That Eliza should naïvely give her advice concerning the training of her sisters was a circumstance so in keeping with the girl's force of character that her late mistress hardly gave it a thought, nor had she time at that moment to wonder where the letters had been left and found. It was the thought that the family reputation for sense and sobriety had apparently been in the hands of an unprincipled stranger, and had been preserved only by his easy good-nature and by Eliza's energy, that struck her with depressing and irritating force. Had the girls come in her way just then, the words she would have addressed to them would have been more trenchant than wise, but as Eliza was by her side, retreating towards the road, she felt no desire to discuss the matter with her.
She observed now that Eliza looked worn and miserable as she had never seen her look before, unless, indeed, it had been in the first few days she ever saw her. The crowded state of the hotel could hardly account for this. "I hope, Eliza, that having despised that suitor of yours when he was here, you are not repenting now he is gone."
The girl looked at her dully, not understanding at first.
"Speaking of Cyril Harkness?" she cried; "good gracious, no, Miss Sophia." But the response was not given in a sprightly manner, and did not convey any conviction of its truth.
"You must be working too hard."
"Well, I needn't. I'll tell you a bit of good fortune that's come to me.
Mrs. Glass—one of our boarders—you know her?"
"The stout person that comes to church in red satin?"
"Yes; and she's rich too. Well, she's asked me to go and visit her in Montreal in the slack time this next winter; and she's such a good boarder every summer, you know, Mr. Hutchins is quite set on me going. She's promised to take me to parties and concerts, and the big rink, and what not. Ah, Miss Sophia, you never thought I could come that sort of thing so soon, did you?"
"And are you not going?"
Sophia's question arose from a certain ring of mockery in Eliza's relation of her triumph.