“Certainly not: but she has. I will wish you good-night now. I hope you will be quite well on Monday evening when I return from my visit to the Brown House.”
Mr Durrant left the room, and Harriet lay back in her deep, easy chair, lost in thought. Once again she said to herself:
“That horrid girl is about to supplant me. I wonder, oh, I wonder!”
She thought long and hard.
Book Two—Chapter Eight.
Mr Durrant Visits Brown House.
Mr Durrant arrived at the Brown House on Sunday afternoon. It was a day when few visitors were expected. Mr Starling, having gone to church in the morning, invariably spent the afternoon lying back in a cosy corner of the green-house, smoking and reading a Sunday newspaper. He was by no means an irreligious man, but he liked his ease on Sunday, being under the supposition that he worked extremely hard during the week days. Mrs Starling spent Sunday afternoon lying down and imagining herself a little worse than usual. Miss Felicia sat in the drawing-room, and Violet and Rose played on the lawn.
They were quite good little children and never made any unruly noise—that is, except when Robina was at home. Robina brought a disturbing element into their young lives: but now that she was gone, and Bo-peep was gone, the entire Starling family had settled down into their ordinary habits.