"Yes," said Annette, and she took her friend's hand and kissed it. "I have been considering it some time. I am thinking of staying here and setting up as a dressmaker."
"As a dressmaker!" almost gasped Mrs. Stoddart.
"Yes. Why not? My aunt is a very good dressmaker in Paris, and she would help me—at least, she would if it was worth her while. And there is no one here to do anything, and all that exquisite work the peasant women make is wasted on coarse or inferior material. I should get them to do it for me on soft fine nainsook, and make a speciality of summer morning gowns and children's frocks. Every one who comes here would buy a gown of Teneriffe-work from me, and I can fit people quite well. I have a natural turn for it. Look how I can fit myself. You said yesterday that this white gown I have on was perfect."
Mrs. Stoddart could only gaze at her in amazement.
"My dear Annette," she said at last, "you cannot seriously think I would allow you to leave me to become a dressmaker! What have I done that you should treat me like that?"
"You have done everything," said Annette,—"more than anyone in the world since I was born,—and I have accepted everything—haven't I?—as it was given—freely. But I felt the time was coming when I must find a little hole of my own to creep into, and I thought this dressmaking might do. I would rather not try to live by my voice. It would throw me into the kind of society I knew before. I would rather make a fresh start on different lines. At least, I thought all these things as I came up the path ten minutes ago. But these two letters have shown me that I have a place of my own in the world after all."
She put two black-edged letters into Mrs. Stoddart's hand.
"Aunt Catherine is dead," she said. "You know she has been failing. That was why they went to live in the country."
Mrs. Stoddart took up the letters and gave them her whole attention. Each of the bereaved aunts had written.
"My dear Annette (wrote Aunt Maria, the eldest),—I grieve to tell you that our beloved sister, your Aunt Catherine, died suddenly yesterday, from heart failure. We had hoped that the move to the country undertaken entirely on her account would have been beneficial to her, entailing as it did a great sacrifice on my part who need the inspiration of a congenial literary milieu so much. She had always fancied that she was not well in London, in which belief her doctor encouraged her—very unwisely, as the event has proved. The move, with all the inevitable paraphernalia of such an event, did her harm, as I had feared it would. She insisted on organizing the whole affair, and though she carried it through fairly successfully, except that several of my MSS have been mislaid, the strain had a bad effect on her heart. The doctor said that she ought to have gone away to the seaside while the move was done in her absence. This she declared was quite impossible, and though I wrote to her daily from Felixstowe begging her not to over-fatigue herself, and to superintend the work of others rather than to work herself, there is no doubt that in my absence she did more than she ought to have done. The heart attacks have been more frequent and more severe ever since, culminating in a fatal one on Saturday last. The funeral is to-morrow. Your Aunt Harriet is entirely prostrated by grief, and I may say that unless I summoned all my fortitude I should be in the same condition myself, for of course my beloved sister Catherine and I were united by a very special and uncommon affection, rare even between affectionate sisters.
"I do not hear any more of your becoming a professional singer, and I hope I never shall. I gather that you have not found living with your father quite as congenial as you anticipated. Should you be in need of a home when your tour with Mrs. Stoddart is over, we shall be quite willing that you should return to us; for though the manner of your departure left something to be desired, I have since realized that there was not sufficient scope for yourself and Aunt Catherine in the same house. And now that we are bereaved of her, you would have plenty to occupy you in endeavouring, if such is your wish, to fill her place.—Your affectionate aunt, Maria Nevill."