"I am sure they are very ordinary kind of people, I never find any difficulty in getting on with them; I don't approve of all this rubbish about feeling," said Miss Charlotte, shortly.
Before the visitor had been half-an-hour at table, she knew that "I am sure" of Miss Charlotte's by heart, and a deep feeling of pity for those who had always to listen to it sprang up within her. There seemed to be no point on which the excellent lady was not sure, yet the mere statement of an opinion by anyone else appeared to rouse in her breast a feeling of covert ire.
"Elaine, my child, come here," said Miss Ellen, softly.
Elaine started, rose, and came round the table. Her aunt took her hands.
"You are eating nothing," she said, "and your hands are very hot. Don't you feel well? Are you tired?"
"I am sure," remarked Miss Charlotte, "she has had nothing to tire her—she drove all the way home from Poole."
"Yes, but she has been agitated—she has had a shock," said Miss Ellen, anxiously; with a strange feeling, as she looked into the girl's dilated eyes, that Elaine was gone, and that she was perusing the face of a stranger. "Do you feel shaken, dear child?"
"Yes," said Elaine at last, in her unready way.
"She had better have a little wine and water, and lie down," said her aunt, sympathetically. "Go and lie on the sofa, Elaine dear, and rest. I am so vexed—so grieved for her to see such a terrible thing," she said to Lady Mabel. "One would always keep young girls in ignorance even to existence of crime."
"Oh, would you?" said her ladyship, in accents of such real surprise that each sister looked up electrified at the bare idea of questioning such orthodox teaching. "I mean," she explained, with a smile, "that I think women ought to be very useful members of society, and I should not at all like to feel that the sight of a wounded wayfarer by the roadside only inspired one with the desire to faint. I shall wish all my girls to attend ambulance classes, so that a broken limb may always find them a help, not a hindrance. One cannot shut up girls in bandboxes nowadays, and I would not, if I could. Let them be of some use in their generation—able to stop a bleeding artery till the doctor comes, as well as able to bake a cake or make their clothes. Do you agree with me, Miss Willoughby?"