“I am sorry. Would you kindly tell James what you would like instead. Tea—coffee—soup? A warm drink would be better than milk this morning.”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“Nothing, James! You may go.”
James departed. Aunt Maria went on with her knitting, the click-click of the needles sounding startlingly distinct in the silent room. Darsie sat shamed and miserable, now that her little ebullition of spleen was over, acutely conscious of the rudeness of her behaviour. For five minutes by the clock the silence lasted; but in penitence, as in fault, there was no patience in Darsie’s nature, and at the end of the five minutes the needlework was thrown on the floor, and with a quick light movement she was on her knees by Lady Hayes’s side.
“Aunt Maria, forgive me. I’m a pig!”
“Excuse me, my dear, you are mistaken. You are a young gentlewoman who has failed to behave as such.”
“Oh, Aunt Maria, don’t, don’t be proper!” pleaded Darsie, half-laughing, half in tears. “I am a pig, and I behaved as much, and you’re a duchess and a queen, and I can’t imagine how you put up with me at all. I wonder you don’t turn me out of doors, neck and crop!”
Lady Hayes put down her knitting and rested her right hand lightly on the girl’s head, but she did not smile; her face looked very grave and sad.
“Indeed, Darsie, my dear,” she said slowly, “that is just what I am thinking of doing. Not ‘neck and crop’—that’s an exaggerated manner of speaking, but, during the last few days I have been coming to the conclusion that I made a mistake in separating you from your family. I thought too much of my own interests, and not enough of yours.” She smiled, a strained, pathetic little smile. “I think I hardly realised how young you were! One forgets. The years pass by; one falls deeper and deeper into one’s own ways, one’s own habits, and becomes unconscious of different views, different outlooks. It was a selfish act to take a young thing away from her companions on the eve of a summer holiday. I realise it now, my dear; rather late in the day, perhaps, but not too late! I will arrange that you join your family at the sea before the end of the week.”
Darsie gasped, and sat back on her heels, breathless with surprise and dismay. Yes! dismay; extraordinary though it might appear, no spark of joy or expectation lightened the shocked confusion of her mind. We can never succeed in turning back the wheels of time so as to take up a position as it would have been if the disturbing element had not occurred. The holiday visit to the seaside would have been joy untold if Aunt Maria had never appeared and given her unwelcome invitation, but now!—now a return to Seaview would be in the character of a truant carrying within her heart the consciousness of failure and defeat. In the moment’s silence which followed Aunt Maria’s startling announcement the words of advice and exhortation spoken by her father passed one by one through Darsie’s brain.