“Mollie, you won’t! You shan’t! You never could!”
“Couldn’t I? You wait and see!”
“And if you did I would never touch a farthing. I warn you, once for all, that it is useless, so far as I am concerned.”
Mollie looked at her sister’s flushed, defiant face, and laughed her happy, light-hearted laugh.
“Dear old High-falutin’! We won’t argue about it. Half a dozen invitations will show you the soundness of my position better than a hundred discussions. Meantime, I’m going to dress. I have a horrible conviction that that maid will return and offer to do ‘your hair, madam,’ so I mean to be beforehand with her.”
Ruth sat still in her chair, enjoying the unwonted luxury of idling, with no disturbing spasm of conscience to remind her that she ought to be mending or patching, or giving Betty a music lesson, or helping Mary to hang clean curtains in the drawing-room. It was delightful to nestle back against the cushions and study one by one the dainty appointments of the room, and revel in the unaccustomed sense of space. Imagine just for a moment—imagine possessing such a home of one’s own! The house, with its treasures of beautiful and artistic furnishings, which represented the lifelong gatherings of a man renowned for his taste; the extensive grounds, with gardens and vineries and forests of glass, providing an endless summer of blossom; the income, that in itself was a fortune, and held such inexhaustible possibilities of good. What she could do with it, if it were only hers! With one stroke of the pen she would repay the poor old tired pater for all his goodness in the past, and lift the weight of care for the future from his shoulders. She would heap luxuries upon the dear little mother, who was still a child at heart; so pathetically easy to please that it seemed a sin that she should ever be sad. The girls should be sent to finishing schools, and the boys given a thorough training to equip them for their fight in life. Mollie, of course, should live at the Court, and share equally in all her possessions; and they would travel, and help the poor, and be kind to everyone, and never forget the day of small things! or grow arrogant and purse-proud. Ruth dreamed on in a passion of longing till Mollie, standing before the dressing-table, with her white arms raised to her head, caught sight of her face in the mirror, and uttered a sharp exclamation.
“Ruth! What is it, darling?”
Ruth started nervously and glanced upwards with guilty eyes, but there was nothing alarming in the aspect of the figure which stood over her, white necked, white armed, with the loosened golden hair falling round the anxious face. She caught the outstretched hand, and gripped it tightly between her own.
“Oh, Mollie, I want it! I want it dreadfully! When I think of the possibility I feel half wild. If I am disappointed, I believe I shall die! I can’t be unselfish, even for you. I want it for myself!”
She was on the verge of tears, but Mollie’s matter-of-fact cheeriness had the usual bracing effect. She seemed neither shocked nor surprised, but only anxious to soothe.