Amy spent the summer holidays with her mother. Mrs. Neville had grown pale and thin, while a careworn expression had stolen over her face, supplanting the former sad one; and she had a certain nervous, restless manner unusual to her, which Amy could not fail to remark. Mrs. Elrington attributed it to anxiety on her daughter's account during her absence. It was a trying time for Mrs. Neville; she felt and thought often of what her child might suffer, all that one so sensitive might have to undergo from the neglect or taunts of the world; that world she knew so little of, and into the gay circles of which only two short years ago she had been introduced. How she had been admired and courted! Perhaps some of those very acquaintances she might now meet, and how would it be with her? How would they greet her? Not with the grasp of friendship, but as one they had never seen, or having seen, forgotten. She was no longer the rich heiress, but a governess working for her own and others' support. She was no longer in the same society as themselves, no longer worthy of a thought, and would be passed by and forgotten; or, if remembered, looked on as a stranger.
Mrs. Neville thought her daughter altered. She had grown quieter, more reserved, more womanly than before, and more forbearing with little, exacting Sarah.
Would Amy do this, or look at that? show her how to cut out this, or paint that—always something new; but Amy seldom expostulated or refused assistance, but was, as her mother told Mrs. Elrington, a perfect martyr to her sister's whims and fancies. She had changed. But why? Her mother watched her narrowly, and doubted her being happy, and this thought made her doubly anxious, and imprinted the careworn look more indelibly on her face. A few mornings before Amy returned to Brampton, at the close of the holidays, she went over to Mrs. Elrington's, and found her busy in the garden tying up the stray shrubs, and rooting up the weeds.
"I am afraid, Amy dear, you have come to say 'good-bye,' so I must finish my gardening to-morrow, and devote my time for the present to you."
"I shall be very glad, Mrs. Elrington, for indeed I have a great deal to say. I am so anxious about mamma."
"Anxious, Amy! Well, come in and sit down, and tell me all about it. Sit here close by me, and tell me what is the matter, or rather, what you fancy is; as I think the anxiety is all on your account."
"It's mamma, Mrs. Elrington. I am so dissatisfied about her; she is so changed."
"Changed! In what way?"
"In every way. She is not so strong, the least exertion tires her, and I so often notice the traces of tears on her face. Then she is so dull; and will sit for hours sometimes without saying a word, always busy with that everlasting knitting, which I hate; it is quite an event if she drops a stitch, as then her fingers are quiet for a little. If I look up suddenly, I find her eyes fixed on me so mournfully: at other times, when I speak she does not hear me, being evidently deep in her own thoughts. She is so different from what she used to be, so very different."