"Is it less than you expected?"
"It is a great deal more," was the candid answer. "I had not thought much about salary. I fancied I might be offered perhaps ten or twenty pounds."
Mrs. Dewsbury smiled. "Lady Dewsbury is liberal in all she does, Miss Arkell. I should not be surprised, were you to remain with her any considerable length of time, several years for instance, but she would double it."
But for the skeleton preying on Mildred Arkell's heart—the bitter agony that never left it by night or by day—she would have walked home, not knowing whether she trod on her head or her heels. The prospect of fifty pounds a-year to an inexperienced girl, who, perhaps, had never owned more than a few shillings at a time in her life, was enough to turn her head.
But it was not all to be quite plain sailing. Mildred had not disclosed the project to her aunt yet. Truth was, she shrunk from the task, foreseeing the opposition that would inevitably ensue. But it must no longer be delayed, for she was to depart for London that day week, and she went straight to Mrs. Arkells. As she had expected, Mrs. Arkell met the news with extreme astonishment and anger.
"Do you know what you are doing, child! Don't talk to me about being a burden upon Peter! You——"
"Aunt, hear me!" she implored: and be it observed, that to Mrs. Arkell, Mildred put not forth one word of that convenient plea of "seeing the world," that she had filled Peter with. To Mrs. Arkell she urged another phase of the reasoning, and one, in truth, which had no slight weight with herself—Peter's interests. "I ought not to be a burden upon Peter, aunt, and I will not. You know how his heart is set upon going to the university; but he cannot get there if he does not save for it? If I remain at home, the house must be kept up the same as now; the housekeeping expenses must go on; and it will take every shilling of Peter's earnings to do all this. Aunt, I could not live upon him, for very shame. While my mother was here it was a different thing."
"But—to go to Peter's own affairs for a moment," cried Mrs. Arkell, irascibly—"what great difference will your going away make to his expenses? Twenty pounds a year at most. Where's the use of your putting a false colouring on things to me?"
"I have not done so, aunt. Peter and I have talked these matters over since I resolved to go out, and I believe he intends to let his house."
"To let his house!"