"Practising! I have no heart to practise!" exclaimed Charlotte. "Papa is always talking in so gloomy a way. He was in here just now: I was deep in this sonata of Beethoven's, and did not hear him enter, and he began saying it would be better if I and Sophy were to accustom ourselves to spend some of our time usefully, for that he did not know how soon we might be obliged to do it. He has laid down the carriage; he has made fearful retrenchments in the household: I wonder what he would have! And as to our buying anything new, or subscribing to a concert, or anything of that sort, mamma says she cannot get the money from him. I wish I was married, and gone from Westerbury! I am thankful my future home is to be far away from it!"
"Things may brighten here," was all the consolation that Lucy could offer.
"I don't believe they ever will," returned Charlotte. "I see no hope of it. Papa looks sometimes as if his heart were breaking."
"How soon the Miss Fauntleroys have gone out of mourning!" observed Lucy.
"Oh, I don't know. They wore it twelve months; that's long enough for anything. Let me give you a caution, Lucy," added Charlotte, laughing: "don't hint at such a thing as that Barbara Fauntleroy's not immaculate perfection: it would not do in this house."
"Why?" exclaimed Lucy, wondering at her words and manner.
"She is intended for its future head, you know, when the present generation of heads shall—shall have passed away. I'm afraid that's being poetical; I didn't mean to be."
Lucy sat as one in a maze, wondering WHAT she might understand by the words. And Charlotte whirled round on her stool again to the sonata, with as little ceremony as she had whirled from it.
While Miss Fauntleroy was there, Mrs. Arkell had sent a private message to Travice that she wanted him; but Travice did not obey the summons until the young lady was gone. He came then: and Mrs. Arkell attacked him for not coming before; she was attacking him now, while Charlotte and Lucy were talking.
"Why did you not come in at once?" asked Mrs. Arkell, in the cross tone which had latterly become habitual; "Barbara Fauntleroy was here."