"Mr. St. John, then--what does it matter? I should not like you to marry him. Has he really asked you to be his wife?"
"Yes."
"It must have been very sudden!"
"Not so. I think we have understood each other for some little time past."
"Then he has been in the habit of coming to the cottage?"
"Oh yes."
Mrs. Darling, who had raised herself in some commotion as she asked the last question, sank back again, and a look of mortification, of mental trouble, settled on her face. The carriage was approaching their door ere she spoke again, her tones betraying an agitation that was ill suppressed.
"I cannot spare you, Charlotte! Charlotte, my darling, I cannot spare you! How often have I hoped, and urged, and prayed that you would never leave me--that you would be the one to stay and cheer my old age!"
Charlotte shook her head with a smile. Had her mother been less agitated, less evidently in earnest, she might have enlarged on the unreasonableness of such a wish. As it was, she only answered playfully, that her mother need not think of old age these twenty years.
"Are you marrying him for his money--his position?" resumed Mrs. Darling.