"I am tired, mamma; I wish you wouldn't question me. Really I can't exactly particularize why I am marrying him."
"You a second wife! Have you reflected, Charlotte, that Caroline Carleton was his first choice; that there's already an heir to Alnwick who will inherit all; that George St. John has hardly a shilling beyond his entailed estates----"
"Don't mamma!" was Charlotte's interruption, and her brow had contracted as if in pain. "It is quite useless your saying this. I should marry George St. John, though I knew that I must beg my bread afterwards from door to door."
A moan, as of one in sorrow too great for utterance, broke from the lips of Mrs. Darling, and she sank back in the carriage and clasped her hands in pain.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE UNEXPLAINED REASON
Not a word was spoken by either mother or daughter as they entered their home. The little French clock in the drawing-room pointed to eleven--for the festivities at the Hall had been prolonged into evening--and Charlotte, perhaps afraid of further contention, said good night, and went up at once to her chamber. Mrs. Darling threw off her cloak and bonnet and began to pace the room. It was rather a habit of hers when disturbed or vexed.
Never had she been so disturbed as now. Her ordinary crosses had been but light ones, which she scolded or talked away; this seemed to be too deep, too real, for any talking.
It might be unreasonable; every one who knew of it said it was so; but Mrs. Darling had lived in the ardent hope that her eldest daughter--more fondly cherished by her than all the rest--would never leave her, never marry. She had planned and schemed against it. Some two or three years ago, a suspicion arose in her mind that Charlotte was falling in love with George St. John, and she checked it by carrying off Charlotte, and keeping her away until the danger was over. He had married Caroline Carleton before they came back again. No one living had suspected this manoeuvre on the mother's part, or that Charlotte had been in danger of loving the master of Alnwick--if she had not loved him--except Margaret Darling. Surely it must have been unreasonable. Mr. St. John was a free man then in every sense of the word, and Charlotte's son, had she married him and borne one, would have been the heir!
That Mrs. Darling's love for Charlotte had always been inordinate, those about them knew. But, as a woman of the world, she might have foreseen how utterly powerless would be a mother's love to keep her daughter always by her side. Charlotte once said to her in a joking way, that she had better put her into a convent, and make a nun of her: and indeed that would have been about the only way of preventing it. And now, in spite of her precaution, Charlotte was about to marry; to be a second wife. That fact alone brought some gall to Mrs. Darling.