"Where will you go? Will you go into Berkshire?--will you go to London?--to Brighton?--to Paris? Only say where--I don't wish to force you to Alnwick."
"Mamma, I beg you not to worry me on this point. I am very comfortable at Castle Wafer, and you need not try to force me away from it. It is lost labour."
Mrs. Darling made no reply. It would have been useless. All her life she had found it "lost labour" to endeavour to force Charlotte to do anything against her will; and sometimes she felt the yoke upon her was a very heavy one. She bent over her writing again in silence. Presently Charlotte spoke, abruptly:
"How long is that girl going to remain here?" Mrs. Darling's train of thought just then was roaming to many things, pleasant or unpleasant, and she thought "that girl" must mean Honour Tritton. Charlotte's eyes were ablaze with light at the mistake; and Mrs. Darling could have bitten her tongue out for her incaution in mentioning the name. What she next said, did not mend it.
"Charlotte, my darling, I really beg your pardon. I'm sure I don't know how I came to think of her, unless it was that I was talking to her this morning. You----"
"Talking to her!" came the imperative interruption. "I should like to know, mamma, what you can have to say to her. If every one had their deserts, Honour Tritton would be--would be---- What did she presume to say of me?"
"My dear Charlotte!" cried the unfortunate mother, half aghast at the tone in which the last sentence was spoken, "she did not presume to speak of you at all. It was only a casual meeting in one of the lower passages. She just dropped a curtsey, and asked how I was: that was all."
"She presumed to put herself in my way the other day, that woman; I know that," scornfully returned Mrs. Carleton. "But that it might be said I made too much of a trifle utterly beneath me, I should ask Sir Isaac to banish her from Castle Wafer."
"Oh, Charlotte! What, because she--she happened to meet you?"
"No. For the misery she wrought in the years gone by. I wonder what brought her here--why she came?"