“Oh, I don’t know,” she sobbed. “Perhaps, if I had been more strict with him always, he would never have done it. I wish I had made a point of giving them a whipping every night, all round, from the time they were two years old!” she continued, emphatically. “Would that have made my children turn out better, do you think?”
Mrs. Channing could not forbear a smile. “It is not exactly strictness that answers with children, Lady Augusta.”
“Goodness me! I don’t know what does answer with them, then! I have been indulgent enough to mine, as every one else knows; and see how they are turning out! Roland to go and take a bank-note! And, as if that were not bad enough, to let the odium rest upon Arthur! You will never forgive him! I am certain that you never can or will forgive him! And you and all the town will visit it upon me!”
When Lady Augusta fell into this tearful humour of complaint, it was better to let it run its course; as Mr. and Mrs. Channing knew by past experience. They both soothed her; telling her that no irreparable wrong had been done to Arthur; nothing but what would be now made right.
“It all turns contrary together!” exclaimed my lady, drying up her tears over the first grievance, and beginning upon another. “I suppose, Constance, you and William Yorke will be making it up now.”
Constance’s self-conscious smile, and her drooping eyelids might have told, without words, that that was already done.
“And the next thing, of course, will be your getting married!” continued Lady Augusta. “When is it to be? I suppose you have been settling the time.”
The question was a direct and pointed one, and Lady Augusta waited for an answer. Mrs. Channing came to the relief of Constance.
“It would have been very soon indeed, Lady Augusta, but for this dreadful uncertainty about Charles. In any case, it will not be delayed beyond early spring.”
“Oh, to be sure! I knew that! Everything goes contrary and cross for me! What am I to do for a governess? I might pay a thousand a year and not find another like Constance. They are beginning to improve under you: they are growing more dutiful girls to me; and now it will all be undone again, and they’ll just be ruined!”