“Perhaps, too, you will choose to prick her, and pinch her, Miss Matilda Sophia Hanson?” answered Charles, sneeringly, drawing out her name as long and as pompously as it was possible.
“Fie, Charles!” said Edmund; “I am sure you act as if you had forgotten all that papa told us about Miss Hanson.”
Charles, after a moment’s thought, acknowledged that he was wrong, very, very wrong.
Matilda was much struck with this; she was well aware that, under the same circumstances, she should have said much more than he had, and she was curious as to what had been said of her, which could have produced this effect on a boy generally so vivacious and warm-tempered as Charles. After cogitating upon it some time, she at length concluded that Mr. Harewood had endeavoured to impress on the minds of his family the consequence she possessed, as an only child and a great heiress; and although he had appeared so lately to act under a very different impression, yet it was very possible that he had only done so because he was out of temper himself, and, now his mind was become tranquil again, he had repented of his conduct, and been anxious to prevent his children from following his example in this respect.
The more Matilda thought of this, the more fully she fixed it in her mind as an article of belief; but yet there was something in the calm, firm tones of Mr. Harewood, when he spoke to her, and in his present open, yet unbending countenance, when he happened to cast his eyes towards her, which rendered her unsatisfied with the answer she thus gave her own internal inquiries; and although she had been exceedingly angry with him, for presuming to speak to her, she yet felt as if his esteem, and indeed his forgiveness, were necessary for her happiness; and her pride, thus strengthened, contended with her fears and consciousness of guilt and folly; and while she resolved inwardly to keep up her dignity with the young ones, she yet, from time to time, cast an anxious eye towards her new monitor.
In a short time, to Matilda’s great relief, Mr. Harewood stepped into the library to get a book; and the children, in the hope that, when he returned, he would kindly indulge them, either by reading to them, or relating occasionally such anecdotes or observations as the work he read might furnish him with, left their seats, and pressed round the place where their parents were sitting.
Matilda did not like to be left alone, nor did she feel as if she had a right to be held as a child among the rest: again her pride and her repentance had a great struggle, and she knew not to which she should give the preference, for her heart swelled alike with pride and sorrow; she moved towards the same place, and sought, in the bustle of the moment, to divert the painful feeling which oppressed her.
In a few moments, Mr. Harewood was heard to shut the library-door; and as, of course, he might be expected to re-enter very soon, and would now be much nearer to her than he had been, and would certainly adopt some more decided kind of conduct and language towards her, Matilda became again extremely desirous of knowing what he really had said about her, and she two or three times essayed to speak; but a little remaining modesty, which was nearly all the good which her unhappy education had left her, prevented her, until she found that she had no time beyond the present instant left for satisfying her curiosity on so important a point, when, in a considerable flutter of spirits, she whispered to Ellen, but in a voice sufficiently articulate to be heard by others—“Pray what did your papa say of me?”
“That you were very much to be pitied.”
“Pitied! Pray what am I to be pitied for?”