"You thought, I suppose, I was a sort of Cinderella," said Emma laughing, "let out by some benevolent fairy on the occasion of one ball, and that having once escaped into public, I could not be repressed again."
"You know I had not been in your father's house, and had therefore no reason to assign you an imaginary abode in the kitchen, in preference to the parlour, where I had never been. But I own I was surprised by your sudden apparition, since I had neither in ball-room or street, town or country, seen or heard of more than three Miss Watsons."
"I can easily believe it—so protracted an absence will naturally sink one's name in oblivion."
"May I ask if you are to return to your uncle's house?"
"Alas! no—my dear, kind uncle died not quite a twelvemonth ago—my aunt has left England to settle in Ireland—and my home is now at my father's."
"Is it not with rather a strange sensation that you meet your nearest relations; they must be almost unknown to you."
"I have made acquaintance with one brother and two sisters," replied Emma with something like a sigh; "But I have yet to meet another brother and sister."
"It seems almost a pity," said Mr. Howard thoughtfully, "to bring up one child apart and differently from the other members of a family, if they are ultimately to be rejoined. At least I feel in my own case how much I should have lost, had Clara been separated from me in childhood. I suppose it rarely happens that a brother and sister are so much together as we were—but we were orphans, and everything to each other till her marriage."
"It does not do, Mr. Howard, to indulge in retrospective considerations, if they tend to make one dissatisfied," said Emma, with an attempt to check a tear or hide it by a smile; "my friends wished to do everything for the best, and if the result has been different from their intentions, they are not to blame. But I do not know that I should choose to repeat the experiment for one under my care."
"Do you like the neighbourhood?" enquired he, feeling that he had no right to press the last subject further.