“Not always,” said Mrs Western, under her breath; but she was glad that her husband did not catch the words, and that little Brooke’s running in with some inquiry about his lessons interrupted the conversation—for it was trenching on dangerous ground.
“I am afraid papa thinks there is something vexing me,” said Lilias, when Mary and she were alone together for a little.
“You have yourself to blame for it,” said Mary, with some asperity; “why did you speak so indifferently of Mrs Greville’s invitation? Usually you would have been very pleased to go.”
“Oh, Mary, don’t scold me,” said Lilias, pathetically. “I couldn’t go to Uxley—you forget how near Romary it is—I should be sure to hear gossip about him—perhaps that he was going to be married, or some falsehood of the kind. I could not bear it. I almost wondered at your saying you would like to go.”
“It will only be for a couple of days,” said Mary.
“But you are not intending to make any plan with Mrs Greville for my leaving home, I hope, Mary?” said Lilias, anxiously. “It may be better for me to go away after a while, but not yet. And if you came upon the subject with Mrs Greville in the very least, she would suspect something. Promise me you will not do anything without telling me.”
“Of course not,” said Mary. “I would not dream of doing such a thing without telling you.”
But her conscience smote her slightly as she spoke. Why?
A design was slowly but steadily taking shape in her mind, and Mrs Greville’s note this morning had strangely forwarded and confirmed it. Practically speaking, indeed, it had done more than confirm it—it had rendered feasible what had before floated in Mary’s brain as an act of devotion scarcely more possible of achievement than poor Prascovia’s journey across Siberia. And though Mary was sensible and reasonable, there lay below this quiet surface stormy possibilities and an impressionability little suspected by those who knew her best. Her mind, too, from dwelling of late so incessantly on her sister’s affairs, had grown morbidly imaginative on the point, though to this she herself was hardly alive.
“I am not superstitious or fanciful—I know I am not. I never have been,” she argued, “yet it does seem as if this invitation to Uxley had come on purpose. If I were superstitious I should think it a ‘sign.’”