“Not exactly, but my head seems oppressed and uneasy. I long for quiet,” said the Rector, nervously passing his hand across his forehead. “Lilias—did you say there was a letter from her? How is she? When does she return?”
“Return?” repeated Mary, in surprise. “Why, dear papa, she has not been away a fortnight yet! The London doctors cannot yet say how soon Mr Greville is to go to Hastings, and they mean to stay there a month at least.”
“Ah, yes, to be sure. I am glad she is enjoying herself, poor child, but I shall be glad to have her back again,” said Mr Western, vaguely, but with a slight confusion of manner which struck Mary as unlike his usual clear way of expressing himself. She put it all down to the “headache,” however, as her mother said he had been suffering a little from something of the kind lately. And by the afternoon he seemed quite like himself again.
It was not till after morning school hours that conscientious Mary felt herself free to read the precious letter. She had looked forward to it as a treat all the morning, and had, from the thoughts of it, gathered extra patience with which to deal with her somewhat unruly pupils. They got on rather better this morning, however.
“I shall get them into shape again in a little,” said Mary, to herself, as at last she sat down on the low window-seat in her own room at leisure to read all that Lilias had to say; “but it certainly does not do for me to leave home even for a few days. Even if I could have agreed to go to Romary sometimes, that is another reason against it. And, besides, the life there would spoil me for my home duties.”
A vision, a tempting vision, came over her for a moment of how pleasant a thing “the life there” must be. The quiet and regularity of a well-trained and well-managed household were in themselves a delightful thing to one of Mary’s naturally methodical and orderly nature; then the prettiness of the surroundings, the gardens, and the flowers, and the tastefully furnished rooms, the pictures, and the books, and the pleasant voices whose tones seemed still to ring in her ears. What pleasant talks they could have had, they three together; how kind and attentive to every wish or fancy of hers they would have been; how they would have fêted and made much of her in return for her easy task of nursing Alys, had she but “given in” and agreed to forsake her colours! Mary was by no means indifferent, in her own way, to the agreeableness of much that would have surrounded her position as a guest at Romary; she was a perfectly healthy-natured girl, well able to enjoy when enjoyment came in her way, and a girl too of barely one-and-twenty. She gave a little sigh as she re-opened her letter, hoping, in some vague, half-unconscious way, therein to find consolation and support and tacit approval—ignorant though Lilias was of all details of the sturdy stand she had made.
But she was disappointed.
The letter was a nice letter, a very nice letter, as affectionate, sympathising, and sister-like as a letter could be. Written too in very good spirits, it was evident to see; the very result that Mary had so hoped for from Lilias’s visit seemed already to be accomplished à merveille. Why was not Mary pleased?
“What an inconsistent, selfish creature I must be,” she said to herself, when she had finished it. “Why am I not glad, delighted, to see that Lilias is happy again? If she did not care much for Captain Beverley, if I was mistaken in imagining her whole heart to be given to him, should I not rejoice? It does not alter my position, it does not in the least condone the cruel interference that might have ruined her life.”
She turned again to a passage in which Lilias spoke of the Cheviotts.