“No, my dear; I have so much good to be grateful for, that, as you say, it is difficult to think of anything but sunshine. Everything is going on satisfactorily.”
“You have seen General Osbert again, papa, since the poor son’s death?” asked Charlotte; for the younger Mr Osbert had died a few days after the Waldrons arrived.
“Yes, poor old man; he and Lady Mildred are quite at one about everything, and of course I am only too glad to carry out her wishes. One thing I am glad of, and that is that I shall have plenty to do, Charlotte. I could not have endured a life of even comparative idleness.”
“Papa dear,” Charlotte went on, “it is most of all about Claudia I want to speak to you. I cannot tell you how I feel about her. Do you know, papa, I could not have been like her if our places had been reversed? Just think, she is really as happy for us as if we were her own family. I don’t believe it has once come into her mind, even the very least little bit, to wish any of it were coming to them.”
“She is a most sweet and noble girl,” said Mr Waldron.
“And, papa, to think of all she has told me—of how horribly I misunderstood her. To think how poor they are, and of her father’s blindness, and how they have struggled, and all that Claudia has done—not that she seems to think she has ever done anything. I sometimes can’t bear to think of the feelings I had,” and Charlotte’s honest eyes filled with tears.
“It was not altogether your fault,” said her father consolingly.
“Yes, papa; the horrid feelings were,” said Charlotte firmly. “But do you know it is Claudia’s happiness that makes me the most ashamed. She does not know—you said when you first understood about her, you remember, that it would hurt her for me to say too much about how I misjudged her?—she does not know half, and she thinks it was all because she dared not be frank and companionable at school. And she says she is so happy now that we are friends that it was the only thing wanting, and that she is the luckiest girl in the world. And after all, papa, the happiness she is so looking forward to, of working hard and earning, not many would think it a very delightful future, would they? Oh, papa, she is so good.”
“And so she is to be envied after all. Has she not ‘everything’ in the best sense, gipsy dear?”
“And we will always be her dearest friends, won’t we, papa? Afterwards—when—when Lady Mildred is dead, though I don’t like to speak of it, you will be rich enough to help them in many ways that they would not mind, won’t you, papa?”