“It must be so delightful, Regina,” she said, a day or two after her arrival, “to have some one you can always appeal to, always consult, like Mrs Fitzmaurice, close at hand,” and she gave a little sigh. “Papa is the dearest of fathers, and since Margaret’s marriage he and I have been, as you know, everything to each other. Still, after all, a man isn’t a woman, and over and over again I long for a mother.”
“But you have your sister?” I said.
“Oh yes, of course,” was the reply. “The best of sisters; but it cannot now be quite the same, no longer living together. She has her own home and separate interests. I shouldn’t feel it right to trouble her about little things. And you can go to your mother for everything. I do so hate responsibility, and now it seems coming upon me more and more since father is less well than he used to be.”
“I don’t think,” I answered, “that I have ever dreaded responsibility very much, perhaps because, so far, I have small experience of it! But I am likely to have to be rather ‘independent’ before long. I don’t think you will envy me, Isabel, when I tell you that this spring I am going up to London for a couple of months to be taken out by a cousin of mother’s, whom I scarcely know, and already feel afraid of.”
Isabel looked up with startled sympathy in her eyes.
“Oh yes, indeed,” she said. “I do pity you, or rather I would pity myself in your place. Why doesn’t your mother take you out herself?”
Here it was my turn to sigh.
“She is not nearly strong enough,” I said, “for anything of the kind. I have always known that something of the sort was before me sooner or later, and I don’t look forward to it in the least.”
“Poor Regina!” said Isabel. “In our different ways I don’t think either you or I would ever care very much for what is called ‘society’—I from cowardice, and you from—oh! from having so many other things that interest you—such a delightful home, where you are made so much of, and country things. My only experience of London has been for quite a short time together, and under Margaret’s wing. But then, Regina, you are much, much stronger-minded than I. I dare say in the end you will really enjoy it.”
“Perhaps,” I allowed. “I certainly should not care to live a very shut-up life, nor would you either, in any extreme. For instance,” I went on, with a little self-consciousness, which, if Isabel perceived, she was clever enough to conceal that she did so, “for instance, we don’t envy those poor little Miss Greys at Grimsthorpe. By-the-bye, you have not told me if you’ve heard anything of them.”