“They are coming, mamma!” she exclaimed joyfully. “They are really coming to-night. Winifred’s mysterious business is settled at last, Celia says. Isn’t it delightful that we shall have them really back to-day? But,”—as a glance showed her that her mother, too, held a letter in her hand, and that her face scarcely reflected the pleasure Louise herself was feeling—“have you heard, too? Is your letter from Winifred?”
“Yes, dear,” Mrs Maryon replied, with a little sigh. “It is from Winifred. Your father was awake early, so the bag was brought up-stairs—you found yours on the table? I sent it down. Yes, mine is from Winifred. Of course I am delighted they are really coming, but, Louise, I am afraid the experiment of this visit to London has done no good. Your sister is evidently as determined as ever.”
Louise’s face fell a little, more, perhaps, out of sympathy with her mother’s disappointment than from any keen sense of it herself. She had not expected otherwise.
“Celia seems to me to be in a most reasonable frame of mind,” she said. “Nothing could be sweeter and nicer than all she says.”
“Celia is different,” said the mother. “There is sense and reason in her wish to cultivate the talent she believes she has, or at least to find out how much she has. She would never have been unreasonable if Winifred had not put it into her head;” and Mrs Maryon sighed again.
She was more like her eldest daughter in appearance—the slight, tall figures and fairer complexions of the younger girls were from their father’s side. Yet, in character, Winifred more resembled Mr Maryon, though the long chastening of delicate health—since a terrible accident some years before—had so mellowed and refined an originally self-willed and almost despotic nature, that papa’s “gentleness” and well-nigh womanly consideration for others were household words in the family. The mother, full of intelligence and good sense, was nevertheless constitutionally timid and even shy. So, between Mr Maryon’s fear of his own natural imperiousness, and his wife’s almost morbid want of self-assertion, the clever, precocious child had developed into the self-willed, self-opinionated, though always candid and high-principled girl.
In the case of the other sisters, no bad results appeared to have followed their rather exceptional up-bringing. Louise was essentially well balanced and unselfish; Celia too talented to be self-engrossed. She lived in a world where self is quickly lost sight of, though her great capacity for affection kept her from losing touch with the real people and the real life around her.
Louise, as she took her place at the breakfast-table, tried to think of what she could say to cheer her mother.
“I suppose Winifred must judge for herself, mamma,” she said. “You have always said so, and, after all, even if she is away from home for a few months, she may settle down all the better afterwards.”
“I doubt it,” said Mrs Maryon. “Once she has tasted the sweets of independence, and a more exciting life, I doubt if she will ever ‘settle down,’ as you say, unless she married, and of that—at least of the marriage we hoped for—I suppose there is no chance now.”