“Would you be so wicked as to go and turn out your mother?” cried Sara, suddenly flashing into indignation, “and for a girl you know next to nothing about? Sir Charles, I never should have expected this of you.”
Poor Sir Charles fell back utterly disconcerted. “It was all to make you comfortable,” he said. “Of course I’d like my mother to stay. It was all for you.”
“And I told you it could never be me,” cried Sara—“never! I am going to Masterton with papa to take care of him. It is he who wants me most. And then I must say good-bye to every body; I shall only be the attorney’s daughter at Masterton; we shall be quite different; but, Sir Charles, I shall always like you and wish you well. You have been so very good and kind to me.”
Then Sara waved her hand to him and went toward the door. As for Sir Charles, he was too much bewildered to speak for the first moment. He stood and stared and let her pass him. It had never entered into his mind that this interview was to come to so abrupt an end. But before she left the room he had made a long step after her. “We could take care of him at Motherwell,” he said, “just as well. Miss Brownlow, look here. It don’t make any difference to me. If you had not a penny, you are just the same as you always were. If you like me, that is enough for me.”
“But I don’t like you!” said Sara, in desperation, turning round upon him with her eyes flashing fiercely, her mouth quivering pathetically, her tears falling fast. “I mean I like somebody else better. Don’t, please, say any more—thanks for being so good and kind to me; and good-bye—good-bye!”
Then she seized his hand like the vehement creature she was, and clasped it close in her soft hands, and turned and fled. That was the only word for it. She fled, never pausing to look back. And Sir Charles, utterly bewildered and disconcerted, stayed behind. The first thing he did was to walk back to the fire, the natural attraction of a man in trouble. Then he caught a glimpse of his own discomfited countenance in the glass. “By George!” he said to himself, and turned his back upon the rueful visage. It was the wildest oath he ever permitted himself, poor fellow, and he showed the most overwhelming perturbation. He stood there a long time, thinking it over. He was not a man of very fine feelings, and yet he felt very much cast down. Though his imagination was not brilliant, it served to recall her to him with all her charms. And his honest heart ached. “What do I care for other girls?” he said to himself. “What good is Fanny to me?” He stood half the morning on the hearth-rug, sometimes turning round to look at his own dejected countenance in the glass, and sometimes to poke the fire. He had no heart to put himself within reach of his mother, or to look at the other girls. When the bell rang for luncheon he rushed out into the damp woods. Such a thing had never happened in his respectable life before: and this was the end of Sir Charles Motherwell’s little romance.
Sara, though she did not regret Sir Charles, was more agitated than she could have supposed possible when she left the library; there are young ladies, no doubt, who are hardened to it; but an ordinary mortal feels a little sympathetic trouble in most cases, when she has had to decide (so far) upon another creature’s fate. And though he was not bright, he had behaved very well; and then her own affairs were in such utter confusion. She could not even look her future in the face, and say she had any prospects. If she were to live a hundred years, how could she ever marry her father’s clerk? and how could he so much as dream of marrying her—he who had nothing, and a family to maintain? Poor Sara went to her own room, and had a good cry over Sir Charles in the first (but least) place, and herself in the second. What was to become of her? To be the attorney’s daughter in Masterton was not the brightest of fates—and beyond that—She cried, and she did not get any satisfaction from the thought of having refused Sir Charles. It was very, very good and nice of him—and oh, if it had only been Fanny on whom he had set his fancy! Her eyes were still red when she went down stairs, and it surprised her much to see her father leaving the morning-room as she approached. Lady Motherwell was there with a very excited and pale face, and one or two other ladies with a look of consternation about them. One who was leaving the room stopped as she did so, took Sara in her arms, though it was quite uncalled for, and gave her a hasty kiss. “My poor dear!” said this kind woman. As for Lady Motherwell, she was in quite a different state of mind.
“Where is Charley?” she cried. “Miss Brownlow, I wish you would tell me where my son is. It is very strange. He is a young man who never cares to be long away from his mother; but since we have been in this house, he has forsaken me.”
“I saw him in the library,” said Sara. “I think he is there now. I will go and call him, if you like.” This she said because she was angry; and without any intention of doing what she said.
“I am much obliged to you, I am sure,” said the old lady, who, up to this moment, had been so sweet to Sara, and called her by every caressing name. “I will ring and send a servant, if you will permit me. We have just been hearing some news that my dear boy ought to know.”