‘What are you doing here, Cara, when you ought to be looking after your guests, or playing croquet, or amusing yourself?’
‘I am amusing myself, Aunt Cherry, as much as I wish to amuse myself. It is not amusing to go away.’
‘My darling, we must think of your poor father,’ said Miss Cherry, her voice trembling; ‘and there are all your young friends. Will you go and help to form that game, Roger? They want a gentleman. Cara, dear, I would rather you did not walk with Roger Burchell like this, when everybody is here.’
‘He said he had something to show me,’ said Cara. ‘I was glad to get away. All this looks so like saying farewell; as if I might never be here again.’
‘Cara, if you make me cry, I shall not be fit to be seen; and we must not make a show of ourselves before all these people.’ Miss Cherry pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. ‘I am so silly; my eyes get so red for nothing. What did Roger have to show you? He ought to be at work, that boy.’
‘He has an aunt at Notting Hill,’ said Cara, with a soft laugh; ‘and he told me he meant to come to town on Sundays instead of coming here. He says he shall see me quite as often as usual. I suppose he thought I should miss him. Poor Roger! if that were all!’
‘But, Cara, we must not allow that,’ said Miss Cherry. ‘I must speak to his mother. See him every Sunday, as usual! it is ridiculous; it must be put a stop to. Roger Burchell! a lad who is nobody, who has his way to make in the world, and neither connections, nor fortune, nor any advantage——’
Here Miss Cherry was arrested by Cara’s look turned calmly upon her, without excitement or anxiety, yet with that half smile which shows when a young observer has seen the weak point in the elder’s discourse.
‘What should his connections or his fortune have to do with it if he wanted to see me and I wanted to see him?’ said Cara; ‘we have been friends all our lives. But do not make yourself uneasy, Aunt Cherry; for though I might, perhaps, like well enough to see Roger now and then, I don’t want him every Sunday. What would papa say? Roger thinks Sunday in the Square is like Sunday here—church and then a stroll, and then church again. You know it was not like that when I was at home before.’
‘No,’ said Miss Cherry, with a sigh; ‘but then it was different.’ She had her own thoughts as to whose fault that was, and by whose influence James had been led away from natural churchgoing; but she was far too loyal, both to the dead and to the living, to show this. ‘Cara,’ she added, hurriedly, ‘in that respect, things will be as you like best hereafter. You will be the one to settle what Sunday is to be—and what a great many other things are to be. You must realise what is before you, my dear child.’