“I can tell very well what has come over her,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “She is just wild that I have interfered, which it was my clear duty to do. If she had been heart and soul in the matter it would have been different—but she was never that. These old cats at Rosebank, they thought there was nobody saw it but themselves; but I saw it well enough.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Moubray, “perhaps it would have been better to interfere sooner. I wish you would send some one to see if Effie is really there.”
“Why should I have interfered sooner? If everything had gone well, it was such a match as Effie had no chance of making; but when it turned out that it was a mistake, and the other there breaking his heart, that had always been more suitable, and her with no heart in it——” Mrs. Ogilvie paused for a moment in the satisfaction of triumphant self-vindication. “But if you’re just sentimental and childish and come in my way, you bind her to a bankrupt that she does not care for, because of what you call honour—honour is all very well,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, “for men; but whoever supposes that a bit little creature of a girl——”
“Will ye go and see if Effie is in her room?” said her husband impatiently.
“Ye may just ring the bell, Robert, and send one of the maids to see; what would I do with her? If I said anything it would only make her worse. I am not one of the people that shilly shally. I just act, and am done with it. I’m very glad I put in my letter myself that it might go in the first bag. But if you will take my advice you will just let her be: at this moment she could not bear the sight of me, and I’m not blaming her. I’ve taken it in my own hands, at my own risk, and if she’s angry I’m not surprised. Let her be. She will come to herself by-and-bye, and at the bottom of her heart she will be very well pleased, and then I will ask Ronald Sutherland to his dinner, and then——”
“I wish,” said Mr. Moubray, “you would ease my mind at least by making sure that Effie has really come in. I have a misgiving, which is perhaps foolish: I will go myself if you will let me.”
“No need for that,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, ringing the bell. “George, you will send Margaret to tell Miss Effie—but what am I to tell her? that is just the question. She will not want anything to say to me, and she will perhaps think—— You will say just that her uncle wants her, that will be the best thing to say.”
There was a pause while George departed on his errand: not that Mrs. Ogilvie had nothing to say or was affected by the anxiety of others. It had indeed been a relief to her when her husband informed her that Effie, no doubt, had come in and was in her own room. The stepmother, who had been a little uneasy before, took this for granted with a sigh of relief, and felt that a certain little danger which she had not defined to herself was over.
And now that the alarm was past, and that she had put forth her defence, it seemed better not to dwell upon this subject. Better to let it drop, she said to herself, better to let Effie think that it was over and nothing more to be made of it. Mrs. Ogilvie was a woman without temper and never ill-natured. She was very willing to let it drop. That she should receive her stepdaughter as if nothing had happened was clearly the right way. Therefore, though she had a thousand things now to say, and could have justified her proceedings in volumes, she decided not to do so; for she could also be self-denying when it was expedient so to be.
There was therefore a pause. Mr. Moubray sat with his eyes fixed on the door and a great disquietude in his mind. He was asking himself what, if she appeared, he could do. Must he promise her her lover, as he would promise a child a plaything? must he ignore altogether the not unreasonable reasons which Mrs. Ogilvie had produced in justification of her conduct? They were abhorrent to his mind, as well as to that of Effie, yet from her point of view they were not unreasonable. But if Effie was not there? Mr. Ogilvie said nothing at all, but he walked from one end of the room to another working his shaggy eyebrows. It was evident he was not so tranquil in his mind as he had pretended to be.