“You have not been there for a long time, Effie. You have just contented yourself with Fred—which is natural enough, I say nothing against that—and left the sisters alone who have always been so kind to you. It was perhaps not to be wondered at, but still I would not have done it. If they were not just very good-natured and ready to make the best of everything, they might think you were neglecting them, now that you have got Fred.”
As was natural, Effie was much injured and offended by this suggestion.
“I have never neglected them,” she said. “I never went but when they asked me, and they have not asked me for a long time. It is their fault.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, “it is winter weather, and there is nothing going on. Your tennis and all that is stopped, and yet there’s no frost for skating. But whether they have asked you or not, just put on your new frock and come over with me. They are perhaps in some trouble, for anything we can tell.”
“In trouble? How could they be in trouble?”
“Do you think, you silly thing, that they are free of trouble because they’re so well off? No, no; there are plenty of things to vex you in this world, however rich you may be: though you are dressed in silks and satins and eat off silver plate, and have all the delicacies of the season upon your table, like daily bread, you will find that you have troubles with it, all the same, just like ordinary folk.”
Effie thought truly that she had no need of being taught that lesson. She knew far better than her stepmother what trouble was. She was going to marry Fred Dirom, and yet if her heart had its way! And she could not blame anybody, not even herself, for the position in which she was. It had come about—she could not tell how or why.
But she could not associate Phyllis and Doris with anything that could be called trouble. Neither was her mind at all awake or impressionable on this subject. To lose money was to her the least of all inconveniences, a thing not to be counted as trouble at all. She had never known anything about money, neither the pleasure of possession nor the vexation of losing it. Her indifference was that of entire ignorance; it seemed to her a poor thing to distress one’s self about.
She put on her new frock, however, as she was commanded, to pay the visit, and drove to Allonby with her stepmother, much as she had driven on that momentous day when for the first time she had seen them all, and when Mrs. Ogilvie had carried on a monologue, just as she was doing now, though not precisely to the same effect and under circumstances so changed. Effie then had been excited about the sisters and a little curious about the brother, amused and pleased with the new acquaintances to be made, and the novelty of the proceeding altogether. Now there was no longer any novelty. She was on the eve of becoming a member of the family, and it was with a very different degree of seriousness and interest that she contemplated them and their ways. But still Mrs. Ogilvie was full of speculation.
“I wonder,” she said, “if they will say anything about what is going on? You have had no right explanation, so far as I am aware, of Fred’s hurrying away like yon; I think he should have given you more explanation. And I wonder if they will say anything about that report—And, Effie, I wonder——” It appeared to Effie as they drove along that all that had passed in the meantime was a dream, and that Mrs. Ogilvie was wondering again as when they had first approached the unknown household upon that fateful day.