‘Because they are poor,’ said Rose, indignantly. ‘is that to say that they are to have nothing pretty in their lives?’
‘But there must be a good scullery,’ said Anne. She stood with a very grave face behind her sister, looking over her shoulder at the drawings spread out on the table. Whether it was the importance of the scullery, or of the other matters concerning her own happiness which she had in her head, it is certain that Anne’s countenance was very serious. The very tone of her voice proved to those who knew her so well that her mood was graver than usual. At other times the importance of the scullery would have brought a tone of laughter, an accent of fun into her voice; but her gravity was now quite real and unbroken by any lighter sentiment. She was taller than her sister, and of a different order altogether. Anne was rather pale than otherwise, with but a slight evanescent colour now and then; her features good, her face oval, her eyes dark grey, large and lucid, and with long eyelashes curling upwards. But Rose, though she had all that beauté de diable which is the privilege of youth, was, like her mother, round and rosy, though her pretty little face and figure had not the solidity, nor her complexion the set and rigid tone which placid middle age acquires. The one face over the other contrasted pleasantly; the elder serious, as if nothing in heaven or earth could ever make her smile again; the younger bent with momentary gravity and importance over her work. But they had no air of belonging to each other. Nothing but an accident could have linked together two beings so little resembling. The accident was Mr. Mountford, whom neither of them was at all like. They were not Mountfords at all, as everybody in the neighbourhood allowed. They took after their mothers, not the one and indivisible head of the family; but that did not really matter, for these two girls, like their mothers, were no more than accidents in the house.
The ancient estate was entailed, and knew nothing of such slight things as girls. When their father died they would have to give up Mount and go away from it. It was true that there still would be a great deal of land in the county belonging to one of them at least, for Mr. Mountford had not been able to resist the temptation of buying and enlarging his estate at the time when he married his first wife, and thought of no such misfortune as that of leaving only a couple of girls behind him. A long life and boys to succeed him were as certainties in his thoughts when he bought all the lands about Charwood and the estate of Lower Lilford. There they lay now, embracing Mount on every side, Mount which must go to Heathcote Mountford, the head of the other family. It was grievous, but it could not be helped. And the girls were not Mountfords, either the one or the other. They betrayed, shall we say, an inherent resentment against the law of entail and all its harsh consequences, by resembling their mothers, and declining to be like the race which thus callously cast them forth.
Mrs. Mountford looked at them with very watchful eyes. She knew what it was which had made her husband send for his eldest daughter into his study after breakfast. It was a circumstance which often galled Anne, a high-spirited girl, that her stepmother should be in the secret of all her personal concerns; but still man and wife are one, and it could not be helped. This fact, however, that everything was known about her, whether she would or not, shut her lips and her heart. Why should she be confidential and open herself to their inspection when they knew it all beforehand without her? This stopped all inclination to confide, and had its effect, no doubt, as all repression has, on Anne’s character. Her heart was in a turmoil now, aching with anger and annoyance, and disappointment, and a sense of wrong. But the only effect of this was to make her more serious than ever. In such a mood to win a smile from her, to strike her sense of humour, which was lively, or to touch her heart, which was tender, was to open the floodgates, and the girl resented and avoided this risk with all the force of her nature. And, truth to tell, there was little power, either in Mrs. Mountford or her daughter, to undo the bonds with which Anne had bound herself. It was seldom that they appealed to her feelings, and when they made her laugh it was not in sympathy, but derision—an unamiable and unsatisfactory kind of laughter. Therefore it happened now that they knew she was in trouble, and watched her keenly to see the traces of it; and she knew they knew, and sternly repressed any symptom by which they might divine how much moved she was.
‘You build your cottages your way,’ cried Rose, ‘and I will build mine in mine. Papa will let me have my choice as well as you, and just see which will be liked best.’
‘If Heathcote should have to be consulted,’ said Anne, ‘it will be the cheapest that he will like best.’
‘Anne! I shouldn’t have thought that even you could be so unfeeling. To remind us that dear papa——’ cried Mrs. Mountford; ‘dear papa! Do not speak of his life in that indifferent way, at least before Rose.’
‘Oh, it would not matter,’ said Rose, calmly, ‘whatever happens; for they are for the Lilford houses on our very own land. Heathcote hasn’t anything to do with them.’
‘Anne might say, “Nor you either,” my Rosie,’ said her mother; ‘for everybody knows that you are cut off out of it in every way. Oh, I don’t find any fault. I knew it when I married, and you have known it all your life. It is rather hard, however, everything turning out against us, you and me, my pet; part of the property going away altogether to a distant cousin, and the rest all tied up because one of you is to be made an eldest son.’
‘Mamma!’ said Rose, petulantly, giving a quick glance up at her mother, and shrugging her shoulders with the superiority of youth, as who would say, Why speak of things you don’t understand? Then she closed her compasses and put down her pencil. ‘Are we to have a game this afternoon?’ she said; ‘I mean, Anne, are you going to play? Charley and Willie are sure to come, but if you go off as usual, it will be no good, for three can’t play.’