“No, indeed,” said Sir Edward, who was embarrassed, and yet more arbitrary than ever; “for in your own home people have a right to know all about you. Though I am not exactly a relative, I have known you all your life; I may say I brought you up, like a child of my own; and to see you come home like this, all alone, without baggage or attendant, as if you had dropped from the skies, and nobody knowing where you come from, or anything about it,—I think, Winnie, my dear, when you consider of it, you will see it is precisely your own friends who ought to know.”
Then Aunt Agatha rushed into the mêlée, feeling in her own person a little irritated by her old friend’s lecture and inquisition.
“Sir Edward is making a mistake, my dear love,” she said; “he does not know. Dear Winnie has been telling me everything. It is so nice to know all about her. Those little details that can never go into letters; and when—when Major Percival comes——”
“It is very good of you, Aunt Agatha,” said Winnie, with a certain quiet disdain; “but I did not mean to deceive anybody—Major Percival is not coming that I know of. I am old enough to manage for myself: Mary came home from India when she was not quite my age.”
“Oh, my dear love, poor Mary was a widow,” cried Aunt Agatha; “you must not speak of that.”
“Yes, I know Mary has always had the best of it,” said Winnie, under her breath; “you never made a set against her as you do against me. If there is an inquisition at Kirtell, I will go somewhere else. I came to have a little quiet; that is all I want in this world.”
It was well for Winnie that she turned away abruptly at that moment, and did not see Sir Edward’s look, which he turned first upon Mary and then on Aunt Agatha. She did not see it, and it was well for her. When he went away soon after, Miss Seton went out into the garden with him, in obedience to his signals, and then he unburdened his mind.
“It seems to me that she must have run away from him,” said Sir Edward. “It is very well she has come here; but still it is unpleasant, to make the best of it. I am sure he has behaved very badly; but I must say I am a little disappointed in Winnie. I was, as you may remember, at the very first when she made up her mind so soon.”
“There is no reason for thinking she has run away,” said Aunt Agatha. “Why should she have run away? I hope a lady may come to her aunt and her sister without compromising herself in any way.”
Sir Edward shook his head. “A married woman’s place is with her husband,” he said, sententiously. He was old, and he was more moral, and perhaps less sentimental, in his remarks than formerly. “And how she is changed! There must have been a great deal of excitement and late hours, and bills and all that sort of thing, before she came to look like that.”