“Why, they’ll make him a fellow of his college,” said Hugh. “He’ll go in for all sorts of honours. He’s awfully clever, mother; there’s no fear of Will. The best thing I can see is to send him to read with somebody—somebody with no end of a reputation, that he would have a sort of an awe for—and then the University. It would be no use doing it if he was just like other people; but there’s everything to be made of Will.”
“I hope so,” said Mary, with a little sigh. And then she added, “So I shall be left quite alone?”
“No; you are coming to Earlston with me,” said Hugh; “that is quite understood. There will be a great deal to do; and I don’t think things are quite comfortable at the Cottage, with Mrs. Percival here.”
“Poor Winnie!” said Mrs. Ochterlony. “I don’t think I ought to leave Aunt Agatha—at least, while she is so much in the dark about my sister. And then you told me you had promised to marry, Hugh?”
“Yes,” said the young man; and straightway the colour came to his cheek, and dimples to the corners of his mouth; “but she is too y—— I mean, there is plenty of time to think of that.”
“She is too young?” said Mary, startled. “Do I know her, I wonder? I did not imagine you had settled on the person as well as the fact. Well; and then, you know, I should have to come back again. I will come to visit you at Earlston: but I must keep my head-quarters here.”
“I don’t see why you should have to come back again,” said Hugh, somewhat affronted. “Earlston is big enough, and you would be sure to be fond of her. No, I don’t know that the person is settled upon. Perhaps she wouldn’t have me; perhaps—— But, anyhow, you are coming to Earlston, mother dear. And, after a while, we could have some visitor perhaps—your friends: you know I am very fond of your friends, mamma.”
“All my friends, Hugh?” said his mother, with a smile.
This was the kind of talk they were having while Mr. Penrose was laying the details of Hugh’s extravagance before Sir Edward, and doing all he could to incite him to a solemn cross-examination of Winnie. Whether she had run away from her husband, or if not exactly that, what were the circumstances under which she had left him; and whether a reconciliation could be brought about;—all this was as interesting to Sir Edward as it was to Uncle Penrose; but what the latter gentleman was particularly anxious about was, what they had done with their money, and if the unlucky couple were very deeply in debt. “I suspect that is at the bottom of it,” he said. And they were both concerned about Winnie, in their way—anxious to keep her from being talked about, and to preserve to her a place of repentance. Mrs. Percival, however, was not so simple as to subject herself to this ordeal. When Sir Edward called in an accidental way next morning, and Uncle Penrose drew a solemn chair to her side, Winnie sprang up and went away. She went off, and shut herself up in her own room, and declined to go back, or give any further account of herself. “If they want to drive me away, I will go away,” she said to Aunt Agatha, who came up tremulously to her door, and begged her to go downstairs.
“My darling, they can’t drive you away; you have come to see me,” said Aunt Agatha. “It would be strange if any one wanted to drive you from my house.”