“Oh, my dear, you know that was not what I meant,” said the disturbed and agitated aunt.
“I wish then, please, you would say what you mean,” said Winnie. “She would not come with us at first, when we were all ready for her, and then she would not stay at Earlston after going there of her own free will. I dare say she made Mr. Ochterlony’s life wretched with her trouble and widow’s cap. Why didn’t she be burnt with her Major, and be done with it?” said Winnie. “I am sure it would be by far the most comfortable way.”
“Oh, Winnie, I thought you would have had a little sympathy for your sister,” said Aunt Agatha, with tears.
“Everybody has sympathy for my sister,” said Winnie, “from Peggy up to Sir Edward. I don’t see why she should have it all. Hasn’t she had her day? Nobody came in upon her, when she was my age, to put the house in mourning, and banish all one’s friends. I hate injustice,” cried the young revolutionary. “It is the injustice that makes me angry. I tell you, Aunt Agatha, she has had her day.”
“Oh, Winnie,” cried Miss Seton, weeping—“Oh, my darling child! don’t be so hard upon poor Mary. When she was your age she had not half nor quarter the pleasures you have; and it was I that said she ought to come among her own friends.”
“I am sure she would be a great deal better in some place of her own,” said Winnie, with a little violence. “I wonder how she can go to other people’s houses with all that lot of little children. If I should ever come home a widow from India, or anywhere else——”
“Winnie!” cried Aunt Agatha, with a little scream, “for Heaven’s sake, don’t say such things. Sorrow comes soon enough, without going to meet it; and if we can give her a little repose, poor dear—— And what do a few pleasant evenings signify to you at your time of life?”
“A few pleasant evenings!” said Winnie; and she gave a kind of gasp, and threw herself into a chair, and cried too, for passion, and vexation, and disgust—perhaps, a little, too, out of self-disgust, though she would not acknowledge it. “As if that were all! And nobody thinks how the days are flying, and how it may all come to an end!” cried the passionate girl. After having given vent to such words, shame and remorse seized upon Winnie. Her cheeks blazed so that the scorching heat dried up her tears, and she sprang up again and flew at the shutters, on which her feelings had already expended themselves more than once, and brought down the bar with a clang that startled the whole house. As for Aunt Agatha, she sat aghast, and gazed, and could not believe her eyes or ears. What were the days that were flying, or the things that might come to an end? Could this wild exclamation have anything to do with the fact that Captain Percival was only on a visit at the Hall, and that his days were, so to speak, numbered? Miss Seton was not so old as to have forgotten what it was to be thus on the eve of losing sight of some one who had, as she would herself have said, “interested you.” But Aunt Agatha had never in her life been guilty of violence or passion, and the idea of committing such a sin against all propriety and good taste as to have her usual visitors while the family was in affliction, was something which she could not take into her mind. It looked a breach of morals to Miss Seton; and for the moment it actually seemed as if Winnie, for the first time in her life, was not to have her way.
CHAPTER XV.
