“No,” said Mamma, somewhat excited by the prospect of an enemy, yet confident in the perfect credit and honour of the family father, whose good name and humble degree of prosperity no enemy could overthrow. “William has been where he is now for twenty years.”
“So, so,” said Miss Rivers—“and the boy? Take care of these girls; it might be in his devilish way to harm them; and I tell you, when you come to know of it, send me word. So she writes books, this girl of yours? She is no better than a child. Do you mean to say you are not proud?”
Mrs Atheling answered as mothers answer when such questions are put to them, half with a confession, half with a partly-conscious sophism, about Agnes being “a good girl, and a great comfort to her papa and me.”
The girls, when they had executed their commission, looked doubtingly for Louis, but found him gone as they expected. While they were still lingering where he had been, Miss Rivers came to the door again, going away, and when she had said good-by to Mamma, the old lady turned back again without a word, and very gravely gathered one of the roses. She did it with a singular formality and solemness as if it was a religious observance rather than a matter of private liking; and securing it somewhere out of sight in the fastenings of her brown pelisse, waved her hand to them, saying in her peremptory voice, quite loud enough to be heard at a considerable distance, that she was to send for them in a day or two. Then she took her seat in the little carriage, and turned her grey ponies, no very easy matter, towards the high-road. Her easy and complete mastery over them was an admiration to the girls. “Bless you, miss, she’d follow the hounds as bold as any squire,” said Hannah; “but there’s a deal o’ difference in Miss Taesie since the time she broke her heart.”
Such an era was like to be rather memorable. The girls thought so, somewhat solemnly, as they went to their work beside their mother. They seemed to be coming to graver times themselves, gliding on in an irresistible noiseless fashion upon their stream of fate.
Louis came again as usual in the evening. He had heard Mrs Edgerley, and did resent her careless freedom, as Marian secretly knew he would; which fact she who was most concerned, ascertained by his entire and pointed silence upon the subject, and his vehement and passionate contempt, notwithstanding, for Mrs Edgerley.
“I suppose you are safe enough,” he said, speaking to the elder sister. “You will not break your heart because she has forgotten the name of your book—but, heaven help them, there are hearts which do! There are unfortunate fools in this crazy world mad enough to be elated and to be thrown into misery by a butterfly of a fine lady, who makes reputations. You think them quite contemptible, do you? but there are such.”
“I suppose they must be people who have no friends and no home—or to whom it is of more importance than it is to me,” said Agnes; “for I am only a woman, and nothing could make me miserable out of this Old Lodge, or Bellevue.”
“Ah—that is now,” said Louis quickly, and he glanced with an instinctive reference at Marian, whose pallid roses and fluctuating mood already began to testify to some anxiety out of the boundary of these charmed walls. “The very sight of your security might possibly be hard enough upon us who have no home—no home! nothing at all under heaven.”
“Except such trifles as strength and youth and a stout heart, a sister very fond of you, and some—some friends—and heaven itself, after all, at the end. Oh, Louis!” said Agnes, who on this, as on other occasions, was much disposed to be this “boy’s” elder sister, and advised him “for his good.”