Carry withdrew from behind her mother's chair, where she had been standing with one arm round her, and the other tenderly smoothing down the fur round Lady Lindores's throats. She came and sat down opposite to her mother, facing her, clasping her hands together, and looking at her with an eager look as if to anticipate the censure in her eyes. To meet that gaze which she had not seen for so long, which came from Carry's youth and happier days, was more and more difficult every moment to Lady Lindores.
"Carry, I don't know how to begin. You know, my darling, that—your father is unhappy about you. He thinks, you know,—perhaps more than you or I might do,—of what people will say."
"Yes, mother."
Carry gave her no assistance, but sat looking at her with lips apart, and that eager look in her eyes—the look that in old times had given such a charm to her face, as if she would have read your thought before it came to words.
"Carry, dear, I am sure you know what I mean. You know—Mr Beaufort is at Dalrulzian."
"Edward? Yes, mother," said Carry, a blush springing up over her face; but for all that she did not shrink from her mother's eyes. And then her tone sunk into infinite softness—"Poor Edward! Is there any reason why he shouldn't be there?"
"Oh, Carry!" cried Lady Lindores, wringing her hands, "you know well enough—there can only be one reason why, in the circumstances, he should wish to continue there."
"I think I heard that my father had invited him, mamma."
"Yes. I was very much against it. That was when he was supposed to be with Lord Millefleurs—when it was supposed, you know, that Edith—and your father could not ask the one without asking the other."
"In short," said Carry, in her old eager way, "it was when his coming here was misery to me,—when it might have been made the cause of outrage and insult to me,—when there were plans to wring my heart, to expose me to——Oh, mother, what are you making me say? It is all over, and I want to think only charitably, only kindly. My father would have done it for his own plans. And now he objects when he has nothing to do with it."