"Carry, take care, take care. There can never be a time in which your father has nothing to do with you: if he thinks you are forgetting—what is best in your position—or giving people occasion to talk."
"I have been told here," said Carry, with a shiver, looking round her, "that no one was afraid I would go wrong; oh no—that no one was afraid of that. I was too proud for that." The colour all ebbed away from her face; she raised her head higher and higher. "I was told—that it was very well known there was no fear of that: but that it would be delightful to watch us together, to see how we would manage to get out of it,—and that we should be thrown together every day. That—oh no—there was no fear I should go wrong! This was all said to your daughter, mother: and it was my father's pleasure that it should be so."
"Oh Carry, my poor darling! No, dear—no, no. Your father never suspected——"
"My father did not care. He thought, too, that there was no fear I should go wrong. Wrong!" Carry cried, starting from her seat in her sudden passion. "Do you know, mother, that the worst wrong I could have done with Edward would have been whiteness, innocence itself, to what you have made me do—oh, what you have made me do, all those hideous, horrible years!"
Lady Lindores rose too, her face working piteously, the tears standing in her eyes. She held out her hands in appeal, but said nothing, while Carry, pale, with her eyes shining, poured forth her wrong and her passion. She stopped herself, however, with a violent effort. "I do not want even to think an unkind thought," she said—"now: oh no, not an unkind thought. It is over now—no blame, no reproach; only peace—peace. That is what I wish. I only admire," she cried, with a smile, "that my father should have exposed me to all that in the lightness of his heart and without a compunction; and then, when God has interfered—when death itself has sheltered and protected me—that he should step in, par example, in his fatherly anxiety, now!——"
"You must not speak so of your father, Carry," said Lady Lindores; "his ways of thinking may not be yours—or even mine: but if you are going to scorn and defy him, it must not be to me."
Carry put her mother down in her chair again with soft caressing hands, kissing her in an accès of mournful tenderness. "You have it all to bear, mother dear—both my indignation and his—what shall I call it?—his over-anxiety for me; but listen, mother, it is all different now. Everything changes. I don't know how to say it to you, for I am always your child, whatever happens; but, mamma, don't you think there is a time when obedience—is reasonable no more?"
"It appears that Edith thinks so too," Lady Lindores said gravely. "But, Carry, surely your father may advise—and I may advise. There will be remarks made,—there will be gossip, and even scandal. It is so soon, not more than a month. Carry, dear, I think I am not hard; but you must not—indeed you must not——"
"What, mother?" said Carry, standing before her proudly with her head aloft. Lady Lindores gazed at her, all inspired and glowing, trembling with nervous energy and life. She could not put her fears, her suspicions, into words. She did not know what to say. What was it she wanted to say? to warn her against—what? There are times in which it is essential for us to be taken, as the French say, at the half word, not to be compelled to put our terrors or our hopes into speech. Lady Lindores could not name the ultimate object of her alarm. It would have been brutal. Her lips would not have framed the words.
"You know what I mean, Carry; you know what I mean," was all that she could say.