“Hold your tongue, Cresswell,” cried Sarah crossly. “I daresay we know what each other’s ages are. Attend to business, please. I want Richard Mortimer found, I tell you. You can tell him his cousin Sarah wants him. He will come, however far off he may be, when he hears that. You can put it in the papers, if you please.”
Saying this Sarah gave her muslin scarf a little twitch over her elbow, and held up her head with a strange little vain self-satisfied movement. Oh, how Mr. Cresswell did look at her! how he chuckled in his secret soul! From what I had seen once before I understood perfectly well what he meant. He had once taken the liberty to fall in love with Sarah Mortimer himself; and now to see the old faded beauty putting on one of her old airs, and reckoning on the fidelity of a man who, no doubt—it was to be hoped, or what was to become of our search for heirs?—had married and forgotten all about her years ago—tickled him beyond measure. He felt himself quite revenged when he saw her self-complacence. He ventured to chuckle at it secretly. I should have liked, above all things, to box his ears.
“Ah! to be sure; I’ll use all possible means immediately. It’s to be hoped he has ten children,” said Mr. Cresswell, with a very quiet private laugh. Sarah did not observe that he was laughing at her. I believe such an idea could never have entered her head. She began, with an habitual motion she had got whenever she left off knitting, to rub her fingers and stoop to the fire.
“And I insist you should come and report to us what you are doing,” said Sarah; “and never mind Milly; see me. It is I who am interested. Milly, as I tell you, thinks Providence will drop her an heir at the door.”
What could she mean by these spiteful sneering suggestions? I had thought no more of heirs for many a day—never since I got involved in this bewildering business, which I could see no way through. Her sudden attack sent a little thrill of terror through me. I was casting suspicious looks at her; an heir was to be dropped at our door; somebody was plotting against her fortune and honour. Good heavens! what could it mean but one thing? Mad people are always watched, pursued, persecuted, thwarted. I was cast from one guess to another, as if from wave to wave of a sea. I came back to that idea again; and trembled in spite of myself to think of little Sara and her father leaving us, and of being left alone to watch the insane haze spreading over her mind. It was sure to spread if it was there.
Chapter XII.
I WILL not undertake to say that we were a particularly sociable party at dinner that day. The stranger, Mr. Cresswell, who might have been supposed likely to give us a little news, and refresh us with the air of out of doors, was constrained and uncomfortable with the idea of having been found out. I am sure it was the last idea in the world which I wanted to impress upon him. But still, in spite of myself, I had betrayed it. Then Sara, without the faintest idea of her father’s uneasiness, had a strong remembrance of my unlucky words on the previous day, and was very high and stately, by way of proving to me that an attorney’s daughter could be quite as proud as a Mortimer—as if I ever doubted it!—and a great deal prouder. For really, when one knows exactly what one’s position is, and that nobody can change it, one does not stand upon one’s defence for every unwary word. However, so it was that we were all a little constrained, and I felt as one generally feels after a pretty long visit, even from a dear friend, that to be alone and have the house to one’s self will just at first be a luxury in its way.
Not having any free and comfortable subject to talk of, we naturally fell to books, though Mr. Cresswell, I believe, never opened one. He wanted to know if Sara had been reading novels all day long, and immediately Sara turned to me to ask whether she might have one home with her which she had begun to read. Then there burst on my mind an innocent way of putting a question to Mr. Cresswell which I had been very anxious to ask without seeing any way to do it.
“I don’t think you will care for it when you do read it Sara; it is all about a poor boy who gets persuaded not to marry, and breaks the poor creature’s heart who is engaged to him, because there has been madness in the family. High principle, you know. I am not quite so sure in my own mind that I don’t think him a humbug; but I suppose it’s all very grand and splendid to you young people. Young persons should be trained very closely in their own family history if that is to be the way of it. I hope there never was a Cresswell touched in his brain, or, Sara, it would be a bad prospect for you.”
“If you suppose I should think it a bad prospect to do as Gilbert did, you are very wrong, godmamma,” cried Sara. “Why shouldn’t he have been quite as happy one way as the other? Do you suppose people must be married to be happy? it is dreadful to hear such a thing from you!”