“What is it about papa? You look at each other, you and he, like two tigers. You have got the same dreadful eyes. Yes, they are dreadful eyes; they give out fire. I wonder often that they don’t make a noise like an explosion. And Bee, you said yourself that there was something else. You never would have given in to papa, but there was something of your own that parted you from Aubrey—for ever. You said so, Bee—when his mother——”
“Is there any need for bringing in any gentleman’s name?” cried Bee, with the dignity of a dowager. And then, ignoring her own rule, she burst forth, “What I have got against him is nothing to anyone—but that Aubrey Leigh should be insulted and rejected and turned away from our door, and that my heart should be broken because of a woman whom papa and Charlie—whom papa——! He writes to her, and she writes to him—he tells her everything—he consults her about us, us, my mother’s children! And yet it was on her account that Aubrey Leigh was turned from the door—— Oh, if you think I can bear that, you must think me more than flesh and blood!” Bee cried, the tears adding to the fire and sparkle of her blazing eyes.
“It isn’t very nice,” said little Betty, sagely, “but I am not so sure that it was her fault, for if you had stuck to Aubrey as you meant to do at first, your heart would not have been broken, and if Charlie had not been very silly, a person of that age could not have done him any harm; and then papa——. What can she do to papa? I suppose he thinks as she is old he may write to her as a friend and ask her advice. There is not any harm that I can see in that.”
Bee was too much agitated to make any reply to this. She resumed again, after a pause, as if Betty had not spoken: “He writes to her, and she writes to him, just as she did to Charlie, for I have seen them both—long letters, with that ridiculous “Laura,” and a big L, as if she were a girl. You can see them, if you like, at breakfast, when he reads them instead of his papers, and smiles to himself when he is reading them, and looks—ridiculous”—cried Bee, in her indignation. “Ridiculous! as if he were young too; a man who is father of all of us; and not much more than a year ago—. Oh, if I were not to speak I think the very trees would, and the bushes in the shrubbery! It is more than anyone can bear.”
“You are making up a story,” said Betty, wonderingly. “I don’t know what you mean.” Then she cried, carrying the war into the enemy’s country, “Oh, Bee, if you had not given him up, if you had been faithful to him!—now we should have had somebody to consult with, somebody that could have gone and looked for poor Charlie; for we are only two girls, and what can we do?”
Bee did not make any reply, but looked at her sister with startled eyes.
“Mamma was never against Aubrey Leigh,” said Betty, pursuing her advantage. “She never would have wished you to give him up. And it is all your own doing, not papa’s doing, or anyone’s. If I had ever cared for him I never, never should have given him up; and then we should have had as good as another brother, that could have gone into the world and hunted everywhere and brought Charlie home.”
The argument was taken up at hazard, a chance arrow lying in the young combatant’s way, without intention—but it went straight to its mark.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
The house that had been so peaceful was thus full of agitation and disturbance, the household, anxious and alarmed, turning their weapons upon each other, to relieve a little the gnawing of that suspense which they were so unaccustomed to bear. It was true what Bee’s keen and sharply aroused observation had convinced her, that Colonel Kingsward was in correspondence with Miss Lance, and that her letters were very welcome to him, and read with great interest. He threw down the paper after he had made a rush through its contents, and read eagerly the long sheets of paper, upon which the great L, stamped at the head of every page, could be read on the other side of the table. How did that woman know the days he was to be at home, that her letters should always come on those mornings and never at any other time? Bee almost forgot her troubles, those of the family in respect to Charlie, and those which were her very own, in her passionate hatred and distrust of the new correspondent to whom Colonel Kingsward, like his son, had opened his heart.