"I think he would love to have you."
"I know he would; and a home would be so comfortable—he would come to us every evening. Averil"—dropping her voice—"if you only knew what it would be to me to get away, so that I should not be obliged to meet them everywhere. I am afraid," speaking with great dejection, "that you will think me very weak, but I feel as though I should never get over it if I stay here, doing just the same things, and going to just the same places, and having no heart for anything."
"My poor child"—caressing her—"do you think I do not understand? Do you imagine that I am sending you away from me for my own good?"
"Ah, that is the only sad part—that I should have to leave you, Averil, and just as I was beginning to love you so. It is all my selfishness to plan this, and leave you alone."
"But I shall not be alone," returned Averil, brightly. "I do not mean you to take Lottie, so you may as well make up your mind to that. Besides, Ned Chesterton wants her, and I intend him to have her, by and by, when Lottie is a little older and wiser. Then I shall have Annette, and Mother Midge, and a host of belongings. Never was a little woman richer in friends than I am."
"You deserve every one of them," replied Maud; and then a shade passed over her lovely face "You will be better without us, Averil. Mamma, Georgina, and I have only spoiled your home and made it wretched. You will be able to lead your own life, follow your own tastes as you have never done yet. Do you think I do not see it all plainly now? how it has been all duty and self-sacrifice on your part, and grasping selfishness on ours? I wonder you do not hate us by this time, instead of being our good angel!"
"You shall not talk so," returned Averil, kissing her. "You are my dear sister, and sisters always bear with one another's faults. Well, it is settled; and now I shall leave you to talk it over with your mother, while I give a hint to Rodney and Frank. Then there is Georgina; she must come home at once; and you must get well, Maud; for your mother will do nothing without you."
"I feel well already," replied Maud; and indeed she looked like a different creature; something of her old energy and spirit had returned at the notion of the change.
Averil knew her suggestion had been a wise one; it was a "splendid fluke," as Frank observed when he heard it.
If a bomb had exploded at Mrs. Willmot's feet she could not have been more utterly aghast than when the idea was jointly propounded by Maud and Rodney. "Preposterous! Impossible!" she repeated over and over again. "A more impracticable scheme had never been heard. Cross the sea! Never! She was a wretched sailor. She would rather die than cross the Atlantic. Live out of England, where her two good husbands were buried! How could any one ask such a thing of a widow? Averil just wanted to get rid of them; it was a deep-laid plot to set herself free."