Bessie expected that her evening would be as solitary as her afternoon, but, rather to her surprise, Mrs. Sefton beckoned her to sit down beside her.
“My dear,” she said, “you are feeling very uncomfortable, I can see, and you do not like to ask questions; you think something is the matter, and you are right. Edna is making us all very unhappy. She has quarrelled with Neville, and has broken off her engagement with him, and nothing that Richard or I can say to her will induce her to listen to reason.”
“Oh, Mrs. Sefton, how dreadful!”
“Yes, is it not heart-breaking? Poor Neville! and he is so devoted to her. They were to have been married next spring, but now Edna declares that nothing would induce her to marry him. She will have it that he is jealous and monopolizing, and that he distrusts her. Over and over again she told us both that she would be the slave of no man’s caprice. Of course it is all her temper; she is just mad with him because he is always in the right, and she knows how ungenerously she has acted; but bye and bye she will repent, and break her heart, for she is certainly fond of him, and then it will be too late.”
“And she has really sent him away?”
“Yes; she told him to go, that she never wanted to see him again; and he has gone, poor fellow! Richard drove him to the station. He says he never saw a man so terribly cut up, but he told Richard, just at the last, that perhaps it might prove the best for them in the end, that they were not suited to each other, and never had been, but that Edna had never shown him her temper quite so plainly before.”
“Oh, Mrs. Sefton, how terrible it all seems! Can nothing be done?”
“Nothing,” in a voice of despair. “Richard and I have talked to her for hours, but it is no use. She declares that it is a good thing she and Neville at last understand each other, that she will never repent her decision, and yet all the time she looks utterly wretched. But she will not own it; it is just her pride and her temper,” finished the unhappy mother, “and I must stand by and see her sacrifice her own happiness, and say nothing.”
“May I go up to her, Mrs. Sefton? Do you think she would care to see me?”
“I think she will see you now, and it is not good for her to be alone; but you will find her very hard and impracticable.”