"I think Mere Side is just the most charmingly-situated house, and altogether the loveliest spot I ever saw. I always envied you your home until I knew."
"Knew what?" asked Gertrude, turning sharply round with an expression of utter astonishment on her handsome face. It was reflected on that of her friend, Pauline Tindall, who had spoken without having an idea that she was trenching on forbidden ground.
"You must know what I mean, dear," she replied, "and surely you are not angry at me for alluding to it. I would not pain or annoy you for the world," and she clung coaxingly to Gertrude, who was a full head above her in height.
"I do not understand you. I was surprised, not angry, when you said those words, 'until I knew,' and I want to know the meaning of them also. Tell me, Pauline, if you are really my friend!"
"If! Oh, Gertrude, can you doubt me? I am and shall always be your true friend, I hope. It is impossible that you should not know already far more than I can tell. I was only thinking that if Mr. Richard—I should say Mr. Whitmore now, as he is the only gentleman in the family—were to marry, how sad it would be for you all. If I lived at Mere Side on the same terms, I should be haunted with a perpetual dread of receiving notice to gait, and should feel as if a sword were hanging over my head whenever my brother spoke to a girl."
Still there was a look of perplexity and bewilderment on Gertrude Whitmore's face, and at last it dawned on her friend's mind that facts which were known to all the country round must be unknown to her.
It was perfectly true. No outsider had ever spoken to these Whitmore girls about the difference between Dick's worldly circumstances and their own. Everybody knew that the main portion of the money and the whole of the estate had come by Dick's mother, and that Mr. Whitmore had only a life interest in these. Of course, all had belonged to the young man himself since he came of age, and that was two years ago, when Gertrude was fifteen.
And everybody took it for granted that what was so generally known outside was equally so to the young people who lived so comfortably with stepbrother Dick. It was of no use alluding to such matters. The girls were happy and well cared for, and Richard Whitmore was the best of sons to his charming stepmother, and of brothers to the quartet of bonnie lasses at Mere Side. No doubt they would marry in good time, or if he married, he would do something towards increasing the slender income of one to whom he gave a son's affection.
If outsiders failed to speak of the position, Richard Whitmore was still less likely to name it. It was this lad of sixteen, who, when his father died, had gone quietly to the trustees, that father's old friends, and pleaded with them for the largest allowance that they dared take the responsibility of granting during his minority. Not for himself, but that Mrs. Whitmore might not want any luxury to which she had been accustomed, or the girls feel that a needless shadow had fallen on their young lives.
It was Richard who had said to the mother, "Do not be afraid of spending from your own store. It will be replenished in due time," meaning when he should have legal power to do what he chose with his own. And, lastly, it was he who had persuaded Mrs. Whitmore to keep the girls in ignorance of what they owed to him.