"May I enter?" asked Fox.
"Come in, boy, come in!" said the old man, answering for his sister, as though the house were his own; and his own it might be considered, for it was paid for and furnished out of Hall; the maintenance of Miss Cleverdon fell on him and his estate.
"Come!" said the Squire, roughly, "shut the door behind you boy. Go over beside her. Take her hand. Hold out yours, Bess. Doy' hear? It is all settled between us."
Fox entered the room, fastened the door, and remained fumbling at the lock, with his face to it, affecting great diffidence. Mr. Cleverdon took him by the arm and thrust him away, and pointed imperiously to where Bess sat, near the fireplace, on which burnt no spark; her hands lay in her lap folded, and her eyes on the hearth. The window was behind her. The little room was panelled with dark oak that was polished. There were no pictures, no ornaments on the wall—only one oval pastel over the mantelshelf of Magdalen when she was a girl. The colour had faded from this, the pink gone wholly—it was a poor bleached picture of a plain maiden; and now beneath it sat one as blanched, for all the colour had gone out of Bessie's face, and she had assumed the same stiff attitude that her aunt had maintained when drawn by the artist.
Fox, with apparent reluctance, went over to the fireplace; Elizabeth looked at her father with great drops formed on her brow, as though the damp of the atmosphere had condensed on that surface of white alabaster.
"Give him your hand. Are you deaf?"
Elizabeth remained with her hands folded as before, her eyes wide open, fixed reproachfully on her father. She had given her young life to him, borne his roughness, experienced from him no love, no consideration—in every way sacrificed herself to make his home happy, and now he cast her happiness from him, gave her up to a man for whom she had no regard, without considering her feelings in the smallest degree. Then Magdalen looked at the crayon drawing of herself and down at Bessie, and some reminiscence at once painful and yet sweet in its bitterness came back to her—a remembrance, may be, of some sacrifice she had been called to make when about Bessie's age, and the tears came into her eyes.
"Brother," she said, "you are too hasty. The poor child is overcome with surprise. You handle her too roughly. Tell her that her well-being is dear to you, tell her that this plan of yours has been considered by you as the best for her, but do not attempt to drive her, as you might a sheep into the fold to be shorn, with a crack of whip and bark."
"You keep silence, Magdalen," said the Squire. "You have had time to say what you had, and have, it seems, wofully mismanaged the task set thee. I ought to know how to deal with my children."