"Want to?" echoed Mrs. Copley. "I tell you, Dolly, when people get into difficulties the question is not what they want to do. They have to pocket their likings, and eat humble pie. But how has your father got into difficulties?" she burst out with an expression of frightened distress. "He always had plenty. Dolly!—tell me!—what do you know about it? what is it? How could he get into difficulties! Oh, if we had staid at home! Dolly, how is it possible? We have always had plenty—money running like water—all my life; and now, how could your father have got into difficulties?"
Perhaps the difficulty was but transient and would soon pass over, Dolly faintly suggested.
"It don't look like it," said Mrs. Copley miserably, "and your father don't look like it. Here we are down in this desert, you and I, to keep us out of the way, and where we will cost as near nothing as can be; and we can't pay that! Do you know nothing about it, Dolly? how it has come about?"
"I couldn't ask father such a question, mother, you know."
"And what is to become of me!" Mrs. Copley went on; "when travelling is the thing I need. And what is to become of you, Dolly? Nobody to be seen, or to see you, but St. Leger. Have you made up your mind to be content with him? Will you have him, Dolly? and is that the way your father is going to take care of you?"
Poor Mrs. Copley, having so long swallowed her troubles in secret, dreading to give pain to Dolly, now that her mouth was once opened poured them forth relentlessly. Why not? the subject was broached at last, and having spoken, she might go on to speak. And poor Dolly, full of her own anxieties, did not know where to begin to quiet those of her mother.
"Mr. St. Leger is nothing to me," she said, however, in answer to Mrs. Copley's last suggestions.
"He thinks he is."
"Then he is very foolish," said Dolly, reddening.
"It is you that are foolish, and you just do not know any better. I don't think, Dolly, that it would be at all a bad thing for you;—perhaps it would be the very best; though I'd rather have you marry one of our own people; but St. Leger is rich, very rich, I suppose; and your father has got mixed up with them somehow, and I suppose that would settle everything. St. Leger is handsome, too; he has a nice face; he has beautiful eyes; and he is a gentleman."