"I do not think it, Mrs. Mowbray! O yes, she would like to come; but pleasure—it would be pleasure to nobody. I know she wants to come."
"Well, my dear, and she is your mother's sister. Always keep well with your relations. Blood is thicker than water."
"I do not think so!" cried Rotha. "I do not feel it so. If she were not my mother's sister, I would not care; she would be nothing to me, one way or another; it is because she is my mother's sister that she is so exceedingly disagreeable. If people who are your relations are disagreeable, it is infinitely worse than if they were not relations. It is the relationship that puts them at such an unapproachable distance. You are near to me, Mrs. Mowbray, and my aunt Serena is a thousand miles away."
"It is best the world should not know that, my dear. Do you not agree with me, Mr. Southwode?"
"Better still, that there should be nothing to know," he answered somewhat evasively.
"Yes!" said Rotha; "and if I could have been good and gentle and sweet when I first went to her, things might have been different; but I was not. I suppose I was provoking."
"Cannot you make up the breach now?"
"I have not the wish, Mrs. Mowbray. I see no change in aunt Serena; and unless she could change, I can only wish she were not my mother's sister. I have forgiven her; O I have forgiven her!—but love and kinship are another thing."
"My dear, it would not hurt you, much, to let her come. I know she would feel it a gratification."
"I know that well enough."