“I am afraid, sister, that we can but bow to the inevitable,” said Miss Matilda with a sigh as she folded the letter. “It seems to me that we have no right, even if we had the will, to withhold our approval of the step she has chosen to take.”
“My own view exactly,” replied Miss Jane with a sorrowful shake of the head. “And yet—oh, dear!—we shall only have the dear girl back at home to lose her permanently after a little while. And I was looking forward—— Oh! I was looking forward to so many things.”
And then before more could be said Tamsin’s voice broke suddenly in. “And is it not a right and proper thing that Miss Ethel should marry and have a home of her own?” demanded the old woman in tones which had something of an injured ring in them. “Why should she not have a husband to love and cherish her—some good man to whose life she—in her turn—will be a blessing? Ay, and he is a good man, is Mr. Everard Lisle—very different from that other one! If some of us have missed it, is there any reason why we should begrudge it to her? I trow not, indeed—I trow not!”
She and her tray were gone before Miss Matilda had sufficiently recovered from her astonishment to find a word to say.
“Really, the way Tamsin presumes on our good nature and her own length of service is at times most trying. I am afraid that one of these days we shall be under the necessity of giving her notice.” It was not the first time Miss Matilda had spoken to the same effect; but no one knew better than she how empty was the threat.
“It seems to me, sister,” remarked Miss Jane timidly, “that we have been justly rebuked for our selfishness. We have been thinking more of our own loss than of the dear girl’s happiness. That is not as it should be.”
Miss Matilda did not answer for a little while. She seemed intent on tearing up the envelope of Ethel’s letter into the tiniest of fragments. Then she said gently: “You are right, sister. It is the child’s happiness that we ought to consider first of all. But”—with a sigh—“we are growing old, and the house will seem very lonely without her.”
Then, somehow, tears sprang to the eyes of both, and for a little space they wept silently.
But there were no traces of tears in their eyes when, about four o’clock the same afternoon, just as they had agreed between themselves that if Ethel must marry, there was no one to whom they would sooner entrust her than to Everard Lisle, they were startled by seeing Lisle himself marching up the garden-path and making direct for the front door.
Nor were the sisters less surprised when he informed them of the special purpose which had brought him there. They willingly entered into all the details of the story which Ethel had told him, going over it with him step by step; but in the result he found that he had been unable to add anything of real consequence to that which he knew already.