about, and they are always kind to me.'
'I don't think you ought to go among them or countenance them.'
'My dear child,'--and the colour rose--'I don't feel as if I had a right to set myself above any one.'
'Mother!'
'People might have said just the same of me.'
'And whose fault was that?' muttered Nuttie under her breath, but Mrs. Egremont would not hear. She only pleaded, as perhaps mother ought not to have done with child.
'You know, Nuttie, it is not for my own pleasure, but your father's eyesight makes him dislike to go anywhere without me now; and I really should be uneasy about him.'
'Yes; he is all you care for,' said Nuttie. 'You sacrifice everything you used to think essential, just to his will and pleasure.'
'Oh, Nuttie, I hope not; I don't think I do!'
'If I thought it was doing him any good I should not so much mind,' went on the girl; 'but he is just the same, and I am always thinking of 'As the husband is, the wife is--''
'Hush! hush! You have no right to think in that way of your father. I will not hear it. I have let you say too much already, Nuttie.' Then after a pause she added, gently and wistfully, 'You have been better taught, and are clearer headed than ever I was, my Nuttie, and it is quite right that you should hate what seems evil to you. I can only go on trying to do what seems my duty from day to day. I know,' she added with rising tears, 'that the sin and folly of my younger days worked a difficult position for us both; but we can only act according to our lights, and pray God to direct us; and please-- please bear with me, my dear one, if the same course does not always seem right to us both.'
Nuttie had never heard her say anything so fully showing that she realised these difficulties, and, greatly touched, she asked pardon, kissed and caressed her mother. There was a calm over them for the next few days, and Nuttie actually refrained from bitter comments when her mother was not allowed to go to evensong on Sunday, on the plea of her being tired, but, as the girl believed, in order that she might read the newspapers aloud.
She knew that her silence was appreciated by the way her mother kissed her and called her a dear, good, considerate girl.
On Monday Mr. and Mrs. Egremont went away at what was a strangely early hour for the former, Nuttie spending her days at the Rectory.
On the Tuesday Blanche went with her little sister and the governess on a shopping expedition to Redcastle, and in relating her adventures on her return, she said, 'Oh, by the bye, I met Annaple in Park's shop!'
'Full of Micklethwayte news, I suppose,' said May.
'Yes, of course. Did you know, Nuttie, that your aunt was ill?'
'No, indeed, I did not. What was the matter?'
'Bronchitis, I believe--brown titus, as Betty Butter calls it.'
'Bronchitis! Oh dear! oh dear! Are you quite sure, Blanche?'
'Oh yes! I am quite certain Annaple said Mark told her that Miss Headworth was laid up with bronchitis.'
'And nobody has written to us all this week!' sighed Nuttie.
'I should think that a sign there could not be much in it,' observed May; 'it may be only a bad cold.'
'But Aunt Ursel had bronchitis four years ago, and was very ill indeed,' persisted Nuttie. 'I'm sure it is bronchitis, and that she won't let Miss Mary write to us.'
She was in much distress about it, though May privately told her that she ought to know Blanche's way better than to trust implicitly to any of her reports; and her aunt said much the same thing in more general terms, even proposing that if she did not hear the next morning she should go over to Lescombe to ascertain what Mark had really said.
This pacified her a little, but on her way home the alarm grew upon her, and, moreover, she recollected the opposition that she believed that her father was certain to make to either her mother or herself going to nurse her aunt. It flashed upon her that if she were to hasten to Micklethwayte on this alarm before there could be a prohibition, it would be no disobedience, and perfectly justifiable, not to say noble. Her parents were to return on Thursday evening, and she made up her mind that, unless she were fully reassured as to Miss Headworth's state, she would go off at once to Micklethwayte before any one could gainsay her. She had plenty of money, and she consulted the time-table in the hall before going upstairs. It only concerned the nearest line, but she calculated that if she caught the express, she should reach her destination in time to write to her mother at Waldicotes, and prevent needless shocks. Her eagerness for the plan grew upon her, so that it seemed like liberation; she could hardly sleep for thinking of it, and certainly was not as much disappointed as she believed herself when the post came in--a blank.
Martin was away with her mistress, so Nuttie explained matters to the upper housemaid, who was very sympathetic, carried down her orders for the carriage, procured for her both breakfast and provision for the journey, and packed her clothes. Ursula would fain have been off before the Rectory was aware, but the two little girls came up with a message about the plans for the day, just as she was beginning an explanatory note, and she entrusted to them the information that she was so uneasy about Miss Headworth that she had decided on going to see for herself.
So in dashed Adela and Rosalind to their mother's room full of excitement with the news that Cousin Nuttie was gone off by the train, because her aunt was very ill indeed.
'Gone, Adela? are you sure? Really gone?'
'Oh yes, mamma! The dogcart was coming round, and she said she wanted to catch the 10.05 train, and was very sorry she had not time to write a note to you.'
'Was there a letter? What had she heard?'
'Oh, only that her aunt was so very ill! She did not tell us--did she, Rosie?'
'There was something about being in time to write to Aunt Alice,' suggested Adela.
'I am very sorry about this. I am afraid it will be a great shock to Alice,' observed the mother, as she imparted the news at her husband's dressing-room door.
'Young girls are so precipitate!' said the Canon.
'Your brother won't like it at all,' the lady continued.
'Not he. But after all, it is just as well that he was not asked. They do owe that poor old lady a good deal, and Alwyn's not the man to see it. I'm not sorry the girl took the matter into her own hands, though I couldn't have advised it.'
'Except that it will all fall on Alice.'
'He is very fond of Alice. She has done more with him than I ever thought possible. Kept him respectable this whole year, and really it grows on him. He makes ever so much more of her now than when he first brought her home--and no wonder. No, no; he won't fall foul of her.'
'Perhaps not; but it is just as bad, or worse, for her if he falls foul of her daughter. Besides, she is very much attached to her aunt. I wish I knew what the account was, or whether she knows anything about it.'
CHAPTER XXI. URSULA'S RECEPTION.
'Thy wish was father, Harry, to that thought.'--SHAKESPEARE.
It was at half-past seven o'clock that Ursula Egremont's cab stopped at St. Ambrose's Road. She had missed the express train, and had to come on by a stopping one. But here at last she was, with eyes even by gaslight full of loving recognition, a hand full of her cab-fare, a heart full of throbbing hope and fear, a voice full of anxiety, as she inquired of the astonished servant, 'Louisa, Louisa, how is Aunt Ursel!' and, without awaiting the reply, she opened the adjoining door. There sat, with their evening meal on the table, not only Mary Nugent, but Miss Headworth herself.
Nuttie rushed at her, and there was an incoherency of exclamations, the first thing that made itself clear to the senses of the traveller being, 'Ill, my dear? No such thing! Only I had a bad cold, and Mary here is only too careful of me.'
'But Mark said you had bronchitis.'
'What could have put that into his head? He did not write it, surely?'
'He wrote it to Annaple Ruthven, and she told Blanche.'
