The Pillars of the House, V1

should have minded nothing if Alda had not been so angry at Clement's sending for Sister Constance. You did give him leave, though?'

'Yes, and I should have done so much more decidedly if I had known.'

At that moment Sister Constance knocked at the door, with her work in her hand, and Wilmet inferred that this was the refuge from Alda and the drawing-room. To Cherry's surprise, Wilmet, instead of ignoring everything unsatisfactory, began at once, 'Please come in, Sister Constance; I wanted to thank you, and tell you how sorry and ashamed I am! I am afraid you have not been treated as-'

'Don't say any more, my dear,' as the tears were in her eyes; 'don't think about it.'

'I ought to think!' said Wilmet. 'I have been trying to understand things ever since I came home; but everybody except Cherry and Clem blames everybody, and they only blame themselves! I can't understand the rights of anything!'

'My dear,' said Sister Constance, 'I think it would be impossible to go into the details of all that has happened. Shall I tell you how it seemed to me?'

'Pray do!'

'I thought that the authority of an elder reared in so different a school necessarily was producing a few collisions. There was some ignorance, and a good deal of dislike of interference, and the younger ones would not have been human not to take advantage of it; but it is over now you are come home, and I strongly recommend an act of oblivion.'

'Oh! I don't want to punish the poor children,' said Wilmet.

'Oblivion, I said, not only amnesty;' and as she did not see perfect comprehension in Wilmet's face, she added, 'I mean, not only that the children should be forgiven, but that their elders should not go hunting for causes, and thinking how this or that could have been prevented.'

'I suppose not,' said Wilmet. 'It is all plain enough;' and the sigh that followed quite amazed Cherry, who smiled up in her face, saying, 'Plain enough that we can't do without you.'

'No,' said Wilmet, kissing Cherry's uplifted face ere leaving the room; but it was with such an effort at a responding smile, that Cherry exclaimed, 'Oh dear! how dreadfully we have vexed her!' And Sister Constance thought the more.

Yet again Wilmet had to hear another testimony to the anarchy in her absence. Those formidable bills had obliged her to apply to Alda for an advance of the sum she had offered for Lance's journey; and this, after some petulance and faltering, elicited that some old forgotten London bills had come down and swamped this Midsummer quarter's allowance, so that the promise must stand over till-till Michaelmas; or it might be that Ferdinand's matters were arranged, and then what would such a paltry sum be? Wilmet turned away in shame and disgust at having trusted for a moment to such offers. She could only do what she had never done before-apply to Mr. Froggatt for an advance on Felix's account: and she detained him after dinner for the purpose.

He was as kind as possible, assuring her that he should have been hurt if she had not come to him. And then, in his blandest way, he thought it right to hint that 'Young people were sometimes a little unguarded.' She was prepared for the story of the loss of Stella, but she was not prepared to hear of a gossipping intercourse over the newly arrived Punches, etc., carried on in the early morning with Redstone, not only by Bernard but Angela. She was but eleven years old, so it was no worse than the taste of childish underhand coquetry and giggling; there was no fear of its continuance after Felix's return, and, indeed, good old Mr Froggatt had kept guard by coming in two hours earlier ever since the discovery; but the propensity dismayed Wilmet more than all that had yet happened, and on this head she thought it right to reprove Angela seriously.

'Dear me, Wilmet, you are always telling us not to think ourselves above our station. Mr. Redstone is just as fit to speak to as Felix was before he was a partner.'

'Should you like Felix to have found you gossipping in the reading- room?'

'Well,' said audacious Angela, 'half the fun in things is the chance of being caught.'

'My dear, you don't know what you are saying,' replied Wilmet dejectedly, as if exhausted beyond the power of working out her reproof! and Angela had to fight hard against any softening, telling Bernard that W. W. was a tremendous old maid, who had no notion of a lark.

Robina, who stood in the peculiar position of neither accusing nor being accused, would not add her voice to the chorus of welcome, and did not wonder that every hour wore off something from the radiance of the beautiful bloom brought from the Bailey. Indeed, the unusual gravity and reserve of the younger sister struck Cherry's observant eyes, and made her think at first that she had been much pained by having to part with Lance in his weak half-recovered state; but when at tea-time the whole history of the illness was inquired into in detail by the assembled family, the downcast eyes and cheeks with which Robin encountered every mention of Captain Harewood's good offices led to the inference that she had in her excitement forgotten the bounds where the brook and river meet, and was in an anguish of shame; Wilmet meantime looking flushed with the fag of her vexatious day, and speaking plentifully of this same Captain, proving to herself all the while that she was doing so with ordinary gratitude and composure.

Robina was quartered upon Geraldine in the holiday crowding of the house; and somewhere about four o'clock on the summer morning, Cherry, wakening as usual, and reaching for her book, heard a voice from the corner asking if she wanted anything. 'No, thank you, Bobbie. Go to sleep again.'

'I can't; I've been thinking about it all night. I think he's coming to-day.'

'Who?'

'Captain Harewood. He promised to come and tell us how Lance and Felix are.'

'I am very glad; but Wilmet never said so.'

'No, but-O Cherry, I wish we could contrive some nice quiet place, but nothing is ever quiet in this house.'

'No,' said Geraldine, who was but too well aware of the fact, 'though I can't imagine that any Harewood can be distressed on that score.'

'Oh, but-' said Robina, to whom the communication began to feel so momentous, that she could not help toying round it before coming to the point-'I know; at least, I am sure he will want to see her particularly.'

'You Robin, what have you got into your head?' said Cherry, trying to misunderstand, but feeling a foreboding throb of consternation.

'It is not my head. Willie told me.' And as she detected a sigh of relief, 'And it is no nonsense of his either. He did it on Sunday evening by the river-side.'

'He did it?' repeated Geraldine, willing to take a moment's refuge in the confusion of antecedents, though too well aware what must be coming.

'You know what I mean. He-Jack-John-Captain Harewood, had it out with her when we were all walking together.'

'My dear, impossible!'

'I mean, we were out of hearing, but we saw them at it, and walked up and down till Lance got tired out, and Willie and I stayed to make it proper.'

Geraldine relieved herself by a little laugh, and said, in a superior tone of elderly wisdom, 'But, my dear, there might be a walk even without what you call doing it.'

'Yes,' reiterated Robina; 'but I know, for the Captain shut himself up with Mr. Harewood when we came in, and Bill heard his father telling his mother about it at night through the wall.'

'For shame, Robin!'

'Oh! he told them long ago that he could hear, and they don't care; besides, Mrs. Harewood told him himself when he went in to wish her good morning, and she kissed me and Lance too about it, and said they hadn't their equals. And poor Mettie thinks no one knows of it but their two selves, and maybe Mr. Harewood!'

'But, Robin, I don't know how to understand it. I think she would have told Alda, at least.'

'Perhaps she has to-night,' said Robina; 'but, you see, she didn't accept him.'

'Oh! then it doesn't signify.'

'Not out and out, I mean; and it is only because of us. At least, we are sure she likes him.'

'We! You and Willie!'

'And Lance. He saw it all the time he was getting well. Besides, the Captain told his father that she wouldn't listen to him, and would have hindered his going to Felix if Lance had been fit to travel alone.'

'Then it is not an engagement now?'