“You don’t want that. You know everybody; you have been here all your life,” she said. “And I am sure you got plenty of partners, and looked very nice. And what a pretty necklace that is,” said Emma, artlessly entering upon her subject. “Are they real? Oh, you must not be offended with me, for I never had any nice ornaments. The youngest never has any chance. If they are real, I suppose they are worth a great deal of money; and you must be quite rich, or you would not be able to afford them.”
“We are not rich; indeed we are very poor,” said Hester, “but the pearls are my mother’s. She got them when she was young, from her mother. They have belonged to us for numbers of years.”
“I wonder what Cousin Catherine could mean!” said Emma innocently.
“About my pearls?” cried Hester, pricking up her ears, and all her spirit awakening, though she was so sleepy and tired of the long night.
“She said you oughtn’t to wear them. She said you shouldn’t have them. I wonder what she meant! And Mr. Harry Vernon, that tall gentleman, he seemed to understand, for he got quite red and angry.”
“I oughtn’t to wear them—I shouldn’t have them!” Hester repeated, in a blaze of wrath. She sat bolt upright, though she had been lying back in her corner indisposed for talk.
“Oh, I dare say she didn’t mean anything,” said Emma, “only spite, as you are on the other side.”
Hester did not reply, but she was roused out of all her sleepiness in a moment. She let Emma prattle on by her side without response. As they drove past the Grange a window was opened softly, and someone seemed to look out.
“Oh, I wonder if that was Mr. Edward,” said Emma. “I wonder why he stayed away. Is he after some girl, and doesn’t want Cousin Catherine to know? If it were not that you would scarcely speak to each other when you met, I should say it was you, Hester.”
“I wish,” said Hester severely, “that you would go to sleep; at three in the morning I never want to talk.”
“Well, of course, it may be that,” said Emma somewhat inconsequently, “but I never want to sleep when I have been enjoying myself. I want to have someone in the same room and to talk it all over—everything that has happened. Who was that man, do you know who—”
And here she went into details which Hester, roused and angry, paid no attention to. But Emma was not dependent on replies. She went on asking questions, of which her companion took no notice, till the fly suddenly stopped with a great jarring and rattling, and the opening of two doors, and glimmers of two small lights in the profound dark, gave note of watchers in the two houses, warned by the slow rumbling of the ancient vehicle, and glad to be released from their respective vigils. In Hester’s case it was her mother, wrapped in a warm dressing-gown, with a shawl over her head, and two anxious eyes shining out with warm reflections over her little candle, who received the girl in her finery with eager questions if she were very cold, if she were tired, if all had gone off well.
“Run upstairs, my darling, while I fasten the door,” Mrs. John said. “There is a nice fire and you can warm yourself—and some tea.”
In those days people, especially women, were not afraid of being kept awake because of a cup of tea.
“Mamma,” said Hester when her mother followed her upstairs into the old-fashioned, low-roofed room, which the fire filled with rosy light, “it appears that Catherine Vernon says I ought not to wear your pearls. Has she anything to do with your pearls? Has she any right to interfere?”
“My pearls!” cried Mrs. John almost with a scream. “What could Catherine Vernon have to do with them? I think, dear, you must have fallen asleep and been dreaming. Where have you seen Catherine Vernon, Hester? She gives us our house, dear; you know we are so far indebted to her: but that is the only right she can have to interfere.”
“Had she anything to do with my father?” Hester asked.
She was relieved from she did not know what indefinable terrors by the genuine astonishment in her mother’s face.
“Anything to do with him? Of course; she had a great deal to do with him. She was his first cousin. Her father had brought him up. It was intended—but then he met me,” said the gentle little woman, not without a tone of satisfaction in the incoherent tale. “And she was a kind of partner, and had a great deal to do with the bank. I never understood the rights of it, Hester. I never had any head for business. Wait, darling, till I undo these buttons. And now, my love, if you have got warm, go to bed. My pearls! She must mean, I suppose, that they are too good for you to wear because we are poor. They were my mother’s, and her mother’s before that. I would like to know what Catherine Vernon could have to say to them,” Mrs. John said, taking the pearls from her child’s throat and holding them up, all warm and shining, to the
