Hester turned upon her indiscreet companion with a blaze of indignation. The fact that there was truth in it made it doubly odious. Her whole frame trembled with angry shame. She threw up her hand with an impatient gesture, which frightened and silenced Emma, but which Hester herself afterwards felt to be a sort of appeal to her forbearance—the establishment of a kind of confidence.
“What is that about Edward Vernon?” said Mrs. John, whose tranquil ear had caught something, naturally of that part of the conversation which it was most expedient she should not hear.
Emma paused, and consulted Hester with her eyes, who, however, averted her countenance and would not ask forbearance. A rapid debate ensued in Emma’s mind. What is the use, she asked herself, of having a mother if you cannot tell her everything, and get her to help you? But on the other hand, if Hester did not wish it spoken of she did not dare to oppose an auxiliary who might be of so much service to her. So she answered carelessly—
“Oh, nothing! but don’t you think, Mrs. Vernon, you who know the world, that for a girl to go away just when a gentleman is coming to the point, is a great pity? And just as likely as not nothing may ever come of it if her people interfere like this and drag her away.”
“My dear,” said Mrs. John, astonished, though mollified by the compliment to her knowledge of the world, “I cannot call to mind that I have ever heard such a question discussed before.”
“Oh, perhaps not—not in general society; but when we are all women together, and a kind of relations, I am sure it is only charity to wish that a girl like me might get settled. And when you have had an offer you take such a different position, even with your own people. I want Hester to ask Roland to let me stay.”
“Hester! but why Hester? If you wish it I will speak to Mr. Ashton—or your grandparents would be more suitable,” Mrs. John said.
And it was at this moment that Roland himself came in to pay his respects. When he had said everything that was polite—nay, more than polite, ingratiating and devoted, as if in a subdued and reverential way he was paying his court to the mother rather than the daughter—he contrived to make his way to where Hester sat apart, working with great but spasmodic energy, and not yet recovered from the ferment into which Emma had plunged her. “I scarcely saw you last night,” he said.
“There were so many people to see,” Hester replied, with a cloudy smile, without lifting her eyes.
“Yes, there were a great many people. And tomorrow night, I hear, at the Merridews—”
“I am not going.”
“No? I thought I should have been able to see a little of you there. A ballroom is good for that, that one—I mean, two—may be alone in it now and then—and there were many things I wanted to say. But I thought you did go.”
“Yes, often; but I am tired of it!” cried Hester. “It is too much; one wants something more than folly in one’s life.”
“This is not folly,” he said, looking round at the quiet little room, the tranquil lady by the fire, the work at which Hester’s hands were so busy. She was seated near the side window which looked out upon the road.
“No; this is dullness—this is nothing,” she said; “not living at all, but only going on because one cannot help it.”
“I suppose, on the whole, the greater part of life is that; but you, with the power to make others happy, with so much before you—”
“I am sure the life that I know is all that,” cried Hester; “we are here, we don’t know why, we cannot get out of it, we must go on with it. It is a necessity to live, and prepare your dinner every day and mend your clothes, not because you wish to do so, but because you can’t help yourself. And then the only relief to it is folly.”
“Don’t call an innocent little dance folly, with all its opportunities. If it gave me the chance of a long quiet talk—with you.”
“If that is not folly, it is nonsense,” Hester said, with a laugh, not unmoved by the tone, not unsubdued by the eyes.
“You may think so, but I don’t. I have looked forward to it for so long. If life is nothing to you here, fancy what it is to me in the Stock Exchange.”
“I have no doubt it is very interesting to you. It is something to do: it is change, and thought, and risk, and all that one wants.”
“That is what Edward Vernon says,” said Roland. “He, too, finds life monotonous—I suppose because he has everything he wishes for.”
“Has he everything he wishes for?” said Hester, with a catch of her breath, and a sudden glance up with keen, questioning eyes. The next moment she bent her head again over her work. “What I want is not dancing,” she said.
“It is work, according to the fashion of young ladies. You don’t know when you are well off. You have always wanted work,” said Roland, “and barbarous parents will not let you. You want to go and teach wretched little children, and earn a little miserable money. You to be wasted on that! Ah! you have something a great deal better
