The Ladies Lindores

to John Erskine; the next day she drove to Tinto with more anxiety than hope. Already a great change had come over that ostentatious place. The great rooms were shut up; the less magnificent ones had already begun to undergo a transformation. The large meaningless ornaments were being carried away. An air of home and familiar habitation had come about the house. Carry, in her widow’s cap, had begun to move lightly up and down with a step quite unlike the languor of her convalescence. She was not convalescent any longer, but had begun to bloom with a soft colour and subdued air of happiness out of the cloud that had enveloped her so long. To see her so young (for her youth seemed to have come back), so fresh and almost gay, gave a wonderful pang of mingled pain and delight to her mother’s heart: it showed what a hideous cloud that had been in which her life had been swallowed up, and to check her in her late and dearly bought renewal of existence was hard, and took away all Lady Lindores’s courage. But she addressed herself to her task with all the strength she could muster. “My darling, I am come to⁠—talk to you,” she said.

“I hope so, mother dear; don’t you always talk to me? and no one so sweetly,” Carry said, with her lips upon her mother’s cheek, in that soft forestalling of all rebuke which girls know the secret of. Perhaps she suspected something of what was coming, and would have stopped it if she could.

“Ah, Carry! but it is serious⁠—very serious, dear: how am I to do it?” cried Lady Lindores. “The first time I see light in my child’s eye and colour on her cheek, how am I to scold and threaten? You know I would not if I could help it, my Carry, my darling.”

“Threaten, mamma! Indeed, that is not in your way.”

“No, no; it is not. But you are mother enough yourself to know that when anything is wrong, we must give our darlings pain even for their own dear sakes. Isn’t it so, Carry? There are things that a mother cannot keep still and see her dear child do.”

Carry withdrew from behind her mother’s chair, where she had been standing with one arm round her, and the other tenderly smoothing down the fur round Lady Lindores’s throats. She came and sat down opposite to her mother, facing her, clasping her hands together, and looking at her with an eager look as if to anticipate the censure in her eyes. To meet that gaze which she had not seen for so long, which came from Carry’s youth and happier days, was more and more difficult every moment to Lady Lindores.

“Carry, I don’t know how to begin. You know, my darling, that⁠—your father is unhappy about you. He thinks, you know⁠—perhaps more than you or I might do⁠—of what people will say.”

“Yes, mother.”

Carry gave her no assistance, but sat looking at her with lips apart, and that eager look in her eyes⁠—the look that in old times had given such a charm to her face, as if she would have read your thought before it came to words.

“Carry, dear, I am sure you know what I mean. You know⁠—Mr. Beaufort is at Dalrulzian.”

“Edward? Yes, mother,” said Carry, a blush springing up over her face; but for all that she did not shrink from her mother’s eyes. And then her tone sunk into infinite softness⁠—“Poor Edward! Is there any reason why he shouldn’t be there?”

“Oh, Carry!” cried Lady Lindores, wringing her hands, “you know well enough⁠—there can only be one reason why, in the circumstances, he should wish to continue there.”

“I think I heard that my father had invited him, mamma.”

“Yes. I was very much against it. That was when he was supposed to be with Lord Millefleurs⁠—when it was supposed, you know, that Edith⁠—and your father could not ask the one without asking the other.”

“In short,” said Carry, in her old eager way, “it was when his coming here was misery to me⁠—when it might have been made the cause of outrage and insult to me⁠—when there were plans to wring my heart, to expose me to⁠—Oh, mother, what are you making me say? It is all over, and I want to think only charitably, only kindly. My father would have done it for his own plans. And now he objects when he has nothing to do with it.”

“Carry, take care, take care. There can never be a time in which your father has nothing to do with you: if he thinks you are forgetting⁠—what is best in your position⁠—or giving people occasion to talk.”

“I have been told here,” said Carry, with a shiver, looking round her, “that no one was afraid I would go wrong; oh no⁠—that no one was afraid of that. I was too proud for that.” The colour all ebbed away from her face; she raised her head higher and higher. “I was told⁠—that it was very well known there was no fear of that: but that it would be delightful to watch us together, to see how we would manage to get out of it⁠—and that we should be thrown together every day. That⁠—oh no⁠—there was no fear I should go wrong! This was all said to your daughter, mother: and it was my father’s pleasure that it should be so.”

“Oh Carry, my poor darling! No, dear⁠—no, no. Your father never suspected⁠—”

“My father did not care. He thought, too, that there was no fear I should go wrong. Wrong!” Carry cried, starting from her seat in her sudden passion. “Do you know, mother, that the worst wrong I could have done with Edward would have been whiteness, innocence itself, to what you have made me do⁠—oh, what you have made me do, all those hideous, horrible years!”

Lady Lindores rose too, her face working piteously, the tears standing in her eyes. She held out her hands in