The little village seemed to lie asleep in the August sunshine. From the upland where she stood Nelly could see the columns of pale smoke going up from cottage chimneys, but nobody was astir in the gardens. It was noon. Scarcely a flake of cloud relieved the intense blue overhead; not a breath of wind fanned the thick leafage in the copse behind her.
Nelly Channell was not sorry that the morning was over. Like most people who have a great deal of time on their hands, she was often puzzled about the disposal of it. When she had diligently practised on the piano indoors, and had paid a visit to the little step-brother and sister in the nursery, there was nothing more to be done. She used sometimes to say that this part of her life was like an isthmus,[109] connecting the two continents of schoolgirlhood and womanhood.
On this morning she had carried a book out of doors, and had read it from beginning to end. It was a book that had been recommended to her by Mrs. Channell. Nelly had a great reverence for her stepmother’s opinion; but the story had not pleased her at all. It was directly opposed to all her notions of right and wrong. She even went so far as to say to herself that it ought never to have been written.
Nelly was a girl who generally spoke her mind;—a little bluntly sometimes, but always with that natural earnestness which makes one forgive the bluntness. As the distant church clock struck twelve, and the stable-clock repeated the strokes, she turned and went into the house.
It was a large handsome house, which her father had built soon after his second marriage, about twelve years ago. But although they had coaxed the creepers to grow over the red bricks, and wreathe the doors and windows,[110] Nelly always maintained that it was not so charming a place as the little vine-covered cottage where she was born. The cottage was still standing; she could see it from her father’s hall-door. And she had only to cross two fields and an orchard when she wanted to visit the dear old man and woman who had sheltered her in her childhood.
On the threshold of the house stood Mrs. Channell with a light basket on her arm.
“I am going to the cottage to see mother,” she explained. “I have been making a new cap for her,—look, Nelly.”
She lifted the basket-lid, and afforded Nelly a glimpse of soft lace and lilac ribbons.
“Why didn’t you let me make it, mamma?” the girl asked. “I think you ought to use these idle hands of mine, if you want to keep them out of mischief.”
“I gave you a book to read this morning,” Mrs. Channell replied.
“Yes. I have read it, and I don’t like it,” said candid Nelly, stepping back to lay the[111] volume on the hall table. “I will go with you to the cottage, and we can talk it over.”
Arm-in-arm they walked through the sweet grass, keeping under the shadow of the hedges and trees. Mrs. Channell waited for the girl to speak again.
“I don’t like the book,” Nelly repeated, after a pause. “The writer seems to have strange ideas. The hero—a very poor hero—is false to the heroine. After getting engaged to her, he discovers that he can never love her as he loves another girl; and of course she releases him from the engagement when she finds out the truth. But instead of representing him as the worthless fellow that he was, the author persists in showing us that he became a good husband and father. He begins his career by an act of treachery; and yet he prospers, and is wonderfully happy with the wife of his choice! It is too bad.”
“Lewis Moore was not a treacherous man,” said Mrs. Channell, quietly. [112]“He made a great and terrible mistake. But sometimes it is not easy to distinguish between a blunder ............