AFTER what Sara had told me I felt in great doubt as to what I should do. Staying in Chester, even for a night, was against my habits, and might make people talk. Ellis, of course, would be very wise over it among the servants, and the chances were that it might alarm Sarah; but at the same time I could not return there in the same state of uncertainty. I could not meet her face again, and see her going on with her knitting in that dreadful inhuman way. Having once broken out of my patience, it seemed to me quite impossible to return to it. I felt as if I could only go and make a scene with Sarah, and demand to know what it was, and be met by some cruel cold denial that she understood anything about it, which would, of course,—feeling sure that she understood it all, but having no sure ground on which I could contradict her,—put me half out of my senses. On the whole, staying in Chester all night could do no harm. If Ellis talked about it, and pretended that he knew quite well what I had gone about, I dare say it was no more than he had done already, and would be very well inclined to do again. One must always pay the penalty for having faithful old servants, and, really, if my absence frightened Sarah, so much the better. She ought not to be allowed to go on placidly congratulating herself on having shut out this poor young man. If we were wronging him, what a cruel, cruel, miserable thing it was of Sarah to be glad of having balked him and driven him away! It is dreadful to say such things of one’s own only sister, but one does get driven out of patience. Think of all I had come through, and the dreadful doubt hanging over me! I had kept very quiet for a long time and said nothing to nobody; but now that I had broken out, I fear I was in rather an unchristian state of mind.

All that afternoon I kept quiet, and rested behind the green blinds in Mr. Cresswell’s half-lighted drawing-room. How Sara ever has got into the way of enduring that half light I can’t imagine; or rather I should say I don’t believe she uses this room at all, but has the back drawing-room, where the window is from which she could see down into the poor{247} curate’s rooms, and watch his wife dressing the baby, as she told me long ago. You can see the street, too from an end window in that back drawing-room; perhaps that is how she would have known if Mr. Luigi had come back, for I am pretty sure, from the glimpses I had when the doors opened, that the blinds were not down there. She received her visitors in the back drawing-room that afternoon. I heard them come and go, with their dresses rustling about, and their fresh young voices. Of course I neither heard nor listened what they were talking of; but dear, to hear how eager the creatures were in their talk! as if it were anything of any consequence. I sat with that hum now and then coming to my ears, bewildering myself with my own fancies. If I could have read a book or a paper, or given my mind to anything else, it would have been a deal better for me; but my disorder of mind, you see, had come to a crisis, and I was obliged to let it take its way.

It was not without a good deal of difficulty and embarrassment that Mr. Cresswell and I met. He was a little uncomfortable himself with the same feelings he had shown a spark of at the Park, and unduly anxious to let me see that he had lost no time in inquiring about the Langhams,—that was the name of the young people,—as soon as he heard of them, and had meant to come out to us next day and tell us the result. For my part, I was a great deal more embarrassed than he was. I could scarcely help letting him see that this new heiress was a very small part of my excitement and trouble; indeed, had no share in the trouble at all, for as much as I could give my mind to think of her, was pure pleasure; but at the same time my heart revolted from telling him my real difficulty. He, I dare say, had never once connected the young Italian, whom everybody in Chester knew something about, with us or our family; and I was so perfectly unable to say what it was I feared, that a shrewd precise man like Cresswell would have set it down at once merely as a woman’s fancy. At the same time, you know, I was quite unpractised in the art of concealing my thoughts. I betrayed to him, of course, a hundred times that I had something on my mind. I dare say he remembered from the time of our last interview that I looked to have something on my mind, and he made a great many very skilful efforts to draw it out. He talked of Sarah, with private appeals to me in the way of looks and cunning questions to open my mind about her; and, to tell the truth, it cost me a little self-denial, after we really got into conversation, not to{248} say something, and put his shrewdness on the scent. I dare say he might have worried out the secret somehow or another; but I did not commit myself. I kept my own counsel closely, to his great surprise. I could see he went away baffled when it was nearly time for dinner. And he was not at all pleased to be baffled either, or to think that I was too many for him. I felt sure now I should have to be doubly on my guard, for his pride was piqued to find it all out.

I can’t tell anybody what a comfort it was to my heart when my new Milly Mortimer came. If the two had been very bright and elate about finding themselves heirs to a great estate I might have been disgusted, glad as I was to know about them; for, to be sure, one does not like one’s heirs to be very triumphant about wealth they can only have after one’s own death. But something more than houses or lands was in that young creature’s mind. She was wonderfully steady and cheerful, but never for a moment lost out of her eyes what was going to happen to her. It was not mere sympathy, you know, that made me know so well how she was feeling, for, to be sure, I never was in her circumstances nor anything like them; it was because I was her relation, and had a natural insight into her mind. I don’t believe Sara had the least perception of it. When we came upstairs after dinner, leaving that fine young soldier, whom really I felt quite proud of, with Mr. Cresswell, this came out wonderfully, and in a way that went to my heart. Sara, who was extremely affectionate to her, set her in an easy chair and brought her a footstool, and paid her all those caressing little attentions which such kittens can be so nice about when they please. “I am so glad you have come to know my godmamma just now,” said Sara, kissing her, “because she will know to comfort you when Mr. Langham goes away.”

My Milly said nothing for a moment; she rather drew herself away from Sara’s kiss. She did not lean back, but sat upright in her chair, and put away th............