The Heir of Redclyffe

She went into her own room, and waited, with her eyes on her watch, a prey to every strange alarm and anticipation, grievously hurt at this want of confidence, and wounded, where she least expected it, by both daughter and nephew. She thought, guessed, recollected, wondered, tormented herself, and at the last of the thirty minutes, hastily opened the door into the dressing-room. Laura sat as before, crouched up in the corner of the wide sofa; and when she raised her face, at her mother's entrance, it was bewildered rather than embarrassed.

'Well, Laura?' She waited unanswered; and the wretchedness of the look so touched her, that, kissing her, she said, 'Surely, my dear, you need not be afraid to tell me anything?'

Laura did not respond to the kindness, but asked, looking perplexed, 'What have I said? Have I told it?'

'What you have given me reason to believe,' said Mrs. Edmonstone, trying to bring herself to speak it explicitly, 'that you think Philip is attached to you. You do not deny it. Let me know on what terms you stand.'

Without looking up, she murmured, 'If you would not force it from me at such a time.'

'Laura, it is for your own good. You are wretched now, my poor child; why not relieve yourself by telling all? If you have not acted openly, can you have any comfort till you have confessed? It may be a painful effort, but relief will come afterwards.'

'I have nothing to confess,' said Laura. 'There is no such thing as you think.'

'No engagement?'

'No.'

'Then what am I to understand by your exclamations?'

'It is no engagement,' repeated Laura. 'He would never have asked that without papa's consent. We are only bound by our own hearts.'

'And you have a secret understanding with him?'

'We have never written to each other; we have never dreamed of any intercourse that could be called clandestine. He would scorn it. He waited only for his promotion to declare it to papa.'

'And how long has it been declared to you?'

'Ever since the first summer Guy was here.'

'Three years!' exclaimed her mother. 'You have kept this from me three years! 0 Laura!'

'It was of no use to speak!' said Laura, faintly.

If she had looked up, she would have seen those words, 'no use,' cut her mother more deeply than all; but there was only coldness in the tone of the answer, 'No use to inform your parents, before you pledged your affections!'

'Indeed, mamma,' said Laura, 'I was sure that you knew his worth.'

'Worth! when he was teaching you to live in a course of insincerity? Your father will be deeply hurt.'

'Papa! Oh, you must not tell him! Now, I have betrayed him, indeed! Oh, my weakness!' and another paroxysm of tears came on.

'Laura, you seem to think you owe nothing to any one but Philip. You forget you are a daughter! that you have been keeping up a system of disobedience and concealment, of which I could not have believed a child of mine could be capable. 0 Laura, how you have abused our confidence!'

Laura was touched by the sorrow of her tone; and, throwing her arms round her neck, sobbed out, 'You will forgive me, only forgive him!'

Mrs. Edmonstone was softened in a moment. 'Forgive you, my poor child! You have been very unhappy!' and she kissed her, with many tears.

'Must you tell papa?' whispered Laura.

'Judge for yourself, Laura. Could I know such a thing, and hide it from him?'

Laura ceased, seeing her determined, and yielded to her pity, allowing herself to be nursed as she required, so exhausted was she. She was laid on the sofa, and made comfortable with pillows, in her mother's gentlest way. When Mrs. Edmonstone was called away, Laura held her dress, saying, 'You are kind to me, but you must forgive him. Say you have forgiven him, mamma, dearest!'

'My dear, in the grave all things are forgiven.'

She could not help saying so; but, feeling as if she had been cruel, she added, 'I mean, while he is so ill, we cannot enter on such a matter. I am very sorry for you,' proceeded she, still arranging for Laura's ease; then kissing her, hoped she would sleep, and left her.

Sympathy was a matter of necessity to Mrs. Edmonstone; and as her husband was out, she went at once to Charles, with a countenance so disturbed, that he feared some worse tidings had come from Italy.

'No, no, nothing of that sort; it is poor Laura.'

'Eh?' said Charles, with a significant though anxious look, that caused her to exclaim,--

'Surely you had no suspicion!'

Charlotte, who was reading in the window, trembled lest she should be seen, and sent away.

'I suspected poor Laura had parted with her heart. But what do you mean? What has happened?'

'Could you have guessed? but first remember how ill he is; don't be violent, Charlie. Could you have guessed that they have been engaged, ever since the summer we first remarked them?'

She had expected a great storm; but Charles only observed, very coolly, 'Oh! it is come out at last!'

'You don't mean that you knew it?'

'No, indeed, you don't think they would choose me for their confidant!'

'Not exactly,' said Mrs. Edmonstone, with the odd sort of laugh with which even the most sensitive people, in the height of their troubles, reply to anything ludicrous; 'but really,' she continued, 'every idea of mine is so turned upside-down, that I don't know what to think of anybody.'

'We always knew Laura to be his slave and automaton. He is so infallible in her eyes, that no doubt she thought her silence an act of praiseworthy resolution.'

'She was a mere child, poor dear,' said her mother; 'only eighteen! Yet Amy was but a year older last summer. How unlike! She must have known what she was doing.'

'Not with her senses surrendered to him, without volition of her own. I wonder by what magnetism he allowed her to tell?'

'She has gone through a great deal, poor child, and I am afraid there is much more for her to suffer, whether he recovers or not.'

'He will recover' said Charles, with the decided manner in which people prophesy the restoration of those they dislike, probably from a feeling that they must not die, till there is more charity in their opinion of them.

'Your father will be so grieved.'

'Well, I suppose we must begin to make the best of it,' said Charles. 'She has been as good as married to him these four years, for any use she has been to us; it has been only the name of the thing, so he had better--'

'My dear Charlie, what are you talking of? You don't imagine they can marry?'

'They will some time or other, for assuredly neither will marry any one else. You will see if Guy does not take up the cause, and return Philip's meddling--which, by the bye, is now shown to have been more preposterous still--by setting their affairs in order for them.'

'Dear Guy, it is a comfort not to have been deceived in him!'

'Except when you believed Philip,' said Charles.

'Could anything have been more different?' proceeded Mrs. Edmonstone; 'yet the two girls had the same training.'

'With an important exception,' said Charles; 'Laura is Philip's pupil, Amy mine; and I think her little ladyship is the best turned out of hand.'

'How shocked Amy will be! If she was but here, it would be much better, for she always had more of Laura's confidence than I. Oh, Charlie, there has been the error!' and Mrs. Edmonstone's eyes were full of tears. 'What fearful mistake have I made to miss my daughter's confidence!'

'You must not ask me, mother,' said Charles, face and voice full of affectionate emotion. 'I know too well that I have been exacting and selfish, taking too much advantage of your anxieties for me, and that if you were not enough with my sisters when they were young girls, it was my fault as much as my misfortune. But, after all, it has not hurt Amy in the least; nor do I think it will hurt Charlotte.'