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Letter Of Credit

<h4 id="id02310" style="margin-top: 2em">NOT DRESSED.</h4> Mr. Digby did not come that evening. Next evening he did. He came early, just as the family had finished dinner. Mrs. Busby welcomed him with outstretched hand and a bland smile. "I am so glad to see you, Mr. Southwode," she said, before he had time to begin anything. "I want to know what you think of this proposition to open picture galleries and libraries to the people on Sunday?" "The arguments for it are plausible." "Certainly plausible. What do you think?" "It is of no consequence, is it, what any individual thinks?" "Why yes, as it seems to me. By comparing views and the reasons given in support of the views, one may hope to attain some sound conclusion." "Is it a matter for reason to consider?" Mrs. Busby opened her eyes. "Is not everything that, Mr. Southwode?" "I should answer 'no,' if I answered." "Please answer, because I am very much in earnest; and I like to drive every question to the bottom. Give me an instance to the contrary." "When you tell Miss Antoinette, for example, to put on india rubbers when she goes out in the wet, is she to exercise her reason upon the thickness of the soles of her boots?" "Yes," cried the young lady referred to; "of course I am! India rubbers are horrid things anyhow; do you think I am going to put them on with boots an inch thick?" Mr. Southwode turned his eyes upon her with one of his grave smiles. Mrs. Busby seemed to ponder the subject. "Is it raining to-night, Mr. Southwode?" Antoinette went on. "Yes." "How provoking! then I can't go out. Mr. Southwode, you never took me anywhere, to see anything." "True, I believe," he answered. "How could I ask Mrs. Busby to trust me with the care of such an article?" "What 'such an article'?" "Subject to damage; in which case the damage would be very great." "I am not subject to damage. I never get cold or anything. Mr. Southwode, won't you take me, some night, to see the Minstrels?" "They are not much to see." "But to hear, they are. Won't you, Mr. Southwode? I am crazy to hear them, and mamma won't take me; and papa never goes anywhere but to his office and to court; won't you, Mr. Southwode?" "Perhaps; if Mrs. Busby will honour me so much." "O mamma will trust you, I know. Then the first clear evening, Mr. Southwode? the first that you are at leisure?" Without answering her he turned to Mrs. Busby. "How is Rotha?" "Very well!" the lady answered smoothly. "Shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?" "I am afraid, not to-night. She was unable to come down stairs this afternoon, and so took her dinner alone. Next time, I hope, she will be able to see you." Mr. Digby privately wondered what the detaining cause could be, but thought it most discreet not to inquire; at least, not in this quarter. "Is the school question decided?" he therefore went on quietly. "Why no. I have been debating the pros. and cons.; in which process one is very apt to get confused. As soon as one makes up one's mind to forego certain advantages in favour of certain others, the rejected ones immediately rise up in fresh colours of allurement before the mind, and disturb one's judgment, and the whole calculation has to be gone over again." "The choice lies between—?" "Mrs. Mulligan, Miss Wordsworth, and Mrs. Mowbray, have the highest name in the city." "And may I know the supposed counter advantages and disadvantages?" "I'll tell you, Mr. Southwode," said Antoinette. "At Mrs. Mulligan's you learn French and manners. At Miss Wordsworth's you learn arithmetic and spelling. At Mrs. Mowbray's you learn Latin and the Catechism." Mr. Southwode looked to Mrs. Busby. "That's rather a caricature," said the lady smiling; "but it has some truth. I think Mrs. Mowbray's is quite as fashionable a school as Mrs. Mulligan's. It is quite as dear." "Is it thought desirable, that it should be fashionable?" "Certainly; for that shews what is public opinion. Besides, it secures one against undesirable companions for a girl. Both at Mrs. Mulligan's and Mrs. Mowbray's the pupils come from the very best families, both South and North. There is a certain security in that." Mr. Southwode allowed the conversation presently to take another turn, and soon took his leave. Rotha had watched and listened from the upper hall; had heard him come in, and then had waited in an ecstasy of impatient eagerness till she should be sent for. She could hear the murmur of voices in the parlour; but otherwise the house was ominously quiet. No doors opening, no bell to call the servant, no stir at all; until the parlour door opened and Mr. Digby came out. Rotha was in a very agony, half ready to rush down, unsummoned, and see him; and yet held back by a shy feeling of proud reserve. He could ask for her if he had wanted her, she thought bitterly; and while she lingered he had put on his overshoes and was gone. Rotha crept up stairs to her own room, feeling desperately disappointed. That her aunt might have made excuses to keep her up stairs, she divined; but the thought put her in a rage. She had to sit a long while looking out of her window at the lights twinkling here and there through the rain, before the fever in her blood and her brain had cooled down enough to let her go to bed and to sleep. The next day she began her school experience. The intervening day had been used by Mrs. Busby to make a call upon Mrs. Mowbray, in which she explained that she had an orphan niece left under her care, for whom she much desired the training and the discipline of Mrs. Mowbray's excellent school. The girl had had no advantages; her mother had been ill and the child neglected; she supposed Mrs. Mowbray would find that she knew next to nothing of all that she ought to know. So it was arranged that Rotha should accompany her cousin the very next morning, and make her beginning in one of the younger classes. Rotha went in her old grey dress. The walk was not long. Antoinette stopped at the area gate of a house in a fine open street. "Where are you going?" said Rotha. "Here. This is the place." "This? Why it is a very handsome house," said Rotha. "As good as yours." "Of course it is handsome," Antoinette replied. "Do you think my mother would let me go to a shabby place. Handsome! of course it is. Come down this way; we don't ring the bell." What a new world it was to Rotha! In the lower hall the girls took off bonnets and wraps, hanging them up on hooks arranged there. Then Antoinette took her up stairs, up a second flight of stairs, through halls and stairways which renewed Rotha's astonishment. Was this a school? All the arrangements seemed like those of an elegant private home; soft carpet was on the stairs, beautiful engravings hung on the walls. The school rooms filled the second floor; they were already crowded, it seemed to Rotha, with rows and ranks of scholars of all sizes, from ten years old up. Antoinette and she, being later than the rest, slipped into the first seats they could find, near the door. There was deep silence and great order, and then Rotha heard a voice in the next room beginning to read a chapter in the Bible. The sound of the voice struck her and made her wish to get a sight of the reader; but that was impossible, for a bit of partition wall hid her and indeed most of the room in which she was from Rotha's view. So Rotha's attention concentrated itself upon what she could see. The pleasant, bright apartments; the desks before which sat so many well-dressed and well- looking girls; ah, they were very well dressed, and many of them, to her fancy, very richly dressed; as for the faces, she found there was the usual diversity. But what would anybody think of a girl coming among them so very shabby and meanly attired as she was? If she had known— However, self-consciousness was not one of Rotha's troubles, and soon in her admiration of the maps and pictures on the walls she almost forgot her own poor little person. She was aware that after the reading came a prayer; but though she knelt as others knelt, I am bound to say very little of the sense of the words found its way to her mind. After that the girls separated. Rotha was introduced by her cousin to a certain Miss Blodgett, one of the teachers, under whose care she was placed, and by whom she was taken to a room apart and set down to her work along with a class of some forty girls, all of them or nearly all, younger than she was. And here, for a number of days, Rotha's school life went on monotonously. She was given little to do that she could not do easily; she was assigned no lessons that were not already familiar; she was put to acquire no knowledge that she did not already possess. She got sight of nobody but Miss Blodgett and the girls; for every morning she was sure to be crowded into that same corner at school-opening, where she could not look at Mrs. Mowbray; nobody else wanted that place, so they gave it to her; and Rotha was never good at self-assertion, unless at such times as her blood was up. She took the place meekly. But school was very tiresome to her; and it gave her nothing to distract her thoughts from her troubles at home. Those were threefold, to take them in detail. She wore still the old dress; she was consequently still kept up stairs; and it followed also of course that Mr. Digby came and went and she had no sight of him. It happened thus. Several days he allowed to pass without calling again. Not that he forgot Rotha, or was careless about her; but he partly knew his adversary and judged this course wise, for Rotha's sake. His first visit had been on Tuesday evening; he let a week go by, and then he went again. Mrs. Busby was engaged with other visitors; he had to post-pone the inquiries he wished to make. Meanwhile Antoinette attacked him. "Mr. Southwode,—now it is a nice evening, and you promised;—will you take me to the Minstrels?" "I always keep my promises." "Then shall we go?" with great animation. "Did I say I would go to-night?" "No; but to-night is a good time; as good as any. Ah, Mr. Southwode! let us go. You'll never take me, if you do not to-night." "What would Mrs. Busby say?" "O she'd say yes. Of course she'd say yes. Mamma always says yes when I ask her things. Mamma! I say, mamma! listen to me one moment; may I go with Mr. Southwode?" One moment Mrs. Busby turned her head from the friend with whom she was talking, looked at her daughter, and said, "Yes"; then turned again and went on with what she was saying. Antoinette jumped up. "And bring your cousin too," said Mr. Southwode as she was flying off. Antoinette stopped. "Rotha? she can't go." "Why can she not go?" "She has got nothing ready to wear out yet. Mamma hasn't had time to get the things and have 'em made. She couldn't go." "She might wear what she wore when I brought her here," Mr. Digby suggested. Antoinette shook her head. "O no! Mamma wouldn't let her go out so. She couldn't, now that she is under her care, you know. Her things are not fit at all." "Will you have the kindness to send word to your cousin that I should like to see her for a few minutes?" "O she can't come down?" "Why not?" "O she's in no condition. Mamma—mamma! Mr. Southwode wants to see Rotha." "I am very sorry!" said Mrs. Busby smoothly and calmly, turning again from the discourse she was carrying on,—"I have sent her to bed with a tumbler of hot lemonade." "What is the matter?" "A slight cold—nothing troublesome, I hope; but I thought best to take it in time. I do not want her studies to be interrupted." Mr. Southwode was powerless against this announcement, and thought his own thoughts, till Mrs. Busby drew him into the discussion which just then engaged her. Upon this busy talk presently came Antoinette, hatted and cloaked, and drawing on her gloves. Stood and waited. "Mr. Southwode—I am ready," she said, as he did not attend to her. "For the Minstrels?" said he, with that very unconcerned manner of his. "But, Miss Antoinette, would not your cousin like to go?" "She can't, you know. Where are your ears, Mr. Southwode? Mamma explained to you that she was in bed." "Then do you not agree with me, that it would be the kindest thing to defer our own pleasure until she can share it?" Antoinette flushed and coloured, and tears of disappointment came into her eyes. A little tinge rose in Mrs. Busby's cheeks too. "Go and take your cloak off," she said coldly. "And Antoinette, you had better see that your lessons for to-morrow morning are all ready." Mr. Southwode thereupon took his departure. If he had known what eyes and ears were strained to get knowledge of him at that moment, I think he would have stood his ground and taken some very decided measures. But he could not see from the lighted hall below up into the darkness of the third story, even' if it could have occurred to him to try. There stood however a white figure, leaning over the balusters, and very well aware whose steps were going through the hall and out at the front door. Poor Rotha had obeyed orders and undressed and gone to bed, though she insisted her throat was only a very little irritated; and neither the one fact nor the other had prevented her from jumping tip to listen when the door bell rang, and again when steps she knew came out from the parlour. Again he had been here, and again she had missed him. Of course he could do nothing when told that she was in bed with a cold. Rotha went back into her room and stood trembling, not with a chill, though the night was cold enough, but with a fever of rage and desperation. She opened the window and poured out the lemonade which she had not touched; she shut the window and wrung her hands. She seemed to be in a net, in a cage, in a prison; and the walls of her prison were so invisible that she could not get at them to burst them. She would write to Mr. Digby, only she did not know his address. Would he not write to her, perhaps? Rotha Was in a kind of fury of impatience and indignation; this thought served to give her a little stay to hold by. And a letter did come for her the very next evening; and Rotha's eyes never saw it, nor did her ears hear of it. Neither did her new dresses come to light; and evening after evening her condition was not changed. She was prisoner up stairs with her books and studies, which did not occupy her; and hour after hour Rotha stood in the hall and listened, or sat watching. She could not hear Mr. Digby's voice again. She wondered what had power to detain him. With craving anxiety and the strain of hope and fear, Rotha's cheek began to grow pale. It was getting at last beyond endurance. She went through her school duties mechanically, thinking of something else, yet doing all that was required of her; for, as I said, it was ground that she had gone over already. She queried with herself whether Mr. Southwode might not come even to the school to seek her; it seemed so impossible that she should be utterly kept from the sight of him. All this while Rotha never spoke his name before her aunt or cousin; never asked a question about him or his visits. By what subtle instinct it is hard to tell, she knew the atmosphere of the house was not favourable to the transmission of those particular sounds. One thing, one day, had made a break in her gloomy thoughts. She was in her class, in the special room appropriated to that class, busy as usual; when the door opened and a lady came in whom Rotha had not fairly seen before, yet whom she at once recognized for what she was, the head of the establishment. Rotha's eyes were fascinated. It was a tall figure, very stately and dignified as well as graceful; handsomely and carefully dressed; but Rotha took in that fact without knowing what the lady wore, she was so engrossed with the face and manner of this vision. The manner was at once gracious and commanding; courteous exceedingly, while the air of decision and the tone of authority were well marked. But the face! It was wonderfully lovely; with fair features and kind eyes; the head sat well upon the shoulders, and the hair was arranged with very rare grace around the delicate head. So elegant a head one very rarely sees, as was Mrs. Mowbray's, although the dressing of the hair was as simple as possible. The hair was merely twisted up in a loose knot or coil at the back; the effect was what not one in a thousand can reach with all the arts of the hair-dresser. This lovely apparition paused a minute or two before Miss Blodgett, while some matter of business was discussed; then the observant eyes came to the young stranger in the class, and a few steps brought them close up to her. "This is Miss Carpenter, isn't it?—yes. How do you do, my dear." She took Rotha's hand kindly. "How is your aunt, Mrs. Busby?" Rotha answered. Perhaps those watchful eyes saw that there was no pleasure in the answer. "Your cousin—she is in Miss Graham's class, is she not?" "Yes, ma'am." "Well, I hope you have made some friends here. Miss Doolittle, won't you be helpful to Miss Carpenter if you can? she is a stranger among us.— Good morning, young ladies!" The lady swept away from the room; but all that day there hovered in Rotha's thoughts a vision of beauty and grace and dignity, an accent of kindness, a manner of love and authority, which utterly fascinated and wholly captivated her. It was quite a sweetener of that day's dry work. She looked to see the vision come again the next day, and the next; in vain; but Rotha now knew the voice; and not a word was let fall from those lips, in reading or prayer, at the school opening now, that she did not listen to. Days went on. At last one day Mrs. Busby said it was no use to wait any longer for the mantua-makers; Rotha might as well come down and have her dinner with the family. She could not stay in the drawing room of course, until she was decently dressed; but she might as well come to dinner. Rotha could not understand why so much could not have been granted from the first; there was nobody at the dinner table but her aunt and cousin and Mr. Busby. Mr. Busby was a very tall, thin man, always busy with newspapers or sheets of manuscript; whose "Good morning, my dear!" in that peculiar husky voice of his, was nearly all Rotha ever heard him say. He took his breakfast, or his dinner, and went off to his study at once. Rotha climbed the stairs to Mrs. Busby's dressing room, after the meal was over, and sat down to think. She was consuming herself in impatience and fretting. By and by Lesbia came in to see to the fire. "Lesbia," said Rotha with sudden resolution, "will you do something for me?" She looked at the girl eagerly. "Mebbe, miss. Like to know what 'tis, fust." "It is only, to tell me something," said Rotha lowering her voice. "Aint nothin' harder 'n to tell things," said the girl. "That's the hardest thing I know." "It isn't hard, if you are willing." "Don' know about that. Well, fire away, Miss Rotha. What you want?" Rotha went first to the door and shut it. Then came back and stood by the table where Lesbia was lighting the gas drop. "Lesbia, I want you to tell me— You always open the door, don't you?" "'Cept when I aint there." "But in the evenings you do?" "I'm pretty likely to, miss—if it aint my evening out." "I want you to tell me—" Rotha lowered her voice to a whisper,—"if Mr. Southwode has been here lately?" Lesbia stood silent, considering. "You know him? You know Mr. Southwode?" "He brought you here the fust, didn't he?" "Yes. Yes, that is he. When was he here last?" "Don't just 'member." "But about when? Two weeks or three weeks ago?" "Well, 'pears to me as if I'd seen him later 'n that." "When, Lesbia? Oh do tell me! do tell me!" "Why he aint nothin' particular to you, is he?" "He is everything to me. He is the only friend I have got in the world. When was he here, Lesbia?" "He's a mighty handsome gentleman, with hair lighter than your'n, and a mustaches?" "Yes. He came with me that first day. Tell me, Lesbia!" "But Miss Rotha, I can't see what you want to know fur?" "Never mind. I tell you, he is all the friend I have got; and I'm afraid something is wrong, because I don't see him." "I reckon there is," said Lesbia, not reassuringly. "What?" "Mrs. Busby will kill me." "No, I shall not tell her you told me. O Lesbia, Lesbia, speak, speak!" Lesbia glanced at the girl and saw her intense excitement, and seemed doubtful. "You'll be so mad, you'll go tellin' the fust thing," she said. Rotha sat down, in silence now, and gazed in Lesbia's face with her own growing white. Lesbia seemed at last overcome. "He was here last week, and he was here this week," she said. "This week!—and last week too. What day this week, Lesbia?" "This here is Friday, aint it. Blessed if I kin keep the run o' the days. Let us see—Mr. Southwode was here the last time, Tuesday." "Tuesday? And I was here studying." "Then you don't know?" said Lesbia eyeing her. "He's done gone away." "What do you mean? That can't be." "He's done gone, miss. Sailed Wednesday. I heerd 'em talking about it at dinner. His name was in the list, they was sayin'; in the papers." "Sailed Wednesday? O where to, Lesbia?" "Don' know, miss; some place where the ships goes." "England?" "Mebbe. I doesn't know all de places on dis yere arth." "How long is he going to be gone?" "Can't tell dat, miss. I haint heerd nobody say. La, I dare say he'll come back. It's as easy to come as to go. Folks is allays goin' and comin'. But if you tell Mis' Busby, then I've done gone and lost my place, Miss Rotha." Rotha stood still and said not a word more. But she turned so white that Lesbia looked on in alarm, expecting every moment she would faint. There was no faintness, however. Rotha was not one of those who lose present knowledge of misery in the weakness of a swoon. She turned white and even livid in the intensity of passion, the fury of rage and despair which held her; then, knowing that she must not betray Lesbia and that accordingly she must not meet anybody's eyes, she seized her books and rushed up stairs to her own little room. It was dark there, but so much darker in the child's heart that she never noticed that. It was cold, yet not to her, for in her soul a fire was burning, hot enough to dispense with material warmth. She never missed that. But the walls of her room did seem to her a prison, a dreadful prison, from which she must flee if there were any place to flee to. Had her only refuge failed her? Was her one heart's treasure lost to her? Was the world empty, and all gone? The bewilderment of it almost equalled the pain. Rotha held her head in both hands and tried to find some hope, or some stay for her thoughts and for her feelings. She charged it all presently with the certainty of intuition upon her aunt. For in her Rotha had not one particle of trust. She had received at her hands no unkind treatment, (what was the matter with the mantua- makers, though?) she had heard from her lips no unkind word; yet both would not have put such a distance between them as this want of trust did. It was Rotha's nature to despise where she could not trust; and here unhappily there was also the complication of fear. Somehow, she was sure, her aunt had done it; she had prevented Mr. Digby from seeing her; and now he was away, and how could she tell but cunning arrangements would be potent enough to keep him from seeing her evermore? Any reason for such machinations Rotha indeed failed to divine; why her aunt should desire to keep them apart, was a mere mystery; all the same, she had done it; and the chances were she would choose to do it permanently. Mr. Digby had been duped, or baffled somehow; else he would never have left the country without seeing his charge. She did not know before that Mr. Digby could be duped, or baffled; but if once or twice, why not again. She would write to him. Ah, she had not his address, that he was to have given her. He would write. Yes, but somebody else would get the letters. Rotha was of anything but a suspicious disposition, yet now suspicion after suspicion came in her mind. The possible moving cause for her aunt's action was entirely beyond her imagination; the action itself and the drift of it she discerned clearly. There rose in her a furious opposition and dislike towards her aunt, a storm of angry abhorrence. And yet, she was in Mrs. Busby's care, under her protection, and also—in her power. Rotha gnashed her teeth, mentally, as she reviewed the situation. But by degrees grief overweighed even anger and fear; grief so cutting, so desolating, so crushing, as the girl had hardly known in her life before; an agony of anguish which held her awake till late in the night; till feeling and sense were blunted with exhaustion, and in her misery she slept. When the day came, Rotha awaked to a cold, dead sense of the state of things; the ashes of the fire that had burned so fiercely the night before; desolate and dreary as the ashes of a fire always are. She revolved while she was dressing her plan of action. She must have certain information from Mrs. Busby herself. She was certain indeed of what she had heard; but she must hear it from somebody besides Lesbia, and she must not betray Lesbia. She thought it all over, and went down stairs trembling in the excitement and the pain of what she had to do. It was winter now in truth. The basement room where the family took their meals in ordinary, was a very warm and comfortable apartment; handsomely furnished; only Rotha always hated it for being half underground. The fire was burning splendidly; Mr. Busby sat in his easy chair at the side of the hearth next the light; Mrs. Busby was at the table preparing breakfast. Rotha stood by the fire and thought how she should begin. The sun shone very bright outside the windows. But New York had become a desert. "Mr. Busby, will you come to the table?" said his wife. "Rotha, I am going to see about your cloak to-day." Rotha could not say "thank you." She began to eat, for form's sake. "What are you going to get her, mother?" Antoinette enquired. "You can come along and see." "Aunt Serena," said Rotha, trying to speak un-concernedly, "what has become of Mr. Digby—Mr. Southwode, I mean." "I do not know, my dear," the lady answered smoothly. "Why haven't I seen him?" "My dear, you have not seen anybody. Some day I hope you will be able; but I begin to despair of the dress-makers." "If my tailor served me so, I should give him up," said Mr. Busby's quick, husky utterance. "Yes, papa, but you wouldn't, if there was only one tailor you liked." "Isn't there more than one mantua-maker for all this big city?" "My dear, Miss Hubbell suits me, and is uncommonly reasonable, for the quality of her work; and she has so much custom, we cannot get her without speaking long beforehand." "Why don't you speak, then?" "When was Mr. Digby—Mr. Southwode here, aunt Serena?" Rotha began again. "A few nights ago. I do not recollect. Mr. Busby, as you go down town will you stop at Dubois's and order the piano tuner? The piano is quite out of tune. And I wish you would order me a bag of coffee, if you say you can get it more reasonably at your down town place." "Very well, my dear." The words used to amuse Rotha, they rolled out so, brisk and sharp, like the discharge from a gun. To-day she was impatient. "Aunt Serena, I have been wanting to see Mr. Southwode very much." No answer. Mrs. Busby attended to her breakfast as if she did not hear. "When can I?" Rotha persisted. "I am sure, I cannot say. Mr. Busby, I will trouble you for a little of that sausage." "This sausage has too much pepper in it, mamma." "And too little of something else," added Mr. Busby. "Of what, Mr. Busby?" "That I do not know, my dear; it belongs to your department." "But even the Chaldean magicians could not interpret the dream that was not told to them," Mrs. Busby suggested, with smiling satisfaction. "How can I have the missing quality supplied, if you cannot tell me what it is you miss?" "You can divine, my dear, quite as well as the Chaldean magicians." "Then if that is true, aunt Serena," Rotha put in desperately, "will you please tell me where Mr. Southwode is?" "Her divining rod is not long enough for that," said Mr. Busby. "Mr. Southwode is on the high seas somewhere, on his way to England." "On the high seas!" Rotha repeated slowly. "There was no occasion to mention that, Mr. Busby," said his wife. "Mr. Southwode's movements are nothing to us." "Seem to be something to Rotha," said the gentleman. "You knew that," said Rotha, steadily. "Why did you keep it from me, aunt Serena?" "I did not keep it from you," Mrs. Busby returned, bridling. "The papers are open. I did not speak of it, because Mr. Southwode and his affairs are no concern of yours, or of mine, and therefore are not interesting." "Of yours? No! But they are all I have in the world!" said Rotha, with fire in her cheeks and in her eyes. Mrs. Busby went on with her breakfast and avoided looking at her. But Antoinette cried out. "All she has in the world! Mr. Southwode! Pretty well for a young lady! Mamma, do you hear that? Mr. Southwode is all she has in the world." "Once hearing a silly thing is quite enough. You need not repeat it, Antoinette." "Didn't he come to say good bye?" asked Rotha, her eyes blazing. "I do not answer questions put in that tone," said Mrs. Busby, coldly. "I know he did," said Rotha. "What did he go to England for, Mr. Busby?" "Mr. Busby," said his wife, "I request you not to reply. Rotha is behaving improperly, and must be left to herself till she is better- mannered." "I don't know, my dear," said the gentleman, rising and gathering his newspapers together, previous to taking his departure. "'Seems to me that's an open question—public, as you say. I do not see why you should not tell Rotha that Mr. Southwode is called home by the illness and probable death of his father. Good-morning, my dear!" "Did you ever see anything like papa!" said Antoinette with an appealing look at her mother, as the door closed. "He don't mind you a bit, mamma." Mrs. Busby's slight air of the head was more significant than words. "He is the only fraction of a friend I have in this house," said Rotha. "But you needn't think, aunt Serena, that you can do what you like with Mr. Southwode and me. I belong to him, not to you; and he will come back, and then he will take me under his own care, and I will have nothing to do with you the rest of my life. I know you now. I thought I did before, and now I know. You let mamma want everything in the world; and now perhaps you will let me; but Mr. Southwode will take care of me, sooner or later, and I can wait, for I know him too." Rotha left the room, unconsciously with the air of a tragedy queen. Alas, it was tragedy enough with her! "Mamma!" said Antoinette. "Did you ever see anything like that?" "I knew it was in her," Mrs. Busby said, keeping her composure in appearance. "What will you do with her?" "Let her alone a little," said Mrs. Busby icily. "Let her come to her senses." "Will you go to get her cloak to-day?" "I don't know why I should give myself any trouble about her. I will let her wait till she comes to her senses and humbles herself to me." "Do you think she ever will?" "I don't care, whether she does or not. It is all the same to me. You let her alone too, Antoinette." "I will," said Antoinette. "I don't like spitfires. High! what a powder-magazine she is, mamma! Her eyes are enough to set fire to things sometimes." "Don't use such an inelegant word, Antoinette. 'High!' How can you? Where did you get it?" "You send me to school, mamma, to learn; and so I pick up a few things. But do you think it is true, what she says about Mr. Southwode?" "What?" "That he will come and take her away from you." "Not if I don't choose it," "And you will not choose it, will you?" "Don't be foolish, Antoinette. Rotha will never see Mr. Southwode again. She has defied me, and now she may take the consequences." "But he will come back, mamma? He said so." "I hope he will." "Then he'll find Rotha, and she'll tell him her own story." "Will you trust me to look after my own affairs? And get yourself ready to go out with me immediately." <h4 id="id02520" style="margin-top: 2em">CHAPTER XIV.</h4> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.