"But I do not mean to wait for that. You are misunderstanding me purposely, Miss Challoner. I want you to come and talk to me one evening,--any evening. No one but Miss Mewlstone will be there."

"Oh, no!" responded Phillis, suddenly turning very red:

"I do not think that would do at all, Mrs. Cheyne. I do not mean to be rude or ungrateful for your kindness, but--but----" Here the girl stammered and broke down.

"You wish, then, to confine our intercourse to a purely business relation?" asked Mrs. Cheyne, and her voice had a tone of the old bitterness.

"Would it not be better under the circ.u.mstances? Forgive me if I am too proud, but----"

"Oh, you are proud, terribly proud!" returned Mrs. Cheyne, taking up her words before she could complete her sentence. "You owe me a grudge for what I said that night, and now you are making me pay the penalty.

Well, I am not meek: there is not a human being living to whom I would sue for friendship. If I were starving for a kind word, I would sooner die than ask for one. You see, I am proud too, Miss Challoner."

"Oh, I did not mean to hurt you," returned Phillis, distressed at this, but determined not to yield an inch or bend to the sudden caprice of this extraordinary woman, who had made her suffer so once.

"To be hurt, one must have feelings," returned this singular person.

"Do not be afraid, I shall not attempt to shake your resolution: if you come to me now it must be of your own free will."

"And if I come, what then?" asked Phillis, standing very straight and stiff, for she would not be patronized.

"If you come you will be welcome," returned Mrs. Cheyne; and then, with a grave inclination of the head, she swept out of the room.

CHAPTER XXVII.

A DARK HOUR.

"I should go one evening, if I were you: it is easy to see that Mrs.

Cheyne has taken a fancy to you," said Nan, who was much interested by this recital; but to this Phillis replied, with a very decided shake of the head,--

"I shall do nothing of the kind; I was not made to be a fine lady's _protegee_. If she patronized me, I should grow savage and show my teeth; and, as I have no desire to break the peace, we had better remain strangers. Dear Magdalene certainly has a temper!" finished Phillis, with a wicked little sneer.

Nan tried to combat this resolution, and used a great many arguments: she was anxious that Phillis should avail herself of this sudden fancy on the part of Mrs. Cheyne to lift herself and perhaps all of them into society with their equals. Nan's good sense told her that though at present the novelty and excitement of their position prevented them from realizing the full extent of their isolation, in time it must weigh on them very heavily, and especially on Phillis, who was bright and clever and liked society; but all her words were powerless against Phillis's stubbornness: to the White House she could not and would not go.

But one evening she changed her mind very suddenly, when a note from Miss Mewlstone reached her. A gardener's boy brought it: "it was very particular, and was to be delivered immediate to the young lady," he observed, holding the missive between a very grimy finger and thumb.

"MY DEAR YOUNG LADY,--

"Pride is all very well, but charity is often best in the long run, and a little kindness to a suffering human being is never out of place in a young creature like you.

"Poor Magdalene has been very sadly for days, and I have got it into my stupid old head--that is always fancying things--that she has been watching for folks who have been too proud to come, though she would die sooner than tell me so; but that is her way, poor dear!

"It is ill to wake at nights with nothing but sad thoughts for company, and it is ill wearing out the long days with only a silly old body to cheer one up; and when there is nothing fresh to say, and nothing to expect, and not a footstep or a voice to break the silence, then it seems to me that a young voice--that is, a kind voice--would be welcome. Take this hint, my dear, and keep my counsel, for I am only a silly old woman, as she often says.

"Yours, Bathsheba Mewlstone."

"Oh, I must go now!" observed Phillis, in an embarra.s.sed voice, as she laid this singular note before Nan.

"Yes, dear; and you had better put on your hat at once, and Dulce and I will walk with you as far as the gate. It is sad for you to miss the scramble on the sh.o.r.e; but, when other people really want us, I feel as though it were a direct call," finished Nan, solemnly.

"I am afraid there is a storm coming up," replied Phillis, who had been oppressed all day by the heavy thundery atmosphere: she had looked so heated and weary that Nan had proposed a walk by the sh.o.r.e.

Work was pouring upon them from all sides: the townspeople, envious of Mrs. Tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs's stylish new dress, were besieging the Friary with orders, and the young dressmakers would have been literally overwhelmed with their labors, only that Nan, with admirable foresight, insisted on taking in no more work than they felt themselves able to complete.

"No," she would say to some disappointed customer, "our hands are full just now, and we cannot undertake any more orders at present: we will not promise more than we can perform. Come to me again in a fortnight's time, and we will willingly make your dress, but now it is impossible." And in most cases the dress was brought punctually at the time appointed.

Phillis used to grumble a little at this.

"You ought not to refuse orders, Nan," she said, rather fretfully, once. "Any other dressmaker would sit up half the night rather than disappoint a customer."

"My dear," Nan returned, in her elder-sisterly voice, which had always a great effect on Phillis, "I wonder what use Dulce and you would be if you sat up sewing half the night, and drinking strong tea to keep yourselves awake? No, there shall be no burning the candles at both ends in this fashion; please G.o.d we will keep our health, and our customers; and no one in their senses could call us idle. Why, we are quite the fashion! Mrs. Squails told me yesterday that every one in Hadleigh was wild to have a gown made by the 'lady dressmakers.'"

"Oh, I daresay!" replied Phillis, crossly, for the poor thing was so hot and tired that she could have cried from pure weariness and vexation of spirit: "but we shall not be the fashion long when the novelty wears off; people will call us independent, and get tired of us; and no wonder, if they are to wait for their dresses in this way."

Nan's only answer was to look at Phillis's pale face in a pitying way; and then she took her hand, and led her to the corner, where her mother's Bible always lay, and then with ready fingers turned to the well known-pa.s.sage, "Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labor unto the evening."

"Well, Nan, what then?"

"Evening is for rest,--for refreshment of mind and body: I will not have it turned into a time of toil. I know you, Phillis; you would work till your poor fingers got thin, and your spirits were all flattened out, and every nerve was jarring and set on edge; and you would call that duty! No, darling,--never! Dulce shall keep her roses, and we will have battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k every evening; but, if I have to keep the key of the work-room in my pocket, you and Dulce shall never enter it after tea." And Nan's good sense, as usual, carried the day.

Phillis would much rather have joined her sisters in their walk than have turned in at the gloomy lodge-gates.

"'All ye who enter here, leave hope behind,'"

she quoted, softly, as she waved her hand to Nan.

The servant who admitted her looked a little dubious over his errand.

"His mistress was in her room," he believed, "and was far too unwell to see visitors. He would tell Miss Mewlstone, if the young lady liked to wait; but he was sure it was no use,"--all very civilly said. And as Phillis persisted in her intention of seeing Mrs. Cheyne, if possible, he ushered her into the library, a gloomy-looking room, with closed blinds, one of which he drew up, and then went in search of Miss Mewlstone.

Phillis did not find her surroundings particularly cheerful. The air was darkened by the approaching storm. A sullen cloud hung over the sky. The library windows opened upon the shrubberies. Here the trees were planted so thickly that their shade obscured much of the light.

The room was so dark that she could only dimly discern the handsome bindings of the books in the carved oak book-cases. The whole of the furniture seemed sombre and ma.s.sive. The chair that the footman had placed for her was covered with violet velvet, and was in harmony with the rest of the furniture.

Dreary as the room looked, it was nothing to the shrubbery walk. A narrow winding path seemed to vanish into utter darkness. In some places the trees met overhead, so closely had they grown.

"If I were the mistress of the White House," Phillis said to herself, "I would cut every one of those trees down. They must make this part of the house quite unhealthy. It really looks like a 'ghost walk' that one reads about." But scarcely had these thoughts pa.s.sed through her mind when she uttered a faint cry of alarm. The dark room, the impending storm, and her own overwrought feelings were making her nervous; but actually, through the gloom, she could see a figure in white approaching.

In another moment she would have sought refuge in the hall, but contempt at her own cowardice kept her rooted to the spot.

"She was an utter goose to be so startled! It was--yes, of course it was Mrs. Cheyne. She could see her more plainly now. She would step through the window and meet her."

Phillis's feelings of uneasiness had not quite vanished. The obscurity was confusing, and invested everything with an unnatural effect. Even Mrs. Cheyne's figure, coming out from the dark background, seemed strange and unfamiliar. Phillis had always before seen her in black; but now she wore a white gown, fashioned loosely, like a wrapper, and her hair, which at other times had been most carefully arranged, was now strained tightly and unbecomingly from her face, which looked pallid and drawn. She started violently when she saw Phillis coming towards her, and seemed inclined to draw back and retrace her steps.

It evidently cost her a strong effort to recover herself. She seemed to conquer her reluctance with difficulty.

"So you have come at last, Miss Challoner," she said, fixing her eyes, which looked unnaturally bright, on Phillis. Her voice was cold, almost harsh, and her countenance expressed no pleasure. The hand she held out was so limp and cold that Phillis relinquished it hastily.

"You said that I should be welcome," she faltered, and trying not to appear alarmed. She was too young and healthy to understand the meaning of the word hysteria, or to guess at the existence of nervous maladies that make some people's lives a long torment to them.