'Julie, go downstairs and beg Lady Sarah not to wait,' said Mrs. Palmer, with great decision.

Julie came back, saying that Miss Rhoda was with Lady Sarah below, and asking for Miss Dolly.

'Presently,' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Very pretty, indeed, Julie!' Then she suddenly exclaimed, 'You cannot imagine what it is, Dolly, to be linked to one so utterly uncongenial, you who are so fortunate in our dear Robert's perfect sympathy and knowledge of London life. He quite agrees with me in my wish that you should be introduced. Admiral Palmer hates society, except to preach at it--such a pity, is it not! I a.s.sure you, strange as it may seem, I quite dread his return.'

Dolly stood bolt upright, scarcely conscious of the dress or the pins, or her mother's monologue. She was still thinking over the great determination she had come to. George had not come back, but Dolly had made up her mind to tell Lady Sarah everything. She was not afraid; it was a relief to have the matter settled. She would say no word to injure him. It was she who had been to blame throughout. Her reflections were oddly intermingled with snips and p.r.i.c.ks other than those of her conscience. Once, as Julie ran a pin into her arm, she thought how strange it was that Mr. Raban should have guessed everything all along.

Dolly longed and feared to have her explanation over.

'Have you nearly done? Let me go down, Julie,' said Dolly, becoming impatient at last.

But Julie still wanted to do something to the set of the sleeve.

And while Julie was pinning poor Dolly down, the clock struck nine, and the time was over, and Dolly's opportunity was lost for ever. It has happened to us all. When she opened the dining-room door at last she knew in one instant that it was too late.

The room seemed full of people. Lady Sarah was there, Mrs. Morgan bristling by the window; Rhoda was there, kneeling at Lady Sarah's knee, in some agitation: her bonnet had fallen off, her hair was all curling and rough. She started up as Dolly came in, and ran to meet her.

'Oh! Dolly,' she said, 'come, come,' and she seized both her hands. 'I have told Lady Sarah everything; she knows all. Oh! why did we not confide in her long ago?' and Rhoda burst into tears. 'Oh, I feel how wrong we have been,' she sobbed.

'Rhoda has told me everything, Dolly,' said Lady Sarah, in a cold voice--'everything that those whom I trusted implicitly saw fit to conceal from me.'

Was it Aunt Sarah who had spoken in that cold harsh-sounding tone?

'Rhoda has acted by my advice, and with my full approval,' said Mrs.

Morgan, stepping forward. 'She is not one to look back once her hand is to the plough. When I had seen George's letter--it was lying on the table--I said at once that no time should be lost in acquainting your aunt, Dolly. It is inconceivable to me that you have not done so before.

We started immediately after our eight-o'clock breakfast, and all is now clearly understood, I trust, Lady Sarah; Rhoda's frankness will be a lesson to Dolly.'

Poor Dolly! she was stiff, silent, overwhelmed. She looked appealingly at her aunt, but Lady Sarah looked away. What could she say? how was it that she was there a culprit while Rhoda stood weeping and forgiven?

Rhoda who had enforced the silence, Rhoda now taking merit for her tardy frankness! while George was gone; and Dolly in disgrace.

'Indeed, Aunt Sarah, I would have told you everything,' cried the girl, very much agitated, 'only Rhoda herself made me promise----'

'Dolly! you never promised,' cried Rhoda. 'But we were all wrong,' she burst out with fresh penitence; 'only Lady Sarah knows all, and we shall be happier now,' she said, wiping her eyes.

'Happy in right-doing,' interrupted Mrs. Morgan.

'Have we done wrong, Aunt Sarah? Forgive us,' said Dolly, with a touching ring in her voice.

Lady Sarah did not answer. She was used to her nephew's misdeeds, but that Dolly--her own Dolly--should have been the one to plot against her cut the poor lady to the heart. She could not speak. 'And Dolly knew it all the time,' she had said to Rhoda a minute before Dolly came in.

'Yes, she knew it,' said Rhoda. 'She wished it, and feared----' Here Rhoda blushed very red. 'George told me she feared that you might not approve and do for him as you might otherwise have done. Oh! Lady Sarah, what injustice we have done you!'

'Perhaps Dolly would wish to see the letter,' said Mrs. Morgan, offering her a paper; there was no mistaking the cramped writing. There was no date nor beginning to the note:--

I have been awake all night thinking over what has happened. It is not your fault that you do not know what love is, nor what a treasure I have wasted upon you. I have given you my best, and to you it is worthless. You can't realise such love as mine.

You will not even understand the words that I am writing to you: but it is not your fault, any more than it is mine, that I cannot help loving you. Oh, Rhoda, you don't care so much for my whole life's salvation as I do for one moment's peace of mind for you. I see it now--I understand all now. Forgive me if I am hurting you, for the sake of all you have made me suffer.

I feel as if I could no longer bear my life here. I must go, and yet I must see you once more. You need not be afraid that I should say anything to frighten or distress you. Your terror of me has pained me far more than you have any conception of, G.o.d bless you. I had rather your hands smote me than that another blessed.

'It is most deplorable that a young man of George's ability should write such nonsense,' said Mrs. Morgan.

Poor Dolly flushed up and began to tremble. Her heart ached for her poor George's trouble.

'It is not nonsense,' she said, pa.s.sionately; 'people call what they cannot feel themselves nonsense. Aunt Sarah, you understand, though they don't. You must see how unhappy he is. How can Rhoda turn against him now? How can she after all that has pa.s.sed? What harm has he done? It was not wicked to love her more than she loved him.'

'Do you see no cruelty in all this long deception?' said Lady Sarah, with two red spots burning in her cheeks. 'You must both have had some motive for your silence. Have I ever shown myself cold or unfeeling to you?' and the flushed face was turned away from her.

'It was not for herself, Lady Sarah,' said Mrs. Morgan, wishing to see justice done. 'No doubt she did not wish to injure George's prospects.'

Dolly was silent. She had some dim feeling of what was in Lady Sarah's mind; but it was a thought she put aside--it seemed unworthy of them both. She was ashamed to put words to it.

If Dolly and her aunt had only been alone all might have been well, and the girl might have made Lady Sarah understand how true she had been to her and loyal at heart, although silent from circ.u.mstances. Dolly looked up with wistful speaking eyes, and Lady Sarah almost understood their mute entreaty.

The words of love are all but spoken when some one else speaks other words; the hands long to grasp each other, and other fingers force them asunder. Alas! Rhoda stood weeping between them, and Mrs. Palmer now appeared in an elegant morning wrapper.

'My dearest child, Madame Frisette is come and is waiting,' said Dolly's mamma, sinking into a chair. 'She is a delightful person, but utterly reckless for tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. How do you do, Mrs. Morgan; why do you not persuade Lady Sarah to let Madame Frisette take her pattern, and----?'

But, as usual, Lady Sarah, freezing under Mrs. Palmer's sunny influence, got up and left the room.

Rhoda, tearful and forgiven, remained for some time giving her version of things to Mrs. Palmer. She had come to speak to Lady Sarah by her aunt's advice. Aunt Morgan had opened George's letter as it lay upon the breakfast-table, and had been as much surprised as Rhoda herself by its contents. They had come to talk things over with Lady Sarah, to tell her of all that had been making Rhoda so unhappy of late.

'I thought she and you, Mrs. Palmer, would have advised me and told me what was right to do,' said the girl, with dark eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g over. 'How can I help it if he loves me? I know that he might have looked higher.'

'The boy is perfectly demented,' said Mrs. Palmer, 'to dream of marrying. He has not a sixpence, my dear child--barely enough to pay his cab-hire. He has been most ridiculous. How we shall ever persuade Lady Sarah to pay his debts I cannot imagine! Dolly will not own to it, but we all know that she does not like parting with her money. I do hope and trust she has made her will, for she looks a perfect wreck.'

'Oh, mamma!' entreated poor Dolly.

Mrs. Palmer paid no heed, except to say crossly, 'I do wish you had shown a little common sense. Dolly, you have utterly injured your prospects. Robert will be greatly annoyed; he counts so much upon dear Sarah's affection for you both. As for me, I have been disappointed far too often to count upon anything. By the way, Dolly, I wish you would go up and ask your aunt whether that invitation has come to Bucklersbury House. Go, child; why do you look so vacant?'

Poor Dolly! One by one all those she trusted most seemed to be failing and disappointing her. Hitherto Dolly had idealised them all. She shrank to learn that love and faith must overcome evil with good, and that this is their reward even in this life, and that to love those who love you is not the whole of its experience.

Rhoda's letter, miserable as it was, had relieved Dolly from much of her present anxiety about George. That hateful dark river no longer haunted her. He was unhappy, but he was safe on sh.o.r.e. All the same, everything seemed dull, and sad, and undefined that afternoon, and Robert coming in, found her sitting in the oak-room window with her head resting on her hand and her work lying in her lap. She had taken up some work, but as she set the st.i.tches, it seemed to her,--it was but a fancy--that with each st.i.tch George was going farther and farther away, and she dropped her work at last into her lap, and reasoned herself into some composure; only when her lover came in cheerfully and talking with the utmost ease and fluency, her courage failed her suddenly.

'What is the matter; why do you look so unhappy?' said Robert.

'Nothing is the matter,' said Dolly, 'only most things seem going wrong, Robert; and I have been wrong, and there is nothing to be done.'

'What is the use of making yourself miserable?' said Robert, good-naturedly scolding her; 'you are a great deal too apt, Dolly, to trouble yourself unnecessarily. You must forgive me for saying so. This business between George and Rhoda is simply childish, and there is nothing in it to distress you.'

'Do you think that nothing is unhappiness,' said Dolly, going on with her own thought, 'unless it has a name and a definite shape?'

'I really don't know,' said Henley. 'It depends upon ... What is this invitation, Dora? You don't mean to say the d.u.c.h.ess has not sent one yet?' he said in a much more interested voice.

'There is only the card for Aunt Sarah. I am afraid mamma is vexed, and it is settled that I am not to go.'

'Not to go?' Robert cried; 'my dear Dolly, of course you must go: it is absolutely necessary you should be seen at one or two good houses, after all the second-rate society you have been frequenting lately. Where is your mother?'

When Mrs. Palmer came in, in her bonnet, languid and evidently out of temper, and attended by Colonel Witherington, Robert immediately asked, in a heightened tone of voice, whether it was true that Dolly was not to be allowed to go to the ball.

Philippa replied in her gentlest accents that no girl should be seen without her mother. If an invitation came for them both, everything was ready; and, even at the last moment, she should be willing to take Dorothea to Bucklersbury House.