"By asking him down here to stay with his sister," said Ellen, quietly.

A pause followed, an awful pause, which to good little Miss f.a.n.n.y boded so darkly, that she hurled herself into the breach with energetic good-will.

"Dear me!" she cried, "what a good idea! What a treat for dear Elaine! I wonder n.o.body ever thought of it before!"

"Do you? _I_ do not," said Charlotte, with withering contempt. "I wish, f.a.n.n.y, I really wish you would reflect a little before you speak--you are as unpractical as Ellen is!"

Miss f.a.n.n.y rejoiced in having at least partially diverted the storm to her own head--she was well used to it, and would emerge from Charlotte's ponderous admonitions as fresh and smiling as a daisy from under a roller.

"Do you know the atmosphere in which that boy has been brought up?" went on the irate speaker. "Do you know the society to which he is accustomed--the language he usually hears--and, very probably, speaks?

He smokes and drinks, I should say--plays billiards and bets, very probably--a charming companion for our Elaine."

"My dear Charlotte, he is not fourteen yet, and he is being educated at the most costly private school--he can scarcely drink and gamble yet, I really think," remonstrated Ellen.

"Oh, of course, if you choose to invite him, there is no need to say more--no need to consult me--the house is not mine, as no doubt you wish to remind me," said Charlotte, with virulent injustice.

"Char!" cried Ellen, in much tribulation, "you know, my dear, so well that I would not for worlds annoy you--I would do nothing contrary to your judgment. You know how I lean upon you in everything. But think, dear, if this poor little boy is brought up, as you say, in a house-hold of Sabbath breaking, careless people, is it not only right, only charitable on our part to ask him here and see if we cannot show him the force of a good example? Are we so uncertain of the results of our teaching on Elaine that we feel sure he will corrupt her? May we not hope that the contrary will be the case--that the care we have lavished on our girl may help her to serve her brother?"

"My dear Ellen, I never yet put a rotten apple into a basket of good ones with the idea that the sound apples would cure the rotten one,"

said Miss Charlotte, grimly.

"Oh, surely the case is not the same," cried Miss Ellen, too flurried to search for the fallacy in her sister's a.n.a.logy.

"Put it in this way: In two years--only two years, mind--Elaine will be her own mistress, whether or not she inherits the fortune which we think is hers by right, she will at least have a handsome allowance. With what confidence will you be able to launch her out into the world if you fear now that, in her own home, and surrounded by her home influences, she will not be able to withstand the corrupting power of a little boy of fourteen?"

"There again, that is all rhodomontade," cried Charlotte, "talking on, without reflection, which is very surprising in a woman of your sound sense. 'Launch her out into the world,' indeed! As if we were going to turn Elaine out of the house on her twenty first birthday, and wash our hands of her. What is to prevent her staying here always, if she pleases?"

"What is to keep her here a moment, if she chooses to go?" asked Ellen.

Charlotte hesitated a little.

"She is not likely to choose to go," she said.

"I am not so sure. There is a great deal--oh, a great deal in Elaine which none of us have ever seen," replied her sister. "It sometimes frightens me to think how little I know about her."

"I cannot imagine what you mean," said Charlotte, in the blank, dry tone she always used when she could not understand what was said.

"You will see some day," said Ellen, which Micaiah-like prophecy exasperated her sister the more.

"I think Ellen is right," said Emily, suddenly.

She had taken very little part in the discussion, but it was always a.s.sumed in the family that Emily would agree with Charlotte. The open desertion of this unfailing ally bereft the already much irritated lady of the power of speech.

"I mean about having the boy Brabourne to stay here," said Emily, "I have thought of the same thing myself more than once--that Elaine ought to get acquainted with him, and that the only way to do it would be to have him here, as we dislike the Ortons so much. I don't want people to think that we grudge him his share of the inheritance, and I think it looks like that, if we ignore him so persistently."

This was putting the matter on a ground less high than Ellen's, and one, therefore, more easily grasped by the others.

"I quite agree with you," murmured f.a.n.n.y, and Charlotte raised an aroused face from her work.

"I daresay," said Emily, "that the Ortons all laugh at us for nasty covetous old maids, and that they think we dislike the boy simply because we are jealous, I don't exactly like to have people imagine that."

"Naturally not," Charlotte was beginning, in m.u.f.fled tones, when f.a.n.n.y exclaimed, in consternation,

"Bless us all! Look at the clock! Where can that child be?"

All looked up. The urn had long ceased to sing, the hot cake was cold, the fried ham had turned to white lumps of fat, and the finger of the clock pointed to seven.

They had been so absorbed in discussing Elaine's future that her present whereabouts had entirely been forgotten. Now at last they were thoroughly anxious.

f.a.n.n.y rang the bell to have the tea re-made and the food heated, Emily hurried out to see if there were any signs of the wanderers on the road across the valley. Charlotte went to Acland, the coachman, to tell him to go and look for them.

"You had better harness Charlie, and take the carriage," she said, "I am afraid something is wrong--Miss Elaine has sprained her ankle, or something; anyway, it is getting so late, they had better drive home. It is very strange; I can't understand it at all."

"No, miss, not more can't I, for Jane's mostly a woonderful poonctual body for her tea," said Acland, chuckling.

"Never known her late before; something _must_ have happened."

She walked nervously across the stable-yard, and looked down the drive.

Lo! and behold a trim little carriage was just entering, and perched on the box beside a strange coachman was Jane herself.

"Jane!" screamed Charlotte, "where's Miss Elaine?"

The carriage came to a standstill, and Elaine, white, and, somehow, altered-looking, stood up in it.

"Here I am, Aunt Char," she said; "I am quite safe."

"But what--what--what has happened?" gasped Miss Charlotte, staring at Elaine's travelling-companion. "Jane, what has happened?"

For all answer, Jane went off into a perfect volley of hysterics. It was scarcely to be wondered at, for her day's experience had far exceeded anything which had previously happened to her in all her fifty years of life.

Miss Charlotte was greatly alarmed, however, as Jane's usual demeanor was staid and unemotional to a degree. She ran for sal volatile, salts, for she hardly knew what, and soon her agitated and broken utterances drew f.a.n.n.y and Emily out into the stable-yard.

Elaine did not go into hysterics. She stood up, very white, with shining eyes, which seemed bluer and larger than usual, as Lady Mabel introduced herself to the ladies, and began a clear and graphic description of what had taken place. It seemed too incredible, too horrifying to be true, that their little Edge Combe had been the scene of such violence and bloodshed.

So overcome were they that they quite forgot even to thank Lady Mabel for her kindness in bringing Elaine home, until she said, with a charmingly graceful bow, "And now I will not keep you, as I know you are longing to be rid of me;" and extended a hand in leave taking.

Then Miss Charlotte suddenly rallied, and said,

"Oh, but we could not on any account allow you to go on without taking some refreshment."

CHAPTER IX.

So it would once have been--'tis so no more, I have submitted to a new control; A power is gone which nothing can restore, A deep distress hath humanized my soul.

WORDSWORTH.