background. It was not the beauté du diable, the bewildering charm of youth, and freshness, and smiles, and rose tints. She had something of all this, and to boot she had features —beaux traits. But as for this part of her power, Winnie, to do her justice, thought nothing of it; perhaps, to have understood that people minded what she said, and noticed what she did because she was very handsome, would have conveyed something like an insult and affront to the young lady. She did not care much, nor mind much at the present moment, whether she was pretty or not. She had no rivals, and beauty was a weapon the importance of which had not occurred to her. But she did care a good deal for being Winifred Seton, and as such, mistress of all she surveyed; and though she could have beaten herself for it, it galled her involuntarily to find herself thus all at once in the presence of a person whom Providence seemed to have set, somehow, in a higher position, and who was more interesting than herself. It was a wicked thought, and she did it battle. If it had been left to her, how she could have petted and cared for Mary, how she would have borne her triumphantly over all the fatigues of the journey, and thought nothing to take the tickets, and mind the luggage, and struggle with the railway porters for Mary’s sake! But to have Mary come in and absorb Aunt Agatha’s and everybody’s first look, their first appeal and principal regard, was trying to Winnie; and she had never learned yet to banish altogether from her eyes what she thought.
“It does not matter, aunt,” said Mary; “I cannot make a recluse of myself – I must go among strangers – and it is well to be able to practise a little with Winnie and you.”
“You must not mind Winnie and me, my darling,” said Aunt Agatha, who had a way of missing the arrow, as it were, and catching some of the feathers of it as it flew past.
“What do you mean about going among strangers?” said the keener Winnie. “I hope you don’t think we are strangers; and there is no need for you to go into society that I can see – not now at least; or at all events not unless you like,” she continued with a suspicion of sharpness in her tone, not displeased, perhaps, on the whole that Mary was turning out delusive, and was thinking already of society – for which notwithstanding she scorned her sister, as was natural to a young woman at the experienced age of eighteen.
“Society is not what I was thinking of,” said Mary, who in her turn did not like her young sister’s criticism; and she took her seat and her cup of tea with an uncomfortable sense of opposition. She had thought that she could not be annoyed any more by petty matters, and was incapable of feeling the little cares and complications of life, and yet it was astonishing how Winnie’s little, sharp, half-sarcastic tone brought back the faculty of being annoyed.
“The little we have at Kirtell will be a comfort to you, my love,” said the soothing voice of Aunt Agatha; “all old friends. The vicar you know, Mary, and the doctor, and poor Sir Edward. There are some new people, but I do not make much account of them; and our little visiting would harm nobody,” the old lady said, though with a slight tone of apology, not quite satisfied in herself that the widow should be even able to think of society so soon.
Upon which a little pucker of vexation came to Mary’s brow. As if she cared or could care for their little visiting, and the vicar, and the doctor, and Sir Edward! she to whom going among strangers meant something so real and so hard to bear.
“Dear Aunt Agatha,” she said, “I am afraid you will not be pleased; but I have not been looking forward to anything so pleasant as going to Kirtell. The first thing I have to think of is the boys and their interests. And Francis Ochterlony has asked us to go to Earlston.” These words came all confused from Mary’s lips. She broke down, seeing what was coming; for this was something that she never had calculated on, or thought of having to bear.
A dead pause ensued; Aunt Agatha started and flushed all over, and gave an agitated exclamation, and then a sudden blank came upon her sweet old face. Mary did not look at her, but she saw without looking how her aunt stiffened into resentment, and offence, and mortification. She changed in an instant, as if Mrs. Ochterlony’s confused statement had been a spell, and drew herself up and sat motionless, a picture of surprised affection and wounded pride. Poor Mary saw it, and was grieved to the heart, and yet could not but resent such a want of understanding of her position and sympathy for herself. She lifted her cup to her lips with a trembling hand, and her tea did not refresh her. And it was the only near relative she had in the world, the tenderest-hearted creature in existence, a woman who could be cruel to nobody, who thus shut up her heart against her. Thus the three women sat together round their breakfast-table, and helped each other, and said nothing for one stern moment, which was a cruel moment for one of them at least.
“Earlston!” said Aunt Agatha at last, with a quiver in her voice. “Indeed it never occurred to me – I had not supposed that Francis Ochterlony had been so much to – But never mind; if that is what you think best for yourself, Mary – ”
“There is nothing best for myself,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, with the sharpness of despair. “I think it is my duty – and – and Hugh, I know, would have thought so. Our boy is his uncle’s heir. They are the – the only Ochterlonys left now. It is what I must – what I ought to do.”
And then there was another pause. Aunt Agatha for her part would have liked to cry, but then she had her side of the family to maintain, and though every pulse in her was beating with disappointment and mortified affection, she was not going to show that. “You must know best,” she said, taking up her little air of dignity; “I am sure you must know best; I would never try to force my way of thinking on you, Mary. No doubt you have been more in the world than I have; but I did think when a woman was in trouble that to go among her own friends – ”
“Yes,” said Mary, who was overwhelmed, and did not feel able to bear it, “but her friends might understand her and have a little pity for her, aunt, when she had hard things to do that wrung her heart – ”
“My dear,” said Aunt Agatha, with, on her side, the bitterness of unappreciated exertion, “if you will think how far I have come, and what an unusual journey I have made, I think you will perceive that to accuse me of want of pity – ”
“Don’t worry her, Aunt Agatha,” said Winnie, “she is not accusing you of want of pity. I think it a very strange sort of thing, myself; but let Mary have justice, that was not what she meant.”
“I should like to know what she did mean,” said Aunt Agatha, who was trembling with vexation, and with those tears which she wanted so much to shed: and then two or three of them dropped on the broad-brimmed cambric cuff which she was wearing solely on Mary’s account. For, to be sure, Major Ochterlony was not to say a relation of hers that she should have worn such deep mourning for him. “I am sure I don’t want to interfere, if she prefers Francis Ochterlony to her own friends,” she added, with tremulous haste. She was the very same Aunt Agatha who had taken Mary to her arms the day before, and sat by her bed, listening to all the sad story of her widowhood. She had wept for Hugh, and she would have shared her cottage and her garden and all she had with Mary, with goodwill and bounty, eagerly – but Francis Ochterlony was a different matter; and it was not in human nature to bear the preference of a husband’s brother to “her own friends.” “They may be the last Ochterlonys,” said Aunt Agatha, “but I never understood that a woman was to give up her own family entirely; and your sister was born a Seton like you and me, Winnie; – I don’t understand it, for my part.”
Aunt Agatha broke down when she had said this, and cried more bitterly, more effusively, so long as it lasted, than she had cried last night over Hugh Ochterlony’s sudden ending: and Mary could not but feel that; and as for Winnie, she sat silent, and if she did not make things worse, at least she made no effort to make them better. On the whole, it was not much wonder. They had made great changes in the cottage for Mary’s sake. Aunt Agatha had given up her parlour, her own pretty room that she loved, for a nursery, and they had made up their minds that the best chamber was to be Mary’s, with a sort of sense that
