the younger woman. “I really am better; I don’t think there is actually much the matter with me; I have just overtired myself a little. I shall be all right once I start to-morrow.”
“It is your going alone,” said Mrs Raynsworth, despondently.
Evelyn stroked her mother’s hand.
“How funny you are!” she said; “you didn’t mind it half so much at first as Philippa did, and now she says nothing more about it, and you have begun to worry yourself. But as for Philippa, where can she be? I’ve scarcely seen her to-day.”
“She was out for some time this afternoon,” said Mrs Raynsworth. “I was rather surprised at it, for she knows I am uneasy about you.”
As she spoke, the door opened and her younger daughter entered.
“Where have you been?” said Mrs Headfort; “with papa?”
“No,” Philippa replied, “I’ve been up in my own room.”
“You might have stayed with me the last evening,” her sister continued, with a touch of reproach. “And I must go to bed immediately – poor mamma’s unhappy about my looking so ill.”
Philippa glanced at her critically.
“I don’t wonder,” she said; “you certainly are not looking well. Yes, I think the best thing you can do is to go to bed. Let me see, what time do you leave to-morrow?”
“Not till eleven – that’s to say, eleven from this house. The train goes at twelve.”
Philippa’s face grew grave.
“Don’t think it horrid of me,” she began, “but I can’t possibly be here to say good-bye to you at eleven, or to go to the station with you. I must be at Marlby before then, to-morrow morning.”
“Well, if you’re to be there, why not come to the station to see me off?” said Evelyn. “I shall think it rather horrid of you if you don’t!”
“I am very sorry,” Philippa replied, “very sorry to seem horrid, but I can’t even see you off.”
“How strange you are, Philippa!” exclaimed Mrs Raynsworth. “You shouldn’t have made any pressing engagement for to-morrow morning. You seemed so anxious about Evelyn!”
“So I am, mamma,” Philippa replied, “but the mere fact of my seeing her off wouldn’t do her much good.”
But Mrs Raynsworth still looked annoyed. She was feeling really anxious and concerned about her elder daughter, and was in consequence less calm than usual.
“Evelyn,” said Philippa, “do come up to bed. I’ll stay with you while you undress.”
Mrs Headfort got up slowly.
“Philippa is queer this evening,” she thought to herself. “She’s not very nice to mamma.”
“I will come down again in a few minutes,” said Philippa, as they left the room. “I only want to make sure of Evelyn taking her medicine, and to prevent her going into the nursery again to-night. – What will you do without me to look after you,” she added, turning to her sister.
“There will be no nursery for me to wander into,” said Evelyn, with a sigh, “when I feel dull or lonely, as there is here.”
Philippa turned quickly.
“But you never do feel dull or lonely – at least not lonely, here with mamma and me, surely?” she said, with a touch of reproach.
“Oh, well, no, not in the same way, of course. But there must be times when I feel lonely without Duke, even though I love so being at home with all of you. It wouldn’t be natural if I didn’t miss him.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Philippa, half absently, for in her own mind she was thinking, “How strange it must be to care for anybody more than for one’s own people! I cannot picture it to myself at all.”
The few minutes she had spoken of to her mother turned out thirty at least, for more than half an hour had passed before her younger daughter rejoined Mrs Raynsworth in the drawing-room. And even then Philippa seemed so carried away and preoccupied that her mother felt again slightly irritated by her manner.
“Are you very tired this evening, Philippa?” she said at last; “or is there anything the matter? You don’t seem like yourself.”
Philippa gave a little start.
“I’m quite well – not the least tired, I mean,” she said, quickly. “I am thinking about Evelyn; there is nothing else the matter.”
“You mean about her going to-morrow alone?” said Mrs Raynsworth; “I am not at all happy about it myself. She looks so fragile, poor little thing. She is not nearly as strong as you, Philippa, in any way. But it is always a satisfaction to me to see how fond you are of each other; she clings to you so. And to tell you the truth, before she and the children came to us, I had some misgiving as to how it would be, for you were practically a child when she married, and those two or three years made all the difference. You had come to be so thoroughly the daughter at home – helping your father and me. I have perhaps never said to you before in so many words that I have been very pleased, very gratified by your whole tone towards and about Evey. You have been unselfish and self-forgetting all through.”
The young girl’s eyes glistened with pleasure. It was not often that Mrs Raynsworth – as a rule a somewhat silent and undemonstrative woman – expressed herself so unreservedly.
“Dear mamma,” said Philippa, “there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Evelyn. And I am so glad, so particularly glad, that you understand it. Thank you so much for what you’ve said. Now, I think I will go to bed if you don’t mind,” and she kissed her mother warmly.
“She must be tired, though she won’t own to it,” thought Mrs Raynsworth as Philippa left the room. “It is generally so difficult to get her to go to bed early,” and again the feeling came over her of there being something slightly unusual about her younger daughter that evening.
She would have been still more perplexed and surprised could she have seen Philippa an hour or two later in her own room. For long after the whole household was asleep, the girl was busily sewing at various articles of her attire, altering them and modifying them with the help of some small purchases she had made that afternoon. And when at last all was completed to her satisfaction, she drew out a small light trunk, already partially packed, which she proceeded to fill.
“I think that will do,” she said to herself, as she stood up and surveyed it with satisfaction. “With this and a hand-bag, and the things I’ll manage to get into Evelyn’s roll of rugs, I am sure I shall have all I need. Now I’ve only to write my letter of explanation to mamma. Dorcas must give it to her when it is quite certainly too late to overtake me.”
And half an hour later she was in bed and fast asleep, her mother’s words having removed any misgivings she had felt as to what she was about to do.
Mrs Headfort looked a little better the next morning, thanks to a good night’s rest; thanks also, perhaps, to the not unnatural excitement she was feeling about her journey and its results. Between her anticipations and her regret at leaving her children, she was sufficiently distracted not to notice that Philippa had slipped away
