“Don’t talk to me,” cried Mrs. Aumerle, in the tone of decision which to her was habitual; “I say that a young wife does wrong, exceedingly wrong, in leaving the home of her natural protector, and throwing herself back upon her own family, just because she and her husband have chanced to have some unpleasant words together.”

The time was the afternoon of the day following that of Annabella’s unexpected arrival; the scene was the sitting-room at the vicarage; the auditor, Mabel Aumerle.

“Unpleasant words!” repeated Mabel angrily; “why the earl tore her writing to pieces, and ordered her out of the room, before her own servant—only think of that, before her own liveried servant! No woman of spirit could submit to that!”

“Woman of spirit—nonsense!” cried the step-mother, “a woman’s spirit ought to be one of submission.”

“I would have done what she did!” said Mabel.

“I daresay that you would,” answered Mrs. Aumerle, with a touch of sarcasm in her manner; “but I happen to know a good deal more of life than you do, and mind my word, Mabel, when a woman marries she takes her husband for better for worse; she has made her choice and she must abide by it; she only lowers herself by appealing to the world to arbitrate between her and the man whom she has vowed to obey.”

“How has Annabella appealed to the world?” asked Mabel, with but little of respect in her tone.

“By making herself the talk of the world. There’s not a house in Pelton, no, nor much farther round, in which the flight of the countess and its cause is not the subject of conversation. The gossips are feasting on the news, and doubtless by to-morrow morning we shall have the whole affair, with every kind of exaggeration, appearing in the county paper. I’ve really no patience with the girl! And to mix us up with her folly! I feel as if I were aiding and abetting a wife’s rebellion against her husband.”

“Unfeeling creature!” thought Mabel, whose partiality for her cousin, and high-flown spirit of romance, made her espouse the countess’s cause with the chivalric devotion of a knight errant towards some fair and persecuted damsel.

“I am sure I hope that she does not intend to prolong her stay here,” continued Mrs. Aumerle. “To say nothing, of the inconvenience of accommodating herself and her fine maid, I think it an evil to have in the house one who sets such an example of wilfulness and pride.”

“Papa could never but welcome to his home the orphan niece of my own beloved mother,” exclaimed Mabel, with flashing eyes, feeling as though she were doing a lofty and generous action in defending the cause of the oppressed.

“A child of fifteen is no judge of these matters, and would show her good sense best by her silence,” was the cold observation of Mrs. Aumerle.

Mabel’s proud spirit was thoroughly roused by this remark. Her present mood seemed strangely inconsistent with the softened humility which she had shown, when in the arbour a few days previously, she had leant her head on her sister’s bosom, feeling herself indeed to be a poor, helpless sinner! But is not this a species of inconsistency which, by experience, we know to be but too common in the heart? We prostrate ourselves before God, but stand erect before our fellow-creatures: we own our infirmities in the quiet hour when religion speaks to the soul, but start back with angry indignation, if those weaknesses be touched upon by another. Pride stands back when we, in solitude, or with one chosen friend, review our past conduct and mourn over our faults, but springs forward if a rebuke, however just, be not sweetened by flattery, or tempered by caution.

Mabel disliked her stepmother, and did not care to hide that dislike from its object. The feeling partly arose from a want of tenderness and tact on the part of Mrs. Aumerle. That lady, with much common sense, high principle, and warmth of heart, was quite devoid of that nice apprehension of tender points, that delicacy in touching upon painful subjects, which is morally, what feelers are physically to some of the insect creation. Mrs. Aumerle had no feelers, and she rather prided herself on the want. She classed nerves, sensibility, timidity, romance, under the one comprehensive title of “humbug;” things which, like cobwebs, she would have thought too insignificant to be noticed, had they not been, to the mental eye, too unsightly to be spared. Mrs. Aumerle’s sympathies were quick and active in cases of what she regarded as real distress. She was an eminently practical woman, and did much good in her husband’s parish; but she had no pity for nervous complaints, no patience for fanciful troubles. It may be imagined how little of congeniality there could be between such a character and that of the refined sensitive Ida, the romantic impulsive Mabel.

But without congeniality there should have been, on the part of the stepdaughters, a just appreciation of merit, meek submission to authority, and due respect of manner. If Mabel, on all these points, was by far the most open offender, Ida, on her part, was assuredly not free from her share of blame. Her youngest sister looked up to her both as a guide and example. Mabel’s highest ambition was to copy the character of Ida, and like most young artists, she unintentionally exaggerated all the defects of what she copied. Mabel seemed to have an intuitive perception of the fact that Ida held her stepmother in low estimation, regarded her advice as valueless, took her reproofs almost as wrongs. Ida, unwittingly, was nurturing in her sister a spirit of proud independence, much more congenial, alas! to the human heart, than the faith, humility, and love which the young Christian earnestly sought to implant in her young companion. Ida was to a certain degree counteracting the effects of her own counsels, defeating the aim of her own prayers.

Mabel, on the present occasion, was so much irritated by her stepmother’s recommendation of silence, that she was about to utter an insolent reply, when the conversation was fortunately interrupted by the entrance of her father, whose presence ever acted as a check on any ebullition of temper.

“Well, Lawrence,” said Mrs. Aumerle, coming forward to meet her husband, “I hope that this unpleasant affair is to come to a speedy end.”

“God grant it!” replied the clergyman. “Have you spoken to Annabella?”

“I was beginning to tell her a little of my mind when she implored me to leave the room. She has rather too much of the countess about her, to care to listen to simple truth. She was in a highly excited state; I should not wonder if she were in a fever to-morrow.”

“Do you think that we should send for Dr. Bardon?”

“He’ll come, sure enough, without our sending. We shall have no peace as long as the countess remains here. All the idle, curious people in the county will find some excuse for visiting the vicarage. The Greys, Whitemans, and Barclays have been here to-day already. I have given Mary orders to let in nobody but the Doctor.”

“Is Ida with her cousin?” asked Aumerle.

“She has hardly been out of her room from the first.”

“That is well,” said the vicar; “my child will do her best to calm and to soften.”

“I think that it is the earl who must require to be calmed and softened,” observed Mrs. Aumerle; “he has been very shamefully treated.”

“Augustine has, as you are aware, undertaken a mission to him. I would have gone myself, but my brother’s greater intimacy with Dashleigh, and superior powers of persuasion, would, I felt, make him a more effectual advocate for this poor misguided young creature. I thought that he would have been back ere now. I await his return with great anxiety.”

“Here comes my uncle!” exclaimed Mabel.

Aumerle met his brother at the door. “Any good tidings?” he exclaimed. Augustine shook his head doubtingly as they entered the sitting-room together.

“The earl is extremely indignant,” he said, removing the hat from his heated brow; “I have been arguing with him for more than an hour, and I have my doubts as to whether we have come to a satisfactory conclusion at last.”

“Oh, on what does he decide?” cried Mabel.

“He consents at length to pardon the countess’s act of foolish petulance, on condition that she ask his forgiveness, and return this very day to her home.”

“Reasonable terms!” said Mrs. Aumerle.

“Yes,” assented the vicar, but the little furrow of anxious thought still remained on his brow. “Augustine,” he said to his brother, “will you go and communicate your message to Annabella?”

“Nay, nay, I have done my part. If I have more influence with my old college-companion, you have more power with your niece. I suspect that your task will be at least as difficult as mine, notwithstanding your gentle auxiliaries. I have so little expectation of your success, that I have ordered a conveyance to take me to Aspendale an hour hence, that I may leave your dwelling more free to accommodate its new guest.”

“I hope,” said Mrs. Aumerle, “that the conveyance will rather be required to take Annabella back to the home which she should never have quitted.”

“I hope so too,” observed Augustine with a smile; “but I own that I have my doubts and my fears on the matter.”

The vicar at once proceeded to the room in which Ida was endeavouring, though with little effect, to soothe the irritated spirit of her cousin. Annabella rose on the clergyman’s entrance, and Ida, from a feeling of delicacy, silently left the apartment.

Aumerle gently communicated to his impatient auditor the message which he bore.

“His pardon!” exclaimed Annabella, striking her little hand with vehemence on a table which was beside her; “his pardon, forsooth! and for what? Nay, then, I see the truth of the words—

and she laughed in the bitterness of her soul.

“My dear niece,” said the vicar tenderly but gravely, “even by your own account you had given just cause of displeasure to your husband, before he spoke the hasty word which you find it so difficult to forgive. Prejudice may blind you—”

“Uncle, let me have no more of this; I can’t bear it!” exclaimed Annabella, rising in nervous excitement. “If I am in your way—in Mrs. Aumerle’s way, I will leave the house at once, go to London—an hotel—anywhere—but I will not—” Her voice rose, and again she struck the table as she repeated the words,—“I will not go and beg pardon of the man who turned me out of my own room, and in the presence of a menial servant.”

“Annabella, this is the excitement of fever; you require—surely I hear Bardon’s voice below!” said the vicar, who found it impossible to manage his niece in her present mood, and who was almost alarmed at the wildness of her manner. “Would you see the doctor?” added Mr. Aumerle.

Annabella hesitated for a moment, then exclaimed, “Dr. Bardon! yes, I will see him at once.” She remained in her standing position, rigid as a statue, till the vicar, after a brief absence, introduced the physician into the room, and then himself retired to another.