Part 55 (1/2)

'But, Dolly, you are not going to a heathen country. Your confirmation will be as much attended to in New Zealand as here.'

'Oh, but I should be confirmed with Mysie, and Aunt Lily would read with me, and help me!'

'Yes, I see.'

'Do please tell him. Aunt Jane. He heeds what you say more than any one.

Do tell him that the only hope of my being good is if I stay with Aunt Lily just these few years!'

'Ah, Dolly, that is what you really mean and care about--not the Cambridge business.'

'Of course it is. Please tell him, Aunt Jane--somehow I can't--that I was bad and foolish when I wrote all the letters he had; but now I know better, and--and--I don't want to vex him, but I shall be ever so much better a daughter to him if he will leave me with Aunt Lily, to learn some of her goodness'--and there were tears in her eyes, for these months had softened her greatly.

'My poor Dolly!' said Aunt Jane, much more tenderly than she generally spoke. 'I am very sorry for you. I do think Aunt Lily has been the making of you, and that it is very hard that you should have to be uprooted from her, just as you had learnt to value her, I will tell your father so; but honestly, I do not think it is likely to make him change his mind.'

Miss Mohun sought her brother out the next day, and told him that they had all been waiting in patience when thinking that his daughter's residence at Silverton was an unsuccessful experiment. The explosion she had predicted had come, and Dolores had been a different creature ever since, owing to Lady Merrifield's management of her in the crisis; and she added that the girl was most unwilling to leave her aunt, and that she herself thought it would be much better to leave her for a few years to the advantages of her present training, where her affections had been gained. Mr. Mohun could not see it in the same light. The intimacy with Constance Hacket was in his eyes a folly, consequent on his sister's pa.s.sion for Sunday schools and charities; and Jane, being infected with the like ardour, he disregarded her explanations. The underhand correspondence could not have been carried on without great blindness and carelessness, or, at least, injudiciousness, on Lady Merrifield's part, and there was no denying that she had trusted to a sense of honour that was nonexistent. Nor did he appreciate Jane's argument that the conquest of the heart and will had thus been far more thoroughly gained than it would have been by constant thwarting and watching. It was hard to forgive such an exposure as had taken place, or to believe that it had not been brought about by unjustifiable errors, more especially as Lady Merrifield was the first to accuse herself of them. Moreover, he had become sensible of a strong natural yearning for the presence of his only child, and he had been so much struck with his sister Phyllis's family that he sincerely believed himself consulting the girl's best interests. He was by no means an irreligious or unG.o.dly man, but he had always thought his sister Lilias more or less of an enthusiast, and he did not wish to see Dolores the same. Perhaps, indeed, the poor child's manifest clinging to her aunt and cousins made him all the more resolute to remove her before her affection should be entirely weaned from himself.

He made his headquarters at Silverton, and during the next two months modified his opinions so far as to confess to his sister Jane that Lilias was a much more sensible woman than he had believed her, and had her children well in hand. He even allowed that Dolores was improved, and owed much to her kindness; and when the first sting of the exposure was over, he could see that the treatment had been far from injudicious as regarded the girl's own character. He was even glad that warm love and friends.h.i.+p had grown up towards her aunt and cousins; but all this left his purpose unchanged; although, after the first, nothing was said about it, Dolores tried to forget it, and hoped that the sight of her going on well and peaceably would convince him of the inexpediency of disturbing her. She could not even mention it to Mysie, lest the dread should become a reality by being uttered. So no more pa.s.sed on the subject till it became necessary to take her outfit in hand, and he also wished to take her to Beechcroft, that the old family home which he regarded with fresh tenderness might be impressed on her memory.

Then, though she never durst directly oppose the fate which he destined for her, she surprised him by a violent burst of tears and sobbing, and an entreaty that he would not take her away from Aunt Lily and Mysie a moment sooner than could be helped.

She clung to everything, even to the guinea-pigs, and she was the first in the Easter holidays to beg for the 'Thorn Fortress.' Indeed, Mysie was a little shocked at her grief, as disloyal and unfilial. 'One ought not to mind going anywhere with one's father,' she said; 'we all thought it a great honour for Phyllis and Alethea.'

'They are grown up!' said Dolores, 'and Aunt Lily does get into one so!

Oh, don't say there's Aunt Phyllis. I hate the very name of her.'

'She must be nice,' said Mysie, 'Whenever the 'grown-ups' are pleased with me they say I am getting like her, as if it was the best thing one could be.'

'But I don't want Mysie old and grown up, I want my Mysie now, as you are!--And you'll forget and leave off writing, like Maude Sefton.'

'Never!' cried Mysie. 'Eight across the world you will always be my own twin cousin.'