visible difference. I was received by one of the maids, with whose face I was familiar. There had never been any wealth of male attendants at Ellermore, and this did not strike me as unusual. She took me into the drawing-room, which was deserted, and bore a more formal look than of old. “Miss Charlotte is mostly with her papa,” the woman said. “He is very frail, but just wonderful contented, like a bairn. She’s always up the stair with the old gentleman. It’s no’ good for her. You’ll find her white, white, sir, and no’ like hersel’.”
{150}
{151}
In a few minutes Charlotte came in. There was a gleam of pleasure (I hoped) on her face, but she was white, white, as the woman said; worn and pale. After the first greeting, which had brightened her, she broke down a little, and shed a few hasty tears, for which she excused herself, faltering that everything came back, but that she was glad, glad to{152} see me! And then she added quickly, that I might not be wounded, “It has come to that, that I can scarcely ever leave my father; and to keep up the deception is terrible.”
{152}
“You must not say deception.”
“Oh, it is nothing else; and that always punishes itself. It is just the terror of my life that some accident will happen; that he will find out everything at once.” Then she looked at me steadily, with a smile that was piteous to see, “Mr. Temple, Ellermore is sold.”
“Is it so—is it so?” I said, with a sort of groan. I had still thought that perhaps at the last moment something might occur to prevent the sacrifice.
She shook her head, not answering my words, but the expression of my face. “There was nothing else to be desired,” she said; and, after a pause, “We are to take him to the Bridge of Allan. He is almost pleased to go; he thinks of nothing{153} further—oh, poor old man, poor old man! If only I had him there safe; but I am more terrified for the journey than I ever was for anything in my life.”
{153}
We talked of this for some time, and of all the arrangements she had made. Charley was to come to assist in removing his father; but I think that my presence somehow seemed to her an additional safeguard, of which she was glad. She did not stay more than half an hour with me. “It will be dull, dull for you, Mr. Temple,” she said, with more of the lingering cadence of her national
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