“You give me credit--that I don’t deserve,” she said. “I--I came to speak to my cousin on business. It was really a--I won’t call it a selfish motive, that brought me. But it will give me real pleasure to see the girls.”
To divine the hidden meaning of this little speech, which was entirely apologetic, occupied the attention of the anxious family suddenly pushed back into eagerness again by the intimation of her real errand. It was not all for nothing, then! It was not a mere call of civility! Mr. Penton, who had felt something like relief when she rose, consoled by the thought that there could not at least be any new misfortune to intimate to him, fell again into that state of melancholy anticipation from which he had been roused, while the young ones bounded upward to the height of expectation. Something was coming--something new! It did not much matter to them what it was. They looked on with great excitement while their father conducted his cousin across the hall to his book-room, as it was called. They were not given to fine names at Penton Hook. It had been called the library in former days. But it was a little out at elbows, like the rest of the house--the damp had affected the bindings, the gilding was tarnished, the russia leather dropping to pieces, a smell of mustiness and decay, much contended against, yet indestructible, was in the place. And it was no longer the library, but only the book-room. The door of the drawing-room being left open, the family watched with interest indescribable the two figures crossing the hall. Mrs. Russell Penton, though she had not been there for so many years, knew her way, which particular interested the girls greatly, and opened a new vista to them, into the past. Mrs. Penton, for her part, knew well enough all about Alicia, but she was not jealous. She shivered slightly as she saw the great lady’s skirt sweep the hall.
“Oh, Anne,” she whispered, “tell Martha to bring a cloth and wipe it. A velvet dress! You children, with your wet feet, you are enough to break any one’s heart. What are the mats put there for, I should like to know?”
“Oh, what do you think of her, mother? Did you like her? Don’t you think she meant to be kind? Do you think we must go?”