Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood
too short for the leave-taking; for all she had to say to me. It will be years, perhaps, before we meet again."
"Meet again! Meet where?"
"In Heaven!"
"You are a strange child!" exclaimed Selina, looking at me very steadfastly. "Ursula has infected you, I see, with her serious notions. I used to tell her there was time enough for it years hence."
"And mamma used to tell you that perhaps, if you put off and put off, the years hence might never come for you, Selina."
"What! you remember that, do you?" she said, with a smile. "Yes, she used to lecture me; she was fifteen years older than I, and assumed the right to do so."
"Mamma never lectured; what she said was always kind and gentle," was my sobbing answer.
"Yes, yes. You think me insensible now, Anne; but my grief is over--that is the violence of the grief. When the letter came to say Ursula was dead, I cried the whole day, never ceasing."
"Mamma had a warning of her death," I continued; for it was one of the things she had charged me to tell to her sister Selina.
"Had a what, child?"
"A warning. The night before she was taken ill--I mean dangerously ill--she dreamt she saw papa in a most beautiful place, all light and flowers; no place on earth could ever have been so beautiful except the Garden of Eden. He beckoned her to come to him, and pointed to a vacant place by his side, saying, 'It is ready for you now, Ursula.' Mamma awoke then, and the words were sounding in her ears; she could have felt sure that they were positively spoken."
"And you can tell me this with a grave face, calling it a warning!" exclaimed Selina.
"Mamma charged me to tell it you. She related the dream to us the next morning----"
"Us! Whom do you mean, child?"
"Me and our old maid Betty. She was my nurse, you know. Mamma said what a pleasant dream it was, that she was sorry to awake from it; but after she grew ill, she said she knew it was sent as a warning."
Selina laughed. "You have lived boxed up with that stupid old Betty and your mamma, child, until you are like a grave little woman. Ursula was always superstitious. You will say you believe in ghosts next."
"No, I do not believe in ghosts. I do in warnings. Mamma said that never a Keppe-Carew died yet without being warned of it: though few of them had noticed it at the time."
"There, that will do, Anne. I am a Carew, and I don't want to be frightened into watching for a 'warning.' You are a Carew also, by the mother's side. Do you know, my poor child, that you are not left well off?"
"Yes; mamma has told me all. I don't mind."
"Don't mind!" echoed Selina, with another light laugh. "That's because you don't understand, Anne. What little your mamma had left has been sunk in an annuity for your education--eighty or a hundred pounds a year, until you are eighteen. There's something more, I believe, for clothes and incidental expenses."
"I said I did not mind, Selina, because I am not afraid of getting my own living. Mamma said that a young lady, well-educated and of good birth, can always command a desirable position as governess. She told me not to fear, for God would take care of me."
"Some money might be desirable for all that," returned my aunt, in a tone that sounded full of irreverence to my unaccustomed ears. "The maddest step Colonel Hereford ever took was that of selling out. He thought to better himself, and he spent and lost the money, leaving your mamma with very little when he died."
"I don't think mamma cared much for money, Selina."
"I don't think she did, or she would not have taken matters so quietly. Do you remember, Anne, how she used to go on at me when I said I should marry Edwin Barley?"
"Yes; mamma said how very wrong it would be of you to marry for money."
"Quite true. She used to put her hands to her ears when I said I hated him. Now, what are those earnest eyes of your searching me for?"
"Do you hate him, Selina?"
"I am not dying of love for him, you strange child."
"One day a poor boy had a monkey before the window, and you said Mr. Edwin Barley was as ugly as that. Is he ugly?"
Selina burst into a peal of ringing laughter. "Oh, he is very handsome, Anne; as handsome as the day: when you see him you shall tell me if you don't think so. I---- What is the matter? What are you looking at?"
As I stood before my aunt, the door behind her seemed to be pushed gently open. I had thought some one was coming in; and said so.
"The fire-light must have deceived you, Anne. That door is kept bolted; it leads to a passage communicating with my bedroom, but we do not use it."
"I am certain that I saw it open," was my answer; and an unpleasant, fanciful thought came over me that it might be the man I saw in the avenue. "It is shut now; it shut again when I spoke."
She rose, walked to the door, and tried to open it but it was fast.
"You see, Anne. Don't you get fanciful, my dear; that is what your mamma was:" but I shook my head in answer.
"Selina, did not Mr. Edwin Barley want me to go to Mrs. Hemson's instead of coming here?"
"Who told you that?"
"I heard Mr. Sterling talking of it with mamma."
"Mr. Edwin Barley did, little woman. Did you hear why he wished it?"
"No."
"You should have heard that, it was so flattering to me. He thought I was too giddy to take charge of a young lady."
"Did he?"
"But Ursula would not accept the objection. It could not matter for a few weeks, she wrote to Mr. Edwin Barley, whether I were giddy or serious, and she could not think of consigning you, even temporarily, to Mrs. Hemson. Ah! my cousin Frances Carew and I took exactly opposite courses, Anne; I married for money, she for love. She met an attractive stranger at a watering-place, and married him."
"And it was not right?"
"It was all wrong. He was a tradesman. A good-looking, educated man--I grant that; but a tradesman. Never was such a thing heard of, as for a Carew to stoop to that. You see, Anne, she had learnt to like him before she knew anything of his position, or who he was. He was a visitor at the place, just as she was. Of course she ought to have given him up. Not she; she gave herself and her money to him, and a very pretty little fortune she had."
"Did she marry in disobedience?"
"That cannot be charged upon her, for she was alone in the world, and her own mistress. But a Carew of Keppe-Carew ought to have known better."
"She was not of Keppe-Carew, Selina."
"She was. Don't you know that, Anne? her father was Carew of Keppe-Carew; and when he died without a son, his brother, your mamma's father and mine, succeeded to Keppe-Carew. He died in his turn, leaving no son, and Keppe-Carew and its broad lands went to a distant man, the male heir. We three Carews have all married badly, in one way or another."
Mrs. Edwin Barley was speaking dreamily then, as if forgetting anybody heard her.
"She, Frances, married Hemson the tradesman, throwing a barrier between herself and her family; Ursula married Colonel Hereford, to wear out a few of her best years in India, and then to die in poverty, and leave an unprovided-for child; and I have married him, Edwin Barley. Which is the worst, I wonder?"
I thought over what she said in my busy brain. Few children had so active a one.
"Selina, you say you married Mr. Edwin Barley because he is rich."
"Well."
"Why did you, when you were rich yourself?"
"I