I want to."

"I will leave you now." She hesitated a moment at the door, but she
could not bring herself to speak of her engagement. She saw that
Charlotte was in one of her "no-matter-every-thing-right" moods, and
knew she would take the important news without the proper surprise and
enthusiasm. In fact, she perceived that Harry's visit occupied her whole
mind; for, as she stood a moment or two irresolute as to her own
desires, Charlotte talked eagerly of her brother.

"Well, I hope if Harry is of so much importance in your eyes, you will
dress decently to meet him. The rector is coming to dinner also."

"I shall wear my blue gown. If I imitate you, I cannot be much out of
the way. Heigh-ho! Heigh-ho! I hope Harry will have a pleasant visit. We
must do our best, Sophia, to make him happy."

"O Charlotte, if you have nothing to talk about but Harry, Harry, Harry,
I am going! I am very fond of Harry, but I don't pretend to be blind to
Harry's faults. Remember how many disagreeable hours he has given us
lately. And I must say that I think he was very ungrateful about the
hundred and eighty pounds I gave him. He never wrote me a line of
thanks."

"You did not give it to Harry, you loaned it to me. Be just Sophia. I
have paid you fifteen pounds of it back already, and I shall not buy a
single new dress until it is all returned. You will not lose a shilling,
Sophia."

"How Quixotic you can be! However, it is no use exciting ourselves
to-night. One likes to keep the peace at Yule-tide, and so I will bow
down to your idol as much as I can conscientiously."

Charlotte made no answer. She had risen hastily, and with rather
unnecessary vigor was rattling the ewer and basin, and plashing out the
water. Sophia came back into the room, arranged the glass at the proper
angle to give her a last comprehensive review of herself; and this being
quite satisfactory, she went away with a smiling complacency, and a
subdued excitement of manner, which in some peculiar way revealed to
Charlotte the real position of affairs between her sister and Julius
Sandal.

"She might have told me." She dashed the water over her face at the
implied complaint; and it was easy to see, from the impatient way in
which she subsequently unbound her hair, and pulled the comb through it,
and from the irritability of all her movements, that she felt the
omission to be a slight, not only indicating something not quite
pleasant in the past, but prefiguring