rave every time he called upon her
just as difficult to bear as were her own peculiar slights. Julius had
ceased to recognize him, had ceased to speak of him except as "that
person." Every visit he made Charlotte was the occasion of some petty
impertinence, some unmistakable assurance that his presence was
offensive to the master of Seat-Sandal.

All these things troubled the mother also, but her bitterest pang was
the cruelty of Sophia. A slow, silent process of alienation had been
going on in the girl ever since her engagement to Julius: it had first
touched her thoughts, then her feelings; now its blighting influence had
deteriorated her whole nature. And in her mother's heart there were sad
echoes of that bitter cry that comes down from age to age, "Oh, my son
Absalom, Absalom! My son, my son!"

"O Sophia! oh, my child, my child! How can you treat me so? What have I
done?" She was murmuring such words to herself when the door was opened,
and Sophia entered. It was characteristic of the woman that she did not
knock ere entering. She had always jealously guarded her rights to the
solitude of her own room; and, even when she was a school-girl, it had
been an understood household regulation that no one was to enter it
without knocking. But now that she was mistress of all the rooms in
Seat-Sandal, she ignored the simple courtesy towards others.
Consequently, when she entered, she saw the tears in her mother's eyes.
They only angered her. "Why should the sorrows of others darken her
happy home?" Sophia was one of those women whom long regrets fatigue. As
for her father, she reflected, "that he had been well nursed, decorously
buried, and that every propriety had been attended to. It was, in her
opinion, high time that the living--Julius and herself--should be
thought of." The stated events of life--its regular meals, its trivial
pleasures--had quite filled any void in her existence made by her
father's death. If he had come back to earth, if some one had said to
her, "He is here," she would have been far more embarrassed than
delighted. The worldly advantages built upon the extinction of a great
love! Sophia could contemplate them without a blush.

She came forward, shivering slightly, and stirred the fire. "How cold
and dreary you are! Mother, why don't you cheer up and do something? It
would be better for you than moping on the sofa."

"Suppose Julius had died six weeks ago, would you think of 'cheering
up,' Sophia