such barefaced fishing for compliments?' said
Charles; but Amabel, who did not like her sister to be teased, and
was also conscious of having wasted a good deal of time, sat down to
practise. Laura returned to her drawing, and Charles, with a yawn,
listlessly turned over a newspaper, while his fair delicate features,
which would have been handsome but that they were blanched, sharpened,
and worn with pain, gradually lost their animated and rather satirical
expression, and assumed an air of weariness and discontent.

Charles was at this time nineteen, and for the last ten years had been
afflicted with a disease in the hip-joint, which, in spite of the
most anxious care, caused him frequent and severe suffering, and had
occasioned such a contraction of the limb as to cripple him completely,
while his general health was so much affected as to render him an object
of constant anxiety. His mother had always been his most devoted and
indefatigable nurse, giving up everything for his sake, and watching him
night and day. His father attended to his least caprice, and his sisters
were, of course, his slaves; so that he was the undisputed sovereign of
the whole family.

The two elder girls had been entirely under a governess till a month
or two before the opening of our story, when Laura was old enough to
be introduced; and the governess departing, the two sisters became
Charles's companions in the drawing-room, while Mrs. Edmonstone, who had
a peculiar taste and talent for teaching, undertook little Charlotte's
lessons herself.

CHAPTER 2

If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with't.
--THE TEMPEST

One of the pleasantest rooms at Hollywell was Mrs. Edmonstone's
dressing-room--large and bay-windowed, over the drawing-room, having
little of the dressing-room but the name, and a toilet-table with a
black and gold japanned glass, and curiously shaped boxes to match; her
room opened into it on one side, and Charles's on the other; it was a
sort of up-stairs parlour, where she taught Charlotte, cast up accounts,
spoke to servants, and wrote notes, and where Charles was usually to
be found, when unequal to coming down-stairs. It had an air of great
snugness, with its large folding-screen, covered with prints and
caricatures of ancient date, its book-shelves, its tables, its
peculiarly easy arm-chairs, the great invalid sofa, and the grate, whic