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Page 39
"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 also she knew not what
disagreeable feelings for the future.
"It is not Sophia's fault," she muttered; "Julius is to blame for it. I
think he really hates me now. He has said to her, 'There is no need to
tell Charlotte, specially; it will make her of too much importance. I
don't approve of Charlotte in many ways.' Oh, I know you, sir!" and with
the thought she pulled the string of her necklace so impatiently that it
broke; and the golden beads fell to her feet, and rolled hither and
thither about the room.
The incident calmed her. She finished her toilet in haste, and went
down-stairs. All the rooms were lighted, and she saw Julius and Sophia
pacing up and down the main parlor, hand in hand, so interested in their
_sotto voce_ conversation as to be quite unconscious that she had stood
a moment at the open door for their recognition. So she passed on
without troubling them. She heard her mother's happy laugh in the large
dining-room, and she guessed from its tone that Harry was with her. Mrs.
Sandal was beautifully dressed in black satin, and she held in her hand
a handsome silver salver. Evidently she had been about to leave the room
with it, when detained by some remark of her son's; for she was half-way
between the table and the door, her pretty, kindly face all alight with
love and happiness.
Harry was standing on the hearth-rug, facing the room,--a splendidly
handsome young fellow in a crimson and yellow uniform. He was in the
midst of a hearty laugh, but when he saw Charlotte there was a sudden
and wonderful transformation in his face. It grew in a moment much
finer, more thoughtful, wistful, human. He sprang forward, took her in
his arms, and kissed her. Then he held her from him a little, looked at
her again, and kissed her again; and with that last kiss he whispered,
"You good sister. You saved me, Charlotte, with that five hundred
pounds."
"I would have given it had it been my all, it been fifty times as much,
Harry."
There was no need to say another word. Harry and Charlotte understood
each other, and Harry turned the conversation upon his cousin.
"This Indian fellow, this Sandal of the Brahminical caste, what is he
like, Charley?"
"He does not admire me, Harry; so how can I admire him?"
"Then there must be something wrong with him in the fundamentals; a
natural-born inability to admire what is lovely and good."
"You mustn't say such a thing as that, Harry. I am sure that Sophia is
engaged to him."
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