England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
"Oh, if you plead with her, she will have mercy; for I know her--I am
sure of her! Oh! how can I thank you?--how can I thank you both?"
Here some tears rose to Charlotte's eyes, and rolled fast and heavily
down her cheeks. She put up her handkerchief to wipe them away.
"You asked me to cry yesterday, but I could not; now I believe I shall
be able," she said with almost a smile. "God bless you!"
Before Wilson could get in another word she had left him and, hurrying
through the square, was lost to sight.
Wilson gazed after her retreating form; then he went into Somerset
House, and once more long and carefully studied Mr. Harman's will.
CHAPTER XLI.
NO WEDDING ON THE TWENTIETH.
Charlotte was quite right in saying that now she could cry; a great
tension had been removed, an immediate agony lightened. From the time
she had left the doctor's presence until she had met Sandy Wilson, most
intolerable had been her feelings. She would sink all pride when she saw
him; for her father's sake, she would plead for mercy; but knowing
nothing of the character of the man, how could she tell that she would
be successful? How could she tell that he might not harden his heart
against her plea? When she left him, however, she knew that her cause
was won. Charlotte Home was to be the arbitrator of her fate; she had
never in all her life seen such a hunger for money in any eyes as she
had done in Charlotte's, and yet she felt a moral certainty that with
Charlotte she was safe. In the immediate relief of this she could cry,
and those tears were delicious to her. Returning from her drive, and in
the solitude of her own room, she indulged in them, weeping on until no
more tears would flow. They took the maddening pressure of heart and
brain, and after them she felt strong and even calm. She had washed her
face and smoothed her hair, and though she could not at once remove all
trace of the storm through which she had just passed, she still looked
better than she had done at breakfast that morning, when a tap came to
her door, and Ward, her maid, waited outside.
"If you please, Miss Harman, the dressmaker has called again. Will you
have the wedding dress fitted now?"
At the same instant and before Charlotte could reply, a footman appeared
at the head of the stairs--"Mr. Hinton had arrived and was waiting for
Miss Harman, in her own sitting-room."
"Say, I will be with him directly," she answered to the man, then she
turned to Ward. "I will send you with a message to the dressmaker this
evening; tell her I am engaged now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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