“No,” said docile Innocent; “but I should like to be of use--it would be pleasant to be of use,” she added, after a pause. “Let me do something. What is a companion? How strange that she should be so red and so breathless? Is it all about me?” “It is because she is a fool,” said Mrs. Eastwood, though, indeed, she herself was flushed and excited too. “But what is a companion?” asked Innocent. “You are my companion and Nelly’s,” said Mrs. Eastwood; “my dear, don’t think of it any more.” “And she is Frederick’s,” said Innocent, contemplating with a strange abstract spectatorship the group on the sofa. There was no enmity, only a wondering contemplation in her eyes. “Can he never be without her? Will she stay with him for ever and ever?” “As long as she lives,” said Mrs. Eastwood, with a profound sigh. CHAPTER XXVIII. A NEW COMPLICATION. This evening was an eventful evening at The Elms. When Mrs. Frederick had rested sufficiently and calmed down, she was carried off by her husband with the very briefest and driest of leave-takings. Old Sir Timothy and his wife had gone off before, as hurriedly as was consistent with good-breeding, shaking their old heads over the family fray they had witnessed, and forming suppositions as to the origin of Mrs. Frederick which did her injustice, unexalted though her antecedents were. “I don’t know what Mrs. Eastwood could mean by asking me to meet such a person,” cried Lady Doul in high dudgeon. “Hush! my dear, hush! the poor woman was trying to make the best of it,” said Sir Timothy; “and though she’s evidently a termagant, she’s extraordinarily pretty, wonderfully pretty.” “I have no patience with you men,” said Lady Doul. “Pretty! what has pretty to do with it? Do you think a pretty face is like charity, and covers a multitude of sins?” “A great many, my dear,” said old Sir Timothy, with a chuckle. And so the old pair jogged on to their lodgings, half sorry, half shocked, half indignant. The party they left behind was more seriously excited. The first thing Mrs. Eastwood did was to hurry off Innocent to bed, accompanying her to her room with a fear for the effect of Amanda’s ravings upon her feelings, which was really uncalled for; for Innocent’s feelings were too little on the surface to be moved by any such assault. It had given rise to vague thoughts in her mind, but no wound--thoughts which, when her aunt, with many caresses, had left her, she expressed to old Alice, with more freedom than probably she would have ventured upon with any one else. Innocent’s habitation was now in the old schoolroom, to which she had taken so great a fancy. And here Alice waited upon her with a care which amazed the other servants, for Innocent had nothing to give in return, not even thanks or caresses, and was considered “proud” and “stuck-up” in her dreamy habitual silence.