‘The house is Tom’s, not mine. And I shall be at my own house at Easton--if I am living.’ ‘Oh,’ said Janet. Carry, though a little roused in her own defence, almost quailed before the look in the girl’s eyes. ‘You will be happier then,’ she said, with the air of an assailant hurling a stone at his victim; ‘for you will be all by yourself--with Beau.’ ‘Go upstairs, Janet: I can have no more of this!’ ‘I will not,’ she cried; ‘you said it was Tom’s house, not yours. He would not let me be sent away out of his hall, from father’s picture, for--anyone--if he were here.’ Carry raised her eyes and saw him standing behind his child. There seemed a dull smile of triumph in his painted eyes. ‘You thought they were yours--but they are mine,’ Torrance seemed to say. Both of them! their father’s in every nerve and fibre--nothing to do with her. CHAPTER X Apart from these painful struggles with her children which were quite new to Lady Car, there were many things that pained her in her residence at the Towers. First of all there was her nearest neighbour, her dearest friend, her only sister Edith; the dearest companion of her life, who had stood by her in all her troubles, and to whom she had given a trembling support in her struggle, more successful than poor Carry’s against the husband her father had chosen for her. Edith had succeeded at last in marrying her only love, which was a poor marriage for an Earl’s daughter. They had, indeed, finally, both of them, made poor marriages; but what a contrast between them! Carry living ignobly with the husband of her choice upon Torrance’s money, the result of her humiliation; while Edith was at the head of a happy, frugal family, carefully ordered, with little margin for show or pleasure, but yet in all the plenitude of cheerful life, without a recollection to rankle, or any discord or complication in all her candid existence. Her father had not been able to force the will of Edith. She had not loved her John any better than poor Carry had loved in her early tender youth the lover of all her dreams, the Edward Beaufort who was now her husband; but Carry had not been able to resist the other husband, the horrible life. Even in that Edith had so much, so much the advantage over her sister! And then--oh, wonder to think of it---- John--John, from whom nothing had been expected, except that he should show himself, as he had always done, the good fellow, the honest gentleman, the true friend he was, whether by development of his own respectable mind or by the influence of Edith (though she was never clever like Carry), or by the united force of both, John had long been one of the most important men in the district, member for his county, trusted and looked up to both by his constituency at home and the people at head-quarters, who took his advice, it was said, on Scotch affairs more than anyone’s; whereas Edward---- Carry had long made that poignant comparison in her heart, but to see them