“Don’t talk to me,” cried Mrs. Aumerle, in the tone of decision which to her was habitual; “I say that a young wife does wrong, exceedingly wrong, in leaving the home of her natural protector, and throwing herself back upon her own family, just because she and her husband have chanced to have some unpleasant words together.” The time was the afternoon of the day following that of Annabella’s unexpected arrival; the scene was the sitting-room at the vicarage; the auditor, Mabel Aumerle. “Unpleasant words!” repeated Mabel angrily; “why the earl tore her writing to pieces, and ordered her out of the room, before her own servant—only think of that, before her own liveried servant! No woman of spirit could submit to that!” “Woman of spirit—nonsense!” cried the step-mother, “a woman’s spirit ought to be one of submission.” “I would have done what she did!” said Mabel. “I daresay that you would,” answered Mrs. Aumerle, with a touch of sarcasm in her manner; “but I happen to know a good deal more of life than you do, and mind my word, Mabel, when a woman marries she takes her husband for better for worse; she has made her choice and she must abide by it; she only lowers herself by appealing to the world to arbitrate between her and the man whom she has vowed to obey.” “How has Annabella appealed to the world?” asked Mabel, with but little of respect in her tone. “By making herself the talk of the world. There’s not a house in Pelton, no, nor much farther round, in which the flight of the countess and its cause is not the subject of conversation. The gossips are feasting on the news, and doubtless by to-morrow morning we shall have the whole affair, with every kind of exaggeration, appearing in the county paper. I’ve really no patience with the girl! And to mix us up with her folly! I feel as if I were aiding and abetting a wife’s rebellion against her husband.” “Unfeeling creature!” thought Mabel, whose partiality for her cousin, and high-flown spirit of romance, made her espouse the countess’s cause with the chivalric devotion of a knight errant towards some fair and persecuted damsel. “I am sure I hope that she does not intend to prolong her stay here,” continued Mrs. Aumerle. “To say nothing, of the inconvenience of accommodating herself and her fine maid, I think it an evil to have in the house one who sets such an example of wilfulness and pride.” “Papa could never but welcome to his home the orphan niece of my own beloved mother,” exclaimed Mabel, with flashing eyes, feeling as though she were doing a lofty and generous action in defending the cause of the oppressed. “A child of fifteen is no judge of these matters, and would show her good sense best by her silence,” was the cold observation of Mrs. Aumerle.