“You are not aware, perhaps,” she said coldly to the poor girl who stood unconsciously doubling down and plaiting with her trembling fingers the fringe of the table-cover that hung near her,--“you are not aware, I daresay, that, unless I succeed--for the benefit of my younger children--in a law-suit which is in progress, your fortune, as well as Katherine’s, will be very trifling indeed. Had your poor father lived, there would, of course, have been an opportunity of remedying this evil, this _injustice_,” she added firmly, and with a stress upon the word which poor Rhoda was far too much engrossed by her own troubles to notice. “I tell you this, not that you may suppose that, under _any_ circumstances, you could have been permitted to disgrace your family by marrying this extraordinarily presumptuous person, but because I wish you to understand that a _good_ marriage may be positively necessary, both for you and for Katherine. By the way, now that we are on this disagreeable subject, will you allow me to ask whether she--whether your sister, who seems to me to be self-willed and forward enough for anything--knew of this--this disgraceful entanglement: for entanglement, Rhoda,” she went on severely, “there must have been. Poor as my opinion naturally is of the intellect of a person who could write such a letter as that” (pointing to it contemptuously), “quoting Scripture too in such a personal and impertinent manner, still I cannot believe that the man _could_ have been such an egregious fool, could have been so preposterously silly, as to have written to me, if you--just look at me, will you, instead of at the carpet--had not said or done something to authorise his presumption.” The cold eyes fixed upon the now tearful face before her seemed to command as well as to expect an answer. None, however, came; so, still more authoritatively, Lady Millicent--could she find no better way of improving her talents (_id est_, her children) and of showing her appreciation of the legacy committed to her charge, than by thus torturing the feelings of Cecil Vavasour’s young daughter?--Lady Millicent pressed the question to which she had hitherto received none but the least comprehensible of replies. “Answer me. Really I have no more time to waste. Had you any idea that this Mr. Wallingford intended making the application which strikes me as so extraordinary?” With some difficulty, Rhoda managed to stammer forth a negative. “Indeed no,” she said; “and, mamma, Kate knew no more about it than I did. I never told her--I mean, I--” She stopped suddenly, her face the colour of the setting sun when, “cradled in vermilion,” it throws its red reflection over slope and mountain, land and river. On her cheek and brow and slender neck the tell-tale witness rushed; and Lady Millicent--well aware that her guileless daughter knew and felt that she had committed herself--said, even more coldly than before: