Leaving Mrs. Willoughby in deep consultation with Mari’ on the subject of this feast, we will next look after the two sweet girls whom we so abruptly deserted in the last chapter.  When Maud’s glowing cheeks were first visible that morning, signs of tears might have been discovered on them, as the traces of the dew are found on the leaf of the rose; but they completely vanished under the duties of the toilet, and she came forth from her chamber, bright and cloudless as the glorious May-morning, which had returned to cheer the solitude of the manor.  Beulah followed, tranquil, bland and mild as the day itself, the living image of the purity of soul, and deep affections, of her honest nature.

The sisters went into the breakfast-room, where they had little lady-like offices of their own to discharge, too, in honour of the guest; each employing herself in decorating the table, and in seeing that it wanted nothing in the proprieties As their pleasing tasks were fulfilled, the discourse did not flag between them.  Nothing, however, had been said, that made the smallest allusion to the conversation of the past night.  Neither felt any wish to revive that subject; and, as for Maud, bitterly did she regret ever having broached it.  At times, her cheeks burned with blushes, as she recalled her words; and yet she scarce knew the reason why.  The feeling of Beulah was different.  She wondered her sister could ever think she was a Meredith, and not a Willoughby.  At times she feared some unfortunate oversight of her own, some careless allusion, or indiscreet act, might have served to remind Maud of the circumstances of her real birth.  Yet there was nothing in the last likely to awaken unpleasant reflections, apart from the circumstance that she was not truly a child of the family into which she had been transplanted.  The Merediths were, at least, as nonourable a family as the Willoughbys, in the ordinary worldly view of the matter; nor was Maud, by any means, a dependant, in the way of money.  Five thousand pounds, in the English funds, had been settled on her, by the marriage articles of her parents; and twenty years of careful husbandry, during which every shilling had been scrupulously devoted to accumulation, had quite doubled the original amount.  So far from being penniless, therefore, Maud’s fortune was often alluded to by the captain, in a jocular way, as if purposely to remind her that she had the means of independence, and duties connected with it.  It is true, Maud, herself, had no suspicion that she had been educated altogether by her “father,” and that her own money had not been used for this purpose.  To own the truth, she thought little about it; knew little about it, beyond the fact, that she had a fortune of her own, into the possession of which she must step, when she attained her majority.  How she came by it, even, was a question she never asked though there were moments when tender regrets and affectionate melancholy would come over her heart, as she thought of her natural parents, and of their early deaths.  Still, Maud implicitly reposed on the captain and Mrs. Willoughby, as on a father and mother; and it was not owing to them, or anything connected with their love, treatment, words, or thoughts, that she was reminded that they were not so in very fact, as well as in tenderness.