‘They are everywhere, my love.’

’But so different.  I never felt so happy or useful before I lived with you in London.’

‘The change is in yourself, not in the place.’

’Oh!  Serena, this is cruel!  I could live with my father anywhere, but the others—­impossible.’

’Think it over.  You know that you have a home with us whenever you like; that it would be my pleasure as well as interest to have you always.  That we shall miss you in every possible way; still duty is duty.  As long as your father did not care, and Lady Mary was rather glad to have the Park to herself, the thing was, perhaps, different, at any rate Freda was not then the Freda she is now.

‘Serena, you are a bitter-sweet, and a horrible little apple that is.’

‘But they say it makes good cider.’

’At any rate you ought not to influence me.  I will not decide whilst you are here, and that is all I will promise.  If I do, it will be to go to you undoubtedly.  But I will think it over.’

That very night before she went to bed, Freda did think it over, sitting by the fire in her delightful, warm, well-lighted, well-furnished bedroom; but she could not come to any determination.  She made out a sort of debtor and creditor account in her own head, and cashed it according to her somewhat imperfect notions of book-keeping.

’My father—­of course I owe him a great deal in the way of duty and love; but he owes me something for letting me have my own way all my life, bringing me up with the notion that I should be an heiress, and then disappointing me by marrying a woman whom I utterly despise.  Lady Mary—­I owe her nothing whatever, beyond the common proper treatment that one must give to every one; she, on the contrary, owes me compensation for marrying my father when I am sure he didn’t want her, and certainly I did not.

’Colonel Vaughan—­I don’t owe him anything beyond a little improvement in my style of singing and drawing; yes, I owe him a heavy debt of gratitude for not proposing for me instead of Wilhelmina, for assuredly I should have married him, and he owes me something for making a fool of me.  Wilhelmina—­I owe her a good deal, firstly, for despising her, laughing at her, ridiculing her—­and she all the time better than I was, for she never retaliated—­and secondly, for trying to prejudice the colonel against her.  Harold—­I owe him the love of a sister, and he owes me nothing as yet; here I am decidedly debtor.  The poor, of course, wherever one is, one owes them a great debt of Christian charity and love; and I must confess that they are not quite so well seen to as when Gladys was my almoner; but then she is here again to see to them, and that, on her own responsibility, and it is Lady Mary’s place to care for them now.

’On the other hand, Serena—­I owe her everything; all my few good thoughts, words and works.  She owes me nothing.  Mr Jones, ditto; I am wholly creditor in London:  the poor, the ragged schools, I owe them every farthing I can give, for they want it, and have few to help them.  I feel almost sure I should be best in London.  Rowland Prothero, I owe him compensation for my great, unpardonable rudeness and pride; I am more ashamed of that one action than of any other.  He so superior to me in every way, but the mere accident of birth.’