“It be over, Miss Charlotte.”

So she went to her own room.  It was chilly and dreary.  The fire had been allowed to die down, and had only just been replenished.  It was smoking also, and the candles on her toilet-table burned dimly in the damp atmosphere.  She hurriedly changed her gown, and was going down-stairs, when a movement in Sophia’s room arrested her attention.  It was very unusual for Sophia to be up-stairs at that hour, and the fact struck her significantly.  She knocked at the door, and was told rather irritably to “Come in.”

“Dear me, Sophia! what is the matter?  It feels as if there were something wrong in the house.”

“I suppose there is something wrong.  Father got a letter from Harry by the late post, and he left his dinner untouched; and mother is in her room crying, of course.  I do think it is a shame that Harry is allowed to turn the house upside down whenever he feels like it.”

“Perhaps he is in trouble.”

“He is always in trouble, for he is always busy making trouble.  His very amusements mean trouble for all who have the misfortune to have any thing to do with him.  Julius told me that no man in the ‘Cameronians’ had a worse name than Harry Sandal.”

“Julius!  The idea of Julius talking badly about our Harry, and to you!  I wonder you listened to him.  It was a shabby thing to do; it was that.”

“Julius only repeated what he had heard, and he was very sorry to do so.  He felt it to be conscientiously his duty.”

“Bah!  God save me from such a conscience!  If Julius had heard any thing good of Harry, he would have had no conscientious scruples about silence; not he!  I dare say Julius would be glad if poor Harry was out of his way.”

“Charlotte Sandal, you shall not say such very unladylike, such unchristianlike, things in my room.  It is quite easy to see whose company you have been in.”

“I have been with Ducie.  Can you find me a sweeter or better soul?”

“Or a handsomer young man than her son?”

“I mean that also, certainly.  Handsome, energetic, enterprising, kind, religious.”

“Spare me the balance of your adjectives.  We all know that Steve is square on every side, and straight in every corner.  Don’t be so earnest; you fatigue me to-night.  I am on the verge of a nervous headache, and I really think you had better leave me.”  She turned her chair towards the fire as she spoke, and hardly palliated this act of dismissal by the faint “excuse me,” which accompanied it.  And Charlotte made no remark, though she left her sister’s room, mentally promising herself to keep away from it in the future.