“Oh, I can ring for lights,” said Sara; “but that isn’t sceptical. It’s sceptical to go on wishing to live forever, and to make the world last forever, as if we mightn’t have something better. At least so I think. And as for Mr. Hardcastle, I don’t know what he has to do with it--he never said a word on the subject to me.”
“Yes, my dear, but there is a general looseness,” said the old lady. “I know the sort of thing. He lets you think whatever you like, and never impresses any doctrines on you as he ought. We are not in Dewsbury parish, you know, and I feel I ought to speak. There are such differences in clergymen. Our vicar is very pointed, and makes you really feel as if you knew what you believed. And that is such a comfort, my dear. Though, to be sure, you are very young, and you don’t feel it now.”
“No, I don’t feel it at all,” said Sara; “but, Lady Motherwell, perhaps you would like to go to your room. I think I hear papa’s cart coming up the avenue--will you wait and see him before you go?”
Thus the conversation came to an end, though Lady Motherwell elected to wait, and was as gracious to Mr. Brownlow as if he had been twenty county people. Even if Sara did not have Brownlows, as everybody supposed, still she would be rich and bring money enough with her to do a vast deal of good at Motherwell, where the family for a long time had not been rich. Sir Charles’s father, old Sir Charles, had not done his duty by the property. Instead of marrying somebody with a fortune, which was clearly the object for which he had been brought into the world, he had married to please a fancy of his own in a very reprehensible way. His wife herself felt that he had failed to do his duty, though it was for her sake; and she was naturally all the more anxious that her son should fulfill this natural responsibility. Sir Charles was not handsome, nor was he bright, nor even so young as he might have been; but all this, if it made the sacrifice less, made the necessity more, and accordingly Lady Motherwell was extremely friendly to Mr. Brownlow. When she came down for dinner she took a sort of natural protecting place, as if she had been Sara’s aunt, or bland, flattering, uninterfering mother-in-law. She called the young mistress of the house to her side, and held her hand, and patted it and caressed it. She told Mr. Brownlow how pleased she was to see how the dear child had developed. “You will not be allowed to keep her long,” she said, with tender meaning; “I think if she were mine I would go and hide her up so that nobody might see her. But one has to make up one’s mind to part with them all the same.”