“I wish,” cried Effie, reddening now with sudden anger,--“oh, I wish you would----”
“Mind my own business? But it is my own business. When I married your father it was one of the first of my duties to look after you, and consider your best interests. I hope I’ve always done my duty by you, Effie. From seeing that your hair was cut regularly, which was just in a heart-breaking tangle about your shoulders when I came home to Gilston, to seeing you well settled, there is nothing I have had so much in my mind. Now don’t you make me any answer, for you will just say something you will regret. I shall never have grown-up daughters of my own, and if I were not to think of you I would be a most reprehensible person. All I have to ask of you is that you will not be a fool and throw away your advantages. You need not stir a finger. Just take things pleasantly and make a nice answer to them that ask, and everything else will come to your hand. Lucky girl that you are! Yes, my dear, you are just a very lucky girl. Scarcely nineteen, and everything you can desire ready to drop into your lap. There is not one in a hundred that has a lot like that. There are many that might do not amiss but for some circumstances that’s against them; but there is no circumstance against you, and nothing that can harm you, unless just some nonsense fancy that you may take up at your own hand.”
Thus Mrs. Ogilvie ran on during the drive home. After one or two murmurs of protest Effie fell into silence, preferring, as she often did, the soft current of her own thoughts to the weary words of her stepmother, who indeed was by no means unaccustomed to carry on a monologue of this description, in which she gave forth a great many sentiments that were a credit to her, and gave full intimation, had any attention been paid to her, of various plans which were hotly but ineffectually objected to when she carried them out.
Mr. Ogilvie in his corner, what with his truffles and the unusual fatigue of an afternoon spent in the midst of a crowd, and the familiar lullaby of his wife’s voice, and the swift motion of the horses glad to get home, had got happily and composedly to sleep. And if Effie did not sleep, she did what was better. She allowed herself to float away on a dreamy tide of feeling, which indeed was partly caused by Fred Dirom’s devotion, yet was not responsive to it, nor implied any enchantment of her own in which he held a leading place. She mused, but not of Fred. The pleasure of life, of youth, of the love shown to her, of perhaps, though it is a less admirable sentiment, gratified vanity, buoyed her up and carried her along.