“What is the matter, Mary?” she would say, looking up from her Berlin work. She had a daughter who was married – and she was always working chairs for her, and footstools, and I don’t know what.

“Nothing,” said I, sitting down on the stool by her wool-basket and turning over the pretty colours; and then, after I had been silent for a minute, I said, “They have gone out for a walk.”

“It is very natural, my dear; you must not be jealous. It might be a question, you know, whether you liked your papa to marry; but now that he is married, it is his duty to be attentive to his wife.”

“He had me before he had a wife,” cried I; “why should he love her better than me? Why should he be so much happier with her than with me? He has always something to say to her: he is always smiling and pleasant. Sometimes with me he will be a whole day and never say a word. Why should he be more happy with her than with me?”

Mrs Stephens laughed. “I can’t tell you how it is, Mary, but so it is,” she said; “and by and by, when you are older, you will have somebody whom you will be happier with than you ever were with your papa. That is the best of being young. When my Sophy married, it was very hard upon me to see her happier with her husband than she had been with her mother, and to know that all that sort of thing was over for me, and that I must be content with my worsted-work. But you will have a happiness of your own by and by, when you are older; so you must not grudge it so much to your poor papa. I think he is looking pale. I thought he coughed a great deal on Sunday. Is she doing anything for that cough of his, do you know?”

“I never noticed that he had a cough.”

“Well, I hope she does,” said Mrs Stephens, with a strange look, as if she meant something. “Your papa never was strong. He has not health to be going out of nights, and to all those concerts and things. She ought to look after his cough, Mary. If she does not, it will be she who will suffer the most.”

I did not in the least understand what this meant; I had never remarked papa’s cough. Yes, to be sure, he always had a little cough – nothing to speak of. I had been used to it all my life, and it was not any worse than usual – it was nothing. I told Mrs Stephens so, and then we talked of other things.

What a long year that was! When the wedding-day came round again they had a party, and were quite gay. It was a very odd thing to see a party in our house; but, though I would not have owned this for the world, I almost think I half enjoyed it. I had got used to papa’s foolish happiness, and to Mrs Peveril’s ways. By mere use and wont I had got more indifferent; and then there began to be some talk of getting a situation for me as a governess. Papa did not like the idea, but I myself pressed it on, with a feeling that something new would be pleasant. I took most of my ideas of life from novels; and if you will think of it, young ladies who are governesses in novels, generally come to promotion in the end, though they may have to suffer a great deal first. I did not much mind the suffering. Whatever it may be that makes one superior to other people, one can bear it. I made up my mind to a great deal of trouble, and even persecution, and all kinds of annoyances, feeling that all this would come to something in the end. All my dreams about being Lady Mary, and a great personage, had been dispersed by my father’s marriage. But now I began to dream in another way; and by degrees the old nonsense would steal back. I used to sit with a book in my hand, and see myself working in a schoolroom with the children; and then some one would come to the door, and I should be called to a beautiful drawing-room, and the lady of the house would take me in her arms and kiss me, and say, “Why did not you tell me who you really were!” and there would be a lawyer in black who had come with the news. All this I am sure is intensely silly, but so was I at the time; and that is exactly how my mind used to go on. Sometimes a gentleman would come into it, who would be intensely respectful and reverential, and whom I would always refuse, saying, “No; I will allow no one to descend from their proper rank for me!” until that glorious moment came when I was found out to be as elevated in rank as in principles. Oh, how absurd it all was! and how I liked it! and what a refuge to me was that secret world which no one ever entered but myself, and yet where so many delightful people lived whom I knew by their names, and could talk to for hours together! Sitting there under Mrs Peveril’s very nose, I would have long argumentations with my lover, and he would kiss my hand, and lay himself at my feet, and tell me that he cared for no one in the world but me; and the scene of the discovery was enacted over and over again while papa was talking of parish matters, quite unaware that by some mysterious imbroglio of affairs he was really the Earl of – So and So – (I never could hit upon a sufficiently pretty name). Thus, instead of weeping over my hard fate and thinking it dreadful to have to go out as a governess, I looked forward to it, feeling that somehow the discovery of the true state of affairs concerning us was involved in it, and that, without that probation, Fate would certainly never restore me to my due and native eminence in the world.

But, however, I must come back to the night of the anniversary, and to our party. I had on a pretty new white frock – my first long one: and I half, or more than half, enjoyed myself. Everybody was very kind to me, everybody said I was looking well; and Mrs Tufnell and Mrs Stephens petted me a good deal behind backs, and said, “poor child!” And then papa’s curate, who was one of the guests, kept following me about and trying to talk to me; whenever I looked up I met his eyes. I did not admire him in the least, but it amused me very much, and pleased me, to see that he admired me. When I wanted anything he rushed to get it for me. It was very odd, but not at all disagreeable, and gave me a comfortable feeling about myself. When the people went away, papa stood a long time in the hall between the open doors, saying good-night to everybody. He went back into the parlour after they were all gone; he went up to the fireplace, I don’t know why, and stood there for a moment as if there had been a fire in the grate. Then he called “Mary!” I might have known it was not me he wanted. He held out his hand without turning round. “I never thought I could be happier than I was this day last year,” he said, “and yet I am happier to-night. What a delightful year you have given me, my darling – Oh, is it you? What did you mean by not telling me it was you, when you must have perceived that I thought I was talking to my wife?”

“There was no time to tell you,” I said. It gave me a pang I can scarcely describe when he thrust my hand away which I had held out to him. He was ashamed; he sat down suddenly in the big chair, and then all at once a fit of coughing came on, such a fit of coughing as I never saw before. It frightened me; and he looked so pale, and with such circles round his eyes! When he could speak he said, hurriedly, panting for his breath, “Be sure you do not tell her of this – .” That was all he thought of. It did not matter for me.

But, as it happened, it was not long possible to keep it from her. When I look back upon that evening, with its little follies, and the laughter, and the curate, and my new dress! O, how little one knows! That very night papa was taken ill. He had caught cold in the draught as he shook hands with the people. It was congestion of the lungs, and from the first the doctor looked very serious. The house changed in that night. The study and the parlour and the whole place turned into a vestibule to the sick room, which was the centre of everything. The very atmosphere was darkened; the sun did not seem to shine; the sounds outside came to us dulled and heavy. I was not allowed to be very much in the room. She took her place there and never left him, day or night; and if I were to spend pages in describing it I could not give you any idea of my dreariness, left alone down below, not allowed to help him or be near him while my father lay between living and dying. I could not do anything. I tried to read, but I could not read. To take up a novel, which was the only thing I could possibly have given my attention to, would have seemed like profanation at such a time. It would have been worse than reading a novel on Sunday, which I had always been brought up to think very wicked; and as for my dreams, they were worse even than the novels. I dared not carry them on while papa was so ill. I felt that if I allowed my thoughts to float away on such useless currents, I never could expect God to listen to my prayers. For this reason I made a dreadful effort to think “as one ought to think,” to think of religious things always and all day long – and this was very difficult; but I made the effort, because I thought God was more likely to listen to me if I showed that I wanted to do well.

But, oh the dreary days and the dreary nights! The three last nights I sat up in my dressing-gown, and dozed drearily and woke still more drearily, after dreaming the strangest dreams. Sometimes I thought it was the wedding-day again, and he was standing with her hand on his arm; sometimes it was the anniversary, and he was saying how happy he was; sometimes it was a funeral. I dreamed always about him, and always in different aspects. One morning I woke up suddenly and found Ellen standing by me in the grey dawning. She did not say anything; the tears were running down her face. But I got up and followed her quite silent, knowing what it was.

He died, after a week’s illness, in the morning, leaving us a whole horrible, light, bright day to get through with what patience we could; and then there was a dreary interval of silence, and he was carried away from us for ever and ever; and she and I, two creatures of different minds as ever were born, with but this one link of union between us, were left in the house alone.