ng.

'Oh, you are too much of a chit to know--but I say, Bertha, write to me,
and let me know whom Mervyn brings to the house.'

With somewhat the like injunction, only directed to a different quarter,
Robert likewise left Beauchamp.

As he well knew would be the case, nothing in his own circumstances was
changed by his mother's death, save that he no longer could call her
inheritance his home. She had made no will, and her entire estate passed
to her eldest son, from whom Robert parted on terms of defiance, rather
understood than expressed. He took leave of his birthplace as one never
expecting to return thither, and going for his last hour at Hiltonbury to
Miss Charlecote, poured out to her as many of his troubles as he could
bear to utter. 'And,' said he, 'I have given my approval to the two
schemes that I most disapproved beforehand--to Mervyn's giving my sisters
a home, and to Miss Fennimore's continuing their governess! What will
come of it?'

'Do not repent, Robert,' was the answer. 'Depend upon it, the great
danger is in rashly meddling with existing arrangements, especially by a
strain of influence. It is what the young are slow to learn, but
experience brings it home.'

'With you to watch them, I will fear the less.'

Miss Charlecote wondered whether any disappointment of his own added to
his depression, and if he thought of Lucilla.

CHAPTER XVIII

My sister is not so defenceless left
As you imagine. She has a hidden strength
Which you remember not.--_Comus_

Phoebe was left to the vacancy of the orphaned house, to a blank where
her presence had been gladness, and to relief more sad than pain, in
parting with her favourite brother, and seeing him out of danger of
provoking or being provoked.

To have been the cause of strife and object of envy weighed like guilt on
her heart, and the tempest that had tossed her when most needing peace
and soothing, left her sore and suffering. She did not nurse her grief,
and was content that her mother should be freed from the burthen of
existence that had of late been so heavy; but the missing the cherished
recipient of her care was inevitable, and she was not of a nature to
shake off dejection readily, nor to throw sorrow aside in excitement.

Mervyn felt as though he had caught a lark, and found it droop instead of
singing. He was very kind, almost oppressively so; he rode or drove with
her to every ruin or view esteemed worth seei