dress-makers."
"If my tailor served me so, I should give him up," said Mr. Busby's quick, husky utterance.
"Yes, papa, but you wouldn't, if there was only one tailor you liked."
"Isn't there more than one mantua-maker for all this big city?"
"My dear, Miss Hubbell suits me, and is uncommonly reasonable, for the quality of her work; and she has so much custom, we cannot get her without speaking long beforehand."
"Why don't you speak, then?"
"When was Mr. Digby--Mr. Southwode here, aunt Serena?" Rotha began again.
"A few nights ago. I do not recollect. Mr. Busby, as you go down town will you stop at Dubois's and order the piano tuner? The piano is quite out of tune. And I wish you would order me a bag of coffee, if you say you can get it more reasonably at your down town place."
"Very well, my dear." The words used to amuse Rotha, they rolled out so, brisk and sharp, like the discharge from a gun. To-day she was impatient.
"Aunt Serena, I have been wanting to see Mr. Southwode very much."
No answer. Mrs. Busby attended to her breakfast as if she did not hear.
"When can I?" Rotha persisted.
"I am sure, I cannot say. Mr. Busby, I will trouble you for a little of that sausage."
"This sausage has too much pepper in it, mamma."
"And too little of something else," added Mr. Busby.
"Of what, Mr. Busby?"
"That I do not know, my dear; it belongs to your department."
"But even the Chaldean magicians could not interpret the dream that was not told to them," Mrs. Busby suggested, with smiling satisfaction. "How can I have the missing quality supplied, if you cannot tell me what it is you miss?"
"You can divine, my dear, quite as well as the Chaldean magicians."
"Then if that is true, aunt Serena," Rotha put in desperately, "will you please tell me where Mr. Southwode is?"
"Her divining rod is not long enough for that," said Mr. Busby. "Mr. Southwode is on the high seas somewhere, on his way to England."
"On the high seas!" Rotha repeated slowly.
"There was no occasion to mention that, Mr. Busby," said his wife. "Mr. Southwode's movements are nothing to us."
"Seem to be something to Rotha," said the gentleman.
"You knew that," said Rotha, steadily. "Why did you keep it from me, aunt Serena?"
"I did not keep it from you," Mrs. Busby returned, bridling. "The papers are open. I did not speak of it, because Mr. Southwode and his affairs are no concern of yours, or of mine, and therefore are not interesting."
"Of yours? No! But they are all I have in the world!" said Rotha, with fire in her cheeks and in her eyes. Mrs. Busby went on with her breakfast and avoided looking at her. But Antoinette cried out.
"All she has in the world! Mr. Southwode! Pretty well for a young lady! Mamma, do you hear that? Mr. Southwode is all she has in the world."
"Once hearing a silly thing is quite enough. You need not repeat it, Antoinette."
"Didn't he come to say good bye?" asked Rotha, her eyes blazing.
"I do not answer questions put in that tone," said Mrs. Busby, coldly.
"I know he did," said Rotha. "What did he go to England for, Mr. Busby?"
"Mr. Busby," said his wife, "I request you not to reply. Rotha is behaving improperly, and must be left to herself till she is better-mannered."
"I don't know, my dear," said the gentleman, rising and gathering his newspapers together, previous to taking his departure. "'Seems to me that's an open question--public, as you say. I do not see why you should not tell Rotha that Mr. Southwode is called home by the illness and probable death of his father. Good-morning, my dear!"
"Did you ever see anything like papa!" said Antoinette with an appealing look at her mother, as the door closed. "He don't mind you a bit, mamma."
Mrs. Busby's slight air of the head was more significant than words.
"He is the only fraction of a friend I have in this house," said Rotha. "But you needn't think, aunt Serena, that you can do what you like with Mr. Southwode and me. I belong to him, not to you; and he will come back, and then he will take me under his own care, and I will have nothing to do with you the rest of my life. I know you now. I thought I did before, and now I know. You let mamma want everything in the world; and now perhaps you will let me; but Mr. Southwode will take care of me, sooner or later, and I can wait, for I know him too."
Rotha left the room, unconsciously with the air of a tragedy queen. Alas, it was tragedy enough with her!
"Mamma!" said Antoinette. "Did you ever see anything like that?"
"I knew it was in her," Mrs. Busby said, keeping her composure in appearance.
"What will you do with her?"
"Let her alone a little," said Mrs. Busby icily. "Let her come to her senses."
"Will you go to get her cloak to-day?"
"I don't know why I should give myself any trouble about her. I will let her wait till she comes to her senses and humbles herself to me."
"Do you think she ever will?"
"I don't care, whether she does or not. It is all the same to me. You let her alone too, Antoinette."
"_I_ will," said Antoinette. "I don't like spitfires. High! what apowder-magazine she is, mamma! Her eyes are enough to set fire to things sometimes."
"Don't use such an inelegant word, Antoinette. 'High!' How can you? Where did you get it?"
"You send me to school, mamma, to learn; and so I pick up a few things. But do you think it is true, what she says about Mr. Southwode?"
"What?"
"That he will come and take her away from you."
"Not if I don't choose it,"
"And you will not choose it, will you?"
"Don't be foolish, Antoinette. Rotha will never see Mr. Southwode again. She has defied me, and now she may take the consequences."
"But he _will_ come back, mamma? He said so."
"I hope he will."
"Then he'll find Rotha, and she'll tell him her own story."
"Will you trust me to look after my own affairs? And get yourself ready to go out with me immediately."
CHAPTER XIV.
IN SECLUSION.
Rotha climbed the three flights of stairs from the breakfast room, feeling that her aunt's house, and the world generally, had become a desert to her. She went up to her own little room, being very sure that neither in the warm dressing room on the second floor, nor indeed in any other, would she be welcome, or even perhaps tolerated. How should she be, after what had taken place? And how could she breathe, anyhow, in any atmosphere where her aunt was? Imprudent? had she been imprudent? Very possibly; she had brought matters to an unmanageable point, inconvenient for all parties; and she had broken through the cold reserve which it had been her purpose to maintain, and lost sight wholly of the principles by which it had Been Mr. Digby's wish that she should be guided. Rotha had a mental recognition of all this; but passion met it with simple defiance. She was not weeping; the fire at her heart scorched all tender moisture, though it would not keep her blood warm. The day was wintry indeed. Rotha pulled the coverlet off her bed and wrapped herself in it, and sat down to think. .
Thinking, is too good a name to give to what for some time went on in Rotha's mind. She was rather looking at the procession of images which passion called up and sent succeeding one another through the chambers of her brain. It was a very dreary time with the girl. Her aunt's treachery, her cousin's coldness, Mr. Digby's pitiless desertion, her lonely, lonely place in the world, her unendurable dependence on people that did not love her; for just now her dependence on Mr. Digby had failed; it all rushed through and through Rotha's head, for all the world like the changing images in a kaleidoscope, which are but new combinations, eternally renewed, of the same changeless elements. At first they went through Rotha's head in a kind of storm; gradually, for very weariness, the storm laid itself, and cold realit
y and sober reason had the field.
But what could reason do with the reality? In other words, what step was now to take? What was to be done? Rotha could not see. She was at present at open war with her aunt. Yes, she allowed, that had not been exactly prudent; but it would have had to come, sooner or later. She could not live permanently on false social grounds; as well break through them at once. But what now? What ground did she expect to stand and move on now? She could not leave her aunt's house,