CHAPTER XXIX 433
" Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour to tea."
They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the kitchen door. Mr. St. John, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed through; the two ladies stopped: Mary, in a few words, kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to come down; Diana took my hand: she shook her head at me.
" You should have waited for my leave to descend," she said. " You still look very pale-- and so thin! Poor child!-- poor girl!"
Diana had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove. She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter. Her whole face seemed to me full of charm. Mary ' s countenance was equally intelligent-- her features equally pretty; but her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant. Diana looked and spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently. It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will.
" And what business have you here?" she continued. " It is not your place. Mary and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license-- but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour."
" I am very well here." " Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour." " Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary.
" To be sure," added her sister. " Come, you must be obedient." And still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.
" Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, " while we take our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little