No Name Wilkie Collins (e book reader android TXT) đ
- Author: Wilkie Collins
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âI dare say I have left it in the library, along with my other keys,â said Mr. Vanstone. âGo and look for it, my dear.â
âYou really should check Magdalen,â pleaded Mrs. Vanstone, addressing her husband when her daughter had left the room. âThose habits of mimicry are growing on her; and she speaks to you with a levity which it is positively shocking to hear.â
âExactly what I have said myself, till I am tired of repeating it,â remarked Miss Garth. âShe treats Mr. Vanstone as if he was a kind of younger brother of hers.â
âYou are kind to us in everything else, papa; and you make kind allowances for Magdalenâs high spiritsâ âdonât you?â said the quiet Norah, taking her fatherâs part and her sisterâs with so little show of resolution on the surface that few observers would have been sharp enough to detect the genuine substance beneath it.
âThank you, my dear,â said good-natured Mr. Vanstone. âThank you for a very pretty speech. As for Magdalen,â he continued, addressing his wife and Miss Garth, âsheâs an unbroken filly. Let her caper and kick in the paddock to her heartâs content. Time enough to break her to harness when she gets a little older.â
The door opened, and Magdalen returned with the key. She unlocked the postbag at the sideboard and poured out the letters in a heap. Sorting them gayly in less than a minute, she approached the breakfast-table with both hands full, and delivered the letters all round with the businesslike rapidity of a London postman.
âTwo for Norah,â she announced, beginning with her sister. âThree for Miss Garth. None for mamma. One for me. And the other six all for papa. You lazy old darling, you hate answering letters, donât you?â pursued Magdalen, dropping the postmanâs character and assuming the daughterâs. âHow you will grumble and fidget in the study! and how you will wish there were no such things as letters in the world! and how red your nice old bald head will get at the top with the worry of writing the answers; and how many of the answers you will leave until tomorrow after all! The Bristol Theaterâs open, papa,â she whispered, slyly and suddenly, in her fatherâs ear; âI saw it in the newspaper when I went to the library to get the key. Letâs go tomorrow night!â
While his daughter was chattering, Mr. Vanstone was mechanically sorting his letters. He turned over the first four in succession and looked carelessly at the addresses. When he came to the fifth his attention, which had hitherto wandered toward Magdalen, suddenly became fixed on the postmark of the letter.
Stooping over him, with her head on his shoulder, Magdalen could see the postmark as plainly as her father saw itâ âNew Orleans.
âAn American letter, papa!â she said. âWho do you know at New Orleans?â
Mrs. Vanstone started, and looked eagerly at her husband the moment Magdalen spoke those words.
Mr. Vanstone said nothing. He quietly removed his daughterâs arm from his neck, as if he wished to be free from all interruption. She returned, accordingly, to her place at the breakfast-table. Her father, with the letter in his hand, waited a little before he opened it; her mother looking at him, the while, with an eager, expectant attention which attracted Miss Garthâs notice, and Norahâs, as well as Magdalenâs.
After a minute or more of hesitation Mr. Vanstone opened the letter.
His face changed color the instant he read the first lines; his cheeks fading to a dull, yellow-brown hue, which would have been ashy paleness in a less florid man; and his expression becoming saddened and overclouded in a moment. Norah and Magdalen, watching anxiously, saw nothing but the change that passed over their father. Miss Garth alone observed the effect which that change produced on the attentive mistress of the house.
It was not the effect which she, or anyone, could have anticipated. Mrs. Vanstone looked excited rather than alarmed. A faint flush rose on her cheeksâ âher eyes brightenedâ âshe stirred the tea round and round in her cup in a restless, impatient manner which was not natural to her.
Magdalen, in her capacity of spoiled child, was, as usual, the first to break the silence.
âWhat is the matter, papa?â she asked.
âNothing,â said Mr. Vanstone, sharply, without looking up at her.
âIâm sure there must be something,â persisted Magdalen. âIâm sure there is bad news, papa, in that American letter.â
âThere is nothing in the letter that concerns you,â said Mr. Vanstone.
It was the first direct rebuff that Magdalen had ever received from her father. She looked at him with an incredulous surprise, which would have been irresistibly absurd under less serious circumstances.
Nothing more was said. For the first time, perhaps, in their lives, the family sat round the breakfast-table in painful silence. Mr. Vanstoneâs hearty morning appetite, like his hearty morning spirits, was gone. He absently broke off some morsels of dry toast from the rack near him, absently finished his first cup of teaâ âthen asked for a second, which he left before him untouched.
âNorah,â he said, after an interval, âyou neednât wait for me. Magdalen, my dear, you can go when you like.â
His daughters rose immediately; and Miss Garth considerately followed their example. When an easy-tempered man does assert himself in his family, the rarity of the demonstration invariably has its effect; and the will of that easy-tempered man is Law.
âWhat can have happened?â whispered Norah, as they closed the breakfast-room door and crossed the hall.
âWhat does papa mean by being cross with me?â exclaimed Magdalen, chafing under a sense of her own injuries.
âMay I askâ âwhat right you had to pry into your fatherâs private affairs?â retorted Miss Garth.
âRight?â repeated Magdalen. âI have no secrets from papaâ âwhat business has papa to have secrets from me! I consider myself insulted.â
âIf you considered yourself properly reproved for not minding your own business,â said the plainspoken Miss Garth, âyou would be a trifle nearer the truth. Ah! you are like all the rest of the girls in
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