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556 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
" ratted " the instrument, because the music would wake her little
dears upstairs. And that music did wake them ; and they howled
melodiously, and the Little Sister, who was about to serve Lady
Jane Tregarvan with some tea, dashed upstairs to the nursery : and
Charlotte had reached the room already : and she looked angry
when the Little Sister came in : and she said, "I am sure, Mrs.
Brandon, the people downstairs will be wanting their tea;" and
she spoke with some asperity. And Mrs. Brandon went downstairs
without one word ; and, happening to be on the landing, conversing
with a friend, and a little out of the way of the duet which the
Miss Ringwoods were performing—riding their great old horse, as
it were, and putting it through its paces in Mrs. Firmin's little
paddock ;—happening, I say, to be on the landing when Caroline
passed, I took a hand as cold as stone, and never saw a look of
grief more tragic than that worn by her poor little face as it passed.
"My children cried," she said, "and I went up to the nursery.
But she don't want me there now." Poor Little Sister. She
humbled herself and grovelled before Charlotte. You could not
help trampling upon her then, madam; and I hated you—and a
great number of other women. Ridley and I went down to her
tea-room, where Caroline resumed her place. She looked very
nice, and pretty, with her pale sweet face, and her neat cap and
blue ribbon. Tortures I know she was suffering. Charlotte had
been stabbing her. Women will use the edge sometimes, and drive
the steel in. Charlotte said to me, some time afterwards, " I was
jealous of her, and you were right; and a dearer more faithful
creature never lived." But who told Charlotte I said she was
jealous ? O fool ! I told Ridley, and Mr. Ridley told Mrs. Firmin.
If Charlotte stabbed Caroline, Caroline could not help coming
back again and again to the knife. On Sundays, when she was
free, there was always a place for her at Philip's modest table ; and
when Mrs. Philip went to church, Caroline was allowed to reign in
the nursery. Sometimes Charlotte was generous enough to give
Mrs. Brandon this chance. When Philip took a house—a whole
house to himself—Philip's mother-in-law proposed to come and stay
with him, and said that, wishing to be beholden to no one, she
would pay for her board and lodging. But Philip declined this
treat, representing, justly, that his present house was no bigger
than his former lodgings. " My poor love is dying to have me,"
Mrs. Baynes remarked on this. "But her husband is so cruel to
her, and keeps her under such terror, that she dares not call her life
her own." Cruel to her ! Charlotte was the happiest of the happy
in her little house. In consequence of his parliamentary success,
Philip went regularly to chambers now, in the fond hope that more