CHAPTER XXIX
The day after this fête, Helen received a letter from her mother that alarmed her much. Lady Eskdale thought Sophia's recovery far from satisfactory; she was weak and low, with a tendency to a cough, and was anxious to be moved to Eskdale Castle, which she thought agreed with her better than any other place, and, above all things, she wished to see Helen. "I must go to her," thought Lady Teviot; "there can be no difficulty about it. Mr. G. goes to-morrow, and the Douglases the next day, and I am sure Lady Portmore has been here long enough, and if she goes, there will only be some gentlemen left; and Lord Teviot may do very well without me, at all events, for a few days. Beaufort could go over to Eskdale with me." She did not like to investigate how much or how little she wished that some of their party should insist on remaining at St. Mary's, so as to keep Lord Teviot at home; but she went the length of thinking that he would be bored in a house where there was illness, and that she would be more useful to Sophia if she went without him.
She was pursuing this train of thought when he entered the room so suddenly as to startle her. She threw her handkerchief over the letter she was writing to her mother, hardly knowing why, but she always had in Lord Teviot's presence the painful consciousness that her feelings towards her family would be misunderstood or condemned. Perhaps she was wrong in dwelling on this idea, perhaps he was wrong in the manner that gave rise to it; but so it
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