There had been music, singing, talking, laughing, all that was most agreeable; charming manners in Captain Wentworth, no shyness or reserve; they seemed all to know each other perfectly, and he was coming the very next morning to shoot with Charles. He was to come to breakfast, but not at the Cottage, though that had been proposed at first; but then he had been pressed to come to the Great House instead, and he seemed afraid of being in Mrs Charles Musgrove's way, on account of the child, and therefore, somehow, they hardly knew how, it ended in Charles's being to meet him to breakfast at his father's.
The morning hours of the Cottage were always later than those of the other house, and on the morrow the difference was so great that Mary and Anne were not more than beginning breakfast when Charles came in to say that they were just setting off, that he was come for his dogs, that his sisters were following with Captain Wentworth; his sisters meaning to visit Mary and the child, and Captain Wentworth proposing also to wait on her for a few minutes if not inconvenient; and though Charles had answered for the child's being in no such state as could make it inconvenient, Captain Wentworth would not be satisfied without his running on to give notice.
In two minutes after Charles's preparation, the others appeared; they were in the drawing-room.
Charles"--she hit herself wildly--"come in at once to Father.
Charles began to run, but checked himself, and stepped heavily across the gravel path.
Charles took two letters, and read them as he followed the procession.
Charles, to steady them further, read the enclosure out loud: "A note in my mother's handwriting, in an envelope addressed to my father, sealed.
"How!" exclaimed Charles, in astonishment, "and have I then a rival, and a successful one too?"
"Yes--yes--I will conceal my misery from others," cried Charles, springing on his feet and rushing from the room; "would to God I could conceal it from myself!"
Miss Emmerson was enabled to discover some secret uneasiness between Charles and Julia, although she was by no means able to penetrate the secret.
Then a middle-aged laborer stepped from the road into the field, hat in hand, ducked respectfully, and said: "Look 'e here, Sir Charles. Don't 'e mind them fellers.
"Sir Charles will stand by me," he said, after a pause, with assumed confidence, but with an anxious glance at the baronet.
"Hold your tongue, Jane, for God's sake," said Sir Charles, taking her horse by the bridle and backing him from Trefusis.
I am in the service of the parliament, which orders me to fight General Lambert and Charles Stuart -- its enemies, and not mine.
"Then I may positively say that your honor is not inclined to favor King Charles II.?"
