She then took her way to the music-room, where, as she surmised, she found Henrietta at the piano, and Lord Allerton leaning over her.
"Henrietta," exclaimed she, "do go into my room, and bring me down the little red book; you are the only one I can trust among my papers, and I am too tired to go up stairs." Away went her obedient niece; and Lord Allerton, a little annoyed at the duet being interrupted, stood turning over some loose music. "It is very provoking," said the countess, laughing, "that Rotheles is more often right than I am. He is much more quick-sighted in affairs of the heart. I will not tell you all the handsome things that he has been saying about you. Still, Lord Allerton, you have kept me a little too much in the dark, for Henrietta is to me as if she were a child of my own." Before her marriage, Lady Rotheles would have said, "like a sister."
At this moment Henrietta returned; her aunt immediately left the room, saying, with a meaning smile, as she closed the door, "I see very well that I am de trop; but, Henrietta, you are a sad undutiful girl to let your aunt be the last to find out what every one else in the house knows."
The result of Lady Rotheles's system of non-interference showed itself the following day, when she came into the drawing-room, where Lady Anne was placed at her favourite window, and Mary seated at an embroidery frame, pale, silent, and pursuing her work with a sort of sad, mechanical industry.
