'
'Oh! Serena, this is cruel! I could live with my father anywhere, but
the others--impossible.'
'Think it over. You know that you have a home with us whenever you like;
that it would be my pleasure as well as interest to have you always.
That we shall miss you in every possible way; still duty is duty. As
long as your father did not care, and Lady Mary was rather glad to have
the Park to herself, the thing was, perhaps, different, at any rate
Freda was not then the Freda she is now.
'Serena, you are a bitter-sweet, and a horrible little apple that is.'
'But they say it makes good cider.'
'At any rate you ought not to influence me. I will not decide whilst you
are here, and that is all I will promise. If I do, it will be to go to
you undoubtedly. But I will think it over.'
That very night before she went to bed, Freda did think it over, sitting
by the fire in her delightful, warm, well-lighted, well-furnished
bedroom; but she could not come to any determination. She made out a
sort of debtor and creditor account in her own head, and cashed it
according to her somewhat imperfect notions of book-keeping.
'My father--of course I owe him a great deal in the way of duty and
love; but he owes me something for letting me have my own way all my
life, bringing me up with the notion that I should be an heiress, and
then disappointing me by marrying a woman whom I utterly despise.
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