This person
was Ann Woolper. Mrs. Woolper had come to the villa prepared to find in
Miss Halliday a frivolous self-satisfied young person, between whom and
an old broken-down woman like herself there could be no sympathy. She had
expected to be contemptuously--or, at the best, indifferently--entreated
by the prosperous well-placed young lady, whom Mr. Sheldon had spoken of
as a good girl, as girls go; a vague species of commendation, which, to
the mind of Mrs. Woolper, promised very little.
As clearly as Philip Sheldon dared express his wishes with regard to
Charlotte Halliday, he had expressed them to Ann Woolper. What he would
fain have said, was, "Watch my stepdaughter, and keep me well acquainted
with every step she takes." Thus much he dared not say; but by
insinuating that Tom Halliday's daughter was frivolous and reckless, and
that her lover was not to be trusted, he had contrived to put Mrs.
Woolper on the _qui vive_.
"Mr. Philip's afraid she may go and marry this young man on the sly,
before he's got the means to support a wife," she said to herself, as she
meditated upon the meaning of her master's injunctions; "and well he may
be. There's no knowing what young women are up to nowadays; and the more
innocent and inexperienced a young woman is, the more she wants looking
after. And Miss Georgy Craddock always was a poor fondy, up to naught but
dressing herself fine, and streaming up and down Barlingford High Street
with her old schoolfellows.
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