The third person whose mind was full of Mrs. Brown was Jim Plowden. He had seen her little of late, partly that the many calls Mr. Osborne made upon him left him less time for those strolls about the village, which had ended so often in the ‘Blue Boar,’ but sometimes, to his advantage, in the schoolhouse; partly because, now that the evenings were so much lighter, he could not go there unseen. This reason had acted with the others in the partial reformation of Jim. It was scarcely possible to go into the ‘Blue Boar’ in the lingering daylight while all the village folk were about. Had he been altogether uninterrupted in his former habits, it is possible that by this time he might not have cared. But Mr. Osborne’s warm and exacting friendship had begun with the lengthening days, and after an interval, even of a week or two, such a hindrance told. On this occasion, however, Jim felt that he must risk a little danger for the sake of a woman who had been kind to him, who had certainly amused him, and, he sometimes began to think, had done him good. It could be nothing to her advantage to have a visitor such as he was. She had done it, he thought vaguely, out of kindness, and now hewould risk something for kindness too; and then he could always say he had brought a message about the school from his father, or Florence, who took an interest in the school, or Mab, or somebody. Fortified by his good intention he walked into the schoolmistress’s house about six o’clock that evening when all the people were about, several of whom stared, he could see, at Mrs. Brown’s visitor—in which, however, I need not say, Jim deceived himself, for the village people were already aware that he visited Mrs. Brown, as well as that he visited the ‘Blue Boar,’ and held these secrets in store against the time when they might be of use either for or against the Rector’s son. He went in, however, boldly, to the surprise of Mrs. Brown, who did not expect him, and who was engaged in some sort of operation that looked very much like packing. She invited him to come in, and cleared one of the chairs from a number of miscellaneous articles with which it was covered, and which she was putting away.
‘You are not—going on a journey?’ he said, alarmed.
‘Oh no, not that I know of; but you know, Mr. Jim, a woman in such a humble position as mine, with so many people to please, has but an uncertain tenure. I am putting some old things in order, so that should anything untoward happen——’
‘But I hear nothing except praise,’ said Jim; ‘they say no one ever kept the school in such order, or the children so bright, or——’
‘Do they really say so? How truly good of them!’ said Mrs. Brown, with a laugh. It was a laugh of so much amusement that Jim, who did not see the joke, was disposed to be angry, but she ended by shaking her head and putting on a comically doleful look. ‘But I do not please everybody,’ she said; ‘oh, far from it. Your friend, Mr. Osborne, does not like me: and your cousin, Miss Mab, is full of suspicions.’
‘Mab,’ said Jim in high disdain, ‘as if it mattered what Mab thought!’
‘Don’t you know,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that Miss Mab will probably be an heiress one of these days, and that it will matter a great deal what she thinks?’
‘Nonsense,’ cried Jim, ‘as much an heiress as I am! We have no rich relations, alas! to leave us money.’
‘But she may have,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘and if you will take my advice you will go in for your cousin, Mr. Jim; that would make everything straight if you got a nice little bit of money with your wife.’
‘Nonsense,’ cried Jim, becoming scarlet, and feeling the verytips of his ears burn. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘if I ever have a wife I’d rather keep her than that she should keep me.’
‘A very excellent sentiment,’ said his adviser, ‘but I don’t quite see how you are going to carry it out.’
‘I shall carry it out by having no wife at all,’ said Jim: and then he added hastily, ‘that’s not what I came to tell you. Have you any reason for not wanting Swinford to know that you are here?’
‘For not wanting—Swinford—to know——?’ A little colour seemed to rise, too, in her dark countenance. ‘This change of subject,’ she cried, ‘takes away my breath. You are too quick for me. Have I any reason——? It is Leo Swinford you mean, at the Hall?’ As if she did not know who it was! Even Jim was clever enough to perceive that she was simply gaining time. ‘No,’ she answered slowly, ‘I have no particular reason. I do not, perhaps, in a general way wish—to receive—friends who have known me elsewhere, here——’ She looked round upon her little room, with a laugh. ‘You may, perhaps, if you think of it, understand why. Have you come to warn me that I am found out?’
‘Oh no,’ said Jim. ‘And I’m sure I don’t want to interfere; but he was at the Rectory last night. He said he had caught a glimpse of a lady he knew, and had followed her all the way down to the village to speak to her, and she had disappeared. Some one said that no one had passed but Mrs. Brown. And then he laughed and said, “Perhaps it was Mrs. Brown he had seen going to pay a visit to some one in the servants’ hall.â€â€™
A sudden flash shot out of Mrs. Brown’s dark eyes. ‘I hope,’ she said, ‘you encouraged the idea that I paid visits in the servants’ hall?’
‘I didn’t say anything—good or bad,’ said Jim.
Which was not strictly true; but then nobody heard him, which came to the same thing.
‘Good friend,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘true friend! but you can tell Leo Swinford when you see him again that one of these days Mrs. Brown is coming to call on him, with important information, at the Hall, and he will never need to hunt her through the rain any more!’
Whata contrast from the little schoolhouse, though it was so much more decorated than a schoolmistress’s little sitting-room has any right to be, or from the drab drawing-room at the Rectory! The more one became acquainted with Mrs. Swinford’s boudoir, the more exquisite it appeared. Those little water-colours which were hung on the walls were worth a small fortune, and a crowd of collectors would have appeared like ravens on the scene if it had been suggested that they could be sold: and the little Italian cabinets between the windows, with their delicate inlayings of ivory—not like the untrained beauty of the East, but fanciful and varied as a dream—were almost as valuable. And then the tempered, delicious warmth, and the softened, delightful light! Yet I think (though, of course, she would not have endured them for a day) that the roughest wooden furniture, and the shabbiest surroundings would have been a sort of relief—for the moment at least—to Mrs. Swinford. She surrounded herself with all these beautiful things, and then she hated them. They never varied, they were lovely and novel for a moment, and then there they hung for years, and never changed. How tired she was of them all! To have broken the delicate frames, and torn up a picture here and there, which was only a piece of paper after all, would have given her a sensation. And yet that would not have done much good; it would have left a visible blank on the wall, which it would have been necessary to fill up, searching far and near through all the studios to find something that would fill its place—which would keep a little movement in life for a short time. But it would be ludicrous to tear up a picture for that reason, and ridicule was more unbearable even than weariness. On this particular occasion, however, the room looked brighter even to her than usual. It was again an evening of soft-falling spring rain. The skies had been one unbroken gray all the afternoon. The softsmall flood fell almost unseen over the country, making the young foliage, which did not dislike the wetting, glisten, and washing the colour out of the lilacs, and covering the ground under the fruit-trees with fallen white petals, almost like snow. A day which the lonely lady thought, if ever by chance she glanced from her window, was enough to account for any suicide. And she had been reading the greater part of the day, reading, save the mark! exciting French novels, in which all the ways of breaking the seventh commandment were dwelt upon to the sickening of any appetite. Even Mrs. Swinford, who considered that the chief occupation of life, was a little sick of one after another. The delicacy of the analysis of sentiment, etc., palled upon her after hours of such reading. She would have liked, perhaps, even at her age, if some gay Lothario had entered her boudoir, and led her, or tried to lead her, into those paths which relieve the idle soul: but only to look on while one woman after another was led astray! The books were like the room, her habitual reading as it was her habitual scene; and she would have declared it impossible to exist without the one and the other. But even to her accustomed faculties it became sickening at the last. Was that life any more than the boudoir was life? It was impossible for any drudge to have been more sick of her toil and wretchedness than Mrs. Swinford was of her existence, if this were all.
But at the moment of distraction Artémise arrived, and everything for the moment became tolerable. She had thrown off her cloak and overshoes in the other room; that the shock of seeing a damp woman, who had walked through the rain, might not be given to the delicate lady within. And Artémise truly enjoyed the difference in the atmosphere, and held her feet to the fire, and breathed in the warm and balmy air with genuine pleasure. ‘How comfortable you are!’ she said.
‘Comfortable! I am miserable—always and always!’ the great lady cried.
‘My dear, many people would be very glad to have the half of your misery,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘though I confess I agree with you more or less. It would bore me to death. A fight with Mrs. Jones on the question whether or not Lizzie is getting on with her lessons as well as she ought, for the great sum of fourpence a week, is more agreeable to me.’
‘Are you going on with that dreadful work for ever, Artémise?’
‘No, I am afraid not. It is not that I dislike it, however. It is great fun. You should see little Mab Pakenham, who hasconceived some doubts of me from what I have told her—so it is entirely my own fault—coming down as grave as a judge to superintend the moral effects of my teaching. She would not betray me for the world, but she is afraid of me lest I should teach the girls principles unknown to Watcham.’
‘The little impertinent! She ought to look at home——!’
‘She does look at home, and that is what makes her so staunch. She comes and superintends, but betrays me, never! However, as my morals might prove too great a charge for little Mab, and as your son Leo has got on my track——’
‘What, Leo—has got on your track, Artémise?’
‘Yes, that was rather fun, too. I saw him the other day watching me through the bushes, and as I did not want to fall into his arms at that little side door—which is so convenient—I turned and dodged him. His patience was wonderful; he was resolved to have me. We played an amusing game through and through the shrubbery, and then I took to the open, thinking I was lost. But the rain was blinding, I suppose, and the dark coming on, so I got off safe. Were you aware that he dined at the Rectory one night?’
‘I heard he did not come in for dinner. I was not downstairs. It did not concern me. At the Rectory—with that Plowden woman——’
‘And that Plowden girl. Do you know one of them is like her aunt? How should you like it if Leo——’
‘You insult my son, Artémise.’
‘Ah well! There is never any telling; since he cannot have one, he may content himself with the other. I have seen more wonderful things before now.’
‘Who is the one he cannot have?’
‘My dear Cecile, why this tone of surprise? I told you before. Leo thinks Lady William the most attractive woman he ever saw, and I do not wonder. She was always attractive, even as a silly girl.’
‘How you insult me, Artémise!—a woman I hate, who has no right to that name, and will soon be proved the impostor I have always known she was.’
Mrs. Swinford sat upright on her sofa, with a glow of anger on her face.
‘Then I had better hurry off,’ said Mrs. Brown composedly. ‘If she is to be attacked, it is evident I cannot stay here.’
‘But you said it was the safest place,’ cried Mrs. Swinford in alarm, ‘that nobody would think, of looking for you in Watcham.’
‘It is no longer safe now that Leo is on my track, and little Mab full of alarm as to my morality. She will not betray me, that little thing; but some time or other she will make her mother come with her, to judge if my teaching is all right.’
‘Then you must go, Artémise—you must go at once; though how I am to live, in this dreadful place, with no one to care whether I am alive or dead——’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Brown solemnly, ‘I have thought of that. You want somebody to look after you. You will have to make up your mind between two things, between the two greatest things in the world—love and hate. If you hate her more than you love me, I will go. But you must remember, it is not going to come back. I will have to disappear so entirely, that no one will ever hear of me more. I can’t turn up again when you want me, even by stealth, as I do now.’
‘Why, why?’ said Mrs. Swinford, who had uttered this question again and again, while Mrs. Brown was speaking. ‘Why should you disappear entirely? When it has blown over, when it is forgotten—everything is forgotten after a while.’
‘Do you think Emily will forget a thing that means her honour, and her child’s inheritance?—you have not forgotten, and it ought to be nothing to you.’
‘Nothing! You know what it is to me, Artémise.’
‘Yes, I know what it is to you. It is hate and revenge—and do you think your motives are stronger than hers? You want to pay off an old score, but she wants to live respected and to provide for her child. She will send detectives after me everywhere as soon as she knows. She will have you watched so that I shall never be able to approach you. It will be good-bye for ever between you and me, Cecile, if I am to carry out that rôle——’
‘Artémise, you are too cruel! You know that I cannot live long without you. You know that seeing you, having you at hand, is my only comfort. I live only while you are here; for the rest of the time I only exist, I vegetate, and hate the light——’
‘I know,’ said Mrs. Brown, in a slightly softened tone, ‘that you are fond of me, Cecile; that I have been more or less necessary to you ever since I was born. You must make up your mind, however, soon, for it will certainly be as I say.’
‘No, no!’ said Mrs. Swinford, rising from her sofa, trailing her long skirts after her from end to end of the beautiful room. ‘No, no! We will leave this place; we will go to Paris, where we can be secure. There are places there no detective would think of. Detective—an English detective’—she laughed her tinklingintolerable laugh. ‘Bunglers all! what do they ever find out? I tell you, Artémise, we can live there in perfect safety, you and I together—and see our friends—and amuse ourselves. All with you! Fancy what a changed life!’
‘On the edge of a volcano—for me.’
‘On the edge of no volcano—what could be done to you? Nothing! It is no crime—and she would give it up very soon. She could not help herself, she would have no money. These people will take even her allowance from her—she will have nothing, nothing—not a penny, not a name; she will have to work—she will not think much of detectives then; she will not be able to go to law. No, Artémise; we shall live together, and you will be safe, safe as a child.’
‘My dear Cecile! In the meantime if all this should come to pass, Leo will marry Lady William, who will have no alternative but to accept him, and it will be she who will have the revenge, not you. Stop a bit—and he has plenty of money, and will never rest till he has found me out. He will know well enough where to look. All that you know in Paris, and more, he knows.’
Mrs. Swinford had kept saying ‘No, no, no!’ all the time. Her face flushed, her eyes shone.
‘He shall not, he shall not! It will be with my curse. He shall never, never do it,’ she cried. ‘I would rather he were dead.’
‘It does not matter much what you wish—your curse! you have not made your blessing a thing to be desired, Cecile. Oh, I am not blaming you; it is not my affair, but I don’t believe in the curse, you know. He will do it, and the woman whom you have ruined will marry him, for she will have no other resource. And Leo will find me wherever you hide me: no, it is for you to choose—between love and hate, Cecile.’
‘I will never,’ she said between her closed teeth, ‘let that woman go.’
‘Then you choose hate? I knew you would,’ said Mrs. Brown, still perfectly calm; ‘and now, my dear, you must hear me. For I never meant to serve your hate all the time; I never meant to let Emily be ruined. If she needs me I shall reappear. Yes, wherever I am. I am going away, but I shall leave my address with Leo, or with Jim, or with——’
‘Artémise!’ she cried.
It was rarely that the sound of a raised voice was heard out of Mrs. Swinford’s room. She had nobody there to excite her to anger, but on this occasion she was no longer the sovereign in herown palace. It was not rebellion that moved her, for Artémise had always retained her independence; nor defiance, for nothing could be more quiet than Mrs. Brown’s tone. It was the impatience of contradiction, the surprise at opposition which a woman to whom everybody has yielded feels at the first check, and the sound was so sharp and keen, and raised to such an unusual pitch of surprised exasperation, that when a knock came immediately after to the door, and Leo’s voice was heard asking ‘May I come in?’ it was impossible for his mother to stop him with the languid, ‘No, I do not wish to be disturbed,’ with which she had often closed the door upon him. Julie, the usual sentinel, had stolen away, believing her mistress to be too much occupied to miss her—unhappy Julie when the moment of retribution came.
There was not a word said. Mrs. Swinford had not recovered her composure when her son opened the door.
‘You do not say anything; so I suppose I may come in,’ he said.
The man’s intrusion was strange in this chamber never intended for him. A man and a son!—that is something different from a man and a brother. Mrs. Swinford gave her visitor a sharp and meaning look, and then said:
‘What may you want, Leo, coming upon us in such a sudden way?’
‘Was I sudden? I heard you with some one, and I thought I might venture also, as you were evidently talking. And here I find precisely the person I wanted.’
‘Leo, you are very ill-bred. When you come to your mother’s room, which is not very often, you might pretend, at least, that it was for her you came.’
‘That surely goes without saying, mother. I was not aware when I came that there was any one here.’
‘And you may be very well assured, Cecile, that at all events it was not for the love of me.’
Mrs. Swinford returned to her sofa with an exclamation of impatience.
‘You have all your own objects,’ she said, ‘you are all pursuing your own ends. There is no one who thinks what is best for me. Leo, we were talking on private matters, women’s matters. Now that you have seen Artémise, as you seem to have wished, your good sense will tell you that it is best to go away.’
‘It was not from any desire to see her,’ said Leo. ‘Madame Artémise knows very well what I should be likely to wish in that respect: nor to talk to her, though she is so entertaining, but to know where I may find her, for the sake of others.’
‘Oh yes, we all know what you mean. It is Emily Plowden you mean—it is you who have been backing her up all this time against your mother. I know you, Leo—that it should be against your mother, gives it a zest. You make her think—poor thing!—that it is for her, while your real desire is to expose your mother—to build her up in opposition to me.’
‘I think you must be dreaming,’ he said provoked. ‘Madame Artémise, was it you I saw the other night in the shrubbery? Why did you run away?’
‘Do you call that running away? I wasn’t, however, displeased to have had a little excitement for once. But you see I was not afraid of you, for I have come back.’
‘I don’t know wherein the excitement lies,’ said Leo impatiently. ‘I have a message to give you, that is all.’
‘You will give no message to Madame Artémise in my room.’
‘Are you mad, mother? Why should I not say what I have got to say? There is nothing so sacred in your room. I respect your seclusion, and never interfere; but surely when I find you with your chosen companion——’
‘She is my chosen companion. She is the only person who cares for me in the world. She shall come here and live with me, and comfort me for all the evil I have had to bear. She knows how I have been treated here, by those who should have cherished me most. My husband, who never understood me: my son, who has been beguiled from my side by my enemy. Artémise knows all my miseries, every one. She has consoled me when I have been at my worst. She shall come and live with me now, and be my companion, as you say, or else——’
But then Mrs. Swinford paused. There had been a certain pathos and dignity in her complaint. And she meant to add a threat, but instead stopped short and looked her son in the face.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you have always been the mistress of your own house, and chosen your own company. You invite whom you choose here——’
‘Yes, I will invite whom I choose. Artémise shall stay with me, and we will fill the house. Oh, it is not the time for the country, I know; but later, later. Thank you, Leo, I will trouble you no longer. Send the housekeeper here, I will give my orders; or Julie—Julie will give my orders. You need not take any trouble. And we will not detain you any longer; you must have affairs of your own that interest you more than ours.’
Mrs. Swinford waved her hands and all her rings, dismissing her son, who made a step towards the door.
‘Leo will stay a little longer, please. You are speaking very much at your ease—mother and son: are you aware that this is a proposal that has been made before, and that I have never consented to it? No, Cecile, I will not live in your house—nor will I do your bidding, whatever it may be, Leo. The schoolmistress of Watcham has her own humble duties to perform, and she will perform them just as long as she chooses. She is a woman not bound by rules in general, and who does not care for a character from her last place, or anything of that sort. But at present she cannot be spared from her duties, not even for the sake of the best of friends who dispose of her so sweetly. She is not a woman to be calculated upon or to be disposed of, except in her own way.’
‘Do you mean to say that you are the schoolmistress, Mrs. Brown?’
Leo had no inclination or desire to thwart her, or to disturb her in her position. He commented to himself with secret satisfaction on the inconsequence of the woman who thus gave herself up, so to speak, into his hands. For all that he wanted he had now discovered, that is, where she was to be found.
‘Yes; I am the schoolmistress, Mrs. Brown, whom you scared the other day. Why should I have been scared and fled, and led you such a dance? Because it amused me, Mr. Swinford: and I am here because it amuses me. And I shall go away when I please, probably without giving notice. I think, Cecile, if you will ring your bell, it would probably please Mr. Morris, your dignified butler, to let me out to-night by the great door.’
‘It rains,’ said Leo. ‘If you will permit me, Madame Artémise, I will order the brougham to take you home.’
She made him another curtsey with a merry devil twinkling in her eye.
‘The poor schoolmistress! That will be the best joke of all,’ she said.
‘Mother, I want you to come with me to the school,’ said Mab. She had lost no time in carrying out Mrs. Brown’s previsions, though she was quite unaware of them.
‘Me—to go with you to the school? You know I have never had anything to do with the school. There are plenty of ladies to look after the school.’
‘Yes, I know what you always say, mother: and I never asked you before. You will never have anything to do with the parish; but this is not the parish, it is me. Mrs. Brown is a very queer woman. She has them all in the most excellent order; but—I want you to see with your own eyes and tell me what you think.’
‘I have a very important letter to write, Mab.’
‘You are always writing important letters now, mother. What is it about? You never tell me anything now. I used to know all about your letters, and lately you never tell me anything. You are always conspiring with Uncle James. You never trust anything to me!’
‘Poor Uncle James! How much perplexity and trouble I have brought him—and everybody connected with me.’
‘You—mother!’
Mab stood and stared at her with wide-open eyes.
‘No,’ said Lady William, with a blush and a laugh. ‘You do well to stare, Mab. I suppose that is one of the conventional things that people say when they are in trouble. No, I have not brought perplexity upon any one, or trouble, for a great number of years; but it is true that I have begun again now——’
‘What is it, mother?’ Mab came to the back of her mother’s chair, put her arms round Lady William’s neck, and rubbed her downy girlish cheek against the other, which was paler, but not less soft. Then Mab made a guess at the trouble in the only form that occurred to her. ‘Have we been spending too much money?Have we got into debt? Has anything happened about—Uncle Reginald——’
‘Poor Reginald!’ cried Lady William. ‘That is what it is to be the prodigal of the family—everything is laid upon him. No, it is quite another matter. It is—why shouldn’t I tell her? It is your father’s brother, who has died and left a great deal of money. And there are things to arrange. If I can settle everything, as I wish—you will be a rich girl. But it is all uncertain, and it has stirred up so much that was gone and past.’
‘Then it is about money,’ said Mab in a relieved tone. ‘And perhaps we may be rich! Well, that is nothing to trouble about, mother. I should like it, on the contrary. Come out, and leave the letter till to-morrow. Come anyhow—whether you come to the school or not——’
‘What a little pertinacity you are! But, Mab, there is another side to the question. If it is not settled that you are to be rich—an heiress, as people call it—we shall, perhaps, be very poor, poorer than you can imagine: with nothing—less than nothing!’ cried Lady William, thinking with a pang of the good name and honour—the loss of which Mab never could understand.
‘Well!’ said Mab, with another rub of her cheek upon her mother’s, ‘that’s nothing so very dreadful either. Most people are poor—far, far more people than are rich. We shall be no worse than our neighbours. I daresay we shall be able to do something for our living. We are not useless people, mother, you and me. And now come out, come out, mother dear! You will write your letter much better after you have had a walk. The fresh air puts things into your head, the right things to say——’
‘Ah, Mab,’ cried Lady William, ‘if you only knew how willing I am to be tempted, how much rather I would put it off—for ever if I could——’
‘Well, mother, putting it off till the afternoon is not putting it off for ever,’ said sensible Mab.
And when Lady William went to get her hat, Mab, who had always a hundred things to do within as well as outside the house, in the course of her moving about as she put things straight upon the table, saw her mother’s letter upon the blotting-book, which Lady William had left open. Mab had no idea that she did anything wrong in looking at it. She had had no hesitation in all her life before, about anything that was her mother’s, and why now? It began, ‘Gentlemen,’ which was a queer mode of address, Mab thought, and this was how it went on:
‘I had already heard of Lord John Pakenham’s death, and expected your letter accordingly. I have no certificates to send you, as it never occurred to me to provide myself with anything of the kind, and circumstances, as I hear from my brother, have occurred to make it somewhat difficult to obtain them but you will perhaps know better how to act in the matter than I do. I was married on the 13th May, in St. Alban’s Proprietary Chapel, Stone Street, Marylebone, by the Rev. Mr. Gepps, who is since dead. And I am informed by my brother that the Chapel was burnt down some years ago. It seems an unfortunate concatenation of accidents, but I don’t doubt that you will know how to proceed in the matter. There is no witness of the marriage still alive—except——’
Here the writing broke off, and Mab stopped short with a curious sensation as if she had been pulled up suddenly. It startled her a little; she could scarcely tell why. What did people mean, inquiring into matters so long past? Her mother’s marriage! Why, everybody knew all about her mother’s marriage. ‘Am not I a proof of it? Mab said to herself. ‘I hope they don’t mean to suggest that I am not my mother’s child!’ It disturbed her a little, though she could not have told why. Poor mother! she never liked talking about her marriage. Why should she be troubled? Mab had long ago made up her mind that it could not have been a happy marriage, though natural piety (which was strong in her) prevented her from blaming her father. They did not understand each other, she supposed. Many married people failed in that: strange to think how anybody could fail to understand mother, who was so very easy to get on with, not jealous or touchy, or any of those things! And that anybody should worry her about her marriage after all this time when she had been a widow for such years and years! Mab could not bear that her mother should be worried in this or any other way.
‘Mother,’ she said, when they set out, ‘I want to say something to you. I read your letter, you know, in the writing-book——’
‘You read my letter, Mab?’
‘Well, you never said I mustn’t; I never thought you could be writing anything you did not want me to see.’
‘And you are quite right, my dear,’ said Lady William seriously; but all the same, she asked herself with a shudder, ‘How far she had gone, what she had said?’
‘And, mother, if they are raking up everything, all thosethings you prefer not to talk of, that you have never even told me—because of this money that might or should come to me—mother, I don’t want their money. Let them keep it to themselves. I will not have you worried or get that look over the eyes for anything of the kind. I ought to have a say in it, if it is for me.’
‘My love, it is very sweet of you to say that—and quite what I might have expected from my Mab; but unfortunately they, if you mean the lawyers, won’t keep it to themselves, nor can they keep it from you, if—— The family would keep it willingly, I have no doubt, but then it is not in their hands.’
‘If—what, mother?’
To think—among all her mother had said—that this little straightforward, practical mind should have seized on the one little word which she had not meant to say! Lady William was pale, besides having, as Mab remarked, a look over her eyes. ‘If—I can settle it all as I wish,’ she replied.
Mab gave a dissatisfied look, but said no more on the subject. Lady William’s tone admitted of no more questioning, and the little girl knew when to stop. She took her advantage, however, in another direction, and seizing her mother’s arm as they reached the village street, said: ‘Now, mother, come with me to the school.’
Lady William laughed, and consented. A laugh, an escape from present anxiety, a run with a little coaxing, not-to-be-denied girl through the morning air and sunshine—how pleasant these things are! She had been a little vexed about the letter, and had checked Mab’s inquiries in a manner which does not at all show in print, but which was very effectual, and now she could not fail to make up for all this by giving in to Mab. When they reached the schoolroom, however, it did not present the same aspect of quiet without and occupation within which it generally did. There was a little crowd round the door, in the midst of which were some of the elder girls talking volubly. And at the moment when Lady William and her daughter appeared upon the scene, Mr. Osborne was visible coming towards them on one side and Leo Swinford on the other. What was the matter? Mab, whom everybody knew, pushed into the midst of the agitated group.
‘Oh, Miss, teacher’s gone,’ the girls cried, hurrying round as to a new listener.
‘Gone! Mrs. Brown!’ cried Mab, with almost a shriek of dismay: and then the story was told by half-a-dozen eager voices at once. Mrs. Brown had returned last evening in a grandcarriage—the carriage from the Hall—to the wonder and awe of the nearest neighbours who were witnesses of the event; but whether she went away again late that night or by the first train in the morning no one knew. What was certain was that when the children came to school in the morning the schoolroom (oh, joy!) was locked up, and no trace to be found of Mrs. Brown. Later, when the schoolmaster decided upon the strong step of breaking open the doors, it was found that Mrs. Brown’s trunks were fastened, her house stripped of all its embellishments, and no sign of her left anywhere. The boxes were addressed to a railway station in London to be left till called for. There was no letter, no statement of any excuse. She was gone, that was all that could be said.
This, of course, was by no means all that was said as the schoolgirls chattered and the women compared notes. A number of them had perceived as something was up. Some had seen from the first as she wasn’t the kind of woman for our school, and it wouldn’t answer long; though several acknowledged as it must be allowed she pushed the girls on.
‘There’s my Lizzie,’ said an admiring mother, ‘passed all the standards and done with schooling, and she but twelve; and the help it is to have her at home!’
‘But teacher was allays fond of me, mother,’ said Lizzie, ‘and pushed me on.’
Then a great many had burst in to declare that teacher was very fond of them individually, and had pushed them all on. A little Babel of talk arose at the schoolroom door, which was only partially stayed when Mr. Osborne arrived, to whom the whole story had to be told over again. And then Mr. Swinford came up breathless, who received the news with more excitement than any one.
‘Gone!’ he cried, ‘gone!’ as if he could not believe his ears. ‘Have they searched the house?’ he inquired anxiously.
‘Well, sir, what’s the good o’ searching the house? She can’t be hiding upstairs,’ the women said.
Leo was not satisfied with this, however, but ran into the schoolmistress’s house with a very white and anxious face, making his way upstairs to her bedroom and into the little kitchen and every corner. He came down again and took Lady William by the arm, leading her aside. He did not even observe the scrutiny of Mab, who, full of curiosity which she herself did not understand, watched and followed them.
‘Did you see her?’ he asked anxiously.
‘See her?’ cried Lady William—‘the schoolmistress? Mrs. Brown?’
‘Then you had not found out,’ he said, ‘that she was Artémise?’
And then Mab thought that her mother would have fainted. She threw up her arms and cried: ‘Artémise!’ almost with a shriek. ‘And she has been here at my door—here—and I never knew!’
‘Mr. Leo,’ said Mab, ‘mother has been worried until she is almost ill. She has had business and all sorts of things to worry her. Why did you tell her this, whatever it means, to make her worse?’ She had drawn Lady William into a chair and stood behind her, supporting her head upon her own breast, with her arms over her mother’s shoulders like the wings of some homely angel half-fledged and not in full heavenly state.
‘Somebody must go after her,’ Lady William cried hurriedly. ‘She must not, she must not escape. Here! do you mean to sayhere, at my very door? And I had been told to go and see her, and Mab, my wise Mab, had made me come at last. Oh, child, why was it not yesterday—why was it not——? And Leo, to think you should never have told me. The woman that can make all right, that can save Mab’s fortune, and my—— Leo, Leo, why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Mab, why did you not make me come before to-day?’
‘I only made the discovery last night,’ he said, while she sat wringing her hands, ‘and that she should fly like this never came into my mind. I was on my way to tell you, to bring you here.’
‘Mab did that. Mab, though she knows nothing, understands. And who is to follow that woman and secure her now? Some one must go at once, before the scent is cold, before—before——’
‘Dear lady, I am ready to go—wherever you please to send me. I am here only for your service. I will go to where the address is and wait, wait till she comes. It is easy. I will never forgive myself for letting her go last night.’
Lady William had been slowly coming to herself, the giddiness going out of her head, and the dimness from her eyes. When she recovered her composure, she saw that a little crowd had gathered round her—some of the women from outside, one of whom held a glass of water, while another had rolled forward Mrs. Brown’s sofa and was entreating her ladyship to lie down; while behind stood two tall figures looking on, Mr. Osborne and Jim. The curate had on that mask of disapproval which he wastoo apt to show to any weakness. Why Lady William should get up a little faint because this schoolmistress, of whom he himself had never approved, had gone, he found it impossible to divine. A faint! As if it were anything to her—the schoolmistress! of whom she had never taken any notice. It was like the folly of women, making a fuss upon every possible occasion. Mr. Osborne did not pause to consider that Lady William was not the woman to faint in order to make a fuss, or even to remember that she had not fainted at all. Such considerations interfere sadly with the solid foundations of tradition. Jim stood beside his friend with a very different expression upon his face. It was anxious, full of sympathy, and of something more than sympathy, eager to interfere, to speak; but nobody took any notice of Jim.
‘Mother, do you think you could walk home now?’ said Mab in her ear. ‘Please, please, mother, come away if you can.’
‘I ought to go after her, Mab.’
‘Dear lady, I will go,’ cried Leo. ‘Surely you can trust me?’
‘Oh, mother,’ cried Mab, more and more impatient, ‘come home now, come home.’
Mab could scarcely tell why it was that she was so anxious for her mother to come away. Other people were arriving from moment to moment. Miss Grey, on one of her parochial rounds, startled by the commotion and the sight of so many children about during school hours: and General FitzStephen, who, seeing that something had happened (always such a godsend in a village), had walked over to inquire into it. Mab could not bear that her mother’s agitation should be seen by so many curious pairs of eyes. And by Mr. Osborne above all, looking disapproval over the heads of the little crowd.
‘There is no train,’ she said, ‘till the afternoon; and if the things are not sent off, how can she come to claim them? And you could not hang about a railway station waiting. Oh, mother, come home.’
‘Mab,’ said Jim, making his way to her, ‘I’ll do anything. You can send me anywhere. And let me take Aunt Emily home.’
Lady William rose from among the attendants, recalled to herself by these offers of aid.
‘Mab has always the most sense of all of us,’ she said with a smile. Of course nobody can go when there is no train. Thanks; but I don’t think I need your arm, Jim. No, no; I am not ill at all. I was only much startled to find that Mrs. Brown, who has just gone away so hastily, was an old friend whom Ihad many reasons for wishing to see: and I never knew she was here.’
‘Do you know,’ cried Miss Grey, ‘I always thought her face was familiar to me; but I could not put a name to it. Who was she? I ought to have known her, too.’
‘And she has gone away—without any notice!’ said the General. ‘I never heard of such a thing. The schoolmistress! And what is to be done to fill her place?’
Lady William, under cover of this discussion, which was immediately taken up by the curate and Miss Grey, left the house, which had never before, perhaps, been so invaded by the crowd. The released children were in fullémeuteoutside—those who had not already been secured by their mothers—filling the village street with commotion, and sorely trying the patience of the boys on the other side, who heard but could not understand those sounds of jubilee. To think that there were no means of checking the riot, and that half of the children in the parish had thus an unexpected holiday, was grievous to the soul of Mr. Osborne, who formed a sort of committee instantly in the abandoned house over Mrs. Brown’s boxes. Miss Grey called to Mab that she would come in the afternoon and tell them how things were arranged, as they went away. That little lay-curate could not imagine, sympathetic as she was, that there could be any question so interesting as this.
And, indeed, nothing had happened in Watcham for years that had been so exciting. The schoolmistress! without a word of warning, without a thought, apparently, of the embarrassment or trouble it would cause to the parish, without any consideration even of her own interest—for how could she ever obtain another situation, having left her charge like this? People came out to their doors to ask, as Lady William passed, could it be true? and groups stood discussing the strange event all along the street. The schoolmistress! that functionary of all others in an English parish is the least apt to be revolutionary. What could this portent mean?
Itwas very hard to get rid of Leo Swinford, but Mab succeeded at last. He insisted on walking with Lady William to the cottage, full of apologies and excuses all the way.
‘I thought this morning,’ he said, ‘when I was told she was gone, that it was a dose of chloral. All women like her take chloral, and all women like her are apt to take a sudden disgust with life.’
‘Poor Artémise?’ said Lady William, who was always fair and rarely unkind. ‘Do any of us know what kind of woman she was? She has never had justice all her life, and with all that power and independence and spirit, she would have made a better man than a woman. I cannot think if she had known how much I wanted her that she would have gone away.’
To this Leo made no reply. He thought he knew a great deal better. He thought it was because of a cruel plot with his mother that Artémise had disappeared. But he would not destroy Lady William’s confidence, nor did he dare betray how much more he knew about the matter, and the cause of her anxiety to see Artémise than had ever been confided to him. But he walked on by her side repeating what he would do. He would go to London and take the boxes with him. He would wait at the station she had indicated till she came. But she might not come. She might send a stranger.
‘Bien!’ said Leo. ‘I will be there. I will follow, whoever it may be. I will not lose sight of her property, her boxes, till I have found her or some clue to her. Dear lady, the boxes—that is the best of guides: for what is a woman without her “things� Is it not so?’
‘You are always safe to have a theory about women to fall back upon,’ said Lady William, beguiled into a laugh; and then they reached the door of the cottage, and Leo, who was notinvited to cross the threshold, had nothing for it but to go away.
The ladies, however, had another attendant, who was more pertinacious, who waited for no invitation, but stalked in after them as he had stalked along by Mab’s side, with a much-troubled countenance but few words, all the way. Jim found himself in the midst of this imbroglio, which he did not in the least understand, not as a spectator only, but as a potential agent with something to say if he could but secure the means of saying it. What the message with which he was charged meant he knew as little as he could comprehend what possible or impossible link there could be between Mrs. Brown and Lady William, the one the symbol of dignity and modest greatness to Jim, the other—— He thought no evil of Mrs. Brown: he thought she was ‘queer’ though kind: that a woman so old and so clever should be on the terms of abon camaradewith himself was astounding to him, but agreeable. There was no harm in anything she had either said or done in his knowledge. But he had known that the ladies of the parish, at whom she laughed so much, would have very little approval of Mrs. Brown had they known more of her—and Lady William was ‘a cut above’ the ladies of the parish: that she should be so much distressed by Mrs. Brown’s sudden departure as to faint, or almost faint, when she discovered it, was incredible to him. But things being so, Mrs. Brown’s message, which he had thought at the time to be a kind of insanity, began to have meaning in it—meaning still dark to him, but which, perhaps, Lady William would understand. He went into the cottage after them, accordingly, indifferent to Mab’s looks, who frowned him back: but Jim was not to be kept back by Mab. When he appeared in the drawing-room, Lady William had thrown herself into a chair, and was leaning back with an air of anxiety and trouble, yet relief to be at rest and unobserved for the moment. Jim’s entrance made her start, with a little exclamation of annoyance.
‘Jim,’ said Mab, ‘oh, do go away, there’s a good fellow; don’t you see that mother’s overdone?’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Jim, ‘but I’ve got something to say to Aunt Emily.’
‘Oh, what can you have to say? Something about going up to town. There’s a hundred people ready to go up to town—if that would do any good. Please, Jim, please, go away!’
‘I have something to say to Aunt Emily,’ said Jim, standing first on one foot and then on the other in his embarrassment, butwith a dogged look of determination that had never been seen upon his face before.
‘Get me a glass of water, Mab,’ said Lady William, ‘and let Jim alone. It is very kind of him to be so ready to help.’
It did not occur to her, indeed, that Jim could have very much real help to give; but she saw the anxiety in the young man’s face, and even (as she was always a person who could be amused at the most unlikely moments) the attitude of her little Mab, determined to sweep this big and obstinate encumbrance out of the way, stirred her with that sense of the humorous which gives so much solace to life. When Mab had most unwillingly gone out of the room, Jim came up, red and eager, and much flustered, to Lady William’s chair.
‘Aunt Emily,’ he said, breathless; ‘I know Mrs. Brown. She told me to tell you——’
‘What, Jim! she told you—you!’
‘Never mind that now,’ he cried, ‘I’ll explain after. She said: “If there is any chance of harm to Lady William—it sounds like madness, but I must say it—if she is likely to be overwhelmed, tell her not to be afraid, I’ll come.†That’s what she said, Aunt Emily. I thought she was mad—but then I thought I must tell you——’
‘She was not mad. Thank you, thank you, Jim. Don’t say anything—to any one. She said she would come?’
‘I was to tell you she would stand by you—not to be afraid—if you were likely to be overwhelmed——’
‘Here is Mab coming back. Thank you, Jim, I understand, and I believe her—I believe her! You’ve given me great comfort. Thank you, thank you, Jim!’
Jim did not know why he was thanked any more than he knew what the meaning of his communication was; but he was greatly elated all the same, and felt the clearing up of Lady William’s countenance—which was, he said to himself, exactly like the clearing of the clouds from the sky—to be his doing, with the warmest sense of beneficence and pleasure.
‘She is ever so much better; she is almost quite right,’ he said to Mab, who came hurrying in with a glass of water, and who could not help feeling a little annoyance to be thus assured by Jim of her mother’s recovery. By Jim!—with a smirk as if he had been instrumental in the improvement. He went away with that look of complacence and gratification on his face for which Mab would fain have boxed his ears; but at all events he did take himself away, and that was always something gained.
‘Now, mother, you will have a little peace,’ said Mab. ‘Lie down a little on the sofa, and close your eyes. That always does Aunt Jane good, and perhaps it may you. But I don’t know what will do you good; you never give me the chance to know.’
‘I don’t think closing my eyes will do me any good,’ said Lady William. ‘Give me that work of yours to set right, which you got into such a muddle last night. I am much better; I am almost all right, as poor Jim said.’
‘He seemed to think he had something to do with it,’ said Mab, with a snort of disdain.
‘Poor Jim! and perhaps he had. He brought me a message. You never told me much about Mrs. Brown, Mab.’
‘Oh, mother! I told you till I was tired telling you. I told you she was a lady. Well, what business had a lady in our school? But what does all that matter now? Who was she, mother? It is your turn to tell me.’
‘An old friend, Mab.’
‘Oh, that I know! But something more, surely? or you would not have been so startled to-day, or so distressed to miss her.’
‘The distress was selfish,’ said Lady William. ‘She was with me once, at a most important moment of my life; and she can help me better than any one to settle that question with the lawyers about your money, Mab.’
‘Oh!’ said Mab, ‘She told me she knew my father, and old John, as she called him, and——’
‘And you never told me, Mab.’
‘It was in a kind of confidence. And she did not say she knew you; and it was all so mixed up with things—that made me think she oughtn’t to be there, mother, in our school. And yet how could I tell any one, and make her lose her place? And that is why I wanted you to go this morning, to see what you thought; for you would have known in a moment if there was anything wrong.’
‘And that is why you have been so often at the school of late, my little girl?’
Mab nodded her head, slightly abashed, but yet not shaken in her confidence that it was the right thing.
Lady William drew her child into her arms and kissed her. ‘My little girl!’ she repeated, with a soft burst of laughter. And then she put her handkerchief to her eyes, and pushed Mab away and took the tangled work of last night, in which Mab had come to great grief, into her clever hands.
No doubt, whatever it was that had done it—even were itJim—Jim, of all people in the world!—mother was better, brighter, happier, Mab concluded, half comforted, half perplexed. For that Jim should have had the power to do that—Jim!—transcended Mab’s powers of imagination. Lady William retained her cheerfulness until the afternoon, when she sat down to finish that letter which had been left in her blotting-book. But she made small speed over it, and it appeared to Mab that ‘the look over her eyes’ came back. If it could be imagined that Mab was capable of being glad at the overclouding of her mother’s face, I would say she was at least not displeased when this occurred, so that such a ridiculous instrumentality as that of Jim might be proved insufficient for the change it seemed to have caused. But this was a feeling of which Mab was ashamed after the first moment when it flashed upon her. Lady William sat for a long time over the letter, but she did not add anything to it. She held her pen in her hand, and on several occasions bent over the paper as if she were about to write, but always stopped short. What had she more to say? She knew now that when these words were written the all-important witness had been within her reach; but now she was as much out of it as Lady William had then supposed her to be—lost in that big world of London where the most anxious parent cannot find his child. And who could tell whether Artémise would ever hear how things went, or whether she was wanted? The promise Jim brought had consoled her for a moment. It had been like a revelation of comfort to hear that at least Artémise was on her side. But this did not outlast the depressing effect of the afternoon—that puller-down of hopes. Artémise might be on her side, but how, now that she had disappeared again, was she to find her when that moment arrived at which her word was indispensable? And then Lady William felt that this promise of help only in the moment of uttermost need had something humiliating in it. To keep her in suspense to the last, trembling with the sword suspended over her head, and then to step in—no sooner. This was not surely the act of a friend. And why should Artémise be her friend when Mrs. Swinford was her enemy? Her heart sank. The little flush of satisfaction faded. She threw down her pen, and left her letter unfinished, as before.
And then Leo Swinford came with his eager proposals to go to town, to find the runaway at all hazards, until Lady William, exhausted by many emotions and by that sickening revulsion of fresh despair after a rising of hope, became impatient, and more than half resentful of his importunities, which were more ardentthan the occasion required—or seemed so to this fastidious lady, who in the failure of her own confidence was disposed to take umbrage at his—which rested upon the certainty of being able to do himself by his unassisted exertions now, what it would have been so easy, so simple, to do yesterday, and so entirely within his power.
‘It scarcely seems to me worth the while,’ she said, with a weary look. ‘Why should you make a sentry of yourself at that railway? She will send some one for her boxes and elude you, as she has done before.’
This was hard upon poor Leo, who, indeed, had done his best. He was still there when the Rector appeared, who interrupted one of those protestations and entreaties to be trusted, from which Lady William turned so coldly. And the Rector was still more cold.
‘If we had but known in time,’ Mr. Plowden said. ‘I had never seen the lady. If any of those who must have known her had but given us a hint in time.’
It could only be Leo to whom this reproach was addressed, and the Rector did not notice his protest that he had never associated his mother’s visitor with the school. Even Lady William was unjust. She said: ‘You must have suspected that she had some haunt or shelter at Watcham.’ Leo had to fall back upon some of his own general theories about women, that they are always unjust. But he did not go away, which made the Rector more angry still: for Mr. Plowden had come on business. Some days had elapsed since the lawyer’s letter was received, and yet it had not been answered, nor had any decision been come to as to what was or was not to be said in the reply. He had come again to-day with the intention of pressing for Mr. Perowne—Mr. Perowne and his firm had known all the secrets of the Plowden family for generations, why should not he be entrusted with this? But Lady William would only look at him with a silent resistance. She would not accept Mr. Perowne, nor would she tell him why.
‘I have begun my letter,’ she said, ‘I will finish it to-night; it is merely to tell them the facts——’
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ said the Rector solemnly, ‘don’t send it away at least without letting me see it—without taking my opinion at least.’
‘There is as much as I have written,’ she said, handing him the letter, ‘you are welcome to see it, but whatever comes of it I must do it my own way.’
And Leo had the bad taste to sit through this discussion, toremain even while the Rector read the half-written letter, vehemently shaking his head and saying ‘no—no—no’ as he went on. It is true that Mr. Swinford went to the other side of the room and talked to Mab, whose presence there her uncle also felt to bede trop. For the room was so small that being at the other end of it only meant that those other two people were some two or three yards away.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I would admit nothing, Emily. You are wrong—you are wrong. You are making no stand for yourself at all. Why tell them about the chapel being burnt down, and why say you don’t know where she is——. It is wrong, I say; it is betraying everything. When they see this, they will have no mercy.’
‘You think I should go away?’ said Leo to Mab. ‘But I have not yet received my orders. Have patience with me a little, and I will go.’
And then, as if there were not already too many, Miss Grey came in, to fulfil her volunteer promise to bring them news of how things were settled.
‘Oh, Mr. Plowden, how glad I am to see you,’ she said, ‘for I am very anxious to know whether you will sanction our arrangement. Mr. Osborne seemed to think it was all right because Florry—though, as I said to him, Florry is a darling, but she is not the Rector. What an extraordinary business it was, to be sure!’
‘Do you mean Mrs. Brown?’ the Rector asked, very impatiently: and yet incivility was not possible to Miss Grey.
‘What a wonderful thing to do, to shake the dust from her feet, as the Bible says. But we never did anything unkind. I should have laid myself out to be friendly if she would have responded. But I always felt she was a most unlikely person to hold that position. Did you happen to keep her testimonials, Mr. Plowden, or do you remember who they came from? There should be some inquiry made; and the people who recommended her should be warned of the way she treated us. Not that there was a word to say against her management of the school. Everybody seems to say she did very well there.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said the Rector, more affronted than ever. ‘anything about her appointment, Miss Grey.’
‘Ah, well! but you remember something about her, Emily. Didn’t you say you knew her—under some other name? If it was here, I must surely remember her, too. I always felt that I had seen her face somewhere before. The first time I saw her itmade quite an impression on me. I kept asking myself where have I seen that face? But, you know, familiarity breeds—— that is to say, when you get used to a face, you no longer think. Was it in Watcham you knew her, Lady William, my dear?’
‘She did not live actually in Watcham,’ Lady William replied, with hesitation. ‘I saw her—that is, she was present—at my marriage.’
The Rector (for what reason I cannot tell) looked at his sister angrily, shaking his head as if this had somehow been a betrayal of weakness too.
As for Miss Grey, she threw up her hands as if a sudden light had flashed upon her, and cried: ‘Ah, to be sure! now I remember—at your marriage! I recollect all about her now: that was where I saw her—and often in Mrs. Swinford’s carriage before.’
‘That was where you saw her?’
Lady William’s bosom heaved with a quick breath; her colour changed from pale to red; she bent forward as if her hearing had failed her. As for Miss Grey, she gave her friend a sudden apologetic look, put up her hands as if to cover her face, and burst into a deprecating laugh.
‘Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘No, of course you didn’t know. I kept it to myself, for I had no business to be there. And I was a little huffy that you had not asked me. Yes, my dear, I saw you married,’ said little Miss Grey.
Lady William fell back in her chair, and covered her face with her hands. The Rector, for his part, got up and walked to the window, where he stood looking out, ‘to see if it rained,’ he muttered; though a brighter sky could not be than that which shone in upon the startled group. Mab and Leo, looking on, were as much startled as little Miss Grey herself, by the sensation she had evidently produced.
‘You don’t mean to say that you’re angry,’ she said, ‘Emily, after nearly twenty years?’
Lady William uncovered her face, from which the blood had receded again, leaving her perfectly pale. She rose up tremulously, and cast herself upon the neck of her old friend.
‘Angry?’ she said. ‘Oh, glad, thankful beyond measure. Why didn’t I know it before?’
‘Well, my dear, I suppose I was ashamed to confess the liberty I had taken,’ said Miss Grey, who was much surprised, and yet pleased by the impression made. ‘I may as well make a clean breast of it now, since you’re not displeased. I was going up to town that day. I do assure you I was going up on my ownbusiness to town. And I saw you at the station, the dear old Rector, and you in a little white bonnet, and another lady. Bless me, to think that should have been Mrs. Brown! You were looking like a lily flower—paler even than you are now. Ah! you are not pale now, you are like a rose. Did ever any one see the mother of a big girl like Mab change colour like that before? I saw you all three get into a cab—and then my curiosity got the better of me. I daresay it was very dreadful. I was too much ashamed ever to tell anybody. I took another cab and followed you. And I crept in behind to the very back of that nasty ugly little chapel, quite furious with the Rector and everybody that you should have had such a wedding. To think how things come out all of a sudden after one has bottled them up for twenty years!’