“‘You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!’”
“‘You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!’”
“‘You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!’”
“It’s me,” Miss Scott answered patiently, in a small voice.
“You?” Lady Jane’s eyes glittered and glared again.
“Yes. I was a doorstep baby, as I told you; and now they’ve found out at last that I am Diana Trevelyan, the only child of Sir Randolph, who died in an insane asylum a few days ago.”
“You? The daughter of Sir Randolph? You’re mad!”
“No, I’m not mad, though my father was. If you will only read the letter, you will understand. You see, all his Lincolnshire estates come to me, so it makes rather a difference, doesn’t it?”
“Rather a difference!”
No words could describe Lady Jane’s tone as she repeated the words. At the mere thought that, instead of speaking outher irate mind to a poor little governess with whom her son had been silly enough to fall in love, she had been railing at Miss Diana Trevelyan, a charming girl and an heiress, quite as good as herself, and the most desirable daughter-in-law she could wish for, she suddenly got red in the face, and buried herself in the documents, in which she presently became absorbed.
As she read the wonderful story, and learned that the other Lincolnshire Trevelyans had thought it best not to question Ellen’s right—or Diana’s—her wrath subsided, and joy rose in its place, as it would in any mother’s heart, over what could only be a genuine love match, though it had turned out so vastly advantageous. At last she folded the many sheets together and put them back into the envelope, which she held in one hand while she covered hereyes with the other for a moment. “I don’t quite know what to say,” she said simply, and then looked up with a rather shy smile. “I was awfully nasty, I know. I’m sure you would have been a very good wife to Lionel without a name or a fortune, my dear. I can’t imagine why it seemed so dreadful to me five minutes ago! I was quite stupidly angry, and you must forgive me, please. You will, won’t you?”
She was almost pathetic in her defeat, though she was quite ridiculous too, and knew it.
Ellen laughed gaily. “My dear Lady Jane,” she said, “I’ll forgive you with all my heart if you’ll only forgive me for something much worse that I did to you?”
“I’ll forgive you anything—I’m so happy!” answered the elder woman, smiling.
“I’ve been a fairly good governess tothe girls, haven’t I?” asked the young girl. “And well-behaved, too? And if I wanted it, you’d give me a good character, wouldn’t you? That is, if I hadn’t fallen in love with your eldest son?”
“Oh, that wouldn’t have mattered,” said Lady Jane. “It was his falling in love with you that I couldn’t stand! Of course I would give you a good character!”
“Thank you. Now I’ll make my confession. I used to be good at theatricals, and when I saw your advertisement I made up for the place.”
“Made up? It was all a sham?”
Lady Jane started in surprise.
“The limp was a sham, the hump was a little pillow, the blotches were liquid rouge, my eyes never wander unless I choose to make them do it, and I had never worn my hair like that in my life! Can you forgive me for having cheated you all, when I read your advertisement? I suppose it was just devilry that made me do it—and I wanted to see more of Lionel, since we were engaged. After all, I was quite fit for the place, wasn’t I? All I had to do was to make myself thoroughly undesirable; and I did!”
“And to think that I wasted all that good lotion on you!” cried Lady Jane, laughing.
She would have thought the whole trick an abominable fraud on the part of Ellen Scott, but quite entered into the fun of the practical joke, since it had been played by Miss Diana Trevelyan. After all, she never made any pretence of being magnanimous or bursting with noble sentiments. She was just an ordinary woman of the world, and a very good mother, who had beenhorrified at the idea that her eldest son should marry badly, and was delighted to find that he was going to marry well after all; and let any natural mother who would not feel just as she did, find fault with her and call her worldly!
That is the story of that Undesirable Governess they had at King’s Follitt last year, and it explains why Lionel and Jocelyn were married on the same day to two Trevelyan girls who were only very distantly related. In a nice story-book it would of course have been the penniless younger son who would have married the governess-heiress, and the heir of King’s Follitt would have married Anne Trevelyan, who was not particularly well off. But in real life things do not happen in that way, and yet people are happy just the same—when they are.
The darker side of the whole affair wasthat, after Ellen turned into somebody else, those girls ran perfectly wild, and fell back into their old ways of poaching and exchanging game for chocolates with the postman; and they sat up in the King’s Oak by the lodge and peppered the passing horses on the Malton road with catapults, and potted rooks, and rode steeplechases in the park on the best horses in the stable; and they strenuously did all those things which they should have left undone, to the total exclusion of the other things, till Lady Jane felt that she was going mad, and it looked as if no one but the matron of a police station could ever be satisfactory as a governess at King’s Follitt.