The Heir Presumptive and the Heir Apparent

CHAPTER XXV.

But Mary’s heart was not heavy. She went away lightly through the long corridor to the old lord’s room, and entered it like a sunbeam, smiling on every one. Mary had been a woman easily cast down in her old natural life, an anxious woman, a little apt to take a despondent view. But she was so far from being despondent now that she scarcely showed gravity enough for a sick room. She went in and took her place by the sick bed where her old husband lay, shrunken and worn out, with fever in his eyes, and a painful cough that tore him in two.

“I think,” she said, “that already you are looking a great deal better, Frogmore.”

“I am afraid the doctors don’t think me better,” said the old lord, “and to be prepared in case of anything that may happen I want to have a very serious talk with you, my dear.”

“Nay, Frogmore,” she said, with a beaming smile, “not so very serious. The chief thing is to keep up your spirits. I know by experience that it is half the battle. We shall have plenty of time for serious talks.”

“Well, my love, I am willing to hope so,” said Lord Frogmore, with a faint smile. “But it can do us no harm to make sure. There are a few things I am very anxious to talk over with you. I shall be very sorry to leave you alone, my poor Mary, especially now when there are such good hopes. Our life together has not been so cloudless as I had hoped, but you have made me very happy all the same, my dear love. You must never forget that.”

“Dear Frogmore,” said Mary in a slightly injured tone. “I cannot imagine what you mean when you say our life has not been cloudless. It sounds as if you were disappointed in me—for to me it has been like one long summer day!”

“My poor dear—my poor dear!” he said, feebly caressing the hand that held his own.

“Not your poor dear! I have been a happy woman—far more happy than I could ever have looked for—but I mean to continue to be so,” she added with a little nod of her head which was almost coquettish. “I haven’t the least intention of talking of it as if it were in the past.”

Behind Lady Frogmore in the distance of the large room was someone who looked little more than a shadow, but who took a step forward when the conversation came to this point, and made a warning gesture to the old lord over his wife’s head. Lord Frogmore replied with an impatient twitch of his eyebrows and resumed:

“I don’t want to vex you, my love—but life’s very uncertain for the best of us. It’s hard to tell what a day is to bring forth. I never thought this morning that I should be so happy as to have you with me, Mary, to-night.”

“No,” she said, “how wrong it was of them not to tell me; of course, the moment I was told I came away at once. But you must have known that I would come as soon as I knew that you wanted me, Frogmore.”

“Yes,” he said, with his kind, indulgent smile. “I ought to have known that. At all events, my dear, here you are at last.”

“At last! he talks,” said Mary with a laugh, as if appealing to some one, “as if I had been years away.”

The poor old lord patted her hand with his feverish fingers. There was something piteous in the contrast between his serious anxiety and the light-hearted confidence in her tone. “Well,” he said after a time, “my love—to return to what we were saying. I needn’t tell you, Mary, the chief subject I am concerned about—the bringing up of little Mar. You can’t think,” he said after a pause with a little fervor, “what that baby has been to me while you’ve been away.”

“What baby?” she said, almost with a look of offence, drawing away her hand. “I am surprised, Frogmore, that you should want anyone to take my place for—such a short time.”

“To take your place?” he said, “oh, no; but to wait for you along with me: for to whom else could it be of so much importance, next to me—and who could comfort me like him, Mary! You must be strong now for Mar’s sake.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Frogmore,” she said, her color changing. “It is impossible to me to make out what you mean. You seem to speak in riddles. I don’t know who this child is you have taken such a fancy to. But you mustn’t expect me to follow you in that. I will do anything for your sake, dear, but to give myself up to a strange child whom I know nothing about——”

“Whom you know nothing about! Oh, Mary, my poor Mary,” he cried.

“Whom I know nothing at all about,” she said with some vehemence. “The one I suppose that comes in to play with Duke. Frogmore, I hope you have not given Duke’s place in your heart to any stranger. Oh, I say nothing against the boy!”

“To a stranger!” cried the old man, with a piercing tone of pain.

“Oh, my dear Frogmore, oh, my dear! I would not for the world cross you, and if it is a little favorite—of course I shall take care of him, and love him—try to love him—for your sake: but you must not care for him too much on the other hand,” she said, playfully, though with an effort, lifting up her finger—“to interfere with me—or Duke.”

The old gentleman looked at her with eyes full of pain—“Oh, my poor Mary,” he said, “can you not remember—try and remember—what happened before you went away.”

“I remember very well, my dear,” she said, “only it is strange that you should talk of my going away as if it had been something of the greatest importance. To hear you speak one would think I had deserted you—run away from you—left you alone for years.”

“Dr. Marsden,” said Lord Frogmore. He repeated the call impatiently in another minute, “Dr. Marsden!”

“Do you want to speak to Dr. Marsden? I am sure he will be here directly. Oh, here he is,” said Mary, looking round with a little surprise. “He must have been quite close by.”

“Dr. Marsden,” cried Frogmore, with a gasp for breath, “is this how it is always to be?”

“Oh, I hope not,” said Dr. Marsden. “Things will arise naturally to awaken old recollections; but we must not force anything—we must not force anything. In that case we should only lose what we have gained.”

“But I have no time to wait,” cried the old lord—“I—have no time to wait——”

As he spoke he was seized with one of the dreadful fits of coughing which shook his old frame. There is nothing more dreadful than to look on at one of those accés which threaten to shake the very life out of a worn and exhausted body, and to feel how utterly helpless we are, how incapable of doing anything to relieve or succor. Mary, though she was so placid and confident, so sure that all would be well, was greatly troubled by this attack. She had always been thought a good nurse, but for a good nurse in the uninstructed sense, there is nothing so difficult, nothing so dreadful as to do nothing. She hurried to put her arm under the pillows to raise up the sufferer, to support him in her arms, and was altogether cast down when her trusted doctor put his hand upon her shoulder and drew her away.

“But something must be done—his head must be raised—he must be supported——”

“My dear lady, he must be left alone—you only disturb him,” the doctor said.

She withdrew to a little distance and cast herself down in a chair, and covered her face, but it was not enough not to see, for she could still hear the spasm that shook his old frame. He must be left alone—you only disturb him—— What terrible words are those to say! Was it, she wondered in her confused brain, because of the delusion in his that she had abandoned him? How could he think she had abandoned him? His head must have gone wrong, to think of her short visit to the Marsdens as if it had been a desertion. And this little boy who had been a comfort to him——! Mary could not understand it. The heart which had been so light to come home, so sure that as soon as she was there to take care of him Frogmore would get well, began to sink: you only disturb him! Oh, was it possible that this was the sole issue of her nursing, she who had always been considered the best of nurses! Mary began to cry silently, under cover of the hands in which she had hidden her face, and despair stole into her heart. The sound of the coughing filled the room, persistently, going on and on. Now and then came a break and she thought it was over, but it only began again. And the doctor stood there, only looking on, doing nothing, and Rogers, who somehow stepped out of the shadow behind in anxious attendance too, was doing nothing. So many of them, with the command of everything that money could buy, and yet they could do nothing. The poorest tramp on the wayside could not have coughed more incessantly or with less help from anything that could be done for him than Lord Frogmore.

After this the evening seemed to speed away in an incoherent troubled blank, as it does when illness is present absorbing every interest. It seemed to be ten o’clock, then midnight, before any one was aware that the day was ended; and yet every minute was so long. Mary sat a little apart, with a strange pained sensation of reluctance to subject herself again to that reproach—You disturb him—which rankled in her mind, and vaguely, dimly, saw many things pass which she did not understand. The little boy, for instance, was brought in and flung himself upon Frogmore’s bedside, the old lord turning his worn face to him, stroking the little pale cheeks with his trembling withered hands, and kissing the child again and again. “Oh father,” the child said, “father!” and Frogmore murmured, “my little boy, my little man!” in his feeble voice, again and again. Mary sat bolt upright and looked on, with I cannot tell what wonder and wretchedness in her eyes. She was put away from her husband’s side, and this little thing had his tenderest words. Where had he come home from, that little boy? and by what strange chance had he thus become the sweetest and dearest thing to Frogmore? Sometime in the middle of that long feverish blank which was the night Dr. Marsden came to her and insisted she should go to bed. “He is a little quieter now, and there is nothing to be done. Nothing. Nothing that you or anyone can do. You promised to do whatever I told you when I said I would bring you home, Lady Frogmore.”

Mary made no answer to this voice which came to her in the long silence, and which she was not very sure was anything but a voice in a dream. She looked up into the face of her doctor with a dumb obstinacy which he did not attempt to overcome. For her only answer she crept back to the bedside and took her place again there, and watched and watched till a cold blue stole through the closed curtains and every crevice, and the candles and lamp seemed to grow sick and pale, and it was day again. Frogmore’s face looked grey like the daylight when that pitiless, all pervading light came in; but his eyes turned to her with wistful affection, and he put out his old, withered, aged hand. And then the light faded away.

When Lord Frogmore died his wife behaved like a woman whose sanity was completely restored. The mad doctor, who had proved himself both wise and kind in his unexpected attendance at this deathbed, watched her with the most anxious care, but with great relief. She understood the blow that had fallen upon her, and her grief was great and natural, but self-controlled. She burst forth into no ravings, nor did she show any want of comprehension. She allowed herself to be taken away when all was over, and yielded to the directions of her physician with the old gentle docility. After an hour or two of quiet weeping she fell asleep with her hand in her sister’s hand—a gentle woman stricken with deep loss, but very patient, giving no trouble, just what Mary would have been in other circumstances. Agnes Hill sat by her for hours, feeling as if in a sanctuary, while she listened to her sister’s calm breathing and saw the soft tears steal from under her eyelids—a sanctuary of peaceful sorrow, of patience, not rebellious, not excessive, least of all mad. Agnes sat and cried with an ache in her breast which Mary did not know. The boy! What was to happen to the boy? When Mary woke again, when she came out again into ordinary life, and if the amendment continued and her sanity was recognized, could it be that she would still ignore the boy?

CHAPTER XXVI.

“Oh!” cried the mother in a tone of intolerable impatience—“That is nonsense, you know, Mr. Blotting. Why, I was there! How can she persist when every body knows to the contrary. My daughter Mary has been troubled in her mind, poor thing; but she never was idiotic I hope—and when I speak to her—Agnes, what nonsense! I must speak to her! It is the most dreadful dereliction of duty to let things like this go on——”

“Dr. Marsden says she is going through a very important crisis,” said Agnes; “and that her mind must not be disturbed——”

“Oh, Dr. Marsden!” cried Mrs. Hill: she did not say blank him, or dash him, or anything that a clergyman’s wife ought not to say—but she meant it, as was very clear. “How should Mr. Marsden know better than her mother?” she inquired with dignity, as if to such a question there could be but one reply.

“I am of the same opinion as your mother,” said the vicar. “I think you will find after I have had a conversation with her that there will be no further trouble. She will not stand out against me.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Hill cried—and stopped again—for she had not the same faith in her husband’s intervention. “But,” she added quickly, “I am of opinion that when she is told the facts calmly, with the proofs I can bring, for I saw everything with my own eyes. Mary who was always a reasonable creature—you know,” she cried, with a little laugh and toss of her head, “there never was such a thing known in this world as that a mother should disown her child.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Blotting, “there will be no want of proof. The little lord’s rights are safe enough. But who’s to have the custody?—not a mad mother who disowns him——”

“Sir!” cried Mrs. Hill, springing to her feet.

“Mr. Blotting,” said the vicar, “forgets, my dear—forgets of whom he’s speaking. Such a phrase used of my daughter——”

“I beg your pardon,” said the man of business. He looked at Agnes, who had said nothing, whose eyes were anxiously fixed upon him. “I mean no offence. I must face the facts. What would the Court of Chancery or any other authority think of a mother who denied that her child was hers? She says she knows nothing about it, that she never had a child. It’s monstrous; it’s incredible. She says the most astounding things.”

“What, what?” cried the old people, both together. They were half reproachful of Mary, wholly impatient of her folly, yet half excusing and apologizing all the time.

“She says it is quite impossible she could ever have done such a thing. I can only give you the poor lady’s own words. She says she was bound in honor to someone—a woman’s name—probably you will know. Poor soul! Bound in honor to Jane or Marjorie never to have a child! I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but who do you think would give her the charge even of her own affairs after such a speech as that?”

“Who is Jane or Marjorie?” said the vicar, mouthing the words. “I don’t know anybody of those names.”

The mother and daughter looked at each other. They were under no difficulty in understanding. “Oh,” said Mrs. Hill, “her worst enemy! Do you mean to say that after all my poor child has borne from that woman——”

“Dear mother!” said Agnes. “Oh, let us wait a little—let us do nothing in a hurry. I suppose it has been known before that a poor woman might be sane enough with one delusion. That is Mary’s case. She is sane, but she has forgotten. She never saw her baby. It seized her at once, that terrible trouble. She never knew. Don’t you remember, mother, how she lay like a log, never caring, never looking at him. Oh, Mr. Blotting, don’t let her be sent away again for that! In every other way she is sane, my poor sister is sane.”

“I am sincerely sorry for you, Miss Hill,” the lawyer said. But he gave no pledge, he made no promise. “It will depend chiefly upon John Parke,” he said, “as one of the executors, and the child’s uncle. He of course is the natural guardian. And he no doubt will hear what the doctors have to say, and decide what is best to be done with Lady Frogmore.”

“John Parke!” both the old people cried again; Mrs. Hill adding in almost a shriek—“And Tisch—Tisch, who hates my poor Mary, who would like to kill her! Oh, you will never put the boy in her hands.”

“I fail to see,” said the vicar, mumbling. “I fail to see what can be the need of John Parke when her parents are here.”

“My dear sir,” said the man of business, “John Parke is the nearest relation. He’s an executor. He’s the heir, if anything should happen to the little boy—a very delicate little boy I hear, like old men’s children generally—and with insanity on one side. You really must forgive me if I speak my mind. I have been connected with the Parkes, I and my firm, for longer than any one can say; but I never knew such a sad conjunction of affairs.”

The Hills, it was evident, were very much startled by this speech. The vicar stood before the fire swaying his heavy head, looking at the floor, while Mrs. Hill, who was more active of mind, made little starts as if to begin speaking, then stopped with the words on her lips.

“Do you mean to say,” said Agnes, “that everything will be in—Mr. John Parke’s hands?”

“I am the other executor,” said the man of business, not without a little demonstration of the importance which these country people had seemed to ignore.

“But,” said the vicar, “we are Lady Frogmore’s parents—I am the child’s grandfather, nearer than an uncle. Why, my wife was here when he was born.”

“And we have no object to serve,” cried Mrs. Hill, bursting forth, “none, none, but their good. It’s for John Parke’s advantage that—that harm should come. He can’t be supposed to be fond of little Mar. And his wife—why Tisch, Tisch, everybody knows!—she has her own boy that she thinks ought to be the heir. He’s not safe, he’s not safe if he’s in Tisch Grocombe’s hands!”

“Mother, mother!” cried Agnes, in dismay.

“You will excuse me saying,” said the lawyer, “that I can’t listen to anything of this kind. Ladies go a long way I know in what they permit themselves to say of each other, but with men of the world, madam, libels can’t be indulged in. Mrs. John Parke——”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Hill, breathing out fire and fury in the word, “what has Mrs. John Parke to do with my child—or with my grandchild, Mr. Blotting? We have no object but their good. We want nothing but their good. If anything were to happen to little Mar it would be my death. Oh, can’t you see, can’t you see the difference? I don’t say she would poison him or throw him out of a window,” cried the old lady, flushed and trembling with her vehemence. “But it would be for her good that the child should die. Do you hear me, oh do you hear me! It would be to her advantage that the child should die, the dear child, the apple of our eyes. It would give her husband the title—and herself which is more:—it would make her boy the heir. And you will put him in her hands, our little delicate boy, our little darling, poor Frogmore’s little Mar! Oh vicar, speak to him. Oh Agnes, say something—don’t let them throw little Mar’s life away!”

“I can only say,” said the vicar, shuffling about with his large feet, “that we’re Lady Frogmore’s parents, and the child’s guardians by—by nature. I can’t see what there’s more to say.”

“It’s clear that I can hear no more,” said the lawyer, “it’s painful to see such animosity. Still we know what ladies are. Had anything been necessary to show how impossible—— But there never could have been any question of such a thing,” he continued sharply. “Mr. Hill, you ought to be enough a man of the world to see that the mother’s parents have nothing to do with the matter. Why, it’s ridiculous. The mother herself is no more than a sort of accident. What I’ve got to think of is the Parkes, the family. It is astonishing you don’t understand.”

“Mr. Blotting,” said Agnes, “my mother perhaps went too far. We don’t want to show prejudice. Still the child is a delicate child—and he’s been used to us all his life—to me, at least—I’ve been the same as his mother,” she said, with the tears in his eyes. “I know all he requires—their treatment might be dangerous for him. Don’t take him from us until he’s older and stronger. I don’t ask anything unreasonable. Mrs. Parke, I don’t doubt, would be—very kind: but she’s used to robust children—and little Mar is so delicate.”

“She is pleading as if it was a favor,” cried Mrs. Hill, “as if we had no right——”

“You had better both of you leave it to me—leave it to me,” said the vicar. “I’ll talk it over with this gentleman, as a man of the world. My dear, you can go and look after Mary. That’s your business. Leave me to talk it over, like a man of the world.” The vicar was pleased with that appeal to his superior wisdom. He wanted nothing so much as to get rid of the ladies and bring Mr. Blotting to a due sense of the situation, man to man.

“Sir——,” Mrs. Hill began; but Agnes, too, was against her. She caught her mother by the arm.

“Oh, father is right,” she said. “Let us go to Mary. I never know what she may be doing when we leave her too long alone. It is not good for her to be long alone.”

The house through which these two ladies made their way upstairs had changed in the strangest way. It was not neglected or out of order, nor had it the deserted appearance, as if life had altogether ebbed away from the forsaken sitting-rooms, which often shows the presence of death, throned in a remote chamber, and making an end even of family meetings. Mr. Upjames at the head of affairs took care of that, and as John Parke and his wife were expected in the afternoon, there were fires in all the rooms, and everything ready for the visitors, who were felt by all the household instinctively to have so much risen in importance. The decorous silence, which was proper to a house “in trouble,” reigned, however, up and down. The servants glided about like mutes, stealing noiselessly out of sight, or flattening themselves against the wall when by chance they encountered “one of the family;” and the discipline was such that not a voice or a laugh betrayed from behind the swing doors the existence of a number of young servants, who, however impressed by the circumstances, could not be overcome with grief. The feeling in the house, it must be allowed, was in favor of the visitors who were expected rather than those who had arrived. The Hills were “the other side” to the retainers of the Parke faction. They saw through the vicar’s bulk and solemnity, and they were aware by instinct that the old lady would be hard upon servants and keep an inquisitive eye upon their shortcomings. They were, therefore, though perfectly civil, not anxious in their service to my lady’s people. My lady, herself, poor thing, the servants were half afraid of, half sorry for. They thought she might have another attack at any moment. The women shrank back upon each other when they attended to her rooms or answered her bell. The maid whom she had brought with her was even more alarming than herself, a mad nurse who knew all about the things that were done to lunatics, though she put on the aspect of an ordinary lady’s maid. Thus poor Mary, who had been so kind to them all, who was so gentle and so soft-voiced, sympathetic with everybody, was a sort of bug-bear in the house from which she had been banished so long, to which she had returned so strangely. And all through this great silent house there was a thrill of uncertainty,—nobody knowing what was to be done, or what the new régime would be. The little lord in the nursery, poor little delicate boy who would never be “rared” as all the country people said, who was a child of old age, with madness on one side of the house, whose father was dead and whose mother denied his existence: and the poor lady shut up in her rooms, in her grief and widowhood, with the maid who was nurse, and the mad-doctor hanging about, ever watchful, not leaving her long out of his sight—the troubled group who hung about her, and about the child, yet had no real right there, and might be put to the door by the executors any day—made up a miserable family—a disturbed, uncertain, uncomfortable, little community—not knowing what was to happen. The only one in the house who was calm, who feared nothing, was Mary herself in her retirement, half cured of her madness, full of gentle sorrow without anguish, and ignoring altogether in a strange bewilderment of nature all the dangers and miseries amid which, the most innocent of unconscious sufferers, she was about to take up without protection or support the strange story of her life.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Lady Frogmore had not been much disturbed by any external interruption since she had been led away from her husband’s room after his death. Poor Mary was very natural in all her ways. She took her sorrow sweetly like the gentle woman she was. There was an hour or two during which she lay weeping on the bed, saying now and then some broken words—how good he was, her dear old lord, how tender, how kind—and what was she to do without him who had been so good to his poor Mary! Agnes not crying so much, feeling the dreadful blank and change perhaps more, sat by her sister’s bedside and held her hand, and received her broken confidences. Poor Mary did not repine, she did not even grieve as at first that she had not been there when Frogmore was taken ill, that they did not send for her soon enough. Even that had floated away from her mind. The tears came flowing from her eyes and the tender words from her lips. Dear Frogmore! There never had been any one like him, so kind! so kind! How was she to live without her old husband, her dear companion? In Mary’s mind there was no consciousness that she had been absent from her husband for years; yet, perhaps, though she was not aware of it, this fact had something to do with the calm of her sorrow. There was no despair in her mourning. By-and-bye she allowed herself to be undressed, to take the draught prepared for her and go to bed. Agnes still sat by her thinking of many things, but it did not occur to anybody that Agnes had anything but a very secondary part in the trouble. And Mary slept and woke again and shed more tears, and then rose up with a patient face and a quiver in her lip, and was very anxious that a black gown might be found somewhere in her wardrobe, turning with a tremor from the others she had been wearing. “I shall never more wear anything again but black,” she said. A little later she was able to think of her mourning and the mourning for the house: both which had to be seen to without delay. Agnes was ready to write the necessary letters, but Lady Frogmore herself joined in the consultation about what would be wanted, and quietly put down Mrs. Hill’s economical suggestions. There were a great many things to think of, and Mary was greatly disturbed to find that a small room which opened from her own was quite open, the sunshine coming in and the outer world visible. “Oh, how is this!” she said; “the blinds are not down nor the shutters closed.”—“They are, over all the house, my lady,” said the maid; “but I thought just this little room, which nobody can see, which is not seen from outside——“—“Oh, close it, close it at once,” said Lady Frogmore. “I can’t bear it—and my dear lord lying dead in the house.” This made her tears flow again; but when the light was shut out she resumed with her mother and sister the consultation about the mourning. She thought of the paper with the deepest black border, and cards to be printed. It seemed to please her to have this occupation, these trifles which had to be attended to—“I suppose,” she said, her voice trembling, her eyes filling—“I must now call myself Dowager on my cards——”

“Oh, no, my dear Mary, no—why should you—not for years and years.”

“You must not think it will hurt me, mother. Oh, no, no! What do I care for anything but losing him. It will not vex me to call John by his name—or Letitia——” She stopped again, her voice failing her. “Oh, Letitia,” she said, “cannot blame me now. She will have nothing, nothing to say against me now.”

“Mary, for goodness sake, do not speak to me of that woman. I can’t bear to hear her name in your mouth,” cried Mrs. Hill.

Agnes gave her mother a look, and laid her hand upon her sister’s. “There is one other thing, Mary,” she said, turning the talk to the mourning. There are times when that mourning is a great relief to the poor people who are shut up with their sorrow and can talk of nothing but the one dreadful subject which fills heaven and earth. Mary returned to the thought of all those necessary gowns for the housemaids with a sort of dismal relief. But when she was left to herself again, her thoughts returned to Letitia—Letitia was coming in the afternoon. There was in Lady Frogmore’s thoughts a faint terror of her former friend mingled with a sort of consolatory consciousness that Letitia could have nothing against her now. All must be right now. Mary’s little superiority was over. She would not have been sorry had it not involved the loss of Frogmore, and now that he was gone it was a consolation to think that she no longer stood in anybody’s way, that she could injure no one any more. Letitia would forgive her now. There had been no harm done. She could not regret—no, not even for Letitia, that she had married her dear old lord. It seemed to Mary that it had been a very short time, only a few months, since she married Frogmore. And it had done no harm. Letitia would have to acknowledge that now. They were none the worse for it. It gave her a little consolation in the midst of her tears.

Meanwhile John Parke and his wife were traveling gloomily towards Frogmore. It would be vain to say that even John, his brother, was deeply affected by the death of the old lord. That would have been too much to expect in any case. Neither could it be said that during five years past they had thought of nothing but the wrong inflicted upon them by Lord Frogmore’s marriage, and the birth of the boy who stood between them and all their hopes of advancement in life. In five years the mind gets accustomed even to such a misfortune as that, and though they may not feel it less, people don’t dwell upon a thing so far off as they did when it was fresh in their minds. The death of Lord Frogmore, however, brought it all back to their thoughts. But for Mary, but for that boy, what a changed world it would now have been for them! By this time it was they who would have been Lord and Lady Frogmore. They would have been going to take possession of their own great family house, to come into their fortune. Hope would by this time have become reality to them—if it had not been for Mary and that miserable puny boy. Even John could not help thinking of this as he looked moodily out of the window of the railway carriage and plucked at his moustache. His servants would already have begun to ‘my lord’ him. His difficulties (for he had difficulties though his wife was so excellent a manager) would all have been over. Good God! and to think that a bit of a sickly child, a creature that nobody wanted, had done him out of all that. It was enough to distract the mind of a saint. As for Letitia, all that and a great deal more was in her mind. She had not been at the Park since that dreadful day when she had discovered what had befallen Mary, and had known that it was she herself who had done it. Since then, though Duke had been a frequent visitor, his parents had never been invited by Frogmore, and Letitia knew why. And now she was going to see Mary, who it was said had recovered all at once and come home. This was a wonderful story, which it was almost impossible to believe; and Letitia, with her guilty conscience, could not but think there was some hidden meaning in it. Mary, suddenly well, returned all in a moment!—it did not seem credible. She set out to accompany John to the house of mourning with very mingled feelings—indignant to have to go there at all, in a position which contrasted so cruelly with her hopes. But also, in spite of all her self-command and capacity for excusing herself, Letitia was afraid in her heart of meeting Mary, terrified for her look, wondering how much she remembered, how much she knew. She could not form an idea to herself how she would be received by her old friend. She was afraid of Mary—afraid lest Lady Frogmore should betray her to John, and make her stolid but upright husband aware of the harm she had done. And also, if truth must be told, Mrs. Parke was afraid of the mad woman whom she had injured, and of whose cure she thought nobody could be certain. She was not a brave woman physically, though it is not necessary to be a coward to fear an insane person. The bravest may quail in such circumstances. An insane person whom you have wronged; who probably will remember the wrong; who will be cunning and vindictive, as mad people are known to be. Letitia’s thoughts were not of a pleasant kind as she travelled towards the home of her husband’s race. She dared not shrink or refuse to do the duty which was incumbent upon her. But she was white and trembling in her furs, quite unable to get warm or to repress the shiver that ran over her from time to time. John observed this with the terror of a man who had never been apt to meet an emergency by himself. “For goodness’ sake,” he said, “take something! Have a glass of wine—have a little brandy. I can get you some brandy at the station. Don’t get ill now, Letitia, for heaven’s sake.” She nodded her head at him with the best smile she could conjure up. She certainly was a faithful woman so far as that was concerned. She would not at such a crisis leave John to his own devices—not whatever might happen. Rather have the lunatic fly upon her than that—— But, all the same, she went on to the Park in terror of her life.

The great house standing all shadowed in the wintry sunshine, every shutter shut and every blind drawn down, was a dismal sight enough, not calculated to raise any one’s spirits. The great door was standing open, and inside were several servants, Upjames in the foreground to receive the visitors and show his own pre-eminence. Behind stood the old vicar, with whom and his big head and his mumbling voice Letitia felt a sickening familiarity as if he were always there in the worst moments of her life. She remembered him just like that when she had made her assault in the vicarage in the vain endeavor to frighten Mary from marrying old Frogmore. She had seen him again before the birth of the child. And here he was once more as she came in cold and trembling, terrified for what was before her. Behind the vicar another man was hanging about, a tall man in a long coat, which swung behind him as he strolled about the hall, stooping, with his shoulders thrust up to his ears. She divined at once that this was the mad-doctor not yet separated from his patient, Letitia let her fur cloak drop off her shoulders into the footman’s hands, and appeared not to see the vicar’s hand which was stretched out with the intention of giving her that silent clasp of sympathy which is the right thing in a house of mourning. “Oh, how do you do?” she said. “I am going at once to Mary,” and passed him quickly, leaving John to make the explanation. She felt that as far as she herself was concerned the worst must be got over at once. Upstairs in the corridor a woman was standing whom Letitia did not know, too serious for a maid, too important for a servant of the house. “Are you Lady Frogmore’s—attendant?” said Mrs. Parke. She was half afraid, as the servants were, of the woman, who, if not mad herself, was a mad nurse. “Yes, my lady,” said the stranger, a mode of address which made the heart burn in Letitia’s bosom. Ah! but for that child, that wretched little boy, that would be her proper title now. “I am Mrs. Parke,” she said breathlessly. “How is Lady Frogmore?”

“Oh, my lady, she is wonderful,” said the woman. Lady Frogmore’s attendant knew what her mistress thought, and she believed like Mary that Mrs. Parke was now in reality Lady Frogmore, though good breeding prevented her from adopting the title until the old lord was buried. “She is as much herself as her dearest friend could wish her—she is as collected as you or me.”

“What an extraordinary thing?” said Letitia. “Is it thought to be a complete cure?”

“Ah!” said the nurse, “that no man can tell till time has proved it. Things that come of a sudden sometimes go off on a sudden too. But in the meantime what a blessing, my lady! She was able to be with his lordship to the last. And as calm now, and as composed, though sorrowful, as a lady could be.”

“Then she is quite——safe?” said Letitia with a slight shudder.

“My lady!” said the woman with indignation. “She was never but like a blessed lamb even at the worst.”

“I know; I know. She was always gentle. Don’t think badly of me,” said Mrs. Parke, “but I’ve a great horror of—of that sort of thing. Would you mind coming in with me? And just be near me, please, whatever might happen. It would give me great confidence. If you only look at her, it’s enough, isn’t it? Oh! do stay by me when I go in, please.”

“You are doing my poor lady great injustice,” said the attendant with outraged dignity.

“Oh, no—not that—but you’ll stand by me, won’t you?” Letitia said. She went on towards Mary’s door with a slackened step. Not even the assurance she had received, not her conviction that what the nurse said was true, could stand against her conscience, and sense of what she deserved from Mary. She might be a lamb to others, but Letitia had no right to count upon her as a lamb. When she opened the door she looked back and beckoned to the attendant, who was slowly following. “You’ll stand by me?” she said again, and eventually knocked at Mary’s door.

Lady Frogmore and her sister were together in the room. Mary had been trying to read a little in a good book. To read anything that might amuse her, that would draw her thoughts from herself and her sorrow, would have been profane, almost wicked. Mary was far too dutiful to think of anything of the kind, but it was not wrong, it was indeed edifying, to read a little of a sermon about heaven. It conveyed, indeed, no idea at all to the poor lady’s mind, and to think of Lord Frogmore as having been swept up among those abstractions was quite impossible: but still it was a right thing to do. She put it down, however, with alacrity when she heard Letitia’s knock at the door, and came forward a step or two as much as was decorous to meet her sister-in-law. A newly-made widow must not hurry forward with extended hands. It is her place to keep still, to have her visitors brought up to her. “Here I and sorrow sit.” Mary was very observant of all the conventionalities; but when Letitia, trembling, came up to her and put her shaking arms around her, Mary responded with a cordiality which overwhelmed the visitor. She held Letitia close, and wept upon her shoulder, Mrs. Parke trembling all the time, restraining herself with an effort of horror from shrieking, and not at all sure that she might not be rent to pieces at the end of the embrace. “Oh, Letitia! it is all over, all over. My poor old lord is gone,” cried Mary, sobbing. She added, a moment after in a voice that went through and through the hearts of the other listeners, but struck upon that of Mrs. John Parke like some strange chord of which she had no understanding, “and after all there is no harm done to you! It is my only consolation. After all there is no harm done to you!”

“Oh, Mary! It is a sad blow to us all, but we must bear it,” said Letitia, disengaging herself from the embrace which she so feared. She cast a glance round to see that the nurse was near, and strengthened by this, sat down at a little distance from the new-made widow. “It is a great loss,” she said, putting up her handkerchief to her eyes; “so kind to us as he always was. But we must seek for resignation and strength to bear it.”

“Indeed he was kind to everybody,” said Agnes, hoping to keep the strange interview upon safe ground.

“And what a good thing you were able to come back to be with him at the last!” said Mrs. John.

“My dear Letitia,” said Mary, “I can’t find words to tell you. You must not think I will feel it that you should have my name—or that Mr. Parke should have his name. Oh, no! I shall not. You must not put aside your rights out of any thought of me. I am only the Dowager now, and you are Lady Frogmore.”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. John, springing to her feet, “I knew all that was said was nonsense, and that there never would be a cure. Agnes Hill, you may risk your life, but I will not risk mine—at the mercy of a——”

She had sprung up from her chair with a scared face, and hurried towards the door. As for Mary, she did not understand this recoil of her sister-in-law from her. “What is it?” she said; “what is it? Why should she have any grudge against me? Tell her, Agnes, that I have no grudge; that I am glad. After all, though she was so frightened of me, I have done her no harm.”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Letitia hurried along the passage to the room which she always occupied at the Park, and where Felicie was already arranging her “things” out of the box. She took refuge in this room as in a safe place, and locked the door behind her with an impulse of fright. When, however, she sat down panting to think it over, reassured by these walls and by the tranquil presence of her maid busied about ordinary concerns, and by the conviction that Mary was in the hands of the attendant and would not be allowed to follow her, Mrs. Parke began to perceive that her panic might be thought foolish, and that there was really nothing to be afraid of. “For they would never have allowed her to hurt me,” she said to herself—“and she did not mean to hurt me, poor thing. She meant to be kind. She was always silly,” Letitia said to herself, her old contempt for Mary Hill beginning to get the better of her panic and terror of Lady Frogmore. But her heart again jumped to her mouth when the sound of someone running along the corridor ended in a thump upon the locked door. “Oh, don’t open it, don’t open it, Felicie!” she said, springing up to hide herself. She was only stopped by the sound of a voice which came in among the drumming. “Mamma, mamma, open—mamma, let me in, I want mamma,” said the intruder. Even then Letitia had horrible visions of the mad-woman taking advantage of the opportunity, while Duke was admitted, to rush in upon her victim. But even the boy’s presence was an additional protection. He would come between her and any assault. He was a big, strong boy. When John Parke came in just behind his son, Letitia felt almost at her ease. Between them, the man and the boy could surely deal with the maniac. She could not in their presence do any real harm. John Parke’s face was covered with clouds; he was moody and serious, scarcely moving out of his absorbed gravity to receive the eager salutations of Duke, who had been greatly subdued by the melancholy of the house, and delighted to find in the advent of his parents an opening out of the gloom. John went up scowling to his wife, and, standing over her, desired that Felicie might be sent away. “I have something to say to you,” he said. Letitia made herself as comfortable as circumstances would permit. She took off her cloak and hat, and had an easy chair drawn to the fire. Then she sent her maid away and turned to her husband, who had been looking on at these proceedings with impatience. “Now, what is it?” she said.

“I am glad you can attend to me at last. I want to speak to you about that poor woman and the state of the house.”

“What poor woman? Do you mean Mary Hill? You can’t tell me much about her, for I have seen her. Talk of cures! She is as mad as a March hare. Duke, just lock the door.”

“Why should he lock the door? What I’ve got to say is of importance. Don’t let us have any nonsense!” said John Parke.

“She is as mad—as any one ever was. If she came bursting into the room in that state—I should die. I know I should die.”

“They said she was quite quiet,” he cried.

“And so she is! very quiet. John, she said she was the Dowager and that I was Lady Frogmore.”

“Then you know,” said John, “though that was not how they told me. They say she remembers nothing about the little boy. She declares she never had any child; that he is a little boy who was invited to play with Duke; and that Frogmore took a fancy to him and adopted him. Letitia, it’s the most wonderful thing I ever heard of, and very exciting to people in our position. Do you hear me? What do you think? Was such a thing ever heard of, that a woman should forget she had a child? I never heard of such a thing. Do you think——?” He looked at her with eyes full of excitement, full of awakened anxiety, and a hundred questions. John Parke was not a clever man; he had never pretended to be: but he had boundless faith in his wife’s cleverness, and he brought her this extraordinary question with an unhesitating confidence in her power to draw something out of it that would be somehow to his advantage and that of the family. He fixed his eyes upon her with all the fervor of a question of life and death.

“Oh, I know that,” cried little Duke. “Aunt Mary is Mar’s mother, ain’t she, mamma? But she says she never heard of him. She says she don’t know him. And she’s his own mother! I laughed till I thought I should have dropped. Fancy mamma; Aunt Mary! And Mar laughed too,” the boy said; but added in another moment in a subdued tone, “He was going to cry, but I made him laugh. He’s a very little thing; he doesn’t always see the fun.”

Neither of his parents paid any attention to Duke, though they let him have his say. But John Parke, who had never taken his eyes from his wife’s face, standing over her waiting for her decision on the question he had put before her, now touched her on the shoulder, recalling her to herself and what he had asked. “Eh?” he said interrogatively. “Letitia—don’t you think——”

“No!” she said suddenly, when this little by-play had been twice repeated, “I don’t. Nothing can be made of it. A child born in this house in everybody’s knowledge; put in the papers—as public as if he had been a prince. No! Don’t ask me what I think. There’s nothing to be thought or said on the subject. She’s mad; that is all.”

“But they all say she is not mad—and she says she never had a child. She ought to know,” said John. “Who should know if she doesn’t. Letitia, when I think—if it hadn’t been for her, you and I would have been coming home here; we should have had everything. And what if, after all, there’s been some mistake, some delusion. Frogmore—poor old fellow, I wouldn’t say a word against him; but he was prejudiced. If she says he adopted the boy—— Well! She ought to know——”

“Don’t be a fool, John Parke,” cried his wife. “Frogmore was proud of him, as you know. He hated me. He would never have married Mary Hill but to have his revenge on me. Do you think I don’t feel it, her set up in my place? And wouldn’t I turn that brat to the door if I could, oh! without a moment’s thought. But I’m not a fool,” said Letitia. “The woman’s mad—she doesn’t know what she’s saying. There’s dozens of witnesses to prove it if she denies. The doctor and the nurse and all the servants in the house, and her mother, and—we needn’t go further—myself. John Parke, don’t be a fool. You’ll never get the better of her in that way.”

“All the same,” said John, who had recovered the first dismay caused by her contradiction while she went on speaking. “All the same, I think it’s worth fighting—with the mother at your back.”

“The mother!” she said, with contempt. “She’d go raving mad in the witness-box, and that would be fine proof for you. Why, the child was born before all the world, so to speak, like the heir to the crown. You might as well fight the one as the other. Oh, it is not for any love of them, you may be sure, that I speak!”

“I don’t understand you, Letitia,” said John. “I’d fight it to the last, if it was any good, but as for turning the child out of doors or so forth as you talk in your wild way——”

“You would leave me to do that,” said Letitia, with a snarl, “and so I should, and never think twice either of him or his mother. Duke, what do you mean staring at me like that? You don’t understand what we’re talking about. Run away and play. Go to the nursery or wherever you live when you’re here.”

“Mamma, Mar’s quite a little fellow; he doesn’t know very much, but he’s a very nice little fellow. If it is Mar you and papa are going to turn out of the house——”

Letitia burst into a shrill laugh. She pushed her boy away from her.

“Go off to your play, you little —— dunce,” she said. “Mar! why, Mar’s the master of the house, don’t you know: he’s Lord Frogmore. It’s we that Mar will turn out of the house if we don’t mind. You had better go and ask him to be kind to papa, and not send us away.”

Father and son looked on with equally bewildered faces at this burst of merriment, which they could not understand.

“I am sure,” said Duke, “that Mar would be very fond of papa if he’d let him, and never, never think of turning anyone away. Mar is—why, Mar is—Mamma! Mar’s father’s dead, and his mother has forgotten him, and he’s a very, very little boy.”

Duke’s eyes filled with tears, his lips began to quiver; the thought of Mar’s loneliness and a vague sense of unkindness and danger around him went to the child’s heart. The effect of Duke’s emotion on his two parents was very different. Letitia gave her son a look of exasperation, as if she would have liked to strike him; but John’s countenance melted, and his hand unconsciously went over with a caress on the boy’s shoulder. John’s obtuse mind had taken what he heard au pied de la lettre, and the idea that “the little boy” might after all be an imposter, and his own rights intact, had inflamed his mind. But he had no unkindly feeling to little Mar, and the tears in Duke’s eyes were not only a reproach to his father, but melted at once the untimely, artificial frost in John’s heart.

“God forgive me,” he said, “I didn’t think of the poor child at all. I was thinking only—— Poor little boy! Duke, my fine fellow, you’re right to stand up for him. You make me ashamed of myself. We’ll do what we can to make it up to the poor little fellow, Duke!”

“Yes, father!” cried Duke, putting his hand into John’s hand.

Letitia looked from one to the other more exasperated than ever. Her lip curled, in spite of herself, over her set teeth like the snarl of a dog. Had there been a thunderbolt handy and within her reach, how unhesitatingly she would have aimed it at those two fools! “I think you’d better go and comfort your friend,” she said. “Take care of him, Duke, he may be a good friend to you another time, for you’re nobody, don’t you know, and he is Lord Frogmore. For goodness sake, John, send the boy off and lock the door after him. I’ve got a hundred things to say.”

John did as he was told, with the clouds closing over his face again. He had fired his shot, so to speak, and having failed had nothing more on his side to suggest.

“It is a little difficult,” said Letitia, “to know where to have you, when one moment you are ready to take on trust a mad-woman’s denial of a truth that is as well known as the Prince of Wales—and the next are shedding tears over the poor little boy.”

“I don’t see why one might not do both,” said John.

“No; consistency doesn’t matter much, does it? But putting sentiment aside, I should like to know what’s going to be done.”

“I haven’t heard much—how could I,” said John. “There’s no will but one made before the child was born—leaving the mother guardian—of course, if she’s mad, as you say, she can’t be that now, I suppose.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“The doctor says two or three things—as they all do—that she’s quite well, not mad at all, though of course it has a strange appearance that she should have forgotten her child, and would go against her in a court of law. But he thinks it is quite natural, by all kinds of reasons,” said John hurriedly, perceiving, as so few speakers are clever enough to do, that he no longer had the ear of his audience. He gave Letitia a look half affronted, half anxious, and then began to walk up and down the room, awaiting her reply.

“Five years old,” said Letitia, “a little puny thing with no stamina, and the mother out of the question, taking no interest——”

“Poor little thing,” said John.

“And after Mary—you are the guardian, I suppose.”

“Letitia!” he cried. There was something in the tone with which she had said these words—something indescribable, hideous, which horrified him. He turned upon her with staring eyes.

“Well,” she said calmly, “is there anything wonderful in that. I suppose you will be guardian as the next after her. He will be—in your hands——”

“Where he will be as safe,” John cried coming up to her almost as if he would have seized and shaken her, “as if he were my own.”

“I never doubted it,” Letitia said.

What did she mean? her husband looking down upon her from where he stood could not accuse her of anything. The words had been simple enough. And she was now holding her foot to the fire, as if the only thing she cared for in the world was to get warm. She did not look at him. She yawned a little as if the conversation was getting tedious. “You see yourself,” she went on, “that there’s no use trying to unseat the boy because of his mother’s wild fancies. The thing you have to think of is how to do the best for him. And you’ll have to take this into consideration at once. I should say we’d better come here and let Greenpark. It will be best for the boy; and as I suppose you will have a great deal to do with the property it will be better for you. There is a long minority to look forward to, and of course there must be a good allowance for the child. It would be better for Mary that she should have the Dower-house. The boy can’t be any pleasure to her, feeling as she does, and it will be good for him to have children about him instead of being brought up like a little old man.”

“You seem to have got it all cut and dry,” said John, astonished.

“Yes. I’ve been thinking about it,” said Letitia. “You need not speak of it all, cut and dry as you call it, at once, but it’s best to have a plan in our heads. That’s what I advise. And as soon as the funeral is over the first thing to do is to get rid of Mary. I am very much frightened of mad people. I have always been so all my life.”

“Well, perhaps it might be the best way. But there is Blotting to consult. Blotting has as much to say as I have. He’s executor too. And so is she for that matter.”

“John,” said Mrs. Parke. “She is much better out of the house. And all those Hills. I can’t bear them. If she keeps on thinking it an interloper, only adopted by Frogmore, she might do some harm to the child. It’s not consistent with your duty to keep her here.”

She looked up as she said this and met his eyes. There was a half smile in hers, but Mrs. Parke’s eyes were not expressive—they were dull eyes, and when Letitia chose they became duller still with no meaning in them at all. Perhaps she had not any meaning. The tone which frightened her husband might have been an accidental change of her voice. He looked at her with all the penetration there was in his, but could make nothing of her. John had been very much frightened, he could not tell how; for, as a matter-of-fact, it was he who had entertained ideas prejudicial to little Mar and not Letitia. What dreadful thing had he imagined about his wife? “You are the guardian.” There could not be simpler words. Was it some suggestion from the devil that had made him hear in them something—that was too dreadful to be spoken? John Parke, who was honest enough, and could not have harmed anyone, though he would have fought tooth and nail for his rights, looked into his wife’s face, and saw nothing there that gave any solution to what he had imagined. But after the shock he had received it was not very easy for him to continue the conversation. He said, “I beg your pardon,” thrusting one of his hands into his pocket, as if to find the solution of the mystery there. Letitia did not ask why he begged her pardon. She begged him to call Felicie, that she might get a cup of tea.

CHAPTER XXIX.

It was said by everybody that nothing could be more pathetic than Lord Frogmore’s funeral. When a man dies over seventy he is usually attended to his grave, if he has been a good man, by much respect and reverential seriousness, but not by any acute feelings; but there was something in the aspect of the little boy whom John Parke led by the hand after the old man’s coffin which went to the hearts of the bystanders. Poor little boy! an interloper if ever there was one, a being unnecessary, who never ought to have been. It is needless to say that this was not the popular sentiment. The village folks gaped after the little lord with a partiality and sympathy partly made up of compassion for him, and partly of admiration for his great good fortune. A little thing like that! and already a great lord. People of another class, however, entertained different feelings. The man of business, who was his other guardian, looked at little Mar with a troubled pity that had a little impatience in it. Poor little man! Why on earth had he ever been born? Nobody wanted him. He stood horribly in the way of John Parke and all his sturdy children. It was not at all surprising if John felt it so, and certainly Mrs. John did. There could be no doubt on that subject. They had married on the strength of that inheritance, which nobody ever doubted, and he had been his brother’s heir presumptive all his life. Who wanted this little thing? If even his mother had been fond of him, had taken some pride in him! But she threw him off altogether. The poor little forlorn creature with his little pale face! He was in everybody’s way. But for him John Parke would have come tranquilly into his kingdom, the inheritance which he had expected all his life, which had been his right. There was scarcely anybody, Mr. Blotting thought, who would not be glad if the child were removed to a better world. “If the Lord would take him,” that was what poor people said of their superfluous children. The lawyer could not but think with a feeling not so pious that this would really be the best way. The event would break his aunt’s heart perhaps, but what does it matter if a middle-aged unmarried woman, an old maid, should chance to break her heart? And to everybody else it would be a relief. “They’ll never rare him,” was what the village gossips said. Mr. Blotting had not the slightest doubt that Mrs. John Parke would do the best she possibly could to “rare” Mar, though it would be much against her interest. But what a saving of trouble, what a clearing up of difficulties, if only the Lord would take him. Poor unnecessary child! the old man’s plaything, now nothing but a trouble and hindrance, what to him were all the good things to which he had been born? Nobody wanted him to be born, not even his mother it appeared; and the best thing for him would be to slip away out of life and be heard of no more.

Mar had a very white serious little face, and watched every detail of the funeral service with a strange earnestness. He clutched fast hold of his uncle’s hand as he stood gazing, wondering, not knowing what it was all about. To associate the ominous blackness of that coffin, which was the central object in the dismal scene, with his old kind father, was beyond Mar’s powers. He took a great interest in it, how it was to be got down into the hole, and even stepped forward eagerly, dragging John a step or two to see how it was done, which gave some of the bystanders the idea that the poor little precocious lad was about to throw himself into the grave of his father, and made several take a hasty step towards him to rescue the child. Poor little thing—and not such a bad business either if it could be done—if the Lord would take him. The village people, too, thought it would be a great thing if the Lord would take him. He never would be reared they were sure; and what with his mother, poor lady, who was mad, and his father, who was dead, there was little prospect of any comfort or petting, such as his forlorn orphanhood required, for poor little Mar.

Mary went to the church, though it was considered by Mrs. Hill that it was more decorous that she should not be able to follow the mournful little procession to the grave, and it was not practicable to shut her out afterwards from the assembly of the mourners, before whom the will was read. She came in looking perhaps better than she had ever looked in her life before, in the imposing black and white of her widow’s weeds—that dress which it is so common to decry as hideous, but which is almost always advantageous to its wearer. She was pale and grave, but had that air of soft exhaustion and almost repose which so often follows a grief which is natural, but not impassioned or excessive. The tears came easily to her eyes, her lips occasionally trembled, and her voice broke; but she was quite composed and quiet, guilty of no exaggeration or extravagance of mourning. She came in with her own party surrounding and supporting her—the vicar first of the group, the doctor bringing up the rear with the apologetic air of a man who knows he is not wanted, yet is conscious of a certain right to come. The two factions, so to speak, kept instinctively on different sides of the room, and the vicar and John Parke had a momentary silent struggle for the commanding position in front of the fire which both aimed at. When the one saw the intention of the other he involuntarily hesitated and fell back a step, so that there was first a mutual withdrawal from the coveted place; and then it came simultaneously into the minds of both that to give up this advantage out of mere politeness was unnecessary in the position in which they now stood to each other, so that both began to advance again, as if by a word of command. But if John Parke was more nimble, being younger, the vicar carried more weight, and with a sweep of his large shoulder pushed on, before the other’s attitude was secure. The result was therefore to the advantage of the vicar in this brief preliminary encounter. Mrs. John had placed herself in a comfortable chair near the fire, with her handkerchief and smelling-bottle ready. Mary was more in the open, so to speak, with her mother seated near; Agnes standing by her chair, and the doctor behind. There was little remark as Mr. Blotting read and expounded the will, to which, indeed, no one paid very much attention. They were all tolerably acquainted with its scope and conditions before.

“The chief point to be settled,” said the man of business, “as circumstances may make certain of the late lord’s stipulations impossible, is the future custody and care of poor little Lord Frogmore. I think it may all be managed amicably among us, which would be so much better than any public interference with what the testator wished. I feel sure he would prefer that we should carry out the spirit of his instructions in good intelligence among ourselves.”

“Mr. Blotting,” said Lady Frogmore, “may I be allowed to speak?”

She was the only one to whom the will had been at all new, and she had received it with little gestures of assent and nods of her head.

“Surely, Lady Frogmore, whatever you may wish to say.”

“It is just this,” said Mary. “I agree in all my dear lord says. If there had been—a child. These things,” she said with an old maidenly blush dying her countenance for a moment, “have always, I believe, to be taken into consideration; but there was, you see, no child——”

“Not when the will was written: but a prospect of one, Lady Frogmore.”

“People don’t make settlements upon prospects,” said Mary with a gleam of shrewdness. “Do you think he would have left it like that, if it had come to anything? My dear lord was far more careful of my comfort than that. It is clearly understood, then, that there was no child?”

“Not then,” said Mr. Blotting.

“Not then,” said Mary, “nor ever. Why, what time was that?”

The lawyer read out the date, “Nearly six years ago.”

She had been unmoved by the figures, but started slightly at this.

“Six years! We have not been married—half that time——”

“Oh, yes, my dear Mary,” said Mrs. Hill; “going on for seven years. You see you have been so long away, such a long time away—more than five years.”

“My dear,” said the vicar, “never mind about dates. Mary must be kept quite calm——”

She glanced round, with a wondering, troubled look.

“Five years! Why!” She burst into a little laugh. “I to be away from my dear old lord for five years! Mother, you must be dreaming. But let us return to the other subject. I have a statement to make, which is very serious. I think I have a right to be heard, for no one can know as well as me. I have always been disturbed ever since I was married by the thought of any harm that might happen to Letitia and her family through me. You all know that. Well! Please let everybody listen to me; it is very, very important. My great comfort in my dear lord’s death is this—that everything of that kind has been mercifully averted. You may think me very calm, seeing how much I have lost. Oh, no one can tell what I have lost—the kindest, the dearest! He was old, but that only made us suit each other the better—for you know I was not young. But my comfort in it all is this—that no harm has been done. I don’t understand your talk about a child. John Parke, my husband’s brother, is of course Lord Frogmore; and Letitia is Lady Frogmore: and I am the Dowager; that is all as plain as daylight. And,” said Mary, rising, her eyes full of tears, her gesture full of dignity, “if they think I grudge it they are very, very wrong. I wish them a happy life and long, long years to bear their new name; and my own comfort in losing my dear lord is that no harm has been done to them.”