"What about the shooters, Wilson? I suppose they'll be in directly?"
"They're just finishing the last beat, ma'am. Shall I bring in tea?"
Mrs. Gaddesden assented, and then leaving her seat by the fire she moved
to the window to see if she could discover any signs in the wintry
landscape outside of Philip and his shooting party. As she did so she
heard a rattle of distant shots coming from a point to her right beyond
the girdling trees of the garden. But she saw none of the shooters--only
two persons, walking up and down the stone terrace outside, in the glow
of the November sunset. One was Elizabeth, the other a tall, ungainly,
yet remarkable figure, was a Canadian friend of Elizabeth's, who had
only arrived that forenoon--M. Félix Mariette, of Quebec. According to
Elizabeth, he had come over to attend a Catholic Congress in London.
Mrs. Gaddesden understood that he was an Ultramontane, and that she was
not to mention to him the word "Empire." She knew also that Elizabeth
had made arrangements with a neighbouring landowner, who was also a
Catholic, that he should be motored fifteen miles to Mass on the
following morning, which was Sunday; and her own easy-going Anglican
temper, which carried her to the parish church about twelve times a
year, had been thereby a good deal impressed.
How well those furs became Elizabeth! It was a chill frosty evening, and
Elizabeth's slight form was wrapped in the sables which had been one of
poor Merton's earliest gifts to her. The mother's eye dwelt with an
habitual pride on the daughter's grace of movement and carriage. "She is
always so distinguished," she thought, and then checked herself by the
remembrance that she was applying to Elizabeth an adjective that
Elizabeth particularly disliked. Nevertheless, Mrs. Gaddesden knew very
well what she herself meant by it. She meant something--some quality in
Elizabeth, which was always provoking in her mother's mind despairing
comparisons between what she might make of her life and what she was
actually making, or threatening to make of it.
Alas, for that Canadian journey--that disastrous Canadian journey! Mrs.
Gaddesden's thoughts, as she watched the two strollers outside, were
carried back to the moment in early August when Arthur Delaine had
reappeared in her drawing-room, three weeks before Elizabeth's return,
and she had gathered from his cautious and stammering revelations what
kind of man it was who seemed to have established this strange hold on
her daughter. Delaine, she thought, had spoken most generously of
Elizabeth and his own disappointment, and most kindly of this
Mr. Anderson.
"I know nothing against him personally--nothing! No doubt a very
estimable young fellow, with just the kind of ability that will help him
in Canada. Lady Merton, I imagine, will have told you of the sad events
in which we found him involved?"
Mrs. Gaddesden had replied that certainly Elizabeth had told her the
whole story, so far as it concerned Mr. Anderson. She pointed to the
letters beside her.
"But you cannot suppose," had been her further indignant remark, "that
Elizabeth would ever dream of marrying him!"
"That, my dear old friend, is for her mother to find out," Delaine had
replied, not without a touch of venom. "I can certainly assure you that
Lady Merton is deeply interested in this young man, and he in her."
"Elizabeth--exiling herself in Canada--burying herself on the
prairies--when she might have everything here--the best of
everything--at her feet. It is inconceivable!"
Delaine had agreed that it was inconceivable, and they had mourned
together over the grotesque possibilities of life. "But you will save
her," he had said at last. "You will save her! You will point out to her
all she would be giving up--the absurdity, the really criminal waste
of it!"
On which he had gloomily taken his departure for an archæological
congress at Berlin, and an autumn in Italy; and a few weeks later she
had recovered her darling Elizabeth, paler and thinner than before--and
quite, quite incomprehensible!
As for "saving" her, Mrs. Gaddesden had not been allowed to attempt it.
In the first place, Elizabeth had stoutly denied that there was anything
to save her from. "Don't believe anything at all, dear Mummy, that
Arthur Delaine may have said to you! I have made a great friend--of a
very interesting man; and I am going to correspond with him. He is
coming to London in November, and I have asked him to stay here. And you
must be _very_ kind to him, darling--just as kind as you can be--for he
has had a hard time--he saved Philip's life--and he is an uncommonly
fine fellow!"
And with that--great readiness to talk about everything except just
what Mrs. Gaddesden most wanted to know. Elizabeth sitting on her
mother's bed at night, crooning about Canada--her soft brown hair over
her shoulders, and her eyes sparkling with patriotic enthusiasm, was a
charming figure. But let Mrs. Gaddesden attempt to probe and penetrate
beyond a certain point, and the way was resolutely barred. Elizabeth
would kiss her mother tenderly--it was as though her own reticence hurt
her--but would say nothing. Mrs. Gaddesden could only feel sorely that a
great change had come over the being she loved best in the world, and
that she was not to know the whys and wherefores of it.
And Philip--alack! had been of very little use to her in the matter!
"Don't you bother your head, Mother! Anderson's an awfully good
chap--but he's not going to marry Elizabeth. Told me he knew he wasn't
the kind. And of course he isn't--must draw the line somewhere--hang it!
But he's an awfully decent fellow. He's not going to push himself in
where he isn't wanted. You let Elizabeth alone, Mummy--it'll work off.
And of course we must be civil to him when he comes over--I should jolly
well think we must--considering he saved my life!"
Certainly they must be civil! News of Anderson's sailing and arrival
had been anxiously looked for. He had reached London three days before
this date, had presented his credentials at the Board of Trade and the
Colonial Office, and after various preliminary interviews with
ministers, was now coming down to Martindale for a week-end before the
assembling of the small conference of English and colonial
representatives to which he had been sent.
Mrs. Gaddesden saw from the various notices of his arrival in the
English papers that even in England, among the initiated he was
understood to be a man of mark. She was all impatience to see him, and
had shown it outwardly much more plainly than Elizabeth. How quiet
Elizabeth had been these last days! moving about the house so silently,
with vaguely smiling eyes, like one husbanding her strength before
an ordeal.
What was going to happen? Mrs. Gaddesden was conscious in her own mind
of a strained hush of expectation. But she had never ventured to say a
word to Elizabeth. In half an hour--or less--he would be here. A motor
had been sent to meet the express train at the country town fifteen
miles off. Mrs. Gaddesden looked round her in the warm dusk, as though
trying to forecast how Martindale and its inmates would look to the
new-comer. She saw a room of medium size, which from the end of the
sixteenth century had been known as the Red Drawing Room--a room
panelled in stamped Cordovan leather, and filled with rare and beautiful
things; with ebony cabinets, and fine lacquer; with the rarest of
oriental carpets, with carved chairs, and luxurious sofas. Set here and
there, sparingly, among the shadows, as though in scorn of any vulgar
profusion, the eye caught the gleam of old silver, or rock crystal, or
agate; _bibelots_ collected a hundred and fifty years ago by a Gaddesden
of taste, and still in their original places. Overhead, the uneven
stucco ceiling showed a pattern of Tudor roses; opposite to Mrs.
Gaddesden the wall was divided between a round mirror, in whose depths
she saw herself reflected and a fine Holbein portrait of a man, in a
flat velvet hat on a green background. Over the carved mantelpiece with
its date of 1586, there reigned a Romney portrait--one of the most
famous in existence--of a young girl in black. Elizabeth Merton bore a
curious resemblance to it. Chrysanthemums, white, yellow and purple,
gleamed amid the richness of the room; while the light of the solitary
lamp beside which Mrs. Gaddesden had been sitting with her embroidery,
blended with the orange glow from outside now streaming in through the
unshuttered windows, to deepen a colour effect of extraordinary beauty,
produced partly by time, partly by the conscious effort of a dozen
generations.
And from the window, under the winter sunset, Mrs. Gaddesden could see,
at right angles to her on either side, the northern and southern wings
of the great house; the sloping lawns; the river winding through the
park; the ivy-grown church among the trees; the distant woods and
plantations; the purple outlines of the fells. Just as in the room
within, so the scene without was fused into a perfect harmony and
keeping by the mellowing light. There was in it not a jarring note, a
ragged line--age and dignity, wealth and undisputed place: Martindale
expressed them all. The Gaddesdens had twice refused a peerage; and with
contempt. In their belief, to be Mr. Gaddesden of Martindale was enough;
a dukedom could not have bettered it. And the whole country-side in
which they had been rooted for centuries agreed with them. There had
even been a certain disapproval of the financial successes of Philip
Gaddesden's father. It was true that the Gaddesden rents had gone down.
But the country, however commercialised itself, looked with jealousy on
any intrusion of "commercialism" into the guarded and venerable
precincts of Martindale.
The little lady who was now, till Philip's majority and marriage,
mistress of Martindale, was a small, soft, tremulous person, without the
intelligence of her daughter, but by no means without character.
Secretly she had often felt oppressed by her surroundings. Whenever
Philip married, she would find it no hardship at all to retire to the
dower house at the edge of the park. Meanwhile she did her best to
uphold the ancient ways. But if _she_ sometimes found Martindale
oppressive--too old, too large, too rich, too perfect--how was it going
to strike a young Canadian, fresh from the prairies, who had never been
in England before?
A sudden sound of many footsteps in the hall. The drawing-room door was
thrown open by Philip, and a troop of men entered. A fresh-coloured man
with grizzled hair led the van.
"Well, Mrs. Gaddesden, here we all are. Philip has given us a capital
day!"
A group of men followed him; the agent of the property, two small
neighbouring squires, a broad-browed burly man in knickerbockers, who
was apparently a clergyman, to judge from his white tie, the adjutant of
the local regiment, and a couple of good-looking youths, Etonian friends
of Philip. Elizabeth and Mariette came in from the garden, and a young
cousin of the Gaddesdens, a Miss Lucas, slipped into the room under
Elizabeth's wing. She was a pretty girl, dressed in an elaborate
demi-toilette of white chiffon, and the younger men of the party in
their shooting dress--with Philip at their head--were presently
clustered thick about her, like bees after pollen. It was clear, indeed,
that Philip was paying her considerable attention, and as he laughed and
sparred with her, the transient colour that exercise had given him
disappeared, and a pale look of excitement took its place.
Mariette glanced from one to another with a scarcely disguised
curiosity. This was only his third visit to England and he felt himself
in a foreign country. That was a _pasteur_ he supposed, in the
gaiters--grotesque! And why was the young lady in evening dress, while
Lady Merton, now that she had thrown off her furs, appeared in the
severest of tweed coats and skirts? The rosy old fellow beside Mrs.
Gaddesden was, he understood from Lady Merton, the Lord Lieutenant of
the county.
But at that moment his hostess laid hands upon him to present him to her
neighbour. "Monsieur Mariette--Lord Waynflete."
"Delighted to see you," said the great man affably, holding out his
hand. "What a fine place Canada is getting! I am thinking of sending my
third son there."
Mariette bowed.
"There will be room for him."
"I am afraid he hasn't brains enough to do much here--but perhaps in a
new country--"
"He will not require them? Yes, it is a common opinion," said Mariette,
with composure. Lord Waynflete stared a little, and returned to his
hostess. Mariette betook himself to Elizabeth for tea, and she
introduced him to the girl in white, who looked at him with enthusiasm,
and at once threw over her bevy of young men, in favour of the
spectacled and lean-faced stranger.
"You are a Catholic, Monsieur?" she asked him, fervently. "How I envy
you! I _adore_ the Oratory! When we are in town I always go there to
Benediction--unless Mamma wants me at home to pour out tea. Do you know
Cardinal C----?"
She named a Cardinal Archbishop, then presiding over the diocese of
Westminster.
"Yes, mademoiselle, I know him quite well. I have just been staying with
him."
She clasped her hands eagerly.
"How _very_ interesting! I know him a little. _Isn't_ he nice?"
"No," said Mariette resolutely. "He is magnificent--a saint--a
scholar--everything--but not nice!"
The girl looked a little puzzled, then angry, and after a few minutes'
more conversation she returned to her young men, conspicuously turning
her back on Mariette.
He threw a deprecating, half-penitent look at Elizabeth, whose faced
twitched with amusement, and sat down in a corner behind her that he
might observe without talking. His quick intelligence sorted the people
about him almost at once--the two yeoman-squires, who were not quite at
home in Mrs. Gaddesden's drawing-room, were awkward with their tea-cups,
and talked to each other in subdued voices, till Elizabeth found them
out, summoned them to her side, and made them happy; the agent who was
helping Lady Merton with tea, making himself generally useful; Philip
and another gilded youth, the son, he understood, of a neighbouring
peer, who were flirting with the girl in white; and yet a third
fastidious Etonian, who was clearly bored by the ladies, and was amusing
himself with the adjutant and a cigarette in a distant corner. His eyes
came back at last to the _pasteur_. An able face after all; cool,
shrewd, and not unspiritual. Very soon, he, the parson--whose name was
Everett--and Elizabeth were drawn into conversation, and Marietta under
Everett's good-humoured glance found himself observed as well
as observer.
"You are trying to decipher us?" said Everett, at last, with a smile.
"Well, we are not easy."
"Could you be a great nation if you were?"
"Perhaps not. England just now is a palimpsest--the new writing
everywhere on top of the old. Yet it is the same parchment, and the old
is there. Now _you_ are writing on a fresh skin."
"But with the old ideas!" said Mariette, a flash in his dark eyes.
"Church--State--family!--there is nothing else to write with."
The two men drew closer together, and plunged into conversation.
Elizabeth was left solitary a moment, behind the tea-things. The buzz of
the room, the hearty laugh of the Lord Lieutenant, reached the outer
ear. But every deeper sense was strained to catch a voice--a step--that
must soon be here. And presently across the room, her eyes met her
mother's, and their two expectancies touched.
"Mother!--here is Mr. Anderson!"
Philip entered joyously, escorting his guest.
To Anderson's half-dazzled sight, the room, which was now fully lit by
lamplight and fire, seemed crowded. He found himself greeted by a gentle
grey-haired lady of fifty-five, with a strong likeness to a face he
knew; and then his hand touched Elizabeth's. Various commonplaces passed
between him and her, as to his journey, the new motor which had brought
him to the house, the frosty evening. Mariette gave him a nod and smile,
and he was introduced to various men who bowed without any change of
expression, and to a girl, who smiled carelessly, and turned immediately
towards Philip, hanging over the back of her chair.
Elizabeth pointed to a seat beside her, and gave him tea. They talked of
London a little, and his first impressions. All the time he was trying
to grasp the identity of the woman speaking with the woman he had parted
from in Canada. Something surely had gone? This restrained and rather
cold person was not the Elizabeth of the Rockies. He watched her when
she turned from him to her other guests; her light impersonal manner
towards the younger men, with its occasional touch of satire; the
friendly relation between her and the parson; the kindly deference she
showed the old Lord Lieutenant. Evidently she was mistress here, much
more than her mother. Everything seemed to be referred to her, to circle
round her.
Presently there was a stir in the room. Lord Waynflete asked for his
carriage.
"Don't forget, my dear lady, that you open the new Town Hall next
Wednesday," he said, as he made his way to Elizabeth.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"But you make the speech!"
"Not at all. They only want to hear you. And there'll be a great crowd."
"Elizabeth can't speak worth a cent!" said Philip, with brotherly
candour. "Can you, Lisa?"
"I don't believe it," said Lord Waynflete, "but it don't matter. All
they want is that a Gaddesden should say something. Ah, Mrs.
Gaddesden--how glorious the Romney looks to-night!" He turned to the
fireplace, admiring the illuminated picture, his hands on his sides.
"Is it an ancestress?" Mariette addressed the question to Elizabeth.
"Yes. She had three husbands, and is supposed to have murdered the
fourth," said Elizabeth drily.
"All the same she's an extremely handsome woman," put in Lord Waynflete.
"And as you're the image of her, Lady Merton, you'd better not run her
down." Elizabeth joined in the laugh against herself and the speaker
turned to Anderson.
"You'll find this place a perfect treasure-house, Mr. Anderson, and I
advise you to study it--for the Radicals won't leave any of us anything,
before many years are out. You're from Manitoba? Ah, you're not
troubled with any of these Socialist fellows yet! But you'll get
'em--you'll get 'em--like rats in the corn. They'll pull the old flag
down if they can. But you'll help us to keep it flying. The Colonies are
our hope--we look to the Colonies!"
The handsome old man raised an oratorical hand, and looked round on his
audience, like one to whom public speaking was second nature.
Anderson made a gesture of assent; he was not really expected to say
anything. Mariette in the background observed the speaker with an amused
and critical detachment.
"Your carriage will be round directly, Lord Waynflete," said Philip,
"but I don't see why you should go."
"My dear fellow--I have to catch the night train. There is a most
important debate in the House of Lords to-morrow." He turned to the
Canadian politely. "Of course you know there is an autumn session on.
With these Radical Governments we shall soon have one every year."
"What! the Education Bill again to-morrow?" said Everett. "What are you
going to do with it?"
Lord Waynflete looked at the speaker with some distaste. He did not much
approve of sporting parsons, and Everett's opinions were too Liberal to
please him. But he let himself be drawn, and soon the whole room was in
eager debate on some of the old hot issues between Church and Dissent.
Lord Waynflete ceased to be merely fatuous and kindly. His talk became
shrewd, statesmanlike even; he was the typical English aristocrat and
Anglican Churchman, discussing topics with which he had been familiar
from his cradle, and in a manner and tone which every man in the
room--save the two Canadians--accepted without question. He was the
natural leader of these men of the land-owning or military class; they
liked to hear him harangue; and harangue he did, till the striking of a
clock suddenly checked him.
"I must be off! Well, Mrs. Gaddesden, it's the _Church_--the Church we
have to think of!--the Church we have to fight for! What would England
be without the Church--let's ask ourselves that. Good-bye--good-bye!"
"Is he talking of the Anglican establishment?" muttered Mariette. "_Quel
drôle de vieillard!_"
The parson heard him, and, with a twinkle in his eyes, turned and
proposed to show the French Canadian the famous library of the house.
The party melted away. Even Elizabeth had been summoned for some last
word with Lord Waynflete on the subject of the opening of the Town Hall.
Anderson was left alone.
He looked around him, at the room, the pictures, the panelled walls,
and then moving to the window which was still unshuttered, he gazed out
into the starlit dusk, and the dim, stately landscape. There were lights
in the church showing the stained glass of the perpendicular windows,
and a flight of rooks was circling round the old tower.
As he stood there, somebody came back into the room. It was the
adjutant, looking for his hat.
"Jolly old place, isn't it?" said the young man civilly, seeing that the
stranger was studying the view. "It's to be hoped that Philip will keep
it up properly."
"He seems fond of it," said Anderson.
"Oh, yes! But you've got to be a big man to fill the position. However,
there's money enough. They're all rich--and they marry money."
Anderson murmured something inaudible, and the young man departed.
A little later Anderson and Elizabeth were seated together in the Red
Drawing Room. Mrs. Gaddesden, after a little perfunctory conversation
with the new-comer, had disappeared on the plea of letters to write. The
girl in white, the centre of a large party in the hall, was flirting to
her heart's content. Philip would have dearly liked to stay and flirt
with her himself; but his mother, terrified by his pallor and fatigue
after the exertion of the shoot, had hurried him off to take a warm bath
and rest before dinner. So that Anderson and Elizabeth were alone.
Conversation between them did not move easily. Elizabeth was conscious
of an oppression against which it seemed vain to fight. Up to the moment
of his sailing from Canada his letters had been frank and full, the
letters of a deeply attached friend, though with no trace in them of the
language of love. What change was it that the touch of English
ground--the sight of Martindale--had wrought? He talked with some
readiness of the early stages of his mission--of the kindness shown to
him by English public men, and the impressions of a first night in the
House of Commons. But his manner was constrained; anything that he said
might have been heard by all the world; and as their talk progressed,
Elizabeth felt a miserable paralysis descending on her own will. She
grew whiter and whiter. This old house in which they sat, with its
splendours and treasures, this environment of the past all about them
seemed to engulf and entomb them both. She had looked forward with a
girlish pleasure--and yet with a certain tremor--to showing Anderson her
old home, the things she loved and had inherited. And now it was as
though she were vulgarly conscious of wealth and ancestry as dividing
her from him. The wildness within her which found its scope and its
voice in Canada was here like an imprisoned stream, chafing in caverns
underground. Ah! it had been easy to defy the Old World in Canada, its
myriad voices and claims--the many-fingered magic with which an old
society plays on those born into it!
"I shall be here perhaps a month," said Anderson, "but then I shall be
wanted at Ottawa."
And he began to describe a new matter in which he had been lately
engaged--a large development scheme applying to some of the great Peace
River region north of Edmonton. And as he told her of his August journey
through this noble country, with its superb rivers, its shining lakes
and forests, and its scattered settlers, waiting for a Government which
was their servant and not their tyrant, to come and help their first
steps in ordered civilisation; to bring steamers to their waters,
railways to link their settlements, and fresh settlers to let loose the
fertile forces of their earth--she suddenly saw in him his old self--the
Anderson who had sat beside her in the crossing of the prairies, who had
looked into her eyes the day of Roger's Pass. He had grown older and
thinner; his hair was even lightly touched with grey. But the traces in
him of endurance and of pain were like the weathering of a fine
building; mellowing had come, and strength had not been lost.
Yet still no word of feeling, of intimacy even. Her soul cried out
within her, but there was no answer. Then, when it was time to dress,
and she led him through the hall, to the inlaid staircase with its
famous balustrading--early English ironwork of extraordinary
delicacy--and through the endless corridors upstairs, old and dim, but
crowded with portraits and fine furniture, Anderson looked round him in
amazement.
"What a wonderful place!"
"It is too old!" cried Elizabeth, petulantly; then with a touch of
repentance--"Yet of course we love it. We are not so stifled here as you
would be."
He smiled and did not reply.
"Confess you have been stifled--ever since you came to England."
He drew a long breath, throwing back his head with a gesture which made
Elizabeth smile. He smiled in return.
"It was you who warned me how small it would all seem. Such little
fields--such little rivers--such tiny journeys! And these immense towns
treading on each other's heels. Don't you feel crowded up?"
"You are home-sick already?"
He laughed--"No, no!" But the gleam in his eyes admitted it. And
Elizabeth's heart sank--down and down.
* * * * *
A few more guests arrived for Sunday--a couple of politicians, a
journalist, a poet, one or two agreeable women, a young Lord S., who had
just succeeded to one of the oldest of English marquisates, and so on.
Elizabeth had chosen the party to give Anderson pleasure, and as a guest
he did not disappoint her pride in him. He talked well and modestly, and
the feeling towards Canada and the Canadians in English society had been
of late years so friendly that although there was often colossal
ignorance, there was no coolness in the atmosphere about him. Lord S.
confused Lake Superior with Lake Ontario, and was of opinion that the
Mackenzie River flowed into the Ottawa. But he was kind enough to say
that he would far sooner go to Canada than any of "those beastly places
abroad"--and as he was just a simple handsome youth, Anderson took to
him, as he had taken to Philip at Lake Louise, and by the afternoon of
Sunday was talking sport and big game in a manner to hold the
smoking-room enthralled.
Only unfortunately Philip was not there to hear. He had been over-tired
by the shoot, and had caught a chill beside. The doctor was in the
house, and Mrs. Gaddesden had very little mind to give to her Sunday
party. Elizabeth felt a thrill of something like comfort as she noticed
how in the course of the day Anderson unconsciously slipped back into
the old Canadian position; sitting with Philip, amusing him and
"chaffing" him; inducing him to obey his doctor; cheering his mother,
and in general producing in Martindale itself the same impression of
masculine help and support which he had produced on Elizabeth, five
months before, in a Canadian hotel.
By Sunday evening Mrs. Gaddesden, instead of a watchful enemy, had
become his firm friend; and in her timid, confused way she asked him to
come for a walk with her in the November dusk. Then, to his
astonishment, she poured out her heart to him about her son, whose
health, together with his recklessness, his determination to live like
other and sound men, was making the two women who loved him more and
more anxious. Anderson was very sorry for the little lady, and genuinely
alarmed himself with regard to Philip, whose physical condition seemed
to him to have changed considerably for the worse since the Canadian
journey. His kindness, his real concern, melted Mrs. Gaddesden's heart.
"I hope we shall find you in town when we come up!" she said, eagerly,
as they turned back to the house, forgetting, in her maternal egotism,
everything but her boy. "Our man here wants a consultation. We shall go
up next week for a short time before Christmas."
Anderson hesitated a moment.
"Yes," he said, slowly, but in a changed voice, "Yes, I shall still be
there."
Whereupon, with perturbation, Mrs. Gaddesden at last remembered there
were other lions in the path. They had not said a single word--however
conventional--of Elizabeth. But she quickly consoled herself by the
reflection that he must have seen by now, poor fellow, how hopeless it
was; and that being so, what was there to be said against admitting him
to their circle, as a real friend of all the family--Philip's friend,
Elizabeth's, and her own?
That night Mrs. Gaddesden was awakened by her maid between twelve and
one. Mr. Gaddesden wanted a certain medicine that he thought was in his
mother's room. Mrs. Gaddesden threw on her dressing-gown and looked for
it anxiously in vain. Perhaps Elizabeth might remember where it was last
seen. She hurried to her. Elizabeth had a sitting-room and bedroom at
the end of the corridor, and Mrs. Gaddesden went into the sitting-room
first, as quietly as possible, so as not to startle her daughter.
She had hardly entered and closed the door behind her, guided by the
light of a still flickering fire, when a sound from the inner room
arrested her.
Elizabeth--Elizabeth in distress?
The mother stood rooted to the spot, in a sudden anguish.
Elizabeth--sobbing? Only once in her life had Mrs. Gaddesden heard that
sound before--the night that the news of Francis Merton's death reached
Martindale, and Elizabeth had wept, as her mother believed, more for
what her young husband might have been to her, than for what he had
been. Elizabeth's eyes filled readily with tears answering to pity or
high feeling; but this fierce stifled emotion--this abandonment of pain!
Mrs. Gaddesden stood trembling and motionless, the tears on her own
cheeks. Conjecture hurried through her mind. She seemed to be learning
her daughter, her gay and tender Elizabeth, afresh. At last she turned
and crept out of the room, noiselessly shutting the door. After
lingering a while in the passage, she knocked, with an uncertain hand,
and waited till Elizabeth came--Elizabeth, hardly visible in the
firelight, her brown hair falling like a veil round her face.