Kitabı oku: «Robin Redbreast: A Story for Girls», sayfa 13

Frances and even Eugene were almost speechless with excitement: Jacinth, though wound up to a tremendous pitch, was too proud and too self-contained by habit to show what she was feeling.

'Lady Myrtle hopes you will come back with us, Aunt Alison,' she said quietly, 'at least to spend the rest of the day, as you wouldn't consent to come to stay for two or three.'

Miss Mildmay, before replying, glanced at her niece with a curious sort of admiration, not altogether free from disappointment.

'Jacinth certainly is extraordinarily self-controlled,' she thought. Very self-controlled, like very reserved people do not always entirely appreciate their own characteristics in another! But aloud she replied much in the same matter-of-fact tone.

'It is very good of her, but I would rather find my own way home from the station. I will come out to Robin Redbreast to-morrow or the day after to have a talk with your mother. She will have more than enough to occupy her to-day.'

Jacinth secretly commended her aunt's good sense, but the younger ones seemed a little sorry. They wanted everybody to be as happy as themselves.

'It isn't that you don't think there'd be room enough in the carriage, Aunt Alison, is it?' said Frances, anxiously. 'For the closed wagonette is coming too for mamma's maid and the luggage, and I wouldn't mind the least bit getting into it.'

'Or I could go on the box,' suggested Eugene. 'I could quite squeeze in between Bailey and Fred, and I'm sure they wouldn't mind.'

'Thank you, dears,' said Miss Mildmay, more warmly than she had spoken to Jacinth; 'thank you very much. No; it is not on that account. And indeed there is plenty of room in here for Eugene extra. But I shall enjoy more, coming to-morrow or the day after, and then you must all spare me your mother for an hour or so.'

The train was late of course. There was that strange odd bit of time we all know so well – of waiting and expectancy, intensified of course in the present case by the fact that the mother they were about to meet was literally a stranger to the three children. Even Jacinth was a good deal paler than her wont, when at last the train slowly steamed into the station and drew up beside the platform where they were standing.

Would she have known her mother, she asked herself afterwards? Scarcely; there were several passengers who might have been the one. She felt almost bewildered when Aunt Alison turned from all, to hurry forward to greet a slight, girlish-looking figure – girlish in herself, though not in attire or bearing – who was gazing about her with eager eyes.

'Eugenia.'

'Alison,' and the two sisters-in-law had caught each other's hands and kissed each other before Jacinth had really taken in that this was 'mamma!'

Then Miss Mildmay drew back without another word than 'Here they are! I did want to give them over to you, myself, you see,' and her usually calm voice trembled a little.

And Jacinth felt an arm thrown round her, and the words whispered into her ear, 'My darling child!' and for almost the first time in her life a choking sensation that was not pain, and a rush to her eyes of tears that were not sorrow, made her dimly conscious that she knew her own nature and its depths less fully than she had imagined.

And then in turn she fell back a little while the two younger ones, with a glad cry from Francie of 'Mamma, mamma!' and a solemn 'It's me; I'm Eugene,' from the small brother, were drawn close, close, by the arms that had not held them for so long, and kissed as they never remembered having been kissed before.

And somehow – I don't think any of them could ever clearly have told how; perhaps Mrs Mildmay's maid had a head on her shoulders and was equal to the occasion – they all found themselves in the landau again; all, that is to say, except Aunt Alison, who stood waving good-bye to them all from the curbstone, her face for once actually rosy with excitement.

'Mamma!' said Frances, and then she stopped short. 'It's too lovely, I can't speak.'

Eugene was stroking his mother's mantle. It was of soft downy material, rich in colour and texture.

'How pretty!' he said.

Jacinth glanced at it and the rest of her mother's attire, and at her mother herself. She felt proud of her, of her undeniable beauty and air of distinction – proud to present her to Lady Myrtle – and yet —

'I wonder if mamma is very much taken up with her clothes,' she thought. 'I wonder if she is extravagant. I expect I shall have to take a good deal upon me, as Lady Myrtle said. I suppose people in India really grow very unpractical.'

Poor Lady Myrtle! Little had she intended her words to be thus travestied.

But the reflection was not disagreeable to Jacinth, to whom a position of responsibility and management was always congenial. She took her mother's hand in hers, and smiling at Eugene replied: 'Yes indeed. What lovely fur trimming, mamma! And what a pretty bonnet! You couldn't have had that in India, surely?'

'No,' said Mrs Mildmay, smiling back at her children, 'I got one or two things in London yesterday. I thought you would like me to look nice, especially as I was going straight to Robin Redbreast. I don't believe poor dear Aunt Alison would have seen any difference if I had come back in the same clothes I went away in all those years ago.'

'No,' agreed Frances, 'I don't believe she would.'

But Jacinth looked a little grave; she could not quite 'make out' her mother.

'Aunt Alison spends almost nothing on herself,' she said. 'She gives away every farthing she possibly can.'

'I know she does, dear. She is the most self-denying person in those ways that I have ever met,' said Mrs Mildmay heartily, though mentally hoping to herself that Jacinth was not very matter-of-fact. But Eugene was looking very solemn.

'What are you thinking of, my boy? his mother asked.

'Those clothes,' he said, 'those clothes what you went away with. They must be wored out. I was only two when you went away, mamma?'

This made them all laugh, which was perhaps a good thing – a slight relief to the over-excitement which in their different ways all had been experiencing.

'Mamma,' said Frances earnestly, when the laughter had calmed down, 'I must tell you, I had no idea you were so pretty. I think you are the very prettiest person I ever saw.'

'So do I,' Eugene chimed in.

Mrs Mildmay could not resist kissing again the two sweet flushed faces.

'My darlings,' she said, 'I hope you will always think so, in one way, even when my hair is white and my face old and wrinkled.'

'I hope,' thought Jacinth to herself, 'I hope mamma isn't – not vain, it's such a contemptible word – but I hope she doesn't care too much for looks and outside things of that kind.'

But the very defining her thoughts startled her. She knew she had no right to begin criticising her mother in this way, and she pulled herself up.

'Mamma,' she said, and her tone was both perfectly natural and simple, and more unconstrained than Mrs Mildmay had yet heard it – 'mamma, isn't it really delightful, and isn't it almost wonderful that we should be all staying with Lady Myrtle and taking you to her? Isn't it really like a fairy story?'

'It is indeed,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'It is wonderful. The way that she seemed to start up just when – so soon after we had lost dear granny, and in a sense our home.'

'It would have been lovely, of course, for you to come back to us anyway,' said Frances, 'but it wouldn't have been so lovely if we'd all been going to Aunt Alison's. It's rather a poky place, you know, mamma, and in India I suppose the houses are all enormous. I can only remember like in a dream, about very big, very white rooms.'

'The last house we've had was far from enormous,' said her mother with a smile, 'still it was very nice. I often wished you and Jassie could have been with us there.'

'But – oh mamma, you'll never go back again,' pleaded Frances. 'We've got dear papa's coming to look forward to now, and after that – never mind where we live, if only we stay together.'

Mrs Mildmay smiled, though for the first time with a touch of sadness.

'Don't let us spoil to-day by looking forward, dear; except, as you say, to your father's coming. If he were here, everything would seem perfect.'

'And here's Robin Redbreast,' exclaimed Jacinth, as they turned the corner of the lane, 'and "Uncle Marmy's gates" wide open in your honour. Generally we drive in at the side. Now, mamma, take a good look. First impressions are everything, you know. Isn't this perfect?'

She seemed full of enthusiasm, which her mother was glad to see and quick to respond to.

'It is beautiful: I have never seen anything like it,' she replied warmly. 'And could there have been a more exquisite day?'

'And mamma, mamma,' cried Eugene, 'you know, don't you, it was all me that got friends with Lady Myrtle; me, with getting —wursty, that day, you know?'

CHAPTER XIV.
A COURAGEOUS PLEADER

Lady Myrtle was standing in the porch. It seemed to her only fitting that she should come thus far to welcome such a guest, and something in her almost tremulously affectionate greeting touched Mrs Mildmay keenly.

'It is so good of you – meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend. 'And, oh, how delightful it is to have you and this to come to!'

'My dear, my dear,' said Lady Myrtle, 'don't thank me. Only let me see that you and your children are happy and at home with me; that is all I care about.'

And again she kissed the Eugenia she had not seen since her childhood.

Mrs Mildmay was very like Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character' – no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness.

'You are not like your mother,' said Lady Myrtle, when the little group had made its way into the drawing-room where tea was already waiting. 'I knew you were not. Yet something in your voice recalls her. I suppose you can scarcely remember her,' she went on, 'not well enough to see the really marvellous resemblance between her and my child here – my child as well as yours?' and she smiled at Jacinth who was standing by, and laid her hand affectionately on the girl's arm.

'Oh yes,' Mrs Mildmay replied, 'I remember enough for that. And then I have one or two excellent portraits, besides the large one at Stannesley; at least my father always told me they were excellent. And even when Jassie was quite tiny, he saw the likeness and was delighted at it. But I – I am quite "Denison" I know, and so are Francie and Eugene. The odd thing is that Jassie is also in some ways more like the Mildmays than the two others.'

'I have never seen your husband, you know,' said Lady Myrtle. 'I can't say that the likeness to good Miss Alison Mildmay has ever struck me.'

The quaint way in which the old lady said it made them all smile a little – all, that is to say, except Jacinth. She had not altogether relished her mother's remark.

But that evening was a most happy one – perhaps the very happiest the two younger children had ever known – and one certainly to be marked with a white stone in the memory of all the five who spent it together. By a tacit agreement no uncertain or anxious questions were touched upon. Mrs Mildmay was able to give a good account of their father's health at the time of her leaving him, to the children, and made them all laugh by her account of her brother Marmaduke's description of the terrible formality of that first evening at Market Square Place. She seemed gifted with a wonderful amount of fun and merriment: Jacinth caught herself laughing after a fashion which was very rare with her.

'Mamma is ever so much younger than I,' she said to herself when she found herself alone for the night. 'She is as charming and sweet as she can be. But I can foresee some things pretty clearly. It is a good thing I am of a different character. What would happen if we were all as impulsive and' – 'childish' was the word in her thoughts, but again she felt a little startled at the length to which her criticism of her mother was going, and pulled herself up – 'as impulsive as Francie, and as mamma must be by nature?'

And she fell asleep in the midst of a not unpleasing picture of herself as the wise, considerate prop of the whole family, looked up to by her parents, leant upon by Lady Myrtle, a Lady Bountiful to all within her reach, a – But here I think her imaginings probably faded into the phantasmagoria of dreams.

Mrs Mildmay had bidden her elder girl a fond good-night; then she hastened along the passage for a moment's peep into Frances's little room.

'The child will be asleep, I daresay,' she thought to herself. 'It is almost selfish of me to risk waking her. But I will be very careful, and I really cannot resist the delight of seeing them in bed, of knowing they are under the same roof again at last.'

And she stole in. It was a moonlight night. Francie had been in bed some little time, but she was not asleep. She was lying with her eyes wide open gazing out through the unshaded window, which was within her view, at the tree tops, illumined by the silvery radiance, and swaying gently in the soft night breeze; her shaggy hair making a background on the pillow for her sweet, childish face. And at the faint sound her mother made on entering she started up.

'Mamma, mamma!' she cried, as Mrs Mildmay knelt down and threw her arms round the little figure. 'My own little mamma, my own, my own! to think it is you, to think I really and truly have you. Oh, can I ever be so happy again! Oh, mamma darling, I don't know how to thank God enough; that was what I was thinking about when you came in. No, no, you didn't wake me. I haven't been asleep.'

'My darling, my own little girl!' whispered Mrs Mildmay.

'Mamma dear,' Frances went on, after a moment's beautiful silence. 'I feel already that I can tell you everything. Now there's one thing; it's come into my mind again since I've been in bed; I'm afraid I forgot about it in the first rush of happiness, you know, but now I've remembered. Mamma, don't you think when we're awfully happy we should try to do something for other people – that God means us to? Well, it's about the Harpers. Oh, mamma, I'm afraid they are having such very bad troubles just now.'

Mrs Mildmay started a little.

'You don't mean, dear – you haven't heard anything quite lately, about the father, Captain Harper, have you?'

'No,' said Frances, 'I've not heard anything. Miss Falmouth was the only girl who knew about them away from school, and she has left. But you remember I wrote to you that Bessie and Margaret mightn't come back, and they haven't. And I'm sure it's because they've got poorer with their father being so ill. Mamma, did you hear anything more from their aunt before you left?'

'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay sadly. 'I heard a good deal. All there is to hear, indeed. A letter from the eldest daughter, Camilla Harper – the one who wrote to you – came to Mrs Lyle just before I left. She showed it to me. I am afraid it is as you say, Francie; they have very heavy troubles and anxieties indeed.'

'And don't you think they're good, really very good people, mamma?' asked the child eagerly.

'I think they seem quite wonderfully good,' said her mother, warmly. 'I cannot understand; I mean I can scarcely realise, how they can all be so brave and cheerful, when one thing after another – one misfortune after another – has come to try them so terribly. Yes, it almost frightens me to think of our happiness in comparison with their troubles, Francie.'

'But mamma,' and Frances hesitated. 'If we can do anything to help them? Wouldn't that make it seem righter? I mean as if we were meant to do it.'

'I am going to try,' said Mrs Mildmay. Her voice was low and quiet, but it carried assurance with it. 'Your father and I talked a great deal about it after we heard the worst of things from Mrs Lyle. And we decided that it would be only right, even at the risk of annoying or even offending Lady Myrtle. It seems "meant" as you say, Francie – the coincidences of it all – my coming straight here, and that letter reaching Mrs Lyle just before I left. So we quite made up our minds about it.'

Frances drew a deep breath of thankfulness.

'It does seem as if everything I have most wanted was going to come,' she said.

Then, as her mother, after kissing her again, was turning to leave the room, telling her she really 'must go to sleep,' the little girl called her back for a moment.

'Mamma, dear,' she said. 'If you don't mind, would you please not say anything to Jass about what we've been talking of.'

Mrs Mildmay looked a little surprised.

'Why not, dear? Why should I not tell her as well as you?'

'Oh well, because Jass didn't know Bessie and Margaret nearly as well as I did, and you must have seen by her letters that she didn't care about them like me,' said Frances.

'But that does not, in one way, much signify,' replied her mother. 'Once Jacinth knows all about them she will feel as we do: your father and I do not know any of them personally. It is not as friends of ours that I would in any way plead their cause with their own near relation.'

'No, of course not,' said Frances. But still she did not seem satisfied. 'Jacinth has always been so afraid of vexing Lady Myrtle by seeming to interfere,' she said. 'And even Aunt Alison said it was better not.'

'Very likely not. You are both too young to have it in your power to do anything. Still, I am sure you have lost no opportunity of speaking highly of the girls whom you do think so highly of.'

'Yes,' said Frances, quietly. 'I have done that. But somehow, mamma, I have vexed Jass about it several times. I shouldn't like her to think I had "spoilt" your first evening, by beginning about the Harpers. That's what she might say.'

'I will give her no reason for being vexed with you, dear. I can understand her fear of vexing Lady Myrtle – I feel the same myself – and when I tell her, Jacinth, all about it, it will be in no way mixed up with you, Francie. She will only need to understand the whole thing thoroughly to agree with us.'

And Frances fell asleep in happy confidence that 'mamma' would put it all right. How delightful it was to have her at hand to lean upon!

But Mrs Mildmay had spoken rather more confidently about Jacinth than she quite felt. Frances's words reminded her of the cold, unsympathising way in which her elder daughter had alluded in her letters to the Harpers; after knowing all that Frances had written to her mother.

'Jacinth is thoughtful and considerate beyond her years,' thought she, 'but I do trust she is no way selfish or calculating. Oh no, that is impossible. I must not be fanciful. Marmy warned me that I might find her self-contained and even self-opinionated, but that is very different from anything mean or selfish. It is sad, all the same, to know nothing of one's own child for one's self, at first hand. Whatever the poor Harpers' trials have been,' she went on, as Frances had once said to Bessie, 'at least they have been spared this terrible, unnatural separation.'

And the thought brought back to her again the task that was before her on the morrow. She was not a little nervous about it. 'But I must not delay,' she said to herself. 'If anything is to be done to help them in this present crisis, it must be at once. And I promised Mrs Lyle not to put off. I wonder when I shall have the best chance of a good talk with Lady Myrtle. Alison is coming over in the morning, she said. Naturally she is anxious to hear all about Frank. I wish it had not happened that I was obliged to begin upon a certainly painful, a possibly offensive topic with the dear old lady just at the very first! And when she is so very, very good to us!'

But Eugenia Mildmay was not the type of woman to shrink from what she believed to be an undoubted duty because it was painful to herself, or even to others.

'Dear little Frances,' was almost her last waking thought, 'I feel as if I already understood her perfectly. And oh, I do hope I shall be wise and judicious with my Jassie too.'

Every trace of fatigue had vanished from Mrs Mildmay's bright face when they all met at breakfast the next morning; the 'all' including Lady Myrtle, who had now begun again to come down early, since the fine mild weather had, for the time, dispelled her chronic bronchitis. She looked round the table with a beaming face.

'It is long since I have had such a party at breakfast,' she said. 'Never before, I think, indeed, since I have been settled at Robin Redbreast, and that is a good while ago. To make it perfect we only want your husband, Eugenia, whom you know, I have never seen.'

'Well, I hope it will not be very long before you do see him; and I can assure you he is very eager to see you, dear Lady Myrtle,' replied Mrs Mildmay.

'How like mamma is to Frances!' thought Jacinth. It struck her even more forcibly this morning than the day before.

'Is Colonel Mildmay dark or fair? Does he resemble his sister?' inquired the old lady.

Mrs Mildmay considered.

'No; I scarcely think so,' she said. 'And yet there is a family likeness. The odd thing is, as I was saying, that though Jacinth "takes after" my mother's family so decidedly, yet she is more like the Mildmays than either Francie or Eugene.'

'I don't see it, I confess,' said Lady Myrtle drily, and Mrs Mildmay caught for the first time a glimpse of the cold manner the old lady could assume if not altogether well pleased. But in less than an instant Lady Myrtle seemed herself to regret it. 'I mean to say I see no resemblance in Jacinth to Miss Alison Mildmay. Of course I cannot judge as to her having any to her father.'

'Papa has dark hair, like Jass,' said Frances. 'But he's very nice-looking.'

'The "but" doesn't sound very complimentary to me, Francie,' said Jacinth laughingly; and her mother, glancing at her, was struck by the wonderful charm of the smile that overspread her face.

'I wasn't thinking of you that way,' said Frances, bluntly. 'I was thinking of Aunt Alison.'

'Aunt Alison's not pretty,' said Eugene. 'Her's too – not smiley enough, not like mamma.'

'Eugene!' said his mother. But Eugene did not seem at all snubbed.

'À propos of Miss Alison Mildmay,' said Lady Myrtle, 'she is coming to see you to-day, is she not? She must be anxious to hear all about her brother.'

'Yes,' said Mrs Mildmay, 'she will be coming quite early. Jassie told us you are often busy in the morning, so I thought that would be the best time for me to be with her.'

'Jacinth knows all my ways,' said Lady Myrtle with a smile of approval. 'Yes, that will do nicely; Miss Mildmay must stay to luncheon, and then you and I, Eugenia, can drive her back. Will you drive with me this afternoon? I always enjoy a talk in a carriage along our quiet roads.'

'Thank you; that will be very pleasant,' said Mrs Mildmay. And no one would have suspected the slight sinking of heart with which she said to herself that this would clearly be the best opportunity for what she had to lay before her kind hostess as to the poor Harpers.

'We begin school again on Monday,' said Frances. 'I do hope it will be fine till then. Jass, won't you stay with Eugene and me this afternoon? We do so want to get the house we are building finished so that we can have tea in it on Lady Myrtle's birthday.'

'Yes,' Mrs Mildmay interposed quickly, 'that will do very well, and to-morrow perhaps Jassie may drive with you, Lady Myrtle, and then I will invite myself to spend the afternoon with you two, shall I?'

Her quick tact, founded on sympathy, warned her of the possibility of the elder girl feeling herself thrown out of the place she had naturally come to feel as her own beside the old lady.

'And Lady Myrtle is so devoted to Jacinth too. She would miss her, even though she would not like to seem to prefer her to me,' thought the mother; and the expression in the two faces rewarded her for her consideration.

Frances had her own ideas as to her mother's intentions in connection with the proposed drive that afternoon. But she was already perfectly at rest in the delightful certainty that 'mamma would know what was best to do.' So, though deeply interested and in a sense anxious, she had no nervous misgiving as to the result of the effort which she felt sure was going to be made in behalf of her friends, and she spent the afternoon very happily with her sister and brother, working at the famous house they had been allowed to build in a corner of the garden. It was very interesting, and even Jacinth, in some ways less 'grown-up' than she liked to fancy herself, found it very absorbing. By half-past four o'clock they had all worked so hard that they really began to be very tired and rather hot.

'I wish it was tea-time,' said Jacinth. 'We are all to have tea together while the holidays last. Lady Myrtle thought mamma would like it. And, of course, you and Eugene, Francie, will come in at the end of dinner as you did last night. I wonder why Lady Myrtle and mamma are so long. I suppose they've gone a long drive.'

'They started rather late,' said Frances. 'Aunt Alison was talking to Lady Myrtle a good while after the carriage was at the door. But I wonder they're not back by now. Don't you think we'd better go in now and get tidy, so as to be quite ready when they come?'

They did so. But for once Frances was the more expeditious of the two. When Mrs Mildmay entered her own room on returning from the drive, a little figure, unexceptionably neat as to hair and hands and garments, darted out from behind the window-curtains whence she had been watching the drive up to the house.

'Mamma, dear,' she exclaimed, 'don't ring for Syme. Mayn't I help you to take off your things for once? I do so want to ask you – you don't mind, do you? —have you been able to say anything to Lady Myrtle? I had a feeling that you meant to speak about it the very first chance you could.'

Mrs Mildmay looked a little agitated.

'Francie, dear,' she said, 'I haven't time to tell you about it just now. We must hurry down to tea. But I have done something, and I almost hope I have made a beginning towards more. All I can, all it would be right for me to tell you, I will. But I scarcely think I can do so to-day. Come to my room quite early to-morrow morning, half an hour or so before breakfast. As soon as we have had tea just now, I have promised to help – at least she puts it so – Lady Myrtle to write a rather difficult letter.'

'Is it to the Harpers?' half whispered Frances.

Her mother nodded.

Frances gave a sort of skip of joy.

'Oh, mamma, how lovely!' she exclaimed. 'How clever you are! I do believe everything's going to come right.'

'Don't be too hopeful, dear. But at least their present terrible difficulties will be a little smoothed, I trust.

And it was no use telling Frances not to be too hopeful. She seemed almost to dance as she followed her mother down-stairs, and the drawing-room at Robin Redbreast had rarely, if ever, heard brighter talk and merrier laughter than went on this afternoon round the tea-table, where Jacinth did the honours as if she were the recognised daughter of the house.

It went perhaps somewhat against the grain with her to be told, though in the kindest manner, that Lady Myrtle and Mrs Mildmay had some business letters to write in the boudoir, and must not be disturbed till post-time. But she was a sensible girl on the whole, and really glad to see the cordial understanding between her mother and the friend who seemed to her now by adoption almost a second mother. And she was without the slightest suspicion that the letters in question concerned the Harpers, of whom indeed for some time past she had almost left off thinking at all.

'Possibly it's already something about the London appointment for papa,' she thought. 'Lady Myrtle is always so energetic and business-like. I daresay she would have liked to consult me about it, but then it would scarcely have seemed right not to make mamma the first of course.'

And she answered so pleasantly that she and Frances had a duet they wanted to practise before playing it to their mother, that Mrs Mildmay's slight instinctive misgiving as to her elder daughter's docility and reasonableness was for the time completely dispersed.

'To-morrow, you know, dear Jacinth, you are to drive with me,' said Lady Myrtle, 'while your mother is going to have Francie and Eugene all to herself.'

Perhaps the result of Mrs Mildmay's conversation with her hostess during their drive that afternoon will be best shown by one of the letters which the Robin Redbreast postbag carried off that very evening. It was addressed to Mrs Harper at a certain number in a quiet bye-street in the north-west of London, and ran thus:

Robin Redbreast, Thetford,

May 4, 187-.

My dear Mrs Harper – I write to you instead of to your husband, Captain Harper, who is by birth my nephew, as I understand that he might be upset by an unexpected letter, being at present in a critical state of health. I regret that it should be so, and that your anxieties should be increased by other difficulties, and I enclose a draft on my London bankers for £500, which will, I trust, relieve you from your most pressing cares. I ask you to accept this in a kindly spirit, though from a complete stranger. It is the gift of an aged woman who is always glad to have the privilege of helping those whose difficulties may become privately known to her, as well as of responding to the many public appeals for assistance. But it is not the gift of a relative. From a certain date, now many years ago, my brother Bernard Harper and all connected with him died to me as completely as though he had never existed, and I feel it only honest to put the matter in its true light at the risk of wounding not unnatural susceptibilities. I ask you also to accept my sincere good wishes for Captain Harper's restoration to health, and I remain, yours faithfully,

Myrtle Camilla Goodacre.

It was a strange letter. And strange as it was, it had been more eccentric still, but for Mrs Mildmay's strenuous efforts to soften its expressions and accentuate the real sympathy which had dictated the gift. It was a strange position altogether. The tears had risen into the old lady's bright eyes when her old friend Jacinth Moreland's daughter laid before her the sad facts of the case, and the life or death that not improbably hung upon her response. Never had good cause a better advocate. She read aloud the letter written by Camilla Harper to her aunt in India, and confided by Mrs Lyle to Mrs Mildmay; she told of Captain Harper's honourable career, and of the brave struggle made by him and his wife against the overwhelming difficulties which had come upon them through no fault – no imprudence even – of their own; she described the good promise of their children, how the sons were all already more or less 'distinguished, the daughters models of girlish excellence.'