"Yes, indeed I am. Where have you been all this time? Oh, my poor dear, you can't tell me! You are ill, Francis. Let me take care of you. Can you tell me where you live?"

But he could not reply. His head drooped upon his breast: he looked as if he neither saw nor heard. What was she to do?

Of one thing Mary was certain. Now that she had found her husband, she was not going to lose sight of him again.

She would go with him whithersoever he went, unless he repelled her by force. She gave one regretful thought to her young mistress, and to a certain project which she had determined to put into effect that night, and then she thought of the Brookes no more. She must leave them, and follow her husband's fortunes. There was no other way for her.

Fortunately she had money in her pocket. She had also thrown a shawl across her arm before she came to the door. The shawl belonged to Miss Brooke, and had been offered to one of the guests as a loan; but Mary had forgotten all about the guests, and appropriated the shawl, with the cool resolution which characterized her in cases of emergency.

Necessity--especially the necessity entailed by love--knows no law. At that moment she knew no law but that of her repressed and stunted, but always abiding, affection for the husband who had burdened her life for many weary years with toil and anxiety and care. For him she would do anything--throw up all friendships, sacrifice her future, her character, and, if need be, her life.

She wrapped the shawl round her head, and put her arm through her husband's, without once looking back.

"Come, Francis," she said, quietly, "show me where you live now. We will go home."

She led him unresistingly away. For a little while he walked as if in a dream; but by and by his movements became more a.s.sured, and he turned so decidedly in one direction that she saw he knew his way and was pursuing it. She said nothing, but kept close to his side, with her hand resting lightly on his arm. She was not mistaken in her expectations.

Francis went straight to the wretched lodging in which he had slept for the past few nights, and Mary at once a.s.sumed the management of his affairs.

She was rewarded--as she thought, poor soul!--for her efforts. When she had lighted a fire and a candle, and prepared some sort of frugal meal for the man she loved, he lifted up his face and looked at her with a gleam of returning memory and intelligence in his haggard eyes.

"Mary," he said, in a bewildered tone, "Mary--my wife? How did you come here, Mary? How did you find me out?"

"Are you glad to see me, dear?" said Mary.

"Yes--yes, I am. Everything will be right now. You'll manage things for me."

It was an acknowledgment of the power of her affection which more than recompensed her for the trouble of the last few months.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

MRS. TRENT'S STORY.

"I never heard of such an extraordinary thing," said Lesley.

"Then that shows how little you know of the world," said Doctor Sophy, amicably. "I've heard of a hundred cases of the kind."

"Well, there are some elements of oddity in this case," remarked Caspar Brooke, striking in with unexpected readiness to defend his daughter's views. "Kingston was not a giddy young girl, who would go off with any man who made love to her. Indeed, I can't quite fancy any man making love to her at all. She was remarkably plain, poor woman."

"She had beautiful eyes," said Lesley. "And she was so nice and quiet and kind. And I really thought that she was--fond of me." She paused before she uttered the last three words, being a little afraid that they would be thought sentimental. And indeed Miss Brooke did give a contemptuous snort, but Caspar smiled kindly, and patted his daughter's hand.

"Don't take it to heart," he said. "'Fondness' is a very indeterminate term, and one that you must not scrutinize too closely. This little black beast, for instance"--caressing, as he spoke, the head of the ebony-hued cat which sat upon the arm of his chair--"which I picked up half-starving in the street when it was a kitten, is fond of me because I feed it: but suppose that I were too poor to give it milk and chicken-bones, do you think it would retain any affection for me? A sublimated cupboard-love is all that we can expect now-a-days from cats--and servants."

"When you can write as you do about love," said Lesley, who was coming to know her father well enough to tease him now and then, "I wonder that you dare venture to express yourself in this cold-blooded way in our hearing!"

"Ah, but, my dear, I was not talking about love," said Caspar, lightly.

"I was talking about 'fondness,' which is a very different matter. You did not say that your maid, Kingston, _loved_ you--I suppose she was hardly likely to go that length--you said that she was fond of you. Very probably. But fondness has its limits."

Lesley smiled in reply, and did not utter the thought that occurred to her. What she really believed was that Kingston was not only "fond" of her, after the instinctive fashion of a dumb creature that one feeds, but loved her, as one woman loves another. Although her democratic feelings came to her through her father's teaching, or by inheritance from him, she did not quite like to say this to him: he might think it foolish to believe that a servant whom she had not known for very many weeks actually loved her; and yet she had the conviction that Kingston's attachment was deeper and more sincere than that of many a woman who claimed to be her friend. And she was both grieved and puzzled by Kingston's disappearance.

For this was on Monday morning, and the woman had not come back to Mr.

Brooke's. Great had been the astonishment of every one in the house when it was found that the quiet, well-spoken, well-behaved Mary Kingston, who had hitherto proved herself so trustworthy and so conscientious, had gone away--disappeared utterly and entirely, without leaving a word of explanation behind. She had last been seen on the pavement, shortly before midnight, a.s.sisting a lady to get into a hansom. n.o.body had seen her re-enter the house. It seemed as if she had been spirited away. She had gone without a bonnet or shawl, in her plain black dress and white cap and ap.r.o.n, as if she meant to return in a minute or two, and she had not appeared again. The shawl that she had taken with her was not missed, for Miss Brooke continued for some time under the impression that it had been lent to one of the visitors.

The conversation recorded above took place at Mr. Brooke's luncheon-table. It was not often that he was present at this meal, but on this occasion he had joined his sister and daughter, and questioned them with considerable interest about Kingston. After lunch, he put his hand gently on Lesley's arm, just as she was leaving the dining-room, and said, in a tone where sympathy was veiled with banter--

"Never mind, my dear. We will get you another maid, who will be _less_ fond of you, and then perhaps she will stay."

"I don't want another maid, thank you, papa. And, indeed, I do think Kingston was fond of me," said Lesley earnestly.

Mr. Brooke shrugged his shoulders. "Verily," he said, "the credulity of some women----"

"But it isn't credulity," said Lesley, with something between a smile and a sigh, "it is faith. And I can't altogether disbelieve in poor Kingston--even now."

Mr. Brooke shook his head, but made no rejoinder. Privately he thought Lesley foolishly mistaken, but believed that time would do its usual office in correcting the mistakes of the young.

His own incredulity received a considerable shock somewhat later in the day. About four o'clock a knock came to his study, and the knock was followed by the appearance of the sour-visaged Sarah.

"If you please, sir, there's that woman herself wants to see you."

"What woman, Sarah?" said Caspar, carelessly. He was writing and smoking, and did not look up from his work.

"The woman, Kingston, that ran away," said Sarah, indignantly. "I nearly shut the door in her face, sir, I did."

"That wouldn't have been legal," said Mr. Brooke. "Why doesn't she see Miss Brooke or Miss Lesley? I am busy."

"I expect she thinks she can get round you more easy," said Sarah, who was a very old servant, and occasionally took liberties with her master and mistress.

"She won't do that, Sarah," said Caspar, laughing a little in spite of himself. "Show her in."

He laid down his pen and his pipe with a rather weary air. Really, he was becoming involved in no end of domestic worries, and with few compensations for his trouble! Such was his silent thought. Lesley would, shortly leave him: Alice had refused to come back to his house.

Well, it would be but for a short time. He had almost made up his mind that when Lesley was gone he would give up a house altogether, establish his sister in a flat, throw journalism to the winds, and go abroad. The life that he had led so long, the life of London offices and streets, of the study and the committee-room, had become distasteful to him. As he thrust away from him the ma.n.u.script at which he had been busy, his lips were, half unconsciously, murmuring a very well-worn quotation--

"For I will see before I die, The palms and temples of the South."

And from this pa.s.sing day-dream he was roused by the entrance of a woman whom he knew only as his daughter's maid.

He was struck at once by some indefinable change that had pa.s.sed over her since he had seen her last. He had noticed her, as he noticed everybody that came within his ken; and he had remarked the mechanical precision of her demeanor, the dull sadness of her lifeless eyes. There was a light in her face now, a tremulous quiver of her lips, a slight color in her thin cheeks. She looked like a creature who could feel and think: not an automaton, worked by ingenious machinery.

He noted the change, but did not estimate it at its true worth. He thought she was simply excited by the consciousness of her misdemeanor, and by the prospect of an interview with him. He put on his most magisterial manner as he spoke to her.

"Well, Kingston," he said, "I hope you have come to explain the cause of the great inconvenience you have brought upon Miss Brooke and my daughter."

"That is exactly what I have come to do, sir," said Kingston, looking him full in the face, and speaking in clear, decided tones, such as he had never heard from her before. She generally spoke in a m.u.f.fled sort of way, as though she did not care to exert herself--as though she did not want her true voice to be heard.

"Sit down," said Mr. Brooke, more kindly. He had the true gentleman's instinct; he could not bear to see a woman stand while he was seated, although she was only his daughter's maid, and--presumably--a culprit awaiting condemnation. "Now tell me all about it."

"Thank you, sir, I'd prefer to stand," said Kingston, quietly. "At any rate, until I've told you one or two things about myself. To begin with: my name was Kingston before my marriage, but it's not Kingston now."