"You never said that before!" cried Mattie; "ill and alone!"

"Harriet will return home when she gets up--she is just ill enough to be kept very quiet."

"I'll not go to her, then."

Mattie still fixed her dark eyes on Mr. Wesden; that steady, unflinching gaze was making the stationer feel uncomfortable.

"I don't know that there is anything else to say," said Mattie, after a long pause; "and I suppose--you've nothing else to say to me?"

"Nothing. Except," he added, after another pause on his part, "that I hope you will take care of yourself--that this will be a lesson to you."

Mattie coloured once more, and took time to reply.

"I would part friends with _you_," she said at last. "I have been trying hard to bear everything that you say, remembering past kindness. _You_ saved me at the eleventh hour, when I was going back to ruin--_you_ taught me what was good, and made this place my home; for _you_ and _yours_ I would do anything in the world that lay in my power. BUT!" she cried, her face kindling and her eyes flashing, "if it had been any one else who had spoken to me as you have done, who had cast such cruel slander at me, and believed in nothing but my vileness, I--I think I should have killed him!"

Mr. Wesden had never seen Mattie in a pa.s.sion before; her frenzy alarmed him, and he backed against the drawers behind him lest she should attempt some mischief. His confidence in the righteousness of his cause was more shaken also; but he did not know how to express it, having been ever a man whose ideas came slowly.

"Upstairs, a little while ago, Mr. Wesden," continued Mattie, "I thought that we were quits with each other--that casting me back to the streets made amends for the rescue from them years ago. I thought almost that I could afford to hate you--but you must forgive me that--I was not myself then! I know better now; and if I go back alone and friendless, still I take with me all the good thoughts which the latter years have given me, and no misfortune is likely to rob me of."

"But--but----"

"But this is strange talk in a woman who cannot account for missing property, and keeps out all night," said Mattie; "you can't think any better of me now--some day you will. Good-bye, sir--may I shake hands with you?"

"I--I don't bear any malice, Mattie. I--I wish you well, girl," he stammered, as he held forth his hand.

Mattie's declamation had cowed him, softened him. He was the man of the past, who had faith in her, and whom late events had not changed so much. He thought it might be a mistake just then--he did not know--he understood nothing--his brain was in a whirl.

Mattie shook hands with him, and then went away without another word.

Outside in the streets the traffic was thickening--it was Sat.u.r.day morning, when people sought the streets in greater numbers. Mattie's slight form was soon lost in the surging stream of human life; Mr.

Wesden, who had followed her to the door, noticed how soon she was submerged.

Five years ago he had taken her from the streets--a stray. Again in her womanhood, at his wish, he had cast her back to them a stray still--nothing more!

A stray whom no one would claim as child, sister, friend; who went away characterless in a world ever ready to believe the worst. She had spoken of her strength to do battle now alone, but she did not know with what enemies she had to fight, or what deadly weapons to encounter; watching her from that shop door, she looked little more than the child G.o.d had once prompted him to save.

He could have run after her again, as in the old times, and cried "Stop!"--he could have taken her to his heart again, and began anew with her, sinking the incomprehensible bygones for ever.

But he moved not; and Mattie, the stray, drifted from his home, and went away to seek her fortunes.

END OF THE THIRD BOOK.

BOOK IV.

"WANT PLACES."

CHAPTER I.

"ONE AND TWENTY."

Mattie's box was fetched away from Great Suffolk Street; the man who called for it brought a note to Ann Packet, which she found a friend to read for her later in the day. It did not furnish Ann Packet with her address--"When I am settled, Ann," she promised, quoting her own words on that morning of departure, "and I am very unsettled yet awhile."

Poor Ann Packet, who had looked forward to paying sundry flying visits to Mattie, and upon spending her holiday once a month with her, mourned over this evasion of Mattie's--"won't she trust even in me, or think of me a bit?" she said.

In Mattie's letter was enclosed a smaller one to Harriet Wesden, who understood the _coup d'etat_ which had ensued by that time, and was agitated and unhappy concerning it. This was Mattie's letter to Harriet Wesden, _in extenso_:--

"Keep your promise, dearest Harriet--never forget that your happiness, and that of others, depend upon it. Do not think that I have taken the blame, or am a victim--it is not only for my actions of that night that I have gone away. Sooner or later, it must have come. G.o.d bless you!--I hope to see you again soon. Your letter to Sidney is destroyed."

Harriet pondered over this missive. For weeks she became more thoughtful, and aroused fresh anxiety in her father--for weeks went on an unknown and fierce struggle to break away from her promise and tell all.

She had been afraid of the revelation, and what would be said and thought about it; she had seen her innocence construed as half-consent, and herself set down as an accomplice in Mr. Darcy's plot; she had feared losing the esteem and confidence of all who now respected her.

But when Mattie had been sent away for keeping out all night--and though she had not heard the story, she guessed of whom Mattie had been in search--her sense of justice, her love for Mattie, led her more than once to the verge of the revelation. Keeping her own secret was one thing, but the blame to rest on another was very different, and despite her promise--into which she had been entrapped as it were--the avowal was ever trembling on her lips.

After, all it was but the truth to confess--her father and mother would believe her; and if Sidney Hinchford turned away, why surely there was nothing to grieve at in that--she could not have loved Sidney, or that letter would never have been written to him! And yet let it be recorded here, Harriet Wesden's main incentive to keep her secret close was for Sidney Hinchford's sake. It tortured her to think that she should have ever entertained one feeling of love or liking for the Mr. Darcy who had sought her humiliation; the shock to her pride had not only turned her utterly away from Mr. Darcy, but the very contrast he presented to young Hinchford, had aroused the old, or given birth to a new affection for the latter.

She valued Sidney Hinchford at his just due at last; she understood his patience, energy, and love; how he had been working for her from his boyhood, and what would have been the effect to him of losing her. She had made up her mind, when he returned, to give him all her heart, and sustain him by her love against those secret cares which lately had been shadowing him. She believed that her secret was for ever shut away from the light--that keeping it under lock and key would be better for Sidney, whose trust in her was so implicit. He had always believed in her devotion to himself; why should she break in upon that dream, now she felt that all girlish follies were over with her, and she had become a staid woman, whose hope was to be his wife?

She was consoled by Mattie's letter: "It is not only for my actions of that night that I have gone away. Sooner or later it must have come."

Mattie, ever a deep thinker, considered it best also--by her confession, even Mattie would be unhappy; so Harriet kept her secret for everybody's sake, and made her last mistake in life. Mattie and she had both regarded the subject from a narrow point of view, and were wrong; the best intentioned people are wrong sometimes, and from young women, with their heads disturbed concerning young men, we do not antic.i.p.ate the judgment of Solomon.

Harriet Wesden felt secure--knowing not of the letter in Mr. Hinchford's coat, of Mr. Hinchford's mistake and Mattie's. And yet the chances now were against the revelation, thanks to the treacherous memory of the old gentleman. He had mentioned his error in the counting-house to his employers the same day, and met with a reprimand and a supercilious shrug of the shoulders--"It was like old Hinchford," one partner had muttered to another, and there the subject ended for a while. Mr.

Hinchford went home, resolving to restore the letter to Harriet Wesden, took the letter from his pocket and put it on the bedroom mantel-piece, to keep the matter in his remembrance until he saw Harriet again.

There for two days the letter remained, till Ann Packet, in dusting the room, knocked it on the floor, picked it up and placed it on the dressing-gla.s.s, where Mr. Hinchford found it, and rather absently-shut it in the looking-gla.s.s drawer, as a safe place; and then the letter pa.s.sed completely out of recollection, there being a great deal to trouble his mind just then.

For they were not kind to him at his business, expected too much from him, and made no allowance for an old servant; and above all, and before all, the boy's birthday was drawing near--it was three days before Harriet Wesden's--and there was no sign of Sidney Hinchford on his way towards him.

By that time Mr. Wesden had found a customer for his business, which was to change hands early in February; and in February what would become of him, and whither should he go himself, thought Mr. Hinchford? Good gracious! he would have to change his residence, and his son perhaps never be able to find him! A horrid thought, which only lasted till he thought of his son's business address, but _whilst_ it lasted, a trying one.

When the birthday of Sidney Hinchford came round in January, the father grew excited; talked of his son at business all day, and worried the clerks about his son's accomplishments; returned in the evening to hara.s.s Mr. Wesden, always at his post behind the counter, for the few more days remaining of his business life.

"I have brought a bottle of wine home with me in the hope of the lad's return," said Mr. Hinchford, placing that luxury on the counter; "his one and twentieth year must not pa.s.s without our wishing _bon voyage_ to his manhood. You and I, Mr. Wesden, will at least drink his health to-night."

"Very well."

"I'll come and keep you company, after tea, in the back parlour, Wesden, and we'll have a long talk about my boy and your girl. There should have been a formal betrothal to-night, with much rejoicing afterwards. To think of his being one-and-twenty to-day, and away from us!"

"It must seem odd to you. Perhaps he'll come back to-night."

"That's what I have been thinking, Wesden. I fancy if he were near his return journey he would make a push for it to-night, knowing the old father's wishes. I fancy, do you know, that if I had been your daughter----"