That's why I've run away."

"You say you have not lost your way," replied the old gentleman, taking no heed of her answer. "Where were you going to?"

"To London."

"To London!" repeated her interlocutor. "What would you have done there?"

"I would have gone to Mrs. Browne. I would have asked my way until I found her house."

There came a pause, during which the old gentleman looked at her and muttered himself.

Meg thought she heard him say, "Like parent, like child. The same evil disposition." Then lifting his voice, he called to the coachman, "Drive to Greyling; when you get there ask the way to Moorhouse, Miss Reeves'

school for young ladies."

"No, no! I will not go back!--I will not!" cried Meg, jumping to her feet as the carriage began to turn round.

"You shall go back," said the old gentleman, pushing her down in the seat opposite and holding her there.

The carriage moved swiftly, and so noiselessly that Meg heard every word her companion said.

"You shall go back this time; but if ever you seek to run away from that school again, no one will take you back again. You shall be left to achieve your own willful ruin. I will wash my hands of you forever.

"Listen," he continued, with upraised finger, as Meg, awed by his manner, did not reply. "Do you know what will happen if you try to escape from that school again? You will become a pauper. You will have to beg by the roadside. You will sink lower and lower, until you get into the workhouse."

"No!" cried Meg, with a flash of confidence. "Mrs. Browne will take me in."

"Mrs. Browne has left that house. It is occupied by strangers who do not know you, who would shut its doors upon you."

"Gone!" repeated Meg, aghast. "Where is she gone to?"

"You will never know," said the stranger. Then after a moment he resumed: "If I had not been driving down that road this evening you would have begun your downward course already. Remember what I say to you. If you try to escape again you will become a little casual. A ruffianly porter will let you in and order you about, you will be put into a dirty bath, obliged to wear clothes other beggars have worn before you."

"No, no! It can't be--it won't be!" cried Meg.

"Who will prevent it?" said the old gentleman.

"Mr. Standish. He is my friend--he shall prevent it! I will write to him--he will fetch me away!" cried Meg incoherently, with a despairing sense of the futility of her a.s.sertions.

"Where will you write to him?" asked the stranger sharply. "Listen, child. You do not deserve that I should trouble myself on your account, and it seems as if you did not care to deserve that I should. There was one whom I loved who proved base and ungrateful. I left him to his fate."

He paused. Meg had not understood this mysterious speech. Her blood grew cold. After a moment the stranger resumed: "I do not doubt this Mr.

Standish showed you much kindness, and I will not blame you because you are grateful to him; but from the moment you left your former life Mr.

Standish pa.s.sed out of it. He does not know where you are. He never will know. You do not know where he is. I do not know it; I could tell you nothing about him. Dismiss him from your thoughts." He made a gesture as if, with his uplifted hand, he were tearing the tie between her and that friend of her childhood. "Remember you owe duty and grat.i.tude to another now. Be silent!"

"Oh, I want to know where he is--I want to know!" cried Meg, breaking again into incoherent appeal.

The old gentleman did not reply. He sat there silent, his face growing dimmer as the evening deepened. Suddenly Meg realized the desolation that had overtaken her, and throwing herself forward with her face p.r.o.ne down upon the cushions, she burst into weeping, with speechless sobs.

The stranger made no effort to comfort her. When the paroxysm of weeping had spent itself Meg turned her head, and saw that the night had come.

The stars were out in the sky. By their light she dimly discerned the old gentleman's face. She thought that he was looking at her, then she saw that he lay back with his eyes closed, as if asleep.

She did not move. A hope and an a.s.surance which had hitherto filled her heart had gone out of her life, and she lay there an atom of despair lost in a void of desolation. The carriage drove noiselessly on. She was vaguely aware of the still freshness of the night spreading about her.

She knew when the carriage stopped, and when lights flashed, and familiar voices, speaking excitedly, sounded near. Still she did not stir.

She confusedly heard the old gentleman ask for Miss Reeves, and this lady reply. She recognized Miss Grantley's accents angrily a.s.serting she ought not to be taken back. Then again she knew the stranger requested that she should be put to bed and given some food, while he had a private talk with the head-mistress.

Meg felt herself taken out; she recognized that she was in Rachel's arms. She was carried upstairs and undressed. She made no resistance, except to refuse the food Rachel pressed upon her.

At last she lay in bed and in the dark, communing and wrestling with her soul--living the troublous day over again. Sometimes thinking that she was once more struggling up that dusty highway; that she was falling and stumbling along; drifting away and then coming back to half-consciousness; and then dreamily hearing the thump, thump of crutches coming toward her, and catching a glimpse of a bright, bold face looking at her.

As she lay there oppressed by the weariness and bewilderment of that feverish time, a thirst for comfort rose in her little heart. She vaguely heard the rumble of carriage-wheels driving away, and she knew the old gentleman was gone.

In her sadness and longing for solace Meg was dropping off to sleep, when suddenly and softly she felt a kiss alight upon her forehead. She did not stir or question; she was too exhausted to wonder or to fear.

After the day's fever and alarm she could not quail or wonder any more.

She fancied she heard light steps leave the room; but that kiss had brought the solace she yearned for, and she fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIV.

WHO GAVE THAT KISS.

A year and a half had elapsed since that wild outburst of rebellion against discipline had sent Meg flying Londonward. She had settled down into the routine of the school. Nothing now existed for her outside its boundaries. She had parted company with her childhood. The goblin past lay behind her, and as she looked back upon it the child who watched over the staircase almost appeared to have been a visionary creature.

She concentrated all her attention upon her studies. If still Miss Grantley was prejudiced against her she won the approbation of her other teachers. Signora Vallaria rolled her dark eyes as Meg's fingers still lagged behind in execution; but there was an energy, an intelligence in her apprehension that made the signora, while wringing her hands, yet consider Meg's lesson a treat to give. If Meg's answers occasionally still lacked exact.i.tude in the historical cla.s.s they were always roughly brilliant and intelligent. She was still apt to pa.s.s beyond her own depth, but her fellow-pupils felt the impetus of a rashness that was the outcome of energy. Meg had an unconscious ascendency over her schoolmates. A vigorous nature will always sway more languid spirits; but her influence over them was due rather to the fact that since she was eight years of age she had begun to think, and, like all suffering creatures, to observe. This power of observation, of drawing her own conclusions, and of acting upon them, was the secret of her ascendency over her schoolfellows. It was the ascendency of character.

Some called her repellent; for there was a childlike bluntness, a certain defiant awkwardness about her still. Others, like Miss Pinkett, treated her with contempt as a nameless waif. Others again, like Gwendoline Lister, wove a web of romance about her; nothing short of Meg being the deserted child of a d.u.c.h.ess satisfied the Beauty. Meg knew she continued to be the object of this speculation, and these castles in the air made about her future wounded her, and she repelled curiosity. She still remained solitary in that busy republic of girls. Still her sensitive pride impelled her to refuse sweets when offered to her, because she had none to give in return; still she refused invitations, because she could not ask others to be guests at her home.

The day of her attempted flight had proved memorable; that day of feverish adventures had brought her an experience over which, in her loveless life, she often pondered. That spectral kiss placed on her forehead, which had brought such solace to her as she lay in misery and loneliness, haunted her. Who had given her that kiss? At first she had thought it might be Miss Reeves to a.s.sure her of pardon; but why should the schoolmistress have made a mystery of her kindness? The balanced composure and impartiality of the lady's manner dispelled this conjecture. The more Meg saw Miss Reeves the more she felt sure the lady would not yield to any emotional demonstration, and, if she yielded, she would not conceal it. Miss Grantley could not have taken this fit of pity. Her frosty behavior precluded its possibility. Then Meg thought it might be the cook who was kind to her.

"Did you come up to my room that night when I was going to sleep?" she asked the old servant; but the surprised denial she received was conclusive. Who then could have given her that kiss? It could not be the old gentleman. She had heard the wheels of his carriage driving down the garden, and nothing could well be more unlikely or unlike his stern, unsympathetic nature. There was no one else in the house that day except the servants, and no servant could have approached with that gliding footfall. Meg sometimes fancied it might be her dead mother attracted to her grieving child's bedside; but Meg asked herself, "If it were, why had she not come to kiss or comfort her before?" and then she added, "there are no such things as ghosts." But still this solution seemed to rest upon her mind as a notion more akin to her feelings, if it were the least probable explanation of the mystery.

Meg, during the year and a half that had elapsed, had given way to no more bursts of impish rage; she had become a reticent, grave, and silent girl. She was rather stern-looking, but this expression of sternness, if to a superficial observer it might have seemed an outcome of her nature, was in truth but that of a habit acquired by its enforced repression.

Her sympathies bid fair to languish and die from want of soil, when an event happened which gave a force and a color to her school-life.

One afternoon after cla.s.s, Meg, entering the schoolroom, perceived the girls gathered in a knot at the further end. She pushed her way through to discover what was attracting them. A golden-haired child was the center of the group. She was a new pupil come from India, and the girls were lavishing caresses upon the little stranger. The child was pretty and frail-looking enough to justify their enthusiastic effusiveness.

She submitted to the kisses and hugs and general petting with a half-resigned air that suggested endurance of what she was already over-satiated with, rather than grat.i.tude for the accorded welcome. Meg looked on, unsympathizing with these cheap caresses, but still attracted by the prettiness of the child as one might be by a strange bird of great beauty. The wistful gaze of large blue eyes encircled with lilac shadows met hers; but still Meg took no notice, repelled by that excess of demonstration lavished upon the little stranger by the other girls.

"They don't see how they worry the poor little thing," she muttered as, taking up what she had come for, she went upstairs.

Some time after, as she knelt before her trunk, putting its contents in order, a slight touch on her elbow caused her to look round.

"What pretty things!" said a little voice. It was the child. With tiny fingers she pointed to the gayly-bound volume Meg was restoring to the box.

"There are pictures inside," Meg replied, turning the pages. The child looked coldly at the prints. She apparently did not care for the ill.u.s.trations. It was the gold-edged leaves and the gold pattern on the cover which attracted her.

"How it _sines_!" she said with her baby lisp, and she pa.s.sed her rosy fingertips over the gilding.