"Then, no doubt he will be glad to see you," Miss Forcus said, and thought to herself that now she was going to have the daughter of a felon for her sister-in-law.

By way of solace to her family pride she turned from the impending, disastrous marriage of the step-brother to that satisfying alliance her own brother had made. The daughter of a baronet had been his wife--the sister-in-law of a peer. The baronet was a banker, and rich. If the little son had lived he would have inherited his grandfather's fortune which now had gone to the son of Lord Brace. Lord Brace, who was an Irish peer, wanted the money more than Francis, certainly, who had a sufficient fortune of his own, even without that considerable one his wife had received from her mother, and had left to him.

All such facts, which Ada Forcus generally accepted as a matter of course, she now produced for the benefit of Deleah, meekly counting the st.i.tches of the Madonna lily, which when worked in beads, grounded in amber silk and framed in gold, would be converted into a screen, to hang on the marble mantelpiece in the Cashelthorpe drawing-room.

About the wife whom Sir Francis had loved and lost, who had lived for two years in this beautiful home, sitting to read, and eat, and sew, in her husband's company, walking the gardens by his side, cared for and tended and watched over by him, Deleah had dreamed many dreams. Beautiful as an angel she had pictured her, and with an angel's nature, to be so loved, so inexpressibly mourned by him. She had dreamed dreams, but had asked no questions. She asked them now.

"Was she so very beautiful--Lady Forcus?"

Not to say strictly beautiful; which had surprised them all, Francis having ever been a beauty lover. She had what was called a _dear_ face.

And such manners! Such a dignity! Such an air of high-breeding! "I used to say to myself, 'Small wonder that Francis is your slave.'"

"And was he?"

"He was, indeed. Bound to her, hand and foot; with no thought but to please her, no wish but what was hers."

Deleah sighed for very fullness of heart.

"But only because of his love for her, understand. Not because she had him in the very least under her thumb."

Deleah shook a sympathetic head. "I am sure he could not be that."

"He has never been the same since her death. Never! And never will be again."

"One would not wish him to be. It would spoil it," Deleah sighed.

Miss Forcus echoed the sigh. "Well, I do not know," she admitted. "People die, but the world has to go on, Deleah. If the child had lived it would have been different; but it seems to me a pity there should be no one to come after Francis, to bear his name, and inherit his fortune. Of course there is Reggie; but--"

She stopped there, remembering that in all probability the son of Reggie would be the grandson of William and Lydia Day--felon, and bankrupt grocer. The thought choked her. Had Francis remembered it? "Whoever marries Reggie will marry a rotten reed," she said impetuously. "I pity the girl who does it, from my heart."

"So do I," said Deleah quietly, and knitted her brow, chasing a tiny fugitive bead with the point of her needle.

Miss Forcus heard with surprise and satisfaction, yet was afraid to believe. What penniless girl, whose hand was her own to bestow, would refuse the wealthy young Forcus? Longing for further a.s.surance, and greatly daring, she risked the question: "You knew Reggie so well, then, yet did not fall in love with him?"

"I? Oh, no!" Deleah said. She lifted her head from the frame over which she was stooping and looked calmly in the other woman's face; and Miss Forcus was struck with the perception of what a gentle dignity the girl had. A dignity less arresting, perhaps, than that she had admired so much in Francis's wife, but as effective.

"Ah, well!" she smiled, immensely relieved, and overjoyed to find she might again take her protegee to her heart. "We shall see who there is that will be good and great enough for you, Deleah. He will have to be both to deserve you."

"He will have to be both before I love him," Deleah said calmly, but with the colour in her cheeks. She put her head on one side to contemplate the lily growing so slowly under her fingers. "'I needs must love the highest when I see it,'" she said, half to herself.

For while she had been talking and listening she had been thinking of that sacrifice which she had but now thought was demanded of her; and she had made up her mind not to make it.

When Sir Francis came in, that evening, he found lying on his writing-table a little note with the signature "Deleah Day." "I hope you will excuse me that I have altered my mind and decided to go home at once," it ran. "I think I am wanted there. I hope you will not think I do not feel all your kindness. I do feel it with all my heart."

Carrying this scanty missive open in his hand, Sir Francis sought his sister.

"Yes, she has gone," that lady said. "She evidently wished it, and I drove her back to-day."

"Then how about Reggie?"

"You were quite deceived about Reggie, Francis. You are, indeed. Deleah will never marry Reggie. She as good as told me so. I never was more thankful. It would have been so terribly unsuitable. She told me she was writing to you. What does she say?"

Sir Francis did not choose to see the hand held out for Deleah's little note. He folded it, and walked to the window, looking out thoughtfully upon the garden, his hands behind his back, the letter, held by its corner in one of them, waggling up and down.

"She told me she had written," Miss Forcus said again, by way of reminder.

"She simply says she has gone."

"I shall miss her dreadfully. She is the dearest girl. Never have I seen one so lovely and so little vain."

"She is too lovely to be vain," Sir Francis said.

And at the tone rather than the words Miss Forcus lifted a startled head, and gazed and gazed upon her brother's stately back, upon the hands clasped behind it, holding the letter, waggling up and down, he would not let out of his keeping.

Over another letter which Sir Francis received the next morning, he laughed as he read. He tossed it across the table to his sister. "What a fellow!" he said.

"From Reggie? I wish you had not written to him to come home, Francis."

"He's not coming. Don't alarm yourself. He says the Worrad.y.k.es have turned up at Nice--"

"They followed him! They've no doubt taken Daisy. I would stake my existence they've taken Daisy!"

"You are quite right. Daisy is there. Reggie has promised to go on with them to Rome."

"_Now_ she'll catch him!" prophesied the lady. "Good gracious! Supposing things were as you thought and Deleah had waited to welcome him home! What a quandary we should have been in then, Francis!"

CHAPTER x.x.x

Deleah Grows Up

It was Thursday afternoon: the day on which the shops of Brockenham closed at two. George Boult, who had taken to visiting Bridge Street on the Thursday half-holiday as well as the Sunday, must be expected this afternoon. One way or other Mrs. Day would have to answer that proposition of his which had filled her with such a misery of doubt.

Very little on his part had been said at the time of the offer. He would be the happier for a lady at the head of his table, he had said; she and her daughters wanted a home. Both were perhaps too old for sentiment, both were old enough to take what chance of happiness and comfort life still offered them. "Think it over, ma'am," he had said. "I'll look in on Thursday. I don't antic.i.p.ate you'll have thought of a better plan."

She had not, unless to drown herself was a better plan.

She had no impulse to suicide, but was a woman of unlimited selflessness, who, believing that her death would make life easier to her children, would have gone to it without any fuss.

Sometimes, with little Franky, on a Sunday afternoon, she had walked by the side of the river where it ran away from the ugly black wharves upon its sh.o.r.es to the meadows where Franky loved to see the toads slip down through the weeds to the clear water, loved to get his boots wet in trying to catch the darting minnows in his hands, loved to gather the forget-me-nots, and river-mint, and ragged robin, to carry home to Deleah.

She knew exactly the spot, where if she was only sure it would be best for Bessie, for Deleah, for poor, poor Bernard, she would slip down the shelving bank and go wading, wading in, till out of her depth and weighed down by her clothes she would sink out of sight, out of trouble, out of life. She had no illusions about the enfolding in the "cool and comforting arms of death." She knew quite well the horror of it, the choke, with the rank, foul-tasting river in her mouth, its weeds and offal winding her limbs. But that would pa.s.s, and she would be out of it. Far rather would she be dead at the bottom of the river than married to her benefactor, Mr.

George Boult. If only she was sure it might be best for the children.

"I wonder what's to become of me while you're having your interesting interview with Scrooge?" Bessie said at dinner-time. "It's raining, so I can't go out for a walk."