"It was not stupid: how could you know who I was?----There, John, I have been showing Mr. Campion your gloxinias. Don't you think them lovely, Mr. Campion?"

And she glided away with the sweetest smile, and Sydney, after a few words with Sir John, took his departure, with a feeling of mingled gratification and amus.e.m.e.nt which he found rather pleasant. So she had not thought him impertinent, after all? She did not seem to have noticed the compliment that he had tried to pay her, and which he now acknowledged to himself would have suited for Milly Harrington better than Sir John Pynsent's sister. Was she really as childlike as she seemed, or was she a designing coquette?

The question was not a very important one, but it led Sydney to make a good many visits to Sir John's house during the next few weeks, in order to determine the answer. Miss Pynsent's character interested him, he said to himself; and then she wanted to discuss the state of the working-cla.s.ses in Vanebury. He did not care very much for the state of the working-cla.s.ses, but he liked to hear her talk to him about them. It was a pity that he sometimes forgot to listen to what she was saying; but the play of expression on her lovely face was so varied, the lights and shadows in her beautiful eyes succeeded each other so rapidly, that he was a little apt to look at her instead of attending to the subject that she had in hand.

This was quite a new experience to Sydney, and for some time his mind was so much occupied by it that the season was half over before he actually faced the facts of the situation, and discovered that if he wanted to pluck this fair flower, and wear it as his own, Sir John Pynsent was not the man to say him nay.

BOOK IV.

SORROW.

"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen a.s.s, Wer nie die k.u.mmervollen Nachte Auf seinen Bette weinend sa.s.s, Er kennt Euch nicht, ihr himmlische Machte!"

GOETHE.

CHAPTER XX.

"I WAS THE MORE DECEIVED."

Milly Harrington had pa.s.sed two months at Birchmead, and her grandmother's neighbors were beginning to speculate on the probabilities of her staying over the summer.

"Poor soul; it's lonely for her," Mrs. Chigwin said to her friend, Elizabeth. "I do hope that Mr. Beadon, or whatever her husband's name is, will come back before very long. She must be fretting for him, and fretting's so bad for her."

"You think there is a husband to come, do you?" asked Mrs. Bundlecombe, mysteriously.

"Why not, Bessy? She says she's married, and she wears a wedding-ring; and her clothes is beautiful."

"I'd like to see her marriage lines," said Mrs. Bundlecombe. "But, there! maybe I'm hard on her, poor thing, which I ought not to be, seeing that I know what trouble is, and how strangely marriages do turn out sometimes. But if there is a husband in the case, it's shameful the way he neglects her, never coming to see her, and going abroad on business, as she says, while she stays with her grandmother!"

"She pays Mrs. Harrington," remarked Mrs. Chigwin, reflectively, "and she always seems to have plenty of money; but she do look sad and mournful now and then, and money's not everything to those that want a little love."

As she concluded her moral observation, she started up, for a shadow darkened the open doorway: and on looking up, she saw that Milly herself was standing just outside. The girl's beautiful face was pale and agitated; and there were tears in her eyes. The old woman noticed that she was growing haggard, and that there were black lines beneath her eyes; they exchanged significant looks, and then asked her to step in and sit down.

"You run about too much and fatigue yourself," said Mrs. Chigwin. "Now you sit there and look at my flowers, how still they keep; they wouldn't be half so fine if I was always transplanting them. You want a good, quiet home for yourself: not to be moving about and staying with friends, however fond of you they may be."

Milly had sunk into the chair offered to her, with a look of extreme exhaustion and fatigue, but at Mrs. Chigwin's words she sat up, and her eyes began to grow bright again.

"I think so myself, Mrs. Chigwin. I shall be glad to get back to my own nice quiet home again. As for looking tired, it is only because I have been packing up my things and getting ready to go. Mr. Beadon has written to me to join him in London, and I am going to start this very afternoon."

The rosy color came back into her face: she smiled triumphantly, but her lips quivered as she smiled.

"That's right, my dear. I don't approve of young husbands and wives living separate, unless there's some very good cause for it," said Mrs.

Bundlecombe, thinking of her beloved Alan. "It always gives occasion to the enemy, and I think you're very wise to go back. Perhaps you had some little bit of a tiff or misunderstanding with Mr. Beadon----"

"Oh no," said Milly. The color in her face was painfully hot now. "Mr.

Beadon is always very good and kind. But," she continued, looking down and pushing her wedding-ring to and fro, "he is very busy indeed, and he is obliged to go abroad sometimes on business. He travels--I think he calls it--for a great London house. He is getting on very well, he says, in his own particular line."

"Ah, that is nice!" said Mrs. Chigwin, comfortably. "And how glad you will be to see each other."

"Oh, yes," faltered Milly. There was a curiously pathetic look in her great blue eyes such as we sometimes see in those of a timid child.

"Yes--very glad."

"And you'll bring him down here to see your grandmother, I suppose?

She's not set eyes on him yet, has she? And how nice it will be for you to come down now and then--especially when you have a family, my dear, Birchmead being so healthy for children, and Mrs. Harrington such a good hand with babies----"

Suddenly, and to Mrs. Chigwin's infinite surprise, Milly burst into tears. The loud, uncontrolled sobs frightened the two old women for a moment; then Mrs. Chigwin got up and fetched a gla.s.s of water, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and audibly expressing her fear that Milly's exertions had been "too much for her." But Mrs.

Bundlecombe sat erect, with a look of something like disapproval upon her comely old face. She had her own views concerning Milly and her good fortune; and soft and kind-hearted by nature as she was, there were some things that Aunt Bessy never forgave. The wickedness of Alan's wife had hardened her a little to youthful womankind.

"I'm better, thank you," said Milly, checking her sobs at last, and beginning to laugh hysterically. "I don't know what made me give way so, I'm sure."

"You're tired, love," said Mrs. Chigwin, sympathetically, "and you're not well, that's easy to see. You must just take care of yourself, or you'll be laid up. You tell your good husband _that_ from me, who have had experience, though without a family myself."

Milly wiped the tears away, and rose from her chair.

"I'll tell him," she said. "But--oh, there's no need: he takes an awful lot of care of me, you've no idea! Why, it was he that said I had better come to my grandmother while he was away: he knew that granny would take care of me; and now, you see"--with hasty triumph--"he wants me home again!"

She pocketed her handkerchief, and raised her head.

"I thought you said he had been abroad?" said Mrs. Bundlecombe.

"Of course I did, because he _has_ been abroad," the girl said, laughing nervously. "But he's in London now. Well, good-bye, Mrs. Chigwin; good-bye, Mrs. Bundlecombe; you'll go in and comfort granny a bit when I'm gone, won't you? She's been fretting this morning about my going away."

"Bless you, love," said Mrs. Chigwin. "I'll go in every day if you think it will do her any good. And if you write to her, Milly, she'll be pleased, I'm sure."

"I _will_ write," said Milly, in rather a shame-faced way. "I was so busy--or I'd have written oftener. Good-bye."

She looked at them wistfully, as if reluctant to take her leave; and her expression so wrought upon Mrs. Chigwin's feelings that she kissed the girl's cheek affectionately.

"Good-bye, love," she said; "you know where to find us when you want us, you know."

Milly departed, and the two friends remained silent until her light figure had pa.s.sed the window, and the click of the garden gate told them that she was well out of hearing. Then Mrs. Chigwin began, in rather a puzzled tone:

"You weren't very hearty with her, Elizabeth. You looked as if you had something against her."

"I've this against her," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, smoothing down her black ap.r.o.n with dignity, "that I believe there's something wrong about that marriage, and that if I were Mrs. Harrington I wouldn't be satisfied until I'd seen her marriage lines."

"Perhaps she has seen them," said Mrs. Chigwin, the pacific. "And we've nothing to go upon, Bessy, and I'm sure the idea would never have entered my head but for you."

"Why did she burst out crying when you talked of her husband and children coming down here?" asked Mrs. Bundlecombe, acutely. "It may be that she isn't to blame; but there's something wrong somewhere. She's hurried and flurried and worried."

And this was true. The summons which Milly had received was of the briefest and least intelligible character. It was in a handwriting that she knew well, and although it was unsigned she was tremulously ready and eager to obey it at once. "Come back to your old lodgings at Hampstead," the writer said. "Do not stay any longer at Birchmead: I want you in London." And that was almost all.