Not being expected, they had to hire from the hotel, and arrived just as Gladys and Miss Peck were enjoying their afternoon tea. She was unfeignedly glad to see them, and showed it in the very heartiness of her welcome. It was somewhat of a relief to Mrs. Fordyce to find Gladys alone with Miss Peck. She had quite expected to meet the objectionable girls in the drawing-room, but there were no evidences of their presence in the house at all, nor did Gladys allude to them in any way.

She had a thousand and one questions to ask about them all, and appeared so affectionately interested in everything pertaining to the family, that Mr. Fordyce could not forbear casting a rather triumphant glance at his wife.

'As the mountain would not come to Mahomet, Mahomet has come to the mountain,' he said in his good-natured way. 'You should have heard the doleful conversation about you at breakfast this morning. Were your ears not ringing?'

'No, I had something more serious to take up my attention,' said Gladys a trifle soberly. 'I hope you have come to stay a few days--until to-morrow, at least?'

'Are all your other guests away?' inquired Mrs. Fordyce, with the faintest trace of hardness in her voice.

'Christina Balfour is here still. Her companion left this morning rather suddenly,' said Gladys, and it was evident that she felt rather distressed. 'In fact, she ran away from Bourhill.'

'Indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. Fordyce, in astonishment. 'Why should she have run away? It would have been quite sufficient, surely, for her to have said she wished to return to Glasgow. You were not keeping her here against her will, I presume?'

'No,' replied Gladys a trifle unsteadily. 'I cannot say she has treated us well. It was a very silly as well as a wrong proceeding to get up in the middle of the night and leave the door wide open, as she did. She has disappointed me very much.'

Mrs. Fordyce looked at Gladys in a kind of wonder. Her candour and her justness were as conspicuous as her decision of character. It evidently cost her pride no effort to admit that she had made a mistake, though the admission was proof of the correct prophecy made by Mrs. Fordyce when the hot words had pa.s.sed between them concerning Liz at Bellairs Crescent. Mrs. Fordyce, however, was generous enough to abstain from undue triumph.

'Well, well, my dear, we all make mistakes, though we don't all admit so readily as you have done that they are mistakes,' she said good-humouredly. 'I suppose the girl felt the restraint of this quiet life too much. What was her occupation before she came down? I don't know that I heard anything about her.'

'She was once a mill girl with Mr. Fordyce,' answered Gladys. 'She is the girl who disappeared, don't you remember?--Walter Hepburn's sister.'

'Oh!'

The lawyer drew a long breath.

'Perhaps it is just as well she has disappeared again. I did not know _that_ was the girl all the talk was about. Well, are you not tired of this quiet life yet?'

'Oh no; I like it very much. But when will you allow the girls to come down, Mrs. Fordyce? I think it is too bad that they have never yet paid me a proper visit at Bourhill.'

'They are talking of London again--wheedling their poor dear papa, as they do every May. I think you must go with us again, my dear.'

'Yes, I should like that,' replied Gladys, with brightening face; and Mrs. Fordyce perceived that she had sustained a very severe disappointment, which had made her for the time being a trifle discontented with her own fair lot.

She took an early opportunity, when Gladys conducted her to the guest-chamber, to put another question to her.

'Gladys, how long is it since George was here?'

'I have never seen him since that night in your house, when he didn't come up to the drawing-room,' answered Gladys calmly.

'But he has written, I suppose?'

'No; nor have I.'

'My dear girl, this is very serious,' said Mrs. Fordyce gravely. 'What was the difference about? You will tell me, my dear? I have your best interests at heart, but I cannot help thinking it is rather soon to disagree.'

'I don't think we disagreed, only I said I should ask whom I like to Bourhill. Surely that was within my rights?' said Gladys proudly.

'Oh yes, to a certain degree, but not when you harbour questionable characters--yes, I repeat it, questionable characters, such as the girl who ran off this morning I hope you counted your spoons to-day, Gladys?'

Gladys could have laughed, only she was too miserable.

'Oh, what absurd mistakes you make!' was all she said.

'Not so very absurd, I think. Well, as I said, I think George only showed that he had a proper regard for you and your peculiar position here. We know the world, my love; you do not. I think now, surely, you will allow us to be the judges of what is best for you?'

'I think he has behaved shamefully to me, not having come, or even written, for so long, and I don't think I can forgive him. Think, if he were to treat me so after I was his wife, how dreadful it would be. It would certainly break my heart.'

'My dear, the cases are not parallel. When you are his wife your interests will be identical, and there never will be any dispute.'

Gladys shook her head. She did not feel at all sure of any such thing.

'I cannot help thinking, my dear child, that the sooner you are married the better it will be for you. You are too much isolated here, and that Miss Peck, good little woman though she is, is only an old sheep. I must for ever regret the circ.u.mstances which prevented Madame Bonnemain coming to Bourhill.'

Mrs. Fordyce felt the above conversation to be so unsatisfactory that she occupied herself before dinner in writing a letter to her nephew, in which she treated him to some very plain-speaking, and pointed out that unless he made haste to atone for past shortcomings, his chance of winning the heiress of Bourhill was not worth very much.

This letter reached the offender when he was seated at his father's breakfast-table with the other members of the family. He slipped it into his pocket, and his mother, keenly watching him, observed a curious look, half surprise, half relief, on his face. She was not therefore in the least surprised when he came to her immediately after breakfast for a moment's private conversation.

'I've had a letter from Aunt Isabel, written at Bourhill last night; you can read it if you like.'

She took it from him eagerly, and perused it with intense interest. Like her son, she had really abandoned hope, and had accepted the silence of Gladys as her lover's final dismissal.

'This is extraordinary, George,' she said excitedly. 'The girl has been, and gone, evidently, and never uttered a word. Can you believe it?'

'I must. Gladys would not be fretting, as Aunt Isabel says she is, if she knew all that. What shall I do?'

His mother thought a moment. She had been very unhappy during the last two weeks, daily dreading the revelation of the miserable story which would make her idolised boy the centre of an unpleasant scandal. Her relief was almost too great, and it was a few minutes before she could collect her thoughts and gather up the scattered threads of her former ambition.

'You may have a chance yet. It is a slender one; but still I advise you to make instant use of it. Go down and make it up with Gladys, at any cost. If she has heard nothing, and is at all pliable, press for an early marriage.'

She gave the advice in all good faith, and without a thought of the great moral wrong she was committing. The supreme selfishness of her motherly idolatry blinded her to the cruel injustice she was meting out to the innocent girl whose heritage she coveted for her son. Yet she counted herself a Christian woman, and would have had nothing but indignant scorn for the individual who might presume to question her right to such a t.i.tle.

This is no solitary or exceptional case. Such things are done daily, and religion is made the cloak to cover a mult.i.tude of sins. Mrs.

Fordyce had so long striven to serve both G.o.d and Mammon that she had lost the fine faculty which can discern the dividing line. In other words, her conscience was dead, and allowed her to give this deplorable advice without a dissenting word.

'It would be deuced awkward,' said the amiable George, 'if anything were to come out after.'

'After marriage, you mean? Oh, there would be a scene, a few hysterics perhaps, and there the matter would be at an end. A wife can't afford to be so punctilious as a maiden fancy free. She has herself too much to lose.'

George accepted the maternal advice, and went out to Mauchline after business hours that very day.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XLI.

A GREAT RELIEF.