"You blessed child! And he is rich, I suppose?"

"I'm sure he is very rich, but then I don't care about riches."

"Heather, you mustn't keep me the whole day chattering. When a girl begins on the subject of her sweethearts she never stops, and I have plenty of things to attend to. Here's a list of provisions I wrote out early this morning. I want you to go into the town and buy them for me.

Don't forget one single thing; go right through the list and buy everything. Here's thirty shillings; you oughtn't to spend anything like all that. But pay for the things down on the nail the minute you have purchased them. Now then, off with you, and I will consider the subject of your sweethearts. Upon my word, to think of a mite like you having two!"

I left Aunt Penelope's room and went out and bought the things she required. She had a troublesome lot of commissions, and they took me some time to execute. When I had done so I returned home again.

"You are to go up to your aunt's room, and as quickly as you can, miss,"

said Jonas, when I found myself in the little hall.

"Jonas," I said, "several nice things will be sent in from the shops, and I have got a little bird for auntie's tea, and I want you to cook it just beautifully."

"You trust me," said Jonas. "I'll see to that."

He left me, and I went upstairs to Aunt Penelope's room.

"The doctor has been, Heather, and he says you are the finest medicine he ever heard of, and that my chest is much better, and I am practically out of the wood; but here's a telegram from your father."

"Oh!" I said, breathlessly, "has he discovered anything?"

"Read," she answered, gazing at me with her glittering black eyes.

I read the following words:--

Leaving Paddington by the 11.50 train. Hope to be with you about 1.30.

GORDON GRAYSON.

"How did he know? Why is he coming?" I asked, my face turning very white.

"He is coming, if you wish to know, Heather, because I asked him to come. And now, you will have the goodness to sit down by me. No, I am not hungry for dinner. I won't touch any food until you know the story I am about to tell you. Sit down where I can see your face, my child. Your father is coming, of course, because I wish it, and now I have something to say to you."

I sat down, feeling just as though my feet were weighted with lead. I was trembling all over. Aunt Penelope looked at me fixedly; she had the best heart in the world, but the expression of her face was a little hard. Her eyes seemed to glitter now as they gazed into mine.

"Aunt Penelope," I said, suddenly, "be prepared for one thing. Whatever you tell me, whatever you believe, and doubtless think you have good cause to believe, I shall never believe, never--if it means anything against my father."

"Did I ask you to believe my story, Heather?"

"No, but you expect me to, all the same," was my reply.

"I expect you to listen, and not to behave like an idiot. Now sit perfectly still and let me begin."

"It doesn't matter, if you don't expect me to believe," I said.

"Hush! I am tired, I have been dangerously ill, and am not at all strong. I must get this thing over, or I'll take to worrying, and then I shall be bad again. Well, now, about your father. You understand, of course, that he left the army?"

I nodded.

"Oh, you take that piece of information very quietly."

"He told me so himself," I said, after a pause. "Of course, I must believe what he tells me himself."

"He told you himself? That's more than I expected Gordon Grayson to do.

However, he has done so, and I don't think the worse of him, not by any means the worse, as far as that point is concerned. It hasn't occurred to you, I suppose, my poor little girl, to wonder why a man like your father is no longer in the army, to wonder why every army man will have nothing to do with him, to wonder why he married a woman like Lady Helen Dalrymple, and why she is received in society and he is not?"

"How can you tell?" I asked, opening my lips in astonishment, "you weren't there to see."

"A little bird told me," said Aunt Penelope.

This was her usual fashion of explaining how certain information got to her ears: there was always a "little bird" in it; I knew that bird. I sat very still for a few minutes, then I said, as quietly and patiently as I could--

"Speak."

"It happened," said Aunt Penelope, "in India, and it happened a long time ago--the beginning of it happened before you came to live with me, Heather. Of one thing, at least, I am glad--your poor, sweet mother, my precious sister, was out of it all. She believed in your father as you believe in him; she was spared the terrible knowledge of the other side of his character."

"Oh, hush! don't say such things."

"And don't you talk rubbish. Listen to the plain words of a plain old woman, a woman who, for aught you can tell, may be dying."

"I am sure you are not, auntie; I have come back to help you to get well again."

"I am saying nothing against you, poor child; you are right enough, you do credit to my training. Had you been left to his tender mercies, G.o.d only knows what sort of creature you'd have grown into. But now I will begin, continue, and end in as few words as possible. Your father came courting your mother long years ago in a dear little seaside garrison town. He was a young lieutenant then, and was very smart, and had a way with him which I don't think he ever lost."

I thought of my darling father, with his cheerful, bluff manners, with his gay laugh, his merry smile, his ready joke. Even still he had "a way with him," although it must be sadly altered from the time when my mother was young.

"Your mother was a good bit my junior, Heather, and she and I kept a little house together. She was a very pretty girl indeed, and, of course, men admired her. We were pretty well off in those days, the pressure of penury had not come near us; we were orphans, but were left comfortably off. We used to subscribe to all the pleasant things that took place in our little town, and we occupied ourselves also in good works, and I think we were loved very much. Your father came along and got introduced to your mother, and to me, and we both took to him from the first."

"Oh, auntie, did you like him, then?"

"Like him! Of course I did. Heather, he was just the sort of man to beguile young girls to their destruction.

"Well, he cast his spell over your mother, and people began to talk about them both, and I began to get into a rage, for I knew what those soldier lads were when they liked. I knew how easy it would be for him to flirt and make love and ride away. I was determined he should not do that. Your mother could not have borne it. She was so pretty, Heather, and so clinging, and so gentle, and she had just given her whole heart to your father. So one day I asked him, after he had been with her the whole morning, and they had walked together by the seash.o.r.e, and sat together in the garden, and he had read poetry to her, and she had listened with her heart in her eyes--I said to him, 'Do you know what you are doing?' He stared at me and coloured, and said, 'What?'--and then I said again, 'You must know perfectly well that a girl's heart is a sensitive thing, so just be careful what you are doing with my young sister's heart.' He coloured all over his face, and I never liked him better than when he sprang forward and took my hand and said,

"'Why, Penelope!'--I knew I ought to be shocked, but I did not even mind his calling me Penelope--'Why, Penelope, if I could only believe that I had been fortunate enough to make any impression on your sister's heart, I'd be the happiest man on earth, for I love her, Penelope, better than my own life!' Yes, Heather, I can hear him saying those words just as though it were yesterday, and I was ever so pleased, ever so glad; the delight and joy of that moment come back to me even now. Of course, your father and mother got engaged, and everything was as right as possible. They were married, and soon after their marriage they went to India, and in about a year's time I heard of the birth of their child--of you--Heather. Your mother was very poorly after your birth, and had to be sent to the hills, up to a place called Simla. But even the air of the hills did not do her any good. She pined and pined, and faded and faded, and when you were about five years of age she died."

"I remember about _afterwards_," I said then, "I saw her after she was dead."

"Well, you needn't tell me, the knowledge would be harrowing," said Aunt Penelope. "After your mother's death I wrote to Gordon, proposing to adopt you, and begging of him to send you to me at once. He refused rather shortly, I thought, and said that he preferred you to be near him, and that he knew a family who would keep you in the hills during the hot weather. So the next few years went by. Then, when you were about eight years old I got a letter from your father. He said he was coming back to London, that he wanted to come on special business, and also that he had now changed his mind, and would bring you to me, if I had not changed my mind about having you. Of course I had not, and he brought you, and that was the end of that story. You were left with me and you fared well enough. While your father was in London I saw him several times, and I marked a great change in him, and what I considered a great deterioration of character. He knew the woman he has since made his wife even then, and often spoke of her. She was in society in Calcutta, where his regiment was stationed, and he often met her. He used to mention her in almost every letter he wrote, and I was fairly sick of her name, and also of the name of her brother. I told Gordon so in one of my letters. I said that Lady Helen's brother might be the best man on earth, but that he was nothing at all to me, and that if he wanted to write about him he had better choose another correspondent.

"Then, all of a sudden, without the slightest warning, the blow of blows fell. Your father was arrested on a charge of forgery; he had forged a cheque for a considerable sum of money. Oh, I forget all the particulars, but he had been made secretary to the golf and cricket clubs, and held, so to speak, the bank--in fact, he made away with the money, but he was caught just in time, and was tried by the laws of India, and sentenced to prison--penal servitude, in short. Of course, such a frightful disgrace carried its own consequences. He was cashiered from the army, they would have nothing whatever to do with him. His term of imprisonment was over late last autumn. I often used to wonder what would happen when he was free, and to speculate as to what your feelings would be when you saw him again. I used to make myself miserable about him. Well, you met, as you know, and he carried off everything with a high hand, and insisted on taking you away with him, and insisted further on marrying Lady Helen Dalrymple. It seems she stuck to him when all his other friends deserted him. He has lived through his punishment as far as the law of the land is concerned, but he will never outlive his disgrace, and there isn't a true soldier in the length and breadth of the land who will speak to him. Well, that's his story, and I was obliged to tell you. Now, you can run away and change your dress--oh, I forgot, you have no dress to change into. Well, you can tidy your hair and wash your hands, and by that time we'll be ready for dinner. Now, off with you, and be sure you have your hair well brushed. Good-bye for the present."

CHAPTER XVII

I left Aunt Penelope's room. I walked very slowly. My room was next to hers, and the walls between were quite thin; you could almost hear a person talking in the adjoining room. I wanted to be very quiet. I wanted no one to hear me, and yet I could not bear the perfect stillness and the cramped feeling of the tiny room.