"What was the object?"

"To make him look not so distinguished--like nothing. If a man isn't handsome, but only distinguished"--Kitty's mood was dangerous--"and you make him look cheap, that's one advantage, and--"

Here the Young Doctor, having observed the rising tide of antagonism in the tone of the voices behind him, gently interposed, and made it clear that the purpose was to throw a shadow on the past of her husband in order to discredit his evidence; to which Mrs. Crozier nodded her understanding. She liked the Young Doctor, as who did not who came in contact with him, except those who had fear of him, and who had an idea that he could read their minds as he read their bodies. And even this girl at her side--Mona Crozier realised that the part she had played was evidently an unselfish one, though she felt with piercing intuition that whatever her husband thought of the girl, the girl thought too much of her husband. Somehow, all in a moment, it made her sorry for the girl's sake. The girl had meant well by her husband in sending for his wife, that was certain; and she did not look bad. She was too sedately and reservedly dressed, in spite of her auriferous face and head and her burnished tone, to be bad; too fearless in eye, too concentrated to be the rover in fields where she had no tenure or right.

She turned and looked Kitty squarely in the eyes, and a new, softer look came into her own, subduing what to Kitty was the challenging alertness and selfish inquisitiveness.

"You have been very good to Shiel--you two kind people," she said, and there came a sudden faint mist to her eyes.

That was her lucky moment, and she spoke as she did just in time, for Kitty was beginning to resent her deeply; to dislike her far more than was reasonable, and certainly without any justice.

Kitty spoke up quickly. "Well, you see, he was always kind and good to other people, and that was why--"

"But that Mr. Burlingame did not like him?" The wife had a strange intuition regarding Mr. Burlingame. She was sure that there was a woman in the case--the girl beside her?

"That was because Mr. Burlingame was not kind or good to other people,"

was Kitty's sedate response. There was an undertone of reflection in the voice which did not escape Mrs. Crozier's senses, and it also caught the ear of the Young Doctor, to whom there came a sudden revelation of the reason why Burlingame had left Mrs. Tynan's house.

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Crozier enigmatically. Presently, with suppressed excitement as she saw the Young Doctor reining in the horses slowly, she added: "My husband--when have you arranged that I should see him?"

"When he gets back--home," Kitty replied, with an accent on the last word.

Mrs. Crozier started visibly. "When he gets back home-back from where?

He is not here?" she asked in a tone of chagrin. She had come a long way, and she had pictured this meeting at the end of the journey with a hundred variations, but never with this one--that she should not see Shiel at once when the journey was over, if he was alive. Was it hurt pride or disappointed love which spoke in her face, in her words? After all, it was bad enough that her private life and affairs should be dragged out in a court of law; that these two kind strangers, whom she had never seen till a few minutes ago, should be in the inner circle of knowledge of the life of her husband and herself, without her self-esteem being hurt like this. She was very woman, and the look of the thing was not nice to her eyes, while it must belittle her in theirs. Had this girl done it on purpose? Yet why should she--she who had so appealed to her to come to him--have sought to humiliate her?

Kitty was not quite sure what she ought to say. "You see, we expected him back before this. He is very exact!"

"Very exact?" asked Mrs. Crozier in astonishment. This was a new phase of Shiel Crozier's character. He must, indeed, have changed since he had caused her so much anxiety in days gone by.

"Usen't he to be so?" asked Kitty, a little viciously. "He is so very exact now," she added. "He expected to be back home before this"--how she loved to use that word home--"and so we thought he would be here when you arrived. But he has been detained at Aspen Vale. He had a big business deal on--"

"A big business deal? Is he--is he in a large way of business?" Mona asked almost incredulously. Shiel Crozier in a large way of business, in a big business deal? It did not seem possible. His had ever been the game of chance. Business--business?

"He doesn't talk himself, of course; that wouldn't be like him,"--Kitty had joy in giving this wife the character of her husband, "but they say that if he succeeds in what he's trying to do now he will make a great deal of money."

"Then he has not made it yet?" asked Mrs. Crozier.

"He has always been able to pay his board regularly, with enough left for a pew in church," answered Kitty with dry malice; for she mistook the light in the other's eyes, and thought it was avarice; and the love of money had no place in Kitty's make-up. She herself would never have been influenced by money where a man was concerned.

"Here's the house," she quickly added; "our home, where Mr. Crozier lives. He has the best room, so yours won't be quite so good. It's mother's--she's giving it up to you. With your trunks and things, you'll want a room to yourself," Kitty added, not at all unconscious that she was putting a phase of the problem of Crozier and his wife in a very commonplace way; but she did not look into Mrs. Crozier's face as she said it.

Mrs. Crozier, however, was fully conscious of the poignancy of the remark, and once again her face flushed slightly, though she kept outward composure.

"Mother, mother, are you there?" Kitty called, as she escorted the wife up the garden walk.

An instant later Mrs. Tynan cheerfully welcomed the disturber of the peace of the home where Shiel Crozier had been the central figure for so long.

CHAPTER XII. AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM

"What are you laughing at, Kitty? You cackle like a young hen with her first egg." So spoke Mrs. Tynan to her daughter, who alternately swung backwards and forwards in a big rocking-chair, silently gazing into the distant sky, or sat still and "cackled" as her mother had said.

A person of real observation and astuteness, however, would have noticed that Kitty's laughter told a story which was not joy and gladness--neither good humour nor the abandonment of a luxurious nature.

It was tinged with bitterness and had the smart of the nettle.

Her mother's question only made her laugh the more, and at last Mrs.

Tynan stooped over her and said, "I could shake you, Kitty. You'd make a snail fidget, and I've got enough to do to keep my senses steady with all the house-work--and now her in there!" She tossed a hand behind her fretfully.

Quick with love for her mother, as she always was, Kitty caught the other's trembling hand. "You've always had too much to do, mother; always been slaving for others. You've never had time to think whether you're happy or not, or whether you've got a problem--that's what people call things, when they're got so much time on their hands that they make a play of their inside feelings and work it up till it sets them crazy."

Mrs. Tynan's mouth tightened and her brow clouded. "I've had my problems too, but I always made quick work of them. They never had a chance to overlay me like a mother overlays her baby and kills it."

"Not 'like a mother overlays,' but 'as a mother overlays,'" returned Kitty with a queer note to her voice. "That's what they taught me at school. The teacher was always picking us up on that kind of thing. I said a thing worse than that when Mrs. Crozier"--her fingers motioned towards another room--"came to-day. I don't know what possessed me. I was off my trolley, I suppose, as John Sibley puts it. Well, when Mrs.

James Shiel Gathorne Crozier said--oh, so sweetly and kindly--'You are Miss Tynan?' what do you think I replied? I said to her, 'The same'!"

Rather an acidly satisfied smile came to Mrs. Tynan's lips. "That was like the Slatterly girls," she replied. "Your father would have said it was the vernacular of the rail-head. He was a great man for odd words, but he knew always just what he wanted to say and he said it out. You've got his gift. You always say the right thing, and I don't know why you made that break with her--of all people."

A meditative look came into Kitty's eyes. "Mr. Crozier says every one has an imp that loves to tease us, and trip us up, and make us appear ridiculous before those we don't want to have any advantage over us."

"I don't want Mrs. Crozier to have any advantage over you and me, I can tell you that. Things'll never be the same here again, Kitty dear, and we've all got on so well; with him so considerate of every one, and a good friend always, and just one of us, and his sickness making him seem like our own, and--"

"Oh, hush--will you hush, mother!" interposed Kitty sharply. "He's going away with her back to the old country, and we might just as well think about getting other borders, for I suppose Mr. Bulrush and his bonny bride will set up a little bulrush tabernacle on the banks of the Nile"--she nodded in the direction of the river outside--"and they'll find a little Moses and will treat it as their very own."

"Kitty, how can you!"

Kitty shrugged a shoulder. "It would be ridiculous for that pair to have one of their own. It's only the young mother with a new baby that looks natural to me."

"Don't talk that way, Kitty," rejoined her mother sharply. "You aren't fit to judge of such things."

"I will be before long," said her daughter. "Anyway, Mrs. Crozier isn't any better able to talk than I am," she added irrelevantly. "She never was a mother."

"Don't blame her," said Mrs. Tynan severely. "That's G.o.d's business. I'd be sorry for her, so far as that was concerned, if I were you. It's not her fault."

"It's an easy way of accounting for good undone," returned Kitty.

"P'r'aps it was G.o.d's fault, and p'r'aps if she had loved him more--"

Mrs. Tynan's face flushed with sudden irritation and that fretful look came to her eyes which accompanies a lack of comprehension. "Upon my word, well, upon my word, of all the vixens that ever lived, and you looking like a yellow pansy and too sweet for daily use! Such thoughts in your head! Who'd have believed that you--!"

Kitty made a mocking face at her mother. "I'm more than a girl, I'm a woman, mother, who sees life all around me, from the insect to the mountain, and I know things without being told. I always did. Just life and living tell me things, and maybe, too, the Irish in me that father was."

"It's so odd. You're such a mixture of fun and fancy, at least you always have been; but there's something new in you these days. Kitty, you make me afraid--yes, you make your mother afraid. After what you said the other day about Mr. Crozier I've had bad nights, and I get nervous thinking."

Kitty suddenly got up, put her arm round her mother and kissed her.

"You needn't be afraid of me, mother. If there'd been any real danger, I wouldn't have told you. Mr. Crozier's away, and when he comes back he'll find his wife here, and there's the end of everything. If there'd been danger, it would have been settled the night before he went away. I kissed him that night as he was sleeping out there under the trees."

Mrs. Tynan sat down weakly and fanned herself with her ap.r.o.n. "Oh, oh, oh, dear Lord!" she said. "I'm not afraid to tell you anything I ever did, mother," declared Kitty firmly; "though I'm not prepared to tell you everything I've felt. I kissed him as he slept. He didn't wake, he just lay there sleeping--sleeping." A strange, distant, dreaming look came into her eyes. She smiled like one who saw a happy vision, and an eerie expression stole into her face. "I didn't want him to wake," she continued. "I asked G.o.d not to let him wake. If he'd waked--oh, I'd have been ashamed enough till the day I died in one way! Still he'd have understood, and he'd have thought no harm. But it wouldn't have been fair to him--and there's his wife in there," she added, breaking off into a different tone. "They're a long way above us--up among the peaks, and we're at the foot of the foothills, mother; but he never made us feel that, did he? The difference between him and most of the men I've ever seen! The difference!"