CHAPTER XI
The Savage, wholly unconscious of, and totally indifferent to, the fact that his every footstep was watched by Stephen, entered the “Bush” Inn and went straight to his room, the little knot of regular customers, who were drinking and smoking in the parlor, either rising respectfully as he entered or maintaining an equally respectful silence until he was out of hearing.
“Mr. Jack’s a fine fellow,” said the landlord, looking at the fire solemnly. “Did you notice his face as he went through? I’m afraid it’s all over with the old squire. Well, well, rest his soul, I say. I’m not one to bear grudges against the dead.”
There was, if not a hearty, a unanimous assent to this dutiful sentiment, and the landlord, encouraged, ventured a little further, looking first over his shoulder to see if the door was shut, and then glancing at a little wrinkled faced man who sat in the corner by the fireplace, and looked, in his rusty black suit, like a lawyer’s clerk, as indeed he was.
“All over now, Mr. Skettle,” said the landlord, with a little cough. “I wonder – ahem – who’ll be the next squire?”
The old clerk peered out from under his hairless brows, and shook his head with a dry smile; it was a very fair imitation of his master’s, Mr. Hudsley’s, manner, and never failed to impress the company at the “Bush.”
“Aha!” he breathed. “Hem – yes. Time will prove – time will prove, Jobson.”
Jobson, the landlord, looked round and winked with impressive admiration, as much as to say, “Deep fellow, Skettle; knows all about it, mind you, but not a word!”
“Well,” said the parish clerk, with a shake of the head, “if wishing would make the mare to go, I know who’d be the Squire o’ Hurst,” and he pointed with his pipe to the ceiling, above which the Savage was thoughtfully pacing to and fro.
“We’ve had enough o’ Davenants,” began the miller; but Jobson stopped him with a warning gesture.
“No names, South – no names; this air a public house, and I’m a man as minds my own business.”
“So was the last squire,” retorted the miller, who was not to be put down – “leastways, he didn’t meddle or help his neighbors. Not one shilling have I took from the Hurst since I was that high. Is there a man in this room as can say he’ll be a penny the worse for Squire Ralph’s death?
“And from what I see it seems to me that if things go on as they appear to be going, we shan’t be much better for the new squire, if the name’s to be the same.”
“A nice spoken gentleman, Mr. Stephen,” muttered the tailor, from behind the table.
The miller smiled and shook his head.
“There’s some grain as grinds so soft that you can’t keep it on the ground from the wind; but it don’t make good bread, neighbor. No! Now the youngster up above,” and he jerked his head toward the ceiling, “he comes of a different branch – same tree, mind yer, but a healthier branch. It will be good news for Hurst Leigh if it’s found that Master Jack is to be our head.”
“Nothing soft about Mr. Jack. If all we hear be true, it’s a pretty wild branch of the tree he comes from.”
“They say he’s wild. No doubt; he always was. I can remember him a boy home for the holidays. He used to come down to the mill and poach my trout – a bit of a boy no higher than that” – and he put his hand against the table – “as fine a boy as ever I see. One day I caught him, and told him I’d either give him a thrashing or tell his uncle; for, do yer see, we allus called the old squire his uncle.
“‘All right,’ said he, ‘wait till I’ve landed this fish and we’ll settle it between us like gentlemen.’ Another time I found him in the orchard. ‘Well, Master Jack,’ says I, ‘bean’t you got enough apples at the Hurst, but you must come and plague me?’ He thought a moment, then he looks up with that audacious flash in his eyes, and says, quiet enough: ‘Stolen fruit is the sweetest, South. If you feel put upon, take it out of the Hurst Orchard. I give you leave.’ What was to be done with a boy like that? Fear! He didn’t know what fear was. Do any o’ you remember that roan mare as the old parson had? Well, Master Jack hears us talking o’ the spiteful beast one day, and nothing ’ud do but he must go off and ask the parson to let him ride ’un. Of course the old fellow said no. Two nights after that the young varmint breaks open the stables, takes out the mare, saddles her, and rides her out to the common. I was late at the mill that night, and I hears her come clattering down the yard like a fire-engine, with Master Jack on her back, his eyes flashing and his hair a-flying, and him a-laughing as if it was the rarest bit o’ fun in the world. I’d just time to cut across the meadow to the five-barred fence, and here he come past me, making straight for the fence, waving his hand and shouting someut about Dick Turpin. Ah, and he took the fence, too, and when that vicious beast threw him, and we came up to him, lying all o’ a heap, with his arm broke, and the blood streaming from his face – what’s he do but laugh at us, and swear as we’d startled her! And as for fighting! There warn’t a week but what he’d come to the mill, all cut and mauled, for the missis to wash him and put him to rights. He’d never go home to the Hurst those times. Even then the old squire and him didn’t agree. The old man called him a Savage, and I hear as that’s what they call him up in London, and yet there warn’t a house in Leigh as he warn’t welcome in. Many and many a time he’s slept up in the mill loft after one of his harum-scarum tricks, and many’s the time I’ve faced the old squire when he’s come after him with a horsewhip.”
“They say that he run through all the money, as was his by rights, up in London in fast living,” said the parish clerk, gravely.
“May be,” said the miller, curtly. “If fast living means open-handed living, it’s like enough; he never could keep a shilling when he was a boy, the first tramp as passed had it, safe as a gun. What’s bred in the bone must come out in the flesh. Here’s to the new squire – if it be Master Jack,” and the sturdy old man raised his glass and emptied its contents at one vigorous but steady pull.
Meanwhile the subject of the discussion paced to and fro, pulling at his brier, and indulging in a study of the brownest description.
Never perhaps in his life had Jack been so upset, so serious and so sobered.
In the first place the sudden – or rather sudden to Jack – death of the old man with whom he had lived and quarreled as a boy, affected him more deeply than even he was aware. There in the silent room in the inn, he recalled all the old man’s good qualities, all the little kindnesses he had done him, Jack, and more than all, the few last solemn and quite unexpectedly affectionate words which had dropped from his dying lips.
Jack, puffing at his pipe and rubbing his short hair with a puzzled frown, went over the scene again and again, and with no mercenary thoughts of the old man’s declaration that he had remembered Jack in his will, but with reference to the mysterious allusions in the disposal of the large part of the property; then Jack’s mind would fly off to the fearful scene at the actual death.
The wild cry, the white and horrified face of Stephen, the puzzled and sternly questioning one of the old lawyer. What did it mean?
And still more mysterious, what was the meaning of Stephen’s conduct on the lawn? What was he hunting for with such intense eagerness as to make him fly at Jack like a madman?
Jack – as no doubt the reader will have surmised – was not clever.
He could not piece this and that together, and from disjointed incidents form an intelligent whole, as a child does with a box of puzzles.
The whole thing was a mystery to him, and grew more confusing and bewildering the more he thought of it.
It takes a villain thoroughly to appreciate a villain, a thief to understand and catch a thief; and Jack, being neither one nor the other, utterly failed to understand Stephen.
That he disliked him, with a feeling more like contempt than hatred, was a matter of course, but if any one had told Jack straight out that Stephen had abstracted the will, Jack would in all probability have refused to credit it. Will stealing and all such meanness was so thoroughly out of his line that he would not have understood how Stephen, led on step by step, could have possibly been guilty of it.
Then again, something else came forcing itself on these thoughts concerning the strange events at the Hurst. For the life of him he could not forget the Forest of Warden and all that had happened to him within its leafy shades.
At one moment it seemed as if years must have elapsed since he lost his way and forced an entrance at the woodman’s hut, at another he was half inclined to believe that he had dined rather heavily at the club and dreamed it all. Like Una, he could not realize that they had met, touched hands and exchanged speech.
Jack could not get the beautiful face out of his mental vision; it mingled with the wan face of the dying man, with Stephen’s pale, distorted countenance; it seemed to beam and shine upon him from the dark corners of the room with the same frank, pure, innocent smile with which it had shone down upon him as he lay at her feet in the woods.
And then the girl’s surroundings! The extraordinary father, with his laborer’s dress and his refined speech and bearing. What mystery enveloped the little group of persons buried in the depths of a wood, living apart from the world?
Jack rumpled his hair and drew a long breath eloquent of confusion and bewilderment.
It was certainly extraordinary! Three days ago he had left London, prosaic London, and was now plunged to the neck in a sea of romance and secrecy.
On one thing he was, however, resolved. He would keep his threat or promise. He would go to Warden Forest and see that beautiful face again, though he had to brave the anger of twenty mysterious woodmen. He thought at first that he would start on the morrow, but some feeling – perhaps some reverence and respect for the dead man – made him change his mind.
“No,” he said to himself, as he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and prepared for bed; “I’ll stay here over the funeral, and then – ”
But, though he felt tired and worn out, it was hours before he could sleep, and when he did, his spirit fled back to Warden Forest, and the face that had haunted him waking hovered about him in dreams.
Was it love; love at first sight? Jack would have been first to laugh at the idea; but it is worthy of note that all the loves which had occurred in his wild, reckless life had never, in their warmest epochs, moved him as the remembrance of Una had done; not one had had the power to disturb his sleep or to bring him dreams.
Jack kept to his resolution. Five days passed, and he stuck to the “Bush” manfully. They were, perhaps, the dreariest days he ever spent in his life, and he never thought of them afterward without a shudder.
Every day he was tempted to take flight and go to London until the day of the funeral; but his promise to Hudsley kept him at his post. He would not even leave the “Bush.”
On the first day, a note, written on the deepest of mourning paper, had come from Stephen, begging him to come to the Hurst; but he had written a firm and what was for him a polite refusal. Of Stephen himself he saw nothing. Mr. Hudsley had also sent, and asked him to stay at his house; and this, too, Jack had declined.
The fact was he wanted to be left alone, to think over the strange adventures in the forest, to dwell with unceasing wistfulness on the beautiful face and sweet, musical voice.
So he clung to the inn; taking a morning dip in the river; strolling about, with his brier pipe in his mouth and his hands in his pockets, exchanging a word with this man and the other, and bestowing his odd change on any children he happened to meet. Sometimes he would drop in at one of the cottages, where he was so welcome when a boy, and smoke and chat; but usually he kept to his room.
But wherever he went he was the observed of all observers. Every night the little club that met in the “Bush” parlor talked about him, and wondered why he didn’t go to the Hurst, and whether he would be the new squire.
The day of the funeral arrived at last – a cold, wet day, that foreshadowed the approaching autumn; and Jack put on his black suit – made by the village tailor who had described Stephen as a nice-spoken gentleman – and went up to the Hurst.
It was the first time he had been near it since the night he had the scuffle with Stephen on the lawn; and, to Jack’s eyes, it looked gloomier than ever.
As he entered the hall, a shrunken figure in shabby black came to meet him; it was old Skettle, Hudsley’s clerk.
The old man peered at him curiously, and made him a respectful bow in response to Jack’s blunt greeting, and opened the library door.
Mr. Hudsley was standing at the table, and looked up with his wrinkled face and keen eyes – not a trace of expression beyond keenness in them. Jack shook hands with him and looked around.
“Where is Stephen?” he said.
As he spoke the door opened and Stephen entered. Jack, frank and candid, stared at him with astonishment.
“Are we ready?”
And they passed out.
In silence they stood beside the grave while all that was mortal of Ralph Davenant was consigned to the earth, and in silence they returned to the library.
With the same stony, impassive countenance, Mr. Hudsley seated himself at the head of the table; Stephen sank into a chair beside him, and sat with his eyes hidden under the white lids; Jack stood with folded arms beside the window, glancing at the far-stretching lawns and watching the servants as they filed in, a long line of black.
When they had all entered Mr. Hudsley drew from his pocket a folded parchment, slowly put on his spectacles, and without looking round, said:
“I am now about to read the last will and testament of Ralph Davenant.”
There was a pause, a solemn pause, then he looked up and said:
“This will was drawn up by me on January – last year. It is the last will of which I have any cognizance. A careful search has been made, but no other document of the kind has been found. That is so, Mr. Stephen, is it not?” and he turned to Stephen so suddenly that all eyes followed his.
Stephen paused a moment, then raised his lids, and with a shake of his head and a sigh murmured an assent.
Mr. Hudsley allowed his keen eyes to rest on him for an instant, then slowly looked in the direction of Jack.
“A most careful search,” he repeated.
Jack, feeling that the remark was addressed to him, nodded and looked at the lawn again.
Mr. Hudsley cleared his throat, and opened the crackling parchment.
There was an intense silence, so intense that Stephen’s labored breathing could be heard as plainly as the rain on the windows.
In the same dry, hard voice Mr. Hudsley began to read. Clause by clause, wrapped in the beautiful legal jargon in which such documents are, for some inscrutable reasons, worded, no one understanding the import, but suddenly familiar words struck upon the ear. They were the servants’ legacies, and a mourning ring to Mr. Hudsley; then, in a stillness that was oppressive, there fell the words:
“To my nephew, Stephen Davenant, I will the whole and sole remainder of all I possess, be it in lands or money, houses or securities, all and of every kind of property, deducting only the afore-mentioned legacies.”
A thrill ran through the assemblage, every eye turned, as if magnetized, to the white, death-like face of the heir.
There he sat, the new squire, the owner of Hurst Leigh and the uncounted thousands of old Ralph Davenant, motionless, white, too benumbed to tremble.
Slowly Mr. Hudsley read over the signatures, and then slowly commenced to fold the parchment.
Then, from the shadow of the curtains, Jack emerged, pale, too, but with cool, calm dignity.
Quite quietly, and with perfect self-possession, he came to the table and looked at the dry, wrinkled face.
“So I understand, Mr. Hudsley, that the squire has left me – nothing.”
Mr. Hudsley looked up, no trace of expression on his face.
“Quite right, Mr. Newcombe,” he replied.
“He has not named me,” said Jack.
“He has not named you in this will.”
Jack bowed, and was turning from the table when Stephen started to his feet.
For one moment his eyes rested on Jack’s face with an awful, piercing look of scrutiny, then his eyes lit up with a malicious gleam of triumph, but it disappeared instantly, and with a gesture of honest generosity and regret, he exclaimed:
“Not named! My dear Jack! But stay! I see how it is. My uncle felt that he could trust to my feeling in the matter. He knew that you would not have to look to me in vain.”
Jack turned and looked at him with infinite contempt and unbelief, and then slowly passed out.
CHAPTER XII
Two days passed since Una had given her promise that should Jack Newcombe come to seek her she would hold no converse with him. How much that promise had cost her no one could say; she herself did not know. She only knew that whereas her life had always seemed dull and purposeless, it had, since Jack Newcombe’s visit, grown utterly dreary and joyless.
Was it love? She did not ask herself the question. Had she done so, she could not have answered it.
Any school-girl of fifteen feeling as Una felt would have known that she was in love, but Una’s only schooling had consisted of the few stern lessons of Gideon Rolfe.
“I can never see him, hear him, speak to him again,” was her one sad reflection; “but if I could be somewhere near him, unseen!”
Then, through her brain, her father’s words rang with melancholy persistence. This youth, whose eyes had seemed so frank and brave, whose voice rang with music so new and sweet, was, so her father said, unutterably wicked. One to be avoided as a dangerous animal! It could not but be true; she thought her father was truth itself.
But if it were so, then how false the world must be, for one to look and speak so gently, and yet be so wicked!
All day she wandered in the woods, returning to the cottage pale and listless, to leave her plate untouched or at best trifled with. Gideon Rolfe saw the change which had befallen her, but held his peace, though a bitter rage filled his heart; Martha Rolfe chided her for her listlessness, and tried to tempt her to eat; but Una put chiding and coaxing aside with a gentle smile, and escaped to the lake where she could dream alone and undisturbed.
The two days passed – on the third, as she was sitting beside the spot which had grown sacred in her eyes, with its crushed and broken ferns, she heard steps behind. Thinking that they were those of her father or one of the charcoal burners, she did not turn her head. The footsteps drew nearer, and a man came out from the thick wood and stood on the margin of the lake, and remained for a moment looking about him.
Una was so hidden by the tall brake that she remained unseen, and sat holding her breath watching him.
He was tall, thin, and dressed in black, and when he turned his face toward her, Una saw that he was not ill-looking. She might have thought him handsome but for that other face which was always in her mental vision. He was very pale, and looked anxious and ill at ease; and as he stood looking before him his right hand took his left into custody. It was Stephen Davenant.
For a few moments he stood with a half-searching, half-absent expression on his pale face, then turned and entered the wood again.
Pale with wonder and curiosity, Una rose and looked after him, and to her infinite surprise saw a carriage slowly approaching.
A lady was seated in it, a lady with a face as pale as the man’s but with a still more anxious and deprecating expression.
Una, with the quickness of sight acquired by a life spent in communion with nature, could see, even at that distance, that the lady’s eyes were like those of the man’s, and, furthermore, that she was awaiting his approach with a nervous timidity that almost amounted to fear.
With fast beating heart Una watched them wondering what could have brought them to Warden, wondering who and what they were, when suddenly her heart gave a great bound, for the gentleman, turning to the driver, said, in a soft, low voice:
“We are looking for the cottage of a woodman, named Gideon Rolfe.”
“Never heard of it, sir. Do you know what part of the forest it is in?”
“No,” said Stephen.
“Then it’s like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay,” retorted the man.
“However difficult, it must be found,” said Stephen. “Drive on till you come to some road and follow that. It may lead us to some place where we can ascertain the direction of this man’s cottage.”
The man touched his horse with the whip, and still Una stood as if spell-bound, but, suddenly remembering that they were going in the opposite direction to the cottage, she was about to step forward, when she heard the bark of the dog, and almost as if he had sprung from the ground, Gideon Rolfe stood beside the carriage.
“Ah, here is someone,” said Stephen. “Can you tell us the road to the cottage of Gideon Rolfe, the woodman, my man?” he asked.
“And what may be your business with him?”
“Why do you ask, my good man?” he replied.
“Because I am he you seek,” said Gideon.
“You are Gideon Rolfe? How fortunate.”
“That’s as it may prove,” said Gideon, coldly. “What is your business?”
“It is of a nature which, I think, had better be stated in a more convenient spot. Will you kindly permit me to enter your cottage and rest?”
Gideon looked searchingly into Stephen’s face for a moment that seemed an age to Una, then nodded curtly, and said: “Follow me.”
“Will you not ride?” asked Stephen, suavely.
But Gideon shook his head, and shouldering his ax, strode in front of the horse, and Stephen motioning to the driver, the carriage followed.
“A charming spot, Mr. Rolfe – charming! Rather shall I say, retired, if not solitary, however.”
“Say what you please, sir,” retorted Gideon, grimly and calmly. “I am waiting to learn the business you have with me.”
“Mother,” he said – “this lady is my mother, Mr. Rolfe – I think, I really think you would find it pleasant and refreshing on the bench which I observed outside the door.”
With a little deprecatory air the lady got up and instantly left the cottage.
Then Stephen’s manner changed. Leaning forward he fixed his gray eyes on Gideon Rolfe’s stern face and said:
“Mr. Rolfe – my name is Davenant – ”
Gideon started, and, with a muttered oath, raised the ax.
Stephen’s face turned as white as his spotless collar, but he did not shrink.
“My name is Davenant,” he repeated – “Stephen Davenant. I am afraid the name has some unpleasant associations attached to it. I beg to remind you, if that should be the case, that those associations are not connected with any fault of mine.”
“Go on. Your name is Stephen Davenant?”
“Stephen Davenant. I am the nephew of Squire Davenant – Ralph Davenant. The nephew of Ralph Davenant. I think you can guess my business with you.”
“Do you come from – him?” he asked, hoarsely.
“In a certain sense, yes,” he said. “No doubt you have heard the sad news. My uncle is dead.”
“Dead!” he repeated fiercely.
“Dead. My uncle died three days ago.”
“Dead!” repeated Gideon, not in the tone of a man who had lost a friend, but in that of one who had lost an enemy.
“Yes,” said Stephen, wiping his dry eyes with his spotless handkerchief; “my poor uncle died three days ago. I am afraid I have not broken it as softly as I should have done. You knew him well?”
“Yes, I knew him well.”
“Then you know how great a loss the county has suffered in – ”
“Spare your fine phrases. Come to your business with me. What brings you here?”
“I am here in consequence of a communication made to me by my uncle on his death-bed. Are you alone?”
Gideon waved his hand with passionate impatience.
“That communication,” Stephen continued, “concerns a certain young lady – ”
“He told you?” he exclaimed.
“My uncle told me that I should find a young lady, in whose future he was greatly interested, in the charge of a certain person named Gideon Rolfe.”
“Well, did he tell you any more than that?”
Stephen made a gesture in the negative.
“So,” said Gideon Rolfe, “he left it to me to tell the story of his crime. You are Ralph Davenant’s nephew. You are the nephew of a villain and a scoundrel!”
It was true, then, that the man knew nothing of the secret marriage of Ralph Davenant and Caroline Hatfield.
“A scoundrel and a villain!” repeated Gideon, leaning forward and clutching the table. “You say that he told you the story of his crime, glossed over and falsified. Hear it from me. Your uncle and I were schoolfellows and friends. I was the son of the schoolmaster at Hurst. Your uncle left school to go to college. I remained at Hurst in my father’s house. I could have gone to college also, but I would not leave Hurst, for I was in love. I loved Caroline Hatfield. She was the daughter of the gamekeeper on the Hurst estate, and we were to be married. Two months before the day fixed for our marriage your uncle, my friend – my friend! – came home to spend the vacation. We were friends still, and I – cursed fool that I was – took him to the gamekeeper’s lodge to introduce him to my sweetheart. Six weeks afterward he and she had fled.”
Stephen watched him closely, his heart beating wildly.
“They had fled,” continued Gideon, in a broken voice. “My life was ended on the day they brought me the news. I left Hurst Leigh and came here. A year later she came back to me – came back to me to die. She died and left me – . She left me her child. I – I loved her still and swore to protect that child, and I have done so. There is my story. What have you to say?”
“It is terrible, terrible!” he exclaimed.
“I have kept my vow. Her child has grown up ignorant of the shame which is her heritage. Here, buried in the heart of the forest, away from the world, I have kept and guarded her for her mother’s sake. There is the story, told without gloss or falsehood. What have you to say?”
“You have discharged your self-appointed trust most nobly! But – but that trust has come to an end.”
“Who says so?”
“I say so. You have done your duty – more than your duty – I must do mine. My uncle, on his deathbed, bequeathed his daughter to my charge.”
“To yours?”
“To mine,” said Stephen, gravely.
“Where is your authority?”
“That I do not come without authority is proven by the mere fact of my presence here and by my knowledge of my uncle’s secret. No one but yourself, your wife and I know of the real identity of this girl. It was my uncle’s wish that the story of her birth should still remain a secret – that it should be buried, as it were, in his grave. Why should the poor girl ever learn the truth, when such knowledge can only bring her shame and mortification?”
“Grant that,” said Gideon, “where could she better be hidden than here? Her secret, her very existence, have been concealed from the world.”
“True, but – but the future, my dear sir – the future! You are not a young man – ”
“I am still young enough to protect her.”
“My dear Mr. Rolfe, you may live – you look as if you would – to be a hundred; you have discharged your self-imposed task most nobly, but you must not forget that it has now devolved upon one who is bound by ties of blood to fulfill it, if not so well, certainly with the best intentions. Mr. Rolfe, I am the young girl’s cousin.”
“You speak of ties of blood; say rather, the ties of shame! Suppose – I say suppose – that I refuse to deliver her up to your care?”
“I do not think you will do that. You forget that, after all, we have little choice in the matter.”
Gideon Rolfe eyed him questioningly.
“The young girl is now of age, and – ”
“Go on.”
“And supposing that you were to refuse to hand her over to my charge, I should feel compelled to tell the story of her life, and – . Pray – pray be calm. I beg you to remember that I am not here of my own desire; that I am merely fulfilling my duty to my uncle, and endeavoring to obey his last wishes. I do not blame you for your reluctance to part with her. It does you credit, my dear Mr. Rolfe – infinite credit. But duty – duty; we must all do our duty.”
“Has anyone of your name ever yet done his duty?” repeated Gideon, sternly.
“For my part, Mr. Rolfe, I have always striven to do mine; yea, even in the face of great temptation and difficulties. I must do it now. After all, why should you resist my uncle’s wish? Consider, she, who was once a child, is now a woman. Do you think it possible to keep her imprisoned in this wood for the whole of her days?”
Gideon Rolfe turned toward the window. For the first time Stephen had found a weak spot in his armor. It was true! Already she was beginning to pine and hunger for the world. Could he keep her much longer?
“Come,” said Stephen, quick to see the impression he had made. “Do not let us be selfish; let us think of her welfare, as well as our own wishes. Candidly, I must confess that I should be perfectly willing to leave her in her present obscurity.”
Gideon Rolfe broke in abruptly.
“Where will you take her?” he asked, hoarsely.
“It is my intention,” he said, “to place her in my mother’s charge. She lives in London, alone. There my cousin will find a loving home and a second mother. Believing that you would naturally have some reluctance at parting with her, not knowing with whom and where she was going, I have brought my mother with me.”
Gideon glanced at the quiet, motionless figure seated on the bench outside, and then paced the room again.
“Does she know?” he asked hoarsely.
“She knows nothing,” said Stephen. “My mother can trust me implicitly. She has long wanted a companion, and I have told her that I know of a young girl in whom I am interested.”
“You intend to keep her secret?” said Gideon.
“Most sacredly,” responded Stephen, with solemn earnestness.
Gideon went to the door and opened it.
“Wait,” he said, and disappeared.