Read the book: «The House of Armour», page 19

“Yes, lady; oh, yes. Frankness is the privilege of great minds.”

“Your last lecture was too long,” she said. “Two mortal hours we had to sit here and listen to you. It wasn’t fair, MacDaly, for we are all tired people and come to the kitchen for relaxation. We don’t want a formal programme, and though it is very interesting to hear about Napoleon and St. Helena, you shouldn’t entrap us into listening to you when our minds aren’t in a receptive condition.”

“True, lady, true, most unfortunately true; but yet,” depositing his tall hat and his sword on the table, and tentatively unfolding his manuscript with a roguish gleam in the tail of his eye, “yet if I might be graciously vouchsafed just one humble corner wherein to amble away in figures of speech those listening who felt in that manner disposed, those not attending who felt in any way so inclined, I might, could, would, and should–”

“Go on, man,” said Camperdown with an imperious gesture, “and don’t bore people to death.”

MacDaly blinked maliciously at him, stationed himself against the wall at a short distance from the fire, and drawing a reading desk toward him placed his manuscript on it.

“Does the time serve my presumption?” he asked presently, peering about the room through a pair of spectacles.

No one heard him. The soldiers were playing games at the tables with their sweethearts, and the other men and women were engaged in conversation. Stargarde, Vivienne, and Dr. Camperdown were talking to a sad-faced girl who had just come in; Judy had slipped to a cushion on the floor and was being initiated into the mysteries of jackstones; and Mr. Armour was absently stroking his mustache and looking into the fire.

Nothing daunted MacDaly cleared his throat and began, “Be it known to all men that somebody said something about Lady Stargarde Turner and her systematic family–”

“Hear him,” said Dr. Camperdown; “he’s talking about you, Miss Turner.”

“MacDaly,” called Stargarde in her clear sweet voice, “you mustn’t be personal.”

“Oh, no, lady, no, not for worlds.”

“It is better not to mention names,” she went on.

“To hear is to obey, lady, as the Turks say when their wives talk to them. We’ll conclude that the subject of this brief discourse is a person called Nameless, otherwise Bombo Elephanto.”

“Very well,” she replied turning back to the girl.

MacDaly, sighing heavily, ran his finger down his manuscript, obliged by Stargarde’s dictum to skip a paragraph of proper names. “Well, time rolled on,” he said at last, “and as it is customary in the finishing-up dance, be it as it may, war dance or otherwise, some one has to pay the piper, this great Mohawk or Mogul as I may call him, Bombo Elephanto, ferociously sets to work teeth and toenails to kill a crow for himself.”

“What under the sun is he at?” growled Camperdown.

“Hush,” whispered Stargarde; “I fear he is on the subject of Colonel Armour. MacDaly has a grudge against him because he sneers at this establishment of the Pavilion, and this is the way he has of settling it. If he is too explicit I shall have to stop him.”

“Bombo Elephanto,” resumed MacDaly, “being aroused into some of the mental affections to which he is recently subject, professionally entitled to be periodical hemidemicrania–”

“H’m; this sounds interesting,” muttered Camperdown.

MacDaly eyed him cunningly. “Ha, the gentleman with the beetling brows is more interested now than he was at first.”

“Does he mean me, the rascal?” growled Camperdown.

Stargarde, suppressing a smile, laid a finger on his arm, and MacDaly in high glee that he had begun to attract the attention of the people in the room, hitched his desk a little nearer to the fire and continued rapidly. “This is firmly believed on account of his many times talking aloud incoherently to himself, and showing a triumph by swaying his hand with great violence as he walks along in company with some unsightly sprite or other in commune with him. Shame, shame, I say, as all do say, upon him who would foully and peevishly urge wrong from his rancoured breast to falsely gratify his own appetite and earthly wicked desires by such assiduous passions.”

“Oh, oh,” groaned Dr. Camperdown; “said the pot to the kettle, thou art blacker than I.”

“Such a being,” pursued MacDaly with uplifted voice, “cannot expect much else than to meet a bad end. Yea, melt like butter before the sun. Only picture the awful end of such a man and in comparison with the terrific state of Turkey, where there is to come an overpowering smashup and the dethroning of the sultan. How will this country be governed? I prophesy that on account of the graceful form, figure, and noble bearing of Lady Stargarde Turner,” he felt himself now far enough in the favor of his awakened audience to disregard the command about proper names, “her chances are many of being made sultana.”

The habitués of the kitchen highly approving of the honor proposed for their patroness interrupted MacDaly by such a clapping of hands that he paused for an instant to mop his gratified face.

“Anticipating her ruling such a barbarous, uncouthed people with a steady rod,” he hurried on, “and reducing the price of raisins and figs, I would cast a prophetic glance into that future and prophesy again that Mr. Stanton Armour–”

Armour withdrew his eyes from the fire and cast a haughty glance at the speaker, which was totally disregarded.

“Will be prime minister,” continued MacDaly. “And Dr. Brian Camperdown,” he pronounced the words with a mischievous relish and a gasping emphasis, “will be chosen by the sultana as her sultan.”

Deafening and violent applause broke out, for the news of Stargarde’s engagement to Dr. Camperdown had spread through the city with almost incredible rapidity.

Blushing slightly she noted the grim, contented pride displayed on Camperdown’s face, then listened to MacDaly, who was hastening on.

“Oh, what a mighty change will be in that realm! I may say that cruel Turkey will be divided and subdivided into a large number of provinces and that a parliament will be produced by the brilliant ascendency of its future sultana.”

“Stick to your text, man,” interpolated Camperdown. “We don’t want to hear nonsense about Turkey. Keep to Halifax.”

“Now, my most noble and illustrious audience,” uttered MacDaly suavely, “before I close, may I express the humble hope that as in the contingency of future events we may not all of us ever meet again under this ardent and hospitable roof, yet we may confront each other where high and low society are also not visibly recognized, but where all who are immaculate enough to get there get into good society, where, to use a homely and worldly phrase, Jack is as good as his master, oftentimes better, my friends, that is, if poor Jack has got a depraved individual for his master, as many of us have. Here, in this most noteworthy family, where again to use a domestic and wooden proverb as I may call it, signifying that every tub must stand on its own bottom, poor Jack can never hope to be as good as his master, for he has been felicitous enough to have for master the Lady Stargarde Turner, who always speaks in the most amply persuasive and gentle tones to her inferiors at all times and who is bountiful in the largeness of her heart and the wonderful magnificence of her nature.”

MacDaly paused here to bow profoundly to Stargarde, then casting an observing glance upon his amused audience, decided that a further dose of her praises would be acceptable.

“Before exclaiming farewell,” he said, again lashing himself into a state of ardor, “let me ask what further thing I can say of this noble lady who has ever wielded the battle-axe of moral suasion on behalf of helpless and attenuated humanity. Perhaps I should not use the word battle-axe in connection with a lady of such refinement who has so long protected the weak, fed the hungry” (here he looked over his manuscript with a grin and said, “I can prove that”), “clothed the naked” (he grinned again and said, “I can prove that too”), “and magnificently struck out for the right. Therefore trusting that she may pardon her humble and obsequious servant when he says that the mighty things she has accomplished have struck terror into the hearts of evil-doers, comparatively speaking, and can only properly be compared to work done with an axe—yea, and a mighty work at that. In conclusion, I may say that I hope we shall meet many times more in health and wealth, happiness and abundance of affectionate recollections of our past and present meetings. So farewell for the present; and believe me to be, ladies and gentlemen, your very well-wishing and obliged servant, Derrick Edward Fitz-James O’Grady MacDaly. Thanks, very much.”

The lecturer bowed, put his manuscript in his pocket, and mingling affably with his hearers received with modesty the joking compliments showered upon him.

Stargarde watched him in intense amusement.

“Why is he fiddling with that sword?” asked Camperdown, sauntering up to her.

“Oh the entertainment is only half over,” and she framed an announcement that she wished him to make.

Camperdown rose and proclaimed in a stentorian voice, “The future sultana of Turkey orders an exhibition of sword exercise by Professor MacDaly.”

Everybody sat down, and the Irish Nova Scotian modestly retiring behind the reading desk from which a perfectly clear view could be had of his proceedings, stripped off his red jacket and drew his sword from its scabbard. Striding to the middle of the room he looked in Stargarde’s direction, and began prancing on one foot and then on the other ejaculating, “Right guard, left guard, cut, thrust, parry,” etc., and swinging himself backward and forward with such startling rapidity that the lookers-on were obliged to tumble into corners and nearly fall over each other into the fire to avoid what seemed to be an avenging weapon.

It was a frolic for MacDaly, and the fun grew fast and furious, till Stargarde, noticing Armour sheltering Vivienne and Judy behind a heap of chairs, and looking as if he thought the performance a trifle undignified, gave the signal to stop.

The children present were shrieking with laughter, but their faces were sobered when the doorkeeper flung the startling announcement into the room that the candy had been stolen from the veranda.

“Buy more,” exclaimed Camperdown. “Off to the restaurant with you! Here’s money—and order cake and coffee for the grown-ups.”

MacDaly approached Stargarde with a mincing step and murmured something about his confident audacity that would seize the passing moment.

“Certainly,” she replied, “but coppers only. I’ll take the silver away from you.”

The delighted man accordingly made a circuit of the room, his heart gladdened by the clash of Canadian cents descending into the capacious receptacle of his tall hat.

Upon the arrival of the refreshments a time of feasting began in the kitchen. The soldiers, with the efficiency of trained waiters, took charge of the coffee and cake. The children revolved huge lumps of taffy in their mouths, and Armour with something like dismay watched the alarming disposition of sweets by the aged granny.

Stargarde was just about to send the rioting children bedward, when her attention was attracted by a commotion at the door.

Camperdown sprang up, but he was too late. What he had dreaded for weeks, with an agony of shame and dread, had come to pass. Of no avail now his lavish bribes and ceaseless supervision.

The astonished doorkeeper had received a blow on the chest, and had gone spinning into a corner of the fireplace, whence he skipped nimbly and stared at his assailant; tattered, unspeakably dirty, Mrs. Frispi, who towered in the doorway wrathful and menacing, mumbling something in a drunken fury at him, which no one understood.

With a low, joyful cry Stargarde sprang up and went to her. At last the woman had come to the Pavilion of her own accord.

“You be a beauty, bain’t you?” said the woman thickly, “barrin’ the door to yer own mother.”

Stargarde did not quite catch her words. Camperdown did, and tried to draw his fiancée back.

“No, Brian,” she said firmly. “I have waited a long time for this. Let us get her in by the fire.”

Close at the woman’s heels, like a cowed, sulky dog, walked the small man, her husband. “Come in too,” said Stargarde, extending a hand to him.

“We be turned out,” he said, with a covert glance about the room, and hanging his head as if the bright light hurt his eyes. “No money; big man say, ‘You go to de streeta.‘”

The woman in exasperation at the withdrawal of attention from her, seized Stargarde by the shoulder. “Don’t you hear?” she gasped hoarsely. “I—be—your—mother.”

The words were audible, though indistinct. A surprised, incredulous look overspread Stargarde’s beautiful face. “Brian,” she said, turning to him as if she could not trust the evidence of her own sense of hearing, “what does she say?”

He would not repeat the words, but in his ashamed, mortified face she received confirmation of her own half-born idea.

“My mother!” she exclaimed, still in a dazed state of semi-belief; “my mother that I have searched for so long!”

“Yes; you be my daughter, and what be daughters for but to work for their mothers?” snarled Mrs. Frispi, suddenly collapsing and sinking into a chair. “And—who’s that?” she stammered, turning her swollen, distorted face toward Stanton Armour, who stood in handsome, deathly pallor, and as motionless as a statue beyond her.

“Oh, my God!” and mouthing, swearing, unutterably foul and repulsive, she groveled from her chair to the floor.

“Oh, tell me, some one,” cried Stargarde wildly, “what is it she says? Is it true?”

“It be true,” said Frispi eagerly. Then stepping forward he plunged his hand among the rags over his wife’s broad chest and withdrew a filthy envelope, out of which he drew a photograph that he handed to Stargarde.

It was a picture of Mrs. Frispi, taken in her palmy days. Stargarde laid a hand on her own fluttering breast. There was a counterpart of this florid, sensuous face that she had treasured for years.

She drew out her own photograph. It was exactly like the other; her intense blue eyes darted to the floor. There in that tall form, in the evil face, she could see a faint, disfigured likeness to herself.

“O God, I thank thee!” she said, and fell on her knees to put her arms about the degraded creature before her.

Where was the terror, the repulsion, the anguish that the sight was to cause her? Camperdown gazed at her in distracted astonishment, then hopelessly surveyed the hushed, motionless ring of people beyond them.

“Brian,” said Stargarde, in tones of ineffable love, “we must take her home.”

At the first shock of her words, he started back with a gesture of utter detestation. He loved her, but he could not touch her mother.

Then he sprang forward, but he was too late. Neither disappointed nor surprised by his refusal, Stargarde gathered the loathsome and disgraceful specimen of fallen womanhood to her own tender bosom, and lovingly enwrapping it in her arms went out in the night.

CHAPTER XXXII
HE KISSED HER AND PROMISED

The spring was long, cold, and trying. The sun shone brightly, but the north wind sweeping over the ice-fields in the Gulf of St. Lawrence breathed chill and disconsolate on shivering Nova Scotia until well into May.

Then to the great delight of the robins, that had come back rather earlier than usual, and had been greeted by a snowstorm, there was a change in the weather. One leap and they were into the jolly summer, clad in his “cassock colored green,” and having on his head a garland. Swelling tree-buds, bursting flowers, and universal greenness prevailed. During the latter part of May, energetic work was carried on in field and garden in preparation for the brief but lovely season which lasts in the seaside province through June, July, and August, until the golden days of September and October come.

The twenty-first of June is the natal day of Halifax, and on this day an annual concert is held in the lovely Public Gardens. The flower beds are roped off, electric lights shine far overhead among the treetops, and lines of Chinese lanterns and rows of torches glow nearer the earth. Two or three military bands play favorite airs to thousands of people, who saunter to and fro listening to the music, haunting ice-cream booths, or watching the effect of fireworks set off from a small island in the center of a pond from which unhappy ducks and geese fly, quacking and gabbling their disapproval of proceedings so disturbing.

From one of these annual concerts held on a perfect June night, Mrs. Colonibel, Vivienne, Judy, and Mr. Armour were returning. Judy, exhausted by much walking to and fro on the Garden paths, had fallen asleep in the carriage with her head on Armour’s shoulder. Mrs. Colonibel and Vivienne sat with faces upturned to the dull blue of the sky listening, the one absently the other intently, to Armour’s description of the wonderful Wolf-Rayet stars.

His voice was calm and measured, yet Vivienne had known all the evening that something had happened to worry him. When they reached the house, and Mrs. Colonibel and Judy went upstairs, she lingered an instant as she said “Good-night.”

There was no response to her glance of inquiry. Whatever his trouble was he had resolved not to impart it to her, and she slowly proceeded to her room, and putting aside her hat, sank on a heap of cushions by her open window and looked out in the direction of the Arm, which lay like a dull, solid expanse of crystal at the foot of its lines of wooded hills.

It was a dark night, and she could see nothing very distinctly. There was a slight murmur in the pines about the house, but beyond that the stillness was perfect. Her thoughts were on the cottage, though she could see nothing of it. Things were not going well there. Valentine had finally taken up his abode with his father, and they rarely saw him up at the larger house. This evening Vivienne knew that Colonel Armour was entertaining some of his friends. Probably that was the cause of the shadow on her lover’s brow, for she knew that he strongly disapproved of his father’s midnight parties.

“Then why does he not say that they shall not take place?” she uttered half aloud, as she thought of the burdens that Stanton Armour was obliged to carry. “I would not endure it were I in his place.”

“A woman only has power over Ephraim to weep and implore and make supplication unto him,” said a voice behind her.

Vivienne scarcely turned her head. She had become fully accustomed to having Mammy Juniper creep upon her at all times and seasons. Ever since the day that the old Negro woman had seen Stanton Armour’s magnificent diamond ring flashing upon Vivienne’s finger she had changed her tactics with regard to her. The girl was to be taken into the family, hence she must be treated with respect, and strange to say, in a very short time she was as much fascinated by Vivienne, and as completely under her influence, as she had formerly been antagonistic and threatening to her. Her insane prejudice, which had been largely a matter of duty, entirely passed away. The girl’s slight imperiousness exercised the same charm over the Maroon woman’s half-crazed mind that it did over Joe’s stolid one, and she followed her new mistress about with offers of service and petitions for the privilege of performing some of her ancient duties of lady’s maid, that sometimes amused and sometimes annoyed Vivienne.

To-night she stood motionless for some time beside the reclining figure, then seeing that the girl did not wish to be disturbed, moved softly about the room, turning up the wicks of the different lamps, arranging the furniture and gathering up books and papers, till finally coming back to Vivienne, she saw that she had fallen asleep.

Deftly, and with a gentle touch, the woman drew out the large pins that confined the girl’s hair, and allowed it to fall in a dusky mass over her shoulders, then dropping a rug over her sat down and watched her.

“To-day the chaff driven by the whirlwind came into my room,” she muttered, “and the doves went mourning about the house. The anger of the Lord is about to come upon us; woe to him that sets his nest on high. Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee? Ephraim has brought shame to his house by cutting off many people. For the stone shall cry out to the wall and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that buildeth a house with blood.”

The night wore on and Vivienne, undisturbed by Mammy Juniper’s mutterings, still slept. There was no sound to break the deathly stillness inside and outside the house, till shortly after one o‘clock the girl started up with a low cry of “Stanton!”

Mammy Juniper went over to her. “Awake, my princess, the hour of the Lord is at hand.”

Vivienne’s dazed glance took in the black figure standing over her, the bright lamps of the room, the darkness outside, then she shuddered. “I have had a distressing dream. Is Mr. Armour here? I thought that he was hurt.”

“Mourn not for the elder but for the younger branch, O princess,” chanted the old woman. “Ephraim is a proud man. He transgresseth by wine, neither keepeth at home. He enlargeth his desire as hell and as death, that cannot be satisfied.”

“Hush, Mammy,” said Vivienne.

“Can you not hear the feet of him that bringeth bad tidings?” rejoined the woman. “Howl, O fir trees, for the lofty cedar has fallen—howl, ye oaks of Bashan, for the forest of the vintage has come down. Woe, woe to him that buildeth a house with blood!”

Vivienne shuddered again, and to avoid looking at the blending of wrath and suffering on Mammy’s ugly face, leaned far out of the window. Down in the direction of the cottage a sudden confused noise had arisen, followed a few seconds later by a sound of footsteps hurrying over the walk to the house. She listened intently till the person below came up to the veranda steps and rattled a key in the door of the back hall. “There must be something wrong at the cottage,” she said, getting up and walking across the room, “and that is Joe.”

“Joe goes as a snake by the way, my princess,” said Mammy seizing a lamp and following her. “It is Vincent.”

Vivienne went out into the hall and looked down over the railing of the circular opening at the night-light burning outside Armour’s door.

Vincent was coming quietly upstairs. His feet made no sound in passing over the thick carpet and he had only to tap at Mr. Armour’s door to have it thrown open to him.

He said a few words in a low voice that they could not hear, then disappeared as quickly as he had come. In a very few minutes Armour emerged from his room, thrusting his arms into his coat as he hurried after his servant.

“O Ephraim, he that dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face,” mumbled Mammy Juniper in a choking voice. “Keep the munitions, watch the way!”

“What is it?” exclaimed Vivienne; “what has happened? You speak knowingly.”

The old woman suddenly became calm. “Come and see,” she said quietly.

Vivienne followed her down the staircase. The house was intensely still. No other persons were stirring. When they reached the lowest hall Vivienne paused. “Mammy, I shall not go down there among those men. Do you go and bring me back news of what has happened.”

Mammy looked at her regretfully. “The Assyrians led by Ephraim bring reproach upon themselves. Only a princess of the house can warn and deliver.”

“I know what you mean,” said the girl proudly; “but I cannot be sensational. I will speak to your master. Now go and see if you can be of any use.”

She walked into the dining room, and the old servant carefully placing the lamp in the middle of the long table, left her alone.

There was a clock on the mantelpiece, and with a dull and heavy sense of apprehension Vivienne watched the hands scarcely moving over its face. Twenty, thirty, forty minutes passed, and still Mammy did not come.

At the end of that time there was a step in the hall and she hurried to the door to be confronted by Stanton Armour.

“Are you here, Vivienne?” he asked in a kind of subdued surprise.

“Yes,” and she anxiously scanned his gloomy, dispirited face.

“You had better go to bed. Why did you get up?”

“I had not gone to bed. I fell asleep by my window after I came home, and waked up when I heard Vincent coming for you.”

He made no reply and she went on: “What was the trouble, Stanton?”

“Valentine got himself into a scrape.”

“That unhappy boy!” she said mournfully.

“Do not worry,” said Mr. Armour, trying to clear his face, “it may not be so bad as we think.”

“How bad is it? why do you hesitate?” she said in a low, disturbed voice.

“I do not like to tell you disagreeable things, Vivienne.”

“Am I a doll or a child that I can endure nothing? I do not like to be so treated, Stanton. What was Valentine doing?”

“You know that he has been drinking lately?”

“Yes.”

“This evening when my father and his guests were at supper Valentine came in and made some remarks that they considered insulting.”

“Indeed!”

“And they drove him into a corner, and some one threw a wineglass at him; I hate to tell you this, Vivienne.”

“That is no surprise to me.”

“They had all been drinking,” he went on a little doggedly; “and in some way or other they have hurt Valentine’s eyes. I fancy that he continued to be irritating, as he knows well how to be, and they continued shying wineglasses at him. They didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“And Vincent heard them and came for you to break up this pleasant party?”

“Yes.”

“How are they leaving here?”

“Vincent is driving them.”

“And he is taken from his rest to do so?”

“Yes, unavoidably so.”

“Have you sent for Dr. Camperdown?”

“I have.”

“And Mammy Juniper is with Valentine?”

“She is.”

“And you are half annoyed with me for coming down,” she said, seizing a handful of her long, hanging hair and pushing it back from her face.

“No, only worried about Valentine.”

“Is there nothing more than that?”

“Nothing more that I care to tell you,” he said evasively.

“You are pale, you suffer,” she said in a low voice.

He gently put back her masses of perfumed hair so that he might see her face more distinctly.

“What a simpleton I used to be,” she suddenly exclaimed; “so young, so deplorably ignorant!”

“Why do you say this?”

“Because I thought that engaged people entered upon a dream of bliss; while you—the more intimately I know you the higher rises some dreadful, dreadful barrier between us. Stanton, tell me, tell me why you are so moody and restless with me lately? Do you not wish to marry me?”

He stooped and kissed her lustrous eyes. “You are mine, mine,” he repeated in accents of repressed passion. “Would to God that you were my wife now.”

“I feel like a restless wave beating against a rock,” she said mournfully. “Am I never to share your troubles?”

The hand resting on her shoulder trembled, and she saw that he was wavering in his hitherto fixed resolve not to confide in her.

“Now—now,” she said eagerly; “tell me tonight. If you love me, trust me.”

“I am racked with anxiety,” he muttered. “What you ask me to do is the right thing, yet you may shrink from me; you may never marry me.”

“Have you ever done anything dishonorable yourself?”

“No; but I have shielded my own flesh and blood; more from instinct than from affection, perhaps, I have done it.”

“Then I will never give you up,” she murmured.

Her beseeching arms were around his neck and he could no longer resist. In halting accents, that were sometimes angry, sometimes ashamed, he told her all she wished to know, and she listened, still clinging to him, but with her hair bound about her face so that he could not see its expression.

When he finished she drew a long sigh, and he found that she was crying.

“Well,” he said, “are we to be husband and wife, or must we separate?”

“We shall never separate, if it rests with me,” she said gently. “But why, oh, why did you dislike my mother?”

“I will make it up to the daughter,” he said, and vehemently. “Can you not see, Vivienne, that if things had not been as they were I would have been spared my worst anxiety?”

“I am so shocked at the wickedness of the world,” she said, “so shocked! I never dreamed of it when I was at school.”

“Yes,” he said gloomily, “it is a bad world.”

“But there is much goodness,” she went on with a sudden radiance of face; “and I am not one to say that the world becomes worse instead of better.”

His face brightened. “Yes, men and women do each other good as well as a frightful amount of evil.”

“And you feel better for telling me this, do you not?”

“Yes; I have been carrying on a wearisome struggle these last few weeks. You will preserve my confidence. There is no one else to whom I talk; no one who knows me. You, my dear innocent lamb,” and he suddenly became loverlike and tender, “are the only being in the world that understands me.”

“You will find my father for me?” she said softly.

“If it is a possible thing; there is no news yet.”

“And when he comes you will try to clear him? Yet stay, Stanton; can you do nothing in his absence?”

“I scarcely think so.”

“Is there no one who knows? What about Mammy Juniper and MacDaly, who talk so strangely about your father? You are silent. Remember, Stanton, I too have a father. Tell me, would you clear him to-morrow if you could, though at the expense of disgracing your own parent?”

“Yes, I would,” he said.

“That is enough,” she said in a low, intense voice. “Have no more scruples about marrying me. I take the responsibility.”

She gave him her hand like a princess, and leaving him standing, a lonely figure in the half-lighted room, went toward the hall to Mammy Juniper, who was waiting for her.

He stood for some time after her departure, staring at the floor, till he heard in abrupt language:

“Where is Mammy Juniper?”

“She is upstairs,” and he lifted his head to see Camperdown pawing the hall carpet like an impatient horse.

“I want some linen, and I wish that she would come down to the cottage. By the way, Stanton,” and he paused as he was about to fling himself out of the doorway, “how much longer are you going to let this thing run on? Fristram and Shelly were here this evening gambling with your worthy sire; the young scamps ought to have been at home with their wives.”