'But he didn't.'
'No; for, you see, he was ill enough to convince himself, as well as other people, that he was a consumptive Devereux after all.'
'Oh yes! I remember the shock with which I heard like a doom that he was going the way of the others; and hen he and the dear Claude came out in his yacht to us at Gibraltar, and were so bright! We had a wonderful little journey into Spain together, and how Jasper enjoyed it! Little did I think I was never to see Claude here again. But it was true, was it not, that all Rotherwood's care gave the dear fellow much more comfort-perhaps kept him longer?'
'I am sure it was so. Rotherwood soon got over his own attachment-the missing an English winter was all he needed; but he would hear of nothing but devoting himself to Claude. Papa and Claude were both uneasy at his going off from all his cares and duties, but I believe-and Claude knew it-that he actually could not settle down quietly while Phyllis remained unmarried, and that having Claude to nurse and carry about from climate was the comfort of his life. Or, I believe, dear Claude would have been glad to have been left in peace to do what he could. Well, then Phyllis and Ada went to stay in the Close with Emily, and Ada wrote conscious letters and came home bridling and blushing about Captain May, so that we were quite prepared for his turning up at Beechcroft, but not at all for what I saw before he had been ten minutes in the house, that it was Phyllis that he meant, and had meant all along! Dear Harry! it almost made up for its not being Rotherwood. Well, poor Ada! It hadn't gone too deep, happily, and I opened her eyes in time to hinder any demonstration that could have left pain and shame-at least, I think so; but poor Ada has had too many little fits for one to have told much more than another. I believe Phyl did tell Harry that he meant Ada, but she let herself be convinced to the contrary; and the only objection I have to it is his having taken that appointment at Auckland, and carried her out of reach of any of us. However, it was better for Rotherwood, and when she was gone, and his occupation over with our dear Claude, his mother was always at him to let her see him married before she died. And so he let her have her way. No, don't look concerned. Lady Rotherwood is an excellent, good woman, just the wife for him, and he knows it, and does as she tells him most faithfully and gratefully. They are pattern-folk from top to toe, and so is the boy. But the girl! He would have his way, and named her Phyllis-Fly he calls her. She is a little skittish elf-Rotherwood himself all over; and doesn't he worship her! and doesn't he think it a holiday to carry her off to play pranks with! and isn't he happy to get amongst a good lot of us, and be his old self again!'
CHAPTER VIII MY PERSECUTED UNCLE
Dolores was allowed to go to Casement Cottage on Sunday. It was always rather an awful thing to her to get through the paddock when the farmer's cattle turned out there. She did not mind it so much in the broad road and in the midst of a large party, with Hal among them, and no dogs; but alone with only one companion, and in the easy path which was the shortest way to the cottage, she winced and trembled at the little black, shaggy Scotch oxen, with white horns and faces that looked to her very wild and fierce.
'Oh, Gillian, those creatures! Can't we go the other way?'
'No; it is a great deal further round, and there's no time. They won't hurt. The farmer engaged not to turn out anything vicious here.'
'But how can he be sure?'
'Well, don't come if you don't like it,' said Gillian, impatiently. 'It is your own concern. I must go.'
Dolores did not like the notion of Constance being told that she would not come because she was afraid of the oxen. She thought it very unkind of Gillian, but she came, and kept carefully on the side furthest from the formidable animals. And Gillian really was forbearing. She did make allowances for the London-bred girl's fears; and the only thing she did was, that when one of the animals lifted up its head and looked, and Dolores made a spring as if to run away, she caught the girl's arm, crying, 'Don't! That's the very way to make him run after you.'
They got safe out of the paddock at last, and rang at the door. They were both kissed, Dolores with especial affectionateness, because the good ladies pitied her so much; and then while Miss Hacket and Gillian went off to their class, Constance took Dolores up into her own room, and began to tell her how disappointed she was not to have seen more of her at the Festival.
'But those curates would not let me alone. I was obliged to attend to them.'
And then she was very eager to know all about Lord Rotherwood, which rather amazed Dolores, who had been in the habit of hearing her father mention him as 'that mad fellow Rotherwood,' while her mother always spoke with contempt of people who ran after lords and ladies, and had been heard to say that Lord Rotherwood himself was well enough, but his wife was a mere fine lady.
But Dolores had a matter on which she was very anxious.
'Connie, do they always read one's letters first? I mean the old people, like Aunt Lily.'
'What! has she been reading your letters?'
'She says she always shall, except father's and Maude Sefton's, because papa spoke to her about that. She took a letter of mine the other day, and never let me have it till the evening, and I am sure Aunt Jane put her up to it.'
'You poor darling!' exclaimed Constance. 'Was it anything you cared about?'
'Oh no-not that-but there might be. And I want to know whether she has the right.'
'I should not have thought Lady Merrifield would have been so like an old schoolmistress. Miss Dormer always did, the old cat! where I went to school,' said Constance. 'We did hate it so! She looked over every one's letters, except parents', so that we never could have anything nice, except by a chance or so.'
'It is tyranny,' said Dolores, solemnly. 'I do not see why one should submit to it.'
'We had dodges,' continued Constance, warming with the history of her school-days, and far too eager to talk to think of the harm she might be doing to the younger girl. 'Sometimes, when a lot of us went to a shop with one of the governesses, one would slip out and post a letter. Fraulein was so short-sighted, she never guessed. We used to call her the jolly old Kafer. But Mademoiselle was very sharp. She once caught Alice Bell, so that she had to make an excuse and say she had dropped something. You see, she really had-the letter into the slit.'
'But that was an equivocation.'
'Oh, you darling scrupulous, long-worded child! You aren't like the girls at Miss Dormer's, only she drove us to it, you know. You'll be horribly shocked, but I'll tell you what Louie Preston did. There was a young man in the town whom she had met at a picnic in the holidays-a clerk, he was, at the bank-and he used to put notes to her under the cushions at church; but one unlucky Sunday, Louie had a cold and didn't go, and she told Mabel Blisset to bring it, and Mabel didn't understand the right place, and went poking about, so that Miss Dormer found it out, and there was such a row!'
'Wasn't that rather vulgar?' said Dolores.
'Well, he was only a clerk, but he was a duck of a man, with regular auburn hair, you know. And he sang! We used to go to the Choral Society concerts, and he sang ballads so beautifully, and always looked at Louie!'
'I should not care for anything of that sort,' said Dolores. 'I think it is bad form.'
'So it is,' said Constance, seriously, 'only one can't help recollecting the fun of the thing, and what one was driven to in those days. Is there any one you are anxious to correspond with?'
'Not in particular, only I can't bear to have Aunt Lilias meddling with my letters; and there's a poor uncle of mine that I know would not like her, or any of the Mohuns, to see his letters.
'Indeed! Your poor mamma's brother?' cried Constance, full of curiosity.
'Mind, it is in confidence. You must never tell any one.'
'Never. Oh, you may trust me!' cried Constance.
'Her half-brother,' said Dolores; and the girl proceeded to tell Constance what she had told Maude Sefton about Mr. Flinders, and how her mother had been used to assist him out of her own earnings, and how he had met her at E
xeter station, and was so disappointed to have missed her father. Constance listened most eagerly, greatly delighted to have a secret confided to her, and promising to keep it with all her might.
'And now,' said Dolores, 'what shall I do? If poor Uncle Alfred writes to me, Aunt Lilias will have the letter and read it, and the Mohuns are all so stuck up; they will despise him, and very likely she will never let me have the letter.'
'Yes, but, dear, couldn't you write here, with my things, and tell him how it is, and tell him to write under cover to me?'
'Dear Connie! How good you are! Yes, that would be quite delightful!'
All the confidences and all the caresses had, however, taken quite as long as the G.F.S. class, and before Constance had cleared a space on the table for Dolores's letter, there was a summons to say that Gillian was ready to go home.
'So early!' said Constance. 'I thought you would have had tea and stayed to evening service.'
'I should like it so much,' cried Dolores, remembering that it would spare her the black oxen in the cross-path, as well as giving her the time with her friend.
So they went down with the invitation, but Gillian replied that mamma always liked to have all together for the Catechism, and that she could not venture to leave Dolores without special permission.
'Quite right, my dear,' said Miss Hacket. 'Connie would be very sorry to do anything against Lady Merrifield's rules. We shall see you again in a day or two.'
And this is the way in which Constance kept her friend's secret. When Miss Hacket had done her further work with a G.F.S. young woman who needed private instruction to prepare her for baptism, the two sisters sat down to a leisurely tea before starting for evensong; in the first place, Constance detailed all she had discovered as to the connection with Lord Rotherwood, in which subject, it must be confessed, good Miss Hacket took a lively interest, having never so closely encountered a live marquess, 'and so affable,' she contended; upon which Constance declared that they were all stuck-up, and were very unkind and hard to poor darling Dolores.
'I don't know. I cannot fancy dear Lady Merrifield being unkind to any one, especially a dear girl as good as an orphan,' said Miss Hacket, who, if not the cleverest of women, was one of the best and most warm-hearted. 'And, indeed, Connie, I don't think dear Gillian and Mysie feel at all unkindly to their cousin.'
'Ah! that's just like you, Mary. You never see more than the outside, but then I am in dear Dolly's confidence.'
'What do you mean, Connie?' said Miss Hacket, eagerly.
Constance had come home from school with the reputation of being much more accomplished than her elder sister, who had grown up while her father was a curate of very straitened means, and thus, though her junior, she was thought wonderfully superior in discernment and everything else.
'Well,' said Constance, 'what do you think of Lady Merrifield sending her to bed for staying late here that morning?'
'That was strict, certainly; but you know she sent Mysie too. It was all my own thoughtlessness for detaining them,' said the good elder sister. 'I was so grieved!'
'Yes,' said Constance, 'it sounds all very well to say Mysie was treated in the same way, but in the afternoon Mysie was allowed to go and make messes with blackberry jam, while poor Dolly was kept shut up in the schoolroom!'
Constance did not like Lady Merrifield, who had unconsciously snubbed some of her affectations, and nipped in the bud a flirtation with Harry, besides calling off some of the curates to be helpful. But Miss Hacket admired her neighbour as much as her sister would permit, and made answer-
'It is so hard to judge, my dear, without knowing all. Perhaps Mysie had finished her lessons.'
'Ah! I know you always are for Lady Merrifield! But what do you say, then, to her prying into all that poor child's correspondence?'
'My dear, I think most people do think it advisable to have some check on young girl's letters. Perhaps Dolores's father desired it.'
'He never put on any restrictions,' said Constance. 'I am sure he never would. Men don't. It is always women, with their nasty, prying, tyrannous instincts.'
'I am sure,' returned Mary, 'one would not think a child like Dolores Mohun could have anything to conceal.'
'But she has!' cried Constance.
'No, my dear! Impossible!' exclaimed Miss Hacket, looking very much shocked. 'Why, she can't be fourteen!'
'Oh! it is nothing of that sort. Don't think about that, Mary.'
'No, no, I know, Connie dear; you would never listen to any young girl's confidence of that kind-so improper and so vulgar,' said Miss Hacket, and Constance did not think it necessary to reveal her knowledge of the post-office under the cushions at church, and other little affairs of that sort.
'It is her uncle,' said Constance. 'Her mother, it seems, though quite a lady, was the daughter of a professor, a very learned man, very distinguished, and all that, but not a high family enough to please the Mohuns, and they never were friendly with her, or treated her as an equal.'
'That couldn't have been Lady Merrifield,' persevered Miss Hacket. 'She lamented to me herself that she had been out of England for so many years that she had scarcely seen Mrs. Maurice Mohun.'
'Well, there were the Miss Mohuns and all the rest!' said Constance. 'Why, Dolores has only once been at the family place. And her mother had a brother, an author and a journalist, a very clever man, and the Mohuns have always regularly persecuted him. He has been very unfortunate, and Mrs. Maurice Mohun has done her utmost to help him, writing in periodicals and giving the proceeds to him. Wasn't that sweet? And now Dolores feels quite cut off from him; and she is so fond of him, poor darling for her mother's sake.'
Tender-hearted as Miss Hacket was, she had seen enough of life to have some inkling of what being very unfortunate might sometimes mean.
'I should think,' she said, 'that Lady Merrifield would never withhold from the child any letter it was proper she should have, especially from a relation.'
'Yes, but I tell you she did keep back a letter on the festival day till she had looked at it. Poor Dolores saw it come, and she saw a glance pass between her and Miss Mohun, and she is quite sure, she says, her Aunt Jane had been poisoning her mind about this poor persecuted uncle, and that she shall never be allowed to hear from him.'
'I don't suppose there can be much for him to say to her,' said Miss Hacket. Then, after a little reflection, 'Connie, my dear, I really think you had better not interfere. There may be reasons that this poor child knows nothing about for keeping her aloof from this uncle.'
'Oh! but her mother helped him.'
'She was his sister. That was quite another thing. Indeed, Connie,' said Miss Hacket, more earnestly, 'I am quite sure that you will use your influence-and you have a great deal of influence, you know-most kindly by persuading this dear child to be happy with the Merrifields and submit to their arrangements.'
'You are infatuated with Lady Merrifield,' muttered Constance. 'Ah! how little you know!'
Here the first warning note of the bell ended the discussion, and Constance did not think it necessary to tell her sister of the offer she had made to Dolores. In her eyes, Mary, who was the eldest of the family, had always been of the dull, grown-up, authoritative faction of the elders, while she herself was still one of the sweet junior party, full of antagonism to them, and ready to elude them in any way. Besides, she had promised her darling Dolores; and the thing was quite romantic; nor could any one call it blame-worthy, since it was nothing like a lover-not even a young man, but only a persecuted uncle in distress.
So she awaited anxiously the next Sunday when Dolores's letter was to be written in her room. To tell the truth, Dolores could quite as easily have written in her own, and brought down the letter in her pocket, if she had been eager about the matter; but she was not, except under the influence of making a grievance. She had never written to Uncle Alfred in her life, nor he to her; and his visits to her mother had always led to something uncomfortable. Nor would she have th
ought about the subject at all if it had not been for the sore sense that she was cut off from him, as she fancied, because he belonged to her mother.
Nothing particular had happened that week. There had been no very striking offences one way or the other; she was working better with her lessons and understanding more of Miss Vincent's methods. She perceived that they were thorough, and respected them accordingly, and she had had the great satisfaction of getting more good marks for French and German than Mysie. She had become interested in 'The Old Oak Staircase,' and began to look forward to Aunt Lily's readings as the best part of the day. But she had not drawn in the least nearer to any of the family. She absolutely disliked, almost hated, the quarter of an hour which Aunt Lily devoted to her religious teaching every morning, though nobody was present, not even Primrose. She nearly refused to learn, and said as badly as possible the very small portions she was bidden to learn by heart, and she closed her mind up against taking in the sense of the very short readings and her aunt's comments on them. It seemed to her to be treating her like a Sunday-school child, and insulting her mother, who had never troubled her in this manner. Her aunt said no word of reproach, except to insist on attention and accuracy of repetition; but there came to be an unusual gravity and gentleness about her in these lessons, as if she were keeping a guard over herself, and often a greatly disappointed look, which exasperated Dolores much more than a scolding.
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