adventures. Would you not like her to begin again?’
And while Rose obeyed, Lord Northmoor was able to extract his cheque-book from his pocket-book, and as Rose paused, to say—
‘I have a debt of which my nephew reminds me. Miss Rollstone furnished the means for his p. 267journey. Will you let me fill this up? This can be repaid,’ he added, with a smile, ‘the rest, never.’
Mr. Rollstone might have been distressed at the venture on which his daughter’s savings had gone; but he was perfectly happy and triumphant now, except that, even more than Mrs. Morton, he suffered from the idea of the Honourable Michael being exposed to the contamination of a workhouse, and was shocked at his Lordship’s thinking it would have been worse for him to be with the Rattler. Then, hastily looking at his watch, Lord Northmoor asked when the post went out, and hearing there was but half an hour to spare, begged Mr. Deyncourt to let him lose no time by giving him the wherewithal to write to his wife.
‘She would miss a note and be uneasy,’ he said. ‘Yet I hardly know what I dare tell her. Only not mourning paper!’ he added, with an exultant smile.
In the curate’s room he wrote—
‘Dearest Wife,—
‘I have been out all day, and have only a moment to say that I am quite well, and trust to have some most thankworthy news for you. Don’t be uneasy if you do not hear to-morrow.—Your own
‘Frank.’
There was still time to scribble—
‘Dear Lady Adela,—
‘I trust to you to prepare Mary for well-nigh incredible joy, but do not agitate her too soon. I cannot come till Friday afternoon.
‘Yours gratefully,
‘Northmoor.’
p. 268Having sent this off, his next search was for a time-table. He would fain have gone by the mail train that very night, but Mr. Deyncourt and Mrs. Morton united in persuading him that his strength was not yet equal to such a pull upon it, and he yielded. They hardly knew the man, usually so equable and quiet as to be almost stolid.
He smiled, and declared he could neither eat nor sleep, but he actually did both, sleeping, indeed, better and longer than he had done since his illness, and coming down in the morning a new man, as he called himself, but the old one still in his kindness to Mrs. Morton. He promised to telegraph to her as soon as he knew all was well, assured her that he would do his best to keep the scandal out of the papers, that he would never forget his obligations to Herbert’s generosity, and that if she made up her mind to leave Westhaven he would facilitate her so doing.
Ida was not up. She had had a very bad night, and indeed she had confessed that she had been miserable under dreams worse than waking, ever since the child was carried off. Her mother had observed her restlessness and nervousness, but had set a good deal down to love, and perhaps had not been entirely wrong. At any rate, she was now really ill, and could not bear the thought of seeing her uncle, though he sent a message to her that now he did not find it nearly so hard to forgive her, and that he felt for her with all his heart.
It was this gentleness that touched Mrs. Morton p. 269above all. Years had softened her; perhaps, too, his patience, and the higher tone of Mr. Deyncourt’s ministry, and she was, in many respects, a different woman from her who had so loudly protested against his marrying Mary Marshall.
p. 270CHAPTER XXXIX
THE HONOURABLE PAUPER
Lord Northmoor’s card was given to the porter with an urgent request for an interview with the Master of the workhouse.
He steadied his voice with difficulty when, on entering the office, he said that he had come to make inquiry after his son, a child of three and a half years old, who had been supposed to be drowned, but he had now discovered had been stolen by a former nurse, and left at the gate of the workhouse, and as the Master paused with an interrogative ‘Yes, my Lord?’ he added—‘On the night between the Wednesday and Thursday of Whitsun week, May the—’
‘Children are so often left,’ said the Master. ‘I will ascertain from the books as to the date.’
After an interval really of scarcely a minute, but which might have been hours to the father’s feeling, he read —
‘May 18th.—Boy, of apparently four years old, left on the steps, asleep, apparently drugged.’
‘Ah!’
p. 271‘Calls himself Mitel Tent—name probably Michael Trenton.’
‘Michael Kenton Morton.’ Then he reflected, ‘No doubt he thought he was to say his catechism.’
‘Does not seem to know parents’ name nor residence. Dress—man’s old rough coat over a brown holland pinafore—no mark—feet bare; talks as if carefully brought up. May I ask you to describe him.’
‘Brown eyes, light hair, a good deal of colour, sturdy, large child,’ said Lord Northmoor, much agitated. ‘There,’ holding out a photograph.
‘Ah!’ said the Master, in assent.
‘And where—is he here?’
‘He is at the Children’s Home at Fulwood Lodge. Perhaps I had better ask one of the Guardians, who lives near at hand, to accompany you.’
