mistress's reflections, through the medium of the mistress's hair, till heat and idleness asserted their narcotic influences together, and Magdalen fell asleep.
It was past three o'clock when she woke. On going downstairs again she found her mother, Norah and Miss Garth all sitting together enjoying the shade and the coolness under the open portico in front of the house.
Norah had the railway time-table in her hand. They had been discussing the chances of Mr. Vanstone's catching the return train and getting back in good time. That topic had led them, next, to his business errand at Grailsea—an errand of kindness, as usual; undertaken for the benefit of the miller, who had been his old farm-servant, and who was now hard pressed by serious pecuniary difficulties. From this they had glided insensibly into a subject often repeated among them, and never exhausted by repetition—the praise of Mr. Vanstone himself. Each one of the three had some experience of her own to relate of his simple, generous nature. The conversation seemed to be almost painfully interesting to his wife. She was too near the time of her trial now not to feel nervously sensitive to the one subject which always held the foremost place in her heart. Her eyes overflowed as Magdalen joined the little group under the portico; her frail hand trembled as it signed to her youngest daughter to take the vacant chair by her side. 'We were talking of your father,' she said, softly. 'Oh, my love, if your married life is only as happy—' Her voice failed her; she put her handkerchief hurriedly over her face and rested her head on Magdalen's shoulder. Norah looked appealingly to Miss Garth, who at once led the conversation back to the more trivial subject of Mr. Vanstone's return. 'We have all been wondering,' she said, with a significant look at Magdalen, 'whether your father will leave Grailsea in time to catch the train—or whether he will miss it and be obliged to drive back. What do you say?'
'I say, papa will miss the train,' replied Magdalen, taking Miss Garth's hint with her customary quickness. 'The last thing he attends to at Grailsea will be the business that brings him there. Whenever he has business to do, he always puts it off to the last moment, doesn't he, mamma?'
The question roused her mother exactly as Magdalen had intended it should. 'Not when his errand is an errand of kindness,' said Mrs. Vanstone. 'He has gone to help the miller in a very pressing difficulty—'
'And don't you know what he'll do?' persisted Magdalen. 'He'll romp with the miller's children, and gossip with the mother, and hob-and-nob with the father. At the last moment when he has got five minutes left to catch the train, he'll say: 'Let's go into the counting-house and look at the books.' He'll find the books dreadfully complicated; he'll suggest sending for an accountant; he'll settle the business off hand, by lending the money in the meantime; he'll jog back comfortably in the miller's gig; and he'll tell us all how pleasant the lanes were in the cool of the evening.'
The little character-sketch which these words drew was too faithful a likeness not to be recognized. Mrs. Vanstone showed her appreciation of it by a smile. 'When your father returns,' she said, 'we will put your account of his proceedings to the test. I think,' she continued, rising languidly from her chair, 'I had better go indoors again now and rest on the sofa till he comes back.'
The little group under the portico broke up. Magdalen slipped away into the garden to hear Frank's account of the interview with his father. The other three ladies entered the house together. When Mrs. Vanstone was comfortably established on the sofa, Norah and Miss Garth left her to repose, and withdrew to the library to look over the last parcel of books from London.
It was a quiet, cloudless summer's day. The heat was tempered by a light western breeze; the voices of laborers at work in a field near reached the house cheerfully; the clock-bell of the village church as it struck the quarters floated down the wind with a clearer ring, a louder melody than usual. Sweet odors from field and flower- garden, stealing in at the open windows, filled the house with their fragrance; and the birds in Norah's aviary upstairs sang the song of their happiness exultingly in the sun.
As the church clock struck the quarter past four, the morning-room door opened; and Mrs. Vanstone crossed the hall alone. She had tried vainly to compose herself. She was too restless to lie still and sleep. For a moment she directed her steps toward the portico—then turned, and looked about her, doubtful where to go, or what to do next. While she was still hesitating, the half-open door of her husband's study attracted her attention. The room seemed to be in sad confusion. Drawers were left open; coats and hats, account-books and papers, pipes and fishing-rods were all scattered about together. She went in, and pushed the door to—but so gently that she still left it ajar. 'It will amuse me to put his room to rights,' she thought to herself. 'I should like to do something for him before I am down on my bed, helpless.' She began to arrange his drawers, and found his banker's book lying open in one of them. 'My poor dear, how careless he is! The servants might have seen all his affairs, if I had not happened to have looked in.' She set the drawers right; and then turned to the multifarious litter on a side-table. A little old-fashioned music-book appeared among the scattered papers, with her name written in it, in faded ink. She blushed like a young girl in the first happiness of the discovery. 'How good he is to me! He remembers my poor old music-book, and keeps it for my sake.' As she sat down by the table and opened the book, the bygone time came back to her in all its tenderness. The clock struck the half-hour, struck the three-quarters—and still she sat there, with the music-book on her lap, dreaming happily over the old songs; thinking gratefully of the golden days when his hand had turned the pages for her, when his voice had whispered the words which no woman's memory ever forgets.
Norah roused herself from the volume she was reading, and glanced at the clock on the library mantel- piece.
'If papa comes back by the railway,' she said, 'he will be here in ten minutes.'
Miss Garth started, and looked up drowsily from the book which was just dropping out of her hand.
'I don't think he will come by train,' she replied. 'He will jog back—as Magdalen flippantly expressed it—in the miller's gig.'
As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door. The footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth.
'A person wishes to see you, ma'am.'
'Who is it?'
'I don't know, ma'am. A stranger to me—a respectable-looking man—and he said he particularly wished to see you.'
Miss Garth went out into the hall. The footman closed the library door after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs.
The man stood just inside the door, on the mat. His eyes wandered, his face was pale—he looked ill; he looked frightened. He trifled nervously with his cap, and shifted it backward and forward, from one hand to the other.
'You wanted to see me?' said Miss Garth.
'I beg your pardon, ma'am.—You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are you?'
