Then there had been some fitful confidence during those few days of acute illness. Why should not the girl have the man if he were lovable? And the Duchess referred to her own early days when she had loved, and to the great ruin which had come upon her heart when she had been severed from the man she had loved. “Not but that it has been all for the best,” she had said. “Not but that Plantagenet has been to me all that a husband should be. Only if she can be spared what I suffered, let her be spared.” Even when these things had been said to her, Mrs. Finn had found herself unable to ask questions. She could not bring herself to inquire whether the girl had in truth given her heart to this young Tregear. The one was nineteen and the other as yet but two-and-twenty! But though she asked no questions she almost knew that it must be so. And she knew also that the father, as yet, was quite in the dark on the matter. How was it possible that in such circumstances she should assume the part of the girl’s confidential friend and monitress? Were she to do so she must immediately tell the father everything. In such a position no one could be a better friend than Lady Cantrip, and Mrs. Finn had already almost made up her mind that, should Lady Cantrip occupy the place, she would tell her ladyship all that had passed between herself and the Duchess on the subject.
Of what hopes she might have, or what fears, about her girl, the Duchess had said no word to her husband. But when she had believed that the things of the world were fading away from her, and when he was sitting by her bedside—dumb, because at such a moment he knew not how to express the tenderness of his heart—holding her hand, and trying so to listen to her words, that he might collect and remember every wish, she had murmured something about the ultimate division of the great wealth with which she herself had been endowed. “She had never,” she said, “even tried to remember what arrangements had been made by lawyers, but she hoped that Mary might be so circumstanced, that if her happiness depended on marrying a poor man, want of money need not prevent it.” The Duke suspecting nothing, believing this to be a not unnatural expression of maternal interest, had assured her that Mary’s fortune would be ample.
Mrs. Finn made the proposition to Lady Mary in respect to Lady Cantrip’s invitation. Lady Mary was very like her mother, especially in having exactly her mother’s tone of voice, her quick manner of speech, and her sharp intelligence. She had also her mother’s eyes, large and round, and almost blue, full of life and full of courage, eyes which never seemed to quail, and her mother’s dark brown hair, never long but very copious in its thickness. She was, however, taller than her mother, and very much more graceful in her movement. And she could already assume a personal dignity of manner which had never been within her mother’s reach. She had become aware of a certain brusqueness of speech in her mother, a certain aptitude to say sharp things without thinking whether the sharpness was becoming to the position which she held, and, taking advantage of the example, the girl had already learned that she might gain more than she would lose by controlling her words.
“Papa wants me to go to Lady Cantrip,” she said.
“I think he would like it—just for the present, Lady Mary.”
Though there had been the closest possible intimacy between the Duchess and Mrs. Finn, this had hardly been so as to the intercourse between Mrs. Finn and the children. Of Mrs. Finn it must be acknowledged that she was, perhaps fastidiously, afraid of appearing to take advantage of her friendship with the Duke’s family. She would tell herself that though circumstances had compelled her to be the closest and nearest friend of a Duchess, still her natural place was not among dukes and their children, and therefore in her intercourse with the girl she did not at first assume the manner and bearing which her position in the house would have seemed to warrant. Hence the “Lady Mary.”
“Why does he want to send me away, Mrs. Finn?”
“It is not that he wants to send you away, but that he thinks it will be better for you to be with some friend. Here you must be so much alone.”
“Why don’t you stay? But I suppose Mr. Finn wants you to be back in London.”
“It is not that only, or, to speak the truth, not that at all. Mr. Finn could come here if it were suitable. Or for a week or two he might do very well without me. But there are other reasons. There is no one whom your mother respected more highly than Lady Cantrip.”
“I never heard her speak a word of Lady Cantrip.”
“Both he and she are your father’s intimate friends.”
“Does papa want to be—alone here?”
“It is you, not himself, of whom he is thinking.”
“Therefore I must think of him, Mrs. Finn. I do not wish him to be alone. I am sure it would be better that I should stay with him.”
“He feels that it would not be well that you should live without the companionship of some lady.”
“Then let him find some lady. You would be the best, because he knows you so well. I, however, am not afraid of being alone. I am sure he ought not to
