Part 35 (2/2)

Caroline felt hot, and yet there was a blank sensation about her at the same time.

”Money?” she said.

”Oh, hasn't he told you? How like him! I suppose it will be a month before he will let you know everything.”

”I think Mr. Haverford meant to speak to me this afternoon,” Caroline said very hurriedly, ”but we have had no chance as yet of any private conversation. He did tell me that I was right in supposing that I had a claim upon Mrs. Baynhurst, and he told me also a little about my mother, but that was all.”

”Well, there doesn't seem very much to tell,” said Mrs. Lancing, after a pause, ”except that you have a certain small income of your own, which his mother, it appears, has kept entirely for herself all these years. I don't know that I ought to say very much about that sort of thing,” said Camilla, with her half bitter laugh. ”I am not so wonderfully straight and honest myself, and I hate throwing stones at anybody else. Still, I don't know that I should defraud a child, and that is what Mrs. Baynhurst did, and would have continued doing if she had not been in a bad temper one day, and turned you out of her house.”

Caroline sat with her hands locked round one of her knees.

”I expect she did it because of Cuthbert,” she said.

This remark seemed to rouse Mrs. Lancing.

”Oh, by the way, he is staying with the Bardolphs,” she said; ”it is the first time I have met him. You know he is a very handsome fellow, Caroline, and how clever! He sings enchantingly. Pam Bardolph is raving about him. He is painting her portrait. Did you ever know two men more unlike than he and Rupert?”

”Yes, they are very unlike,” said Caroline.

Mrs. Lancing lay still a minute or two, and then she opened her eyes again and smiled at Caroline.

There was no light in the room, except the strong glow from the flames which shot up the chimney. From below they could hear the murmur of voices, and sometimes the excited laughter of the children.

”But you won't leave me just yet, will you?”

”I am afraid you will have to turn me out when you want to get rid of me,” said Caroline. A moment later, in a low and moved voice, she said, ”Do you imagine it would be so easy for me to separate myself from you and the children?”

The woman on the couch stretched out her hand, and Caroline stooped forward and took it in hers.

”I should like to think that you would stick to me, that you would never turn against me,” she said, and her lips quivered.

Caroline's only answer was to tighten her hold on that slender hand.

Then she rose and put a warmer wrap over Mrs. Lancing.

”Don't you think if I were to leave you now you would sleep? Perhaps I had better go downstairs again, and see what the children are doing.

They may be getting into mischief and I am sure Babsy, dear little heart, must be nearly worn out.”

And with some persuasion Mrs. Lancing a.s.sented to this. As she reached the big hall, Caroline met Rupert Haverford.

”Mrs. Lancing is resting. I have persuaded her to lie down. She wants to be well for dinner.”

Rupert thanked her.

”I was just coming to look for you. The children are clamouring to know why 'Caroline' has vanished? So I volunteered to find her. Are you having a happy Christmas?” he asked, with a smile.

”I am happy altogether,” Caroline answered him; ”it is so wonderful to find that after all I have a little place of my own in the world, and that there are people who actually care to know what is pa.s.sing with me.”

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