Part 27 (1/2)

'It is indeed,' said Mrs Mildmay. 'It _is_ wonderful. The way that she seemed to start up just when--so soon after we had lost dear granny, and in a sense our home.'

'It would have been lovely, of course, for you to come back to us anyway,' said Frances, 'but it wouldn't have been _so_ lovely if we'd all been going to Aunt Alison's. It's _rather_ a poky place, you know, mamma, and in India I suppose the houses are all _enormous_. I can only remember like in a dream, about very big, very white rooms.'

'The last house we've had was far from _enormous_,' said her mother with a smile, 'still it was very nice. I often wished you and Ja.s.sie could have been with us there.'

'But--oh mamma, you'll never go back again,' pleaded Frances. 'We've got dear papa's coming to look forward to now, and after that--never mind _where_ we live, if only we stay together.'

Mrs Mildmay smiled, though for the first time with a touch of sadness.

'Don't let us spoil to-day by looking forward, dear; except, as you say, to your father's coming. If he were here, everything _would_ seem perfect.'

'And here's Robin Redbreast,' exclaimed Jacinth, as they turned the corner of the lane, 'and ”Uncle Marmy's gates” wide open in your honour.

Generally we drive in at the side. Now, mamma, take a good look. First impressions are everything, you know. Isn't _this_ perfect?'

She seemed full of enthusiasm, which her mother was glad to see and quick to respond to.

'It _is_ beautiful: I have never seen anything like it,' she replied warmly. 'And _could_ there have been a more exquisite day?'

'And mamma, mamma,' cried Eugene, 'you know, don't you, it was all me that got friends with Lady Myrtle; me, with getting--_wursty_, that day, you know?'

CHAPTER XIV.

A COURAGEOUS PLEADER.

Lady Myrtle was standing in the porch. It seemed to her only fitting that she should come thus far to welcome such a guest, and something in her almost tremulously affectionate greeting touched Mrs Mildmay keenly.

'It is _so_ good of you--meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend. 'And, oh, how delightful it is to have you and this to come to!'

'My dear, my dear,' said Lady Myrtle, 'don't thank me. Only let me see that you and your children are happy and at home with me; that is _all_ I care about.'

And again she kissed the Eugenia she had not seen since her childhood.

Mrs Mildmay was very like Frances; correctly speaking, one should put it the other way, but as a new actor on the scene of this little story it is natural thus to express it. Her face had something indescribably childlike about it; her blue eyes were almost wistful, though the whole expression was bright and happy and very changeful. Yet there was plenty of 'character'--no dearth of good firm lines, with yet an entire absence of anything denoting hardness or obstinacy; the whole giving from the first candid glance an impression of extreme ingenuousness and single-mindedness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'It is so good of you, meeting me like this,' the younger woman whispered, as she threw her arms round her old friend.]

'You are not like your mother,' said Lady Myrtle, when the little group had made its way into the drawing-room where tea was already waiting. 'I knew you were not. Yet something in your voice recalls her. I suppose you can _scarcely_ remember her,' she went on, 'not well enough to see the really marvellous resemblance between her and my child here--my child as well as yours?' and she smiled at Jacinth who was standing by, and laid her hand affectionately on the girl's arm.

'Oh yes,' Mrs Mildmay replied, 'I remember enough for that. And then I have one or two excellent portraits, besides the large one at Stannesley; at least my father always told me they were excellent. And even when Ja.s.sie was quite tiny, he saw the likeness and was delighted at it. But I--I am quite ”Denison” I know, and so are Francie and Eugene. The odd thing is that Ja.s.sie is also in some ways more like the Mildmays than the two others.'

'I have never seen your husband, you know,' said Lady Myrtle. 'I can't say that the likeness to good Miss Alison Mildmay has ever struck me.'

The quaint way in which the old lady said it made them all smile a little--all, that is to say, except Jacinth. She had not altogether relished her mother's remark.

But that evening was a most happy one--perhaps the very happiest the two younger children had ever known--and one certainly to be marked with a white stone in the memory of all the five who spent it together. By a tacit agreement no uncertain or anxious questions were touched upon. Mrs Mildmay was able to give a good account of their father's health at the time of her leaving him, to the children, and made them all laugh by her account of her brother Marmaduke's description of the terrible formality of that first evening at Market Square Place. She seemed gifted with a wonderful amount of fun and merriment: Jacinth caught herself laughing after a fas.h.i.+on which was very rare with her.

'Mamma is ever so much _younger_ than I,' she said to herself when she found herself alone for the night. 'She is as charming and sweet as she can be. But I can foresee some things pretty clearly. It is a good thing I am of a different character. What would happen if we were all as impulsive and'--'childish' was the word in her thoughts, but again she felt a little startled at the length to which her criticism of her mother was going, and pulled herself up--'as impulsive as Francie, and as mamma must be by nature?'

And she fell asleep in the midst of a not unpleasing picture of herself as the wise, considerate prop of the whole family, looked up to by her parents, leant upon by Lady Myrtle, a Lady Bountiful to all within her reach, a----But here I think her imaginings probably faded into the phantasmagoria of dreams.