MR. YELVERTON STATES HIS INTENTIONS.
"I don't think you know Mr. Brion," said Mr. Yelverton, first lifting his hat and shaking hands with Mrs. Duff-Scott, and then, with an airy and audacious cheerfulness, introducing the old man (whose name and association with her protégées she immediately recalled to mind); "Mr. Brion—Mrs. Duff-Scott."
The fairy godmother bowed frigidly, nearly shutting her eyes as she did so, and for a moment the little group kept an embarrassed silence, while a sort of electric current of intelligence passed between Patty and her new-found cousin. Mr. Yelverton was, as we say, not the same man that he had been a few hours before. Quiet in his manner, as he ever was, there was yet an aspect of glowing energy about him, an air of being at high pressure, that did not escape the immediate notice of the girl's vigilant and sympathetic eyes. I have described him very badly if I have not made the reader understand the virile breadth and strength of his emotional nature, and how it would be affected by his present situation. The hot blue blood and superfine culture of that ardent young aristocrat who became his father at such an early age, and the wholesome physical and moral solidity of the farmer's fair and rustic daughter who was his mother, were blended together in him; with the result that he was a man at all points, having all the strongest human instincts alive and active in him. He was not the orthodox philanthropist, the half-feminine, half-neuter specialist with a hobby, the foot-rule reformer, the prig with a mission to set the world right; his benevolence was simply the natural expression of a sense of sympathy and brotherhood between him and his fellows, and the spirit which produced that was not limited in any direction. From the same source came a passionately quick and keen apprehension of the nature of the closest bond of all, not given to the selfish and narrow-hearted. Amongst his abstract brothers and sisters he had been looking always for his own concrete mate, and having found her and secured her, he was as a king newly anointed, whose crown had just been set upon his head.
"Will you come?" said Patty to him, trying not to look too conscious of the change she saw in him. "It is time to have done with all our secrets now."
"I agree with you," he replied. "And I will come with pleasure." Mrs. Duff-Scott was accordingly made to understand, with some difficulty, that the mystery which puzzled her had a deep significance, and that she was desired to take steps at once whereby she might be made acquainted with it. Much bewildered, but without relaxing her offended air—for she conceived that no explanation would make any difference in the central fact that Mr. Yelverton and Mr. Brion had taken precedence of her in the confidence of her own adopted daughters—she returned to her carriage, all the little party following meekly at her heels. The girls were put in first—even Elizabeth, who, insisting upon detaching herself from the assembling council, had to submit to be conveyed to Myrtle Street; and the two men, lifting their hats to the departing vehicle, were left on the footpath together. The lawyer was very grave, and slightly nervous and embarrassed. To his companion he had all the air of a man with a necessary but disagreeable duty to perform.
"What is all this about?" Mr. Yelverton demanded with a little anxious irritation in his tone. "Nothing of any great consequence, is it?"
"I—I'm afraid you will think it rather a serious matter," the lawyer replied, with hesitation. "Still," he added, earnestly, "if you are their friend, as I believe you are—knowing that they have no responsibility in the matter—you will not let it make any difference in your feeling for them—"
"There is not the faintest danger of that," Mr. Yelverton promptly and haughtily interposed.
"I am sure of it—I am sure of it. Well, you shall know all in half an hour. If you will kindly find Major Duff-Scott—he has constituted himself their guardian, in a way, and ought to be present—I will just run round to my lodgings in Myrtle Street."
"Are you going to fetch your son?" asked Mr. Yelverton, quickly. "Don't you think that, under the circumstances—supposing matters have to be talked of that will be painful to the Miss Kings—the fewer present the better?"