She hurried on with fevered and troubled steps, picturing to herself every possible kind of hurt which Joan might have received. Proximity to Joan seemed to waken into active life all the motherly dreads and desires and passionate affection which for long years had lain half dormant. Abroad she had been able to wait month after month, never hearing a whisper of Joan, only content in a quiet belief that her child was happy. Now every moment of uncertainty and delay seemed intolerable.
Visions of Joan hovered perpetually before her as she pressed forward—not of George Rutherford’s handsome adopted daughter, but of a little willful, loving child, with velvety, dark eyes and marked, black brows, and sweet, clinging arms. She could almost hear again the prattling utterance so frequent in those days—“Doan wants muvver! Doan does ’ove muvver so.” Did Joan love mother now?
“O, Joan, Joan, my darling!” sobbed Marian, pausing once to lean against a tree trunk. “To think that I could have ever given you up! But I was so alone, so friendless; I didn’t know what to do. If I had known God then I could have kept you, darling—I could have trusted him, and he would have cared for us both. O, Joan, I wish I had. How could I ever leave you?”
Then she was hurrying onward again, passing lane after lane, turn after turn, with never a moment’s hesitation as to the way.
Outside Woodleigh she paused once more, not this time to indulge in tears, but to master herself and subdue all signs of agitation. Calmness was an absolute necessity if she would not betray herself. She would perhaps see Joan, and she must see her as a stranger, manifesting no especial interest in her more than in others. If Joan might ever know her as a mother, this was not the time. So hard did Marian foresee her self-imposed task likely to prove that she could at this moment have turned and fled. Only she would not, and did not.
[CHAPTER XV.]
DULCIBEL’S NURSE.
“I WANT to speak to Mrs. Blogg, if you please.”
Marian made the request with no sort of preface, standing within the door of the Cross Arms Hotel. The flurried waiter whom she had accosted stood still for an instant.
“Mrs. Blogg! I don’t know as you can.”