The messenger was an elderly woman, with gray hair and a pleasant, homely face. She had been Arthur Forrest's nurse, and his mother had left her a pension amply sufficient to keep her in comfort and supply her few wants. The old woman's affection for her nursling was so great that she had never lost sight of him, and the young man, who knew how much he owed to her tender care, had gratified her in his youth and manhood by visiting her from time to time.
Old Mrs. Foster had been the recipient of Arthur's confidence more than once, and she had helped him out of many a boyish scrape. In this dilemma he thought of her. The kind old woman took an interest in his tale, especially because there seemed to be no scheme attached to it for the entrapping of her darling. That he should be led away by the snares of womankind was a subject of constant terror to Mrs. Foster.
"Tak' tent of the lassies, my bairn," she would say to him at times; "they're an awfu' sight tae deep for the lads."
But on this occasion there seemed to be no lassie in the question; only a suffering lady, who, in the very teeth of her bairn's most dangerous admissions (over these the old woman shook her head solemnly), had confessed to a husband still, as it seemed, in the land of the living.
She consented readily—all the more so, perhaps, because of the power it would give her of watching the matter—to what Arthur had been almost afraid to mention, that she herself should become for the time being a kind of confidential servant to the lady, supposing Margaret herself would permit it. In any case she would not shrink from the office of messenger and from the task of observation, for with her young master she was of opinion that the landlady was a dangerous person.
It was a tolerable amount of work for one day, and Arthur was satisfied. He felt that the stone was set rolling at all points, and that it would reach its destination in time if human skill and human energy could accomplish anything.