“We can think nothing else, knowing Archie as we did. Raymond showed his suspicions so strongly, that old Proudfoot threw up all agencies for our property, and there has been a kind of hostility ever since. Poor Vivian, as you know, came to his sad end the next year, but he had destroyed all his papers; and George Proudfoot has been dead four or five years, but without making any sign. Moy has almost risen above the business, and—see, there’s Proudfoot Lawn, where he lives with the old man. He claims to compete with the county families, and would like to contest Wils’bro’ with Raymond.”
“And Jenny?” asked Anne. “Did she bear it as a Christian? I know she would.”
“She did indeed—most nobly, most patiently. Poor girl! at her own home she knew she stood alone in her faith in Archie’s innocence; but they were kind and forbearing, and kept silence, and the knowledge of our trust in him has bound her very close to us.”
“Was that call, when she did not see him, all she ever heard of him?”
“All! except that he left a fragment of paper with the servant, with the one pencil scrawl, ‘A Dieu!’—a capital D to mark the full meaning. She once showed it to me—folded so as to fit into the back of a locket with his photograph.”
“Dear Jenny! And had you traced him on board this ship?”
“No, but his name was in the list; and we knew he had strong fancy for South Africa, whither the Hippolyta was bound. In fact he ought to have been a sailor, and only yielded to his mother’s wishes.”
“We knew a Mr. Archibald Douglas once,” said Anne; “he came and outspanned by us when he was going north after elephants. He stayed a fortnight, because his wagon had to be mended.”
“O, Julius! if we could but find him for her again!” cried Rosamond.
“I am afraid Archibald Douglas is not much more individual a name than John Smith,” said Julius, sadly.