"Isn't it a delightful letter, Annie?" asked Mrs. Potts; "so kind and genial; so exactly like dear old Geoff."
"Yes," Annie replied, very softly; "it is indeed, Til; it is very like Geoffrey."
Then Annie went to look after little Arthur, and left the mother and daughter to their delightful confidential talk.
When the party from Elm Lodge were at the seaside, after Til's marriage, Annie began to write pretty regularly to Geoffrey, who was then in Egypt. She was always thinking of him, and of how his mind was to be roused from its grief; and once more interested in life. She felt that he was labouring at his art for money, and because he desired to secure the future of those dear to him, in the sense of duty, but that for him the fame which he was rapidly winning was very little worth, and the glory was quite gone out of life,--gone down, with the golden hair and the violet eyes, into the dust which was lying upon them. Annie, who had never known a similar grief; understood his in all its intricacies of suffering, with the intuitive comprehension of the heart, which happily stands many a woman instead of intellectual gifts and the learning of experience; and knowing this, the girl, whose unselfish spirit read the heart of her early friend, but never questioned her own, sought with all her simple and earnest zeal how to "cure him of his cruel wound." His picture had been one of the gems of the Academy, one of the great successes of the year, and Annie had written to him enthusiastically about it, as his mother had also done; but she counted nothing upon this. Geoffrey was wearily pleased that they were pleased and gratified, but that was all. His hand did its work, but the soul was not there; and as he was now working amid the ruins of a dead world, and a nation passed away in the early youth of time, his mood was congenial to it, and he grew to like the select lapse of the sultry desert life, and to rebel less and less against his fate, in the distant land where every thing was strange, and there was no fear of a touch upon the torturing nerves of association. All this Annie Maurice divined, and turned constantly in her mind; and amidst the numerous duties to which she devoted herself with the quiet steadiness which was one of her strongest characteristics, she thought incessantly of Geoffrey, and of how the cloud was to be lifted from him. Her life was a busy one, for all the real cares of the household rested upon her. Mrs. Ludlow had been an admirable manager of her own house, and in her own sphere, but she did not understand the scale on which Elm Lodge had been maintained even in Margaret's time, and that which Miss Maurice established was altogether beyond her reach. The old lady was very happy; that was quite evident. She and Annie agreed admirably. The younger lady studied her peculiarities with the utmost care and forbearance, and the "cross" sat lightly now. She was growing old; and what she did not see she had lost the faculty of grieving for; and Geoffrey was well, and winning fame and money. It seemed a long time ago now since she had regarded her daughter-in-law's furniture and dress with envy, and speculated upon the remote possibility of some day driving in her son's carriage.
Mrs. Ludlow had a carriage always at her service now, and the most cheerful of companions in her daily drive; for she, Annie, and the child made country excursions every afternoon, and the only time the girl kept for her exclusive enjoyment was that devoted to her early-morning rides. Some of the earliest among the loungers by the sad sea-waves grew accustomed to observe, with a sense of admiration and pleasure, the fresh fair face of Annie Maurice, as, flushed with exercise and blooming like a rose in the morning air, she would dismount at the door of her "marine villa," where a wee toddling child always awaited her coming, who was immediately lifted to her saddle, and indulged with a few gentle pacings up and down before the windows, whence an old lady would watch the group with grave delight. Mrs. Ludlow wrote all these and many more particulars of her happy life to her absent son; and sometimes Annie wondered whether those cheerful garrulous letters, in which the unconscious mother showed Geoffrey so plainly how little she realised his state of mind, increased his sense of loneliness. Then she bethought her of writing to Geoffrey constantly about the child. She knew how he had loved the baby in happier times, and she never wronged the heart she knew so well by a suspicion that the disgrace and calamity which had befallen him had changed this deep-dwelling sentiment, or included the motherless child in its fatal gloom. She had not spoken of little Arthur in her earlier letters more than cursorily, assuring his father that the child was well and thriving; but now that time was going over, and the little boy's intellect was unfolding, she caught at the legitimate source of interest for Geoffrey, and consulted him eagerly and continuously about her little protégé and pupil.
The autumn passed and the winter came; and Mrs. Ludlow, her grandchild, and Annie Maurice were settled at Elm Lodge. Annie had taken anew to her painting, and Geoffrey's deserted studio had again an inmate. Hither would come Charley Potts--a genial gentleman still, but with much added steadiness and scrupulously-neat attire. The wholesome subjugation of a happy marriage was agreeing wonderfully with Charley, and his faith in Til was perfectly unbounded. He was a model of punctuality now; and when he "did a turn" for Annie in the painting-room, he brushed his coat before encountering the unartistic world outside with a careful scrupulousness, at which, in the days of Caroline and the beer-signals, he would have derisively mocked. Another visitor was not infrequent there, though he had needed much coaxing to induce him to come, and had winced from the sight of Geoff's ghostly easel on his first visit with keen and perceptible pain.
A strong mutual liking existed between William Bowker and Annie Maurice. Each had recognised the sterling value of the other on the memorable occasion of their first meeting; and the rough exterior of Bowker being less perceptible then than under ordinary circumstances, it had never jarred with Annie's taste or offended against her sensibilities. So it came to pass that these two incongruous persons became great friends; and William Bowker--always a gentleman in the presence of any woman in whom he recognised the soul of a lady--passed many hours such as he had never thought life could again give him in his dear old friend's deserted home. Miss Maurice had no inadequate idea of the social duties which her wealth imposed upon her, and she discharged them with the conscientiousness which lent her character its combined firmness and sweetness. But all her delight was in her adopted home, and in the child, for whom she thought and planned with almost maternal foresight and quite maternal affection. William Bowker also delighted in the boy, and would have expended an altogether unreasonable portion of his slender substance upon indigestible eatables and curiously-ingenious and destructible toys but for Annie's prohibition, to which he yielded loyal obedience. Many a talk had the strangely-assorted pair of friends as they watched the child's play; and they generally ran on Geoffrey or if they rambled off from him for a while, returned to him through strange and tortuous ways. Not one of Geoff's friends forgot him, or ceased to miss him, and to wish him back among them. Not one of "the boys" but had grieved in his simple uncultivated way over the only half-understood domestic calamity which had fallen upon "old Geoff;" but time has passed, and they had begun to talk more of his pictures and less of himself. It was otherwise with Bowker, whose actual associates were few, though his spirit of camaraderie was unbounded. He had always loved Geoffrey Ludlow with a peculiar affection, in which there had been an unexplained foreboding; and its full and terrible realisation had been a great epoch in the life of William Bowker. It had broken up the sealed fountains of feeling; it had driven him away from the grave of the past; it had brought his strong sympathies and strong sense into action, and had effected a moral revolution in the lonely man, who had been soured by trouble only in appearance, but in whom the pure sweet springs of the life of the heart still existed. Now he began to weary for Geoffrey. He dreaded to see his friend sinking into the listlessness and dreariness which had wasted his own life; and Geoffrey's material prosperity, strongly as it contrasted with the poverty and neglect which had been his own lot, did not enter into Bowker's calculations with any reassuring effect.
"Does Geoffrey never fix any time for his return?" asked William Bowker of Miss Maurice one summer evening when they were slowly pacing about the lawn at Elm Lodge, after the important ceremonial of little Arthur's coucher had been performed.
"No," said Annie, with a quick and painful blush.
"I wish he would, then," said Bowker. "He has been away quite long enough now; and he ought to come home and face his duties like a man, and thank God that he has a home, and duties which don't all centre in himself. If they did, the less he observed them the better." This with a touch of the old bitterness, rarely apparent now. Annie did not answer, and Bowker went on: