This time a child's voice was heard, as little feet pattered along the terrace outside Ford Manor.
'Aunt Lou is gone,' the child said. 'I saw her running down the hill.'
'Is she? She shall repent it, then, gadding off like that. More shame to you,' Mrs Forrester said wrathfully, 'to let her go, Mary, and cheat me by not telling me the truth. You want the child to go to ruin as you did yourself, I suppose.'
Mary Gifford's face flushed crimson, as she said,—
'It ill becomes my father's wife to taunt his daughter, when he is not here to defend her. Come with me, Ambrose, nor stay to listen to more hard words.'
But the child doubled his small fists, and said, approaching his grandmother,—
'I'll beat you. I'll kill you if you make mother cry! I will, you—'
'Hush, my little son,' Mary said, drawing the boy away. 'It is near thy bedtime. Come with me; nor forget thy manners if other folk are not mindful of theirs.'
The tears of mingled sorrow and anger were coursing each other down Mary Gifford's face, but she wiped them hastily away, and, putting her arm round the child, she led him up the narrow stairs leading from the large kitchen to the room above, where she sat down, with Ambrose clasped close to her heart, by the square bay window, which was flung open on this lovely April evening.
Ford Manor stood on the slope of the hill, commanding a view of the meadows stretching down to the valley, where the home of the Sidneys and the tower of the old church could be seen amongst the trees, now golden in the brilliant western sunshine of the spring evening. Perhaps there can scarcely be found a more enchanting prospect than that on which Mary Gifford looked, as she sat with her boy clasped in her arms, her heart, which had been pierced with many sorrows, still smarting with the sharp thrust her stepmother had given her.