“No, sir; I am Mrs. Rufus Black. My name used to be Lally Bird. Do—do you come from my husband?”
“I come from Mr. Rufus Black,” replied Craven Black politely. “I am the bearer of a note from him, but must precede its delivery with an explanation. Mr. Black is now in Kent, and will remain there for the summer.”
“I—I don’t understand you, sir,” said poor Lally, bewildered.
There was a rustling outside the door, as the landlady settled herself at the keyhole, in an attitude to listen to the conversation between Lally and her visitor. Mrs. McKellar was convinced that there was some mystery connected with her fourth floor lodgers, and she deemed this a favorable opportunity of solving it.
“Permit me to introduce myself to you, Miss Bird,” said her visitor, still courteously. “I am Craven Black, the father of Rufus.”
The young wife gasped with surprise, and her face whitened suddenly. She sat down abruptly, with her hand upon her heart.
“His father?” she murmured.
Craven Black bowed, while he regarded her and her surroundings curiously. The dingy, poverty-stricken little room, with its meagre plenishing and no luxuries, struck him as being but one remove from an alms-house. The young wife, in her wretchedly poor attire, with her big black eyes and brown face, from which all color had been stricken by his announcement, seemed to him a very commonplace young person, quite of the lower orders, and he wondered that his university bred son could have loved her, and that he still desired to cling to her and his poverty, rather than to leave her and wed an heiress.
For a moment or more Lally remained motionless and stupefied, and then the color flashed back to her cheeks and lips, and the brightness to her eyes. She could interpret the visit of Craven Black in but one manner—as a token of his reconciliation with his son.
“Ah, sir, I beg your pardon,” she said, arising to her feet, “but I was sorely frightened. I have been so anxious about Rufus. I expected him home last night. And I could not dream that you would come to our poor home.”