Mignon; or, Bootles' Baby

by John Strange Winter

From Blankhampton, therefore, they went to his place, Ferrers Court, where he was to entertain a rather large party for Christmas, with a sister of his mother’s, and his only near relative, to do the honors for him, and among his guests a Mrs. Smith, a widow, and sister to that dead girl to whom he fancied a resemblance in Miss Mignon. However, at the last moment, Mrs. Smith wrote to excuse herself.

“I am very, very sorry,” she said, “but a very dear friend of mine, with whom I spent two winters in Italy, has suddenly appeared, with a travelling companion and two maids, to pay me a long-promised visit of at least two months. She is a Russian countess—a widow like myself, and wishes, I fancy, to improve her English, which she already speaks very well. Of course I am dreadfully disappointed, but cannot help it.”

Now it happened that Bootles had a very deep and great respect and liking for Mrs. Smith, and not for all the widowed countesses in Russia was he willing to upset his plans; therefore he wrote off at once to Mrs. Smith, after a five minutes’ consultation with Lady Marion, to beg her to carry out her original intentions, and bring Madame and her retinue “along.” Would she telegraph her reply?

Mrs. Smith did so, the reply being, Yes. Moreover, she supplemented the telegram by a letter, in which she mentioned among other things that Madame Gourbolska’s travelling companion must be treated in all ways as an ordinary guest.

So, at the time originally appointed for Mrs. Smith’s coming, the party of six—three ladies and three maids—arrived. Bootles himself went to the station to meet them. He found that Madame Gourbolska was young, not more than thirty, of the plump and fair Russian type, quite fair enough to hold her own beside Mrs. Smith, whom he regarded as the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance. The third lady, Miss Grace, was fair also, perhaps not so positively beautiful as either the English or the Russian lady, but fair-haired, fair-skinned, with soft blue-gray eyes, intensely blue in some lights, as Bootles noticed directly. Graceful she was to a degree, and as he watched her move across the little station he thought how wonderfully her name suited her.

Mrs. Smith smiled at him as he helped her to mount to the top of the omnibus. “Is not the likeness wonderful?” she said, with one of those quick sighs with which we speak of our dead; and then she said, “Poor Rosy.”

Bootles turned and looked at Miss Grace again, his mind going back to those dark days, past and gone now, when he and his best friend had been estranged for honor’s sake; when he and this imperially beautiful woman had stood side by side watching a young life die out; had together seen the sacrifice of a heart, the martyr of love to man.

“Yes, it is very great,” he said, briefly.

That dead sister of Mrs. Smith had always been and would always be a not-to-be-broken bond of union between them, for the widow knew how gladly “that grand Bootles,” as she always called him, would have tried to make up for the love she had lost, while to Bootles Mrs. Smith stood out from the rest of womankind as the sister of the only woman he had ever wished or asked to marry him.

He helped Miss Grace up to the seat beside Mrs. Smith, and took his own place beside the Russian lady, who entertained him very well during the three miles’ drive between Eagles Station and Ferrers Court.