Then she rose to her feet and looked toward me, smiling through tear-dimmed eyes. 'You have made me very happy, Mr Russell. I don't want to know anything further. I leave myself confidently in your hands. You'll find cigarettes on the table behind you; you may smoke here;' and she crossed the room and sat down at the piano. She struck a few chords, deep as her own feelings; then she rose and came toward me. 'Mr Russell, do you know I have never known the joy of a mother's caress or the blessing of a mother's good-night kiss. Such memories of childhood are not mine, and my past is empty—empty. My father, for reasons of which I know nothing, never mentioned my mother's name to me. I was brought up among strangers, kindly enough, but still strangers. I never came in contact with other children. In a way, I was isolated from everything heartfelt and human; it is only since I got to know your neighbours that I have had a glimpse of what is surely the truest, sweetest, and happiest side of life. I like your nurse, your Betty. She once put her hand on my arm, and it had such a motherly touch that I wanted to kiss her. Perhaps you are thinking that this has no connection with anything that has passed between us. Well, you may be right in thinking so; but it is on my mind and in my heart, and I just wanted to tell you now, as I feel my future is hanging by a thread—a very slender thread—and I may not have another opportunity of saying it.'
I understood her mood, and made no reply; but I took her hand, raised it to my lips, and kissed it.
We were standing together in the oriel, watching the sunset splendour through the leafless trees, when Mrs Stuart and Murray Monteith joined us. Once or twice I caught my partner admiringly following Miss Stuart's movements, and he looked several times at me with a mark of interrogation in his eye. I had a feeling that he 'jaloused,' as Betty would put it, and it set me a-thinking; only for a moment, however, and I soon dismissed him and his monocle from my mind.
We had afternoon tea and a pleasant chat on current topics, and then our carriage was called. Just before we started, when we were standing in the hall, Miss Stuart asked me, in an undertone, if she could see, just for a minute, the man who had known her father. I called Joe inside, and Miss Stuart took him into the drawing-room. When he joined us again there was a glad look in his eye, and I knew his heart was proud within him, for he had shaken hands with his old Major's daughter.
I sat quiet and preoccupied in the corner of the brougham when driving home.
Just as the first twinkling light shone out ahead from the Gillfoot turn, Monteith turned to me. 'Russell,' he said, 'pardon my interrupting the flow of your pleasant meditations. You're a queer fellow in many ways; you—you don't say much till it suits you; but I can see as far through a brick wall as any one, and it may be—I say it may be—agreeable to you to know that Blackford Hall in Morningside will shortly be in the market. I've heard you say that if you ever settled down to married life you would like to live there.'
'Thank you, Monteith, for your information,' I said. 'It is agreeable to me to know this.'
Nothing further was said on the subject till we were seated at my cosy fireside. Then Murray Monteith, blowing clouds of fragrant smoke above him, and glancing round my clean, well-furnished walls, said, 'By Jove, Russell! you're a lucky fellow; an old doting nurse there,' inclining his head toward the kitchen, 'who loves you almost with a mother's affection, and who wouldn't allow the wind to blow on you if she could prevent it, and the love of a girl like—like'——and he hesitated and looked at me.
'Go on, Monteith; you're doing all right.'
'Go on! Hang it, man, you go on! Can't you speak, you—you dungeon, and give me a tag on which to hang my congratulations?'