"Ah!" the old lady thought; "she is the child of his heart. Those three twins are merely the children of his home. That poor drudge of a mother of theirs! Mary is the child of her father's heart and mind."
Then aloud: "You had better let me have her, Mr. Gray."
"Let you have her, Lady Anne? What would you do with my Mary?"
He looked scarcely less aghast than he had done a moment before at the suggestion of consumption.
"Not separate her from you, Mr. Gray. This house is my home, and I am not likely to leave it, except for a month or two at a time, at my age. I think the child will be a companion to me. I have no romantic suggestions to make. I am not proposing to adopt Mary. I shall pay her a salary, and give her opportunities for education that you cannot. She interests me, as I have said. Let me have her. When I no longer need her—I am an old woman, Mr. Gray—she will be fit to earn her own living. Everything I have goes back to my nephew Jarvis Lord Iniscrone. But Mary will not suffer. Think! What have you to give her but a life of drudgery under which she will break down—die, perhaps?"
She watched the emotion in his face with her little keen, bright eyes.
"It is not a fine lady's caprice?" he said. "You won't make my Mary accustomed to better things than I could give her and then send her back to be a drudge?"
"The Lord judge between thee and me," she answered solemnly.
"Then I trust you, Lady Anne Hamilton," he said.
The strange thing was that the proud old lady was gratified, almost flattered, by the confidence in Walter Gray's unworldly eyes.