The Duke stopped crying, and looked at the bare wall of rock before him with hopeless, unseeing eyes. Then as he prayed, a great wave of tenderness, of longing for his mother, broke over his child soul, and he got up. Scrambling over the great boulder he had hidden behind, he set off to run home. If this amazing, this shameful news were true, he would set a seal on his misery, and uncertainty would be at an end. If it were false, the Duke set his teeth as he thought of the colonel, then he squared his shoulders and dropped into the swinging run which made him such an admirable hare at “hare and hounds.”
He ran by the beach, a good three miles, and burst into their little sitting-room, tear-stained and breathless, just as Mary had arranged her writing-board on her knee.
She looked up in astonishment at his somewhat noisy entrance. He still wore his cap in the room, before her, and his face was dirty. Who had seen the Duke with a dirty face since he arrived at years of discretion?
“My darling boy, what has happened? Is it Wiggins? Is he hurt?” Mary stood up in her excitement, and the paper and envelopes were scattered about the floor.
The Duke only looked at her, his lips trembling.
“Speak, Duke, what is it? Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“No one is hurt, mother, except me, and I’m only hurt in my heart.” The tears ran down his cheeks as he spoke. “Mother, is it true—are you going to marry Mr. Methven? Oh, say it isn’t true. It’s so dreadful!”
Mary drew the boy to her, and sitting down she took him on her knee. He buried his dirty face in her neck and sobbed.
“My dearest, who has said that I am going to marry Mr. Methven? Surely you do not suspect me of telling people—other people—before I would tell you such a thing as that! Oh, Duke, I thought you trusted me.”
“But, mother, you might not have told them, they might have guessed, and it’s not the not knowing that I mind, it’s—it’s—Mr. Methven!”