Mrs. Level’s own face had turned white. She was about to make a hasty rejoinder, when the door was again opened and Miss Griselda and Miss Katharine came in.
“Not a word, my dear! I will explain to you another time—another time,” she whispered to the girl. And then she stole out of the room.
[CHAPTER XXI.—WHAT THE HEIR OUGHT TO BE.]
A few days after these exciting events the Marmadukes went away. Unless a sense of relief, they left no particular impression behind them. The grown-up people had not made themselves interesting to the old ladies; the lady’s-maid and the parrot alike had disturbed Newbolt’s equanimity; and the children of Avonsyde had certainly not learned to love the Marmaduke children. Clementina had been humbled and improved by her accident, but even an improved Clementina could not help snubbing Rachel every hour of the day, and Rachel did not care to be snubbed. On the day they left Phil did remark, looking wistfully round him: “It seems rather lonely without the Marmadukes.” But no one else echoed the sentiment, and in a day or two these people, who were so important in their own eyes, were almost forgotten at Avonsyde.
On one person, however, this visit had made a permanent impression: that person was poor Mrs. Lovel. She was made terribly uneasy by Clementina’s words. If Clementina, an ignorant and decidedly selfish girl, could notice that Phil was not strong, could assure her, in that positive, unpleasant way she had, that Phil was very far from strong, surely Miss Griselda, who noticed him so closely and watched all he did and said with such solicitude, could not fail to observe this fact also. Poor Mrs. Lovel trembled and feared and wondered, now that the tankard was lost and now that Phil’s delicacy was becoming day by day more apparent, if there was any hope of that great passionate desire of hers being fulfilled.
Just at present, as far as Miss Griselda was concerned, she had no real cause for alarm.
Miss Griselda had quite made up her mind, and where she led Miss Katharine was sure to follow. Miss Griselda was certain that Phil was the heir. Slowly the conviction grew upon her that this little white-faced, fragile boy was indeed the lineal descendant of Rupert Lovel. She had looked so often at his face that she even imagined she saw a likeness to the dark-eyed, dark-browed, stern-looking man whose portrait hung in the picture-gallery. This disinherited Rupert had become more or less of a hero in Miss Griselda’s eyes. From her earliest years she had taken his part; from her earliest years she had despised that sickly younger line from which she herself had sprung. Like most women, Miss Griselda invested her long-dead hero with many imaginary charms. He was brave and great in soul. He was as strong in mind as he was in physique. When she began to see a likeness between Phil’s face and the face of her old-time hero, and when she began also to discover that the little boy was generous and brave, that he was one of those plucky little creatures who shrink from neither pain nor hardship, had Phil’s mother but known it, his cause was won. Miss Griselda began to love the boy. It was beginning to be delightful to her to feel that after she was dead and gone little Phil would have the old house and the lands, that he should reign as a worthy squire of Avonsyde. Already she began to drill the little boy with regard to his future duties, and often when he and she took walks together she spoke to him about what he was to do.
“All this portion of the forest belongs to us, Phil,” she said to him one day. “My father often talked of having a roadway made through it, but he never did so, nor will Katharine and I. We leave that as part of your work.”
“Would the poor people like it?” asked Phil, raising his eyes with their queer expression to her face. “That’s the principal thing to think about, isn’t it—if the poor people would like it?”
Miss Griselda frowned.