“I am thinking about your mother, children,” said Miss Katharine suddenly. “Does it ever occur to you two thoughtless, happy girls that you have got a mother somewhere in existence—that she loves you and misses you?”
“I don’t know my mother,” said Kitty. “I can’t remember her, but Rachel can.”
“Yes,” said Rachel abruptly. “I’m going all round the world to look for her by and by. Don’t let’s talk of her; I can’t bear it.”
The child’s face had grown pale; a look of absolute suffering filled her dark and glowing eyes. Miss Katharine was so much astonished at this little peep into Rachel’s deep heart that she absolutely dried her own tears. Sometimes she felt comforted at the thought of Rachel suffering. If even one child did not quite forget her mother, surely this fact would bring pleasure to the mother by and by.
Meanwhile Miss Griselda was holding a solemn and somewhat alarming conversation with poor Mrs. Lovel. In the first place, she took the good lady into the library—a dark, musty-smelling room, which gave this vivacious and volatile person, as she expressed it, “the horrors” on the spot. Miss Griselda having secured her victim and having seated her on one of the worm-eaten, high-backed chairs, opened the book-case marked D and took from it the vellum-bound diary which six years ago she had carried to the old squire’s bedroom. From the musty pages of the diary Miss Griselda read aloud the story of the great quarrel; she read in an intensely solemn voice, with great emphasis and even passion. Miss Griselda knew this part of the history of her house so well that she scarcely needed to look at the words of the old chronicler.
“It may seem a strange thing to you, Mrs. Lovel,” she said when she had finished her story—“a strange and incomprehensible thing that your white-faced and delicate-looking little boy should in any way resemble the hero of this quarrel.”
“Phil is not delicate,” feebly interposed Mrs. Lovel.
“I said delicate-looking. Pray attend to me. The Rupert who quarreled with his father—I will confess to you that my sympathies are with Rupert—was in the right. He was heroic—a man of honor; he was brave and stalwart and noble. Your boy reminds me of him—not in physique, no, no! but his spirit looks out of your boy’s eyes. I wish to make him the heir of our house.”
“Oh, Miss Griselda, how can a poor, anxious mother thank you enough?”
“Don’t thank me at all. I do it in no sense of the word for you. The boy pleases me; he has won on my affections; I—love him.”