“She was a very nice and kind lady,” concluded Phil, “and she was very good to me; but all the same, Rachel, I would rather see that other lady—the lady in green with the lovely face who comes with a gift.”
“Perhaps she’s only a myth,” said Rachel.
“Please, Rachel, don’t say so. I want the bag of gold so badly.”
Rachel stared and laughed.
“I never thought you were greedy, Phil,” she said. “I cannot think, what a little boy like you can want with a bag of gold.”
“That’s my secret,” said Phil, half-closing his eyes and again turning very pale. “A great many people would be happier if I had that bag of gold. Rachel,” he added, “I do trust I may one day see the lady. I went to look for her that day in the forest; I went miles and miles to find her, but I didn’t, and I was nearly drowned in a bog.”
“It is not a bit necessary to go into the forest to see her,” answered Rachel; “she might come to you here, in this very room. You know this is the very oldest part of the house. This part of Avonsyde is quite steeped in romance, and I dare say the lady has been here once or twice—that is, of course, if she isn’t a myth. There is an old diary of one of our ancestors in the library, and I have coaxed Aunt Griselda now and then to let me read in it. One day I read an account of the lady; it was then I found out about her green dress and her lovely face. The diary said she was ‘passing fair,’ and those who looked on her were beautiful ever afterward. She showed herself but seldom, but would come now and then for a brief half-minute of time to the fairest and the best and to those who were to die young.”
“Rachel,” said little Phil, “just before you came up that time I was lying with my eyes shut, and I was thinking of the beautiful lady, and I almost thought I saw her. I should be happy if she came to me.”
[CHAPTER XVI.—LOST.]
Phil’s mother was in every sense a weak woman. She was not strong enough to be either very good or very bad; she had a certain amount of daring, but she had not sufficient courage to dare with success. She had a good deal of the stubbornness which sometimes accompanies weak characters, and when she deliberately set her heart on any given thing, she could be even cruel in her endeavors to bring this thing to pass. Her husband and the elder Rupert Lovel, of Belmont, near Melbourne, were brothers. Both strong and brave men, they had married differently. Rupert’s wife had in all particulars been a helpmeet to him; she had brought up his children to be brave and strong and honorable. She suffered much, for she was a confirmed invalid for many years before her death; but her spirit was so strong, so sweet, so noble, that not only her husband and children, but outsiders—all, in fact, who knew her—leaned on her, asked eagerly for her counsel, and were invariably the better when they followed her advice. Philip Lovel’s wife was not a helpmeet to him; she was weak, exacting, jealous, and extravagant. She was the kind of woman whom a strong man out of his very pity would be good to, would pet and humor even more than was good for her. Philip was killed suddenly in a railway accident, and his widow was left very desolate and very poor. Her boy was then five years old—a precocious little creature, who from the moment of his father’s death took upon himself the no light office of being his mother’s comforter. He had a curious way even from the very first of putting himself aside and considering her. Without being told, he would stop his noisy games at her approach and sit for an hour at a time with his little hand clasped in hers, while he leaned his soft cheek against her gown and was happy in the knowledge that he afforded her consolation. To see him thus one would have supposed him almost deficient in manly attributes; but this was not so. His gentleness and consideration came of his strength; the child was as strong in mental fiber as the mother was weak. In the company of his brave Cousin Rupert no merrier or gayer little fellow could have been found. His courage and powers of endurance were simply marvelous. Poor little Phil! that courageous spirit of his was to be tested in no easy school. Soon after his sixth birthday those mysterious attacks of pain came on which the doctor in Melbourne, without assigning any special cause for their occurrence, briefly spoke of as dangerous. Phil was eight years old when his mother’s great temptation came to her. She saw an English newspaper which contained the advertisement for the Avonsyde heir. Her husband had often spoken to her about the old family place in the home country. She had loved to listen to his tales, handed down to him orally from his ancestors. She had sighed, and groaned too, over his narratives, and had said openly that to be mistress of such an old ancestral home was her ideal of paradise. Philip, a busy and active man, spent no time over vain regrets; practically he and his elder brother, Rupert, forgot the existence of the English home.