“You have told me, sir, that Miss Brooke’s uncle is dead?”
Saxon bowed his head. Mr Manchuri gazed hard at the young man.
“Your father was my good friend,” he said, a softer note coming into his voice, “and I have always thoroughly respected you. Your father and I have transacted business, and you yourself have shown me hospitality in a distant part of the world I would not be unkind to you, Mr Saxon, and I pity you very much indeed because of your relationship to Miss Brooke.”
“Pray do not pity me,” said Saxon. “If a man of my age—I am eight-and-twenty—cannot do has beet for a lonely girl, almost a child, he must be a poor sort. I am Annie’s guardian, and will do my utmost as long as she lives to befriend her.”
“Sir, I must speak the truth,” said Mr Manchuri. “You are straight as a die and honest and open as the day; but that girl is crafty, insincere, essentially untrue. You can never turn staff of that sort into true gold, however hard you try.”
“I can at least protect a weak and erring girl,” said Saxon with feeling.
“The best thing you can possibly do for her, sir, is to get her out of England and away from her old friends; for she must never return to Mrs Lyttelton’s school.”
“Why so?” asked Saxon.
“It was my privilege, Mr Saxon, to escort Priscilla Weir back to England. She had been very little noticed by me or by anyone else while at Interlaken. But I think, if I may dare to say the word, that God took care of her, and she alone of all that party really enjoyed the glories of nature. For her the Jungfrau showed some of its majesty, and for her the other great mountains spoke unutterable secrets. She is a queer girl, but has a heart of gold, Mr Saxon, a heart of gold. Now that girl first attracted my attention because the resembled a child of my own—a child who has long lived with the angels. I can scarcely tell you what I felt when I saw the likeness, and since then I have probed into Priscilla’s heart and found that in all respects it resembles the heart of my Esther. Sir, the girl was lonely; she was subjected to temptation, and she yielded to it. She has told me about it, and when Mrs Lyttelton’s school opens it will be Priscilla’s painful duty to tell her mistress something which implicates very seriously your cousin, Miss Brooke. It also implicates Miss Lushington. Priscilla, is a guest in my house now. What she will be eventually I have not yet disclosed to her. It is my impression that Esther sent her to me, and I am not going to let her go in a hurry.”
“Yes, this is very interesting, and I am glad that a girl so worthy as Miss Weir should have found a friend in you,” was Saxon’s response. “But you have not explained what my cousin Annie has done.”