Could it be that he had lighted upon some trace of that mystery in his father's past life—that mystery which, without tangible evidence, he had always imagined as the key-note to his father's character in later years? She had fainted immediately upon his telling her his father's former name. Was that a mere coincidence of time, or was the name the cause of the fainting-fit?
Lady Emily arrived on a visit to her son while he was pondering this unanswerable question about Mrs. Wornock, and he caught at the opportunity. He hardly allowed his mother time to inspect his house and gardens, and the small farm which supplied his larder, and to give her opinion upon the furnishing of the rooms and the arrangement of the flower-beds and lawns, before he suggested taking her to call upon his neighbour at Discombe.
"But why, Allan? why should I call upon this Mrs. Wornock, when I am a stranger in the land?" argued his mother. "If there is any question of calling, it is Mrs. Wornock who must call upon me."
"Ah, but this lady is an exception to all rules, mother. She calls upon hardly anybody, and she has begged me to go and see her, and I feel a kind of hesitation in going alone—a second time."
He stopped in sudden embarrassment. He did not wish to tell his mother about the fainting-fit, though he had described the thing freely to Mrs. Mornington. He had thought more seriously of the circumstance since that conversation, and he was inclined to attach more importance to it now than at that time.
"I think you would be interested in Mrs. Wornock, mother," he urged, after a pause, during which Lady Emily had been pacing the room from window to wall with the idea of suggesting a bay to be thrown out where there was now only a flat French casement.
"Allan, you alarm me. I think you must be in love with this eccentric widow. You told me she was very rich, didn't you? It might not be a bad match for you."
"Perhaps not, if Mrs. Wornock had any penchant for me; and if I wanted a wife old enough to be my mother. Do you know that the lady has a son as old as I am?"
He reddened at the thought of that son, whose likeness to Beresford Carew was startling enough to surprise Lady Emily, and might possibly occasion unpleasant suspicions. And yet accidental likenesses are so common in this world that it would be weak to be scared by such a resemblance.