“Is she much changed?”
“Changed! Yes. It was only the ghost of Mercy Porter that I saw. I should not have known her but for her eyes. She had fine eyes, do you remember, and with a great deal of expression in them. I think I should be safe in swearing to Mercy Porter’s eyes.”
“Did she look poor or ill?”
“She looked both—but the illness might be only hunger. She had that wan pinched look one sees in the faces of the London poor, especially in the women’s faces.”
“Have you told her mother?”
“No, I came to the conclusion that it would be giving the poor soul useless pain to tell her anything, having so little to tell. She knew years ago that Colonel Tremaine had deserted his victim, and that the girl had dropped through. God knows where: into the abyss that swallows up handsome young women who begin their career in West End lodgings and a hired brougham. If the mother were to go in quest of her, and bring her home here, it might be only to bring shame and misery upon her declining years. The creature may have fallen too low for the possibility of reformation, and the mother’s last hours might be darkened by her sin. I would do much to rescue her—but I would rather try to save her through a stranger’s help than by the mother’s intervention.”
Lord Cheriton continued his pacing to and fro, and did not appear particularly interested in the case of Mercy Porter. He had been much troubled by her flight from Cheriton, for the seducer was his own familiar friend, and he had felt himself in somewise to blame for having brought such a man to Cheriton. He told himself that he would not have had Tremaine inside his house had his own daughter been out of the schoolroom; and yet he had allowed the man to cross the path of the widow’s only child, and to bring desolation and sorrow upon the woman whose life he had in somewise taken under his protection.
“There are people whose mission it is to hunt out that kind of misery,” he said, after an interval of silence. “I hope one of those good women will rescue Mercy Porter. I think you have been wise in saying nothing to the mother. She has got over her trouble, and anything she might hear about the girl would only be a reopening of old wounds.”
“She is a wonderful woman,” replied the vicar; “I never saw such grief as hers when the girl ran away; and yet within a few months she had calmed down into the placid personage she has been ever since. She is a woman of very powerful mind. I sometimes wonder that even at her age she can content herself with the monotonous life she leads in that cottage.”
“Oh, she likes the place, I believe, and the life suits her,” said Lord Cheriton, carelessly. “She had seen a good deal of trouble before she came here, and this was a quiet haven for her after the storms of life. I am very sorry the daughter went wrong,” he added, with a sudden cloud upon his face. “That was a bitter blow; and I shall never forgive myself for having brought that scoundrel Tremaine here.”