The words seemed, to the woman who uttered them, poor and inadequate, for her heart was very full, but Doctor McKirdy, glancing sharply at their still listener, saw that Madame Sampiero was content, and that his experiment—for so the old Scotchman regarded the coming of Barbara Rebell to Chancton—was likely to be successful.
Had Mrs. Rebell, as child and girl, lived the ordinary life of a young Englishwoman, she would have realised, from the first moment of her arrival at Chancton Priory, how strange, how abnormal were the conditions of existence there; but the quiet solitude brooding over the great house suited her mood, and soothed her sore humiliation of spirit.
As she moved about, that first morning, making acquaintance with each of the stately deserted rooms lying to the right and left of the great hall, and seeking to find likenesses to her father—ay, even to herself—in the portraits of those dead and gone men and women whose eyes seemed to follow her as she came and went among them, she felt a deep voiceless regret in the knowledge that, but for so slight a chain of accidents, here she might have come six years ago.
In fancy she saw herself, as in that case she would have been by now, a woman perhaps in years—for Barbara, brought up entirely on the Continent, thought girlhood ended at twenty—but a joyous single-hearted creature, her only past a not unhappy girlhood, and six long peaceful years spent in this beautiful place, well spent too in tending the stricken woman to whom she already felt so close a tie of inherited love and duty.
Ah! how much more vividly that which might have been came before her when she heard the words with which Mrs. Turke greeted her—Mrs. Turke resplendent in a black satin gown, much flounced and gathered, trimmed with bright red bows, and set off by a coral necklace.
"I do hope and trust, Miss Barbara"——and then she stopped, laughing shrilly at herself, "What am I saying?—well to be sure!—I am a silly old woman, but it's Madam's fault,—she's said it to me and the doctor a dozen times this fortnight, 'When Miss Barbara's come home so-and-so will have to be done,'—And now that you are come home, Ma'am (don't you be afraid that I'll be 'Missing' you again), I'll have the holland covers taken off the furniture!"
For they were standing in the first of the two great drawing-rooms, and Mrs. Turke looked round her ruefully: "I did want to have it done yesterday, but the doctor he said, 'Let them be.' Of course I know there'll be company kept now, and a good thing too! If it wasn't for the coming here so constant of my own young gentleman—of Mr. James Berwick, I mean—we would be perished with dulness. 'The more the merrier'—you'll hardly believe, Ma'am, that such was used to be the motto of Chancton Priory. That was long ago, in the days of Madam's good father, and of her lady mother. I can remember them merry times well enough, for I was born here, dear only daughter to the butler and to Lady Barbara's own woman—that's what they called ladies' maids in those days. Folk were born, married, and died in the same service."
"Then I suppose you have never left Chancton Priory?" Mrs. Rebell was looking at the old woman with some curiosity.
"Oh! Lord bless you yes, Ma'am! I've seen a deal of the world. There was an interlude, a most romantic affair, Miss Barbara—there I go again—well, Ma'am, I'll tell you all about it some day. It's quite as interesting as any printed tale. In fact there's one story that reminds me very much indeed of my own romantic affair,—no doubt you've read it,—Mr. James Berwick, he knows it quite well,—that of the Primrose family. Olivia her name was, and she was deceived just as I was,—but there, I made the best of it, and it all came to pass most providentially. Why, they would never have reared Mr. Berwick if it hadn't been for me and my being able to suckle the dear lamb, and there would have been a misfortune for our dear country!"