“Oh, I am so sorry, for I do need scholars so much, oh, so much.”
“Why didn’t you come, then?” she asked; and I told her how her letter had been two weeks at my lodgings before my return from the continent, and of the sickness which had followed my return.
“And you live there all alone. Have you no friends, no relations anywhere?” she asked.
“None since father and Aunt Esther died.” I said. “I have nobody but Cousin Tom, who is in India, and who never writes to me now. I think he has forgotten me. Yes, I am quite alone.”
“I wonder you have never married in all these years,” was the next remark, and looking up at her I saw something in her face which went over me like a flash of revelation, and my voice shook a little as I repeated her last words, “Never married!” while my thoughts went back to Archie and the summer days when I waited for him, and he did not come, and that later time when Lady Darinda wrote me he was dead.
Was this Lady Darinda? My eyes asked the question, and she answered me: “Perhaps my manner seems strange to you, Miss Burton; let me explain. I was wishing for a new teacher for my little Maude, one who was gentle and patient to children. A friend of mine, Mrs. Barrett, whose daughter you have taught, told me of you. The name attracted me, for I once knew of a Miss Norah Burton. I made inquiries, and learned that Jennie Barrett’s teacher and Miss Norah Burton of the Oaks, Middlesex, were one and the same. I wanted to see you, and so I wrote the note.”
She spoke rapidly, and kept working at the solitaire, without once looking at me, till I said: “You are Lady Darinda Cleaver?”
Then her large blue eyes looked straight at me and she replied:
“I was Lady Darinda Cleaver, cousin to Archibald Browning, whom you were engaged to marry. If you had married him you would have been Lady Cleaver now of Briarton Lodge, for both my brothers are dead, and Archie was next in succession.”
“Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge;” I whispered the words with a gasp, and for a moment tried to realize what was involved in being Lady Cleaver of Briarton Lodge.