“Yes, I’ll be there directly,” Mildred replied, rising hurriedly to say good-bye, and giving her hand to her mother, who fondled it a moment and then said to her, “Your hands are soft as a baby’s, and there are many rings on your fingers. I think I know how they look, and I have felt your hair, but not your face. Tom and Bessie say it is handsome. Would you mind my feeling it? That’s my way of seeing.”
Mildred was glad that Hugh had stepped in to the next room and could not see her agitation, as she knelt beside the blind woman, whose hands moved slowly over her face and then up to her hair, where they rested a moment as if in benediction, while she said, “You are lovely, I am sure, and good, too, and your poor blind mother must miss you so much. Didn’t she hate to part with you?”
“Yes, oh, yes, and my heart is aching for her. Please bless me as if you were my mother and I your daughter Milly,” was Mildred’s sobbing reply, her tears falling like rain as the shaking hands pressed heavily upon her bowed head, while the plaintive voice said slowly, “God bless you, child, and make you happy with your husband, and comfort your poor mother while you are away from her. Amen.”
“Will you tell Mrs. Thornton I am in a hurry?” Mr. Thornton said to Bessie, loudly enough for Mildred to hear, and wiping her tears away, she went out through the side door where her husband was standing, with a frown upon his face, caused not so much by her delay as by the glimpse he was sure he had caught of his son, in the kitchen, with a checked apron tied round his neck and a big cherry stain on his forehead.
Nor did the sight of his wife’s flushed cheeks and red eyes help to restore his equanimity, and although he said nothing then, Mildred felt that he was displeased, as he helped her into the phaeton and took his seat beside her.
CHAPTER IX.
GERARD AND HIS FATHER.
Gathering up the reins and driving very slowly, he began:
“Was that Gerard whom I saw tricked out as a kitchen cook?”
“Gerard was there. Yes,” Mildred answered, and he continued in that cool, determined tone which means more than words themselves, “Is he often there? Is he interested in your sister? If he is, it must stop. I tell you it must stop,” he added more emphatically as his wife made no reply. “I married you because——” he paused a moment and looked at the woman sitting at his side in all her glowing beauty, and then went on in a softer tone,—“because I loved you more than I loved my pride, which, however, is so great, that it will not quietly submit to my son’s marrying your sister.”
“Does he intend to?” Mildred asked so coolly that it exasperated him, and he replied, “He will not with my consent, and he will hardly dare do so without it. Why, he has scarcely a dollar of his own, and no business either. More’s the pity, or he wouldn’t be capering round a kitchen in an old woman’s apron.”