Mary rose hastily to obey, she was glad to turn her back on those present, for the explanation respecting the young visitors at Englefield Grange had lifted a weight from her heart and made her eyes brighter, and the colour on her cheeks deeper than they had been for months. Yes, she could sing now; and as Jack listened, and remembered that this was his last evening at the Limes, he inwardly resolved that when he was old enough, and had made a fortune like Cousin Armstrong, he would marry a wife exactly like Cousin Mary.
Altogether it had been a day of excitement; and when Mary entered her bedroom a feeling of hope—the foundation of which she could scarcely account for—seemed to fill her heart. She lay awake for some time, trying to realise certain causes from which this hope seemed to spring. Her meeting with Henry Halford at the station—the absence of displeasure in her father's manner, which she dreaded would follow her sudden impulse to send him as a messenger—above all, the discovery that she had mistaken one of Mr. Henry Halford's nieces for perhaps his intended wife—and last, but not least, an impression that Cousin Sarah was favourable to the Halfords, and in some way able to influence her father—these reflections, added to the certainty in her own mind that Henry Halford had taken his degree and would soon go up for ordination, seemed so full of hope that they acted with a soothing influence on the young girl's heart, till at length she slept.
Very different from the innocent hopes of Mary Armstrong were the reflections that haunted the chamber of Arthur Franklyn that night at Englefield Grange. The painful event of his second wife's sudden death, and the necessity for an inquest, had spread consternation over the household, and excited great sympathy.
To his surprise, no one sympathised with him more deeply than his eldest daughter, for he remembered how openly she had resented his second marriage. But to the memory of this resentment he now owed Clara's sympathy; remorse for having been at times rude and unkind to the woman who must have suffered so much to cause such a sudden death, filled the young girl's heart.
But even her gentle cares and attentions could not soothe the father's sorrow till he observed that this apparently great grief for his second wife created some little surprise among the relatives of Fanny Halford, who was the mother of his children.
On discovering this he roused himself, and as some excuse for his sorrow, acknowledged the fact of his having hurried her to the train.
"I feel almost as if I were Louisa's murderer," he said "for I remember now how she gasped for breath when we reached the platform."
"No, no, Arthur, do not think anything so painful," said Dr. Halford; "she had never spoken to you of her heart being diseased, or I am sure you would have been more careful, yet I can quite understand how the circumstance troubles you."
Troubled him! Yes, we must do Arthur Franklyn the justice to own that the recollection pained him greatly, but what was that memory compared to the fact that his wife's death before signing certain documents would inevitably cause his utter ruin?
He had that day obtained from his lawyer a document signed by the two trustees of his wife's property, authorizing her to draw out 2000l. for her husband's use.