Miss Merivale's Mistake

by Mrs. Henry Clarke

While Tom and Rose were talking thus, Miss Merivale was waiting anxiously for Rhoda. She had arranged that she should come to Woodcote that morning while Tom and Rose were away. The station was only half a mile from the house, and she did not send to meet her; but she sat by the drawing-room window, looking with painful eagerness down the drive for the first glimpse of the slim figure she remembered.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when Rhoda came up the quiet country road and turned in at the iron gates. It was a delightful day, the first real day of spring. Though no leaves were yet on the trees, ruddy brown buds just ready for bursting clothed every branch. And the grass along the hedges was starred with celandines and daisies, while yellow catkins sprinkled the bushes above them. A blackbird was singing loudly as Rhoda passed the big chestnut trees by the gate, and a squirrel darted down from a fir and scurried across the drive to hide himself in the little wood. Rhoda waited a moment, hoping for another glimpse of the bright-eyed little fellow. She was a child still in her delight in small animals, and this visit to Woodcote was a great treat to her. She loved the country as only country-bred people forced to live in a big town can love it. And this sweet English countryside, with its breezy uplands and smiling pastures, seemed more beautiful to her than even her dear Australia.

She drew a breath of delighted admiration when she came out on the lawn and saw the old house with its beds of tulips before it flaming in the sun. It was such a house as she had read of but had never seen, a haunt of ancient peace, time-worn, yet smiling still, its walls mellowed by the sunshine of many a hundred summers. She would have stood a moment to notice the delightful lines the gables made against the sky, but a figure at one of the deep, narrow-paned windows to the right of the porch caught her attention, and remembering that she had come on sober business, she walked briskly up to the heavy iron-studded door within the porch and pulled the twisted bell rope.

By Miss Merivale’s orders she was shown into the library, a delightful room looking out on the garden at the back of the house. She had ample time to notice what a dear old garden it was, for Miss Merivale kept her waiting quite a quarter of an hour.

More than once Miss Merivale went across the narrow hall and put her hand on the door, and then went back to the drawing-room, finding her courage fail her. And when at last she entered, she was so deadly pale, Rhoda lost all her nervousness in pity for her; she felt sure that she must be ill.

“Yes, that will do very nicely,” Miss Merivale said, after giving the typewritten programmes a cursory glance and pushing them from her. Her eyes went back to Rhoda’s face. She saw now that the fleeting glimpse she had got of her on the staircase had somewhat deceived her. Rhoda was not as pretty as she had thought. Her mouth was a little too wide, and her nose had too blunt a tip for beauty. But it was a charming face, nevertheless, full of heart-sunshine; and the dark brown, darkly-fringed eyes would have redeemed a plainer face.

Miss Merivale remembered with a sharp pang how Lydia had written of her dark-eyed girl. She spoke of her sister, after a moment or two.

“It has struck me that your father might have been related to her second husband,” she said. She had determined after leaving Acacia Road to mention this as possible both to Rhoda and to Tom and Rose.

Many people knew that Lydia had been Mrs. Sampson when she died, though Miss Merivale believed that she herself was the only person who was aware that her child had been named Rhoda.

But she soon found that Rhoda knew very little of her father. She had lived so long with the M’Alisters that she had come to identify herself with them, and had never desired to learn more of her own people. She could scarcely remember her father, and could not remember his Christian name. “J. Sampson is written in my little Bible,” she said. “It is the only book I have which belonged to him. Our house was burnt down when I was about two years old, and all his books and papers were burnt with it. Uncle Tom and Mr. Harding used to call him Jack, I have heard Aunt Mary say.”