Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

Joe Benn made no rejoinder; experience had taught him that it was best not. He passed her, and she shut the door with a bang.

[CHAPTER XXVI.]

MORE INSTILLED DOUBT.

The air was keen and frosty, and the flags of the streets were white and clean--not a common feature in November--as they walked forth. Oswald could but admire this straightforward Scotch girl, with her open speech and her plain good sense. She was so young in appearance that he could only think of her as a girl, though she had herself reminded him that she was older than Frank. This, as he knew, must bring her to a year or two past thirty: and in steadiness of manner and solid independence she was two-and-forty.

Reared in her Highland home, in every comfort for the earlier years of her life, she had since had to buffet with the world. Her mother, a widow since Frank was two years old, had enjoyed a good income, but it died with her. The uncle in London took Frank, who was then a youth; and Jane had to seek a situation. It was not easy to find. For a governess she was not qualified, so many of what are called accomplishments are essential nowadays, and Jane Allister had not learnt them. She had received a good education, but a strictly plain one.

Waiting and waiting! No situation offered itself; and when she heard of Mrs. Graham's she was well-nigh wearied out with the worst of all weariness--that of long-continued disappointment, of hope deferred. But for that weariness she might not have accepted a place where she was to be personal attendant as well as companion. She took it, determined to do her duty in it, to make the very best of it; and when her brother Frank wrote to her in a commotion from his distant home in London, where he was then with Bracknell and Street, she began by making the very best of it to him, gaily and lightly. Frank had the letter yet, in which she had jokingly called him--as she had just related to Mr. Oswald Cray--a proud boy, and recommended him to "bring down" his notions. Frank Allister had never been reconciled to it yet. Jane had grown to like it; and she had remained there all these years, conscientiously doing her duty.

"Have you lost a friend lately?" she inquired, in allusion to the crape band on Oswald's hat.

"Yes," he briefly answered, wincing at the question, could Jane Allister have seen it. All that past time of Lady Oswald's death, and the events attending it, caused an inward shiver whenever they were brought to his mind.

"It is a grievous thing to lose relatives when they are dear to us," remarked Jane. "There is an expression in your countenance at times that tells me you have some source of sorrow."

Whatever the expression she had noticed on his countenance, she would have seen a very marked one now, had they been, as before, face to face near a table-lamp. The old haughty pride came into it, and his brow flushed blood-red. Oswald Cray was one of the very last to tolerate that his secret feelings should be observed or commented upon. As she spoke it seemed to him as if the pain at his heart was read, his hopeless love for Sara Davenal laid bare.