“Then, dear, because you are so dear to me, I would see you happy.”
“Happiness, uncle,” she answered, “is to be compassed by the widow as by the wife—by the childless as by the mother. I am happy now—believe me, I speak the truth.”
And she stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek as she said this.
“I told you I would find work to do,” she continued; “and I mean to try and carry out my idea: the girl’s lovers shall be mine—to paraphrase the old Scotch song—their husbands mine;—their children, my sons and daughters. There is a child here I love very much,” she went on, with a little hesitation; “a poor, neglected child, I wish I had for mine very own.”
“Do not wish for her, Phemie;—other people have more need of her than you,” Mr. Aggland replied; and before Phemie left Norfolk she knew he had advised her well.
Next morning the child who so lately had been regarded as heir to Marshlands, was borne from its gates and laid in the Stondons’ vault, close beside Phemie’s husband.
Dust to dust—ashes to ashes. The words were spoken, and the mourners returned.
“We will go by the last train, and stop in London for the night,” Mr. Aggland suggested; and as he suggested, so Phemie agreed.
When it was growing dark she went to Georgina’s room, and bade her good-bye.
“Good-bye,” said Mrs. Basil Stondon, who felt, it might be, some qualms of reproach at seeing her unloved visitor depart according to her secret desire. “Good-bye, and thank you a hundred times over.”