“Don’t worry about this too much. I am quite sure that when people really want to do what is right and best, things are shaped for us into guidance. I have often found it so in life, though my experience hasn’t been a very long one as yet.”
I felt grateful for his kindness, though I did not reply. There was more on my mind than he understood; the reproachful consciousness of my own foolish presumption was not absent from my mind, paradoxical as this may sound in conjunction with the feeling I have alluded to, of being destined—intended—to be an instrument in the deliverance of the prisoners of the Grim House.
“I need not have mixed myself up in it in the least,” I thought; “and why, after things have gone on quietly enough with them for so many years apparently, should Caryll go and fall ill in this serious way, and place me in such a tangle of perplexity? For, of course, it does not take much putting two and two together to see that what the poor thing is longing and praying for is to have his brother cleared from the mysterious cloud over him.”
As will be remembered, the words I had overheard clearly pointed to the elder Mr Grey being the centre of the trouble—my own instinctive conviction since my first glimpse of the four faces in the square pew at Millflowers church.
Mrs Payne’s first words relieved my immediate apprehension. She looked serenely content, and pleased with herself and everybody else, us truants included.
“Is it not a charming show?” she said. “I have never seen a prettier. Your father and I, Clarence, are feeling more eager than ever about the little country-house we often talk of. How I should enjoy managing the garden!”