“Mamma,” said Constance next evening, when all their excitement and emotions were softened down, “I hope you told Mrs Gaunt that I had been there?”
“My dear, Mrs Gaunt was not thinking of either you or me. Perhaps she might be conscious of Frances; I don’t know even that. When one’s child is dying, it does not matter to one who shows feeling. By-and-by, no doubt, she will be grateful to us all.”
“Not to me—never to me.”
“Perhaps she has no reason, Con,” her mother said.
“I am sure I cannot tell you, mamma. If he had died, of course—though even that would not have been my fault. I amused him very much for six weeks, and then he thought I behaved very badly to him. But all the time I felt sure that it would really do him no harm. I think it was cheap to buy at that price all your interest and everything that has been done for him—not to speak of the experience in life.”
Lady Markham shook her head. “Our experiences in life are sometimes not worth the price we pay for them; and to make another pay——”
“Oh!” said Constance with a toss of her head, shaking off self-reproach and this mild answer together. “It appears that there is some post his father wants for him to keep him at home; and Claude will move heaven and earth—that’s to say the Horse Guards and all the other authorities—to get it. Mamma,” she added after a pause, “Frances will marry him, if you don’t mind.”
“Marry him!” cried Lady Markham with a shriek of alarm; “that is what can never be.”
Meanwhile, Frances was walking back from Mrs Gaunt’s lodging, where the poor lady, all tremulous and shaken with joy and weariness, had been pouring into her sympathetic ears all the anguish of the waiting, now so happily over, and weeping over the kindness of everybody—everybody was so kind. What would have happened had not everybody been so kind? Frances had soothed her into calm, and coming down-stairs, had met Sir Thomas at the door with his inquiries. He looked a little grave, she thought, somewhat preoccupied. “I am very glad,” he said, “to have the chance of a talk with you, Frances. Are you going to walk? Then I will see you home.”
Frances looked up in his face with simple pleasure. She tripped along by his side like a little girl, as she was. They might have been father and daughter smiling to each other, a pretty sight as they went upon their way. But Sir Thomas’s smile was grave. “I want to speak to you on some serious subjects,” he said.