“I am old Crockford’s niece,” said the girl, “and I know my place. I’ve never given myself out for any more than I am; now have I, sir? Thank you for walking up the hill with me, and talking so kind. But it’s time I was going home. He’s quite right, is the old man; and my duty to you, sir, and good-day; and I hope you will come into your fortune all the same.”
How was it that she turned, standing before him there in the road in all her prettiness and cleverness, into Crockford’s niece, with the diction and the air proper to her “place,” was what Walter could not tell. She cast him a glance as she turned round which transfixed him in the midst of his wonder and trouble, then turned and took the short cut across the field, running, getting over the stile like a bird. Which was she, one or the other? Walter stood and gazed stupidly after her, not knowing what to think or say.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE NEW STATE OF AFFAIRS.
When Mr. Penton in the dog-cart was heard coming down the steep path to the open gates there was a universal rush to door and window to receive him. The delay in his coming had held the household in a high state of tension, which the arrival of the carriage with Ally and the young visitor increased. The girls could give no information except that Sir Walter was very ill, and that Mr. Russell Penton himself had put them into the carriage and sanctioned their coming away. Ally took her mother anxiously aside to explain.
“I didn’t know what to do. She is Mr. Russell Penton’s niece; she has no father or mother. She wanted to come, and he seemed to want her to come. Oh, I hope I haven’t done wrong! I couldn’t tell what to do.”
“Of course, there is the spare room,” said Mrs. Penton, but she was not delighted by the appearance of the stranger. “Tell Martha to light a fire in the spare room. But you must amuse her yourselves, you and Anne; your father must not be troubled with a visitor in the house.”
“Oh, she will not be like a visitor, she will be like one of ourselves,” said Ally.
The father, however, observed the little fair curled head at the drawing-room window as he drove up, and it annoyed him. A stranger among them was like a spy at such a moment. The girls were at the window, and Walter, newly returned, had been standing at the gate, and Mrs. Penton was at the door. He jumped down, scarcely noticing the anxious look of inquiry with which she met him, and stopped on the step to take a sovereign from his waistcoat-pocket, which he handed to the groom who had driven him.
“Thank you, Sir Edward,” said the man, touching his hat with great obsequiousness.
“Sir Edward!” and a sovereign! The two things together set Mrs. Penton’s heart beating as it scarcely ever had beat before. She did not understand it for the moment. “Sir Edward:” and a sovereign! This perhaps was the most impressive incident of all.