“Mrs. Percival?” cried Mary, stopping short. “Whom do you mean? Not Winnie? Not my sister? You must have made some mistake.”
“I think it was. It looked like her,” said Will, in his calm way.
Mary stood still, and her breath seemed to fail her for the moment; she had what the French call a serrement du cœur. It felt as if some invisible hand had seized upon her heart and compressed it tightly; and her breathing failed, and a chill went through her veins. The next moment her face flushed with shame and self-reproach. Could she be thinking of herself and any possible consequences, and grudging her sister the only natural refuge which remained to her? She was incapable for the moment of asking any further questions, but went on with a sudden hasty impulse, feeling her head swim, and her whole intelligence confused. It seemed to Mary, for the moment, though she could not have told how, as if there was an end of her peaceful life, of her comfort, and all the good things that remained to her; a chill presentiment, confounding and inexplicable, went to her heart; and at the same time she felt utterly ashamed and horrified to be thinking of herself at all, and not of poor Winnie, the returned wanderer. Her thoughts were so busy and full of occupation that she had gone a long way before it occurred to her to say anything to her boy.
“You say it looked like her, Will,” she began at last, taking up the conversation where she had left off; “tell me, what did she look like?”
“She looked just like other women,” said Will; “I didn’t remark any difference. As tall as you, and a sort of a long nose. Why I thought it looked like her, was because Aunt Agatha was in an awful way.”
“What sort of a way?” cried Mary.
“Oh, well, I don’t know. Like a hen, or something—walking round her, and looking at her, and cluck-clucking; and yet all the same as if she’d like to cry.”
“And Winnie,” said Mrs. Ochterlony, “how did she look?—that is what I want most to know.”
“Awfully bored,” said Will. He was so sometimes himself, when Aunt Agatha paid any special attentions to him, and he said it with feeling. This was almost all the conversation that passed between them as Mrs. Ochterlony hurried home. Poor Winnie! Mary knew better than Miss Seton did what a dimness had fallen upon her sister’s bright prospects—how the lustre of her innocent name had been tarnished, and all the freshness and beauty gone out of her life; and Mrs. Ochterlony’s heart smote her for the momentary reference to herself, which she had made without meaning it, when she heard of Winnie’s return. Poor Winnie! if the home of her youth was not open to her, where could she find refuge? if her aunt and her sister did not stand by her, who would? and yet—— The sensation was altogether involuntary, and Mary resisted it with all her might; but she could not help a sort of instinctive sense that her peace was over, and that the storms and darkness of life were about to begin again.
When she went in hurriedly to the drawing-room, not expecting to see anybody, she found, to her surprise, that Winnie was there, reclining in an easy chair, with Aunt Agatha in wistful and anxious attendance upon her. The poor old lady was hovering about her guest, full of wonder, and pain, and anxious curiosity. Winnie as yet had given no explanation of her sudden appearance. She had given no satisfaction to her perplexed and fond companion. When she found that Aunt Agatha did not leave her, she had come downstairs again, and dropped listlessly into the easy chair. She wanted to have been left alone for a little, to have realized all that had befallen her, and to feel that she was not dreaming, but was actually in her own home. But Miss Seton would have thought it the greatest unkindness, the most signal want of love and sympathy, and all that a wounded heart required, to leave Winnie alone. And she was glad when Mary came to help her to rejoice over, and overwhelm with kindness, her child who had been lost and was found.