“I didn’t want to come,” she said. “I came for your sake, and poor Charlie’s. I don’t want to stay; it’s cold and wretched here; I like India a great deal better; but if I should try a little while longer, and make an attempt to keep you straight, will you promise to take my advice, and do what I tell you? It is of no use my staying otherwise. I am quite ready to pack up and go back to India; make up your mind what you will do.”
“I will do whatever you please,” said Matilda, dissolved in tears.
“For you know you are a fool,” said Verna calmly; “you always were; when you came out a girl, and gave us all that trouble about the cadets in the ship—when you married poor Charlie, and led him such a life—when you came back here and insulted Miss Heriot, and made the house miserable; you have always been a fool, and I suppose you cannot be different; but, at least, you ought to know.”
“Oh, Verna, I will!” cried the penitent; and it was thus with her blue eyes running over with tears, with her lips quivering, and her pretty face melting into its most piteous aspect, that Mr. Hepburn found the young mistress of the house when he went to Pitcomlie, charged with a message, which Marjory, wearied by his importunate desire to serve her, had invented for the purpose. He had not been thinking of Mrs. Charles. She was Marjory’s supplanter to him, and a thoroughly objectionable personage. But when he came suddenly into the room, and saw this weeping creature with her fair hair ruffled by her emotion, tears hanging on her eyelashes, her piteous little pretty mouth trembling and quivering, the sight went to the young man’s susceptible heart. No secondary trouble, such as quarrels with her servants, or the desolation consequent upon that amusement occurred to him as the possible cause for the state in which he found her; no doubt crossed his mind that it was the woe of her widowhood that was overwhelming her. He stopped short at the door out of respect for the sorrow into which he had intruded unawares. He explained with perturbation that he was the bearer of a message; he begged pardon metaphorically upon his knees. “Pray, pray assure your sister that I would not have intruded for the world; that I feel for her most deeply,” he said, the sympathetic tears coming to his own eyes.
“She will be better presently,” said wise Verna; “and it will do her good to see some one. She indulges her feelings too much. Poor child! perhaps it is not wonderful in her circumstances—”
“How could she do otherwise? I remember Charlie so well; may I speak of him to her?” said this sympathetic visitor.
Verna received this prayer very graciously; she said, “It will do her good;” and now she will have something to amuse her, she added, in her heart.
CHAPTER IV.
Hepburn amused Mrs. Charles very much, though that was not considered one of his capabilities in Comlie. He roused her gradually from her depressed state into general conversation. After he had delivered Marjory’s message, he stayed and talked, feeling a quite novel excitement and exhilaration in the fact of this social success, which was unprecedented in his experience. To be appreciated is doubly delightful to a man who is not used to much applause from his friends. Matilda was the first pretty woman who had “understood” him, who had permitted herself to be beguiled out of her private sorrows by his agreeable society. He was not the less faithful to Marjory, who had possessed all his thoughts as long as he could remember; but still it was pleasant to be able to comfort the afflicted, and to feel that his efforts for that end were successful. After a while, when the tears had been cleared away, when a gentle smile had stolen upon the fair countenance before him; when she had yielded to his fascination so far as to talk a little, and to listen eagerly, and to look up to him with those blue eyes, Hepburn could not but feel that Miss Heriot must have been deceived somehow, and that so gentle a creature must be easy “to get on with,” to those who would be good to her. For the first time in his life, he felt that there was something to excuse in the idol of his youth. Not a fault, indeed, but a failure of comprehension; and Marjory had never failed before in any particular, so far as her adorer knew. Perhaps the reason was that this gentle little widow was a totally different kind of woman. Various things he had heard on this subject occurred to Hepburn’s mind to account for Marjory’s failure. Women, even the best and cleverest, did sometimes fail to understand each other, he believed, upon points which offered no difficulty to an impartial masculine intellect. This was not at all a disagreeable thought; it raised him vaguely into a pleasant atmosphere of superiority which elated him, and could not hurt anybody. He even seemed to himself to be fonder of Marjory from the sense of elevation over her. Yes, no doubt this was the explanation. Mrs. Charles had done or said something which a man probably would never have noticed, but which had affected the more delicate and sensitive, but less broad and liberal nature of the sweetest of women; and Marjory, on her side, as he knew by experience, uttered words now and then which were not destitute of the power to sting. Hepburn thought that to bring these two together again would be a very fine piece of work for the man who could accomplish it. A loving blue-eyed creature like this could not but cling to Marjory’s strength, and Marjory would derive beauty, too, from the fair being whom she supported. Yes, he thought, as he looked at her, Matilda was the kind of woman described in all the poets, the lovely parasite, the climbing woodbine, a thing made up of tendrils, which would hang upon a man, and hold him fast with dependent arms. Marjory was not of that nature. To be sure, Marjory was the first of women; but there was a great deal to be said for the other, who was, no doubt, inferior, but yet had her charm. Hepburn felt that in the abstract it would be sweet to feel that some one was dependent upon him. Somehow the idea crept to his heart, and nestled there; but Marjory naturally would not have the same feelings. Marjory would be disposed rather to push away the tendrils. It was a different sort of thing altogether between the two women. Thus Hepburn felt a delicious superiority creep over him as he sat and talked. He received Mrs. Charles’s confidences about the servants after a time, and was deeply sorry. Fleming and the rest seemed to him a set of savages, taking advantage of this sweet young creature’s ignorance and innocence.
“Let me manage it for you,” he said, eagerly. “I am not very clever about servants myself, but I will speak to my housekeeper, who knows everybody. She will find you some one. Let me be of some use to you.”