“Do you think it possible,” he said, with some impatience, “that people like the Heriots are framing a lie in order to harm you?”
She looked at him with dilating eyes, in which the tears gradually rose. She had no understanding of the question. It came natural to her to think that somebody must have done it. “I would try to do what they wished,” she faltered, looking at him with a pathetic desire to understand. “I should be very glad to take their advice—I would do anything—”
“Miss Bassett,” said Fanshawe; “supposing it could affect the question in any way—which it could not—but supposing, for the sake of argument, that these good resolutions of yours could affect the question; how long will you be able to do anything if this piece of news Mr. Hepburn has told me is true?”
“What piece of news?” She looked so scared that he was almost frightened by the impression his words had produced. “Oh, you think there is something between—? But that is unjust to poor Matilda. She could not think of such a thing so soon. She is only amusing herself. You are very cruel to my sister,” cried Verna, turning her back upon him without another word. He went out with a smile, and jumped into his dog-cart, glad to get clear of the whole business. It was nothing to him; but she, poor soul, fled to her own room—so passionately excited that she could scarcely keep still as she rushed up those warm, noiseless, carpeted stairs which had seemed to her like the very path to Elysium, a little while before. There, at least, howsoever things might turn out, her power and reign were over. She could have torn her hair or her dress, or anything that came within her reach, in her passion. It was all over. A mean and small life of dependence and servility was all that now remained to her. To be turned out one way or another, what did it matter? Nay, it would be better to be turned out with Matilda than by her; better to share her downfall than to be crushed by her triumphant prosperity. Thus of the three people affected by Fanshawe’s message, there was but one person whom it affected mildly, and that the one most concerned. Matilda, after her fit of abuse of Marjory and the old family, shed a few angry tears, and then was comfortable again, and ready for such dalliance with her lover, interspersed by quarrels, as was her only fashion of mental amusement. But it would be hard to describe the mingled passions in Hepburn’s mind, as he knelt by the sofa, scorning, hating, adoring, the pretty, miserable, beautiful creature who had bewitched him. It was not her fault; all women were so; did not every sage bear testimony to it, from Solomon downwards? And the poor young fellow, in the revulsion of his feelings, took to admiring her more and more, dwelling upon her beauty, her movements, her glances, all the outward part of her. These were what women possessed to make men mad and happy—nothing more.
And Verna up-stairs sobbed in an hysterical passion. She had lost her very life.
CHAPTER XXII.
It is needless to trace all the steps by which the real heir of the Heriots was placed in such possession of his rights as a poor little orphan baby of three months’ old could attain. Before his young mother was carried to the family grave, where she was laid, under silent protest from her humble family, who stood aloof with a pride familiar to the Scotch peasant, giving up the child with a certain grim and indignant reluctance—the infant was taken to St. Andrews, and placed under Marjory’s care. This was done by Agnes, who all along had regarded Tom Heriot’s sister as her rival and enemy. She carried the child herself, scorning all aid, to Mr. Charles Heriot’s house. If possible, her peasant appearance—the air of a respectable maidservant, which was natural to her—was more manifest than ever. She would not allow it to be supposed that she wished to approach herself, by ever so little, to the “gentles,” with whom her sister had been connected.
“I’ve brought you the bairn,” she said, confronting Marjory, with that defiant look which had never quite left her face; and she unfolded the sleeping baby from the shawl in which he was muffled, and laid him down upon the sofa, sternly repressing all sign of emotion. “He was to be mine,” she said, briefly, “I promised to be a mother to him, but it’s reasonable now that he should be in your hands. My sister, up to her last day,” and here a spasm crossed the resolute features, “never knew that he was the heir—nor my mother. They thought the bairn would be provided for, that was a’. I knew well enough—but why should I have troubled her innocent mind, that heeded no such vanities? And I allow that a bairn like this, born the heir, should be in the hands of the family. You and me will, maybe, never meet again—”
“Agnes,” said Marjory, “you cannot think that I would wish to separate you like this from Isabell’s child?”
Again Agnes’s comely face was swept as by a wind of emotion, and again she banished all trace of feeling. “I know you are kind,” she said. “It is your nature; but I’m of the nature that I canna bide kindness. I’ll take it from my equals—but no from you—and nothing else can be between us—- though I respect ye—I respect ye,” she added, hurriedly. “I’ve no a word to say. If I had been to choose, I would have chosen different. I would rather he had been a poor lad’s son, with little siller. I would have bred him up, and watched him night and day, and put my hope and my heart on him; but oh, being otherwise, it’s a blessing of Providence that it’s come to light now, and no later. Time makes no marks upon a helpless infant, as it would do upon a grown lad. It’s best to part with him now.”