“Certainly it was not from me. I thought you provided for with the money you brought from the West Indies—which, as I saw by the papers, you threw away. Certainly after that exploit, if I had been able to spare ten thousand pounds, I should not have sent it to you to make ducks and drakes of.” Mr Burton was too glad of the opportunity to regain a position more befitting their relationship, and Gervase was too much lost in the confusion of his thoughts to say a word; but the prodigal father was suddenly brought down from this brief superiority by the sudden appearance at the door of a pretty young woman, half lady, half housekeeper, who, calling to him as Mr Burton, begged to know whether the meat was coming by the coach, or if the butcher——. She paused when she saw the stranger, and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon! I didn’t see as any one was with you,”—retreating again, though not without a lingering look of curiosity. Again the flush of an unbecoming embarrassment passed over Mr Burton’s face.
“Come here, Mary,” he said. “Gervase, this is my wife. We—we—were married some years before I—left.”
She rubbed her hand surreptitiously with her apron before she held it out. “Will—the gentleman stay to dinner, Mr Burton?” she said.
The eyes of the father and son met. In the one there was an appeal for forbearance, an apology, an entreaty. Do not disturb my peace, they seemed to say. In the other nothing but confusion and bewilderment. Gervase said hastily, “We are going away this morning.” He saw the look of relief in Mr Burton’s eyes with a sympathetic sensation. He, himself, wanted nothing so much as to get away.
Young Mrs Burton lingered a little. She called her children about her—a pretty group—evidently with the intention of showing her husband’s friend, with natural pride, what there was to be said on her side. Mr Burton looked at them with a less justifiable but not less natural pride, not untouched with shame, in his elderly eyes. “That will do, that will do, Mary; take them away,” he cried. Then he said, turning to his son, “I see you agree with me, Gervase, that it’s better not to disturb her mind. She’s a very good wife to me, and takes great care of me—and the children.”
“They are beautiful children,” said Gervase.
“Are they not?” cried the old gentleman, exultant. But he checked himself, and put a few formal questions about his son’s affairs, walking with him towards the gate. “I am very glad to have seen you,” he said—“sincerely glad. You can let me know when anything particular happens. Otherwise don’t trouble about correspondence. And I need not ask you to say nothing about your discovery, nor my present address, nor——”
“You may rely upon me, father.”
“That’s quite enough—that’s quite enough. God bless you, my boy! I am sincerely glad to have seen you—good-bye, good-bye!” Mr Burton said.
Gervase walked back along the lake-side, with a clouded brow and a bewildered mind. He could not think of his father’s strange new position, for thinking of the mystery rediscovered in his own life. If it did not come from Mr Burton, from whom did it come, that ten thousand pounds? He met Madeline about half-way to the inn. She told him she had been too much excited to rest; that she had come to meet him out of pure nervousness. “Tell me all about it,” she said, looking in his face with very bright, feverish, uneasy eyes.