“You’ve no right to say so,” said Duke, who had been half softened too, and now flashed up again in wrath with the moisture still in his eyes.
“We needn’t quarrel,” said Miss Hill. “Can you tell me where I shall find him? Your mother’s tea would choke me. I want to see my boy.”
“I don’t know why he didn’t come,” said Duke, confused. “He will be in the old school-room as he wasn’t here.”
“Oh, I know very well why he didn’t come! It needs no wizard to tell that. Poor child, poor child! He will scarcely know even me,” said Agnes, as if that were the climax of all misery. She gave Duke a little nod, in which there was some anxiety, notwithstanding the opposition, and went hurriedly upstairs. The children’s apartments were on the second floor, and Agnes, who was spare and slight as a girl, ran up the long staircase as if she had been sixteen. The old schoolroom was at the end of the corridor, a long bright room which overlooked the park. Agnes knocked at the door, her heart beating with many emotions. “Come in,” said the broken voice, a little hoarse and uncertain, of a boy who had lost the angelical timbre of childhood. He was sitting, a long, slim figure, slight as could be, a mere sheath for the spirit, as some boys who grow very fast appear, huddled up in an easy chair, and bent over a table. A long window behind him made his form at first invisible to his anxious visitor; he was nothing but a dark silhouette against the light, and when he sprang up surprised to see a lady enter, the slightness and angularity of the long, straight, yet stooping figure without shape save that most undesirable one given by the contraction of the shoulders and the stoop of the head, made the heart of Agnes sink in her breast. He stood swaying from one foot to another, shy and doubtful. He did not know her at first, which she had anticipated, but which chilled her no less. “Mar!” she said, rushing forward. He stammered and hesitated, she did not know with what feeling—and looked behind as if expecting some one beside. It was not till long after that Agnes realized what the boy had thought. “Aunt Agnes!” he said with an almost shrill tone in his broken voice.
“Oh, Mar, you know me still, God be thanked for that. I thought you must have forgotten me altogether. But, dear, why are you up here, when everybody but you goes to welcome the guests? You are the head of the house, Mar. Nobody can be welcome here that is not welcome to you.”
“Do you think so?” he said with a laugh. “No, no, that would be foolish at my age. I have no visitors—they are all for the others; who should come to visit me?” he said again.
“Your mother, Mar,” said Miss Hill—“and an old aunt that perhaps you don’t make much account of, but who thinks constantly of you.”
“Oh, for you, Aunt Agnes!” cried the boy—“but my mother—what do I know of my mother?—will she look at me when she sees me?—I suppose she must see me while she is here?”
“Mar,” cried Agnes, “there is a change coming in your mother. I am sure of it. She is beginning to think of things. She knows now that there is something wrong. We must be patient, my dear, and keep on the watch. It has been a long, long time coming; but I am sure she begins to feel that something is wrong.”
“It is a long time coming, as you say; and it does not seem very much when it comes,” said the boy. “One only gets to understand the strangeness of it as one grows older; but never mind, I have got on very well without her hitherto, and I need not trouble myself about it, need I, now?”