“Aunt Mary!” cried the boy with a shout, “she’s frightened of Polo when he’s fresh.”
“So she is,” said Lord Frogmore. “I shouldn’t wonder if she let you ride this one when your father takes you out with him.”
“Oh, Uncle Frogmore! why he could step over the big fence without jumping at all,” cried Duke in ecstasy. The old lord was kind to the boy, kinder than he had ever been before.
Why it was that Letitia should have come herself to fetch Duke home on that occasion I have never ascertained. Perhaps it was something in the air, one of those presentiments, sympathetic or antipathetic, brain-waves as the wise call them, which suggested to Mrs. John Parke the possibility of some new turn in the aspect of affairs. She did not ask any questions or receive any definite information during her stay of three days, at least from the heads of the house, but no doubt she drew her own conclusions from the extreme cheerfulness of the head of the house, and the subdued but anxious conciliatory ways of Mary. Mary was always conciliatory, always anxious to make up to Letitia as for an imaginary wrong, but she had never been so anxious as now. She took advantage of a birthday in the family to send a great box full of presents in which every child in the house had a share. She was eager to know if there was anything Letitia wanted—a desire in which Mrs. Parke did not balk her, notwithstanding that it was gall and wormwood to receive anything from Mary’s hands. We have all, however, a good deal of gall and wormwood to swallow in the course of our lives, and it was something to secure a solid advantage even at that cost. Letitia did not let her pride stand in the way. But to come to the Park and see Mary in full possession with that old fool, as his sister-in-law called him, smirking and smiling at her, and everybody serving her hand and foot, was hard for Letitia to endure at any time—and was doubly hard now. For all the more that she was not told anything, Mrs. Parke felt danger and destruction in the air. The care with which Mary was surrounded, the gaiety of Lord Frogmore, seemed proof positive at one moment of the failure of all her own hopes. But then she said to herself, why are they so exuberant towards Duke, petting the boy as he had never been petted before? This bewildered his mother, for she could not herself have felt any compunction in such a case. Her feelings in Mary’s circumstances would have been pure triumph. Thus notwithstanding the assurance given by her maid, and all the other signs which she could not ignore, Letitia left the Park with her son, still unsatisfied. Duke was kissed and blessed and tipped more than ever when he left the Frogmores. His pony had been sent off in charge of a groom, every distinction was done to him that could have been done to the future heir. If it was all because he was no longer certain to be the heir! but that was beyond the intuitions of Mrs. John Parke. She went home in heaviness and anger but still uncertain what to believe. All that she could do was to make poor John’s life very uncomfortable to him when she returned. He was cast down too as was natural. He walked up and down the room gloomily with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders thrust up to his ears as she told the story of her visit. When they were alone Mrs. Parke exercised some uncomfortable economics though she always contrived to do her husband credit when guests were in the house. Thus there was only one small lamp in the room and no fire though the day had been damp and cold, and John Parke did not feel disposed to warm himself as his wife did with hot cups of tea.
“Well,” he said with a sigh—“there was nothing else to be expected. You might have made up your mind to that from the day they were married—I did,” said John with a nod of his head, which was sunk between his shoulders as if he had been the most foreseeing philosopher in the world.
“I have not made up my mind yet,” said Letitia, “for why didn’t they tell me? Mary could never have kept in her triumph. And as for Frogmore, he would have been bursting with it. To be sure, Felicie—but I don’t put much faith in what the maids say. And then, why should they have been so more than usually fond of Duke? No; I won’t believe it,” Mrs. Parke cried, “they couldn’t have resisted the triumph over me.”
“I tell you what,” cried John, “I won’t have that little brute of a pony in my stables. If Frogmore chooses to give Duke presents like that he must keep it for him. A little beast! and fit to eat as much corn as my best hunter. I can’t have it here.”
“John! We must not offend Frogmore.”
“Oh, offend Frogmore! When you tell me we are to be cut out and disinherited and lose everything!”
“I never said that. I wouldn’t say it,” said Mrs. Parke, piously, “as if the worst had happened, for there’s always Providence to take into account, and measles and whooping cough and that sort of thing. And it might be a girl, and a hundred things happen—if it’s anything at all, which I don’t believe myself,” Letitia said, yet with a tremor at her heart. “Go away, for goodness sake, and dress,” she added, with irritation; “to see you going up and down, up and down, like the villains in the theatre is more than my nerves can stand. For goodness sake go away.”