It was natural that we should return to the subject again and again during the day. Harry drew my father’s old books, and the drawing he had laughed at, from his own desk, where he had kept them; and with them the envelope, full of formal documents, which he had written to Aunt Connor for with so much haste and importance, to substantiate my claim to my grandfather’s house; there they lay, unused, almost unlooked at. Harry shook his head as he drew them out. We neither of us said anything. We were neither of us sorry that we had forgotten all about it for a time. For my own part, I went away upstairs very like to cry. This information, which had thrown us back into so many troubles, might never come to anything; and even if it did, what difference would that make? Harry, if I was found out to be a king’s daughter, would never leave his profession, or shrink from its dangers, while this war lasted. My pleasant forgetfulness was over now. He was looking at this subject in the same light he had looked at it before we left Edinburgh;—it would be a home for me.
Chapter VIII.
IT was an agitated, troubled day. The accidental nature of the information, calmly told to one who was supposed to have no interest in it; the coincidence of the names; the startled feeling we had in thus being suddenly brought into contact with people nearly connected with us, who were unaware of our existence, and of whose existence we had been unaware, acted very powerfully on our imaginations. I don’t think either Harry or I had a moment’s doubt upon the subject. As to the identity of the persons, certainly none; and I confess that I, for one, received with perfect faith the suggestion that there was a wrong somehow in the matter, and that my father had turned out to be the true heir. It never occurred to me to imagine any other reason for the suppressed advertisement; and Mr. Cresswell, whom I had thought at the very climax of respectability, suddenly descended into a romantic lawyer-villain in my excited eyes.
To add to the agitation of my thoughts, Sara Cresswell chose to take that day for one of her odd visits. She came in the afternoon to stay with me till evening. She was clearly quite beyond her father’s control; not even subject to a wholesome restriction of hours and meal-times; for she never said her father was out to dinner on the occasions of her coming, nor accounted in any way for her liberty at his dinner-hour. The little brougham used to come for her at night, and her little maid in it—a sign, I suppose, that the father did not disapprove; but that was all. Only wilful as she was, I confess I had grown to like her very much. I sometimes lectured her; and once or twice we quarrelled; but she always came back next time just the same as ever. So quarrelling with her was evidently useless. I must say I had a very strange sensation in welcoming her to-day. Could she know her father’s base purposes about the Park which, according to all appearances, ought to be mine? Could she have been paying her court to those ladies with the hope of supplanting the true heir? A glance at her face, only too frank and daring always, might have undeceived me; but of course, I was bucklered up in my own thoughts, and could see nothing else.
“You are ill,” said Sara, “or you are worried; or ’tis I have done something. If I have, I don’t mind; that is to say, I am very sorry, of course, and I will never do it again. But if you think you will get rid of me by looking glum, you are sadly mistaken. I shan’t go. If you won’t have me for a friend, I shall come for a servant, and fight it out with Lizzie. Lizzie, will you have me for ‘a neebor?’ Ah, I’m learning Scotch.”
“Eh, that’s no Scotch!” cried Lizzie; “ye dinna ken what it is. I’m, maybe, no that good at learning folk now, for I have to speak English mysel’.”
“And Italian, Lizzie!” cried Sara, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about my “glum” face.
Lizzie’s elbows and ankles fell almost immediately, and the most extraordinary blush rose on the girl’s face. “Eh, but it’s funny to hear twa speaking’t,” cried Lizzie, evading the subject eagerly. The truth is, she had got overmuch involved in the delightful excitement of the new language, and in consequence of the ludicrous fascination of the dictionary, by means of which Domenico and she conducted their conversations, had come to like the society of that worthy. When I found him escorting my child-maid and the baby out-of-doors, I thought it was time to remonstrate on the subject; and my remonstrance had woke a certain womanly consciousness in the awkward-sensitive girlish bosom of Lizzie. She was overwhelmed with shame.
Fortunately, the mention of the “twa” diverted Sara’s thoughts. She had never ceased to be interested in Mr. Luigi, and I saw a world of questions in her eye immediately. I hurried her downstairs, not feeling able, really, for random talk; and troubled, more than I could express, to think how disappointed Harry would be when he came home full of one subject, expecting to talk it over with me, and found me occupied entertaining a stranger,—a stranger, too, who had something to do with it, who was our rival, and plotting against us, all unaware of who we were.
However, as it happened, one of the first things Sara’s eye lighted upon when we entered the room, was that old drawing of poor papa’s, which lay on the table. She was the quickest creature imaginable. She had it in her hand before I knew what she was about. Her exclamation made me start and tremble as if I had been found out in something. Here was another witness giving evidence freely, without any wish or contrivance of mine.