“No; not Shakespeare, perhaps. I don’t know—he might have walked about here, though it was not Regent Street then.”
“I wonder,” said Milly suddenly, “where papa can have gone. I never heard him talk of any old friends before; nor relations. By the way, isn’t it very funny that we have no relations in England, Grace?”
“It is strange,” said Grace thoughtfully.
It was not a subject which had occurred to them till now. Their father they were aware had been thirty years in Canada without ever going “home;” and he had no family correspondence, nobody belonging to him that they knew of except themselves. Their mother was a Canadian born, and she had relations in plenty; and cousins on their father’s side had not seemed a necessity before. But as they thought of it, a little additional chill came into the air. England—so dear and delightful as it was, the home of all their traditions—they had begun to make acquaintance with. But to think that they had not a relation in England, nothing to justify their fond identification of themselves with this old country! The idea was somewhat alarming as it burst upon them. It increased the little shade of disappointment which had crept over them against their will, and sent them to their hotel, which was all that answered for home at this moment, with a little heaviness at their hearts.
[CHAPTER II]
MR YORKE went out in the quickly fading spring afternoon with an air of seriousness and resolution, which, indeed, had been upon his countenance all day; but which was not much like the expression of a holiday visitor. He had a long drive out to the northern outskirts of London, across those miles on miles of insignificant streets which are almost more imposing in their shabby dreariness than the more important portions of the greatest of cities. But though they wearied him with endless lines of shabbiness and monotony, the mind of the stranger was not sufficiently at liberty to make any reflection upon them. It was twilight before he reached, mounting upwards slowly for the last mile or so, the suburban heights to which he was bound. He dismissed his cab at the entrance to a leafy lane, lined on each side with detached houses, which were scarcely perceptible among the bare trees and thick hedges. To the servant who admitted him he gave a name which was certainly not that which he had borne an hour before in his hotel. The house which he entered just at the moment of twilight, before the lamps were lighted, was very warmly carpeted and curtained, and almost too warm in the air of its balmy soft interior. He waited for a moment in the hall, with an extraordinary gravity—the seriousness of painful restrained excitement on his face. Then a door opened suddenly, and a lady came out carrying a candle in her hand. The light shone pleasantly upon a fresh face and pretty eyes, undimmed by some fifty years of life; but those eyes were puckered up with a curious, anxious, alarmed gaze, looking into the darkness. She advanced hurriedly for two or three steps, then stopped short in front of the stranger, examining him not without some distress in her look. “Leonard Crosthwaite?” she said, “it is very many years since we have heard that name. Is it some distant cousin we know nothing about? or is it—— is it——”
“It is I, Mary. We have not seen each other for thirty years—but I should have known you anywhere, I think. Certainly, here, in the old house.”
She held up her candle and gazed at him, then shook her head slowly. “It is so sudden,” she said. “It is such a long time——”
“And you did not expect to see me, while I expected—hoped—to see you.” Then he put out his hand. “Mary—you are not still Mary—not a Crosthwaite still, as in the old time? No—I can see that. You have married, and had children—like me.”
This drew a faint little smile from her in spite of herself. “Yes, I have married. I have a son as tall as you. I am a widow. I—— Oh, but I don’t know if I ought to enter into family particulars. How am I to know that you are—Leonard? You are—a little like him.”