“Then why in heaven’s name do you insist on staying? against my will, who am the mistress of the house? I say I will not have you here. I will have no adventurers here. I do not believe there is a word of truth in your story. That man is not dead. Impostors never die. It is all a got-up affair from beginning to end. Look here!” cried Miss Anna, striking her stick on the floor, “as I don’t want to have the whole story raked up in a court of justice, where you would not have a chance, not a leg to stand upon, you or your precious father—I’d rather come to terms with you, and let it go no further. How much will you take to give up your claims altogether? They are false, utterly false; but I don’t want to be made a talk of. I would rather settle it and be done with it, if you will say how much you will take, and start by the next steamboat. There is a steamboat every week, every day perhaps, for anything I know.”
The girls stood close together listening aghast, Milly thinking nothing less than that Miss Anna must be a mad woman, and that now her insanity was becoming visible. But to Grace’s more active mind, this strange proposal conveyed an impression quite different. She looked at Geoffrey, whose turn it now seemed to be to blush. He had made an effort to interfere, and stop Miss Anna, but, failing in that, had drawn a step back, and stood with a painful flush on his face listening to her. As she ended, he stepped forward again.
“With this proposal,” he said, “please to remark, neither I nor my mother have anything to do.”
“There is something, then, upon which we have a claim,” Grace cried; “and we are not mistaken after all!”
“Oh, Grace,” cried Milly, “come away—come away! What does it matter to us? We don’t understand this country, or its ways. Oh, how we used to think of England, how delightful it was to be! but now it is dreadful. If you went to the poorest house in Canada,” cried the girl, “and said, We are in trouble, we are all alone, our father is dead, they would take you in, they would be kind to you; but here they say we are impostors, and offer us money. Oh, Grace, Grace, come away!”
With her eyes sparkling through her tears, her soft cheeks flushed with resentment and shame, her hands clasping her sister’s arm, whom she endeavoured to draw away, Milly turned towards the door. It was not often she took the initiative, or even gave utterance to so many words; but Milly was not quick enough to divine any secret meaning, or to see anything but offence and insult in what had been said. Her only thought was to escape—all the more as she had felt a secret confidence that they had fallen among friends on seeing Geoffrey; and the disappointment made her revulsion of feeling more complete.
The door opened behind as she spoke, and another lady came in. The newcomer had her bonnet on, and brought with her a waft of fresh air from out of doors. She was not beautiful, like Miss Anna, but she had the same white hair and dark eyes—eyes not so penetrating, but kinder. She came in with an untroubled air, as a woman comes into her own house, expecting nothing but the ordinary domestic calm. She stopped short, however, when she saw the visitors, and uttered a little exclamation, “Oh!” somewhat tremulous, like Milly’s own. She was a shy woman for one thing, and for another, having been so lately excited by an unusual visitor, she felt slightly nervous of every new figure. “I did not know you had visitors, Anna,” she said.
“These are not my visitors,” said Miss Anna; “if they are anybody’s visitors, they are your son’s.”
Then the friendly face before them clouded over. She cast one reproachful look at Geoffrey, and turned her back upon the two dark figures in their depth of crape. This was her weakness, but it was a weakness which was full of compunctions. Her son was all she had in the world; and though she would say now and then that to see him married was the height of her ambition, yet this good mother feared and almost hated every feminine creature under thirty, and turned her back upon the whole race lest Geoffrey’s future wife might be found among them. When she had done this, however, her heart always melted, as now. She was, in reality, one of the most womanly of women, and liked nothing so well as feminine companions when she could put confidence in them that they would not take her son from her. The two faces, however, upon which she cast a remorseful glance now, after she had turned her back upon them, were of the most dangerous type. They were the faces of two predatory creatures against whom she felt she had no means of defence. Either of them was capable under her very eyes of sweeping Geoff away from her for ever and ever. Never did hen look upon fox with more dismay; but Mrs Underwood was not a consistent or firm woman. She looked and trembled; but then looked again, and was touched in spite of herself. They were very young; they were in deep mourning; and they were not paying the slightest attention to Geoffrey. Perhaps that last was the most moving circumstance of all.
“Visitors of my son’s? That means, I suppose,” said Mrs Underwood, with a little gasp, yet a heroic effort, “Visitors to me?”