The vicar shook his head. He wondered if this could be a touch of feminine jealousy, knowing that even Mary was not perfect; and this gave him a momentary pang.
“I don’t suppose that I should feel so;—I was very fond of John—but I, of course, could not be jealous—I mean of his love for one unworthy—— ”
“How do you know even that she was unworthy? It is not that, Mr. Pen. But she was nothing to us, and confused him in our minds. Now he is himself—and where is he?” said Miss Musgrave, with tears in her eyes.
“In God’s hands—in God’s hands, Miss Mary! and God bless him wherever he is—and I humbly beg your pardon,” cried Mr. Pen, with an excess of compunction which she scarcely understood. His feelings were almost too warm Mary thought.
And as the news got spread through those invisible channels which convey reports all over a country, many were the visitors that came to the Castle to see what the story meant, though they did not announce this as the object of their visit. Among these visitors the most important was Lady Stanton, who had been Mary’s rival in beauty when the days were. They had not been rivals indeed to their own consciousness, but warm friends, in their youth and day of triumph; but events had separated the two girls, and the two women rarely met, and had outgrown all acquaintance; for Lady Stanton had been involved, almost more immediately than Mary Musgrave, in the tragedy which had so changed life at Penninghame, and this had changed their relations like everything else. This lady arrived one day to the great surprise of everybody, and came in with timid eagerness and haste, growing red and growing pale as she held out her hands to her old friend.
“We never quarrelled,” she said; “why should we never see each other? Is there any reason?”
“No reason,” said Miss Musgrave, making room upon the sofa beside her. But such an unexpected appeal agitated her, and for the moment she could not satisfy herself as to the object of the visit. Lady Stanton, however, was of a very simple mind, and could not conceal what that object was.
“Oh, Mary,” she said, the tears coming into her eyes, “I heard that John’s children had come home. Is it true? You know I always took an interest—— ” And here she stopped, making a gulp of some emotion which, to a superficial spectator, might have seemed out of place in Sir Henry Stanton’s wife. She had grown stout, but that does not blunt the feelings. “I should like to see them,” she said, with an appeal in her eyes which few people could withstand. And Mary was touched too, partly by this sudden renewal of an old love, partly by the thought of all that had happened since she last sat by her old companion’s side, who was a Mary too.
“I cannot bring them here,” she said, “but I will take you to the hall to see them. My father likes them to be kept—in their own part of the house.”
“Oh, I hope he is kind to them!” said Lady Stanton, clasping her white dimpled hands. “Are they like your family? I hope they are like the Musgraves. But likenesses are so strange—mine are not like me,” said the old beauty, plaintively. Perhaps the trouble in her face was less on account of her own private trials in this respect than out of alarm lest John Musgrave’s children should bear the likeness of another face of which she could not think with kindness. There was so little disguise in her mind, that this sentiment also found its way into words. “Oh Mary,” she cried, “you and I were once the two beauties, and everybody was at our feet; but that common girl was more thought of than either you or me.”