“Indeed it is true enough. It is very seldom I go out without the girls: and they—feel strongly, you know, about that.”
“What have they to do with it? Yes, I know: they are plus royalistes que le roi. But this is not the story.”
“Yes, indeed it is, my dear boy. I was telling Annie and Fanny of two poor children. They belong to a man who is—banished from his own country. He did wrong—when he was young—oh so many, so many years ago!—and he is still wandering about the world without a home, and far from his friends. He was young then, and now—it is so long ago;—ah, Geoff, you must not be angry with me. The little children are with Mary. She did not tell me much, for her heart did not soften to me as mine did to her. But there they are; the mother dead who was at the bottom of it all; and nobody to care for them but Mary; all through something that happened before they were born.”
Lady Stanton grew red as she spoke, her voice trembled, her whole aspect was full of emotion. The young man shook his head—
“I suppose a great many of us suffer from harm done before we were born,” he said, gravely. “This is no solitary instance.”
“Ah, Geoff, it is natural, quite natural, that you should feel so. I forgot how deeply you were affected by all that happened then.”
“I did not mean that,” he said, gravely. His youthful face had changed out of its light-hearted calm. “Indeed I had heard something of this, and I wanted to speak to you—— ”
“Run away, my darlings,” said Lady Stanton; “go and see what—nurse is about. Make her go down with you to the village and take the tea and sugar to the old women in the almshouses. This is the day—don’t you remember?”
“So it is,” said Annie. “But we did not want to remember,” said Fanny; “we liked better to stay with you.”
However, they went off, reluctant yet obedient. They were used to being sent away. It was seldom their mother who did it, willingly—but everybody else did it with peremptory determination—and the little girls were used to obey. They untwined themselves from her arms, to which they had been clinging, and went away close together, with a soft rush and sweep as of one movement.