There was a gleam of agitation and pain in her eyes which might well have been taken for anger. The young man was discouraged.
“May I not say anything, then?” he said, wistfully. “My cousin Mary, Lady Stanton, whom you know, told me—but if you are set against us too, what need to say anything? I had hoped indeed, that you—— ”
“What did you hope about me? I should be glad of any approach. I grieved for your brother as if he had been mine. Oh more, I think, more! if it had been poor John who had died—— ”
“It would have been better,” said the young man. “Yes, yes, Miss Musgrave, that is what I feel; Walter had the best of it. Your brother has been more than killed. But I came to say, that so far as we are concerned, there need not be any more misery. Let him come home, Miss Musgrave, let him come home! We none of us can tell now how Walter died.”
Mary was moved beyond the power of words. She got up hastily and took his hand, and pressed it between her own.
“Thank you, I shall always thank you!” she cried, “whether he comes home or not. Oh, my dear boy, who are you that come with mercy on your lips? You are not like the rest of us!”
Mary was thinking of others, more near, whose wrongs were not as the Stantons’, but whom nothing could induce to forgive.
“I am my mother’s son,” said Geoff, his eyes brighter than usual, with a smile lighting up the moisture in them. What Mary said seemed a tribute to his mother, and this made him glad. “She does not know, but she would say so. Let him come home. I heard of the children, and that your brother—— ”
“Yes,” said Miss Musgrave, “from Mary. She told you. She always took an interest in him. Do you know,” she added in a low voice of horror, “that there is a verdict against him, a coroner’s verdict of murder?”
She shuddered at the word as she said it, and so did he.