'I hope things are right between you and Polly,' she said, anxiously, when she and Dr. Heriot were left alone.
'They have never been more so,' he replied, with a mischievous smile; 'for the first time we thoroughly understand ourselves and each other; she is a dear good child, and deserves to be happy.' But as Mildred, somewhat bewildered at the ambiguous tone, would have questioned him still further, he gently but firmly changed the subject.
It was a strange evening to Mildred; outside, the rain lashed the panes. Dr. Heriot had drawn his arm-chair nearer to the glowing fire; he looked spent and weary—some conflicting feelings seemed to fetter him with sadness. Mildred, sitting at her little work-table, scarcely dared to break the silence. Her own voice sounded strange to her. Once when she looked up she saw his eyes were fixed upon her, but he withdrew them again, and relapsed into his old thoughtfulness.
By and by he began to talk, and then she laid down her work to listen. Some strange chord of the past seemed stirred in the man's heart to-night. All at once he mentioned his mother; her name was Mildred, he said, looking into the embers as he spoke; and a little sister whom they had lost in her childhood had been called Milly too. For their sakes the name had always been dear to him. She was a good woman, he said, but her one fault in his eyes had been that she had never loved Margaret; a certain bitter scene between them had banished his widowed mother from his house. Margaret had not understood her, and they were better apart; but it had been a matter of grief to him.
And then he began to talk of his wife—at first hesitatingly—and then, as Mildred's silent sympathy seemed to open the long-closed valves, the repressed sorrow of years began to find vent. Well might Mildred marvel at the secret strength that had sustained the generous heart in its long struggle, at 'the charity that suffered so long.' What could there have been about this woman, that even degradation and shame could not weaken his faithful love, that even in his misery he should still pity and cleave to her.
As though answering her thought, Dr. Heriot suddenly placed a miniature in her hand.
'That was taken when I first saw her,' he said, softly; 'but it does not do her justice; and then, one cannot reproduce that magnificent voice. I have never heard a voice like it.'
Mildred bent over it for a moment without speaking; it was the face of a girl taken in the first flush of her youth; but there was nothing youthful in the face, which was full of a grave matured beauty.
The dark melancholy eyes seemed to rivet Mildred's; a wild sorrow lurked in their inscrutable depths; the brow spoke intellect and power; the mouth had a passionate, irresolute curve. As she looked at it she felt that it was a face that might well haunt a man to his sorrow.
'It is beautiful—beautiful—but it oppresses me,' she said, laying it down with a sigh. 'I cannot fancy it ever looking happy.'