Lover or Friend

by Rosa Nouchette Carey

He went round to the Gray Cottage soon after breakfast. Audrey was watering her flowers in the hall. She looked at him as he passed her, but did not speak; of course, she guessed his errand, for he saw her head droop a little over the flowers.

Mollie received him. The poor girl's eyes were swollen with crying, and she looked up in his face very piteously, as he greeted her with his usual kindness.

'Where is your brother, Mollie?'

'Do you mean Cyril? He is in his room; but no one has seen him. Oh, Captain Burnett, is it true? Mamma has been saying such dreadful things, and we do not know whether we are to believe her. Biddy tries to hush her, but she will go on talking; she is quiet now, and Kester and I crept down here. Ah, there is Kester looking at us; he wants you to go in and speak to him.'

'Is it true?' were Kester's first words when he saw his friend. The poor lad's lips were quivering. 'Oh, Captain Burnett, do tell us that it is not true!'

'I cannot do that, my boy,' returned Michael gravely; and then he sat down and listened to what they had to tell him. He soon found that the mother's wild ravings had told them the truth. In her despair at being refused admittance to her son's room, she had given way to a frantic outburst of emotion. Biddy had tried to get rid of them, but Kester and Mollie had remained, almost petrified with horror. What could their mother mean by telling them that she hated the sight of them, and adjuring them to go to their father?

'Father is dead; does she wish us to be dead, too?' Mollie had faltered. 'Dear mamma, do let me go and fetch Cyril! You are ill; you do not know what you are saying!' But as she turned to go, her mother had started up, and gripped her arm so fiercely that the poor child could have screamed with pain.

'Yes, you shall fetch him, but he will not come; he will not listen to you any more than he would to me. When I implored him on my knees to open the door, he said that he was ill, and that he could not speak to me. But was I not ill, too? If I were dying he would not come to me! and yet he is my son!'

'Dear mamma! oh, dear mamma! do you know how you are hurting me?'

'No; it is he who is hurting me: he is killing me—absolutely killing me!—because I kept from him that his father was alive! Did I not do it for his sake—that he should not be shamed by such a father? Go to him, Mollie; tell him that you know all about it, and that Audrey Ross will have nothing to say to him, because he is the son of a felon. Why are you staring at me? Go! go!' And she pushed her from her so roughly that Mollie would have fallen if Biddy had not caught her.