Fay gave a little cry when she saw her. “Oh, Mrs. Duncan,” she said; and she and the baby together seemed to totter and collapse in the little old lady’s arms.
“Gracious heavens!” exclaimed the startled woman; then, as her basket and scissors rolled to the ground, “Jean, lass, where are you? here are two bairns, and one of them looks fit to faint—ay, why, it is never our dear little Miss Mordaunt? Why, my bairn—” But at this moment a red-haired, freckled woman, with a pleasant, weather-beaten face, quietly lifted the mother and child, and carried them into a dusky little parlor; and in another minute Fay found herself lying on a couch, and her baby crying lustily in Jean’s arms, while the little old lady was bathing her face with some cold, fragrant water, with the tears rolling down her cheeks.
“Ay, my bonnie woman,” she said, “you have given Jean and me a turn; and there’s the big doggie, too, that would be after licking your face—and for all he knows you are better now—like a Christian. Run away, Jean, and warm a sup of milk for the bairn, and may be his mother would like a cup of tea and a freshly baked scone. There give me the baby, and I’ll hold him while you are gone.”
“There’s Andrew bringing in a heap of boxes,” observed Jean, stolidly; “will he be setting them down in the porch? for we must not wake the minister.”
“Ay, ay,” returned Mrs. Duncan, in a bewildered tone; but she hardly took in the sense of Jean’s speech—she was rocking the baby in her old arms and looking at the pretty, white, sunken face that lay on the chintz cushion. Of course it was little Miss Mordaunt, but what did it mean—what could it all mean?
“Mrs. Duncan,” whispered Fay, as she raised herself on her pillow, “I have come to you because I am so unhappy, and I have no other friend. I am married, and this is my baby, and my husband does not want me, and indeed it would have killed me to stop with him, and I have come to you, and he must not find me, and you must take care of baby and me,” and here her tears burst out, and she clung round the old lady’s neck. “I have money, and I can pay the minister; and I am so fond of you both—do let me stay.”
“Whisht, whisht, my dearie,” returned Mrs. Duncan, wiping her own eyes and Fay’s. “Of course you shall bide with me; would either Donald or I turn out the shorn lamb to face the tempest? Married, my bairn; why, you look only fit for a cot yourself; and with a bairn of your own, too. And to think that any man could ill-use a creature like that,” half to herself; but Fay drooped her head as she heard her. Mrs. Duncan thought Hugh was cruel to her, and that she had fled from his ill-treatment, and she dare not contradict this notion.
“You must never speak to me of my husband,” continued Fay, with an agitation that still further misled Mrs. Duncan. “I should have died if I had stopped with him; but I ran away, and I knew he would never find me here. I have money enough—ah, plenty—so you will not be put to expense. You may take care of my purse; and I have more—a great deal more;” and Fay held out to the dazzled eyes of the old lady a purse full of bank-notes and glittering gold pieces, which seemed riches itself to her Highland simplicity.
“Ay, and just look at the diamonds and emeralds on your fingers, my dearie; your man must have plenty of this world’s goods. What do they call him, my bairn, and where does he live?” But Fay skillfully fenced these questions. She called herself Mrs. St. Clair, she said, and her husband was a landed proprietor, and lived in one of the midland counties in England; and then she turned Mrs. Duncan’s attention by asking if she and baby might have the room her father slept in. Then Jean brought in the tea and buttered scones, and the milk for the baby; and while Mrs. Duncan fed him, she told Fay about her own trouble.
For the kind, white-headed minister, whom Fay remembered, was lying now in his last illness; he had had two strokes of paralysis, and the third would carry him off, the doctor said.