"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that disposition—contented, you know; and she was happy from the first; but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"
"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.
"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said, 'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman—a great genius or something of that sort—and do a lot for the world; and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure, so she'd get them all right."
"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in my own handwriting!" he said to himself.
Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.
Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.
"I'm going to find that lady—Mrs. Maclure," he said, jamming his hat down on his head, "if I have to spend the rest of my life in the search."
CHAPTER LII
Beth, surrounded by friends, saw the spring come in that year at Ilverthorpe, and felt it the fairest spring she could remember. Blackbird and thrush sang in an ecstasy by day, and all night long the nightingales trilled in the happy dusk. She did not ask herself why it was there was a new note in nature that year, nor did she trouble herself about time or eternity. Her eternity was the exquisite monotony of tranquil days, her time-keepers the spring flowers, the apple-blossom and quince, daffodil, wallflower, lilac and laburnum, the perfumed calycanthus, forget-me-nots, pansies, hyacinths, lilies-of-the-valley in the woods, and early roses on a warm south wall; and over all the lark by day, and again at night the nightingale. In a life like hers, after a period of probation there comes an interval of this kind occasionally, a pause for rest and renewal of strength before active service begins again.