Laid up in Lavender

by Stanley John Weyman

"'Yes, dear Robert,' cried Mrs. Bevan, eagerly, 'we did indeed.'

"'So I hear. Well, when I make my next will, I will set you down for just so much as you proposed to give her! Peggy, bach,' he continued, turning from the lady, who was looking very queer, and putting into the girl's hands the will which the lawyer had given him, 'tear up this rubbish! Tear it up! Now let us have something to eat in the other room. What, Llewellyn Evans, no appetite!'

"But the family did not stay even to partake of the home-brewed. They were out of the house, I am told, before the coffin and the undertaker's men. There was big talking amongst them, as they went, of a conspiracy and a lunatic asylum. But though, to be sure, it was a wonderful recovery, and the doctor and Mr. Hughes as they drove away after dinner were very merry together--which may have been only the home-brewed--at any rate all that came of Llewellyn's talking and inquiries was that every one laughed very much, and Robert Evans' name for a clever man was known beyond Carnarvon.

"Of course it would be open house at Court that day, with plenty of eating and drinking and coming and going. But towards five o'clock the place grew quiet. The visitors had gone home, and Gwen Madoc was upstairs. The old man was sleeping in his chair opposite the settle, and Miss Peggy was sitting on the window-seat watching him, her hands in her lap, and her thoughts far away. Maybe she was trying to be really glad that the home, about which the cows lowed and the gulls screamed in the afternoon stillness that made it seem home each minute, was hers still; that she was not quite alone, nor friendless, nor poor. Maybe she was striving not to think of the thing which had been taken from her and could not be given back. Whatever her thoughts, she was roused by some sound to find her eyes full of hot tears, through which she could see that the old man was awake and looking at her with a strange expression which disappeared as she became aware of it.

"He began to speak. 'Providence has been very good to us, Peggy,' he said with grim meaning. 'It is well for you, my girl, that your eyes are open to see our kind friends as they are. There is one besides those who were here this morning that will wish he had not been so hasty.'

"She rose quickly and looked out of the window. 'Please don't speak of him,' she pleaded in a low tone. 'Let us forget him.'

"But Robert Evans seemed to take a delight in the--well, the goodness of Providence. 'If he had come to see you only once, when you were in trouble,' he said, as if he were summing up the case in his own mind, and she were but a stick or a stone, 'we could have forgiven him, and I would have said you were right. Or even if he had written.'

"'Oh, yes, yes!' the girl sobbed, her tears raining down her averted face. 'Don't torture me! You were right and I was wrong--all wrong!'

"'Yes, indeed! Just so. But come here, my girl,' said the old man. 'Come!' he repeated, as, surprised in the midst of her grief, she wavered and hesitated, 'sit here;' and he pointed to the settle opposite to him. 'Now, suppose I were to tell you he had written, and that the letter had been--mislaid, shall we say? and come somehow to my hands? Now don't get excited, girl!'

"'Oh!' Peggy cried, her lips parted, her eyes wide and frightened, her whole form stiff with a question.