‘Well, the man was Mr Austin Shield, and the girl was thy mother.’
‘My mother!’ was the ejaculation of the astounded Madge.
‘Yes. It was a silly business on her part, poor soul; but she was cruelly deceived. She had been told lies about him; and there were so many things which made them look like truth, that she believed them.’
‘What could she have been told that could make her forget him?’
‘She never did forget him—she never could forget him; and she told the man she married so. What she was told was, that Austin had forgotten her, and taken somebody else to wife. At the same time no letters came from him. She waited for months, watching every post; but there was never a sign from him. She fretted and fretted; and father fretted to see her getting so bad on account of a man who was not worth thinking about. He had broken his word, and that was enough to make father turn his back on him for ever.’
‘But how did my mother come to—to marry so soon?’
‘She was kind of persuaded into it by father, and by her wish to please him. He was a kind good man; but he was strict in his notions of things. He considered that it was sinful of her to be thinking of a man who had done her such wrong. Then Mr Heathcote was a great friend of father’s—he was a deacon in our chapel—and he asked sister to be his wife. He was quiet and well-to-do then; and father was on his side, though he was twenty years older than your mother. Father thought that his age would make him the better guide for one who was so weak as to keep on mourning for a base man. He was never done speaking about the happy home that was offered her, and in every prayer asked the Lord to turn her heart into the right path. At last she consented: but she told Mr Heathcote everything; and he said he was content, and that he would try his best to make her content too, by-and-by. Father was glad—and that did cheer poor sister a bit, for she was fond of father. So she married.’
‘And then?’
Only the subdued voice, the wide, startled eyes, indicated the agitation of the daughter, who was listening to this piteous story of a mother’s suffering.
‘And then there came a letter from Austin Shield, and he came himself almost as soon as the letter. He had been “up country,” as he called it, for more than a year, and he had been lucky beyond all his expectations. But there were no posts in the wild places he had been staying at. He had written to warn us not to expect to hear of him for many months; but the vessel that was carrying that message home to us—eh, deary, what sorrow it would have saved us—was wrecked in a fog on some big rock near the Scilly Isles; and although a-many of the mail-bags were fished up out of the sea, the one with sister’s letter in it was never found.’