Janet Matheson was busy with her broth, which was boiling softly, slowly over the fire, ready to receive the vegetables—red, white, and green—the carrots and turnips and early crisp cabbage, all nicely cut and glistening with freshness and cleanness, which she had just prepared to add to the contents of the pot. She had a large brown holland apron covering her cotton gown, and a thick white cap surrounding her frosty-apple cheeks. The room was as neat and bright as her own little active figure. The little greenish window behind was open to admit the scent of the mignonette in the garden, and the pale pink monthly rose which looked in. On the sill of the opened window there was a line of books, and a writing-table stood under it, slightly inappropriate, yet disturbing nothing of the homely harmony of the cottage. The door to the street was open too, and any passing stranger could have seen Janet, who now and then looked out, with a carrot in one hand, and the knife with which she was scraping it in the other, wondering where that lassie J’yce could have gone to. The holidays had begun, and Joyce was free. She had done her share of the household service before she went out; but her tender old guardian was of opinion that about this hour ‘a piece’ was essential, though that was a thing of which Joyce could never be got to take proper heed. She had turned her back to the world, however, and was emptying her bowlful of vegetables into the pot, when Mrs. Hayward tapped at the open door. Janet said mechanically, ‘Come in—come away in’ without hurrying the operation in which she was engaged. When she turned she found another bright-eyed woman looking in at her from the pavement.

‘May I come in?’ said Mrs. Hayward.

‘Certainly, mem, ye may come in, and welcome. Come away,’ said Janet, lifting a wooden chair, and placing it, though the day was very warm, within reach of the fire. It was clean as scrubbing could make it, yet she dusted it mechanically with her apron, as is the cottager’s use. Mrs. Hayward watched every movement with her bright eyes, and observed all the details of the little house. A simple woman, looking like a French peasant with her thick cap; a little rustic village house, without the slightest pretension of anything more. And this was the house in which the girl had been bred who Henry said was a lady—a lady! He knew so little, poor fellow, and men are taken in so easily. No doubt she was dressed in cheap finery, like so many of the village girls.

‘I wanted, if you will allow me, to make some inquiries about your—but she is not your daughter?’

‘About Joyce?’ said the old woman quickly. She put down the bowl and came forward a few steps, from henceforward departing from her rÔle of simple hospitality and friendliness, and becoming at once one of the parties to a duel, watching every step her adversary made. ‘And what will ye be wanting with Joyce?’ she asked, planting her foot firmly on the floor of her little kingdom. She was queen and mistress there, let the other be what she might.

‘It is difficult to say it in a few words,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘I have heard that though you have brought her up like your child, and been so tender to her, yet that she is no relation of yours.’

‘There are idle folk in every place,’ said Janet sententiously, ‘who have nothing to do but to stir up a’ the idle tales that ever were heard about the country-side.’

‘Do you mean, then, that this is an idle tale?’

The two antagonists watched each other with keen observation, and Janet saw that there was something like pleasure, or at least relief, in her adversary’s manner of putting the question. ‘It a’ depends on the sense it’s put in,’ she said.

‘We can’t go on fencing like this all day,’ cried Mrs. Hayward quickly. ‘I will tell you plainly what I want. My husband has seen the girl whom you call Joyce.’

‘Mem, you might keep a more civil tongue in your head,’ said Janet, ‘and ca’ her something else than the girl.’

‘What should I call her? I have not seen her. It is not with any will of my own that I am here. I hear her very highly spoken of, and your great kindness to her, and her—what is far more uncommon—gratitude to you.’

‘Mem,’ said Janet, ‘we Scots folk, we’re awfu’ unregenerate in the way of pride. We are little used to have leddies coming inquiring into our maist private concerns, ca’ing a woman’s affection for her bairn kindness, and a good lassie’s good heart for her faither and mither gratitude.’

‘I quite agree with you,’ said Mrs. Hayward, rising up suddenly and putting out her hand. ‘You are quite right, and I am—unregenerate as you say. The reason is, I have been a little put out this morning, and I have inquiries to make which I don’t make with any heart. I have come to ask you to let me see the things which Joyce’s mother left behind her—or at least the letters which Mrs. Bellendean told my husband of. A glance at them would possibly settle the question. My husband thinks—that he knows who she is.’

Janet had wiped her hand with her apron, and given it to her visitor, but with some reluctance. ‘And wha may your husband be, mem?’ she said.

‘He says he spoke to you the other day. He is, though I say it, a distinguished soldier. He is Colonel Hayward, who was Captain Bellendean’s commanding officer.’

Janet was not greatly moved by Colonel Hayward’s distinction, nor by his grade, but that he should be the Captain’s commanding officer impressed her at once. ‘Then he’ll be a gentleman that’s far aboon the like of us,’ she said, ‘and no’ a man that would put forth his hand for naught, or disturb a decent poor family without just cause.’ She stood a little, fingering her apron, ‘glowering frae her,’ as she would have said, casting a wistful look into vacancy. ‘It will maybe be something—that would make a great change,’ she said, her lips quivering a little, ‘if it cam’ true.’

‘I am afraid it would make a great change,’ said Mrs. Hayward, and she added with a sigh, ‘both to you and to me.’

‘To you!’ Janet clasped her hands. ‘What will you have to do with it? What would it be to the like of you? You’re no—you’re no——? or the Cornel——?’ The old woman put her hand with natural eloquence to her breast. ‘My heart’s just louping like to choke me. Oh mem, what would it be to you?’

‘Look here,’ said her visitor. ‘We may be giving ourselves a great deal of unnecessary trouble. It may happen that when I see the letters it will all come to nothing. Then let me see them directly, there’s a dear woman. That is the best and the only thing to do.’

There was a sweep of energetic movement about this rapid little lady that pressed forward Janet’s reluctant feet. She took a step or two forward towards the stair. But there she paused again. ‘I’ve aye said to Peter we must keep a loose grip,’ she said. ‘And when she was only a wean it would have been nothing: but she’s come to be that between him and me, that I canna tell how we’re ever to part. I’ve never said it to her. Na. I’m no’ one to spoil a young cratur’ with praisin’ her. I’ve kept it before her, that if she had mair headpiece than the rest, it was nae credit of hers, but just her Maker that had made her sae. It’s no’ for that. It’s no because she’s an honour and a glory to them that have brought her up. Whiles the one that ye are proudest of is just the one that will rend your heart. But she’s that sweet—and that bonnie—bonnie in a’ her ways—ye canna help but see she’s a leddy born; but to take upon hersel’ because o’ that. Na, na. That shows ye dinna ken our J’yce. Oh, I aye said haud a loose grip!’ cried the old woman, with broken sobs interrupting her speech. ‘I’ve said it to my man a thoosan’ times and a thoosan’ to that; but it’s mair than I have done mysel’ at the hinder end.’

The stranger’s bright eyes grew dim. She put her hand on Janet’s arm. ‘I should like to cry too,’ she said—‘not like you, for love, but for pure contrariness, and spite, and malice, and all that’s wicked. Come and show me the letters. Perhaps we are just troubling ourselves in vain, both you and I——’

‘Na, na, it’s no’ in vain,’ said Janet, restraining herself with a vehement effort. ‘If it may be sae this time, it’ll no’ be sae anither time. We may just be thankful we have keepit her sae lang. I never looked for it, for my pairt. I’ll gang first, mem, though it’s no’ mainners, to show you the way. This is her cha’amer, my bonnie darling; no’ much of a place for a leddy like you to come in to, or for a leddy like her—God bless her!—to sleep in. But we gave her what we had. We could do nae mair—if ye were a queen ye could do nae mair. And she’s been as content all her bonnie days as if she was in the king’s palace. Oh, but she’s been content; singing about the house that it was a pleasure to hear her, and never thinking shame—never, never—of her auld granny, wherever she was. She has ca’ed me aye granny—it was mair natural; and nae slight upon the poor bonny bit thing that is dead and gone.’

Janet went on talking as she placed a chair for the visitor, and went forward to the rude little desk where Joyce kept her treasures. She talked on, finding a relief in it, a necessity for exertion. Mrs. Hayward looked round the little homely place, meanwhile, with a curiosity which was almost painful. It was a tiny little room with a sloping roof, furnished in the simplest way, though a white counterpane on the little bed, and the white covering of the little dressing-table in the window, gave an air of care and daintiness amid the simple surroundings. A few photographs of pictures were pinned against the wall. But the place of honour was given to two photographic groups framed, one representing a group of school children, the other a band of (Mrs. Hayward thought) very uncouth and clumsy young men. Janet, with a wave of her hand towards these, said— ‘Hersel’ and her lassies,’ and ‘Andrew and some of his freends.’ It seemed to the keen but agitated observer, in the formality of the heavy cluster of faces, as if all were equally commonplace and uninteresting. She sat down and watched, with an impatience which nothing but long practice could have kept within bounds, while Janet opened the desk which stood against the wall, and then a drawer in it, out of which at last, with trembling hands, she brought a little parcel, wrapped in a white handkerchief. Janet was as reluctant as her visitor was eager. She would fain have deferred the test, or put it aside altogether. Why had she kept these papers for her own undoing? She undid the handkerchief slowly. There fell out of it as she unfolded it several small articles, each done up in a little separate packet. ‘A’ her bit things that she had,’ Janet explained. ‘A locket round her neck, and a bit little watch that winna go, and the chain to it, and twa rings. I wanted Joyce to wear them, but she will wear nothing o’ the kind, no’ so much as a bit brooch. Maybe you will ken the rings if you see them,’ said Janet, always anxious to postpone the final question, putting down the larger packet, and picking up with shaking fingers, which dropped them two or three times before they were finally secured, the tiny parcel in which the ornaments were enclosed.

‘No, no,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘The letters are the only things. Show me the letters, I implore you, and don’t let us torture ourselves with suspense.’

‘Ae kind of torture is just as bad as another,’ said the old woman, undoing with great unsteadiness the cotton-wool in which the trinkets were enclosed. She held them out in the palm of her brown and work-scarred hand. A little ring of pearl and turquoise, made for a very slender finger, in a simple pattern, like a girl’s first ornament, and beside it another, equally small, a ruby set round with brilliants. The glimmer of the stones in the old woman’s tremulous hand, the presence of these fragile symbols of a life and history past, gave the spectator a shock of sympathetic pain almost in spite of herself. She put them away with a hurried gesture— ‘No, no; nothing but the letters. I never saw these before; I know nothing—nothing but the letters. Show me the letters.’

Janet looked at the trinkets and then at Mrs. Hayward, with a rising light of hope in her eyes. ‘Ye never saw them before? It will just be somebody else and no her ye was thinking of? That’s maist likely, that’s real likely——’ wrapping them up again slowly in their cotton-wool. Her fingers, unused to delicate uses, were more than ever awkward in their tremor. To put them back again was the business of several minutes, during which she went on: ‘You will not be heeding to see the other things? I have them here in her box, just as she left them—for Joyce would never hear of puttin’ on onything—and they’re auld-fashioned, nae doubt, poor things. You’ll no be heeding?—oh ay, the letters—I’m forgetting the letters. But, mem, if ye’ve nae knowledge of her bit rings and things, ye will get nothing out of the letters. There’s nae information in them. I’ve read them mysel’ till I could near say them off by heart, but head or tail of them I could mak’ nane. Here they are, any way. She’s made a kind of a pocket-book to put them in—a’ her ain work, and bonnie work it is—flowered with gold; I never kent where she got the gift o’t. Ye would think she could just do onything she turned her hand to. Ay, there they are.’

And with no longer any possible pretence for delay, she thrust a little velvet case into Mrs. Hayward’s hand—who between impatience and suspense was as much excited as herself. It was worked in gold thread with a runic cross, twisted with many knots and intertwinings, and executed with all the imperfections of an art as uninstructed as that of the early workers in stone who had wrought Joyce’s model. Inside, wrapped carefully in paper, were the two silent witnesses—the records of the tragedy, the evidence which would be conclusive. Mrs. Hayward’s hands trembled too as she came to this decisive point—they dropped out of her fingers into her lap. Her heart gave a leap of relief when her eye fell on the handwriting of the uppermost, which was unknown to her. The other was folded, nothing showing but the paper, yellow and worn at the edges with much perusal. In spite of herself, she took this up with a feeling of repugnance and dread—afraid of it, afraid to touch it, afraid to see—— what instinct told her must be there. She paused, holding it in her hand, and gave Janet a look. No words passed between them, but for the moment their hearts were one.

Mrs. Hayward opened the folded paper, then gave a low cry, and looked at Janet once more—and to both the women there was a moment during which the solid earth, and this little prosaic spot on it, seemed to go round and round.

‘It will be what you was looking for?’ said Janet at last. She had been full of lamentation and resistance before. She felt nothing now except the hand of fate. The other shook her head.

‘Yes,’ she replied, and said no more.