Margaret found Gervase waiting for her in the darkness of the corridor, when she left his mother. Lady Piercey was a righteous woman, who would not keep her maid out of bed after ten o’clock; but her niece was a different matter. He caught his cousin by the arm, almost bringing from her a cry of alarm. “Meg,” he said in her ear, “do you think it’s all true?”

“Oh, Gervase, you gave me such a fright!”

“Is it all true?”

“How can I tell you? I don’t know anything about the law,” she said, with a sense of disloyalty to the poor fellow who was so ignorant; but she could not contradict her aunt, and if that was supposed to be for his good——

“If it should be,” said Gervase, with a deep sigh: and then he added, “I couldn’t let her marry me if it wasn’t to be for her good.”

“Oh, Gervase, why can’t you show yourself like that to them?” his cousin said.

“I don’t know what you mean. I make no difference,” he answered dully, as he turned away.

Then there came another disturbance. The door of Sir Giles’ room further on opened cautiously, and his servant, who was also his nurse, looked out with great precaution and beckoned to her. Sir Giles was in bed; an old man with a red face and white hair; his under lip dropped like that of Gervase, though there was still a great deal of animation in his little bright blue eyes. He called her to come to him close to his bedside, as if Dunning, his man, did not know exactly what his master was going to ask.

“Has Gervase come in?” he said.

“Yes, uncle.”

“Is he drunk?”

“Oh, no,” said Margaret eagerly, “nothing of the sort!”

“That’s all right,” said the old gentleman with a sigh of satisfaction. “Now I’ll go to sleep.”

Thus the whole household, though it was not to be called a sensitive or a loving household, held its watch over the poor lad who, in his patent stupidity, was its only hope.

Margaret Osborne went away to the end of the corridor to her own room where her little boy was sleeping. She was a few years over thirty, as I have said, and therefore was one of those whose day is supposed to be over. She would have said so herself from other reasons, with complete good faith. For was she not a widow, thrown back as wrecks are upon the shore, out of the storms and hurricanes of life? She might have added that she was cast upon a desert island, after a very brief yet sharp acquaintance with all those stirring adventures and hair-breadth escapes which sometimes make life a stormy voyage. She had married a soldier, and gone with him from place to place during a course of troubled years. They had been poor, and their marriage was what is called an imprudent one; but it was so much worse than that, that Captain Osborne had by no means intended it to be imprudent, but had remained convinced till the last moment that Sir Giles Piercey’s niece must bring something substantial with her to the common stock. He had been warned over and over again, but he had not believed the warning; and when he found himself with a wife on his hands, whose utmost endowment was a very small allowance; enough, with economy, to dress her in the simplest manner, but no more—while he himself had little more than his pay to depend on, the disappointment was grievous. Captain Osborne was a gentleman, though not a very high-minded one, and he did his best to keep the knowledge of this shock from his wife, and to look as if he shared that joy in life and intoxicating delight of freedom with which Margaret, the unconsidered orphan of Greyshott, stepped forth into the fulness of existence with the man she loved. He was able to keep that up quite a long time, his despondencies and occasional irritabilities being attributed by Margaret to anything but the real cause of them; but at the last, in an unguarded moment, the secret slipped from him. Not anything to leave an indelible mark on her memory; not that he had married her with the intention of increasing his income, which would not have been true; but only an unintentional revelation of the disappointment which had been in his mind from the very day of their marriage—the failure of a prospect upon which his thoughts were bent. “I thought I should have been able to do you more justice, Meg; but if we’ve grubbed on in a poor way, you must remember it’s that old curmudgeon of an uncle of yours that’s to blame.” She had asked what he meant, with a startled look, and gradually had elicited the story of his disappointment, which sunk into her heart like a stone. Not that she misjudged him or believed that he had married her for that only. Oh! no, no; but to think, when you have supposed your husband to be satisfied with your society as you with his; to find in you the fulfilment of all his hopes of happiness as you in him; and then to discover that from your very marriage day he has gone forth with a disappointment, with a grudge; with an unsaid reflection, “If I had but known!”—Margaret forgot it ’mid the many events that filled her existence, forgot even the bitter thought that, had he known, he need not have been subjected to those slights and scorns and forced self-denials that befall the poor; forgot everything but love and sorrow in those last sad scenes which have this one compensation—that they obliterate all that is not love from the mourner’s heart. But, nevertheless, the mark that had been made on her life was always there. We may have forgotten when, and how, and even by whose hand we got the wound, but the scar remains, and the smoothness of the injured surface can never be restored.

But she had her little boy, who was her estate, her endowment, her dowry, whatever else might be lacking; and who had come to be the delight of the house in which she was received after her widowhood—oh! not unkindly—with a quite genuine compassion and friendliness, if not love. They were not a family of delicate mind; they did not think it necessary to spare a dependent any of those snubs or small humiliations which belong to her lot. They took her in frankly because she had nowhere else to go to, with an occasional complaint of their hard fate in having to receive and support other people’s children, and an occasional gibe at the poor relations who were always a drag upon the head of the family. I do not say that she had not felt this, for she had a high spirit; and, perhaps, if she had been a woman educated as women are beginning to be now, she might have felt herself capable of achieving independence and throwing off the sore weight of charity which is so good for those who give, but generally so hard upon those who receive. But after many a weary thought she had given up the hope of this. She had not boldness enough to venture on any great and unusual undertaking, and there were no means for a woman of earning her living then, except in the way of teaching (which, at all times, must be the chief standby), for which she was not capable, having had no education herself. So that she had to accept the humiliations, to hear herself described as “my niece, you know, who has had to come back, poor thing, left without a penny. If she had not had her uncle’s house to come back to, Heaven knows what would have become of her”; and to witness the visitor’s pressure of Lady Piercey’s hand, and admiring exclamation, “How good you are!” And it was true—they were very good. She had not a moment she could call her own, but was running their errands the whole day. She was sick-nurse, lady’s maid, secretary, and reader, all in one. Sir Giles had moments when he remembered that to have such an invalid master was hard upon Dunning, and that so valuable a servant must have, now and then, an afternoon to himself; and Lady Piercey was very considerate of her maid, Parsons, and insisted, as we have seen, that she should always get to bed by ten o’clock. But to both of these good people it seemed quite natural that Meg should take the place thus vacated, and support the gouty old gentleman, and put the old lady to bed. Their own flesh and blood! like the daughter of the house! of course, it was she who came in naturally to fulfil all their needs. And Margaret never made an objection—scarcely felt one; was glad to be always busy, always at their service; but now and then, perhaps, in an idle moment, wondered, with a smile, how they could get on without her; felt a little indignation against Dunning and Parsons, who never showed any gratitude to her for the many fatigues she spared them—and thought within herself that the story of the niece, poor thing, who had come back without a penny, might be less frequently told.

But there had come into her life a great revenge—a thing which no one had thought of, unintentional, indeed undesired. The little boy, the baby, whom every one had called poor little thing!—as of the most unprotected and defenceless of God’s creation—that little boy, Osy, such a burden on the poor niece who had not a penny! had become the king of the house! It was such a revolution as had never entered into any mind to conceive. Osy, who understood nothing about his proper place or his position, as entirely dependent on Sir Giles’ charity, but did understand very well that everybody smiled upon him, delighted even in his very naughtiness, obeyed his lightest wish, fulfilled all his little caprices, took his little place as prince, as if it had been the most natural thing in the world. From old Sir Giles, by whom he sat on his little stool, patting the old gentleman’s gouty foot, with the softest feather-touch of his little hand, and babbling with all manner of baby talk profound questions that could have no answer, and shrills of little laughter, while even Dunning, on the other side of the old man’s chair, smiled indulgent, and declared that nothing do amuse master or take him out of himself like that child; and Lady Piercey, to whom he would run, hiding among her ample robes with full connivance on her part, when it was time to put him to bed—while Parsons stood delighted by, alleging that children was allays so when they was happy, and that the little ’un was fond of her ladyship, to be sure—there was but one thought little of Osy. He was a darling, he was, the housekeeper said, who was grim to Mrs. Osborne, and resented much being obliged occasionally to take my lady’s orders from the poor niece without a penny. Gervase was the only one in the family who did not idolise Osy. He had liked him well enough at first, when he mounted the little thing on his shoulder to Margaret’s terror, holding the child, who had twice his energy and spirit, with a limp arm in which there was no security. But after the time when Osy, with a fling, threw himself from his cousin’s nervous hold, and broke his little head and plunged the house into a panic of alarm, all such pranks had been forbidden, and Gervase took no more notice of the child, who had already begun to share the contempt of the household for him.

“Why doesn’t Cousin Gervase ’list for a soldier?” Osy had asked one day as he sat by Sir Giles. “Why should he ’list for a soldier?” asked the old gentleman; though Dunning grew pale, and Lady Piercey looked up with a sharp “Eh?” not knowing what treason was to follow. Dunning knew what had been said on that subject in the servants’ hall, and divined that the child had heard and would state his authorities without hesitation. “Because——” said Osy—but then he made a pause—his mother’s eye was upon him, and, perhaps, though he had not the least idea what she feared and probably in childish defiance would have done that precisely had he known, yet this glance did give him pause; and he remembered that he had been told not to repeat what the servants said. The processes in a child’s mind are no less swift than those of a more calculating age. “Because,” said the boy, lingering, beginning to enjoy the suspense on all these faces, “because—it would make his back straight. Mamma says my back’s straight because the sergeant drilled me when I was a lickle, lickle boy.”

“And the dear child is as straight as a rush, my lady,” said Parsons, who was, as so often, arranging Lady Piercey’s work. She, too, was grateful beyond measure to little Osy for not repeating the talk of the servants’ hall.

“And what are you now, Osy,” cried Sir Giles, with a great laugh, “if you’re no longer a lickle, lickle boy?”

“I’m the king of the castle,” said Osy, tilting at Dunning with the old gentleman’s stick. “Bedone, you dirty rascal; let’s play at you being the castle, Uncle Giles, and I’ll drive off the enemy. Bedone, you dirty rascal;—det away from my castle. I’ll be the sentry on the walls,” said the child, marching round and round with the stick over his shoulder for a gun, “and I’ll call out ‘Who does there?’ and ‘What’s the word’—and I’ll drive off all the enemy. But there must be a flag flying.” He called it a flap, but that did not matter. “Mamma, fix a flap upon my big tower. Here,” he cried, producing from his little pocket a crumpled rag of uncertain colour, “this hankechif will do.”

“But that’s a flag of truce, Osy; are you going to give me up then?” said the old gentleman.

“We’ll not have no flaps of truce,” said Osy, seizing Sir Giles’ red bandana, “for I means fightin’—and they sha’n’t come near you, but over my body. Here! Tome on, you enemy!” Osy’s thrusts at Dunning, who retreated outside a wider and a wider circle as the little soldier made his rounds, amused the old gentleman beyond measure. He laughed till, which was not very difficult, the water came to his eyes.

“I do believe that mite would stand up for his old uncle if there was any occasion,” said Sir Giles, nodding his old head across at his wife, and trying in vain to recover the bandana to dry his old eyes.

These were the sort of games that went on in the afternoon, especially in winter, when the hours were long between lunch and tea. When the weather was fine, Osy marched by Sir Giles’ garden chair, and made him the confidant of all his wonderings. “What do the leaves fall off for, and where do they tome from when they tome again? Does gardener go to the market to buy the new ones like mamma goes to buy clothes for me? How do the snowdrops know when it’s time to come up out of the told, told ground?” Fortunately, he had so many things to ask that he seldom paused for an answer. Sir Giles laid up these questions in his heart, and reported them to my lady. “He asked me to-day if it hurt the field when the farmers ploughed it up? I declare I never thought how strange things were before, and the posers that little ’un asks me!” cried the old man. Lady Piercey smiled with a superior certainty, based upon Mangnall’s Questions and other instructive works, that she was not so easily posed by Osy. She had instructed him as to where tea and coffee came from, and taught him to say, “Thank you, pretty cow,” thus accounting for his breakfast to the inquisitive intelligence. But there was one thing that brought a spasm to Lady Piercey’s face, especially when, as now and then happened, she hid the little truant from his mother, and saved Osy from a scolding, as he nestled down amid her voluminous skirts and lifted up a smiling, rosy little face, in great enjoyment of the joke and the hiding place. Sometimes as she laid her hand upon his curly head with that sensation of half-malicious delight in coming between the little sinner and his natural governor, which is common to the grand-parent, there would come a sudden contraction to her face, and a bitter salt tear would spring to her eye. If Gervase had a child like that to be his father’s heir! Why was not that delightful child the child of Gervase, instead of being born to those who had nothing to give him? It was upon Margaret, who had not a penny, that this immeasurable gift was bestowed. And no woman that could be the mother of such a boy would ever marry Gervase! Oh! no, no—a barmaid, to give him a vulgar brat, who, perhaps——. But the thoughts of angry love and longing are not to be put into words.

Margaret went to the end of the gallery to her own room, where her child’s soft breath was just audible as he slept. She went and looked at him in his little crib, a little head like an angel’s, upon the little white pillow. But it was not only in a mother’s tender adoration that she stood and looked at her child. To hurt any one was not in Margaret Osborne’s heart, but there had come into it for some time back a dart of ambition, a gleam of hope: little Osy, too, was of the Piercey blood. She herself was a Piercey, much more a Piercey than Gervase, poor fellow. If an heir was wanted, who so fit as her boy? Far more fit than old General Piercey, whom nobody knew. Oh! not for worlds, not for anything that life could give, would she harm poor Gervase, or any man. But the barmaid and her possible progeny were as odious to Margaret as to Lady Piercey: and where, where could any one find an heir like Osy, the little prince, who had conquered and taken possession of the great house?