Lord Frogmore had always been cheerful, but now he was gayer than ever—for to be sure Mary soon recovered from her momentary illness which was more nerves than anything else, though she was so far from being a nervous subject. She was taken the greatest care of during that summer, and the old lord looked twenty years younger. He whistled when he went out for his walks, he had a smile and a pleasant word for everybody. He grew absolutely juvenile in his extreme satisfaction with himself and everything about him. “You’d say fifty-five at the very most to see him kicking along the road like a new-married man,” said the old woman at the gates, who was just Lord Frogmore’s age, and “expected” a great-grandchild in a week or two. Nothing could exceed his satisfaction and complacency. He reconciled himself to Duke by presenting the boy with a pony all to himself to take home, which had been Duke’s chief earthly desire—and took him to the stables to see the “leggy” colt, which was Uncle Ralph’s present, and which had grown into a tough but not lovely hunter, justifying his original owner’s prophecy.

“Do you think Aunt Mary could ride this, Duke?” the old gentleman asked, with a chuckle.

“Aunt Mary!” cried the boy with a shout, “she’s frightened of Polo when he’s fresh.”

“So she is,” said Lord Frogmore. “I shouldn’t wonder if she let you ride this one when your father takes you out with him.”

“Oh, Uncle Frogmore! why he could step over the big fence without jumping at all,” cried Duke in ecstasy. The old lord was kind to the boy, kinder than he had ever been before.

Why it was that Letitia should have come herself to fetch Duke home on that occasion I have never ascertained. Perhaps it was something in the air, one of those presentiments, sympathetic or antipathetic, brain-waves as the wise call them, which suggested to Mrs. John Parke the possibility of some new turn in the aspect of affairs. She did not ask any questions or receive any definite information during her stay of three days, at least from the heads of the house, but no doubt she drew her own conclusions from the extreme cheerfulness of the head of the house, and the subdued but anxious conciliatory ways of Mary. Mary was always conciliatory, always anxious to make up to Letitia as for an imaginary wrong, but she had never been so anxious as now. She took advantage of a birthday in the family to send a great box full of presents in which every child in the house had a share. She was eager to know if there was anything Letitia wanted—a desire in which Mrs. Parke did not balk her, notwithstanding that it was gall and wormwood to receive anything from Mary’s hands. We have all, however, a good deal of gall and wormwood to swallow in the course of our lives, and it was something to secure a solid advantage even at that cost. Letitia did not let her pride stand in the way. But to come to the Park and see Mary in full possession with that old fool, as his sister-in-law called him, smirking and smiling at her, and everybody serving her hand and foot, was hard for Letitia to endure at any time—and was doubly hard now. For all the more that she was not told anything, Mrs. Parke felt danger and destruction in the air. The care with which Mary was surrounded, the gaiety of Lord Frogmore, seemed proof positive at one moment of the failure of all her own hopes. But then she said to herself, why are they so exuberant towards Duke, petting the boy as he had never been petted before? This bewildered his mother, for she could not herself have felt any compunction in such a case. Her feelings in Mary’s circumstances would have been pure triumph. Thus notwithstanding the assurance given by her maid, and all the other signs which she could not ignore, Letitia left the Park with her son, still unsatisfied. Duke was kissed and blessed and tipped more than ever when he left the Frogmores. His pony had been sent off in charge of a groom, every distinction was done to him that could have been done to the future heir. If it was all because he was no longer certain to be the heir! but that was beyond the intuitions of Mrs. John Parke. She went home in heaviness and anger but still uncertain what to believe. All that she could do was to make poor John’s life very uncomfortable to him when she returned. He was cast down too as was natural. He walked up and down the room gloomily with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders thrust up to his ears as she told the story of her visit. When they were alone Mrs. Parke exercised some uncomfortable economics though she always contrived to do her husband credit when guests were in the house. Thus there was only one small lamp in the room and no fire though the day had been damp and cold, and John Parke did not feel disposed to warm himself as his wife did with hot cups of tea.

“Well,” he said with a sigh—“there was nothing else to be expected. You might have made up your mind to that from the day they were married—I did,” said John with a nod of his head, which was sunk between his shoulders as if he had been the most foreseeing philosopher in the world.

“I have not made up my mind yet,” said Letitia, “for why didn’t they tell me? Mary could never have kept in her triumph. And as for Frogmore, he would have been bursting with it. To be sure, Felicie—but I don’t put much faith in what the maids say. And then, why should they have been so more than usually fond of Duke? No; I won’t believe it,” Mrs. Parke cried, “they couldn’t have resisted the triumph over me.”

“I tell you what,” cried John, “I won’t have that little brute of a pony in my stables. If Frogmore chooses to give Duke presents like that he must keep it for him. A little beast! and fit to eat as much corn as my best hunter. I can’t have it here.”

“John! We must not offend Frogmore.”

“Oh, offend Frogmore! When you tell me we are to be cut out and disinherited and lose everything!”

“I never said that. I wouldn’t say it,” said Mrs. Parke, piously, “as if the worst had happened, for there’s always Providence to take into account, and measles and whooping cough and that sort of thing. And it might be a girl, and a hundred things happen—if it’s anything at all, which I don’t believe myself,” Letitia said, yet with a tremor at her heart. “Go away, for goodness sake, and dress,” she added, with irritation; “to see you going up and down, up and down, like the villains in the theatre is more than my nerves can stand. For goodness sake go away.”

“I can’t take this sort of news so easily as you do,” said John, with his head upon his breast.

“So easily as I do! Oh, go away, go away, and don’t drive me mad with your folly,” cried his wife. “Do you think it can ever be half as much to you as it is to me? To see that Mary Hill in the place that should be mine, to kiss her and pretend to be friends when I could tear her in pieces with my hand, to see your old fool of a brother, who ought to have been dead and buried——”

“Letitia, not a word against Frogmore!”

“Oh, fiddlesticks about Frogmore! as if one could have any patience with an old—— He ought to have been dead and buried long ago. No man has a right to live on society, and keep other people out of their rights. And to marry at that age! It ought to be punished like murder. It’s as bad as murder and robbery and sacrilege and high treason all together. I can’t think but you can find a word to say for him, John Parke.”

“For one thing he’s not seventy—as you may see in any peerage——”

“Oh, don’t talk to me!” cried Letitia—and what answer could be made to that? Altogether Greenpark was on that evening a melancholy house.

Such questions cannot remain long in any doubt, and before the summer was at all advanced Mrs. Parke was compelled to give full evidence to the terrible truth. Needless to say that in the bottom of her heart she had been certain of it all along, though she held out so stoutly and would not acknowledge it to be true. But when it became known that Mrs. Hill and Agnes had arrived at the Park for a long visit, Mrs. John had a paroxysm of almost frenzy which for a day or two kept her to her bed, where she lay devouring her soul with imaginations of what was happening. Imaginations! Did she not know as well as if she had seen them what was going on? Mrs. Hill, oh with what beaming of pleasure on her face, bustling about, putting everybody right. Agnes, like another Mary, full of importance, too. The family from the vicarage altogether at the head of affairs, regulating everything, occupying the whole place, scarcely leaving room enough in his own house for poor old Frogmore, the old fool, the old ass, who had brought all this upon his family. Letitia raged within herself with internal wars and wails of wrath and anguish, like a wild beast, for three days; and then she got up and announced her intention of paying a visit to the Park.

“It’s only right that I should go and ask for her!” she said, with a curl of her lip over her teeth, which made this English lady look like a hyena.

“For goodness sake, Letitia, mind what you’re about. Don’t go and betray yourself,” said her husband in alarm.

“Oh, you may leave me to take care of that,” she said.

She arrived quite suddenly and unexpectedly, without a maid even, with a new travelling bag. “I felt that I must see dear Mary once more before—— At her age one always feels a little nervous for an affair of this kind,” she said sympathetically to Lord Frogmore, whose radiant countenance naturally clouded over at this remark. “I can go home to-night if there’s no room for me,” she added, “though I brought a bag, you see, in case I should stay.”

“There must always be room for my brother John’s wife in any circumstances,” said the polite old lord, but he did not lead the way into the inner sanctuary until he had carried the news of this unexpected arrival. “Mrs. John Parke, my dear,” he said, “is so terribly anxious about you, Mary, that she has come all this way to know how you are.”

“Oh, Letitia!” cried Mary, and “Tisch!” cried Agnes, in equal consternation. They looked at each other and grew pale.

“Let me go down and speak to her. She will frighten Mary out of her wits if she comes upstairs.”

“Oh, no,” said Mary faintly, “she must come in. Oh, Frogmore, I can’t blame her, when I think of those poor children. Perhaps she will feel a little more for me—now——”

“Feel for you! You are the happiest woman I know,” said Agnes, indignant at her sister’s weakness.

“She feels nothing but envy and malice and all uncharitableness,” cried the old lord. “Never mind, my love. We’ll do our best for the children all the same; but you won’t let a woman like that interfere with your happiness, Mary?”

“N—no,” said Mary doubtfully. She grew very white, and then very red, and cried, “Oh, let her come at once, let me get it over,” with something that was very like a cry of despair.

But there was no offence in Letitia’s looks when she made her appearance. She explained again that she had brought a bag in case they would have her for the night, but otherwise that she could very well return to Greenpark the same night, for she would not for all the world upset dear Mary. Her eyes went round the room taking in everything at a glance. Oh, so like the Hills, she said to herself. Just what she would have expected of them. The big chair which was exactly Mrs. Hill, as if it had been made in imitation of her, and all the little trumpery ornaments and things, little pots of flowers and so forth. But Letitia took the chair which was like Mrs. Hill, feeling a momentary satisfaction in disturbing the habit which no doubt the vicar’s wife had already formed of sitting there, and beamed upon the little party as if she was as happy in her friend’s prospects as any of the family could be.

It was not until the evening that she showed the cloud that was hid under all this velvet. She had been so nice, so exactly what a sympathetic sister-in-law should be, that Mary’s mother and sister had not hesitated to leave her alone with their interesting invalid. Lord Frogmore had gone out for one of his frequent walks. The twilight was falling upon the long warm August day. It had begun to get a little dim in the room, though Mary through the open window was still watching the last evening glories in the western sky. Mary, too, had lost her fear of Letitia. It was so much more natural to think well of any one; to believe at bottom an old friend must always be kind. And what would be more natural between two old friends than to go back at such an hour upon the past, especially the past which had linked them so much more closely together.

“When one thinks,” said Letitia with a laugh, “how strangely things come about. Do you remember, Mary, how we met in the picture-gallery? It was the Grosvenor Gallery, wasn’t it? But no; they had not begun there. It must have been in the academy, I suppose. It was just a chance, as people say, that took you and I there at the same time. You were with those old-fashioned aunts of yours. And you were very old-fashioned yourself, my dear, if I may say so now. Very neat you know—you always were neat—but your things looking as if they had all been made at home, and made a good while ago, and as well taken care of. Oh, I think I can see you now, and to think from that chance meeting how much has come!”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mary, “when one thinks of it as you say——” Poor Mary’s voice trembled. She gave a despairing glance towards the door. But no one came to her rescue. Mrs. Hill and Agnes were busy laying out a whole wardrobe of “things” to show to Tisch——

“Yes—when one thinks of it—what put it into my head I wonder to ask you to come to Greenpark for a long visit? I hadn’t as much as thought of you for years, and all at once I saw you standing there, and the thought came into my head. If something hadn’t put that into my mind how different everything might have been for both of us. You would have been just Mary Hill, the vicar of Grocombe’s daughter, living very poorly in that dreadful old place, and I should have been—well, looking forward sooner or later to having this nice old house, and the title and all that. Dear me, how little one knows what difference in one’s life a rash word can make.”

“You can’t feel it more than—I do, Letitia,” said Mary in very subdued and tremulous tones, pulling closer round her with her old agitated movement the lace shawl that had replaced her knitted one.

“Oh, yes,” said Letitia, “I do, my dear, for I have suffered by it you know while you have benefited—that makes all the difference in the world. When I think how different things might have been had I only just said, ‘How d’ye do, Mary,’ and gone by. Then you would never have met Frogmore, never had it in your power to change anything, never turned against me and the poor children——”

“Letitia, oh, don’t say I have turned against you. How have I turned against you? I love the children as if—as if——”

“My dear,” said Letitia, “you know we needn’t discuss that. You would never have turned against us I am quite sure if it hadn’t been so very much to your own advantage. And nobody would expect you for a moment to have done otherwise. Think of what you’ve gained by it. A title. Who would have thought of a title for one of the vicar of Grocombe’s daughters—and everything that heart could desire. A handsome house, two very fine places which you know Frogmore has, not to speak of the house in town which he lets, but which I’m sure you won’t allow him to go on letting. And now having got everything else, you’re going to have an heir, Mary Hill—oh, I forgot, you’re not Mary Hill, you’re my Lady Frogmore,—an heir which is the best of all to turn my poor boy out of my chance, out of what we all thought so sure. No, I don’t want to say—I’m amazed at myself for saying, but I can’t help it. I’m Duke’s mother, and I can’t. I can’t but think of my boy.”

“Oh, Letitia!” said Mary, piteously, holding out her hands in an agonized appeal.

“Oh, I don’t blame you,” cried Letitia, “how could you be supposed not to think of your own advantage. What am I to you? What are we to you that you shouldn’t think of yourself first? Oh, of course you thought of yourself first. It would have been quite unnatural if you hadn’t done so. But I can’t help thinking, Mary, with little Duke upon my mind, and thinking what we must do with him, and then he must be brought up to get his own living now. I can’t help thinking if I had just said, ‘How d’ye do, Mary,’ that day. If I had taken no more notice and never thought, ‘Well, they’re very poor at the vicarage, and one person’s living would never be missed in our house, and that it might be such a thing for you.’ Oh, if I hadn’t been so silly, how different everything might have been. I don’t blame you; not the least in the world; for of course you thought first of what was to your own advantage. But I do blame myself! Oh, I do blame myself. If it hadn’t been for that you would never have seen Lord Frogmore, and how different everything would have been.”

“Oh, Letitia,” cried Mary, as she had done at intervals all through this long address. The tears were pouring down her cheeks. Sometimes she hid her face in her hands; sometimes raised it to give her tormentor an appealing look, a protest against this cruelty. “Oh, Letitia, Letitia, spare me. It is not my fault. I never thought—I never believed—I would rather have died than injure you or the children. It made me ill when I first heard. To think of little Duke. Oh, Letitia, I think my heart will break!”

“Oh, my dear,” said Letitia, “I know all about hearts breaking. It never stops you from having your own way. What is the use of saying you would rather die? Would you rather die with all the good things in life before you? Nonsense, Mary! Don’t talk to me as if I didn’t know all about it. Now you’ll be petted and feted and made as if there never was the like before. You and your baby—while my poor Duke, my Duke, that was the real, rightful heir——”

Mrs. John burst forth in sobs and tears, and the room grew darker and darker. Mary, huddled up in a corner of the sofa, heard and saw no more.