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Page 40
* * * * *
So far in our story we have confined ourselves to the characters in
whom we are immediately interested, without any reference to their
previous history or family connections. But I must pause here to take a
glance into two homesteads, a few days after the events just described.
In the breakfast-room at Ashley House Mr. Morton had laid aside his
newspaper, and was reading a letter from Dr. Brier. It was the second
or third time he had read it, and it seemed to disturb him. Mr. Morton
hated to be disturbed in any way. He was a hard man, who walked
straight through the world without hesitating or turning to the right
hand or to the left. He was a strong-minded man--at least, everybody
who got in his way had good reason to think so. But he had a rather
weak-minded wife. Poor Mrs. Morton was a flimsy woman, without much
stamina, mental or bodily. She stroked her cat, read her novel, lay
upon the sofa, or lolled in her carriage, and interested herself in
little that was really necessary to a true life. It was in such an
atmosphere as this that Ethel Morton lived and Digby had been reared.
Their mother had died when Ethel was a very little baby, and when the
new Mrs. Morton came home the children were old enough to feel that
they could not hope to find in her what they had lost in their true
mamma.
Ethel was a bright, pleasant girl, and, being left very much to
herself, she seemed to live in a world of her own. As a child she
peopled this world with dolls, and each doll had an individuality, a
history, and a set of ideas attached to it, which gave her almost a
human companionship in it. Then came the world of fairies and gnomes
and elves, amongst whom she held sway as queen, and many a plant and
shrub in the garden, and glade in the woodlands, was a part of her
fairy-land. And, now that she was nearly seventeen, a new world was
dawning upon her; human wants and human sympathies were demanding her
thought and care, and every day brought her into contact with those in
the villages round about, whose histories were educating her heart into
the true ideal of womanhood.
As Mr. Morton finished reading the letter he passed it to his wife,
merely remarking:
"You will see Digby has mixed himself up with some disagreeable piece
of business in the school. It is time he came home. I shall see Mr.
Vickers about him to-day, and write for him to return as soon as this
affair has blown over, instead of in September, in order that he may
commence his studies in the law at once."
Leaving Mrs. Morton to mourn that her anxieties and responsibilities
were to be increased by Digby's return, and Ethel to rejoice in the
fact that her brother was coming home to be again her companion, let us
now take a glance into a home in the suburbs of London.
It is a humbler home than that we have just visited, and a happier one.
The breakfast-room is elegantly furnished, but it is small; the garden
is well stocked with flowers, but the whole extent of it is not greater
than the lawn at Ashley House.
There are three people round the breakfast-table. Mrs. Pemberton, a
handsome woman, dressed in the neatest of black and lavender dresses,
and wearing a picturesque widow's-cap. Nellie, her daughter, a girl
about nine or ten years old, and Captain Arkwright, a retired naval
officer, the brother of Mrs. Pemberton.
There is anxiety on each face, and traces of recent tears mark that of
Mrs. Pemberton, as she nervously turns over and over in her hand a long
letter from Dr. Brier, and a still longer and more closely written one
from Howard.
"It is an extraordinary and distressing affair," she said, "and I am at
a loss to know what to do. What would you advise, Charles?"
"I should advise Dr. Brier to choose a lunatic asylum to go to. What a
wooden-headed old fellow he must be, to have got the affair into such a
mess. Do? I should do nothing. You certainly don't suppose Howard is
really concerned in the affair. Not he; that sort of thing isn't in his
line. It'll all come right enough by and by, so, don't fidget yourself,
my dear," he continued. "There's some vile plot laid against Howard,
but if he doesn't come clean out of it with flying colors, call me a
simpleton."
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