CHAPTER XLIII.

ALLY’S SECRET.

As a matter of fact she did not keep it at all.

The others were very anxious, lost in their thoughts, their minds all quivering with anxiety and hope and fear, but still there were moments when the tension relaxed a little. It was very highly strung at first while the excitement of Rochford’s departure and of Sir Edward’s encounter with him was still in the air, but by degrees this died away, and a sense of increased serenity, of greater hope, released their souls from that bondage. Lady Penton after a long silence began again to talk a little about the new house.

“I don’t know what we can do with these poor old things in Penton,” she said; “such a beautiful house as it is, everybody says, and so many pretty things in it: and all we have is so shabby. Ally, you are the only one that has seen it.”

“Yes, mother,” said Ally, waking up as from a dream.

“What do you think, my dear? you ought to be able to tell me. I suppose there is scarcely a room in the house so small as this?”

“I--don’t think I paid any attention.”

“No attention!--to a house which was to be our own house.”

“But no one thought then it was to be our own house,” cried Anne, coming to the rescue. “And you know Ally did not enjoy it, mother.”

“Oh, yes,” cried Ally, suddenly waking up, feeling once more the brightness of pleasure that had come with the sight of _him_; how he had found her neglected and made a princess of her, a little queen! Was it possible that she could ever have forgotten that?

“Well, not at first,” said Anne; “you didn’t like Cousin Alicia, which I don’t wonder at. Mab didn’t like her either. Mother, if Mab comes back and insists on coming to live with us, what shall you do?”

“I wish you would not be so nonsensical,” said Lady Penton, with a little vexation, “when I was talking of the furniture. Why should Mab--” she paused a moment, struck by a recollection, and then wound up with a sigh and a shake of her head. “Why should not Walter have a try?” The words came back to her mind vaguely, just clear enough to arouse a keener consciousness of the prevailing subject which her mind had put aside for the moment. Ah! poor Wat! poor Wat! how could his mother think or speak of anything while his fate hung in the balance? But then she reflected on the new agent who had been sent out into the world in search of him, a young man who knew the ways of young men. This reflection gave her more comfort than anything. She clung to the idea that young men spoke a language of their own among themselves, and that only they understood each other’s way. She resumed with another sigh.

“I don’t suppose we have anything in our possession that is fit to be put into the drawing-room, Ally. I remember it in old days, the very few times I ever was there: but they say it is far more splendid now than it was before. Do you think that chiffonier would do?” The chiffonier had been the pride of Lady Penton’s heart. It was inlaid, and had a plate-glass back. She looked at it fondly where it stood, not very brilliant in fact, but making the shabby things around look a little more shabby. She had always felt it was thrown away amid these surroundings, and that to see it in a higher and better sphere would be sweet and consolatory; but Lady Penton was aware that taste had changed greatly since that article was constructed, and that perhaps the decorations of the great drawing-room at Penton might be out of harmony with a _meuble_ belonging to another generation, however beautiful it might be in itself.

“I--don’t know,” said Ally, looking at the well-known article with her dreamy eyes; “there was nothing like it--I think: I didn’t notice--”

“You don’t seem to have noticed anything, my dear,” her mother said.

Oh, if Ally could but say what it was that had been most delightful to her at Penton! But then she remembered with overpowering shame how she had shrunk from the ladies who had been so good to her; how she had felt the elation of her new superiority; how she had been a snob in all the horror of the word. And she was silent, crushed by remorse and confusion. Fortunately Lady Penton’s mind was taken up by other things.

“I think,” she said, “the chiffonier will do. It is large, too large, for this little room; it will fill one side of the wall very nicely. And perhaps some of the chairs, if they are newly covered; but as for curtains and carpets and all that, everything must be new. It is dreadful to think of the expense. I don’t know how we are ever to meet it. Ally, what sort of carpets are there now? Oh, no doubt beautiful Persian rugs and that sort of thing--simple Brussels would not do. Is it a polished floor with rugs, or is it one of those great carpets woven in one piece, or is it--My dear, what’s the matter? There is no need to cry.”

“I--don’t remember--it is so stupid of me,” said Ally, with the tears in her eyes.

“You are nervous and upset this morning; but we must all try and take a little courage. I have great confidence in Mr. Rochford--oh, great confidence! He is very kind and so trustworthy. You can see that only to look into those nice kind eyes.”

“Oh, mother dear!” cried Ally, flinging her arms about Lady Penton’s neck, giving her a sudden kiss. And then the girl slid away, flying upstairs as soon as she was safely out of sight, to cry with happiness in her own room where nobody could see.

“There is something the matter with Ally this morning,” said her mother; “she is not like herself.”

“She is not at all like herself,” said Anne, with a little pursing up of her lips, as one who should say, “I could an I would.”

“What do you think it is, Anne? Do you know of anything?”

“I don’t know,” said Anne, “but I guess. Mother--I think it’s Mr. Rochford.”

“Mr. Rochford!” Lady Penton replied; and then in a moment the whole passed before her like a panorama. How could she have been so dull? It had occurred to her as possible before old Sir Walter’s death, and she had not been displeased. Now things were different; but still--“What will your father say?” she exclaimed. “Oh, I am afraid I have been neglecting Ally thinking of her brother. What will your father say?”

“If that sort of thing is going to be,” said Anne, sententiously, “do you think anything can stop it, mother? I have always heard that the more you interfere the stronger it becomes. It has to be if it’s going to be.”

Lady Penton did not make any reply to this wisdom, but she was greatly moved. First Walter and then Ally! The children become independent actors in life, choosing their own parts for good, or, alas! perhaps for evil. She stole upstairs after a little interval and softly opened the door of Ally’s room, where the girl was sitting half crying, smiling, lost in the haze of novelty and happiness: her mother looked at her for a moment before she said anything to make her presence known. Ah, yes, it was very clear Ally had escaped, she had gone away from the household in which she was born, the cares and concerns of which had hitherto been all the world to her, into another sphere, a different place, a little universe of her own, peopled but by the two, the beginners of a new world. Lady Penton stood unseen, contemplating the girl’s dreamy countenance, so abstracted from all about her with a complication of new and strange emotions. Her little girl! but now separate, having taken the turn that made her life a thing apart from father and mother. The child! who had in a moment become a woman, an individual with her fate and future all her own. The interest of it, the pride of it, in some respects the pity of it, touches every maturer soul at such a sight--but when it is a woman looking at her own little girl! She came into the room very softly and sat down beside Ally upon the little white bed and put her tender arms about the young creature in her trance; and Ally, with one low cry, “Mother!” flung herself upon the breast which had always been her shelter. And there was an end of the secret--so far as such a secret can be told. The mother did not want any telling, she understood it all. But, notwithstanding her sympathy for her child, and her agreement in Anne’s inspiration and conviction that such a thing _has_ to be if it is going to be, she kept reflecting to herself, “What will her father say?” all the time in her heart.

This was destined to be a day of excitement in many ways. Just before the family meal (which Lady Penton, with a sense of all the changes now surging upward in their family life, had begun to speak of with a little timidity as “the children’s dinner”) one of the Penton carriages came to the door, and Mab burst in, all smiles and delight. “Am I in time for dinner?” she said. “Oh, Lady Penton, you will let me come to dinner? May I send the carriage away and tell them to come back for me? When must they come back for me? Oh, if you only knew how I should like to stay.” It was very difficult for these kind people to resist the fervor of this petition. “My dear, of course we are very glad to have you,” Lady Penton said, with a little hesitation. And Mab plunged into the midst of the children with cries of delight on both sides. Horry possessed himself at once of her hand, and found her a chair close to his own, and even little Molly waved her spoon in the stranger’s honor, and changed her little song to “Mady, Mady,” instead of the “Fader, fader!” which was the sweetest of dinner-bells to Sir Edward’s ears. When dinner was over, Mab got Lady Penton into a corner and poured forth her petition. “Oh, may I come and stay! Uncle Russell is going away, and Aunt Alicia is not at all fond of me. She would not like it if I went with them, and where can I go? My relations are none of them so nice as you. You took me in out of kindness when I didn’t know where to go. I have a lot of money, Lady Penton, they say, but I am a poor little orphan girl all the same.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Lady Penton, “nobody could be more sorry than I am; and a lot of money does not do very much good to a little girl who is alone. But, Mab, I have so many to think of: and we have not a lot of money, and we have to live accordingly. Though Sir Edward has Penton now, that does not make things better, it rather make them worse. Even in Penton we shall live very simply, perhaps poorly. We can not give you society and pleasures like your other friends.”

“But I don’t want society and pleasure. Pleasure! I should like to take care of Molly, and make her things and teach her her letters. I should; she is the dearest little darling that ever was. I should like to run about with the boys. Horry and I are great friends, oh, great friends, Lady Penton. At Penton you will have hundreds of rooms; you can’t say it is not big enough. Oh, let me come! Oh, let me come! And then my money--” But here Mab judiciously stopped, seeing no room for any consideration about her money. “You wouldn’t turn me from the door if I was a beggar, a little orphan,” she cried.

“Oh, my dear! No, indeed, I hope not; but this is very different. Mab, though I am not much set upon money (but I am afraid I am too, for nothing will go without it), yet a rich girl is very different from a poor girl. You know that as well as I.”

“The poor girl is much better off,” cried Mab, “for people are kind to her; they take her in, they let her stay, they are always contriving to make her feel at home; but the wretched little rich one is put to the door. People say, ‘Oh, we are always glad to see you;’ but they are not, Lady Penton! They think, here she comes with her money. As if I cared about my money! Take me for Molly’s nurse or her governess. Ally will be going and marrying--”

“What do you know about that?” Lady Penton said, grasping her arm.

“I! I don’t know anything about it; but of course she will, and so will Anne; and it might happen that you would be glad to have me, just to look after the children a little after the weddings were over, and help you with Molly. Oh, you might, Lady Penton, it is quite possible; and then you would find out that I am not a little good-for-nothing. I believe I am really clever with children,” Mab cried, flinging herself down on her knees, putting her arms about Lady Penton’s waist. “Oh, say that I may stay.”

When she had thus flung herself upon Lady Penton’s lap, Mab suddenly raised her round rosy cheek to the pale one that bent over her. They were by themselves in a corner of the drawing-room, and nobody was near. She said in a whisper, close to the other’s ear, “I saw Mr. Penton in town yesterday. He was looking quite well, but sad. I was--oh, very impertinent, Lady Penton. Forgive me. I stopped the carriage, though I am sure he did not want to speak to me. I told him that you were not--quite well--that you were so pale--and that everybody missed him so. Don’t be angry! I was very impertinent, Lady Penton. And he said he was going home directly--directly, that was what he said. I said you would be sure not to tell him in your letters that you were feeling ill, but that you were. And so you are, Lady Penton; you are so pale. But he is coming directly, that was what he said.”

“Oh, my little Mab!” Lady Penton cried. She gave the little girl a sudden kiss, then put her hands with a soft resoluteness upon Mab’s arms and loosed their clasp. It was as if the girl had pushed open for a moment a door which closed upon her again the next. “Yes,” she said, “my son is coming home. He has stayed a little longer than we expected, but you should not have tried to frighten him about his mother. I am not