CHAPTER XVII.

AT LAST.

Miss Stanley sat in the dining-room making up her accounts. She sat at a table by the window, with her bills and account books spread in order before her, and her pen in her hand, waiting to begin--waiting till the wandering thoughts would come back from their wool-gathering, and settle down to work. Once and again she advanced so far as to dip her pen in the ink, but the figures did not come, the page before her continued white, the ink dried up in her pen. With her elbow on the table, her cheek upon her hand, she went on thinking--thinking about her household, though not about her accounts. She had been head of the family so long, had steered and directed it so many years, and they had been so happy together; and now, it made her head whirl to think of the changes that were coming to pass. In the drawing-room, at that moment, was Muriel with her Gerald--a pair of children, and as unthinkingly happy. Their clear laughter penetrated through closed doors, and she heard it where she sat. Matilda was in the morning-room with Considine, as utterly content, if less obstreperously merry than her niece. And Penelope sat alone.

The moisture gathered in her eyes as she thought, but promptly was brushed away as a disloyalty, for if "dear Tilly" had come to love another more, she was very sure she continued to love her aging sister none the less. And yet it did seem hard to see that other come in between. Since her sister had been a very little girl, she had been to her a mother, watching over and caring for her till they grew to be companions and friends. They had been all the world to one another, and while, with a mother's inconsistency, she had wondered at the blindness of the men, who did not come and marry her sister, she knew that if they had, she would have hated them for their success. And now, after all danger seemed over, when they had settled down to grow old together, when even their adopted daughter was old enough to marry the man, the devastating man, had come--broken in, to disturb the repose of their virginal paradise in the hour of coming twilight, and end the pensive sweetness of their lives.

Yet, and the thought constrained her to admit that it was far from being the worst thing possible which had befallen, she had extorted from her intending brother that he should not take her sister quite away. He was to live with her, and she with them. The house at St. Euphrase was to be hers--Penelope's--and they were to be her inmates. Considine would take a house in town, where she should live with them; and all three parties to the arrangement had professed they saw no reason why they should not always live together. "Yet, why would those two marry at all?" she thought; "surely the season when birds select their mates was past for them. From the things which Considine spoke of as remembering he must be positively old; and Tilly, her precious Tilly"--a new-born candour forced her to admit it now, though she had not thought of it before--"was no longer young. Why could they not live on as friends, as they had been doing? when Considine's company had really added flavour to their spinster lives. What would people say?" Penelope imagined, like the rest of us, that "people" care. It is a fancy which sticks most pertinaciously, despite its lack of reason. Why will we not judge "people" by ourselves? And is it not true that long before our neighbours have grown accustomed to their affairs themselves they have become a twice-told tale to us? We shrug our shoulders and pass on, seeking a new diversion somewhere else. Whatever we may do which pleases ourselves, "people" will cease to trouble their heads about it long before the nine days are over.

The fear of this notoriety, however, was a tonic thought to Penelope. Instinctively she bridled to think that any should presume to criticise a transaction in _her_ family, and at once she ranged herself in spirit on her sister's side, and began to defend her. "'A man,'" she thought, "'is no older than he feels.' What eminent person is it who has written that? It is certainly true of Considine. See how erect he carries himself! How cheerful he is! and strong. His hair is white, but as thick as ever. He rides, and swims, and walks, like an active man of forty. And 'a woman is as young as she looks.' That is true of our Tilly. How well she wears! Who would fancy she was one age with Louisa Martindale? And yet I believe she is. What impertinence it will be if any one presumes to say a word!"

After that turn to her reflections, Penelope felt positively refreshed, and able to pull herself together. The pen was dipped in the ink once more, the bills taken up one by one, and the column of figures extended itself steadily down the page. But her industry was interrupted ere long. The parlour-maid appeared in some confusion. What was she to do? She had standing orders not do disturb her mistress when closeted in the dining-room, and she had been told an hour ago to show no one into the drawing-room or the parlour, and there were a lady and a gentleman and a policeman, and some more, asking to see Miss Stanley.

"Show them in here," Penelope said, wondering what was the matter. The mention of a policeman troubled her. Had it anything to do with the Herkimer bankruptcy?--Gerald being then in the house. The newspapers had been full of his father's doings of late, and they had had much trouble to keep them from Muriel's eyes. "Poor child," she ejaculated, "I hope it is nothing to distress her," and then the visitors walked in. Mrs. Selby and her husband--she had called on Mrs. Selby, and was glad to find in one of the visitors a person whom she knew--a policeman leading in a squaw, and Betsey Bunce--the "atrocity," as she called her in her mind. "How dared she enter there, after the passage which had taken place between them at the rectory as to Muriel's parentage?" Yet it was Betsey who came to the front now, seeing Selby look confused, and in doubt how to begin. "I can see by your face," said Betsey, "you ain't half well pleased, Cousin Penelope, to see me here, after me speaking my mind about what Aunt Judy and me fished out of your woman Annette. But it's that very same story has brought us all here to-day, and a good thing it was that I got hold of it, or goodness knows what would have come to these poor Selbys. You know from the papers all about their losing their little girl long ago. You know, too, that the squaw was taken up last week who ran away with her. Look at her! There she stands, beside the policeman, and not a bit ashamed of herself, as far as I can see. Could you believe that so much artfulness-you've read about it in the papers (the changing clothes and burying boxes, and running away, is what I allude to)--and so much wickedness--wringing two loving hearts (I'm sure that's the kind Mr. and Mrs. Selby have got, for I stayed with them last winter and found them real kind). Look at her, Miss Penelope, and say if you could have believed that so much artfulness, and wickedness, and brazen effrontery--she don't blink an eye even--could be tied up in one blanket."

"Yes, Betsey," said Penelope, opening her eyes, and looking partly offended and partly confused; "and what after that? Mr. and Mrs. Selby and the rest scarcely allowed you to bring them up here, merely to afford you the pleasure of playing showman!"

"You interrupted me, Miss Penelope, or rather I got carried away with having so much to tell all at once; and then I stuck fast. However, as I was saying, that's the squaw! The Selbys are the parents, and you've got the baby in this house! You needn't look at me, cousin, as if I was crazy, for I ain't. It's Muriel--your Muriel--that I mean. Ask Annette Bruneau--by rights she should have been here, too, to make the thing complete, and to speak for herself; but, as I have spoken for all the rest, I may say for her that she would not let herself be brought. She ran upstairs and locked herself into her room, so we had to come along without her. Why don't you send for Muriel to see her mother. Miss Penelope? and Matildy should be here, too. She spoke very harsh to me the last time we met; but she was mad, then, so I bear no grudge. She'll be better friends now. And she _should_ be here, too, to see the meeting of the long-lost child and her parents. It'll be real touching, and she deserves to see it, for she has been like a mother to Muriel--I'll allow that, for all that she said to me some weeks back."

Penelope fetched Muriel and Matilda, and the explanations were long and confused, mingled with embraces and many tears. Even Considine blew his nose, and the policeman passed his sleeve across his eyes; only the squaw looked on unmoved. "If all these whites were happy, as they said they were, why did they shed tears?"

The rush of words grew slower and more fitful after a while. Emotion is exhausting, whether it be grief or joy. Mary Selby sat with her arms round her daughter's waist, and her face buried in her bosom, while Matilda, half-jealous, and feeling half-bereaved, held the girl's hand.

Betsey stood up and surveyed the scene. It seemed her own handiwork, for had she not brought these people together? The emotional silence, when every one was filled with the same idea, made her think of the closing tableau in a pantomime, and to feel herself the beneficent spirit who had brought about the happy _dénouement_. She could not refrain from holding out her parasol over so many bowed heads. It seemed to her to have become a magic wand, tipped with a sparkling star. She could fancy, too, that her gown had transformed itself into tinsel and transparent draperies, and that she was being slowly carried up through the ceiling to the sound of plaintive music.

Much could have been done with Betsey, I verily believe, if she had been caught early and submitted to culture. But "Tollover's Circus" had been her only introduction to the world of plastic imagination, scenic, or pictorial art; saving always "Godey's Magazine of the Fashions," which instructed her in a variety of knowledge she would have been better without, the knowledge, not very accurately stated, of how women with ten times her fortune, if she should ever come to have any, wear their clothes.