Part 2

"Don't, Miss Doris! Don't cry so, dear!" said Susan, pityingly, wiping her own tears away as she spoke. "Master and mistress may return in time to sit down with their guests."

"No, they won't. They'll never come back!" exclaimed Doris, with another burst of sobs.

"What do they say in the letter?" asked the old servant.

"It's awful!" replied Doris. "Just see"--she passed the letter, with a trembling hand--"see what mother has written to me. _You_ may read it, Susan, though no one else shall. There's a message for you in it about the house."

Susan adjusted her glasses and began to read the letter with some difficulty, for tears were in her eyes, and she had to take off her spectacles again and again in order to wipe them away.

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she ejaculated more than once, as she read the letter. "That I should have lived to see this day! My poor mistress! What she must be suffering!"

"And father!" exclaimed Doris. "Oh, how miserable he must be! For it is his fault, you know, and the knowledge of that must be so dreadful."

"I cannot understand his doing it," said Susan, looking deeply pained. "Such a high-minded, honourable gentleman as he always seemed. Your poor mother! your poor mother!" she repeated. "What must she be feeling."

"It's bad for me, too," said Doris, "to be deserted, to be left behind like this."

"Aye, dearie, it is," sighed the old servant, looking at her with great affection. "But you must remember, 'When my father and mother forsake me then the Lord taketh me up.'"

"I don't feel as if He takes _me_ up," sobbed Doris, whose mind was too full of trouble to receive any comfort just then. "Father and mother _might_ have kissed me and said good-bye! Oh, it was cruel, cruel to steal away when I was asleep!" And again she cried as if her heart would break.

Susan endeavoured to calm her, but for some time in vain. At last, however, the old servant, glancing at the small clock on the mantelpiece, exclaimed:

"We _must_ prepare to meet the visitors who are coming! Miss Doris, rouse yourself, be brave; we have our work to do now--afterwards we can weep." Susan brushed away her own tears as she spoke, and, drawing herself up, added in her more usual, matter-of-fact tone, "I should like to have this letter, or at least the part of it containing that message to me, so that I may be able to show it to those who may question my right to sell the furniture, etc."

"I can't spare the letter," replied Doris, "but I will tear off the half sheet containing the message to you."

"Yes, do, dearie, and write your mother's name after it, and your own, too."

"Very well," said Doris, "I will write my own name beside mother's--then it will be seen that I have written hers for her." She did so, adding "pro" before writing her mother's, and then Susan took the half sheet and went to prepare for the coming guests.

An hour afterwards, as Doris was mechanically arranging the drawing-room in the way her mother always liked to have it when visitors were expected, Bernard Cameron entered unannounced.

"Doris!" he exclaimed, coming up to her with outstretched hands. "My dear Doris, what has happened? Crying? Why, darling, what is the matter?"

"Oh, Bernard! Bernard!" She could not tell him for her tears; but the touch of his cool, strong hand was comforting, and she clung to it for a moment.

He soothed her gently until she was able to speak and tell him what had happened since she parted from him the night before, then she allowed him to read her mother's letter.

It was a great blow to the young man full of bright anticipations and ambition, in the full tide of his Oxford career, on the eve of his engagement of marriage, and on the day of his coming-of-age, to learn that he was bereft of his entire fortune and rendered absolutely penniless by one who had undertaken to care for him and protect his rights; who was, moreover, the father of his beloved, with whom he intended to share all that he possessed. Small wonder was it that the young man drew back a little, covering his face with his hands, and uttering something between a boyish sob and a manly sigh.

The next minute he would have turned to Doris again, in order that he might say kind, reassuring words; for not for a moment was his love for her affected by her father's wrong-doing, but they were interrupted, Mr. Hamilton being announced.

The trustee looked worried. He came forward nervously, inquiring if Doris knew where her father was. It was evident that he had already heard from the servants of Mr. Anderson's absence.

Doris could not speak. She looked helplessly at the man, and then at Bernard, rose as if to leave the room, made a step or two forward, stumbled over a footstool, and would have fallen if Bernard had not caught hold of her.

"All this is too much for you," he said, in a quick, authoritative manner. "You must go and lie down. Mr. Hamilton, be so good as to touch the bell. Thank you. Doris does not know where her father is. That will do, Doris. No need to say any more at present. Susan," he continued, as the door opened, "help Miss Anderson to her room. She is ill."

He handed Doris over to the maid with care; but it seemed to the poor girl that he was only too anxious to get rid of her, now that he was aware of the wrong her father had done him. She was, however, relieved to be able to go to her own room, and, under the plea of illness, escape the harassing questions which, otherwise, the coming guests might oblige her to answer. In sending her to her room Bernard was really doing the kindest thing. It never occurred to him that she could possibly imagine that he blamed her, or in any way felt his love for her diminished by her father's heinous conduct.

It was a pity, and the cause of much unhappiness, that he had not time to say one kind word to the poor girl, after the grievous disclosure she had made to him.

*CHAPTER IV.*

*A HARD WOMAN.*

O for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun! LONGFELLOW.

"I have come to say a bit of my mind, Doris Anderson!"

The words were hard and uncompromising. Mrs. Cameron, who, in the twilight, had sought and obtained access to the bedroom of the missing trustee's daughter, stood over her with a gesture which was almost menacing. The difficulty she had met with in forcing her way upstairs against the wishes of Susan and the other frightened maidservants, in whose eyes she looked terrible in her wrath, had much increased her displeasure. She now longed to "have it out" with the only member of Mr. Anderson's family within her reach, or, as she expressed it to Doris, to give her a "bit of her mind."

It was not a nice mind, Doris knew, so far as gentleness, charity, and courtesy constitute niceness, and the poor girl shrank away from her visitor, burying her tear-stained face still deeper in the pillows. A pent-up sigh escaping as she did so might have appealed to a more tender-hearted woman, but only served to still further incense Mrs. Cameron, who, tossing her head with a muttered malediction, forthwith proceeded to disclose the real vulgarity and unkindness of her nature.

"It's no use sniffing and crying there, young woman," she said, "and it's not a bit of good your playing the innocent, and pretending you knew nothing of what was going on. Your father is a thief and a scoundrel! Now what is the use of your sitting up, with that white face, and pointing to the door like a tragedy queen? I shall say what I've come to say, and no power on earth shall stop me. John Anderson, your father, has stolen my poor boy's money, and wasted every penny of it! There is nothing left! Nothing! All has gone! Twenty-five thousand pounds were entrusted to your father by his dying friend Richard Cameron, my husband, who had unlimited faith in him, as had also Mr. Hamilton; and it's all gone! There is nothing left! Nothing! _Nothing_! My poor boy is ruined, absolutely ruined! Just at the starting of his life, when he is doing so well at Oxford, with all his ambition----"

She broke down for a moment, with something like a sob, but, suppressing it, frowned the more fiercely to hide the momentary weakness, "He has this blow hurled at him by one of the very men who, of all others, were appointed to protect his interests, and make everything smooth before him. It isn't as if your father wasn't paid for being acting executor, or trustee. My husband, who was always just"--Mrs. Cameron was one of those wives who abuse and quarrel with their husbands while they have them, but after their death wear perpetual mourning and lose no opportunity of sounding their praises--"left John Anderson a legacy of a hundred pounds, to repay him for any trouble the business of administering his estate might cause. Little did he think what a thief and rogue the man would turn out to be!"

"Leave the room!" gasped poor Doris, sitting up and waving her hand frantically towards the door. Whatever her father had done, she could not listen to such abuse of him.

"Leave the room, indeed!" cried Mrs. Cameron, sitting down on a bedroom chair, which trembled beneath her weight--she weighed at least twelve stone, being stout and tall--"I shall leave it when I choose, and when I've said what I have to say, and not before! And it doesn't become you, Doris," she cried--"it doesn't become you to speak saucily to me. You're as bad as John Anderson, no doubt. Like father, like daughter! You're all tarred with the same stick. If you didn't actually take my boy's money yourself, perhaps you used some of it; or, if you didn't, no doubt it was your extravagance and your mother's that made Anderson want money so badly that he took what was not his own. However," she went on inconsequently, "you are as bad as he if you defend him, and take sides against my poor boy, who never did anything to harm you in his life----"

"Oh, I don't!" interrupted Doris, distressed beyond measure at the idea of such a thing. "If you only knew how I esteem Bernard, and I----" She broke off with a saving instinct which told her that not by pleading her love for Bernard would she soften his mother's heart.

"Esteem him, and yet take the part of the villain who has robbed him of everything?" cried the other indignantly.

"You forget"--almost soundlessly murmured Doris, her white lips only just parting for the words to escape--"you forget, the wrong-doer is my father. Yes, he has done wrong--I acknowledge it," she cried pathetically. "But still he is my father!" And the tears fell down her cheeks.

It was a sight to melt a heart of stone; but Mrs. Cameron was not looking. Though her eyes were fixed upon Doris, and her ears heard the faintly uttered words, she perceived nothing but her boy's wrongs and her own, the vanished L25,000, the stopping of Bernard's education at Oxford, the failure of her own tiny income to provide for their daily bread and the commonest clothes, the sinking of her son into a poor, subordinate sphere at the very commencement of his life, the slipping of herself into squalid, poverty-stricken surroundings, and a narrow, meagre old age. Another picture, too, presented itself the next moment, and that was the mental vision of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson enjoying themselves abroad, in the lap of luxury, eating and drinking at the best hotels, arrayed in handsome clothing, and laughing, yes, actually laughing together about the way in which they had lightened the Camerons pockets.

That being so, it was no wonder that Mrs. Cameron's next words were even harsher than those which had preceded them.

"Yes, you've a scoundrel for a father! You must never forget that!" she cried. "Never, never, for one moment! Wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, you must never forget that. You'll have to take a back seat in life, I can tell you. Not yours will be the lot of other girls. With a father who is a felon in the eyes of the law you can never marry into a respectable family without bringing into it such a load of disgrace as will do it a cruel wrong."

She fixed her eyes sharply on the girl's pale miserable face as she spoke, with more than a suspicion of a love affair between her and Bernard, which she determined to quash, cost what it might to Doris.

"If you marry," she continued harshly, "you will take your husband a dowry of disgrace--that, and nothing else!" She laughed harshly. "Why," she ejaculated the next minute, "why, the girl's not listening!" for she perceived Doris springing from her bed and beginning, in trembling haste, to dress herself.

To get away from that terrible voice, and the sound of those cruel words, was Doris's first determination; her second was to go where she could hide for ever and ever from Bernard Cameron, lest in his noble, disinterested love for her he should venture, in spite of what had occurred, to insist upon marrying her. The idea of bringing him a dowry of disgrace was so frightful that it over-balanced for the moment the poor, distraught mind of the suffering girl.

Mrs. Cameron was one of those women who, when wronged, are blind and deaf to all else; suffering acutely, they pour out torrents of words, unseeing, unheeding the mischief they may be doing to others. She, therefore, continued talking, in a loud, harsh voice, with unsparing bitterness, all the time Doris was dressing and putting on her plainest outdoor apparel; and the mother's mind having turned to the subject of marriage, and her wish being to destroy any thoughts Doris might have cherished of Bernard as a possible husband, she said:

"My son, though poor as a pauper now--thanks to your father--bears an unblemished name. Honourable as the day, he comes of a most honourable race of men. In time, when he has worked up some sort of position for himself, he may marry a girl with money, and thus, in a way, attain to something like the position he has lost. It is all a chance, of course, but it is the only chance he has. There are lots of girls with money. He is handsome and taking; he must marry one of them. Do you hear me, Doris? I say he must! It is the only chance he has. Are you not glad for him to have just that one little chance?"

Doris was silent.

"Ha! You do not answer? Can it be, can it possibly be," Mrs. Cameron's voice grew hysterical, in her fear and anxiety, "that from any foolish words the poor, ruined lad has said--such words as lads will say to giddy girls--you can possibly consider him at all, in any way, bound to you?"

The poor girl would not answer. She looked appealingly around. Was there no one who could save her from this woman? Where was Bernard? Why was he not at her side, to shield and protect her? The next moment she realised the impossibility of his being there in her bedroom; and again her eyes roved longingly round the limited space.

On the morrow no doubt pitying friends, hearing of her trouble, would rally round her: the clergyman's wife, the doctor's, the ladies to whose school she used to go, and others, acquaintances more or less intimate. There was not one of them who would not be kinder to her than this woman, who was goading her now beyond endurance. But they were absent--and Mrs. Cameron was so very, very present.

"Do you mean to say--do you mean to say--there is anything between you, the daughter of a criminal, who shall yet be brought to justice, if there be any power in the arm of the law, and my son--my stainless, innocent child? Will you answer me?"

The room, which was going round and round, in a cloud of darkness crossed by sparks of light, seemed to Doris to assume once more its ordinary appearance, as she came round out of a half-swoon. What to answer, however, she knew not. She could only dimly comprehend the question. Was there anything between her, overwhelmed as she was with disgrace, and Bernard, poor, defrauded, yet honourable in the eyes of all men? Was there anything between them? Yes. There was something between them--there was love. But could she speak of that to a third person, and that third person one so aggressive as Mrs. Cameron? She felt she could not: therefore again she was silent, while the woman poured out on her the wrath which now completely over-mastered her.

"You bad girl!" she cried. "Not content with your father's having ruined my boy by stealing all his money, you are mean enough and wicked enough to deliberately determine to cut away his one remaining chance of rising in the world! 'Pon my word"--all the vulgarity of the woman was coming to the surface--"you would ruin him body and soul, if you could! All for your own ambition, that you, too, may rise in the world; you intend to cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock--and he won't be able to raise you, not he, poor lad! but you will drag him down into the mire, which will close over his head and then--then perhaps you will be content."

She waited for Doris to speak, but still the girl was unable to articulate a word. She was fastening her hat now, and putting the last touches to her veil and gloves; in a moment or two she would be able to escape into the open air, and into the night, now fast coming on.

"It is to his chivalry, doubtless, that you are trusting, to his generosity, his love, his charity, his magnanimity. By his virtues you would slay him, that is, I mean, debase him in the eyes of the world--the world we live in," continued the upbraiding voice.

Then Doris, stung beyond endurance and driven to bay, made answer, confronting Mrs. Cameron proudly, with her little head held high:

"You may keep your son. I will never marry him. He is nothing to me now--_nothing_."

"I can tell him that?"

"Tell him," cried Doris passionately, "tell him that I would not marry the son of such a mother for any consideration in the world! Tell him that I would _rather die_." She felt at that moment as if she would, for the woman's cruel words had dragged her heart far from its moorings.

The next moment Mrs. Cameron was alone, standing in the middle of the room, where she had so brow-beaten and insulted the innocent daughter of that unhappy house, listening to Doris's retreating footsteps on the stairs and in the hall, and then the gentle closing of the outer door.

*CHAPTER V.*

*BERNARD SEARCHES FOR DORIS.*

Life is so sad a thing, its measure Brims over full with human tears; A blighted hope, a buried treasure, Infinite pain, delusive pleasure, Make sorrowful our years. * * * * * Heaven is so near, oh friend, 'tis yonder, God's word doth clear the uncertain way; His hand will bear thee, lest thou wander, His Spirit teach thee thoughts to ponder Till thou hast found the day. LOLA MARSHALL DEANE.

Doris had gone. She had promised never to marry Bernard. The young people were parted for ever. Mrs. Cameron, though poor, had her son, her dear, if penniless, son all to herself. By a vigorous onslaught she had defeated and driven away the enemy, utterly routed and confounded. It was a moment of triumph for her, and yet she felt anything but triumphant; and it was with a cross and gloomy countenance that she proceeded downstairs in search of her son, whom she found at last closeted with Mr. Hamilton in the study.

"How is Doris?" asked Bernard, rising as his mother entered, and offering her a chair.

Mrs. Cameron sat down heavily, a little disconcerted by this interrogation.

"What does that matter?" she snapped. "The question is how are we, the wronged, defrauded, robbed?"

Her son looked at her impatiently. "After all, it is worse for Doris," he said, with great feeling.

"Worse?" ejaculated his mother.

"Worse?" echoed Mr. Hamilton. He was a long, lean man, remarkable for his habitual silence and great learning.

"Yes, ten thousand times worse!" cried Bernard. "We have lost only our money, but she has lost her parents, her home, her money, and everything--that is, almost everything," correcting himself, as a smile flitted across his face, "at one stroke."

"Bernard is right--and the poor girl has the disgrace to bear as well," interjected Mr. Hamilton.

"Humph!" Mrs. Cameron tossed her head. "The Andersons deserve all that they have got," she was beginning, when Bernard stopped her hastily.

"Mother," he said, and his tone had lost its usual submissiveness in speaking to her, "Doris has nothing to do with the cause of our misfortunes. She knew nothing about all this until after it had happened."

"How do you know?" asked Mrs. Cameron sharply.

"Doris told me so."

"Doris told you so! And you believed her?"

"Yes, and always shall!" cried Bernard, his face glowing and his eyes flashing. "And I would have you understand, mother, that I will have no word said against Doris. She and I are engaged to be married. She is my promised wife."

There was a dead silence in the room when his clear, manly voice ceased speaking. His mother was too much astounded and disturbed to easily find words; she had not imagined things had gone quite so far as that between the young people. And Mr. Hamilton, not knowing what to say, shrank back into his habitual silence.

"She is my promised wife," said Bernard again, and there was even more pride and confidence in his young tones. A smile, joyous and brilliant, broke out all over his handsome face. Forgotten were the pecuniary troubles now, the broken career at Oxford, the school that would never be his. In their place was Doris, his beautiful beloved, who would more than make up to him for all and everything. To his mother's amazement and consternation he went on rapidly, "I shall marry her at once, then I shall have the right to protect her against every breath of calumny,--though indeed, if you will respect my wish, Mr. Hamilton," he added, turning to the minister, "and will not tell the police, or prosecute Mr. Anderson, the matter can be hushed up as far as possible, and her name will not be tarnished. But in any case, _in any case_," he repeated, "Doris is mine. I shall marry her and work for her. If the worst comes to the worst, I can get a clerkship, or a post as schoolmaster--and with Doris, with Doris," he concluded, "I shall be very, _very_ happy."

His mother's words broke like a bombshell into the midst of his fond imaginings. "Doris has just been telling me," she said, in low, cruel tones, "that she will _never_ marry you!"

"What? What are you saying?" exclaimed Bernard, agitatedly, the joy in his face giving place to an expression of great anxiety.

His mother said again, "Doris has just been saying to me that she will never, _never_ marry you. She told me I was to tell you so."

"But this is most unaccountable!" cried Bernard, beginning to walk up and down the room. "This is most unaccountable," he repeated. "Why, she told me----" he broke off, beginning again, "Where is she? I must see her--must hear from her own lips the reason of this change."

"You cannot see her, Bernard," said his mother, in slow, icy tones. "You cannot see her. She is not in this house----"

"Not in this house? Not here? What do you mean?"

"She has gone away."

"But where? Where has she gone?"

"I do not know."

"But has she left no message for me?" he asked, with exceeding anxiousness.

"She left the message I have given you," answered his mother. "Tell Bernard," she said, "that I will never, _never_ marry him!"

"That message I refuse to receive!" cried Bernard. "Poor Doris was in such trouble she did not know what she was saying--I am sure she did not mean that."

"I suppose you think I am telling you a lie?" began his mother hotly.

Bernard did not reply, indeed he did not apparently hear her words. He hurried out into the hall, got his hat, and then returned to the room to say to his mother:

"Have you no idea where Doris has gone?"

"Not the least!" snapped Mrs. Cameron.