It chanced that when Miss Fanny called, Gabriel was studying his lessons, using the dining-room table as a desk, and he was able to hear the conversation that ensued. Miss Fanny stood on no ceremony in entering. The front door was open and she entered without knocking, saying, "If there's nobody at home I'll carry the house away. Where are you, Lucy?"
"In my room, Fanny; come right in."
"How are you, and how is the high and mighty Gabriel?" Having received satisfactory answers to her friendly inquiries, Miss Fanny plunged at once into the business that had brought her out so early. "What do you think, Lucy? Margaret Gaither and her daughter have returned. They are at the Gaither Place, and Miss Polly has just told me that there isn't a mouthful to eat in the house—and there is Margaret at the point of death! Why, it is dreadful. Something must be done at once, that's certain. I wouldn't have bothered you, but you know what the circumstances are. I don't know what Margaret's feelings are with respect to me; you know we never were bosom friends. Yet I never really disliked her, and now, after all that has happened, I couldn't bear to think that she was suffering for anything. Likely enough she would be embarrassed if I called and offered assistance. What is to be done?"
"Wouldn't it be best for some one to call—some one who was her friend?" The cool, level voice of Gabriel's grandmother seemed to clear the atmosphere. "Whatever is to be done should be done sympathetically. If I could see Polly, there would be no difficulty."
"Well, I saw Miss Polly," said Miss Fanny, "and she told me the whole situation, and I was on the point of saying that I'd run back home and send something over, when an upper window was opened, and Margaret Gaither's daughter stood there gazing at me—and she's a beauty, Lucy; there's a chance for Gabriel there. Well, you know how deaf Miss Polly is; if I had said what I wanted to say, that child would have heard every word, and there was something in her face that held me dumb. Miss Polly talked and I nodded my head, and that was all. The old soul must have thought the cat had my tongue." Miss Fanny laughed uneasily as she made the last remark.
"If Margaret is ill, she should have attention. I will go there this morning." This was Mrs. Lumsden's decision.
"I'll send the carriage for you as soon as I can run home," said Miss Fanny. With that she rose to go, and hustled out of the room, but in the hallway she turned and remarked: "Tell Gabriel that he will have to lengthen his suspenders, now that Nan has put on long dresses."
"Oh, no!" protested Mrs. Lumsden. "We mustn't put any such nonsense in Gabriel's head. Nan is for Francis Bethune. If it isn't all arranged it ought to be. Why, the land of Dorrington joins the land that Bethune will fall heir to some day, and it seems natural that the two estates should become one." Gabriel's grandmother had old-fashioned ideas about marriage.
"Oh, I see!" replied Miss Fanny with a laugh; "you are so intent on joining the two estates in wedlock that you take no account of the individuals. But brother Pulaski says that for many years to come, the more land a man has the poorer he will become."
"Upon my word, I don't see how that can be," responded Mrs. Lumsden. This was the first faint whiff of the new order that had come to the nostrils of the dear old lady.
Miss Fanny went home, and in no long time Neighbour Tomlin's carriage came to the door. At the last moment, Mrs. Lumsden decided that Gabriel should go with her. "It may be necessary for you to go on an errand. I presume there are servants there, but I don't know whether they are to be depended on."
So Gabriel helped his grandmother into the carriage, climbed in after her, and in a very short time they were at the Gaither Place. The young woman whom Gabriel had seen in Mr. Goodlett's hack was standing in the door, and the little frown on her forehead was more pronounced than ever. She was evidently troubled.
"Good-morning," said Mrs. Lumsden. "I have come to see Margaret. Does she receive visitors?"
"My name is Margaret, too," said the young woman, after returning Mrs. Lumsden's salutation, and bowing to Gabriel. "But of course you came to see my mother. She is upstairs—she would be carried there, though I begged her to take one of the lower rooms. She is in the room in which she was born."
"I know the way very well," said Mrs. Lumsden. She was for starting up the stairway, but the young woman detained her by a gesture and turned to Gabriel.
"Won't you come in?" she inquired. "We are old acquaintances, you know. Your name is Gabriel—wait!—Gabriel Tolliver. Don't you see how well I know you? Come, we'll help your grandmother up the stairs." This they did—the girl with the firm and practised hand of an expert, and Gabriel with the awkwardness common to young fellows of his age. The young woman led Mrs. Lumsden to her mother's bedside, and presently came back to Gabriel.
"We will go down now, if you please," she said. "My mother is very ill—worse than she has ever been—and you can't imagine how lonely I am. Mother is at home here, while my home, if I have any, is in Louisiana. I suppose you never had any trouble?"
"My mother is dead," he said simply. Margaret reached out her hand and touched him gently on the arm. It was a gesture of impulsive sympathy.
"What is it?" Gabriel asked, thinking she was calling his attention to something she saw or heard.
"Nothing," she said softly. Gabriel understood then, and he could have kicked himself for his stupidity. "Your grandmother is a very beautiful old lady," she remarked after a period of silence.
"She is very good to me," Gabriel replied, at a loss what to say, for he always shrank from praising those near and dear to him. As he sat there, he marvelled at the self-possession of this young woman in the midst of strangers, and with her mother critically ill.
In a little while he heard his grandmother calling him from the head of the stairs. "Gabriel, jump in the carriage and fetch Dr. Dorrington at once. He's at home at this hour."
He did as he was bid, and Nan, who was coming uptown on business of her own, so she said, must needs get in the carriage with her father. The combination was more than Gabriel had bargained for. There was a twinkle in Dr. Dorrington's eye, as he glanced good-humouredly from one to the other, that Gabriel did not like at all. For some reason or other, which he was unable to fathom, the young man was inclined to fight shy of Nan's father; and there was nothing he liked less than to find himself in Dr. Dorrington's company—more especially when Nan was present, too. Noting the quizzical glances of the physician, Gabriel, like a great booby, began to blush, and in another moment, Nan was blushing, too.
"Now, father"—she only called him father when she was angry, or dreadfully in earnest—"Now, father! if you begin your teasing, I'll jump from the carriage. I'll not ride with a grown man who doesn't know how to behave in his daughter's company."
Her father laughed gaily. "Teasing? Why, I wasn't thinking of teasing. I was just going to remark that the weather is very warm for the season, and then I intended to suggest to Gabriel that, as I proposed to get you a blue parasol, he would do well to get him a red one."
"And why should Gabriel get a parasol?" Nan inquired with a show of indignation.
"Why, simply to be in the fashion," her father replied. "I remember the time when you cried for a hat because Gabriel had one; I also remember that once when you were wearing a sun-bonnet, Gabriel borrowed one and wore it—and a pretty figure he cut in it."
"I don't see how you can remember it," said Gabriel laughing and blushing.
"Well, I don't see how in the