Harry came to dinner, and Ada made him feel perfectly at home. Certainly prosperity had not spoiled her; she was just as frank and as friendly as when she had been staying with us as a girl at Canterbury; she introduced him to Lord Holmeskirk with a laughing remark, that Harry had at one time very nearly prevented her from ever occupying the position she now so unworthily filled, by making the most desperate love to her when she was only sixteen years old. Lord Holmeskirk laughed, and said, that in that case he was very greatly Harry's debtor in that he had not succeeded in his attempt upon Ada's affections.
Harry and Lord Holmeskirk were soon on very friendly terms. They suited each other well. They had moved certainly in very different circles, and had seen very different sides of life; but they were of the same happy disposition; both in their way singularly straightforward men, and both gifted with the same honest determination to see only the best side of things.
Our little dinner-party went off very pleasantly; and I felt quite relieved to find that when we were helped, the servants left the room; and Ada then told us that she had suffered so much as a girl from the stony presence behind her mother's chair, that she had always determined, if she were at the head of a house of her own, never to have a servant in the room one moment longer than necessary.
After dessert was over, Ada and we went up to the nursery, leaving the gentlemen over their wine, and I believe they would have sat and talked there all night if Ada had not at last sent them message after message to say that tea was ready upstairs. Soon after they came up our fly arrived, and we went home very much pleased with our evening.
After that Harry never raised any objection to going to dine at Wilton Crescent, which we afterwards did every month or so when Ada was in town. Polly and I used to lunch with her once a fortnight, and the coronetted carriage was very often down at Daisy Villa, where it never ceased to be an object of wonder and admiration to the small children of the neighbourhood, and I have no doubt gave us great standing and dignity in the eyes of the inhabitants of the other five villas. I really believe we never ceased to be subjects for wonder and speculation to the countess's powdered footman, who knowing that Lord Holmeskirk had married the daughter of the fashionable Lady Desborough, could never form any hypothesis perfectly satisfactory to himself as to how she could possibly come to be familiar with people living in such a small, and exceedingly unfashionable domicile as No. 1, Daisy Villas, Charlemagne Road, Putney.
CHAPTER III
A STRANGE PROFESSION
A very touching picture Sophy Gregory presented as she sat in the little parlour at work, a week after Dr. Ashleigh's visit; in her mourning dress, and with the tiny fatherless child in her lap. She was very pale, and looked years older than she was. Sophy had gone through a heavy trial. She had loved her husband very truly; not indeed with the same admiring affection she had felt for him when they met in the plantations of Harmer Place – that dream had been dispelled rudely enough long ago, – but she had loved him as a true woman, knowing his faults, and bearing with them, taking them indeed as a special and deserved punishment upon herself for her fault in marrying him as she had done; but yet loving him the more, in that she saw how hard he tried, in spite of his faults, to make her happy. For this she had thanked God, and had prayed very earnestly that some day it might be granted to her, that through her influence over him, and his love for her, he might yet turn out nearly such a man as, in her early days of love, she had fancied him to be. But now all those pictures which she had been so fondly painting of their life in a distant land, had suddenly faded away; those bright pictures which had been ever before her eyes, as she sat at her work through the day, or of an evening, with Robert sitting moodily drinking beside her; fair, happy pictures of their future life, in a rude hut in some lonely clearing, far away from the nearest neighbours; she, engaged in her household work, listening to the ring of Robert's axe, till the hour should come for him to return from his labour, tired, but cheery and bright, to spend the evening with her happily without that dreadful bottle; contented with her fond welcome, sitting by the log fire-side, perhaps with his children climbing on his knee, or standing by while he told them stories, or taught them their first simple lessons, while she sat by busy at her work watching them fondly. At the thought of these, or some such fancies, Sophy's face had brightened often, and, trusting in the future, she had almost forgotten the present, and once again admired as well as loved her husband, not for what he was, but for what he would some day become. But now all these pictures were gone, blotted out in a moment by the rude hand of death, – and of such a death! If he had died as most men die, tranquilly and peacefully, with his last words breathed in her ears, his last look fixed upon herself, Sophy thought she could have borne it with resignation; but to die such a death as this, to be shot down in his strength, to go out full of health and spirits, and never to return; and for her only to be told that he lay in an obscure grave in a distant town! this she could hardly bear; and as she looked with a blank hopeless look into the fire, she thought that were it not for the unconscious babe on her knees, she would gladly – oh, how gladly! – go where there is no more weeping and tears. But for the child's sake she must live and work; for that child who, if he had his rights, would be heir to wealth and fortune – to that very home where his father had been shot down like a common robber, by the woman who had defrauded him of his rights. Sophy did not know all the history of that night's work, only what Dr. Ashleigh had told her; that Robert had gone with the intention of alarming Miss Harmer into divulging where the will was hidden. Angela Harmer's death she regarded as an unfortunate effect of the fright, which could not have been foreseen; of the violence used towards her she was of course ignorant.
Was not Robert, she asked herself, right in what he did? Was he not in his own house, seeking his own for her sake and the child's. Should all this go for ever unpunished? Should this woman who had robbed her and her child, who had now slain her husband, who had, as Dr. Ashleigh had told her, destroyed his daughter's happiness, and brought her to the verge of the grave; should she prosper and triumph? No, a thousand times no; and day after day Sophy's determination became more and more deeply rooted, her purpose more strongly confirmed. Should it cost her her life as it had done Robert's, she would yet find the will. But how? And she brooded over the thought till her brain seemed on fire; she fell into reveries from which nothing except the crying of her child could rouse her; her eyes began to have a dreamy, far-off look, and had there not been anything to rouse and occupy her, it is probable that her reason would have given way entirely under the strain of this fixed idea upon her mind. Upon this day, however, there was a knock at the door, and a little talking in the passage, and then Mrs. Billow, who had been as kind as a mother to Sophy during this period, came into the room.
"Mr. Fielding wishes to speak to you, my dear; he has been here three or four times to ask after you, and I do think you had better see him."
Sophy looked up at her as she spoke, but it was evident that she did not hear what was said to her; her thoughts were too far away to be called back all at once.
"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Billow," she said presently, with an effort, "what are you saying?" Mrs. Billow repeated her message.
"Do see him, my dear," she went on as Sophy shook her head, "It will do you good; you are fretting yourself to death. Indeed, indeed, my dear, you are, and it is very wrong of you; what is to become of your little baby if you get ill, as I am sure you will, if you sit here think, think, all day, without speaking a word to any one? Do see him, now there's a deary, it will do you good, indeed it will."
Sophy paused a little, and then said in a weary tone, "Very well, Mrs. Billow, if it will please you, I will see him."
Mr. Fielding was shown in. He was a rough man, and, to a certain extent, an unprincipled one; but he had been a gentleman once, and could be one still when he chose, and his heart was, after all, not far from its right place.
"Mrs. Gregory," he said, as he came in, "I will not pain you by offering you my condolences, or by telling you how I feel for you in your affliction. Please to consider all that as said, and to take this visit as one simply of business. When I called the day before yesterday, I took the liberty of asking your landlady what you