else, dear Rhoda. Your sympathy, your aid in his work, your child’s love. Remember that your father’s life is not a very happy one. You are old enough to understand that. You know, I think, that it never has been very happy. Can’t you find work enough in cheering him?”
For reply the girl burst into tears.
“Cheer him!” she sobbed. “How can I cheer any one? How can I give comfort to others when my own life is bare of it? It’s easy for you to show me my duty, Mrs. Clarendon. Tell me how I am to do it!”
Isabel put her arm about the shaken form, and there was soothing in the warm current of her blood.
“I cannot tell you how to do it, Rhoda,” she said, when the sobs had half stilled themselves. “My own is too much for me. But I can—with such force of love as is in me—implore you to guard against mistakes, beseech you not to heap up trouble for yourself through want of experience, want of knowledge of the world, through refusal to let older ones see and judge for you. My own life has been full of lessons, though I dare say I have not suffered as much as others would have done in my place, for I have a temperament which easily—only too easily—throws aside care. If only I could live it over again with all my experience to guide me!”
“You don’t understand me,” said the girl, with a fretfulness she tried to subdue. “You don’t know what my trials are. No amount of experience could help me.”
“Not against suffering; no. I won’t talk nonsense, however well it may sound. But you speak of taking active steps, Rhoda. There experience can give very real aid.”
“Mrs. Clarendon,” said Rhoda, after a short silence, “I’m afraid I haven’t a very good disposition. I don’t feel to my father as I ought; I don’t care as much for anybody as I ought—for any of my relations, my friends. I’m not happy, and that seems to absorb me.”
“You don’t care for me, Rhoda?—not for me, a little bit of sincere affection?”
The voice melted the girl’s heart, so wonderful was the power it had.
“I love you with all my heart!” she cried, throwing her arms about Isabel. “You make me feel it!”
“Dear, and that is what I cannot live without,” said Isabel. “I must have friends who love me—simple, pure, unselfish love. I have spent my life in trying to make such friends. I haven’t always succeeded, you know, just because I have my faults—oh, heaps of them! and often I’m as selfish as any one could be. But a good many do love me, I think and trust. Love has a different meaning for you, hasn’t it, Rhoda? I don’t think I have ever known that other kind, and now I certainly never shall. It asks too much, I think; mine is not a passionate nature. But if you could know how happy I have often been in the simple affection of young girls who come and tell me their troubles. If I had had children, I should have spoilt them dreadfully.”
Her eyes wandered, the speech died for a moment on her lips.
“Rhoda,” she continued, taking both the girl’s hands, “some day, and before long, I shall want your love and that of all my dear friends more than ever. Something—never mind, I shall want it, and I have tried so hard to earn it, because I looked forward and knew. All selfish calculation, you see,” she added, with a nervous laugh, “but then it’s only kindness I ask for. You won’t take yours away? You won’t do anything that will put a distance between us? Nothing foolish? Nothing ill-considered? You see, I’ll put it all on my own account. I can’t spare you, I can’t spare one who loves me!”
Mrs. Clarendon accompanied Rhoda next day to Winstoke station. On her way back she drove to several cottages where it was her custom to call, and where the dwellers had good cause to welcome her. Of sundry things which occurred to her in the course of these visits, she desired to speak with Mr. Vissian, and accordingly stopped at the rectory before driving through her own gates. The front door stood open, and with the freedom of intimacy, she walked straight in and tapped at the parlour door, which was ajar. That room proving empty, she passed to the next, which was the rectors study, and here too tapped. A voice bade her enter—to her surprise an unfamiliar voice. She turned the handle, however, and looked in.
A young man was sitting in the rector’s easy-chair, a book in his hand. He rose on seeing an unknown lady. They looked at each other for a moment, with a little natural embarrassment on both sides. Each rapidly arrived at a conclusion as to the other’s identity, and the smile in both cases expressed a certain interest.
“Pardon me,” Mrs. Clarendon said; “I am seeking the rector, or Mrs. Vissian; Can you tell me if either is at home?”
“The rector, I believe, is still away,” was the reply, “but Mrs. Vissian is in the garden. I will tell her.”
But in the same moment Mrs. Vissian appeared, carrying a basket of fruit. She had garden gloves on her hands. Behind her came Master Percy. There was exchange of greetings; then, in response to a look from Mrs. Clarendon, the youthful matron went through a ceremony of introduction. Mrs. Clarendon and Mr. Kingcote were requested henceforth to know each other, society sanctioning the acquaintance.
“Your name is already familiar to me,” said Isabel; “I have been looking forward to the pleasure of meeting you some day. It was in fear and trembling that I knocked at the sanctuary; Mr. Vissian will congratulate himself on having left a guardian. Those precious volumes; who knows, if there had been no one here——?”
“And how are you, Percy?” she asked, turning to the child, who had come into the library, and holding to him her hand. Percy, instead of merely giving his own, solemnly knelt upon one knee, and raised the gloved fingers to his lips. His mother broke into a merry laugh; Mrs. Clarendon smiled, glanced at Kingcote, and looked back at the boy with surprise.
“That is most chivalrous behaviour, Percy,” she said.
Mrs. Vissian still laughed. Percy, who had gone red, eyed her reproachfully.
“You know I am a page to-day, mother,” he said, “that’s how a page ought to behave. Isn’t it, Mr. Kingcote?”
Isabel drew him to her and kissed him; a glow of pleasure showed through her smiling.
“Percy is a great many different people in a week,” explained Mrs. Vissian. “To-morrow he’ll be a pirate, and then I’m afraid he wouldn’t show such politeness.”
“That shows you don’t understand, mother,” remarked the boy. “Pirates are always polite to beautiful ladies.”
There was more laughter at this. Kingcote stood leaning against the mantelpiece, smiling gravely. Percy caught his eye, and, still confused and rather indignant, went to his side.
“Percy still has ideals,” Kingcote observed, laying his hand on the child’s head.
“Ah, they’re so hard to preserve!” sighed Isabel. Then, turning to Mrs. Vissian, “I want a word or two with you about things that are painfully real. Shall we go into the sitting-room?”
She bowed and said a word of adieu to Kingcote, who stood looking at the doorway through which she had disappeared.
Two days later fresh guests arrived at Knightswell, and for a week there was much riding and driving, lawn-tennis, and straying about the garden and park by moonlight. Then the house of a sudden emptied itself of all its occupants save Ada Warren. Mrs. Clarendon herself went to stay at two country places
