I DON’T know very well how I got to Mr. Cresswell’s house. I did manage to get there somehow. I went listlessly through the old fashioned streets I knew so well, and turned down upon that serious old house with its brick front and rows of windows all covered with Venetian blinds. It met the morning sun full, and that was why the blinds were down; but it had a dismal effect upon me, as anything else would have had at that moment. I know how the rooms look inside when the blinds are down; it throws a chill into one’s heart that has known them put down for sadder reasons. I went into the house in the same listless way, like a person in a dream. Somehow I could not take any comfort in those dear young creatures I had just found out. Mr. Luigi, whom I had not found out, returned upon me like a nightmare. Was there no possible way in which this mystery could be discovered? What if I sought an interview with himself and put it to him fairly to tell me who he was? I went into Bob Cresswell’s drawing-room, where the windows were open and the sunshine slanting in through the Venetian blinds. It was rather dark, but a green pleasant darkness, the wind stirring the curtains, and now and then knocking the wood of the blinds softly against the woodwork of the window; a cheerful kind of gloom. Sara’s knick-knacks lay scattered about everywhere on the tables, and there were cushions, and ottomans, and screens, and fantastic pieces of ornamental work about, enough to have persuaded a stranger that Sara was the most industrious person in the world. The creature bought them all, you know, at fancy fairs and such absurd places. I am not sure that she ever took a needle in her fingers; but she said herself she had not the slightest intention of saving her poor papa’s money; and indeed it was very true.

I was thankful to sit down by myself a little in the silence. Sara was out, it appeared, and I threw myself into an easy-chair, and actually felt the quietness and green-twilight look of the room, with just a touch of sunshine here and there upon the carpet near the windows, a comfort to me. Once again,{242} as you may suppose, I thought it all over; but into the confused crowd of my own thoughts, where Sarah, Carson, Mr. Luigi, his fat servant, my new-found Milly Mortimer, and all her belongings, kept swaying in and out and round about each other, there came gleams of the other people suggested by this room;—Mr. Cresswell trying to make some light out of the confusion, Sara darting about, a mischievous, bewildering little sprite, and even, by some strange incoherency of my imagination, Sara’s poor pretty young mother, dead seventeen years ago, flickering about it, with her melancholy young eyes. Poor sweet lonely creature! I remember her a bride in that very room, with Bob Cresswell who might almost have been her father, very fond, but not knowing a bit what to make of her; and then lying helpless on the sofa, and then fading away out of sight, and the place that had known her knowing her no more. Ah me! I wonder whether that is not the best way of getting an end put to all one’s riddles. If Sarah and I had died girls, we should have been girls for ever,—pleasant shadows always belonging to the old house. Now it would be different, very different. When we were gone, what story might be told about us? “In their time something dreadful occurred about the succession, proving that they had never any right to the estate;” or “the great lawsuit began between the heirs of a younger branch and a supposed son of Squire Lewis.” Dear! dear! Who could this young man be? and now here was our real relation, our pretty Milly Mortimer—our true heir, if we were the true heirs of the estate. Dare I let her believe herself the heir of the Park with this mystery hanging over all our heads? Poor dear child, she was thinking more about her husband’s marching orders than if a hundred Parks had been in her power. Trouble there, trouble here; everywhere trouble of one sort or another. I declare I felt very tired of it all, sitting in that cool shady drawing-room. I could turn nowhere without finding some aggravation. This is how life serves us, though it seems such a great thing to keep in life.

“But, godmamma, how in all the world did you come here?” cried Sara Cresswell, springing upon me suddenly, before I had seen her come in, like a kitten as she was; “you who never come to Chester but in great state, to call upon people! It’s only one o’clock, and there’s no carriage about the streets, and you’ve got your old brown dress on. How did you get here?”

“Never mind, child,” said I, a little sharply; “you take{243} away my breath. Suppose you get me some lunch, and don’t ask any questions. I am going to stay all day, perhaps all night,” I said with a little desperation; “perhaps it’s the best thing I could do.”

“Godmamma, something has happened!” cried Sara; and she came and knelt down on the stool at my feet, looking up in my face, with cheeks all crimsoned over, and eyes sparkling brighter than I had ever seen them. It was not anxiety but positive expectation that flushed the child’s face. I could not help thrusting her away from me with my hand, in the fulness of my heart.

“Child!” cried I, “you are glad! you think something has happened to us, and it flushes you with pleasure. I did not expect as much from you!”

Sara stumbled up to her feet, confused and affronted. She stood a moment irresolute, not sure, apparently, how to take it, or whether to show me to the full extent how angry and annoyed she was. However, I suppose she remembered that we were in her father’s house, and that I was her guest after a fashion; for she stammered some kind of apology. “You took me into your confidence before, and naturally ............