I FOUND Aunt Milly in the library with some miniatures spread out before her. She wanted to show them to me. I can’t tell very well what had suggested this to her. She was kept indoors by the rain, and with this standing uneasiness in her mind, Aunt Milly naturally sought for some means of returning to a discussion of the subject that engaged all her thoughts. She made me sit down by her, and silently put one after another before me. I could see clearly enough what she meant. A certain family resemblance ran through them all, a resemblance which Aunt Milly herself had escaped, and of which I believe there was not a trace in my features. But one after another these portraits recalled to me the young Italian’s face.
“I ought to tell you,” said Aunt Milly in a tremulous tone, “what has occurred to my own mind. I have thought of it for some time, but it’s so very unlikely that I never could allow myself to think it. I do believe he must be my father’s son. Yes, you may well be surprised. I can’t think anything else but that my father must have married and had a son, and Sarah somehow had bullied him into leaving the child behind, and we’ve been deceivers all this time, and the Park has never been ours.”
“But, dear Aunt Milly,” cried I, “with all these terrible thoughts, why don’t you satisfy yourself. If you tell Miss Mortimer how much you have found out, she certainly cannot help clearing up the rest.”
“Ah! but she can help it—she is not carried away by her feelings; she knows better than to be surprised or anything like that. I have asked her and been none the better for it,” cried Aunt Milly, “and the young man will not tell me either. Milly, hush! there is certainly some one at the door.”
The door bell at the Park was a peculiar one—it had a solemn cathedral sort of sound that rolled through the whole house, and it was only used by strangers or visitors on ceremony.{290} Both of us started violently when we heard it; it came upon our consultations like a sudden alarm of battle.
“It rains as bad as ever; on such a day who can ring the great bell at our door?” cried Aunt Milly. “God help us! if my father walked in at that door, I should not feel it was anything out of the way. Nothing would surprise me now.”
I could not make her any answer. We both sat perfectly silent, waiting for what was to come. As if to heighten the excitement of the moment, the rain, which had been falling steadily all day, suddenly became violent, and dashed against the windows in torrents. Through all this we could hear the great door opened and the sound of voices. My thoughts travelled into the great vacant drawing-room where these sounds could not fail to reach Miss Mortimer within her screen. What was she doing? Could she be sitting there still, dumb and desperate, listening but not looking, with a pride and resistance more dreadful in its self-control than the wildest passions! I trembled with suspense and wondering anxiety in spite of myself. As for Aunt Milly, the miniatures she was looking at fell out of her hands. She covered her eyes for an instant, and then lifted her scared and pallid face to the door, as if she could hear the approaching sounds better, for having her eyes fixed that way. There was a pause that I suppose did not endure a minute, but which looked like an hour. Then a soft tap at the door; then Ellis entered, looking half as pale and anxious as we did—vaguely frightened he could not tell how.
“Miss Milly,” he said, in a hasty troubled voice, “the gentleman is here as wants Miss Mortimer; what am I to do?”
The old mistress and the old servant looked at each other. The man did not know anything, but he knew the involuntary suspicion and dread that had somehow gathered about the house.
“What are we to do? God help us, Ellis, I know no more than the baby!” cried Aunt Milly under her breath.
She was carried by her excitement beyond her usual discretion. I interposed as I best could.
“Let it come to the crisis!” cried I, not being well aware what I said; “it must be best to know clearly Aunt Milly—hush!—recollect, you know nothing—let him go in.”
She made a convulsive pause and restrained herself; and then the usual keeping up of appearances recurred to her mind. “My sister’s voice! you know, Milly,” she said,{291} turning to me as if with a kind of apology,—“who—who is it, Ellis?”
“It’s—it’s the foreign gentleman, ma’am,” said Ellis, with a sympathetic faltering of his voice.
“Then show him in to Miss Mortimer?” cried Aunt Milly with a gasp over the words. “You shouldn’t have spoken so, my dear,” she said as soon as he was gone, “servants have nothing to do with our private aff............