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And to all kind Mary Strathsay's pleas and words I but begged off as favors done to me, and I was liker to grow sullen than smiling with all the stour. "Why, I wonder, do the servants of a house know so much better than the house itself the nearest concerns of shadowy futures? One night the nurse paused above my bed and guarded the light with her hand. "Let your heart lap," she said.
I stood then in the door of a little ante-room opening into the drawing-room and looking on the courtyard, and gazed thence at those three pictures, as if it were all a delirament, till out of them Effie stepped in person, and danced, trilling to herself, through the groups, flashing, sparkling, flickering, and disappeared. Oh, but Mrs. Strathsay's eyes gleamed in a proud pleasure after her!
Strathsay's pride; and few things were stronger than Mrs. Strathsay's pride, unless 't were Mary's own. If Effie but that's nothing to the purpose. If Alice did not become the bride of Angus Ingestre, it would break Mrs. Strathsay's heart. God forgive me! but I bethought me once that her heart was the weakest member in all her body.
"It's my father's own color, and I'm proud of it, barring the telltale trouble." "You're proud," said he, absently, standing up to go, "that you are the only one of them all that heirs him?" "Not quite. It's the olive in my father's cheek that darkened his wife's yellow curls into Mary Strathsay's chestnut ones.
Strathsay had cautiously planted and nursed the seed, a winning boy, a noble lad, a lordly man. If Margray had not married old Johnny Graeme, it would have broken Mrs. Strathsay's will; the will was strong; she did, she married him. If Mary, with her white moonsheen of beauty, did not bewitch the senses of Captain Seavern, it would break Mrs.
Margray, and Mary Strathsay, had been back three years from school, and the one was just married, and if she left her heart out of the bargain, what was that to me? and the other was to reign at home awhile ere the fated Prince should come, and Effie and myself were to go over seas and take their old desks in the famous school at Edinboro'. The mother knew that she must marry her girls well, and we two younglings were sadly in Queen Mary Strathsay's way.
Mrs. Strathsay was my mother. I might have fallen, too, I might have died, it seems to me, with the sudden snap my heart gave, but all in a word I felt Mary Strathsay's soft curls brushing about my face, and she drew it upon her white bosom, and covered the poor thing with, her kisses.
Then the dancing broke, I found, though I still played on, and it was some frolicsome game of forfeits, and Angus was chasing Effie, and with her light step and her flying laugh it was like the wind following a rose-flake. Anon he ceased, and stood silent and statelier than Mrs. Strathsay's self, looking on.
His father sat in the Queen's own Parliament for the Colonies, had bent to the knightly accolade, and a change of ministry or of residence might any day create Sir Brenton peer; his mother had been Mrs. Strathsay's dearest friend: this child who off and on for half his life had made her house his home and Alice his companion, while in the hearts of both children Mrs.
"When I'm married, Ailie," she whispered, "I'll sing from morn till night, and you shall sit and hear me, without Margray's glowering at us, or my mother so much as saying, 'Why do you so?" For all the time the song had been purling from her smiling lips, Mrs. Strathsay's eyes were laid, a weight like lead, on me, and then she had risen as if it hurt her, and walked to the door.
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