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"Why should I not go on?" said Lady Caroline, glancing from one to another as if in utter ignorance. "Have I said anything wrong? I only meant that I was present at Mrs. Brand's first wedding when she married your father, Mr. Wyvis not your adopted father, of course, but John Wyvis, the ploughman." There was a moment's silence. Then Wyvis took a step forward and thundered.
I want to live in Paris or Vienna with Nora, and enjoy myself I don't want to paint pot-boilers. I say like the man in the parable, 'Give me the portion that belongeth to me, and I'll go my way, promising, however, not to spend it in riotous living. Won't that arrangement suit you?" Wyvis demurred at first, but was finally persuaded into making an arrangement of the kind that Cuthbert desired.
You were only a month or two old when he married Mary Wyvis, however; for your father died before your birth; but there was no secret made of it at the time, I believe. And it is nearly thirty years. Things get forgotten." "Mother, can this be true?" said Wyvis, hoarsely. He was forced into asking the question by Lady Caroline's cool persistence.
Hitherto Wyvis had stood, hat in hand, as if he were ready to go at a moment's notice; but now he changed his attitude. He seated himself determinedly, put down his hat, and looked back at her. "Well," he said, "I see that I must explain myself if I mean to make my peace with you, Janetta. I am, perhaps, not so bad as you think me.
The qualities which made her so different from his timid, underbred, melancholy mother, or his coarse and self-indulgent wife, were those in which Margaret showed peculiar excellence. And before these for the first time in his life Wyvis Brand fell down and worshipped. It was unfortunate; it was wrong; but it was one of those things that will happen sometimes in everyday life.
"I brought Wyvis up on a lie," the mother answered, her face growing woefully stern and rigid as she mentioned his name, "and it has been my punishment that he has always hated lies. I have trembled to hear him speak against falsehood to catch his look of scorn when he began to see that his father did not speak truth.
Brand, who was never happy when she found herself in the company of "fashionable" people. But it was with a perfectly simple and almost child-like manner that Margaret drew her finger away from Wyvis' clasp and went up to his mother, holding out both hands as if in appeal for help. "I am Margaret," she said. "I ought not to have come; but what could I do?
"She does not know you," Dr. Burroughs said, when, a few hours later, Wyvis bent over his mother's pillow and looked into her quiet, care-lined face. "Will she never know me?" asked the young man in a tone of deep distress. "My poor mother! I must tell her how sorry I am for the pain that I have often given her." "She may be conscious for a few minutes by-and-bye," the doctor said.
Mrs. Wyvis Brand was silent for a minute or two. A tear gathered in each of her defiant black eyes, but she did not allow either of them to fall. "You're a queer one," she said, with a hard laugh. "I never met anybody like you before. You're religious, aren't you?" "I don't know: I should like to be," said Janetta, soberly. "That's the queerest thing you've said yet.
It seemed to Janetta almost as if her mind were beginning to wander: the references to Cuthbert's boyish days appeared to be so extraordinarily clear and defined almost as though she were living again through the time when Cuthbert was supplanted by her boy Wyvis. But when she spoke again, Mrs. Brand's words were perfectly clear, and apparently reasonable in tone.
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