“AND THE PRINCE married the Princess with the raven locks, and they lived happy ever afterwards?” Maisie questioned, in her clear, childish treble.
“Yes, I suppose they did,” Rosamond assented with a slow smile.
Maisie clasped her hands. “Oh, you do tell nice stories. Almost as nice as my dear Miss Martin used to.”
Rosamond raised her eyebrows. “Almost, not quite.”
Maisie considered the point for a moment with her head on one side. “Not quite, I think,” she decided at last, loyal to her first friend. “Though yours are very nice too, Miss Treadstone,” she added politely.
“And why are mine not quite as nice?” Rosamond asked teasingly.
Maisie thought a minute. “I think perhaps it is the voice,” she announced at last. “Though you often make me think of her, Miss Treadstone. But Miss Martin had a nice, strong voice, and yours is very weak, so that I have to listen very intently.”
“And don’t you like listening intently?” Rosamond laughed. “Perhaps my voice is weak because I am weak myself, Maisie.”
She certainly looked weak enough for anything as she spoke. She was half-sitting, half-lying in a nest of cushions on the settee in Lady Treadstone’s morning-room at the Hold. She was very thin, her once rounded figure was wasted almost to attenuation, her short hair was curling in red gold tendrils all over her head; her face was absolutely colourless, save for the blue half-circles underneath her eyes, but it wore a look of peace and rest such as Elizabeth Martin had never known.
Spring had merged into summer, summer had become autumn, and was rapidly approaching winter, and still Rosamond Treadstone lay ill and prostrate at the Hold. For weeks after she had learned the truth about John Winter’s death she had lain between life and death, and only very slowly had it become apparent that the former was to conquer. But now it seemed as though, having reached a certain point, she had no strength to go farther. Her days were passed in a sort of mental apathy, and her prostration had been so prolonged that the doctors were becoming seriously anxious. Nothing seemed to have the power to rouse her, and it had been Sir Oswald who had suggested sending for Maisie in the hope that the child she loved might have power to interest Rosamond. His plan had proved more successful than he had dared to hope. Rosamond had been unmistakably pleased to see the child, and Maisie charmed with the resemblance she detected to her dear Miss Martin had taken to her at once. Much of her time was spent with Rosamond in the morning-room, and the doctors had been delighted when they learned that her demand for stories had been acceded to. To-day, they were talking of moving their patient to a warmer climate as soon as her strength was a little more maintained. Sir Oswald had his own ideas as to how this was to be effected, but he had said nothing to Rosamond yet.
Though there had naturally been all sorts of rumours, Rosamond Treadstone’s name had been successfully kept out of the papers when the Home Wood mystery had been finally cleared up, and her marriage with Winter had not been made public. Where once his death had been shown to have been the result of an accident, there had been little interest taken in the affair, and already it was becoming forgotten. But this, Rosamond, obsessed as she had been by the thought of the death, could not realize, and she had a morbid fear of being recognized. Only with Maisie did she feel quite safe, and the child’s affection and trust were very soothing.
She smiled now as Maisie nestled up to her with a demand for another story, and laid her hand on the child’s curls lovingly. Just then Lady Treadstone came into the room.
“I want you to read this, Rosamond,” she said, handing her a letter. “Maisie, your father is asking for you. He has been into Porthcawel, and I think he has some sweets for a good little girl.”
The child ran away and Lady Treadstone turned back to her stepdaughter.
“You see. Barbara wants to pay you a visit. Frank and she will be quite near. You will let them come, won’t you, Rosamond?”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” The girl shivered among her cushions. “Barbara was very good to me, but it would bring all that dreadful time back.”
“I am sorry, dear,” Lady Treadstone said regretfully. “I think it would do you good to see a fresh face, but—” She turned aside and began to arrange some flowers she had brought in.
Rosamond’s lips quivered.
“She was very kind to me but it was for Frank’s sake and because she is an angel of pity. She thought me guilty, every one did. Even you sometimes, mother—” with a quick glance.
“Oh, Rosamond!” Lady Treadstone dropped her flowers, her eyes filled with tears.
“Didn’t you?” Rosamond asked quietly.
“Never! Never!” Lady Treadstone said passionately. “I always said to myself that your father’s little Rose must be innocent. If I have doubted you once or twice, oh, forgive me, child, it has only been a passing thought.”
“I knew it,” Rosamond said softly. She drew her stepmother’s face down to hers, and kissed it gently. “You have been so good to me mother. And how could you help doubting? Why sometimes”—with a terrified look round—“when I have wakened in the night in the dark, I have even doubted myself. All sorts of fears and fancies have crowded into my brain.”
“Ah, well! It is all over now,” said Lady Treadstone, stroking the girl’s hair. “And you do forgive me, Rosamond?”
Rosamond turned her lips to the soft hand. “Forgive you my more than mother! I shall be grateful for your kindness all the days of my life.”
Lady Treadstone was about to make some rejoinder when Sir Oswald’s step was heard in the passage and she turned to meet him.
“Wish me good luck, dear Lady Treadstone,” he said as she smiled at him.
“The best of luck,” she said, pressing his hand.
He went straight across to Rosamond. “How are you to-day, sweetheart?”
A faint pink flushed the white cheeks at the tender word.
“A little better, I think,” she answered uncertainly. “At least, I don’t know, I think Maisie does me good.”
“Dr. Spencer says you are better, much better,” Sir Oswald said, taking the chair behind her. “I have just been talking to him and he says that, now you are well enough to travel, we should lose no time in getting you away. I want you to come with me.” His tone was quite matter of fact, Rosamond looked at him half uncomprehendingly. “I want you to come with me,” he repeated. “Dear, I have been very patient, but now I want a wife.”
Rosamond’s colour deepened, but her grey eyes met his unfalteringly.
“Impossible! I shall never marry. Can’t you see that?”
“No, I can’t,” said Sir Oswald sturdily. “In the Sunny South you will soon get well and strong.”
“It isn’t only a question of health,” Rosamond said quickly, “though no man wants an invalid wife, but—”
“I want this invalid,” he interrupted her fondly.
“But there is everything else,” she went on as if she had not heard him. “How would you like it to be known—how would you like Maisie to know—that you had married John Winter’s widow?”
Sir Oswald leaned forward.
“I should not mind one atom,” he said easily. “You silly child, so that is the phantom that has stood between us, that has been worrying you all this time, as for what the world knows or guesses, it does not matter that”—snapping his fingers—“and people don’t trouble about it as much as you think. They haven’t time to bother about such things nowadays. As for Maisie, if she knew her dear Miss Martin’s identical with that of the wonderful new mother she is going to have, she would be overjoyed. As for myself—” he paused, and looked at her steadily. “For your sake, dearest, I wish you had not made a mistake in the past. I hate to think you were once Winter’s wife, as I should hate to think you ever belonged to any man but me, but I would not on that account forgo one moment of the golden future we are to spend together. I grudge every little bit of it that you pass away from me.”
Rosamond pushed her curls back from her brow wearily.
“I wish I knew what I ought to do. But I am so tired I don’t seem able even to think. But something tells me it isn’t right.”
Sir Oswald took both the thin, hot hands in his and held them in his strong, firm clasp.
“And I tell you it is right, most divinely right,” he said, in his clear, decided tones. “You must let me do the thinking for you. You must forget the past, it is over and done with. The present is ours, and the future, the happy future that we are going to spend together. And you must not keep me waiting long. I want to take you away before the real winter begins. Can you be ready in a week?”
“A week!” Rosamond lay still and looked at him. “You must be dreaming. It is impossible!”
“I don’t think so,” he prisoned both her hands in one of his, and passed his other arm round her amid the cushions. “I am going to settle things my own way,” he added masterfully. “You have been an autocrat long enough. We will be married on Monday week, and my yacht will be waiting to take us to Madeira. What do you say to that?”
Rosamond glanced at him as she met the look in his eyes, hers veiled themselves in their long lashes.
“It doesn’t seem much use my saying anything,” she said, a tiny smile stealing round her mouth, “since you have made up your mind.”
Sir Oswald and Lady Davenant have been married some years now, and Rosamond’s identity with John Winter’s widow has never been discovered. In the peerage the entry runs: “Rosamond Elizabeth only daughter of the seventh Lord Treadstone, born May 1st, 18—; married 19— to Sir Oswald Davenant, Bart., of Davenant Priory.” And so the history of that first terrible mistake of hers has never leaked out.
The change in her hair and appearance was so great when she went back to the Priory as its mistress that even the Dowager Lady Davenant never discovered that she was the pseudo-governess. Sir Oswald had taken care that almost all the servants were new; only two of the old ones were left, the butler and Latimer, and if those two have ever suspected anything—and sometimes a hazy doubt that they may have done so has crossed Rosamond Davenant’s mind—they have never breathed a word of it.
Sir Oswald and his wife pass most of their time at the Priory, for that time of stress and trial through which they have passed has left its mark to some extent on both of them. Sir Oswald’s eyes, though sufficiently serviceable, will never be quite what they were before his accident, and Rosamond, though her splendid health and vitality have reasserted themselves in a greater degree than the doctors at one time dared to hope, is to some extent a sufferer from nerves, and is happiest in the country with her husband and their children.
For there are other children at the Priory now; though Maisie remains the only daughter, there are three big, bonny boys in the nursery—three boys who have their mother’s lovely colouring and their father’s strength and length of limb, and who are the pride of their father’s heart. Rosamond is rather glad they are all boys; she does not want any other girl to take Maisie’s place, and Maisie, for her part, is devoted to her beautiful stepmother and her little brothers. Quite the fastest friends of the Davenants are the Carlyns. Every year the latter come to the Priory for a long visit. The Davenant boys are devoted to Barbara’s little girl, and sometimes, Rosamond, looking into the distant future, fancies she sees a vision of what one daughter-in-law will be like.
Sybil Lorrimer is dead. She married an officer and was killed in a carriage accident a year later. Her coadjutor, Marlowe, is still with Gregg and Stubbs, but he has not risen in his profession as he hoped to do.
THE END