"I hope you found the doctor a satisfactory sort of person? Sometimes the medical men in these out-of-the-way places, are very impossible."

"I found a very unusual man," Christina said thoughtfully; "he is a Dr.

Fergusson, doing _loc.u.m tenens_ work here. He has a remarkable personality; he made one feel he was meant to be a leader of men."

"I hope he will do the patient good."

"I hope he will," Christina said hurriedly; "he--was in a great difficulty that night, and--I hope I did not do wrong in giving him some help he asked for?" she added, looking deprecatingly into the grey eyes fixed on her face, feeling that it was her obvious duty to tell this man, who was Lady Cicely's representative, of the night during which she had left Baba.

"I don't think you can have done anything very wrong," Rupert answered with a smile, and speaking almost caressingly, as he might have spoken to a child. His smile, and the tone of his words, set the girl's pulses beating, although she vaguely realised he was treating her with the same kindliness, he might have bestowed upon Baba.

"Dr. Fergusson was in a great difficulty," she went on, trying again to speak in matter-of-fact tones. "The lady of the house to which he went, was--was very lonely, and he asked me to take care of her for the night. In fact"--Christina smiled at the recollection--"he was very masterful--he really made me go. But I should not have gone, if I had not known that Baba was absolutely safe with Mrs. Nairne. And"--she paused--"I think I was able to help somebody in great trouble."

Rupert's eyes still rested kindly on her face.

"I don't know that I should recommend you to make a practice of leaving Baba, and sitting up with people at night," he said, his smile taking away any possible sting from his words; "but I am sure in this instance, you only did what seemed most right. You and Baba are happy here?" he went on, anxious to spare her any unnecessary embarra.s.sment.

"Baba likes this nice place," the child struck in, "and Christina tell about the prince. Baba thinks the prince is just 'zackly like you,"

she ended, with a wise nod of her curly head. Rupert found himself speculating why, at the child's speech, Baba's nurse flushed with such extreme vividness, and why she evinced so sudden a desire to change the subject.

"Oh! Baba--we don't want to talk about fairy stories now," she interposed. "Tell--tell all about the pony-cart, and our nice drives.

Do you know," she added, looking at him with a shy glance, which seemed to him infinitely attractive, "I have never heard your name, so I don't know what to call you."

"Call him the prince," Baba's clear little voice remarked; "he's my Cousin Rupert, but he's 'zackly like the prince--and you're just 'zackly like the princess," she added, to Christina's no small discomfiture, pointing a dimpled forefinger in the girl's direction, "and some day the prince will marry the princess, and so they'll live happy ever after." Again a flood of colour rushed over Christina's face, and though Rupert saw it in the swift glance he cast at her, he was merciful enough to turn his eyes upon the child, and say gaily--

"You must find a much better prince than I am for your princess, little maid. Cousin Rupert is a battered old gentleman, with no prince-like qualities. Princes are always young and handsome, with blue eyes and golden hair, and silver armour, and lots of other jolly things like that, aren't they, Miss Moore?"

"Yes, certainly," she answered, rallying to his mood, and laughing brightly; "they always dress in silver armour, and the princesses never wear anything but white gowns."

"Sometimes--green gowns do quite as well for princesses," he answered, glancing at the girl's well-made green gown, with eyes of commendation.

"Green belongs to fairyland," he added, when again the colour flushed into her cheeks. "I believe that you and Baba have only quite lately come from that enchanted country--both the two of you, as my old nurse used to say."

"We like fairyland--Baba and I," the girl said gently, "and we both hope, some day, to see the fairies inside the flowers, or dancing round one of their lovely rings. We have found ever so many fairy rings in the fields round here." She spoke with something of a child's eagerness, all her momentary embarra.s.sment gone, and Rupert looked at her, with an increasing sense of approval. Cicely had not acted altogether unwisely, in deciding to give her small daughter this unknown, unvouched-for girl as a nurse. She was obviously a lady, and a cultured lady, and she possessed that nameless quality which never failed to appeal to Rupert's fastidious taste--the restful charm of the true gentlewoman. He liked this Miss Moore, he told himself, he distinctly liked her, and he inwardly commended Cicely's choice, whilst he said to Christina--

"And all this time I have most rudely left your question unanswered.

You asked my name: it is Mernside--Rupert Mernside."

"Oh!" was the only word that jerked itself out of Christina's lips, whilst her eyes gazed at him with an expression of such unmistakable dismay, that he looked at her in surprise.

"Have you any unpleasant a.s.sociations with my name?" he asked. "Has anybody called Mernside ever annoyed you?"

"Oh, no!" she answered quickly. "Only--once I heard the name before--just R. Mernside--and I was surprised when--when it turned out to be your name too." The words were so incoherent, the sentence so oddly turned, that Rupert only looked as he felt, more puzzled than before.

"I had not ever seen you, had I, until I saw you in Baba's nursery?" he questioned.

"No--never." She looked increasingly disconcerted, beneath his puzzled stare. "It was only--that I had heard--had come across the name before, and it--surprised me to hear--it again."

Not wishing to add to her almost painful embarra.s.sment, Rupert tactfully changed the subject, but being an unusually observant man, he noticed that she was not really at her ease during the whole course of his visit. He rose to go, therefore, earlier than he would otherwise have done, seeing how singularly peaceful he found the home-like atmosphere. The girl, with her sweet eyes and restful manner, the baby with her flower-like face, and her loving ways; the old-world firelit room, the pervading sense of what was child-like, simple, serene--all these soothed the man, racked with suspense and misery. It was with reluctance that he closed the door upon it all, Baba's parting words echoing in his ears, as he ran downstairs, and out into the fog of the December evening--

"I think you are just 'zackly like the prince--my pretty lady's prince--and she's the princess!"

Walking briskly up the village street in the direction of the inn, he smiled, as the words spoken in the clear little voice recurred to him again, and the picture of the child and the girl stayed in his mind during the remainder of the evening, whilst he sat in the uncompromisingly dull sitting-room with Wilfred, listening with very fluctuating attention to that young man's chatter, about motoring, sport, and the possibilities of a Frontier campaign.

"And what about Baba and her nurse?" the young man ended by saying.

"As Baba's uncle, I believe it was really my stern duty to go and look her up."

"Ah, well, I happen to be her guardian," Rupert answered drily; "and you were very much occupied with that American and his Daimler, when I went out----"

"And has the nurse the bronze hair of the typical adventuress, only tell me that," Staynes answered, stretching out his long legs to the fire. "If she has, I shall feel it imperative to call on Baba to-morrow, before----"

"Don't talk rot, my good fellow." Rupert's tones had in them a note of irritation, which his astute cousin was not slow to observe. "Didn't I explain to you that Cicely, with all her tenderness of heart, has too much common sense to give over Baba to the care of any doubtful sort of person? The child's nurse is--just a nice, quiet girl, who looks after her well and keeps her happy."

"Great Scott! _A nice, quiet girl_! I think I can safely take her on trust, if you are satisfied that she is--nice--and quiet. The adventuress appealed to me, but nice quiet girls--no, thank you, Rupert! Now if only she had been like that delightful young person with green eyes, who stopped the car the other day--I--should have felt twinges of conscience about my duty as an uncle."

"What an utter rotter you are!" In spite of himself Mernside laughed, knowing from a long and intimate acquaintance with Wilfred, that the young man's surface nonsense went no deeper than the surface, and that Staynes was in no sense of the word a Lothario. A slight, a very slight, twinge afflicted his own conscience, when he remembered the ident.i.ty of the girl he had left that afternoon, in the home-like, firelit room, with the girl to whom his cousin had just alluded.

"There is no necessity to tell him that the two girls are one and the same," Rupert argued with himself. "Some day, presumably, he will meet Miss Moore, and he may then recognise her again. But the probability is that by that time, the motor incident will have gone out of his head." Meanwhile, throughout the bantering conversation he carried on with Wilfred, he found himself constantly wondering why the sound of his name, had caused Baba's nurse such surprise and embarra.s.sment. She had seemed so friendly, so natural, so simple, until the moment when his name had been mentioned, and then she had changed into hesitating self-consciousness, her eyes afraid to meet his, her manner uneasy and shy.

The real reason for the change in her never, of course, occurred to him. It was only very occasionally that he even remembered the annoying episode of the matrimonial advertis.e.m.e.nt, and then merely with a pa.s.sing feeling of regret, that he had failed to help the girl who had been his fellow-victim in Jack Layton's hoax. The girl's initials had faded from his memory, in the more personal and acute trouble of Margaret Stanforth's continued absence and silence, and he never for a moment connected the writer of the wistful little note signed "C.M.,"

with Baba's newest and most devoted slave. If his thoughts that evening ran with curious persistency on Christina, her thoughts turned with no less persistency to him and his visit, and above all, to the dismaying discovery that he was the R. Mernside to whom she had audaciously written, who in return had written to her so kindly. After Baba had been safely tucked up in her cot, sleepily a.s.severating that she meant to go for a ride in Cousin Rupert's car, and that he was "her Christina's prince," Christina herself returned back to the sitting-room, and, seated before the fire, went over in her own mind all the conversation of the afternoon, with its final climax.

"And I don't know whether I ought to tell him who I really am, or not,"

the girl reflected, looking deep into the heart of the glowing coals.

"He was so kind to-day, but I don't believe he would go on feeling kind to a girl who could answer an advertis.e.m.e.nt like that--even though he would still be kind, because he is a gentleman. I wonder if I ought to tell him? And yet--it would be horrible--horrible to have to say it.

I should be so ashamed---so dreadfully ashamed. Only--I think, perhaps--he would understand how poor I was, how desperate I felt, that day when I wrote to him. He has such an understanding face, and his eyes look as if they had seen so much sorrow, so that he would know what other people's sorrows mean. I wish--I--could be a rest-bringer to him." From that thought, she drifted away to the lonely house in the valley, to the beautiful woman whose troubled face and deep, anguished eyes haunted the girl like an obsession, and to the sick man, whose death, so Dr. Fergusson had said, was only perhaps a matter of a few short weeks. What strange tragedy was hidden by the four walls of that lonely house? What did it all mean--the secrecy, the isolation, and above all the trouble that had been written so plainly on that beautiful woman's face?

"I don't suppose I shall ever see her again," was Christina's final and regretful thought, as she rose to go to bed. "I wish people didn't have to be like 'ships that pa.s.s in the night'--only pa.s.sing--not staying together for a little while."

CHAPTER XIII.

"YOU HAVE BEEN A FRIEND TO ME TO-DAY."

Rupert would have found it difficult to explain why, on the following afternoon, his steps again turned towards Mrs. Nairne's house, and why he a.s.sured himself, that it would be kind to Cicely to go to see Baba again, and take the latest tidings of the child back to her mother. He only knew that he had a great desire to sit quietly in that firelit room again, to feel the sense of peace and home-like tranquillity that seemed to hover about it; he only felt that in some inexplicable fashion Baba's new nurse--the girl with the sweet eyes and gentle voice--rested him, that her simplicity, and some child-like quality in her, soothed the pain that tore at his heart. Women had played no part in his life, until one woman had played an overmastering one; and all that his pa.s.sionate adoration of Margaret Stanforth had cost, and was costing, him, gave an added charm to a nature devoid of all subtlety, simple and serene. Across the stretch of years between them, he regarded Christina as little more than a child, but it is often from a child's hands that the pa.s.sion-tossed, world-weary soul can find most comfort; and as Mernside for the second time sat in the old-fashioned sitting-room, and had tea with Christina and her small charge, he felt that in some indefinable fashion, the girl's hands were unconsciously smoothing away some of the misery that chafed his soul. She showed no traces of her embarra.s.sment of the previous day. Night had brought its own counsels, and she had determined not to disclose her ident.i.ty to Mernside.

"After all," she reflected philosophically, "I didn't do anything wrong--only something silly--and it is all over now. Probably he has forgotten all about the stupid girl who wrote him that letter, and anyhow, he doesn't think about me at all, excepting as Baba's nurse, so it would be foolish to make a fuss."

Having come to this determination, Christina, with characteristic good sense, put away from her all thoughts of self-consciousness and embarra.s.sment, and allowed herself to enjoy Mernside's visit, with much the same childish delight as was evinced by Baba. And if the two showed their pleasure in different ways, it was none the less patent to their visitor, that the little nurse, with her big green eyes and dusky cloud of hair, took as much pleasure in his coming as did the golden-haired baby; and it gave him an odd glow of satisfaction to see her eyes brighten as he talked, and to watch the swift soft flushes of colour that came and went in her cheeks. Rupert, when he chose, could talk well and interestingly; he had travelled over the greater part of the world, and in the course of his travels had used eyes and ears to good purpose. And to Christina, the little travelled--to Christina, the whole sum of whose existence had been divided between a Devonshire village, the Donaldsons' suburban house, and a London lodging--all that Rupert told of distant countries, and strange, uncouth peoples was breathlessly interesting and entrancing. Sitting there in the firelight, Baba nestled closely in his arms, Christina seated opposite to him, her chin propped on her hands, her eager eyes following his every word--Rupert found himself talking as he had not talked for a long time with an eager boyish interest that surprised himself. It was only when some chance word of his led Christina to ask him a question about Biskra, that the flow of his eloquence suddenly ceased. It was there, in that garden of the desert, that he had first met Margaret.

The girl's gently-asked question, for some inexplicable reason, brought back to him, as though it were only yesterday, the afternoon when the woman who ever since had dominated his whole existence, had first come into his life. Overhead, the deep pure depths of the bluest sky he had ever seen, against its blue stately palms that waved their fan-like leaves with the soft rustling sounds that only belong to the palm-trees; and there in the sunlight, stately as one of the great trees, her white gown falling about her, Margaret had stood, her dark eyes turned towards the all-surrounding desert. How or why they had begun to speak, he could not now recall, but from that first speech of fellow-countrymen in a far-off land, they had pa.s.sed into acquaintanceship, and from that by easy stages to the friendship which he had implored her to give him, in default of that which she had told him could never be his. Well! at least in the years that followed, he had been able to serve her, to help her, to ease some of the burden of her life, that burden of which he himself knew so little. And to have served her was something for which to be thankful. If only--there was the bitterness--if only she had not gone away out of his ken now, in this strange mysterious fashion, leaving him ignorant of her whereabouts, and of all that concerned her.

If only she had trusted him more! If only---- With a start he roused himself, to realise that Christina's eyes were watching him with a certain shy wonder, and remembering that he had broken off his conversation almost in the middle of a sentence, he looked at her with a smile of apology.

"Do please forgive me," he said. "Your mention of Biskra brought back so many pictures of the past, and--I was looking at them instead of going on with my story."

"Baba likes pictures," the child murmured drowsily.

"Perhaps Baba would like the picture I saw," her cousin answered, feeling an odd compulsion to speak of what was in his thoughts: "a picture of palm-trees, and a princess in a white gown, who walked amongst them, and----"