"Go to her yourself, doctor; it is you that should do it," said the squire.

After some further slight delay, the doctor got up, and did go upstairs. He, even, was half afraid of the task. "It must be done,"

he said to himself, as his heavy steps mounted the stairs. "But how to tell it?"

When he entered, Mary was standing half-way up the room, as though she had risen to meet him. Her face was troubled, and her eyes were almost wild. The emotion, the hopes, the fears of that morning had almost been too much for her. She had heard the murmuring of the voices in the room below, and had known that one of them was that of her lover. Whether that discussion was to be for her good or ill she did not know; but she felt that further suspense would almost kill her. "I could wait for years," she said to herself, "if I did but know. If I lost him, I suppose I should bear it, if I did but know."--Well; she was going to know.

Her uncle met her in the middle of the room. His face was serious, though not sad; too serious to confirm her hopes at that moment of doubt. "What is it, uncle?" she said, taking one of his hands between both of her own. "What is it? Tell me." And as she looked up into his face with her wild eyes, she almost frightened him.

"Mary," he said gravely, "you have heard much, I know, of Sir Roger Scatcherd's great fortune."

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"Now that poor Sir Louis is dead--"

"Well, uncle, well?"

"It has been left--"

"To Frank! to Mr Gresham, to the squire!" exclaimed Mary, who felt, with an agony of doubt, that this sudden accession of immense wealth might separate her still further from her lover.

"No, Mary, not to the Greshams; but to yourself."

"To me!" she cried, and putting both her hands to her forehead, she seemed to be holding her temples together. "To me!"

"Yes, Mary; it is all your own now. To do as you like best with it all--all. May G.o.d, in His mercy, enable you to bear the burden, and lighten for you the temptation!"

She had so far moved as to find the nearest chair, and there she was now seated, staring at her uncle with fixed eyes. "Uncle," she said, "what does it mean?" Then he came, and sitting beside her, he explained, as best he could, the story of her birth, and her kinship with the Scatcherds. "And where is he, uncle?" she said. "Why does he not come to me?"

"I wanted him to come, but her refused. They are both there now, the father and son; shall I fetch them?"

"Fetch them! whom? The squire? No, uncle; but may we go to them?"

"Surely, Mary."

"But, uncle--"

"Yes, dearest."

"Is it true? are you sure? For his sake, you know; not for my own.

The squire, you know--Oh, uncle! I cannot go."

"They shall come to you."

"No--no. I have gone to him such hundreds of times; I will never allow that he shall be sent to me. But, uncle, is it true?"

The doctor, as he went downstairs, muttered something about Sir Abraham Haphazard, and Sir Rickety Giggs; but these great names were much thrown away upon poor Mary. The doctor entered the room first, and the heiress followed him with downcast eyes and timid steps. She was at first afraid to advance, but when she did look up, and saw Frank standing alone by the window, her lover restored her courage, and rushing up to him, she threw herself into his arms. "Oh, Frank; my own Frank! my own Frank! we shall never be separated now."

CHAPTER XLVII

How the Bride Was Received, and Who Were Asked to the Wedding

And thus after all did Frank perform his great duty; he did marry money; or rather, as the wedding has not yet taken place, and is, indeed, as yet hardly talked of, we should more properly say that he had engaged himself to marry money. And then, such a quant.i.ty of money! The Scatcherd wealth greatly exceeded the Dunstable wealth; so that our hero may be looked on as having performed his duties in a manner deserving the very highest commendation from all cla.s.ses of the de Courcy connexion.

And he received it. But that was nothing. That _he_ should be feted by the de Courcys and Greshams, now that he was about to do his duty by his family in so exemplary a manner: that he should be patted on the back, now that he no longer meditated that vile crime which had been so abhorrent to his mother's soul; this was only natural; this is hardly worthy of remark. But there was another to be feted, another person to be made a personage, another blessed human mortal about to do her duty by the family of Gresham in a manner that deserved, and should receive, Lady Arabella's warmest caresses.

Dear Mary! It was, indeed, not singular that she should be prepared to act so well, seeing that in early youth she had had the advantage of an education in the Greshamsbury nursery; but not on that account was it the less fitting that her virtue should be acknowledged, eulogised, nay, all but worshipped.

How the party at the doctor's got itself broken up, I am not prepared to say. Frank, I know, stayed and dined there, and his poor mother, who would not retire to rest till she had kissed him, and blessed him, and thanked him for all he was doing for the family, was kept waiting in her dressing-room till a very unreasonable hour of the night.

It was the squire who brought the news up to the house. "Arabella,"

he said, in a low, but somewhat solemn voice, "you will be surprised at the news I bring you. Mary Thorne is the heiress to all the Scatcherd property!"

"Oh, heavens! Mr Gresham."

"Yes, indeed," continued the squire. "So it is; it is very, very--"

But Lady Arabella had fainted. She was a woman who generally had her feelings and her emotions much under her own control; but what she now heard was too much for her. When she came to her senses, the first words that escaped her lips were, "Dear Mary!"

But the household had to sleep on the news before it could be fully realised. The squire was not by nature a mercenary man. If I have at all succeeded in putting his character before the reader, he will be recognised as one not over attached to money for money's sake. But things had gone so hard with him, the world had become so rough, so ungracious, so full of thorns, the want of means had become an evil so keenly felt in every hour, that it cannot be wondered at that his dreams that night should be of a golden elysium. The wealth was not coming to him. True. But his chief sorrow had been for his son. Now that son would be his only creditor. It was as though mountains of marble had been taken from off his bosom.

But Lady Arabella's dreams flew away at once into the seventh heaven.

Sordid as they certainly were, they were not absolutely selfish.

Frank would now certainly be the first commoner in Ba.r.s.etshire; of course he would represent the county; of course there would be the house in town; it wouldn't be her house, but she was contented that the grandeur should be that of her child. He would have heaven knows what to spend per annum. And that it should come through Mary Thorne! What a blessing she had allowed Mary to be brought into the Greshamsbury nursery! Dear Mary!

"She will of course be one now," said Beatrice to her sister. With her, at the present moment, "one" of course meant one of the bevy that was to attend her at the altar. "Oh dear! how nice! I shan't know what to say to her to-morrow. But I know one thing."

"What is that?" asked Augusta.

"She will be as mild and as meek as a little dove. If she and the doctor had lost every shilling in the world, she would have been as proud as an eagle." It must be acknowledged that Beatrice had had the wit to read Mary's character aright.

But Augusta was not quite pleased with the whole affair. Not that she begrudged her brother his luck, or Mary her happiness. But her ideas of right and wrong--perhaps we should rather say Lady Amelia's ideas--would not be fairly carried out.

"After all, Beatrice, this does not alter her birth. I know it is useless saying anything to Frank."

"Why, you wouldn't break both their hearts now?"

"I don't want to break their hearts, certainly. But there are those who put their dearest and warmest feelings under restraint rather than deviate from what they know to be proper." Poor Augusta! she was the stern professor of the order of this philosophy; the last in the family who practised with unflinching courage its cruel behests; the last, always excepting the Lady Amelia.

And how slept Frank that night? With him, at least, let us hope, nay, let us say boldly, that his happiest thoughts were not of the wealth which he was to acquire. But yet it would be something to restore Boxall Hill to Greshamsbury; something to give back to his father those rumpled vellum doc.u.ments, since the departure of which the squire had never had a happy day; nay, something to come forth again to his friends as a gay, young country squire, instead of as a farmer, clod-compelling for his bread. We would not have him thought to be better than he was, nor would we wish him to make him of other stuff than nature generally uses. His heart did exult at Mary's wealth; but it leaped higher still when he thought of purer joys.

And what shall we say of Mary's dreams? With her, it was altogether what she should give, not at all what she should get. Frank had loved her so truly when she was so poor, such an utter castaway; Frank, who had ever been the heir of Greshamsbury! Frank, who with his beauty, and spirit, and his talents might have won the smiles of the richest, the grandest, the n.o.blest! What lady's heart would not have rejoiced to be allowed to love her Frank? But he had been true to her through everything. Ah! how often she thought of that hour, when suddenly appearing before her, he had strained her to his breast, just as she had resolved how best to bear the death-like chill of his supposed estrangements! She was always thinking of that time. She fed her love by recurring over and over to the altered feeling of that moment. Any now she could pay him for his goodness. Pay him! No, that would be a base word, a base thought. Her payment must be made, if G.o.d would so grant it, in many, many years to come. But her store, such as it was, should be emptied into his lap. It was soothing to her pride that she would not hurt him by her love, that she would bring no injury to the old house. "Dear, dear Frank" she murmured, as her waking dreams, conquered at last by sleep, gave way to those of the fairy world.

But she thought not only of Frank; dreamed not only of him. What had he not done for her, that uncle of hers, who had been more loving to her than any father! How was he, too, to be paid? Paid, indeed! Love can only be paid in its own coin: it knows of no other legal tender.

Well, if her home was to be Greshamsbury, at any rate she would not be separated from him.