MRS. BURFORD'S SELF-COMMUNINGS.

"THERE is something below the surface. He will not tell me because it is a professional matter, but I am convinced that he knows of circumstances which make it desirable to be friendly with John Simpson. I wish I knew, but it would be useless, to ask, and especially at present."

Thus cogitated Mrs. Burford after listening to those decisive words from the lips of her husband. She had convinced herself that there was something below the surface which she would not be allowed to penetrate, and she felt that silence and patience would be advisable under the circumstances.

Mrs. Burford was quite unable to understand her husband's larger, kindlier nature. If he showed special goodwill to any person, she measured him by herself, and judged that he expected some benefit, professional or otherwise, to be the result of showing it.

"If I could but know it, I have little doubt that Dorothy Flint has made her will at last," thought she. "My husband will say nothing, of course, but he will act on the knowledge. If she has left anything substantial to that young Simpson, there would be no harm in being decently civil to him. Dorothy has always declared she would never leave him a penny, but if she changed her mind, she is just the woman to find twenty excuses for carrying out a new whim. I have been daily expecting her to say that she meant to adopt young Kenningham. However, my husband knows what he is about, and he is, I believe, Dorothy's only confidant."

Mrs. Burford smiled at her own thoughts, and persuaded herself, that by carefully noting her husband's conduct, she should be able to form some notion of Miss Flint's intentions. That lady's voice interrupted her cogitations, and she turned quickly to receive and welcome her visitor.

"I am so sorry the girls are both out," she said, after the first greetings were over. "Are you quite alone?"

Mrs. Burford looked beyond Miss Flint, as if expecting to find that she had a companion.

"I came alone, if that is what you wish to ask, but I am no longer so, for you are with me. I want no one else. Not likely, when I come to visit the child-friend of my youthful days," responded Miss Flint.

"It is always sweet to recall those old days," said Mrs. Burford. "You know, dear, I always enjoy a talk with you alone."

"I shall not trouble you to go back so far as the old days, my dear. I think the present more interesting. I am gathering bright faces round me in 'my' old days, and I find that more agreeable than trying to see myself as I was more than forty years ago, and then going to my glass to note the difference between the picture which memory paints, and the one reflected by the mirror."

"We seldom have much satisfaction in anything it shows us when we are growing old. I feel this;" and Mrs. Burford sighed as she answered.

"I do not," said Miss Flint. "I never expected to look young and handsome when more than half-a-century had passed over my head; and if you did, I am sorry for you. Stay; I think I will leave out the word handsome. Good looks are as compatible with old age as with youth. It is when the old try to look young, and trick themselves out in unbecoming finery which apes youth, that age becomes alike hideous and contemptible."

Miss Flint spoke with no little dignity as well as feeling. "I am growing old," she added after a brief pause, "and I am afraid I shall not make the most amiable of old women, seeing that tempers rarely improve as infirmities grow upon us. But I do trust I shall have sense enough to dress and act in accordance with my years, and never be ashamed of people knowing them."

"You can never be accused of dressing too youthfully," said Mrs. Burford. "You have gone into the other extreme. And if you would fall in just a little with the fashion of the day, you would look years and years younger, without the aping of youth you spoke of just now."

"That is just like Nelly. She and I agree on most subjects, but the child harries me now and again in the matter of dress, in this one respect agreeing with yourself. I have promised Nelly that one day she shall choose me a gown and accompaniments. She has long wished me to fix the date, and now I have gone so far as to name the occasion on which I will be attired in accordance with her views."

"Do tell me what that is to be," said Mrs. Burford in a tone of entreaty.

"On Nelly's own wedding-day. As to the date, or any other particular in connection therewith, I am as ignorant as the child herself. But she will tell me in good time, I am sure, and in the meanwhile, I wait patiently for my new gown."

"I hope to see you in it long before that event takes place," said Mrs. Burford, with a look almost of displeasure. "Ellen is too young to talk about getting married—a girl just home from school. And I do hope, dear, that you will not sanction any foolish jesting on such a subject now she is so often with you at Lint Hall."

Mrs. Burford spoke warmly, and in a tone she seldom adopted towards Miss Flint.

But the latter showed no resentment, and replied—

"You may trust me. Surely you do not think me capable of making the most sacred of all human ties a subject for idle jests? It was a shadow, not a reality, that we laughed about. Nelly was pressing me to fulfil an old promise made before she went to Germany. It was, that she should choose me a gown and other articles without any restriction as to cost or material. Again and again she has urged me to say when, and at last I told her it should be for her wedding-day, let it come whenever it might.

"'That will not be for years and years,' she said, 'if ever; and I shall be only too glad to stay at home after so long a banishment. If it were not for poor Magnus, I should rejoice that we cannot go, as usual, to the seaside. You must let me choose the gown, though, seeing how long I have waited for the chance. It will be your dinner-party gown; for, of course, now you are settling down at Lint Hall, you will invite people and go in and out amongst your neighbours.'

"This was what Nelly said, and you may be thankful that, all things considered, the girl wants to stay at home."

"Are you really going to settle down, as Nelly says?" asked Mrs. Burford, who had become in a moment more eager to hear about Cousin Dorothy's intentions than her daughter's.

"For a while, certainly; probably till spring, if I can manage to rest for seven or eight months in a place after being such a rolling stone for thirty years. Only I shall want you to spare me the girls a great deal, or I shall run away without saying good-bye to anybody."

"You have young Kenningham with you at present."

"Yes. If he were like most young men, I should be sorry I had persuaded him to be the guest of a solitary old woman, but he is not, and I find the entertaining of this youth a pleasant experience. I indulge in all sorts of fancies. I make-believe that he is my nephew and he has adopted me as his maiden aunt. He is a fine, honest, single-hearted lad, and he has very real enjoyment in the quiet life he is leading with me at the Hall. The worst of it is, he cannot stay very long. But we are going to be quite gay for us, and have tennis at home, boating on the mere, country drives and excursions, in addition to other hospitalities. My new carriages will be here to-morrow."

Miss Flint enjoyed the astonishment shown on Mrs. Burford's face. She had purposely said nothing about the coming vehicles or her plans for entertaining her neighbours, and Mrs. Burford thought that one or two solemn dinner-parties would be the only attempts at festivity. Then the fine plate would be deposited in the cases and returned to the bank, and the Hall resume its usual condition.

"I do not know whether I am more surprised or pleased," she said. "I have always wished you would settle down somewhere near us and give up your—"

"Vagabond habits," said Miss Flint, taking advantage of a momentary pause.

"I did not use or intend to use such words."

"I am sure of it, my dear, but they are the right ones. I was going to say I am a born vagabond, but that would hardly be correct. I became one through force of circumstances and a thirst for knowledge, which I did not care to satisfy by study. It is so much nicer to see for one's self than through the eyes of other people, and travellers' tales are not always to be trusted," said Miss Flint promptly.

"When you spoke of drives just now, I began to wonder where you would find a decent carriage for hire in the town, and I was about to offer you ours."

"That was very good of you. Now I can offer you the choice of two, or I will do when I get them and circumstances are favourable."

"That means," thought Mrs. Burford, "when you cannot by any possibility use them yourself." Her words, however, expressed thanks for so kind an offer, of which she was little likely to be able to avail herself.

"I cannot bear to leave my boy for long. I shall hear of your hospitalities, but shall not share them." Mrs. Burford's eyes filled and her voice trembled as she alluded to Magnus, whose condition was a sore trial to the mother.

"You must not leave him, of course. He can bear to drive with you, and, if I may, I want to see Magnus. I have something for him in the hall."

Miss Flint bustled out of the room and brought in a dainty basket, in which some of the Lint Hall grapes made a perfect picture resting on their own beautiful leaves. Then she followed Mrs. Burford to the boy's room.

"He cannot bear much excitement. You will be tender with him," whispered the mother, who would not have invited her visitor to Magnus's bedside unless almost compelled to do it.

"You need not fear," was the answer.

And truly any looker-on who knew her, would have wondered where the every-day Miss Flint was gone to, had she been seen in that sick-room.

Magnus was unfeignedly glad to see her, and when she bent over him, he clasped his thin arms round her neck and kissed her heartily. The quiet lad could understand Cousin Dorothy better than Mrs. Burford could.

The woman whose experience dated from childhood, as yet knew only one side of the old maid's character. All her children realised that beneath the rugged surface something better was concealed.

Mrs. Burford had never felt so kindly towards Cousin Dorothy in her life as she did after seeing her with Magnus. She coaxed him to take some of the grapes; she talked cheerily to him—told him stories of wonders she had seen in her travels, to which he listened with eager interest. She took him, as it were, out of himself for a whole happy hour, and finished with an account of the new carriage, in which she declared he should take the first drive, with the doctor's leave, as it was specially built for the comfort of invalids and old women. She left him looking and feeling better than she found him, and Mrs. Burford knew it, and thanked her with all her heart.

"You would not believe how much Magnus enjoyed Miss Flint's company this morning," she said to her husband. "I asked him afterwards if he were tired, and he told me,—

"'No, indeed. I was weary before of lying so still and doing nothing. She is an old darling. I want her as often as ever she can come.'

"Dorothy Flint is the strangest mixture of qualities I ever knew. She is so terribly bitter, almost revengeful, where she takes a dislike to a person; and her likes and dislikes are equally unreasoning, so far as outsiders can judge."

"Her partiality for young Kenningham and her antipathy to my friend Jack Simpson, for instance," said Mr. Burford slily.

"Why do you persist in dragging John Simpson's name in? You know so well my feelings towards him."

"Because I could think of no more apt illustration of your remark about Miss Flint's likes and dislikes. You cannot understand either; and, dear wife, let me ask you to look into your own heart and see whether you have any reasonable ground for some of your own. It has given me pain, more than I can express, to notice your hardness towards our old friend's son, and for no cause, except that, without any wrong-doing on his part, he found himself in poverty, when he had until then every cause to count on riches and—"

"You need not tell me what John Simpson expected; surely all these things are as familiar to me as to yourself. It was no fault of mine that he lost his money."

"But was it not your fault that the lad's sore heart was wounded yet more deeply? Was not the change in your conduct towards him as unreasoning as Miss Flint's hostility?"

"No. I had a very good reason for the course I took. Was it likely that I could permit the intimacy between him and our own children to continue on the old footing? They were passing beyond childhood, and pray would it have been a fitting thing for the ticket-boy at the station to parade up and down with my daughters at will? If there were any romantic nonsense in the young man's head, I think it was really kinder on my part to nip it in the bud. Half-measures would have been ridiculous, and would have failed. I wanted to touch John Simpson's pride, as the best means of separating him from our girls, and I did it. Events have proved that I acted rightly, though I am sometimes afraid that your indiscretion—or shall I call it tenderheartedness?—will yet spoil everything. Whatever happens, my conscience will not reproach me for having neglected to watch over the interests of my children."

"We take different views of things, and I am sorry it should be so. I cannot see that it is right to try and advance the worldly interests of your own children by being hard, cold, and unfeeling towards an orphan-lad in his hour of need, and by ignoring old friendships. At this moment, dear wife, I grieve for you. It hurts me to see you cherish a causeless animosity, and as I grieve, I fear that your heart will be wounded in its tenderest affections before you realise what is in it, what bitterness needs to be expelled therefrom. As to Jack, I have no concern for his future. He has surmounted many difficulties, and though he may still fill a comparatively humble position, mark my words, he is on the high-road to—"

Mr. Burford checked himself and paused.

"The high-road to what?" asked Mrs. Burford eagerly. "Has Dorothy changed her mind and made a new will in his favour?"

"On second thoughts, I will not finish my sentence. To hear of good to Jack would give you no pleasure."

Mr. Burford left the room without further comment, and, much to his wife's chagrin, the secret that had been trembling on his lips remained unspoken.

For some time afterwards she was in a state of combined annoyance, curiosity, and fear—angry that Mr. Burford should have hinted at some secret without imparting it, and curious to penetrate it by other means. Her feeling of fear was on her own boy's account. What had her husband meant when he said, that her heart would be wounded in its tenderest affections before she realised what was in it?

Could it be that he thought the condition of her darling boy was a punishment upon her for having been so hard on John Simpson?

Mrs. Burford's heart sank within her at the thought. The arrow had been shot at random, but it had reached a mark often aimed at in previous conversations, but always missed until now. Mrs. Burford had been so accustomed to defend her conduct and to assure herself that she had acted rightly, that it was a new thing for even a momentary doubt to find a place in her mind. She had now, however, begun to look back at the real motives which actuated her, and this review was far from satisfactory, though she would not have owned as much to any human being.