Anne Hereford. Mrs. Henry Wood
he put a small box into my hands. I remembered having seen it on Selina's dressing-table.
"It contains a few of your Aunt Selina's trinkets," he said. "All she brought here, except a necklace, which is of value, and will be forwarded, with some of her more costly clothes, to Mrs. Hemson for you. Do you think you can take care of these until you are of an age to wear them?"
"I will take great care of them, sir. I will lock them up in the little desk mamma gave me, and I wear the key of it round my neck."
"Mind you do take care of them," he rejoined, with suppressed emotion. "If I thought you would not, I would never give them to you. You must treasure them always. And these things, recollect, are of value," he added, touching the box. "They are not child's toys. Take them upstairs, and put them in your trunk."
"If you please, sir, has the will been found?" I waited to ask.
"It has not. Why?"
"Because, sir, you asked me if I had taken it; you said I was the only one who knew where it had been put. Indeed, I would not have touched it for anything."
"Be easy, little girl. I believe my wife herself destroyed the will: but I live in hopes of coming to the bottom of the mystery yet. As you have introduced the subject, you shall hear a word upon it from me. Busybodies have given me hints that I ought to carry out its substance in spite of the loss. I do not think so. The will, and what I hear connected with its making, has angered me, look you, Anne Hereford. Had my wife only breathed half a word to me that she wished you to have her money, every shilling should be yours. But I don't like the underhand work that went on in regard to it, and shall hold it precisely as though it had never existed. If I ever relent in your favour, it will not be yet awhile."
"I did not know she was going to leave me anything, indeed, sir."
"Just so. But it was you who undertook the communications to Gregg, it seems, and admitted him when he came. You all acted as though I were a common enemy; and it has vexed me in no measured degree. That's all, child. Take another bunch of grapes with you."
I went away, carrying the casket and the grapes. Jemima was packing my trunks when I went upstairs, and she shared the grapes and the delight of looking at the contents of the casket: Selina's thin gold chain, and her beautiful little French watch, two or three bracelets, some rings, brooches, and a smelling-bottle, encased in filigree gold. All these treasures were mine. At first I gazed at them with a mixed feeling, in which awe and sorrow held their share; Jemima the same: it seemed a profanation to rejoice over what had been so recently hers: but the sorrow soon lost itself in the moment's seduction. Jemima hung the chain and watch round her own neck, put on all the bracelets, thrust the largest of the rings on her little finger, and figured off before the glass; while I knelt on a chair looking on in mute admiration, anticipating the time when they would be adorning me. Ah, my readers! when we indeed become of an age to wear ornaments, how poor is the pleasure they afford then, compared to that other early anticipation!
A stern voice shouting out "Anne Hereford!" broke the charm, startling us excessively. Jemima tore off the ornaments, I jumped from the chair.
"Anne, I want you," came the reiterated call.
It was from Mr. Edwin Barley. He stood at the foot of the stairs as I ran down, my heart beating, expecting nothing but that the precious treasures were going to be wrested from me. Taking my hand, he led me into the dining-room, sat down, and held me before him.
"Anne, you are a sensible little girl," he began, "and will understand what I say to you. The events, the tragedies which have happened in this house since you came to it, are not pleasant, they do not bring honour, either to the living or the dead. Were everything that occurred to be rigidly investigated, a large share of blame might be cast on my wife, your Aunt Selina. It is a reflection I would have striven to shield her from had she lived. I would doubly shield her now that she is dead. Will you do the same?"
"Yes, sir; I should like to do so."
"That is right. Henceforth, when strangers question you, you must know nothing. The better plan will be to be wholly silent. Remember, child, I urge this for Selina's sake. We know how innocent of deliberate wrong she was, but she was careless, and people might put a different construction on things. They might be capable of saying that she urged Heneage to revenge. You were present at that scene by the summer-house, from which Heneage ran off, and shot King. Do not ever speak of it."
I think my breath went away from me in my consternation. How had Mr. Edwin Barley learnt that? It could only have been from Selina.
"She sent me after Mr. Heneage, sir, to tell him to let Philip King alone--to command it in his mother's name."
"I know. Instead of that he went and shot him. I would keep my wife's name out of all this; you must do the same. But that you are a child of right feeling and of understanding beyond your years, I should not say this to you. Good-bye. I shall not see you in the morning."
"Good-bye sir," I answered. "Thank you for letting them all be kind to me."
And he shook hands with me for the first time.
CHAPTER VII.
AT MISS FENTON'S.
I must have been a very impressionable child; easily swayed by the opinions of those about me. The idea conveyed to my mind by what I had heard of Mrs. Hemson was, that she was something of an ogre with claws; and I can truthfully say, I would almost as soon have been consigned to the care of an ogre as to hers. I felt so all the while I was going to her.
Charlotte Delves placed me in the ladies' carriage at Nettleby station under charge of the guard--just as it had been in coming. And once more I, poor lonely little girl, was being whirled on a railroad journey. But ah! with what a sad amount of experience added to my young life!
Two o'clock was striking as the train steamed into Dashleigh station. I was not sure at first that it was Dashleigh, and in the uncertainty did not get out. Several people were on the platform, waiting for the passengers the train might bring. One lady in particular attracted my notice, a tall, fair, graceful woman, with a sweet countenance. There was something in her face that put me in mind of mamma. She was looking attentively at the carriages, one after another, when her eyes caught mine, and she came to the door.
"I think you must be, Anne," she said, with a bright smile, and sweet voice of kindness. "Did you not know I should be here? I am Mrs. Hemson."
That Mrs. Hemson! that the ogre with claws my imagination had painted! In my astonishment I never spoke or stirred. The guard came up.
"This is Dashleigh," said he to me. "Are you come to receive this young lady, ma'am?"
Mrs. Hemson did receive me, with a warm embrace. She saw to my luggage, and then put me in a fly to proceed to her house. A thorough gentlewoman was she in all ways; a lady in appearance, mind, and manners. But it seemed to me a great puzzle how she could be so; or, being so that she could have married a retail tradesman.
Mr. Hemson was a silk-mercer and linendraper. It appeared to me a large, handsome shop, containing many shopmen and customers. The fly passed it and stopped at the private door. We went through a wide passage and up a handsome staircase, into large and well-furnished sitting-rooms. My impression had been that Mrs. Hemson lived in a hovel, or, at the best, in some little dark sitting-room behind a shop. Mrs. Jones, who kept the little shop where mamma used to buy her things, had only a kitchen behind. Upstairs again were the nursery and bedrooms, a very large house altogether. There were six children, two girls who went to school by day, two boys out at boarding-school, and two little ones in the nursery. In the yard behind were other rooms, occupied by the young men engaged in the business, with whom Mrs. Hemson appeared to have nothing whatever to do.
"This is where you will sleep, Anne," she said, opening the door of a chamber which had two beds in it. "Frances and Mary sleep here, but they can occupy the same bed while you stay. Make haste and get your things off, my dear, for the dinner