The Wyvern Mystery

In the small breakfast parlour of Oulton, a pretty girl, Miss Alice Maybell, with her furs and wrappers about her, and a journey of forty miles before her--not by rail--to Wyvern, had stood up to hug and kiss her old aunt, and bid her good-bye.

“Now, do sit down again; you need not be in such a hurry--you’re not to go for ten minutes or more,” said the old lady; “do, there’s a darling.”

“If I’m not home before the sun goes down, aunt, Mr. Fairfield will be so angry,” said the girl, laying a hand on each shoulder of kind old Lady Wyndale, and looking fondly, but also sadly, into her face.

“Which Mr. Fairfield, dear--the old or the young one?”

“Old Mr. Fairfield, the Squire, as we call him at Wyvern. He’ll really be angry, and I’m a little bit afraid of him, and I would not vex him for the world--he has always been so kind.”

As she answered, the young lady blushed a beautiful crimson, and the old lady, not observing it, said--

“Indeed, I don’t know why I said young--young Mr. Fairfield is old enough, I think, to be your father; but I want to know how you liked Lord Tremaine. I told you how much he liked you. I’m a great believer in first impressions. He was so charmed with you, when he saw you in Wyvern Church. Of course he ought to have been thinking of something better; but no matter--the fact was so, and now he is, I really think, in love--very much--and who knows? He’s such a charming person, and there is everything to make it--I don’t know what word to use--but you know Tremaine is quite a beautiful place, and he does not owe a guinea.”

“You dear old auntie,” said the girl, kissing her again on the cheek, “wicked old darling--always making great matches for me. If you had remained in India, you’d have married me, I’m sure, to a native prince.”

“Native fiddlestick; of course I could if I had liked, but you never should have married a Mahomedan with my consent. Never mind though; you’re sure to do well; marriages are made in heaven, and I really believe there is no use in plotting and planning. There was your darling mamma, when we were both girls together, I said I should never consent to marry a soldier or live out of England, and I did marry a soldier, and lived twelve years of my life in India; and she, poor darling, said again and again, she did not care who her husband might be, provided he was not a clergyman, nor a person living all the year round in the country--that no power could induce her to consent to, and yet she did consent, and to both one and the other, and married a clergyman, and a poor one, and lived and died in the country. So, after all, there’s not much use in planning beforehand.”

“Very true, auntie; none in the world, I believe.”

The girl was looking partly over her shoulder, out of the window, upward towards the clouds, and she sighed heavily; and recollecting herself, looked again in her aunt’s face and smiled.

“I wish you could have stayed a little longer here,” said her aunt.

“I wish I could,” she answered slowly, “I was thinking of talking over a great many things with you--that is, of telling you all my long stories; but while those people were staying here I could not, and now there is not time.”

“What long stories, my dear?”

“Stupid stories, I should have said,” answered Alice.

“Well come, is there anything to tell?” demanded the old lady, looking in her large, dark eyes.

“Nothing worth telling--nothing that is--” and she paused for the continuation of her sentence.

“That is what?” asked her aunt.

“I was going to talk to you, darling,” answered the girl, “but I could not in so short a time--so short a time as remains now,” and she looked at her watch--a gift of old Squire Fairfield’s. “I should not know how to make myself understood, I have so many hundred things, and all jumbled up in my head, and should not know how to begin.”