Trent's Trust, and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 301 pages of information about Trent's Trust, and Other Stories.

Trent's Trust, and Other Stories eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 301 pages of information about Trent's Trust, and Other Stories.
parks, tiny streams crossed by heavy stone bridges much too large for them—­all these were only pages of those books whose leaves he seemed to be turning over.  Two hours of this fancy, and then the train stopped at a station within a mile or two of a bleak headland, a beacon, and the gray wash of a pewter-colored sea, where a hilly village street climbed to a Norman church tower and the ivied gables of a rectory.

Miss Eversleigh, dignifiedly tall, but youthfully frank, as he remembered her, was waiting to drive him in a pony trap to the rectory.  A little pink, with suppressed consciousness and the responsibilities of presenting a stranger guest to her guardian, she seemed to Randolph more charming than ever.

But her first word of news shocked and held him breathless.  Bobby, the little orphan, a frail exotic, had succumbed to the Northern winter.  A cold caught in New York had developed into pneumonia, and he died on the passage.  Miss Avondale, although she had received marked attention from Sir William, returned to America in the same ship.

“I really don’t think she was quite as devoted to the poor child as all that, you know,” she continued with innocent frankness, “and Cousin Bill was certainly most kind to them both, yet there really seemed to be some coolness between them after the child’s death.  But,” she added suddenly, for the first time observing her companion’s evident distress, and coloring in confusion, “I beg your pardon—­I’ve been horribly rude and heartless.  I dare say the poor boy was very dear to you, and of course Miss Avondale was your friend.  Please forgive me!”

Randolph, intent only on that catastrophe which seemed to wreck all Captain Dornton’s hopes and blunt his only purpose for declaring himself, hurriedly reassured her, yet was not sorry his agitation had been misunderstood.  And what was to be done?  There was no train back to London for four hours.  He dare not telegraph, and if he did, could he trust to his strange patron’s wise conduct under the first shock of this news to his present vacillating purpose?  He could only wait.

Luckily for his ungallant abstraction, they were speedily at the rectory, where a warm welcome from Mr. Brunton, Sibyl’s guardian, and his family forced him to recover himself, and showed him that the story of his devotion to John Dornton had suffered nothing from Miss Eversleigh’s recital.  Distraught and anxious as he was, he could not resist the young girl’s offer after luncheon to show him the church with the vault of the Dorntons and the tablet erected to John Dornton, and, later, the Hall, only two miles distant.  But here Randolph hesitated.

“I would rather not call on Sir William to-day,” he said.

“You need not.  He is over at the horse show at Fern Dyke, and won’t be back till late.  And if he has been forgathering with his boon companions he won’t be very pleasant company.”

“Sibyl!” said the rector in good-humored protest.

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Trent's Trust, and Other Stories from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.