Milly Darrell and Other Tales | Page 7

face.
Whatever this look might mean, she was unconscious of it; she went on

talking gaily of Thornleigh and her Thornleigh friends.
'I do so want to come home, Julian,' she said. 'Do you think there is any
hope for me this midsummer?'
'I think there is every hope. I think it is almost certain you will come
home.'
'O Julian, how glad I am!'
'But suppose there should be a surprise for you when you come home,
Milly,--a change that you may not quite like, at first?'
'What change?'
'Has your father told you nothing?'
'Nothing, except about his journeys from place to place, and not much
about them. He has written very seldom during the last six months.'
'He has been too much engaged, I suppose; and it's rather like him to
have said nothing about it. How would you like a stepmother, Milly?'
She gave a little cry, and grew suddenly pale.
'Papa has married again!' she said.
Julian Stormont drew a newspaper from his pocket, and laid it before
her, pointing to an announcement in one column:
'On May 18th, at the English legation in Paris, William Darrell, Esq., of
Thornleigh, Yorkshire, to Augusta, daughter of the late Theodore
Chester, Esq., of Regent's Park.'
He read this aloud very slowly, watching Milly's pale face as he read.
'There is no reason why this should distress you, my dear child,' he said.
'It was only to be expected that your father would marry again, sooner
or later.'

'I have lost him!' she cried piteously.
'Lost him!'
'Yes; he can never be again the same to me that he has been. His new
wife will come between us. No, Julian, I am not jealous. I do not
grudge him his happiness, if this marriage can make him happy. I only
feel that I have lost him for ever.'
'My dear Milly, that is utterly unreasonable. Your father told me most
particularly to assure you of his unaltered affection, when I broke the
news of this marriage to you. He was naturally a little nervous about
doing it himself.'
'You must never let him know what I have said, Julian. He will never
hear any expression of regret from me; and I will try to do my duty to
this strange lady. Have you seen her yet?'
'No, they have not come home yet. They were in Switzerland when I
heard of them last; but they are expected in a week or two. Come, my
dear Milly, don't look so serious. I trust this marriage may turn out for
your happiness, as well as for your father's. Rely upon it, you will find
no change in his feelings towards you.'
'He will always be kind and good to me, I know,' she answered sadly.
'It is not possible for him to be anything but that; but I can never be his
companion again as I have been. There is an end to all that.'
'That was a kind of association which could not be supposed to last all
your life, Milly. It is to be hoped that somebody else will have a claim
upon your companionship before many years have gone by.'
'I suppose you mean that I shall marry,' she said, looking at him with
supreme indifference.
'Something like that, Milly.'
'I have always fancied myself living all my life with papa. I have never

thought it possible that I could care for any one but him.'
Julian Stormont's face darkened a little, and he sat silent for some
minutes, folding and refolding the newspaper in a nervous way.
'You are not very complimentary to your admirers at Thornleigh,' he
said at last, with a short hoarse laugh.
'Who is there at Thornleigh? Have I really any admirers there?'
'I think I could name half-a-dozen.'
'Never mind them just now. I want you to tell me all you know about
my stepmother.'
'That amounts to very little. All I can tell you is, that she is the daughter
of a gentleman, highly accomplished, without money, and
four-and-twenty years of age. She was travelling as companion to an
elderly lady when your father met her in a picture-gallery at Florence.
He knew the old lady, I believe, and by that means became acquainted
with the younger one.'
'Only four-and-twenty! only four years older than I!'
'Rather young, is it not? but when a man of your father's age makes a
second marriage, he is apt to marry a young woman. Of course this is
quite a love-match.'
'Yes, quite a love-match,' Milly repeated, with a sigh.
I knew she could not help that natural pang of jealousy, as she thought
how she and her father had once been all the world to each other. She
had told me so often of their