I hear nothing, and see nothing--I lose all my senses together in the dark."
It was only by rare accidents, which there was no providing against, that she was ever terrified in this way, after her peculiarity had first disclosed itself. In small things as well as in great, Valentine never forgot that her happiness was his own especial care. He was more nervously watchful over her than anyone else in the house--for she cost him those secret anxieties which make the objects of our love doubly precious to us. In all the years that she had lived under his roof, he had never conquered his morbid dread that Madonna might be one day traced and discovered by her father, or by relatives, who might have a legal claim to her. Under this apprehension he had written to Doctor Joyce and Mrs. Peckover a day or two after the child's first entry under his roof, pledging both the persons whom he addressed to the strictest secrecy in all that related to Madonna and to the circumstances which had made her his adopted child. As for the hair bracelet, if his conscience had allowed him, he would have destroyed it immediately; but feeling that this would be an inexcusable breach of trust, he was fain to be content with locking it up, as well as the pocket-handkerchief, in an old bureau in his painting-room, the key of which he always kept attached to his own watch chain.
Not one of his London friends ever knew how he first met with Madonna. He boldly baffled all forms of inquiry by requesting that they would consider her history before she came into his house as a perfect blank, and by simply presenting her to them as his adopted child. This method of silencing troublesome curiosity succeeded certainly to admiration; but at the expense of Mr. Blyth's own moral character. Persons who knew little or nothing of his real disposition and his early life, all shook their heads, and laughed in secret; asserting that the mystery was plain enough to the most ordinary capacity, and that the young lady could be nothing more nor less than a natural child of his own.
Mrs. Blyth was far more indignant at this report than her husband, when in due time it reached the painter's house. Valentine rather approved of the scandal than not, because it was likely to lead inquisitive people in the wrong direction. He might have been now perfectly easy about the preservation of his secret, but for the distrust which still clung to him, in spite of himself, on the subject of Mrs. Peckover's discretion. He never wearied of warning that excellent woman to be careful in keeping the important secret, every time she came to London to see Madonna. Whether she only paid them a visit for the day, and then went away again; or whether she spent her Christmas with them, Valentine's greeting always ended nervously with the same distrustful question:--"Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Peckover, but are you quite sure you have kept what you know about little Mary and her mother, and dates and places and all that, properly hidden from prying people, since you were here last?" At which point Mrs. Peckover generally answered by repeating, always with the same sarcastic emphasis:--"Properly hidden, did you say, sir? Of course I keep what I know properly hidden, for of course I can hold my tongue. In my time, sir, it used always to take two parties to play at a game of Hide and Seek. Who in the world is seeking after little Mary, I should like to know?"
Perhaps Mrs. Peckover's view of the case was the right one; or, perhaps, the extraordinary discretion observed by the persons who were in the secret of Madonna's history, prevented any disclosure of the girl's origin from reaching her father or friends--presuming them to be still alive and anxiously looking for her. But, at any rate, this much at least is certain:--Nobody appeared to assert a claim to Valentine's adopted child, from the time when he took her home with him as his daughter, to the time when the reader first made his acquaintance, many pages back, in the congenial sphere of his own painting-room.*
* See note at the end of the book.
CHAPTER VIII.
MENTOR AND TELEMACHUS.
It is now some time since we left Mr. Blyth and Madonna in the studio. The first was engaged, it may be remembered, in the process of brushing up Bacchanalian Nymphs in the foreground of a Classical landscape. The second was modestly occupied in making a copy of the head of the Venus de' Medici.
The clock strikes one--and a furious ring is heard at the house-bell.
"There he is!" cries Mr. Blyth to himself. "There's Zack! I know his ring among a thousand; it's worse even than the postman's; it's like an alarm of fire!"
Here Valentine drums gently with his mahl-stick on the floor. Madonna looks towards him directly; he waves his hand round and round rapidly above his head. This is the sign which means "Zack." The girl smiles brightly, and blushes as she sees it. Zack is apparently one of her special favorites.
While the young gentleman is being admitted at the garden gate, there is a leisure moment to explain how he became acquainted with Mr. Blyth.
Valentine's father, and Mrs. Thorpe's father (the identical Mr. Goodworth who figures at the beginning of this narrative as one of the actors in the Sunday Drama at Baregrove Square), had been intimate associates of the drowsy-story-telling and copious-port-drinking old school. The friendly intercourse between these gentlemen spread, naturally enough, to the sons and daughters who formed their respective families. From the time of Mr. Thorpe's marriage to Miss Goodworth, however, the connection between the junior Goodworths and Blyths began to grow less intimate--so far, at least, as the new bride and Valentine were concerned. The rigid modern Puritan of Baregrove Square, and the eccentric votary of the Fine Arts, mutually disapproved of each other from the very first. Visits of ceremony were exchanged at long intervals; but even these were discontinued on Madonna's arrival under Valentine's roof: Mr. Thorpe being one of the first of the charitable friends of the family who suspected her to be the painter's natural child. An almost complete separation accordingly ensued for some years, until Zack grew up to boy's estate, and was taken to see Valentine, one day in holiday time, by his grandfather. He and the painter became friends directly. Mr. Blyth liked boys, and boys of all degrees liked him. From this time, Zack frequented Valentine's house at every opportunity, and never neglected his artist-friend in after years. At the date of this story, one of the many points in his son's conduct of which Mr. Thorpe disapproved on the highest moral grounds, was the firm determination the lad showed to keep up his intimacy with Mr. Blyth.
We may now get back to the ring at the bell.
Zack's approach to the painting-room was heralded by a scuffling of feet, a loud noise of talking, and a great deal of suspicious giggling on the part of the housemaid, who had let him in. Suddenly these sounds ceased--the door was dashed open--and Mr.