Chapter 15 - Page 2

considerations
uppermost in their thoughts. This seemed so natural, that Maud wondered
she too could not feel all this absorbing interest in the child, a
being so totally dependent on the affection of its friends and
relatives to provide for its wants and hazards, in an emergency like
the present.

"_We_ will see to the child, Maud," observed her mother, ten or
fifteen minutes after all were up and dressed. "Do you go to your
brother, who will be solitary, alone in his citadel. He may wish, too,
to send some message to his father. Go, then, dear girl, and help to
keep up poor Bob's spirits."

What a service for Maud! Still, she went, without hesitation or delay;
for the habits of her whole infancy were not to be totally overcome by
the natural and more engrossing sentiments of her later years. She
could not feel precisely the reserve and self-distrust with one she had
so long regarded as a brother, as might have been the case with a
stranger youth in whom she had begun to feel the interest she
entertained for Robert Willoughby. But, Maud did not hesitate about
complying. An order from her mother to her was law; and she had no
shame, no reserves on the subject of contributing to Bob's comfort or
happiness.

Her presence was a great relief to the young man himself, whom she
found in the library. His assistants were posted without, as sentinels
to keep off intruders, a disposition that left him quite alone, anxious
and uneasy. The only intercourse he could have with his father was by
means of messages; and the part of the building he occupied was
absolutely without any communication with the court, except by a single
door near the offices, at which he had stationed O'Hearn.

"This is kind, and like yourself, dearest Maud," exclaimed the young
man, taking the hand of his visiter, and pressing it in both his own,
though he strangely neglected to kiss her cheek, as he certainly would
have done had it been Beulah--"This is kind and like yourself; now I
shall learn something of the state of the family. How is my mother?"

It might have been native coyness, or even coquetry, that unconsciously
to herself influenced Maud's answer. She knew not why--and yet she felt
prompted to let it be understood she had not come of her own impulses.

"Mother is well, and not at all alarmed," she said. "She and Beulah are
busy with little Evert, who crows and kicks his heels about as if
_he_ despised danger as becomes a soldier's son, and has much amused
even _me_; though I am accused of insensibility to his perfections.
Believing you might be solitary, or might wish to communicate with
some of us, my mother desired me to come and inquire into your