Marjory's fifteenth birthday had come at last, and she stood in her mother's room.
The sunlight streamed across the faded hangings and the panelled walls, flooding the place with brightness. It seemed hardly possible that it had been unused for so many years. Lisbeth had worked in it so faithfully week by week that, beyond the fading of the curtains and the rugs which lay about the polished floor, there was nothing to indicate that it had been unoccupied for so long.
There were flowers about the room; there was a work-basket on a small table by the window; and an embroidery frame with a half-finished piece of work in it stood near, just as if its owner might have been working at it yesterday. It was altogether a dainty apartment, and bore evidence in every corner of the girlish fancies of its former mistress. The pictures on the walls were all of a romantic description; the books on the shelves could almost have told the tale of Marjory Hunter's childhood and girlhood. Fairy tales there were in plenty, and the rest were of the tender, sentimental kind--love poems and the like. If Blanche Forester had been describing the collection, she would have said that there was not a single dry book amongst them--the word "dry" in her vocabulary meaning anything from uninteresting to instructive! Had the doctor only known it, he need not have feared the attraction of these books for his niece. Marjory required something stronger and more active in character--stories of great men and women, histories of the world and its wonders, something stirring and stimulating.
Marjory stood in her mother's room--alone. Her feelings as she entered this chamber of her dreams were those of awe and expectation of she knew not what. She gave one quick glance around, but she had eyes for nothing at present but a picture--a picture of a man with a strong, handsome face, and dark hair and eyes which she knew resembled her own. Beside it was another picture--that of a fair-haired girl, her mother. "How sweet she must have been!" thought Marjory, and her eyes turned again to the other picture.
That other picture, would the doctor have confessed it, was one of the chief reasons why he did not wish Marjory to enter her mother's room. With that speaking, impressive portrait of her father continually before her eyes, could the child be taught to ignore and forget him? The doctor had an almost superstitious dislike of having anything moved at Hunters' Brae. His sister had ordered Hugh Davidson's portrait to be hung in her room; there it must stay, but Marjory should not see it until he thought fit.