Annie Owen, our Malory maid, peeped in at the door--came in, looking frightened and important, and closed it before she spoke. She was turning something about in her fingers.
"Please, miss, there's an old gentleman downstairs; and he wants to know, ma'am," she continued, now addressing mamma, "whether you'll be pleased to see him."
Mamma raised herself, and looked at the girl with anxious, startled eyes.
"What is that you have got in your hand?" I asked.
"Oh! I beg your pardon, ma'am; he told me to give you this, please." And she handed a card to mamma. She looked at it and grew very pale. She stood up with a flurried air.
"Please, ma'am?" inquired the girl in perplexity.
"No matter. Ethel, dear, it is he. Yes, I'll see him," she said to the girl, in an agitated way; "show him up. Ethel, it's Harry Rokestone--don't go; he is so stern--I know how he'll speak to me--but I ought not to refuse to see him."
I was angry at my mother's precipitation. If it had rested with me, what an answer the savage old man should have had! I was silent. By this time the girl was again at the hall-door. The first moment of indignation over, I was thunderstruck. I could not believe that anything so portentous was on the eve of happening.
The moments of suspense were not many. My eyes were fixed on the door as if an executioner were about to enter by it. It opened, and I saw--need I tell you?--the very same tall, handsome old man I had seen in the chapel of Cardyllion Castle.
"Oh! Mabel," he said, and stopped. It was the most melancholy, broken voice I had ever heard. "My darling!"
My mother stood with her hand stretched vaguely towards him, trembling.
"Oh! Mabel, it is you, and we've met at last!"
He took her hand in one of his, and laid the other suddenly across his eyes and sobbed. There was silence for a good while, and then he spoke again.
"My pretty Mabel! I lost ye; I tried to hate ye, Mabel; but all would not do, for I love ye still. I was mad and broken-hearted--I tried to hate ye, but I couldn't; I'd a' given my life for you all the time, and you shall have Malory--it's your own--I've bought it--ye'll not be too proud to take a gift from the old man, my only darling! The spring and summer are over, it's winter now wi' the old fellow, and he'll soon lie under the grass o' the kirk-garth, and what does it all matter then? And you, bonny Mabel, there's wonderful little change wi' you!"