So on the Monday morning, Mrs. Wanless again set out for the Grange. With sickening heart and trembling steps, she crept along the sweeping avenue like a thief in dread of being seen. The day was grey and cold, as the latter days of April often are, and the leaden clouds threatened rain. It was one of those days when spring has, as it were, turned back to give a farewell hand-shake to winter. A chilly blast swept along the ground in gusts, and made one shiver; the world looked dreary and forbidding; birds were silent; and as one looked abroad on the cheerless world, and mournful sky, one grew unconsciously to have a shut-in kind of feeling. If only a rift would appear in that grey canopy, then one might breathe and have hope. Who has not come under the spell of such days? To whom have they not seemed to increase the bitterness of sorrow, to add weight to the burden of disappointment?
Mrs. Wanless was probably all the sadder this morning that the day was sad, though her thoughts were too fixed on Sally to be overborne by any idle impressions from the leaden aspect of the landscape. Or perhaps she felt that the day and her feelings were in wonderful unison. A beautiful spring morning might have jarred on her spirit. Spring sunshine is so gladsome, so full of hope, and Mrs. Wanless had no hope, only a longing to bring her daughter home and hide her away out of the world's sight.
Intent on her errand, she approached the house—a large, square building, with innumerable staring windows and a bare lawn in front, where a poor woman could find no hiding place—but as she neared the servants' door round in the east end of the mansion she paused irresolute. She remembered the reception of a week ago, the whispers and nods and innuendos of the wenches who came and went with a wonderful bustle of extemporized activity as she stood speaking to her daughter just by the door. If Sally would but come out, she thought, as once and again she turned back unable to muster courage, and cowered by the garden wall, which approached that end of the house, wherein lay the servants' quarters, with her old shepherd's plaid shawl gathered tightly round her. But no one came save menials, out of whose sight the poor bruised mother would fain have kept herself. The children of the gentlefolks would not be out of doors that day. It was too cold.
At last Mrs. Wanless nerved herself to a desperate effort, left the shelter of the garden wall, and walked as firmly as she could up to the kitchen door, and feebly knocked. She waited a long time as it seemed to her palpitating heart, but no answer came. Her knock had not been heard, so she tried again, this time a little less feebly. It was no use—nobody minded her. Would she go away? Nay, she dared not do that. She would wait, somebody was sure to turn up presently. The resolution was hardly formed when the door opened, and her daughter and she stood face to face. A scared look came into the girl's eyes as she exclaimed, "You here again, mother;" the blood mantled to her forehead, and she half stepped back. But her mother caught her by the arm feverishly, and led her away from the house, saying—
"Oh, Sally, I do so want to see you, but I didn't like to come in again. Why didn't you coom home last night?"
Sally tried to frame some excuse, but her voice failed her; she turned pale as death, and hung her head.
"Why didn't you, dear;" her mother repeated, in a dull, mechanical sort of way. Sally's feelings overcame her. She burst into tears, and through her sobs gasped out—
"I thought you—father—wouldn't let me come back."
Her mother did not at once reply, she was too pained, and also too keenly alive to the eyes that were at many a window gloating over her daughter's misery. Almost roughly she tightened her grasp on the girl's arm, and hurried her round the corner of the garden wall, never halting till safely behind a clump of evergreens. Then she released her daughter, turned, and clasped her to her breast. Both wept now, and, as she wept, the poor, stricken mother cried—
"Ah, Sally, Sally, my pet, my pet, you mustn't think on us like that," in tones that expressed reproach and love and pity and misery all in one. But no word of reproach did she utter.