Ellinor had spent a long hot day in the parsonage, helping that pearl of housewives, Madam Tutterville, with the potting of cherry jam. She had come home across the fields with lagging step, drawing in the luxury of the evening silence, the cool fragrance of the woods, the beauties of the advancing night. She bore, as an offering, a handsome basketful of rectory peaches, over which her soul was grateful: a proper dish to set before him in whose service she took her joy.
On re-entering the house, according to her usual wont, she at first sought her father, but found the laboratory empty of any presence save that of the herb-spirits singing in the throat of the retort. She made no doubt then but that the simpler had sought the star-gazer’s high seat.
One result of her presence at Bindon had been the gradual drawing together of the two men, with herself as a centring link. David was more prone to come down from his tower and her father to come up from his vault. And she took a sweet and secret pleasure in the quite unconscious sense of grievance they would both display when her duty or her mood took her for any length of time away from either of them.
As she reached the foot of the tower stairs a hand was placed upon her arm. She turned with that irrepressible inner revulsion which always heralded to her Margery’s presence.
“Asking your pardon, ma’am,” came the usual silky formula, “may I inquire if you are going up to see my master?”
“To be sure,” answered Ellinor quietly, though she blushed in the dark. “Do you not see that I am going up to the tower?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Mrs. Nutmeg, humbly. “I made so bold as to trouble you, ma’am, not wishing to intrude upon my master myself. The postman left a letter, ma’am.”
Mrs. Nutmeg drew the object in question from under her black silk apron. Very white it shone in the gloom:—a large, oblong folded sheet, with a black blotch in the centre where sprawled an enormous seal.
“This letter, ma’am,” she repeated, “came this evening. Would you be good enough to hand it yourself to my master?”
Ellinor had a superstitious feeling that Margery Nutmeg was one day, somehow, destined to bring misfortune upon her; and it was this perhaps which always left her discomfited after even the most trivial interview with the housekeeper. But determinedly shaking off the sensation, she slipped the letter in her basket and began the ascent of the rugged stairs. No matter how tired she might be, her foot was always light when it led her to the tower, because her impatient heart went on before.