Ellinor, half hidden behind the statue of Diana and its spreading green, watched the scene, waiting for her own moment.
How different had been, she thought to herself, the return of poor Ellinor Marvel, that other daughter of Bindon, upon the cold September night, solitary, travel-worn, penniless, knocking in vain at the door her forefathers had built, creeping round back ways like a beggar, with the bats circling by her in the darkness and the watchdog growling at her from his kennel; unbidden, entering her old house, unwelcomed.—Unwelcomed? Was cousin Maud welcomed?
In her rustling thin silk spencer and her fluttering muslin, with hectic, handsome face, looking anxiously out from under the wide befeathered bonnet, Lady Lochore advanced her thin sandalled foot on the step of the coach and rested her hand upon David’s extended arm.
This was their meeting after years of estrangement! For a second she wavered, made a movement as if she would fling herself into her brother’s arms; the ribbons on her bosom fluttered—was it with a heaving sob? She glanced up at David’s severe countenance and suddenly stiffened herself. He bent and brushed the gloved wrist with his lips.
“Sister, Bindon greets you!”
She tossed her head, and her plumes shook. It seemed to the watching Ellinor as if she would have twitched her hand from his fingers; but he led her on. And the two last Cheverals walked up the steps together.
The servants, Margery at their head, breathed respectful whispers of welcome. The lady nodded haughtily and vaguely. She stood in the hall and David dropped her hand. His eye was cold, there was a faint sneer on his lips.
Welcomed? Ah, no! Ellinor would not have exchanged her dark night of home-coming for her cousin’s golden ceremonious day. Ellinor had cared little at heart—absorbed in her young freedom and her new confidence in life—how she should be received, but the lord of Bindon had looked into her eyes and bade her “welcome,” and laid his lips, lips that could not lie, upon hers.
When Ellinor emerged from behind her foliage screen, Lady Lochore was struggling in Madam Tutterville’s stout embrace. Sir David had summoned all his family upon the scene; and—yes, actually it was her father (in a wonderful blue anachronism of a coat) who was talking so eagerly to the smiling rector that he seemed quite oblivious of the purpose of his own presence.
Aunt Sophia had prepared a fitting address for one whom she had been long wont to regard (however regretfully) as Jezebel. But, as usual, her sternness had melted under the impulse of her warm heart.