“I am dying to see him,” she answered, “to hear him speak, to have him come in and out as he used to do. I want to feel the clasp of his hand, and the touch of his lips. Oh, Richard, Richard, bring back my boy! A word from you will do it.”
“My dear Julia, I have just met Squire Atheling and his daughter. The girl has grown to a wonder of beauty. She is marvellous; I simply never saw such a face. Last week I watched her in the hunting field at Ashley. She rode like an Amazon; she was peerless among all the beauties there. I begin to understand that Piers, having loved her, could love no other woman; and I think we might learn to love her for Piers’s sake. What do you say, my dear? The house is terribly lonely. I miss my son in business matters continually; and if he does not marry, the children of my brother Henry come after him. He is in constant danger; he is in a land where he must go armed day and night. Think of our son living in a place like that! And his last letters have had such a tone of home-sickness in them. Shall I see Squire Atheling, and ask him for his daughter?”
“He will never do it.”
“Then see him, Richard. Anything, anything, that will give Piers back to me.”
The next day the Duke was at Atheling, and what took place at that interview, the Squire never quite divulged, even to his wife. “It was very humbling to him,” he said, “and I am not the man to brag about it.” To Kate nothing whatever was said. “Who knows just where Piers is? and who can tell what might happen before he learns of the change that has taken place?” asked the Squire. “Why should we toss Kitty’s mind hither and thither till Piers is here to quiet it?”
In fact the Squire’s idea was far truer than he had any conception of. Piers was actually in London when the Duke’s fatherly letter sent to recall his self-banished son left for Texas. Indeed he was on his way to Richmoor the very day that the letter was written. He came to it one afternoon just before dinner. The Duchess was dressed and waiting for the Duke and the daily ceremony of the hour. She stood at the window, looking into the dripping garden, but really seeing nothing, not even the plashed roses before her eyes. Her thoughts were in a country far off; and she was wondering how long it would take Piers to answer their loving letter. The door opened softly. She supposed it was the Duke, and said, fretfully, “This climate is detestable, Duke. It has rained for a week.”
“Mother! Mother! Oh, my dear Mother!”
Then, with a cry of joy that rung through the lofty room, she turned, and was immediately folded in the arms she longed for. And before her rapture had time to express itself, the Duke came in and shared it. They were not an emotional family; and high culture had relegated any expression of feeling far below the tide of their daily life; but, for once, Nature had her way with the usually undemonstrative woman. She wept, and laughed, and talked, and exclaimed as no one had ever seen or heard her since the days of her early girlhood.
In the happy privacy of the evening hours, Piers told them over again the wild, exciting story he had been living; and the Duke acknowledged that to have aided in any measure such an heroic struggle was an event to dignify life. “But now, Piers,” he said, “now you will remain in your own home. If you still wish to marry Miss Atheling, your mother and I are pleased that you should do so. We will express this pleasure as soon as you desire us. I wrote you to this effect; but you cannot have received my letter, since it only left for Texas yesterday.”