“Thank you. Success will come. They who care and dare can do anything.” With these words he passed through the gates, and Mrs. Atheling and Kate went slowly back to the house, both of them turning the new ring on their fingers. It was dinner-time, but little dinner was eaten. Edgar’s letter was to read; Mr. North to speculate about; and if either of the women remembered Lord Exham’s expected call, no remark was made about it.
Yet Kate was neither forgetful of the visit, nor indifferent to it. A sweet trouble of heart, half-fear and half-hope, flushed her cheeks and sent a tender light into her star-like eyes. In the very depths of her being there existed a feeling she did not understand, and did not investigate. Was it Memory? Was it Hope? Was it Love? She asked none of these questions. But she dressed like a girl in a dream; and just as she was sliding the silver buckle on her belt, a sudden trick of memory brought back to her the rhyme of her childhood. And though she blushed to the remembrance, and would not for anything repeat the words, her heart sang softly to itself,–
“It may so happen, it may so fall,
That I shall be Lady of Exham Hall.”
CHAPTER THIRD
THE LORD OF EXHAM
On the very edge of the deep, tumbling becks which feed the Esk stands Exham Hall. It is a stately, irregular building of gray stone; and when the sunshine is on its many windows, and the flag of Richmoor flying from its central tower, it looks gaily down into the hearts of many valleys, where
“The oak, and the ash, and the bonny ivy-tree,
Flourish at home in the North Countree.”
Otherwise, it has, at a distance, a stern and forbidding aspect. For it is in a great solitude, and the babble of the beck, and the cawing of the rooks, are the only sounds that usually break the silence. The north part was built in A. D. 1320; and the most modern part in the reign of James the First; and yet so well has it stood the wear and tear of elemental and human life in this secluded Yorkshire vale that it does not appear to be above a century old.