Twenty miles away, another weary soul had been kept awake with loving anxiety. The old man whom Judith had deserted a second time lay in that humble home bemoaning his loneliness, wondering what had drawn the only creature left to him on earth from the shelter of his roof, where she had for some days seemed so cheerfully content. Would she ever return?
The old man was asking himself this question almost in hopelessness, when the first gray of morning broke into his room. Leaving his bed, weary as when he sought it, the old man dressed himself and went to the front door. There, sitting in the porch, with her limbs huddled together, and her hair all afloat, was the young creature whose absence he had bewailed—his daughter Judith.
When she saw her father, the poor girl stood up unsteadily. She was shivering all over; but on her cheeks was a flame of coming fever, and her hot hands shook as she held them toward him.
"Father, I have come back to you. Take me home. I have come back to you. Take me home."
The old man reached forth his arms, drew her within them, and with her head falling helplessly on his shoulder, led her into the house.
CHAPTER LXXII.
THE MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE.
TWO persons, both anxious and unhappy, sat in the breakfast-room at "Norston's Rest," Sir Noel and Lady Rose. Sir Noel was thinking with secret uneasiness of the charge, that had been made with such coarse audacity, against his son, by Richard Storms; he was thinking also, with some self-upbraiding, of the young orphan who had submitted herself so gently to the demands of his pride. With all his aristocratic habits of thought and feeling, Sir Noel was essentially a good man—rich in kindliness, and incapable of doing a cruel thing, knowing it as such, and spite of his worldly reasoning, his heart was not without self-reproach when he thought of Jessup's daughter.
Lady Rose had even deeper causes of anxiety. She had performed her promise to Richard Storms; the papers, which would convey to him a really fine estate, were prepared, and she was ready to deliver them on Ruth's wedding day, when all this shameful attempt to cast disgrace on an honorable name would have been defeated by the sacrifice of two girls, herself giving the smaller part.