The earl watched till they were out of sight, then sat down with his back against the idol, opened the miniature, gave one glance, shut it again, and bent his forehead upon the hand in which it was clenched. Thus he remained motionless till a sound of footsteps aroused him, when he sprang up, thrust the miniature in his bosom, and stood calm and immovable as a statue, ready to receive his wife. I call her his wife, and never, never while there is breath in my bosom, will I, her child, his child, admit that she was not. Are not our laws as sacred as those of England?
My mother came forward clad in the pretty attire of an English page, and so disguised, so full of that beautiful, shrinking modesty which true women always feel when presented in a doubtful position before a beloved object, that it could not fail to arouse Lord Clare from the stupor that had fallen upon him. He smiled faintly as she came forward, and drawing her arm through his, followed the Sibyl down the subterranean passage, guided by a small lamp that had stood before the Egyptian idol. They came out into the fresh night, on the very spot where the Moorish King gave up the splendor of his life. Lord Clare thought of this, and his heart grew heavy again.
Turner followed with long, noiseless strides, and gliding behind the Fonde like a shadow, stood by the mules which had been drawn up beneath the thick trees ready to receive the party.
An hour after, my poor mother was looking back to obtain one more last glimpse of Granada, and the gipsy Sibyl sat alone in her cave with a heap of gold in her lap, counting it over and over by the dim light that struggled down from a niche in the smoky wall.
CHAPTER XV.
THE MANSION AND THE COTTAGE.
The first bright picture upon my memory was of Greenhurst, Lord Clare’s ancestral home. It rests in my mind a background of gorgeous and hazy confusion, indistinct and mellow as a sunset cloud. Then comes a misty outline of distant mountains melting into the more clearly defined middle distance, and in the foreground a beautiful stream sleeping beneath old trees, sparkling through the hollows, and spreading out like a lake in the green meadows. A lawn rose softly upward from the banks of this river, broad and green as emerald. If you parted the soft grass, an undergrowth of the finest moss met your view like velvet beneath a wealth of embroidery. Clumps of trees shaded the lawn here and there, and on either hand, so far as the eye could reach, a park of magnificent old chestnuts, with a fine variety of oaks, filled the eye with the vast wealth of their foliage.
A dozen avenues led through this park, some of them miles in length, and almost all commanded some view of the old mansion. One revealed a gable cutting picturesquely against the sky; another commanded the back entrance, with its massive stonework, burdened with heavy armorial bearings, and heaped with quarterings till the herald office itself would have been puzzled to unravel them. A third opened upon the east wing, with its broad bay windows curving into old stone balconies covered with ponderous sculpture, its antique casements filled with single sheets of plate glass which shone through the ivy like flashes of a river between the trees that fringe it—thus was blended all that is gay and cheerful in our times with the sombre magnificence of the long ago, beautifully as we find the sunshine pouring its glory into the dark bosom of a forest.
This view I remember best, for it was the first object that ever fastened itself upon my memory. A waste of flower-beds, clumps of rich trees, and the wilderness, as we called a tract of land in which all the wildness of nature was carefully preserved, lay between the little antique cottage that I was born in and Greenhurst.
Lord Clare had his own rooms in that wing of the building, and a footpath bordered with wild blossoms, rich ferns, and creeping ivy, wound from a flight of stone steps that descended from his apartments, around the circular flower-beds, and through the wilderness to the jessamine porch of our dwelling. It was a well-trodden path when I first remember it; and no foot ever passed down its entire length but that of Lord Clare. Even the gardeners felt that to be in that portion of the grounds, after the master left his apartments, was an intrusion. Turner, dear, good old Turner, visited us every day, but he always came down the chestnut avenue. No other servant from the mansion ever came near us.
A Spanish woman who had learned but little English, was all the domestic we had. Lord Clare had brought her from Malaga, and had she spoken his language well, the most prying curiosity could have gained no information regarding my parents from her.