She was to get up, and prepare for a journey at once; her maid was packing already.
What was it? What had happened? Lord Hope forgot that he had not told her. The old Countess of Carset had sent for her. She must prepare to start at once for Houghton.
Clara sprang up, ready to offer battle to the old countess a second time in behalf of her stepmother.
While she was being dressed, Lord Hope stood in the corridor without, reading the delicate, upright characters in which the old countess clothed her thoughts.
"My Lord:—Circumstances have happened of late which convince me that I have been hasty and unjust to your wife, and have taken offense too readily from the independence exhibited by your child, my grand-daughter. It is my desire to atone for this, as the men and women of our house have ever atoned for injustice. The infirmities of old age, and more than ordinary ill-health forbid me to visit Oakhurst, which might, perhaps, be properly expected of one who admits herself to have been in the wrong; but, perhaps you and Lady Hope will permit Lady Clara to come to me here a few weeks, in which time, I trust, she will learn to know and love her grandmother.
"Presuming upon your generosity, I have sent my steward and my own maid, that she may have proper protection on her journey. After my grand-daughter has been at Houghton long enough to feel that it is to be her home in the future, I shall expect the pleasure of a visit from you and Lady Hope.
"Louisa, Countess of Carset."
Never, since the day in which he brought the first Lady Hope home, a bride, had such intense satisfaction filled the earl's heart as this letter brought him.
Involved, as he was, with pecuniary difficulties, harassed about his daughter, humiliated by the silent rejection by which the nobility in the neighborhood had repudiated his wife for so many years, this concession so nobly made by the old countess, was an opening of good fortune which promised a solution of all these difficulties. It had, in truth, lifted a heavy burden from his life.
With the letter in his hand Lord Hope went to his wife's dressing-room, where he found her, hollow-eyed, and so nervous that a faint cry broke from her as he entered the room.
She felt the loss of her brother terribly, notwithstanding what seemed to be a ready concession to the harsh treatment he received, and her sleep, as we know, had been restless and broken in the night.
She was cold and shivering, though the weather was warm, and had wrapped a shawl, full of richly-tinted colors, over her morning-dress, and sat cowering under it like some newly-caught animal.