"Poor, poor mamma! How pale and ill she was last night! Oh, papa, do kiss her good-bye for me just once again, when you go back."
Lord Hope turned a smiling look upon the girl, and she added, half in excuse:
"It breaks my heart to leave her so."
Lord Hope did not answer, but folded a cloak around his daughter, helped her into the carriage, and took a seat himself.
Margaret was already seated by the coachman.
"I understand well enough that I am not to travel with my young lady on her journey," she said; "but, so far as her way lies toward London, I am going. My sister wants me there, and I do just as lief be in a tomb as stay at Oakhurst when Lady Clara is away. So, as she is willing, I shall just leave her at the junction, and go up to London. That I can do in spite of the crabbed old thing at Houghton, who wants her at first all to herself."
This was said in confidence to the coachman, who muttered something under his breath about feeling uncommonly lonesome when Mistress Margaret was away from Oakhurst.
Directly after this the carriage drew up at the station, where a grim-looking woman of fifty stood ready to receive the young lady from the hands of her father.
It was not often that Lord Hope was known to exhibit any violent emotion; but Clara felt that he gave way a little when she threw her arms around his neck in parting—and Badger, after he opened the gate to let his master pass through, observed to Jules that something out of the common must be going on up yonder, for all night people had been going in and out like ghosts, and the master seemed like another man.