The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals

by Ann S. Stephens

"And is Lord and Lady Hope at the castle?"

"Aye, an' the young lady, too—her that the oud countess is o'er fond of; but the young 'un is a right comely lass, an' the oud 'un might go furder and fare worse."

Mrs. Yates gathered the woolen shawl she had travelled in about her, and went hastily down the bank on which she had been standing, so excited that all the weakness of age seemed to have been suddenly swept from her.

She had intended to sleep in the village that night; now she bent her steps resolutely toward the castle.

As she came out of the chestnut avenue, keeping upon the turf and among the shadows, all of the glory of that illumination broke upon her.

The broad terrace, flooded with light—a fountain, directly in front, shooting up a column of liquid crystal thirty feet or more, where it branched off, like a tree of quivering ice swayed gracefully in the wind, and broke up in a storm of drops that rained downward, flashing and glittering through that golden atmosphere to their source again.

Above this rose those grand old towers, garlanded with colored lamps that wound in and out of the clinging ivy in great wreaths and chains of tinted fire, which harmonized with the quivering foliage, and flooded the fountain, the terrace, and all the neighboring trees with a soft atmosphere of golden green.

Here and there the gray old stonework of the towers broke through, revealing glimpses of the giant strength which lay hidden underneath; and over the right hand tower, from a flag-staff turned around and around with star-like lights, the broad, red banner, with which the Carsets had for centuries defied their enemies and welcomed their friends, floated slowly out upon the night wind.

Hannah Yates saw all this, and knew, by the music which thrilled the air around her, that the revel, whatever it was, had commenced; for a sound of pleasant voices and sweet laughter came through the open windows, and from the depths of the park—where an ox had been roasted whole that day, and wine and beer had flowed freely as the waters of the fountain—came subdued sounds of a waning festival, which had been given to the tenantry and villagers. The gaiety of the castle was answered back from the park, and harmonized by that of the working people who tilled all the broad lands around it.

When the old woman heard these answering sounds she felt that an heiress to all this greatness was acknowledged that night, for when lords gathered in the castle, and tenants in the park, it was usually to acknowledge the rights of a coming heir, and she could not believe that all this had been done in honor of Lady Hope.