Her kind friends soothed and comforted her—her uncle wept with her, and by degrees she once more grew calm.
Before they separated for the night, Mr Jones offered up a thanksgiving for the great mercy God had vouchsafed to them; and commending his newly-found niece to the further protection of that gracious Providence, who had led the orphan to her home; in His presence, and that of his wife and her friends, he solemnly blessed her, and adopted her as his own child.
It need scarcely be added that his wife registered and signed the vow that her husband made.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE HAPPIEST MAN IN THE WORLD.
Most people know what it is to awake from sleep the morning after a great sorrow; some, also, know what it is to awake after a great and unexpected joy. Gladys opened her eyes upon a dark, thick, cheerless November fog in London, one of the most depressing of all the atmospheric influences. But she did not think of the fog. Although she did not at first fully realise the happiness that she had experienced, and was to experience, she felt, on awakening, a strange sensation of spirits so light, and a heart beating to such cheerful measure, that it all seemed too ethereal to be real. She thought it was the continuation of a blissful dream. For many a long year she had retired to rest, and arisen in the morning calm, resigned, nay, cheerful; but it was the calmness and resignation of a soul attuned by prayer and self-restraint to an equanimity that rarely was disturbed by mirth or pleasure. Now, that soul seemed to dance within her to exhilarating melodies. So happy had been her dreams, so joyous her sleep, that her eyes sparkled unwonted fires when she opened them; and as she jumped out of bed, there was an elasticity in her movements that surprised her very self.
Netta and Minette were still sleeping, and as she dressed herself carefully and neatly, she almost forgot that every one else was not as suddenly raised from sorrow to joy as herself.
'He will come to-day,' she thought, as she smoothed her dark hair, 'and I shall meet him as an equal, no longer a suspicion of my truth. He will not know it yet, but I know it, and oh! the difference of feeling that you can clear yourself by a word when you like. Not to him, for he never doubted—generous, kind Mr Owen! but to his father! to all. How can I be thankful enough! and such an uncle and aunt! It must be a dream; but will he care for me still? so long! and after all my coldness. He has asked me again and again, and each time have I refused him; but then I was an Irish beggar, and nothing more, and I would have died rather than have brought disgrace into his family. And still my promise to his father is binding, and without his consent I never could—but where am I wandering? Maybe he'll not care for me now I am all this older—and he so handsome that he may have any one in and about Glanyravon.'
Gladys cast a shy look into her glass, and a delicate blush kindled her cheek as those dark violet eyes glanced from beneath their long black fringes. Gladys! you are but a weak woman after all.