"I suppose he will be here in the afternoon, before dinner, and we had better wait at home for him. I dare say he'll want to see you alone, and therefore I'll retire to my own rooms,"—looking over the stables! Dear old lady. "But if you wish it, I will receive him first—and then Martha,"—Martha was Alice's maid—"can fetch you down."
This discussion as to the propriety or impropriety of giving her lover a dinner had not been pleasant to Alice, but, nevertheless, when it was over she felt grateful to Lady Macleod. There was an attempt in the arrangement to make Mr. Grey's visit as little painful as possible; and though such a discussion at such a time might as well have been avoided, the decision to which her ladyship had at last come with reference both to the dinner and the management of the visit was, no doubt, the right one.
Lady Macleod had been quite correct in all her anticipations. At three o'clock Mr. Grey was announced, and Lady Macleod, alone, received him in her drawing-room. She had intended to give him a great deal of good advice, to bid him still keep up his heart and as it were hold up his head, to confess to him how very badly Alice was behaving, and to express her entire concurrence with that theory of bodily ailment as the cause and origin of her conduct. But she found that Mr. Grey was a man to whom she could not give much advice. It was he who did the speaking at this conference, and not she. She was overawed by him after the first three minutes. Indeed her first glance at him had awed her. He was so handsome,—and then, in his beauty, he had so quiet and almost saddened an air! Strange to say that after she had seen him, Lady Macleod entertained for him an infinitely higher admiration than before, and yet she was less surprised than she had been at Alice's refusal of him. The conference was very short; and Mr. Grey had not been a quarter of an hour in the house before Martha attended upon her mistress with her summons.
Alice was ready and came down instantly. She found Mr. Grey standing in the middle of the room waiting to receive her, and the look of majesty which had cowed Lady Macleod had gone from his countenance. He could not have received her with a kinder smile, had she come to him with a promise that she would at this meeting name the day for their marriage. "At any rate it does not make him unhappy," she said to herself.
"You are not angry," he said, "that I should have followed you all the way here, to see you."
"No, certainly; not angry, Mr. Grey. All anger that there may be between us must be on your side. I feel that thoroughly."
"Then there shall be none on either side. Whatever may be done, I will not be angry with you. Your father advised me to come down here to you."
"You have seen him, then?"
"Yes, I have seen him. I was in London the day you left."
"It is so terrible to think that I should have brought upon you all this trouble."