"You have given me quite a turn, Miss Stella," she said, with a smile of reproach; "I thought you were lost. Your room is quite ready now, miss."
Stella went up to the old man and kissed him.
"Good-night, uncle," she murmured.
"Good-night, my child," he said, his eyes dwelling on her tenderly, but with something of the bewildered look clouding them; "Good-night, and happy dreams for this, your first night at home."
"At home!" murmured Stella; "at home! You are very good to me, uncle," and she kissed him again.
Mrs. Penfold had done wonders in so short a time permitted her, and Stella found herself standing alone in a tiny room, modestly but comfortably—oh, so comfortably!—furnished, with its white bed and its old-fashioned dimity curtains framing the lattice window. As her gaze wandered round the room, her glorious eyes grew moist. It was all so sudden, so sweet a contrast to the gaunt, bare room, which, for a weary year she had shared with a score of girls as miserable as herself; so sudden that she could scarcely believe it was real.
But youth is ever ready to accept the surprises of life, and she fell asleep—fell asleep to dream that she was back in the wretched school in Italy, and chained to a stone wall from which all her efforts to free herself were unavailing, but presently she thought that a tall, stalwart figure came riding down on a big chestnut horse, and that with one sweep of his strong hand he broke her chains asunder, and, lifting her into his saddle, bore her away. Then the scene changed; she seemed to be following her rescuer who, with his handsome face turned over his shoulder, drew her on continually with a strange fascinating smile. All through her dreams the smiling eyes haunted her, and once she stretched out her hands to keep it from her, but even in the action the gesture of repulse turned in a strange, subtle manner to one of entreaty and welcome, and she drew the smile, as it were, to her bosom, and folded her hands over it. A girlish fancy, perhaps, but such fancies influence a life for good or ill, for joy or misery.
Lord Leycester Wyndward, of whose smile Stella was dreaming, had ridden up the hills, the great chestnut scarcely breaking his pace, but breathing hard and defiantly from its wide, red nostrils—had ridden up the hills and through the woods, and reached the open plateau lying round the Hall.
A noble park occupied the plateau—a park of chestnuts and oaks, which were the pride of the county. Through the park wound the road, gleaming white in the moonlight, to the front gates of Wyndward. The lodge-keeper heard the beat of the chestnut's feet, for which he had been listening intently, and threw open the gates, and Lord Leycester entered the grounds. They were vast in extent and exquisitely laid out, the road winding between a noble avenue of trees that arched overhead. The present earl's grandfather had gone in for arboriculture, and the way was lined for fifty feet back with rare shrubs and conifers.
So serpentine was the road that the great gray mansion broke upon the gaze suddenly, mentally startling him who approached it for the first time.