“Herbert coming home! Oh, how happy you have made me! The brothers once more together, how much each may benefit the other. Nay, uncle, you must not smile thus. Superior as Herbert is in the advantages that training and study impart, Mark has gifts of determination and resolve, as certain to win success. But, here he comes—may I not tell him of Herbert's coming?”
Sir Archy smiled and nodded, and the happy girl was the next moment at Mark's side, relating with delight her pleasant news.
Mark listened with pleasure to the intelligence. Any little jealousy he once felt for acquirements and attainments above his own, had long since given way to a better and more brotherly feeling; and he ardently desired to meet and converse with him again.
“And yet, Kate, how altered may he be from what we knew him, who is to say the changes time may not have wrought in him?”
“Such are not always for the worse, Mark,” said Kate, timidly, for she felt how the allusion might be taken.
A slight tinge of red coloured Mark's cheek, and his eye was lighted with a look of pleasure. He felt the flattery in all its force, but did not dare to trust himself with a reply.
“I wonder,” said he, after a lengthened pause—“I wonder how Herbert may feel on seeing, once more, our wild glen. Will these giant rocks and bold ravines appeal to his heart with the same sympathies as ever; or will the habits of the life he has left, cling to him still, and make him think this grandeur only desolation?”
“You did not feel so, surely, Mark?” said Kate, as she turned upon him a look of affectionate interest.
“Me?—I think so? No! This valley was to me a place of rest—a long sought-for haven. I came not here from the gay and brilliant world, rich in fascinations and pleasures. I had not lived among the great and learned, to hear the humble estimate they have of our poor land. I came back here like the mariner whose bark puts back shattered by the storm, and baffled by the winds, unable to stem the tide that leads to fortune. Yes, shipwrecked in every thing.” “Herbert, Herbert,” cried Kate.
At the same moment a chaise, advancing at full gallop, turned from the road into the avenue towards the house. The boy caught sight of the figures in the garden, flung open the door, and springing out, rushed towards them.