‘Certainly, madam; I wish to make you comfortable. Can you walk upstairs?’
‘Oh, yes!’
She rose from her couch, and leaning on Miss Laury’s arm in a way that showed she had been used to that sort of support, they both glided from the room. Having seen her fair but haughty guest carefully laid on a stately crimson bed in a quiet and spacious chamber; having seen her head sink with all its curls into the pillow of down, her large shy eyes close under their smooth eyelids, and her little slender hands fold on her breast in an attitude of perfect repose, Miss Laury prepared to leave her. She stirred.
‘Come back a moment,’ she said. She was obeyed; there was something in her tone of voice which exacted obedience. ‘I don’t know who you are;’ she said, ‘but I am very much obliged to you for your kindness. If my manners are displeasing, forgive me; I mean no incivility. I suppose you will wish to know my name: it is Mrs. Irving; my husband is a minister in the northern kirk; I come from Sneachiesland. Now you may go!’
Miss Laury did go. Mrs. Irving had testified incredulity respecting her story, and now she reciprocated that incredulity. Both ladies were lost in their own mystification.
Five o’clock now struck. It was nearly dark. A servant with a taper was lighting up the chandeliers in the large dining-room where a table spread for dinner received the kindling lamplight upon a starry service of silver. It was likewise magnificently flashed back from a splendid sideboard all arranged in readiness to receive the great, the expected guest. Tolerably punctual in keeping an appointment when he meant to keep it at all, Zamorna entered the house as the fairy-like voice of a musical clock in the passage struck out its symphony to the pendulum. The opening of the front door, a bitter rush of the night-wind and then the sudden close, and the step advancing forwards, were the signals of his arrival.
Miss Laury was in the dining-room looking round and giving the last touch to all things. She just met her master as he entered. His cold lip pressed to her forehead and his colder hand clasping hers brought the sensation which it was her custom of weeks and months to wait for; and to consider when attained the ample recompense for all delay, all toil, all suffering.
‘I am frozen, Mina,’ said he; ‘I came on horseback for the last four miles; and the night is like Canada.’
Chafing his icy hand to animation between her own warm supple palms, she answered by the speechless but expressive look of joy, satisfaction, idolatry, which filled and overflowed her eyes.
‘What can I do for you, my lord?’ were her first words as he stood by the fire rubbing his hands cheerily over the blaze. He laughed.