‘Our sister, our sweet sister!’
We were immensely excited. All the three of us were so far in love with Ellen Fordyce that her presence was an enchantment to us, and at any rate none of us ever saw the woman we could compare to her; and as we both felt ourselves disqualified in different ways from any nearer approach, we were content to bask in the reflected rays of our brother’s happiness.
Not that he had gone that length as yet, as we knew before the night was over, when he came down to us. Even with the dear maiden herself, he had only made sure that she was not averse, and that merely by her eyes and lips; and he had extracted nothing from her father but that they were both very young, a great deal too young, and had no business to think of such things yet. It must be talked over, etc. etc.
But just then, Griff told us, Frank Fordyce jumped up and turned round with the sudden exclamation, ‘Ellen!’ looking towards the door behind him with blank astonishment, as he found it had neither been opened nor shut. He thought his daughter had recollected something left behind, and coming in search of it, had retreated precipitately. He had seen her, he said, in the mirror opposite. Griff told him there was no mirror, and had to carry a candle across to convince him that he had only been looking at the door into the inner room, which though of shining dark oak, could hardly have made a reflection as vivid as he declared that his had been. Indeed, he ascertained that Ellen had never left her own room at all. ‘It must have been thinking about the dear child,’ he said. ‘And after all, it was not quite like her—somehow—she was paler, and had something over her head.’ We had no doubt who it was. Griff had not seen her, but he was certain that there had been none of the moaning nor crying, ‘In fact, she has come to give her consent,’ he said with earnest in his mocking tone.
‘Yes,’ said Clarence gravely, and with glistening eyes. ‘You are happy Griff. It is given to you to right the wrong, and quiet that poor spirit.’
‘Happy! The happiest fellow in the world,’ said Griff, ‘even without that latter clause—if only Madam and the old man will have as much sense as she has!’
The next day was a thoroughly uncomfortable one. Griff was not half so near his goal as he had hoped last night when with kindly Parson Frank.
The commotion was as if a thunderbolt had descended among the elders. What they had been thinking of, I cannot tell, not to have perceived how matters were tending; but their minds were full of the Reform Bill and the state of the country, and, besides, we were all looked on still as mere children. Indeed, Griff was scarcely one-and-twenty, and Ellen wanted a month of seventeen; and the crisis had really been a sudden impulse, as he said, ‘She looked so sweet and lovely, he could not help it.’
The first effect was a serious lecture upon maidenliness and propriety to poor Ellen from her mother, who was sure that she must have transgressed the bounds of discretion, or such ill-bred presumption would have been spared her, and bitterly regretted the having trusted her to take care of herself. There were sufficient grains of truth in this to make the poor girl cry herself out of all condition for appearing at breakfast or luncheon, and Emily’s report of her despair made us much more angry with Mrs. Fordyce than was perhaps quite due to that good lady.
My parents were at first inclined to take the same line, and be vexed with Griff for an act of impertinence towards a guest. He had a great deal of difficulty in inducing the elders to believe him in earnest, or treat him as a man capable of knowing his own mind; and even thus they felt as if his addresses to Miss Fordyce were, under present circumstances, taking almost an unfair advantage of the other family—at which our youthful spirits felt indignant.