“He chooses, not I. A mother, whose dutiful son has been her sole stay through life, has no right to interfere with what he deems his happiness,” said Alison, gravely. And, at that moment, the young curate reappeared, ready for the duties to which he was summoned by the sharp sound of the “church-going bell.”
“I will stay at home with Captain Rothesay,” observed Mrs. Gwynne. Her guest made a courteous disclaimer, which ended in something about “religious duties.”
“Hospitality is a duty too—at least we thought so in the north,” she answered. “And old friendship is ever somewhat of a religion with me. Therefore I will stay, Harold.”
“You are right, mother,” said Harold. But he would not that his mother had seen the smile which curled his lip as he passed along the hall and through the garden towards the churchyard. There it faded into a look, dark and yet mournful; which, as it turned from the dust beneath his feet to the stars overhead, and then back again to the graves, seemed to ask despairingly, at once of heaven and earth, for the solution of some inward mystery.
While Harold preached, his mother and Captain Rothesay sat in the parsonage and talked of their olden days, now faint as a dream. The rising wind, which, sweeping over the wide champaign, came to moan in the hill-side trees, seemed to sing the dirge of that long-past life. Yet the heart of both, even of Angus Rothesay, throbbed to its memory, as a Scottish heart ever does to that of home and the mountain-land.
Among other long unspoken names came that of Miss Flora Rothesay. “She is an old woman now—a few years older than I; Harold visits her not infrequently; and she and I correspond now and then, but we have not met for many years.”
“Yet you have not forgotten her?”
“Do I ever forget?” said Alison, as she turned her face towards him. And looking thereon, he felt that such a woman never could.
Their conversation, passing down the stream of time, touched on all that was memorable in the life of both. She mentioned her husband—but merely the two events, not long distant each from each, of their marriage and his death.
“Your son is not like yourself—does he resemble Mr. Gwynne?” observed Rothesay.