He pauses. In the darkness a loving, clinging hand has again crept into his, full of sweet entreaty, and by a gentle pressure has reduced him to calmness.
"Ask him, if only to please me," he says, wearily.
"Everything shall be just as you wish it, dearest," says his mother, with unwonted tenderness, and then silence falls upon them all.
The fire blazes up fiercely, and anon drops its flame and sinks into insignificance once more. Again the words that bear some vague but as yet undiscovered meaning haunt Mona's brain. "A splendid scheme." A vile conspiracy, perhaps. Oh, that she might be instrumental in saving these people from ruin, among whom her lot had been cast! But how weak her arm! How insufficient her mind to cope with an emergency like this!
CHAPTER XXVI.
HOW MONA GOES TO ANADALE—AND HOW SHE THERE SEES MANY THINGS AS YET TO HER UNKNOWN.
About half-past two next day they start for Anadale. Not Violet, or Captain Rodney, who have elected to go on a mission of their own, nor Nicholas, who has gone up to London.
The frost lies heavy on the ground; the whole road, and every bush and tree, sparkle brilliantly, as though during the hours when darkness lay upon the earth the dread daughter of Chaos, as she traversed the expanse of the firmament in her ebony chariot, had dropped heaven's diamonds upon the land. The wintry sunshine lighting them up makes soft and glorious the midday.
The hour is enchanting, the air almost mild; and every one feels half aggrieved when the carriage, entering the lodge-gates, bears them swiftly towards the massive entrance that will lead them into the house and out of the cold.