"To hear! Will you not be in London?"
"Not just at present. I am at last really going to my father's, and shall remain there a few weeks. But I shall hear about you from Bertram, and when I return I shall come and see you."
"There will be no one more welcome," said she, frankly putting out her hand.
Just at that moment the door opened, and Mr. Banks advanced and handed a closed envelope to Alsager, saying, "From the railway, Colonel."
It was a telegraphic message; and as such things were rare in those days, Laurence's heart sunk within him before he broke the envelope. It was from Dr. Galton at Knockholt, and said,
"Lose no time in coming. Sir Peregrine has had a paralytic stroke."
Half an hour afterwards Laurence was in a phaeton spinning to the railway. His thoughts were full of self-reproach at his having hitherto neglected to go to his father; but ever across them came a vision of Georgie Mitford in the passion of her grief. "Ah, poor child," he said to himself, "how lovely she looked, and what a life she has in prospect! I am glad I have left her, for it was beginning to grow desperate--and yet how I long, oh how I long to be at her side again!"
[CHAPTER XXII.]
KNOCKHOLT PARK.
The old home which Laurence Alsager had so long slighted, and to which his heart suddenly turned with a strange wild longing, almost powerful enough, he thought, to annihilate the space between it and Redmoor, had seen many generations of Alsagers beneath its peaked and gabled roof. The house stood in a fine park, and occupied a commanding situation on the slope of a well-wooded hill. The features of the scenery were such as are familiar in the midland counties: rich and fertile beauty, with uplands ankle-deep in meadow-grass, tall patriarchal trees, which stood in solemn unending conclave, group by group or singly, with benignant outstretched arms, and wide-spread mantle of green and russet; bright shallow streams, flashing under the sunbeams, and rippling darkly in the shade. All the land about the picturesque and irregular old house was laid out, partly by nature and partly by art, on ornamental principles; and away to the right and left stretched a wide expanse of farm-lands, whose aspect suggested a practical knowledge of the science of husbandry, and a satisfactory return in profit. The house was surrounded by a broad stone-terrace, bounded by a low balustrade, and flanked at each of the corners by a large stone-vase containing flowers, which varied with the season, but were never missing from these stately jardinières. These vases were tended, in common with the formal flower-garden and the particular pet parterre which she called "her own," by Helen Manningtree, the orphan ward of Sir Peregrine Alsager, whom Laurence remembered as a quiet pretty little girl, who had been frank and free with him in her childhood, timid and reserved when he had last seen her, just before he had been driven abroad by the furies of disappointment and wounded pride, and whom he was now to meet again, a graceful, gracious, well-disciplined, and attractive woman.