This was Aldyth's beautiful mother, of whom she had dreamed all her life. Often did her eyes rest on the portrait with a sense of hungry, yearning love, and she longed for the time when she could look into her mother's face, and meet the kiss of her sweet lips. With passing years the longing came to have somewhat of the bitterness of a deferred hope. There were hours when it was positive pain to Aldyth to think of the love she had missed through the long separation from her mother. But her nature was too bright and hopeful for this thought to sadden her long. She was more wont to look forward to the perfect joy of the long-deferred meeting, and dream of the happiness that would then be hers.
Near Mrs. Stanton's portrait were portraits of the two daughters who had been born to her in Australia. They were taken as children, but even these juvenile portraits showed that the elder one, a girl about thirteen, had inherited the beauty of her mother, while the little one, dark, heavy-browed, and somewhat stolid-looking, was unlikely to develop good looks.
Aldyth's eyes turned instinctively to her mother's picture as she laid down her pen, after signing herself, "Your ever-loving daughter."
"Oh, mother! When will you come to me?" she cried in her heart.
If she could have had her own way, Aldyth would long ago have sailed to join her mother at Melbourne, but Mrs. Stanton had reasons for wishing that Aldyth should remain at Woodham with her aunt. Five miles from Woodham lay Wyndham, the family estate of the Lorraines, and at Wyndham Hall lived Aldyth's grand-uncle, an old bachelor, strong-willed, crotchety, eccentric, and possessed of considerable wealth.
Stephen Lorraine was the eldest and the last of three brothers, who had been well-known in the neighbourhood of Woodham. His brother William had practised as a medical man there, winning much love and honour, but he died at the age of fifty, leaving two children, a son and a daughter. The son, a handsome young fellow, was a great favourite with his uncle Stephen, and was looked upon as his heir. With his uncle's approval, he made the army his profession. Stephen Lorraine had a decided notion that his heir must conform to his will in everything, and as long as the young man did so, all went well.
But a time came in Captain Lorraine's history, when love proved stronger than expediency, and he dared his uncle's anger by marrying into an Essex family for which old Stephen had a particular dislike. It was an offence not to be condoned, and Stephen Lorraine at once announced his intention of leaving his property to the only son of his brother James, who had taken holy orders, and after officiating for a while as a curate at Woodham, had been presented to a living in the north of England. At his uncle's request, this young man, Guy Lorraine by name, came to Woodham, and took up his abode at the Hall. He brought with him a delicate young wife and a bright boy of two years.
Meanwhile Captain Lorraine, the discarded heir, disappointed in his married life and depressed by disease, was wandering from place to place, seeking health, and vainly hoping that his uncle would relent towards him. If the news of his death stirred a too late regret within the heart of old Stephen Lorraine, he showed no sign of it, unless the increased bitterness of feeling he manifested towards his nephew's widow might be so regarded. He hated the very name of Aldyth's mother, but he expressed a wish to see the little girl who had been left in the care of her father's sister at Woodham, and as soon as he saw her, Aldyth won her way to his heart.
A few months after the death of Captain Lorraine, Guy Lorraine's young wife also passed away, so that when Aldyth's mother finally left her to her aunt's care, Miss Lorraine—or Lucy Lorraine, as every one called her in those days—had as good as two motherless children to love and cherish. Little Guy and Aldyth were constantly together. If Guy were not spending the day at Miss Lorraine's cottage, Aldyth would be playing with him at the Hall, to her childish mind the most delightful place in the world; for Stephen Lorraine made a great pet of the tiny daughter of his favourite nephew. He would walk about the house and garden with the little damsel seated on his shoulder, clinging to his rough, wiry locks; and Aldyth's earliest rides were taken on a little Shetland pony, attached by a rein to the stout cob ridden by her grand-uncle. The servants at the Hall whispered to each other that the squire cared more for the girl than for the boy, and they found the cause in Aldyth's strong resemblance to her father.
But as young Guy grew into a robust, high-spirited boy, he too won his grand-uncle's affection; and when by his father's sudden death from an accident in the hunting-field he was made, as it seemed, the heir to Wyndham, most persons in the neighbourhood believed that it was Stephen Lorraine's intention that the cousins should marry, and Wyndham thus become the home and inheritance of them both. But up to the time at which our story commences, when the young people were both of age, no one had heard old Stephen give the least hint of any such intention. So far he had been content to let things take their course, judging perhaps from his past experience, that by active interference, he might defeat his own ends.