Soph. You powers, that take into your care the guard
Of innocence, aid me! for I am a creature
So forfeited to despair, hope cannot fancy
A ransom to redeem me ... ...
... ... Was't for this he left me
And, on a feigned pretence—
THE PICTURE.
It would be too adventurous an incident to introduce if this tale were an invention instead of a narrative of facts, that Mr. Grey was ordered by his physician to a part of the coast very near to that where Mrs. Fitzpatrick's cottage was situate. Not a mile of rough hilly ground divided their dwellings from each other. This choice of a locale was very easily accounted for. Mr. Warde was acquainted with Mr. Fletcher, the clergyman of the parish, and wrote to beg him to select a house for his friend. Mr. Fletcher did his best, but houses were not plentiful in that district. It was a pretty cottage, but really deserving of no other name. Mr. Grey did not enjoy it at all; he missed the luxuries of his own house. The casements did not shut, the chimnies smoked. There was no piano for Margaret, and Land's room was so small as to be a daily source of disquiet to his master. He was more annoyed for others than for himself. Little did Margaret think when she went down to the sea-side every morning, and sat patiently by her uncle's chair with her book and her work, that the person who most occupied her mind, was within so short a distance, engaged in the same sort of pursuit, in watching over the declining health of a friend.
But her uncle grew weaker and more restless; he determined to return to Ashdale; and having once fixed the day, he seemed more comfortable in his mind.
"Do you like the idea of it, my child?" said he to Margaret, "shall you not be glad to get back to Ashdale?"
"Very glad, Sir," returned Margaret.
"It must be dull, indeed, for you," said Mr. Grey in a pitying tone, "not a single soul here that we know. We might, to be sure, know the clergyman; but he gets a holiday exactly at the wrong time, and the man who does his duty for him does not live in the place. Not a shop to be seen, nor anything for the child to read but the paper; and that she does not care about, poor little thing."
"Oh, uncle! if you were well I should not find it dull," said Margaret, "I should enjoy the sea and the beautiful rocks above everything. But when there is anything the matter, one always feels safer at home."
Mr. Grey smiled, and said something as he went away about wishing to see Casement again, in which desire Margaret could not join.
As it was his habit to rest in his own room during the afternoon, Margaret took her work into the porch, and sat enjoying the sea breeze, and watching the picturesque road that wound beneath the cottage along the shore. She had found out that when the mind is anxious and distressed, the best thing she could do was to work. Her thoughts could not be compelled to study, and her needle passed the time a little more calmly and quickly than when she was doing nothing. And now a labourer might be seen driving a cart drawn by a yoke of oxen along the rugged way; and then a couple of children carrying between them a basket which they had been sent to fill at the neighbouring village; and but for such rare passengers, the road was quiet all day long. While she sat, thinking of the one subject that filled her mind when she could divert it for a moment from her uncle's illness; thinking over all that Mr. Haveloc had ever said and done at Ashdale, she saw, advancing up the path a figure that made her start and colour, it was—she felt sure of it—Hubert Gage.
He was walking very fast, opened the rustic gate himself, and hastened up to her.