Pleased, pained and perplexed at once, Alma stood transfixed where Elverton had left her.
She had seen her father! her father, whose sudden flight, mysterious wanderings, and unknown fate, had been the great subject of wonder, speculation and conjecture to her own self, to the family and to the community.
She had seen her father, actually seen him in the flesh, and spoken with him face to face! There in that spot he had stood before her, intercepting the last rays of the setting sun as it sank below the horizon. They had not embraced, or kissed, or even taken each other’s hands—they had met as souls may meet on the confines of another world. And now he was gone like a vanished spirit.
She had met her father, and though the shock of that meeting, with its conflicting emotions of great surprise, deep joy, and bitter disappointment, had impressed her senses as forcibly as any actual event could possibly impress any human being, yet now the whole affair seemed to her so like a dream that she almost doubted its reality.
The meeting so sudden and unexpected; the interview so short and unsatisfactory; the consequences so uncertain and alarming; these subjects engrossed her thoughts, absorbed her senses, and riveted her to the spot, so that she did not move until the brushwood near her broke sharply beneath the tread of the intruder whose distant appearance had driven away her father.
Then she started as from sleep, looked up, and flushed with joy, for she thought the new comer would be Norham Montrose.
Alack! he was only old Davy Denny, the head-gardener, returning from one of his occasional inspections of the woods.
The old man cast a curious, anxious, sorrowful glance at his young lady as he touched his hat in passing her.
Alma blushed at meeting that glance, which said, as plainly as eyes could speak:
“Please, Miss Elverton, it is too late for you to be out walking alone in the woods, and if I only dared to speak, I’d up and tell you so.”