In a few minutes Oriole returned. Her mistress was too indisposed to appear; Mr. Sutherland would please to excuse her.
Within half an hour a servant, summoned for the purpose, showed Mr. Sutherland to his room, and supplied him with articles necessary to the bath and toilet.
After refreshing himself, Mark rang the bell, and requested to know if Mr. Clement Sutherland was in the house, and when he could see him.
He was answered, that Mr. Sutherland had ridden to the county town, and would not return before the next morning.
And soon after he was summoned to the supper-table. No one was present at the board beside Mr. Ashley and Mark Sutherland, except Oriole, who stood at the head of the table, and poured out the coffee. With profound and melancholy interest Mark Sutherland watched this girl. She had been a pretty child, and now had ripened into a most beautiful woman. A slight and elegant form, well rounded and tapering, pliant and graceful as a willow, oval face of the purest olive, warming into pomegranate bloom upon the cheeks and lips; large, dark-grey, passionate eyes, fringed with long black lashes, “sweet low brow,” shaded with soft, black, silky ringlets, a countenance full of slumbrous passion and emotion, with little strength of spirit or of intellect. These formed the complete and matchless beauty of the maiden, and Mark Sutherland noticed—he could not help but notice, his interest was so painfully excited—the glances with which Mr. Ashley followed the gracefully-moving form of Oriole.
Mark Sutherland wished to inquire after the health and welfare of his mother, with whom he had made several attempts to open a correspondence, but from whom he had not heard for nearly four years; but an undefinable reluctance withheld him from naming the subject to the degenerate man before him. Mr. Ashley ordered more wine, and pressed it upon his companion; but Mark Sutherland, habitually abstemious, suffered his glass to be filled once, and then excused himself; and Mr. Ashley filled and quaffed glass after glass, momentarily more and more garrulous, noisy, and familiar with Oriole—calling her to his side, drawing her towards him, pinching her cheek and pulling her ears with maudlin freedom; while the poor girl, blushing with shame and confusion, and weeping with grief and terror, sought in vain to escape.
Mark Sutherland, deeply offended with the scene, would gladly have withdrawn, but that he felt his presence to be some protection to the poor girl; he would gladly have interfered for her succour, but that he knew such interference, far from saving her, would hurry on her destruction. It is hard to be wise and prudent when the blood is boiling; and it is uncertain how long he would have remained so, had not a bell sounded in a distant part of the house, and Oriole, taking advantage of the circumstance, exclaimed, “It is my mistress,” and made her escape.
Mr. Ashley poured out and quaffed glass after glass of wine, until his ranting mood was merging into a stupid one; and Mark Sutherland seized the first opportunity to rise and leave the table, and pass into the drawing-room.
That elegant drawing-room which you may recollect communicated with Miss Sutherland’s beautiful boudoir—how changed since he saw it last! Desolation was creeping even into the sanctuary of the house. He had scarcely time to note this by the sickly light of the moon through the open shutters, when a loud, familiar voice in the hall arrested his attention—
“Where is he? In the drawing-room? And no light there? Get a candle, directly, you scoundrel! and light me in there! I shall break my shins over these empty baskets and upset stools—do you hear?”