—Shakspere.
Oh! do whate’er thou wilt! I will be silent.
—Joanna Baillie.
Alice heard an advancing step. She looked around. Milly stood at her side.
“Where is your master? Did he enter by the back gate? Is he at the stables?” she inquired.
“Miss Alice, no, ma’am; he didn’t come home at all. He didn’t even meet the carriage. He turned off ’fore he got to the porter’s lodge, and rode hard as he could down the path as leads down the Hollow. I ’spects how he had some ’litical business long o’ Mr. Hard’stle.”
“Oh, thank Heaven!” said Alice, with a long-drawn sigh of relief, and rising, she hurried off to her own chamber. Not to sit down in faithless despair, but to write a letter to General Garnet, softly and meekly breaking to him the news of their daughter’s marriage, so that the first shock of astonishment and rage should be over before he should come home and she should have to meet him. She wrote this letter. It contained all that she had said in her letter to Elsie, and much more; besides, a meek, appealing spirit pervaded it, that few hearts could have resisted. She dispatched it by a servant to General Garnet at Hemlock Hollow. Then she lay down and tried to sleep.
She was disturbed by the entrance of a servant bearing a letter.
She raised up and took it. It was for General Garnet, and bore the post-mark of Huttontown. She regarded it attentively for an instant, for it was written in a coarse, schoolboy-like hand.
Then she placed it on the dressing-table, and, dismissing the servant, lay down and closed her eyes again, with an effort to sleep. She could not do so for a long time. Emotion was busy in her heart, and thought in her brain. One, two, three hours passed; and then she prayed, prayed for the promised rest, and, praying, fell asleep.