With a faint cry she sprang up and shook it off; and she sat down startled and trembling, for she was very delicate and very sensitive to pain.
"Never mind, never mind a little smarting! When I was young I would have been willing to have been scorched worse than that, to have had such a powerful sign that some one loved me so fiercely as all that! Goodness! how he loves you, to be sure! and how quickly he is coming to see you! Come, pick up your chestnut, child, and see what mark it bears. Come, now! Is it Cromartie?" inquired the old lady with an arch smile.
But the girl made no reply. She had picked up and blown out the blazing emblem that she had playfully made a messenger of fate, and she was gazing upon it. She remained pale and mute.
"Come, come; did you name it for that auburn-haired youth?" persisted the old lady.
"I named it for—the exile—the lady who was borne from the flooded prison that stormy night; I named it for—my mother," answered the maiden in a low tone.
Silence like a panic fell upon the little party.
Mrs. Winterose was the first to break it.
"Gem! how dare you do such dreadful things?" she demanded, speaking more harshly than she had ever before spoken to her spoiled child.
"It's enough to break anybody's heart to hear her say that," whimpered Miss Tabby, wiping her eyes.
"And, oh! what a sign and an omen! If there's any truth in the spell, her mother—if so be she is her mother and is a living—her mother loves her better than any one in the world, and is a hurrying to see her now! For I never knew that to fail," said Miss Libby, clasping her hands and rolling up her eyes.