In reply to this, Colonel Hubert clasped the lovely speaker to his heart; and before he had released her from his embrace, or repeated his inquiry concerning Lady Elizabeth, Sir Edward Stephenson entered, and the conversation became general.
For many hours of that irksome morning Colonel Hubert was kept in the most tantalizing state of suspense by the prolonged absence of the old lady from the drawing-room. But at length, after Sir Edward and his lady had set off for their second morning ramble without him, he was cheered by the appearance of the ancient maiden, who was his aunt's tirewoman, bringing in her lap-dog, and the velvet cushion that was its appendage; which having placed reverently before the fire, she moved the favourite fauteuil an inch one way, and the little table that ever stood beside it an inch the other, and was retiring, when Colonel Hubert said, ... "Is my aunt coming immediately, Mitchel?"
"My lady will not be long, Colonel.... But her ladyship is very poorly this morning," and with a graceful swinging courtesy she withdrew.
The Colonel trembled all over, "very poorly," as applied to Lady Elizabeth Norris, having from his earliest recollection always been considered as synonymous to "very cross."
"She will refuse to see her!" thought he, pacing the room in violent agitation.... "and in that case she will keep her word.... She will never be my wife!"
"Bless me!... How you do shake the room, Colonel Hubert," said a very crabbed voice behind him, just after he had passed the door in his perturbed promenade. "If you took such a fancy early in the morning, when the house maid might sweep up the dust you had raised, I should not object to it, for it is very like having one's carpet beat;... but just as I am coming to sit down here, it is very disagreeable indeed."
This grumble lasted just long enough to allow the old lady (who looked as if she had been eating crab apples, and walked as if she had suddenly been seized with the gout in all her joints,) to place herself in her easy chair as she concluded it, during which time the Colonel stood still upon the hearth-rug with his eyes anxiously fixed upon the venerable but very hostile features that were approaching him. A moment's silence followed, during which the old Lady looked up in his face with the most provoking expression imaginable; for cross as it was, there was a glance of playful malice in it that seemed to say,—
"You look as if you were going to cry, Colonel."
He felt provoked with her, and this gave him courage.—"May I beg of you, Lady Elizabeth, to tell me what I may hope from your kindness on the subject I mentioned to you last night?" said he.
"Pray, sir, do you remember your grandfather?" was her reply.