Thus aided and escorted, the Earl of Beverley moved easily to the room which had been prepared for Lord Walton on the same floor, while Miss Walton followed anxiously, and paused for a moment while her aunt examined the bandages round his knee. Her lover marked the look of painful expectation with which she gazed; and perhaps no balm in all Lady Margaret's stores could have tended so much to restore health and strength as the deep interest that shone in her eyes.
"Do not be alarmed," he said, holding out his hand to her; "this is a mere nothing, and they are all making more of it than it deserves. Go and comfort your fair companion, for she needs it much; but I shall see you tomorrow--shall I not, Annie?"
The last word was uttered in a low tone, as if he almost feared to speak it; but there are moments when a woman's heart grows bold, and those moments are especially when it is necessary to cheer and to console.
"Oh, certainly, Francis!" replied Miss Walton. "I will see you, beyond doubt: my aunt and I will be your nurses. For the present, then, farewell. I will go and comfort poor Arrah, as you say."
When Annie Walton returned to the room where she had left Arrah Neil, she found her still seated, but with the great stag-hound, now with one paw upon her knee, looking up in her face as if he would fain have held some conversation with her, had he but possessed the gift of speech. Arrah, too, was bending down and talking to him--smoothing his rough head with her hand, and seeming as much delighted with his notice as he appeared to be with hers. As soon as Miss Walton entered, however, she turned from her shaggy companion to her friend, and, advancing towards her, threw herself into her arms. For a moment she remained silent, with her eyes hid on the lady's shoulder, and when she raised them they were wet with bright drops; but Annie remarked, though without one spark of pride, that there was a great difference in the manner of Arrah Neil towards her. There was a something gone--something more than the mere look of deep, absent thought, which used so frequently to shade her countenance. There had been a reserve, a timidity, in answering or addressing her, more than mere humility, which was no longer there. Often had she striven to reassure the poor girl, and to teach her to look upon the family at Bishop's Merton rather as friends than mere protectors; but, though Arrah Neil had ever been frank and true in her words, there seemed always a limit drawn in her manner which she never passed, except perhaps at times when she was peculiarly earnest towards the young lord himself: It had seemed as if she felt even painfully that she was a dependant, and resisted everything that might make her forget it for a moment.
Now, however, that restraint was gone: she gazed upon Annie Walton with a look of deep love; she kissed her as she would have kissed a sister; she poured forth her joy at seeing her again, in words full of feeling--ay, and of poetry; and the lady was glad that she did so. She would not for the world have said one syllable to check such familiarity, for the character and fate of Arrah Neil had been to her a matter of deep thought and deep interest. She felt, indeed, also, that after all that had passed--after the scenes they had shared in, and the anxieties and fears they had felt for each other--Arrah Neil could never be to her what she had formerly been; that there was something more in her bosom than pity and tenderness towards the poor girl; that there were affection, tenderness, companionship--not the mere companionship of hours and of dwelling-places, but the companionship of thoughts and interests, which is perhaps the strongest and most enduring of all human ties. There was even more than all this. The change in Arrah Neil went beyond mere manner; the tone of her mind and of her language had undergone the same: it seemed elevated, brightened, enlarged. She had always been graceful, though wild and strange. There had been flashes of a glowing fancy, breaking forth, though oppressed and checked, like the flickering bursts of flame that rise fitfully up from a half-smothered fire; but now the mind shone out clear and unclouded, giving dignity and ease to every expression and every act, however plain the words or ordinary the movements; and Annie Walton felt that from that hour poor Arrah Neil must be to her as a friend.
"Come, dear Arrah," she said, "sit down beside me, and let us talk calmly. You are now amongst friends again--friends from whom you must never part more; and yet we will not speak now over anything that can agitate you. Lord Beverley tells me you have had much to suffer; and I am sure all the scenes you have gone through this day, and the fatigues you have endured, must have well-nigh worn you out and overpowered you."
"I am weary," she replied, wiping away some drops that still trembled on her eyelids; "but I have not suffered as you would do, were you to pass through the same. It is my fate to encounter terrible things--to pass through scenes of danger and difficulty. Such has been my course from childhood; such, perhaps, it may be to the end of life. I am prepared and ready: nay, more--accustomed to it; and when any new disaster falls upon me, I shall henceforth only look up to heaven, and say, 'Oh God! thy will be done! I am not a garden-plant, as you are, Annie. I am a shrub of the wilderness, and prepared to bear the wind and storm."
"Heaven forbid you should meet with many more, Arrah!" answered Miss Walton. "There are turns in every one's fate, and I trust that for you there are bright days coming."
"Still with an even mind will I try to bear them, be they fair or foul," said Arrah Neil--"more calmly now than before; for much has happened to me that I will tell you soon; and I have found that those things which gave me most anguish have brought me happiness that I never dreamt of finding, and that there is a smile for every tear, Annie--a reward for every endurance."