Lord Walton paused and mused; but his sister threw her arm round Arrah Neil, exclaiming, "Oh, dear child! I do rejoice at this indeed."
"And so do I," said Arrah Neil with a sigh; "but as I was enjoined strictly not to mention any of the facts but to you, Annie, or to your brother--the person who told me said, on many accounts--I hope Captain Barecolt, who has been so kind in all this business, will not mention what he believes to be the truth till he have his lordship's leave to do so."
Captain Barecolt laid his hand upon his heart and made her a low bow; but Lord Walton shook his head with a half-reproachful smile, saying, "When you were a poor unfriended girl, Arrah, you used to call me Charles Walton, and, now you are to become a great lady it seems, you give me no other name but 'my lord.'"
The blood spread warm over Arrah Neil's fair cheek and brow. "Oh! no, no!" she exclaimed: "I know not why I did it; but I will call you so no more. You will be always Charles Walton to me, the noble, the good and true, who fondled me as a child, and protected me in my youth, did not despise me in my poverty, and cheered and consoled me in my distress."
Her face was all glowing, her eyes were full of tears, when Lady Margaret returned; but for a moment or two Lord Walton did not speak. The look, the manner of Arrah Neil produced emotions in his mind that he did not rightly understand, or rather roused into activity feelings that he did not know were there. On Lady Margaret Langley, too, the poor girl's appearance at that moment seemed to produce a strange effect. She stopped suddenly as she was crossing the room, gazed intently upon her; and then, as the stag-hound rose and walked slowly up to her, she stopped and patted his head, saying, "Ah, Basto we might well be both mistaken. Come," she continued, turning to her nephew, "supper is ready in the hall; and in the good old fashion of other days we will all take our meal together, and then to rest. For you, my sweet child, whose name I do not yet know----"
"They call me Arrah Neil," replied the girl to whom she addressed herself.
"Well, then, Arrah, I have ordered a chamber for you near my own."
"Nay," said Annie Walton, "Arrah shall share mine; it is not the first time she has done so."
"That is better, perhaps," answered Lady Margaret; "you will doubtless have much to speak of, but I must have my share of her, Annie; for when I look at those eyes, it seems as if twenty sad years were blotted out, and I were in bright days again. But come; the people are waiting for us in the hall, with furious appetites, if I may judge from what I saw of them as I passed through."
Thus saying, she led the way; and in a few moments they were all seated at a long table, the followers of Lord Walton and the men who had accompanied the Earl of Beverley being ranged on either side below the more dignified part of the company.