“Dead and gone and all but forgotten!”
“No, my lord; not for one day forgotten! not for one moment unloved!”
“Ah, well, as you please! but because you love his memory must I regard him as a Solon? ’Tis surely no great treason to reflect upon the wisdom of a dead man!”
“I wish you good day, my lord!” said Arctura, very angry, and left him.
But when presently she found that she could not lift up her heart to her father in heaven, gladly would she have sent her anger from her. Was it not plainly other than good, when it came thus between her and the living God! All day at intervals she had to struggle and pray against it; a great part of the night she lay awake because of it; but at length she pitied her uncle too much to be very angry with him any more, and so fell asleep.
In the morning she found that all sense of his having authority over her had vanished, and with it her anger. She saw also that it was quite time she took upon herself the duties of a landowner. What could Mr. Grant think of her—doing nothing for her people! But she could do little while her uncle received the rents and gave orders to Mr. Graeme! She would take the thing into her own hands! In the meantime, Mr. Grant should, if he pleased, go on quietly with his examination of the house.
But she could not get her interview with her uncle out of her head, and was haunted with vague suspicions of some dreadful secret about the house belonging to the present as well as the past. Her uncle seemed to have receded to a distance incalculable, and to have grown awful as he receded. She was of a nature almost too delicately impressionable; she not only felt things keenly, but retained the sting of them after the things were nearly forgotten. But then the swift and rare response of her faculties arose in no small measure from this impressionableness. At the same time, but for instincts and impulses derived from her race, her sensitiveness might have degenerated into weakness.
CHAPTER LI.
A DREAM.
One evening, as Donal was walking in the little avenue below the terraces, Davie, who was now advanced to doing a little work without his master’s immediate supervision, came running to him to say that Arkie was in the schoolroom and wanted to see him.
He hastened to her.