“And, in conclusion, why should you hear from any lips but my own, that this lady beside me, the daughter of an English earl of ancient house, has honoured the house of Lossie by consenting to become its marchioness? Lady Clementina Thornicroft possesses large estates in the south of England, but not for them did I seek her favour—as you will be convinced when you reflect what the fact involves which she has herself desired me to make known to you— namely, that it was while yet she was unacquainted with my birth and position, and had never dreamed that I was other than only a fisherman and a groom, that she accepted me for her husband.— I thank my God.”
With that he took his seat, and after hearty cheering, a glass or two of wine, and several speeches, all rose, and went to look at the portrait of the late marquis.
CHAPTER LXXII.
KNOTTED STRANDS.
Lady Clementina had to return to England to see her lawyers, and arrange her affairs. Before she went, she would gladly have gone with Malcolm over every spot where had passed any portion of his history, and at each heard its own chapter or paragraph; but Malcolm obstinately refused to begin such a narration before Clementina was mistress of the region to which it mainly belonged. After that, he said, he would, even more gladly, he believed, than she, occupy all the time that could be spared from the duties of the present in piecing together the broken reflections of the past in the pools of memory, until they had lived both their lives over again together, from earliest recollection to the time when the two streams flowed into one, thenceforth to mingle more and more inwardly to endless ages.
So the Psyche was launched. Lady Clementina, Florimel, and Lenorme were the passengers, and Malcolm, Blue Peter, and Davy the crew. There was no room for servants, yet was there no lack of service. They had rough weather a part of the time, and neither Clementina nor Lenorme was altogether comfortable, but they made a rapid voyage, and were all well when they landed at Greenwich.
Knowing nothing of Lady Bellair’s proceedings, they sent Davy to reconnoitre in Portland Place. He brought back word that there was no one in the house but an old woman. So Malcolm took Florimel there. Everything belonging to their late visitors had vanished, and nobody knew where they had gone.
Searching the drawers and cabinets, Malcolm, to his unspeakable delight, found a miniature of his mother, along with one of his father—a younger likeness than he had yet seen. Also he found a few letters of his mother—mostly mere notes in pencil; but neither these nor those of his father which Miss Horn had given him, would he read:
“What right has life over the secrets of death?” he said. “Or rather, what right have we who sleep over the secrets of those who have waked from their sleep and left the fragments of their dreams behind them?”
Lovingly he laid them together, and burned them to dust flakes.
“My mother shall tell me what she pleases, when I find her,” he said. “She shall not reprove me for reading her letters to my father.”