For a moment the old lodge-keeper struggled for breath. Then his voice came, and with a big sob, he cried, ‘Bess—my own darling! Thank God! Thank God!’
He flung his arms about her, raised her, and clasped her to his breast, the hot tears pouring down his wrinkled cheeks into the flushed, upturned face of his daughter.
Bess cried a little, laughed a little, and then cried again, and at last, when she could speak without doing either, she told her story in a few words.
The old lodge-keeper listened in silence.
‘Ay, I knew it, my darling,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘I got your letters, and I trusted you. I guessed it was for the young master’s sake you were silent.’
‘Yes, father; I would never have kept it secret from you but for George.’
‘No, my lass, I know that. I said to myself many a night, when I sat here alone, looking up at the bright stars, and thinking that might be up in the great city you were looking at them too—I said, “My little lass is an honest lass; she wouldn’t shame her old father for the best gentleman in the land.” I knew you were married to the young master, Bess, my darling. If I hadn’t believed that, I don’t think you would have found me here now.’
Little by little, Bess told her father how they had been living in London, and how good George had been; but how now, for some reason, it was necessary he should see his father and make his peace with him. ‘Would her father let him come to the lodge and wait awhile, till he could go up to the hall and see the squire alone?’
Of course Marks would. ‘Wasn’t he the young master, and wasn’t he Bess’s husband? God bless him!’
Then Bess went out, and George came quietly in and sat down in the little room where no one could see him, and they closed the door and drew down the blind, and talked matters over.