“You shall thank me when I have succeeded in my endeavour to restore him to you,” said Trevelyan pressing the lady’s hand with the cordiality of that friendship which, short as their acquaintance had been, circumstances had established and even cemented between them.
He then hastened away from her dwelling, and drove to his own house in Park Square.
CHAPTER CLXX.
AGNES AND MRS. MORTIMER.
In the meantime Mrs. Mortimer had not been idle.
Possessed of the letter which had been entrusted to her, she repaired in a hired vehicle to the immediate vicinity of the cottage, and alighted in the lane which was bounded on one side by the thick and verdant hedge that enclosed the garden.
The old woman had not precisely made up her mind how to proceed in the business which she had taken in hand: she knew that the task was a difficult one,—and she trusted rather to the chapter of accidents than to any settled or preconceived project.
For she naturally reasoned within herself that Mr. Vernon had doubtless warned his daughter not to hold any further communication with strangers: she had seen enough, on the evening of her visit to the cottage, to enable her to judge that her presence there was regarded suspiciously by that gentleman, and that her tale was not believed by him;—and she therefore calculated that Agnes had been duly and impressively counselled not to receive her again. Indeed, it was likewise probable that the young lady might have been taught to look upon her as a person having some evil object in view, and that the servants had been charged to maintain a strict watch upon her movements should she make her appearance in that neighbourhood again.
All these reflections were duly weighed by Mrs. Mortimer; and, under the circumstances which they suggested, she found it to be totally impossible to devise beforehand any particular method of carrying out her aims.
She, however, more than hoped that, as the morning was remarkably fine, with a warm summer sun rendering the face of Nature bright and joyous, Agnes would be certain to walk in her garden, if not farther abroad. Nor was she mistaken in the former portion of her expectation: for scarcely had she reached the verdant boundary of the enclosure, when she beheld, through the high hedge, the light drapery of the young lady, who, clad in a morning-dress, was advancing slowly along a gravel-walk, with a book in her hand.
How beautiful did she appear, even to the gaze of the old harridan who now surveyed her from behind the hedge! There was an æsthetic grace in her movements—an enchanting sweetness expressed in her countenance—a gentle refinement in her bearing—and a halo of innocence around her, which rendered her a being with whom it was impossible to associate ideas of sensuality, but whom the heart might worship with the purest, holiest poetic sentiment, as if hers were an ethereal nature.