With a little formal bend of the head, she left them, and walked in stately fashion up the staircase until she passed out of their sight, when she suddenly quickened her steps, and flew like a bird down the corridor to Lady Cranstoun’s room.
She found that lady lying on a couch, very white and feeble, wrapped in a cashmere morning-gown, and trembling in every limb.
“Oh! my dear, my dear!” Lady Cranstoun murmured, wringing her limp, white hands, “I am so thankful that you have come back. Your father has returned, and has been asking me questions. He compelled me to tell him where you were. I expected a storm, but he said nothing, which seems so much more dangerous. I am in such terror of what he may say to you.”
Stella drew a footstool to the side of Lady Cranstoun’s sofa, and taking one of her hands in both her own, gently kissed it, and rubbed her cheek against it.
“Mamma,” she said, “how would you like to leave the Chase, and come and stay with me in a nice house, where every one would love you, and no one would bully and frighten you, and where you would have nice servants instead of spies, and where your relations would be honored and welcomed, instead of being insulted whenever they came to visit you?”
“It sounds delightful,” returned the poor lady, sighing, “but, of course, it is impossible. What put such ideas into your head?”
“Mr. Pritchard has just asked me to marry him.”
Lady Cranstoun sat up on her sofa.
“My dear, you astonish me!” she exclaimed. “It is so extremely sudden.”
“He says he decided to propose to me as soon as he saw me yesterday,” returned Stella, demurely.