He turned on his heel as he spoke. He strode down the hall and through the avenue; he looked neither to right nor left, and never once behind him. His mother watched him with clasped hands, with anxious eyes, and with prayers on her pale and quivering lips.
“Would he turn? Surely, surely he would turn.” But nay; the trees soon hid him from view—hid him, and lastly Fingal, who with tail and head bent low, as if he knew that sorrow had come, followed at young Claude’s heels.
“Widowed and childless!” These were her words as she sank apparently lifeless on the floor.
Janet, her maid, found her thus and lifted her gently on to the couch. But when memory came back, no words her maid could utter could give comfort.
“I forgive him, Janet,” she said, “as he will forgive me. It is fate. He may write, but he’ll never return: too well do I know the pride of the Highland Alwyns. But, but, dear Janet,”—here all the woman’s nature gushed out in tears—“Janet,” she sobbed, “poor Fingal—too—has—gone.”
Sorrow had fallen like a dark cloud on Dunallan Towers, a cloud that was deepened in its darkness when one morning Alba, the snow-bird, was missing. It was last seen flying listlessly around the great elm trees, then straight as lightning bearing northwards. It was Janet who saw it, and it seemed to say—
“I hear a voice you cannot hear,
That bids me not to stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
That beckons me away.”