“Well, I am, because I feel she will relent.”
“I wonder what she is doing now?”
And Meta’s question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.
I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on sunshiny days, and call him “Diogenes?” But here comes Janet at last.
“Just one question, Janet, and I’ll let you go. How did Lady Alwyn feel when Claude went away?”
“Oh, sir,” says Janet, “she was far too proud to express her feelings to me in that way. You know, sir, when glad she always told me, but her sorrow she invariably kept to herself.”
“So, as she said nothing, you inferred she was unhappy?”
“For that reason I knew she was. Did I put in the diary, sir, that our poor boy, Claude, told me about his dream—consulted me ere he had that terrible interview with her ladyship?”
“Yes, yes, Janet, that is here.”
“Well, sir, it was first Fingal’s going away, trotting so sad-like after his master, and he never once looking back, and then the snow-bird going next. That, I think, nearly broke her heart. But oh, she was proud, sir.”