“The estate has yielded some three hundred a year to Mrs. Wroat, after all salaries were paid,” she explained. “It is not as profitable as most places of its size, but it has served as a grand country seat in its day, and the grounds are very extensive and beautiful. The house and outbuildings are in perfect repair; there is a pair of carriage horses, besides the work animals; and there are a fine lot of sheep and cattle of the best breeds, and they can be made a source of greater revenue if you are willing to go to some outlay for stock.”
“We will see to all that,” said Lally beginning to feel an interest in her new possession. “I would like to talk with Mr. Lang about it some day when he has leisure. I wish you and Mr. Lang would remain to dinner with us.”
The steward’s wife accepted the invitation with delight, and went down to acquaint her husband with his prospects for the future.
Lally made her toilet, with Mrs. Peters’ assistance.
“I can see my future,” said Lally, with the first gleam of brightness Mrs. Peters had seen in her black eyes and on her gypsy face since Mrs. Wroat’s death. “I dare say I shall in time go to town and the house in Mount street for three months in the year; and I shall live here at Heather Hills, and raise prize pigs and prize sheep and prize Highland cattle, and look out of the windows at the sails; and so the years will pass and I shall grow gray. And, oh, I’ll get up a charity school of some sort and teach it myself; and the children, instead of being disfigured with baglike blouses and horrid starched caps, shall all wear the prettiest pink and blue dresses, according to their complexions, and the prettiest white ruffled aprons; and when I die they shall stand in two rows around my grave, and may be somebody will say that I was ‘a mother in Israel.’”
It was not a very bright picture of the future of one so young and pretty as Lally, with fortune and all good gifts. She seemed intended for a home fairy, to cheer and uphold and strengthen a kindly, loving husband; to gather little children of her own to her breast; and good Mrs. Peters could not help praying that such might be Lally’s destiny.
When the young mistress of Heather Hills had changed her black bombazine traveling dress for a black lustreless silk trimmed heavily with crape, and provided with white crape ruffles at the throat, and had put on her jet jewelry, she was ready for dinner. Her black hair had been gathered into braids, and was ornamented with a black bow, and she looked as she was, gentle, refined, intelligent, weighted with sorrow too heavy for her to bear, yet meek and patient as some young martyr.
“We will go down now to our guests, Peters,” she said. “How soon will you be ready?”
Mrs. Peters’ face flushed.
“Miss Lally,” she said hesitatingly, “it is not suitable I should dine with you. I am only your maid, you know. Mrs. Wroat had me always dine with her, because otherwise she must have dined alone, and she liked company. Mr. Lang is the younger son of a Scottish laird, and he might be affronted to dine with me.”