At a little before noon on that September morning, a single figure was moving slowly backward and forward, up and down, the length of the garden walk in the rear of the house of Robert Brand, the trellises of the grapery above and on either side, for nearly the whole distance, flecking the autumn sunshine that fell on the walk and on the moving figure, while from the vines themselves peeped the thick clusters of amber fruit upon which the purple bloom was just beginning to throw a hint of October and luscious ripeness. Late flowers bloomed in the walks and borders on either side; occasionally a bird sent up its quiet and contented twitter from the top of the vine where it was tasting a premature grape; a cicala's chirp rang feebly out, swelled up to a volume that filled the whole garden, then died away again, an indefinable feeling of stillness seeming to lie in the very sound. The sunlight was golden, the sky perfectly cloudless, the air balmy and indolent; beneath the trellis and beside the walk two long rustic settees combined with the wooing air and beckoned to closed eyes, day-dreams and repose; and yet the very opposite of repose was expressed in the appearance and movement of that single figure.
It was that of Robert Brand, three months older than we saw him in the early summer, far less an invalid than he had been at that time, as evidenced by the absence of his swathed limb and supporting cane, yet more broken within that period than most men break in ten twelvemonths—more than he had himself broken before in the same period of his severest years of bodily suffering. Something of the iron expression of the mouth was gone, and in its place were furrowed lines of suffering that the torture of the body could scarcely have imprinted there without the corresponding agony of the mind; he was more stooped in the shoulders than he had been when before observed; and down the side-hair that showed from beneath his broad hat—hair that had been fast but evenly changing from gray to white, there now lay great streaks of finger thickness, white as the driven snow and in painful contrast with the other,—such streaks as are not often made in hair or beard except by the pressure of terrible want, a great sorrow, or a month of California fever. This was not all—he walked with head dejectedly bent, and hands beneath the skirts of his coat; and when he glanced up for a moment it could be seen that his lip trembled and the eye had a sad, troubled expression that might have told of tears past, tears to come, or a feeling far too absorbing for either. Alas!—the old man was indeed suffering. The shame of a life had been followed by its sorrow. He had erred terribly in meeting the one, and paid the after penalty: how could he muster fortitude enough to meet the other?
To him old Elspeth Graeme, large-faced, massive-framed, and powerful looking as of old, with a countenance no more changed during the preceding three months than a granite boulder in the mountains might have been affected by a little wind and storm during the same lapse of time. Behind her Carlo, who since the disappearance of his young master seemed to have found no one else except the old Scottish woman who could pretend to exercise any control over him, and who consequently had attached himself to her almost exclusively. The master, who was making one of his turns up the walk, saw her as she emerged from the house, and met her as she approached, with inquiry in face and voice.
"Well?"
"Stephen has just come ben with the carriage, and the leddy is in the house, though the Laird kens what ye'r wantin' of her here, ava!"
"Hold your tongue, woman! When I need your opinion I will ask you for it!" This in a tone very much like that of the Robert Brand of old, in little squabbles of the same character. Then with the voice much softened: "Is Margaret Hayley in the house, do you say?"
"'Deed she is, then, and she'll just be tired of waiting for ye, as the lassie's gone, gin ye dinna haste a bit!"
"I will come—no, ask her to step into the garden; I will see her here."
"He's gettin' dafter than ever, I'm thinkin', to invite a born leddy out into the garden to see him, instead of ganging in till her as he should!" muttered the old serving-woman as she turned away to obey the injunction, and in that way satisfying, for the time, her part of the inevitable quarrel. The moment after the back door of the house opened again, and Margaret Hayley came out alone. Stately as ever in step, though perhaps a little slower; the charm of youth and budding womanhood in face and figure, with the broad sun flashing on her dark hair and seeming to crown her with a dusky glory; but something calmer, softer, sadder, ay, even older, visible in her whole appearance and manner, than could have been read there in that first morning of June, upon the piazza of her own house. She, too, had been living much within a brief period: it may be that the course of this narration has furnished the reader with better data for judging how much, than any that lay in the possession of Robert Brand.
She approached the end of the arbor from which he was emerging, and he met her before she had reached it. Her face, as they met, wore an unmistakable expression of wonder—his an equally unmistakable one of pain. Neither spoke for one moment, then the old lawyer held out his hand and said: