She heard the carillons sounding pleasantly in the evening air high overhead apparently, and ever and anon the horns and bells of the passing tramway-cars as they glided through the Place Verte.
Among the decorations of the bed-chamber hung a large engraving of an English hunting scene, with the dogs in full cry scampering over fences and ditches, and her eyes often wandered towards it, as, in her mind, it was associated with the last day she had been out with the Royal Buckhounds, and rode from the green lane home to Chilcote Beeches accompanied by Bevil Goring. And then from the picture she would turn to watch her father's pale and sleeping face. The grim visitant had more than once seemed nigh; but Sir Ranald Cheyne clung persistently to earth and earthly things.
Alison sat close to his bedside, for he who lay there seemed—save some one far away, she thought—all that she had to cling to; she was in a circle of light shed by a lamp upon a pedestal, and an unread Tauchnitz volume lay on her lap forgotten—'Tales of Flemish Life,' by Hendrik Conscience, the Walter Scott of Flanders.
She looked pale, worn, and wan. Sorrow and trouble were beginning to tell upon her now; wakeful nights, restless days, and incessant anxious thoughts were all robbing her of the bloom of perfect youth; the sweetness of lip, the softness of brow, the light of eye, were all passing away, and even her voice was changing, and becoming starved and thin, if we may use the expression. While in the yacht she had escaped her father's peevishness to some extent, and the misery of her home life in another, with its struggle for appearances and bare existence, its saving and scraping, and the duns of ever urgent creditors; but then she had undergone the grief of a rough separation from Bevil, with the annoyance the presence of Lord Cadbury gave her.
'If I can only get through all this, nurse papa well, and get back to Bevil, or to where I can hear of him, how happy—how thankful I shall be!'
Though absent in body, she was ever present in spirit with Bevil; but how little could she conceive that he was at that very time so near her.
One of those horrible bats peculiar to Antwerp, and which begin to flit about as evening falls, came bang against the panes of the lighted window and woke Sir Ranald.
'Still sitting there, bird Ailie,' said he, 'and not reading; of what are you thinking?'
'Of home.'
'What home—Chilcote or Essilmont?—of course you prefer the former now?'