'Yes,' replied the other, 'time and God will show.'
Alison remembered these apparently prophetic words after she was at home, and Antwerp was far away, and her visit there seemed but as a dream; for three days after saw her and Sir Ranald in England. 'Ours is a nation of travellers,' says a writer, 'and no wonder, when the elements, air, water, fire, attend our bidding to transport us from shore to shore; when the ship rushes into the deep, her track the foam as of some mighty torrent, and in three hours or less we stand gazing or gazed at among a foreign people. None want an excuse. If rich they go to enjoy; if poor to retrench; if sick to recover; if studious to learn; if learned to relax from their studies.'
None of these objects had brought Alison—the creature of circumstances, and of the plans formed by others—to Antwerp, and now that she was home again—or once again on British soil—the reader may imagine how anxiously she longed for some tidings of Bevil Goring (all unwitting that he had been so long near her, in the land of the stranger), whether he had gone to face the perils of war on the Gold Coast, or been detached at home; and the only one who could have speedily enlightened her thereon was the person to whom she dared not utter his name—Sir Ranald.
So poor Alison could but sigh and think with L.E.L. that
'Earth were too like Heaven
If length of life to love were given.'
CHAPTER V.
IN HAMPSHIRE AGAIN.
'I wish Jerry were here to help me,' sighed Lady Julia, as she lounged in a luxurious fauteuil in the beautiful drawing-room of Wilmothurst, with 'Cousin' Emily, on a dull afternoon of February, when the trees in the stately chase were dripping with moisture, and the reedy fens and lonesome marshes, where the bittern boomed and the heron waded, looked dreary, and the edges of the water-flags were stiff and white with frost. 'I would Jerry were here to help me with his advice. Not that his advice would help us much perhaps, Emily,' she added, querulously.
'Advice, Aunt Julia? When poor dear Jerry was here, he did nothing,' replied that young lady.
'And that was all he ever cared to do, Emily; but I have seen so little of Jerry since he joined the Rifles that I seem to be quite alone in the world.'