Mother and daughter sat silent and sad while the train swept on, Lostwithiel with its antique octagon spire and the ruins of Restormal, with their moat full of sweet-briars; St. Blazey, to whose shrine the woolcombers made their pilgrimages in the days of old (the saint having been tortured or curried to death with wool-combs, by the Cornish men who declined to be converted from Druidism), with many a spacious lawn and bare autumnal wood and many a purple moor, were speedily left behind; and now it was past Grampound with its market-house and ancient granite cross, the train went screaming and clanking. Redruth next, in a dreary and barren district whose wealth lies far below the soil, which is literally honeycombed by the shafts and levels of mines; and then came Hayle, the houses of which are all built of scoria or slag, the debris of ancient mines; and then the travellers hired at the "White Hart," a carriage for Rhoscadzhel.
To Constance, the scenery there had its chief interest in the circumstance that in youth and manhood her husband must have been familiar with every feature of it, and must have shot and hunted over it all. Noon was past now; but the sun shed a rich golden light upon a calm sea, of which they had lovely glimpses at times between the grey granite carns and clumps of oak and elm. Sometimes the carriage rolled past wildernesses of rock and morass, where wild tarns reflected in their glassy depths the blue sky above, and where valleys opened westward to the Bristol Channel, whose waves were buttressed out by precipices of bold and striking outline, and the heart of Constance began to beat painfully as each revolution of the wheels drew her nearer and nearer to the house, that long ere this should have been her home.
She felt, or thought, that now she was about to face, confront, and grapple with her fate, and to know the best or worst! The secret burden so long intolerable, would now be cast aside, and the adoption of any line of action, in lieu of the existence she had led since her loss was confirmed—the dumb mechanical life of one too paralysed even to think—was a relief. Yet moments there were when she half repented of her journey.
Her husband, her sole protector, was gone, and the proofs of their marriage, and of his intentions by will, too, were gone also! If her arguments were repelled, her assertions denied, what must be her fate, and how terribly should she and those he loved so well be exposed to the sneers and heartlessness of a world that knew nothing of their good qualities, or of the cause for that concealment which might now prove the cause of their destruction.
What if even now, at the eleventh hour, as it were, she turned prudently back, and concealed the fact that she was the true Lady Lamorna—that her son was a peer of the realm—and let him and Sybil pass through life as humble Devereaux, content to earn their bread as best they could? But to see Downie Trevelyan, the author of that harsh and most insulting letter, occupying the place of her Denzil—no—no! a thousand times no!
Some such fears had been occurring to Sybil, who now said, in a low voice, as they drew near the stately gate of Rhoscadzhel,
"I doubt, dearest mamma, whether this is a wise proceeding on our part; if we have the legal right to call ourselves Trevelyans, that right should be placed for proof in legal hands."
"If we have—" began Constance, impetuously, and then became silent, for she felt that the views of her daughter were, perhaps, the most correct.
The elaborate iron gate, and its tall granite pillars, each supporting a grotesque Koithgath, surmounted by a coronet, were left behind, and they proceeded along the stately avenue by which we have so lately seen Richard passing as chief mourner at the funeral of the old lord; and now, as the porte-cochère (which bore a double hatchment) was approached, came a new perplexity to the mind of Constance. How was she to announce herself?
As "Lady Lamorna," where there was already one who called herself so; simply as "Mrs. Devereaux," or as "a lady wishing an interview with Lord Lamorna"? But from the utterance of his name in this instance she shrunk.