Cecil's mind was a prey to great bitterness in the conviction that he was leaving Eaglescraig, as it seemed, for ever, and with no definite plans, views, or hopes for the future. Was all this new love, this new joy, to pass out of his life and out of hers as suddenly as it had come to them?
It seemed so!
He had, he thought, done wrong in winning the heart of Mary Montgomerie without the permission of her proud old guardian and kinsman; but now he had little compunction for having done so, as that permission would never have been accorded to him, and he felt that his departure seemed a welcome move to all but her—a departure permitted to pass coldly, and without even a well-bred expression of regret.
A farewell glance at the stately modern villa, and the grim old keep that towered behind it, showed him their walls all reddened in the early morning sun; the window-blinds close drawn, all closed as yet, save one. His heart told him it was that of Mary's room. The sash remained, of course, unlifted, but the blue silk curtain was festooned back, and every pulse vibrated within him when he saw the wave of a white handkerchief, just as the dog-cart went bowling down the wooded avenue towards the highway.
It was Mary's farewell to him.
Would the strains of the sweet old story, that never tires, come to their ears again? How would it all end between him and Mary Montgomerie, or was it ended now?
CHAPTER XIII.
IN SHADOW LAND.
'I am truly glad for Hew's sake, and for Mary's sake, that he has gone—gone ere it was too late!' thought Sir Piers, as he sat in his easy-chair in the library that afternoon, when nothing remained of Cecil Falconer at Eaglescraig but an aching pain in Mary's heart, and in the avenue the ruts of the wheels that had borne him away.
His recent conversation with Hew about the dread of a mésalliance made the old baronet's mind revert—as it too often did, bitterly and unavailingly—to another mésalliance in his family, which nearly brought ruin—for such in the vanity of his soul he deemed disgrace—upon the Montgomeries of Eaglescraig, who had for ages been a power in the bailiwick of Cunninghame.