'Mary!'
'Cecil!'
The two names on each tongue conveyed a world of tenderness, and tender was the light that shone in the eyes of each—tender and yearning too, as they held each other's hands, poor souls, and oblivious of those who stood by and tried to look unconscious, held their hands fast mutually, as if each had recovered some dear treasure, combined with heart and soul.
'You here, Mary!' exclaimed Falconer.
'Yes, Cecil, with Mrs. Garth and Annabelle.'
'If the general knew that I had chaperoned Mary here,' said Mrs. Garth, tremulously, as she pressed his hand, 'I should certainly be discarded, and find myself homeless in my old age.'
'I thank you, from my soul, Mrs. Garth!' exclaimed Cecil; 'after all the evil that has befallen me, is he still implacable as ever?'
'As ever,' replied Mrs. Garth, while Mary only answered with her tears, but Snarley, in the exuberance of his joy, gambolled about among her skirts, as if a lively young rat was hidden there; and Fotheringhame, thinking that the lovers had better be left to themselves, took Falconer's powerful field-glass, threw open the window at the end of his long room, and invited Mrs. Garth and Annabelle to discover, if they could, the outlines of Ben Lomond, and the lights of Stirling twinkling out at thirty miles distance, thus affording the two aching hearts a little interchange of words and caresses.
There are few women in this world who do not resolve firmly and act vigorously when the tender interests of their hearts are affected; thus Mary had somewhat stepped out of her path, at all hazards, to see and console in his affliction the man who loved her, and whom, she had begun to fear, she might never meet again.
What course events might take she knew not, but she knew well that she had been pitilessly told to expect the worst: thus a great pity filled her soul, side by side with her love for Cecil.