Lady Winifred was also alone.
The noonday sun was streaming as of old into the yellow damask drawing-room, and the sea-coal fire crackled on the hearth between the delft-lined jambs cheerily and brightly. Before it, on the thick cosy rug, a sleek tom-cat sat winking and purring, and the favourite terrier of Quentin, coiled up round as a ball, was there too, but fast asleep beside the many-spotted Dalmatian dog, which always followed the old-fashioned family carriage.
The antique ormolu clock, that ticked so loudly on the mantelpiece on the night when Quentin was rescued from the wreck, and his father's corpse was cast on the surf-beaten sand, and when he, a wailing child, was brought by Elsie Irvine to Rohallion, was ticking there still, quietly, regularly, and monotonously, and Lady Winifred looked at its quaint dial wistfully, as she might have done in the face of an old and familiar friend.
Now Quentin and her beloved and only son were both far, far away; both were to encounter the perils of war, and she might never see them more! How much and how many things had happened, she thought, and still the old clock ticked there monotonously, even as it had done when, on an evening now many, many years ago, she came a blooming bride to the old castle by the sea; and so it might continue to tick, long after she, and her comely and affectionate old Lord, lay side by side among the Crawfords of past centuries in the Rohallion aisle of the venerable kirk whose tower she could see terminating the woody vista of yonder lonely glen.
The paragraph of the morning had called up a multitude of sad thoughts that had long been buried, and she felt melancholy, almost miserable, and opening her escritoire, she looked long and earnestly on the relics of Quentin's father—his commission in the French service, the letter in the poor man's pocket-book, and the ring that was taken from his finger, bearing the name of Josephine—the boy's mother, doubtless.
The dominie, to whom the quartermaster lost no time in hastening with the intelligence, like the old Lord, was stout in his belief that Quentin would, as he phrased it, "cast up again."
"Disappeared," he repeated two or three times; "the bairn no since heard o'; the thing's no possible! He will, he shall return again, be assured, to receive his reward, for he is worthy of a crown of gold—worthy of it, yea, as ever were Manlius Torquatus or Valerius Corvus, ilk ane o' wham, as we are told in Livy, slew a Gaul in single combat."
This classic reward did not seem very probable, when a few weeks after, a long official letter was brought to Rohallion, and added greatly to the anxiety and perplexity of the inmates thereof.
In this missive the military secretary, by direction of H.R.H. the Duke of York, "presented his compliments to Major-General Lord Rohallion, K.C.B., and regretted to acquaint him that it was impossible to entertain his request with regard to Mr. Quentin Kennedy, a volunteer with the 25th Foot, as matters had transpired which might render his clearance before a general court-martial necessary."