As he spoke he turned his head to the window. What a world of intelligence and gentle beauty was in that face! It was a face to gaze at for hours and speculate upon.
“Five days my uncle has been gone now,” he said—“five whole days, and what should I have done without these dear books? How kind of Albert Seyton to lend them to me! I do love Albert Seyton, and if—if—no—no, I must not breathe that even to myself. Oh, Heavens! That I should be so unfortunate. When—oh, when will my uncle, who is so stern, and yet tender—so cruel, and yet sometimes so kind—when will he explain to me the awful mystery he hints at when with tears I urge him to let me—”
A low knock at the room door now attracted his attention, and the boy cried cheerfully,—
“Ha! I know that tap, ’Tis Albert. Come in—come in, Albert, I am here, and all alone.”
The door was immediately opened, and a boy of about fourteen or fifteen years of age, whose long flaxen hair and ruddy complexion proclaimed him to be of true Saxon origin, bounded into the room.
“Your uncle still absent, Harry?” he cried.
“Yes,” replied the lad who had been reading. “Five days now, Albert, he has been gone. What should I have done without you?”
“You know I love you, Harry Gray,” said Seyton. “You are very young, but you are a great deal more sensible than many lads of twice your age.”
“I’m past eleven!” said he who was called Harry Gray.
“That’s a great age,” said the other, laughing. “If you don’t think your uncle would pop in unawares, I would sit with you an hour. My poor father is out again. Ah, Harry, he still hopes to procure a recompense from the count. He lost his all in the cause of the present royal family, and now you see they have left him and myself to starve. It’s too bad!”