"I had no other way of getting to you." "Hear him!" cried Alice, running back to Ferdinand, and grasping his arm; "I knew it was not his own will that detained him from us. Dear, dear, Louis!" and weeping again with the excess of her joy, she unconsciously allowed Ferdinand to support her with his arm.
Louis called to a fisherman he descried among the rocks; and giving him his horse to lead to the Parsonage stables, proceeded with Cornelia to join the trembling Alice and the young Spaniard, who, his cousin had told him, was their uncle's guest.
"My sweetest Alice!" said Louis, as he approached her. The moment she heard his footstep and the salutation, she took her hands from her streaming eyes, and threw herself upon his breast.
Cornelia put her hand upon Ferdinand's arm, and impelling him gently forward; "pardon me, Don Ferdinand," said she, "but Alice is so weak in her nerves! Or rather, her tender nature is so alive to any danger threatening those she loves, that at such times she is hardly herself. She will recover soonest when left alone with our dear, but still rash cousin."
"What could impel Mr. de Montemar to so extraordinary an act?"
"His word, given to my uncle, not to be a willing inmate with Duke Wharton. His Grace is at the castle; and he and Sir Anthony, finding Louis determined to return to Lindisfarne, would have made him their prisoner, had he not effected his escape by this terrible expedient."
"But why did Mr. Athelstone require such a promise from your cousin?" asked Ferdinand; "has the gay Duke offended your uncle?"
"As he has offended all virtuous men," replied Cornelia with severity. Ferdinand regretted his inconsiderate question. Fearing the impression it might leave on the sister of Alice, he sighed deeply, and exclaimed; "happy De Montemar! to be in this blessed seclusion so strange to vice, that its first aspect causes you to fly with horror! In the wide, worthless world, Miss Coningsby, vice meets us at every turning; and, to our shame, familiarity with the object soon makes us indifferent to its deformity."
The young Spaniard again lost his self-possession; and with an almost convulsed countenance and waiving his hand for her not to follow him, he darted through a chasm into the craggs; and by their intervening projections instantly disappeared. Cornelia joined Alice and her cousin; then turned with them into the direct path to the Parsonage, that Louis might be released from his wet garments; and her uncle relieved from any alarm the arrival of the horse might have occasioned. As they walked homeward, she gave her cousin a brief account of the visit of the Marquis and his son; and he much surprised her, when he declared this to be the first intimation he had received of their arrival. Alice was not sparing of her invectives against Sir Anthony for his dishonourable concealment of her uncle's messenger; and then enquired how Louis had at last broken away from his detainers.
"That you shall hear by and by," said he, "but I don't know what Cornelia will say; for, indeed, I had a run for it!" Cornelia smiled; and he added in a graver tone; "but if Mr. Athelstone knew the Duke of Wharton was at Bamborough, what must he have thought of my apparent neglect of his summons? Of my shameless contempt of my promise."