Lady Jane turned as if to kiss her, but only patted her on the cheek, and said coldly—
"Good-bye, little fool—now run back again."
When Lady Jane reached the gallery at the top of the staircase, she, too, saw Donica Gwynn seated where Varbarriere had spoken to her.
"Ha! Donica," cried she suddenly, in the accents of early girlhood, "I'm so glad to see you, Donica. You hardly know me now?"
And Lady Jane, in the light of one transient, happy smile, threw her jewelled arms round the neck of the old housekeeper, whose visits of weeks at a time to Wardlock were nearly her happiest remembrances of that staid old mansion.
"You dear old thing! you were always good to me; and I such a madcap and such a fury! Dull enough now, Donnie, but not a bit better."
"My poor Miss Jennie!" said old Donica Gwynn, with a tender little laugh, her head just a little on one side, looking on her old pet and charge with such a beautiful, soft lighting up of love in her hard old face as you would not have fancied could have beamed there. Oh! most pathetic mystery, how in our poor nature, layer over layer, the angelic and the evil, the mean and the noble, lie alternated. How sometimes, at long intervals, in the wintriest life and darkest face, the love of angels will suddenly beam out, and show you, still unwrecked, the eternal capacity for heaven.
"And grown such a fine 'oman—bless ye—I allays said she would—didn't I?"
"You always stood up for me, old Donnie Don. Come into my room with me now, and talk. Yes—come, and talk, and talk, and talk—I have no one, Bonnie, to talk with now. If I had I might be different—I mean better. You remember poor mamma, Donnie—don't you?"
"Dear! to be sure—yes, and a nice creature, and a pretty—there's a look in your face sometimes reminds me on her, Miss Jennie. And I allays said you'd do well—didn't I?—and see what a great match, they tell me, you a' made! Well well! and how you have grown!—a fine lady, bless you," and she laughed so softly over those thin, girlish images of memory, you'd have said the laugh was as far away and as sad as the remembrance.