“And you know you told me you were quite happy at Wyvern,” said Lady Wyndale, returning her farewell caress, and speaking low, for a servant stood at the chaise-door.
“Did I? Well, I shouldn’t have said that, for—I’m not happy,” whispered Alice Maybell, and the tears sprang to her eyes as she kissed her old kinswoman; and then, with her arms still about her neck, there was a brief look from her large, brimming eyes, while her lip trembled; and suddenly she turned, and before Lady Wyndale had recovered from that little shock, her pretty guest was seated in the chaise, the door shut, and she drove away.
“What can it be, poor little thing?” thought Lady Wyndale, as her eyes anxiously followed the carriage in its flight down the avenue.
“They have shot her pet-pigeon, or the dog has killed her guinea-pig, or old Fairfield won’t allow her to sit up till twelve o’clock at night, reading her novel. Some childish misery, I dare say, poor little soul!”
But for all that she was not satisfied, and her poor, pale, troubled look haunted her.
CHAPTER II.
THE VALE OF CARWELL.
In about an hour and a half this chaise reached the Pied Horse, on Elverstone Moor. Having changed horses at this inn, they resumed their journey, and Miss Alice Maybell, who had been sad and abstracted, now lowered the window beside her, and looked out upon the broad, shaggy heath, rising in low hillocks, and breaking here and there into pools—a wild, and on the whole a monotonous and rather dismal expanse.
“How fresh and pleasant the air is here, and how beautiful the purple of the heath!” exclaimed the young lady with animation.
“There now—that’s right—beautiful it is, my darling; that’s how I like to see my child—pleasant-like and ’appy, and not mopin’ and dull, like a sick bird. Be that way always; do, dear.”
“You’re a kind old thing,” said the young lady, placing her slender hand fondly on her old nurse’s arm, “good old Dulcibella: you’re always to come with me wherever I go.”