"Dear me! what an odd creature that Miss Moore is!" thought the maid, as she flew back to the house. "Instead of being in the house, enjoying the music and the grand toilets of the aristocracy that's here to-night, she's out in the loneliest part of the grounds. But, dear me! what an amazing goose I am to be sure. She must have a lover with her, and in that case the grove's a paradise. Too bad my lady was so imperative. I would have pretended that I couldn't find her—just yet."
Bernardine stooped down, and wetting her handkerchief in the brook, laved her face with it.
She dared not approach the grand old lady with her face swollen with tears, as she was sure it must be.
Bernardine found her quite beside herself with excitement.
"I heard the whistle of the incoming train some fifteen minutes ago, Miss Moore," she said. "My son has reached the station by this time. I have sent our fastest team down to meet him. He will be here at any moment. Ah! that is his step I hear now in the corridor! I am trembling so with excitement that I can hardly stand. Do not leave, Miss Moore. I may need you in case this meeting is too much for me and I should faint away in his strong arms."
The footsteps that Bernardine remembered so well came nearer.
She pressed her hand tightly over her heart to still its wild beating.
Bernardine could have cried aloud in her agony; but her white lips uttered no moan, no sound, even when the door was flung open and a tall, handsome form sprung over the threshold.
"Where are you, mother?" cried Jay Gardiner. "The room is so dark that I can not see where you are!"
The next moment the proud, stately old lady was sobbing on the breast of the son she idolized.