"I would eat to please you if I could!" said she with her usual sweetness. "But indeed I cannot. Perhaps when we are once at Thornyhaugh, I shall be better."
I was in as much of a hurry as herself, for I feared she was going to be ill. We mounted our fresh horses, and in about half an hour, Alick pointed out the house. It was a tolerably large one with various ornaments of pepper-box turrets, "crow-stepped" gables, and an addition of more modern date than the rest. It stood on a knoll two thirds surrounded by a brawling stream which here comes down to join the Esk, and must once have been a place of strength. Near by, but partly in ruins, stood a very old and massive tower, almost overgrown with ivy.
"That is the house!" said Alick. "And these are the lands of Thornyhaugh. It's very auld, some part of it. Folk say the tower was built by some of the Beattisons lang syne before the Scots drove them out, and took the land themselves, but a scholar gentleman who was here from Edinbro' last year would have us believe that it was far older even than that, and was built in the time of the Picts. Onyhow it's a very old work and a famous place for bird's nests, only my old Leddy will not let them be harried if she kens. See, there she stands in the porch. What would think that she was past her fourscore and four?"
No one, I thought, as I marked her erect figure and the light step with which she came to meet us. She clasped Amabel in her arms, calling her a poor motherless lammie and I know not what other endearing Scotch names. She led us into her sitting-room and busied herself in undoing Amabel's wraps while Mrs. Alice, her old bower-woman, performed the same office for me. Amabel sank down in a chair and looked round her with an expression of relief.
"It is not a dream," said she. "I am really at Thornyhaugh and not at Highbeck, and I am out of that woman's reach. Oh aunt, do not let her come near me! Indeed, I will be dutiful to my father, but I cannot marry that wicked man."
"And you shall not marry him!" said the old lady. "Fear nothing, my child, you are safe here. But how was it?"
"They shut me up in my room," said Amabel. "They would not let even Wilson come near me, and they took Mary away from me. That French woman brought me my meals, and, scanty as they were, I hardly dared eat them. I believe that they tried to give me opium. My lady came to me the last day—when was it, Lucy?"
"Yesterday, I presume."
"Yesterday," repeated Amabel. "Was it only yesterday? She came to me yesterday morning and told me that she had waited on my humors long enough, and would do so no longer; that I must make up my mind to be married in the morning, and if I would not come to the chapel willingly, I should be dragged thither. I appealed to my father, and she laughed at me, and told me he had gone on purpose to be out of the way."
"But Lord Bulmer!" said I. "Surely no man with a spark of manhood about him would take an unwilling bride, let alone one who hated him."