The French clock on the mantel-piece chimed the half-hour after four, and Mrs. Gilbert looked up, aroused for a moment from her reverie.
"Half-past four," she thought; "it will be dark at six, and I have a long walk home."
Home! she shuddered at the simple monosyllable which it is the special glory of our language to possess. The word is very beautiful, no doubt; especially so to a wealthy country magnate,—happy owner of a grand old English mansion, with fair lands and coverts, home-farm and model-farm buildings, shadowy park and sunlit pleasaunce, and wonderful dairies lined with majolica ware, and musical with the plashing of a fountain.
But for Mrs. Gilbert "home" meant a square-built house in a dusty lane, and was never likely to mean anything better or brighter. She got up from her low seat, and breathed a long-drawn sigh as she took her bonnet and shawl from a table near her, and began to put them on before the glass.
"The parlour at home always looks ugliest and barest and shabbiest when I have been here," she thought, as she turned away from the glass and moved towards the door.
She paused suddenly. The door of the boudoir was ajar; all the other doors in the long range of rooms were open, and she heard a footstep coming rapidly towards her: a man's footstep! Was it one of the servants? No; no servant's foot ever touched the ground with that firm and stately tread. It was a stranger's footstep, of course. Who should come there that day except a stranger? He was far away—at the other end of the world almost. It was not within the limits of possibility that his foot-fall should sound on the floors of Mordred Priory.
And yet! and yet! Isabel stopped, with her heart beating violently, her hands clasped, her lips apart and tremulous. And in the next moment the step was close to the threshold, the door was pushed open, and she was face to face with Roland Lansdell; Roland Lansdell, whom she never thought to see again upon this earth! Roland Lansdell, whose face had looked at her in her dreams by day and night any time within these last six months!
"Isabel—Mrs. Gilbert!" he said, holding out both his hands, and taking hers, which were as cold as death.
She tried to speak, but no sound came from her tremulous lips. She could utter no word of welcome to this restless wanderer, but stood before him breathless and trembling. Mr. Lansdell drew a chair towards her, and made her sit down.
"I startled you," he said; "you did not expect to see me. I had no right to come to you so suddenly; but they told me you were here, and I wanted so much to see you,—I wanted so much to speak to you."