Quantities of other letters were torn open and aimed in balls at the empty grate. But at last he came to a long one which he read breathlessly.
It was from the mother of the girl who had so recently refused him, an involved tortuous epistle, which implied that the daughter was seriously attached to him, and hinted that if he were to come forward again he would not be refused a second time. There was also a short, wavering, nondescript note with nothing in particular in it from the girl herself. The mother had evidently made her write.
A very venomous expression settled on Lord Lossiemouth's heavy face. He suddenly took up a Bradshaw and looked out the trains for Lostford.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Tard oublie qui bien aime.
On this momentous afternoon Magdalen was sitting alone in the morning-room at Priesthope somewhat oppressed by an oncoming cold. It had not yet reached the violent and weeping stage. That was for to-morrow. She, who was generally sympathetically dressed, was reluctantly enveloped in a wiry red crochet-work shawl which Bessie had made for her, and had laid resolutely upon her shoulders before she went out.
She tried to read, but her eyes ached, and after a time she laid down her book, and her mind went back, as it had a way of doing—to Fay.
Fay had told her as "a great secret" that she had accepted Wentworth. She was so transfigured by happiness, so radiant, so absolutely unlike her former listless, colourless, carping self that Magdalen could only suppose that two shocks of joy had come simultaneously, the discovery that she loved her prim suitor, and the overwhelming relief to her tortured conscience of Michael's release.
Wentworth and Michael were still at Venice. Michael, it seemed, had been prostrated by excitement, and had been too weak to travel immediately. But they would be at Barford in a few days' time.