It was then five years since the period of the little episode we have retrograded to relate, five years which had softly glided over Mary Seaham's head, in the almost uninterrupted retirement of her mountain home, and the simple enjoyments and pursuits this existence provided. Five years, which at her happy hopeful period of life, adds, oftener than detracts, from each charm either of mind or person—when, under such untried circumstances, the heart springs forward upon the wings of hope with freshness yet undiminished, and vigour unabated.
It was then between five and six years after, that Mary Seaham, on a summer eve found herself approaching her cousin's house in ——, which place she had last visited with her sister, Lady Everingham, and from thence repaired to that fête which had proved no unimportant incident in her life.
CHAPTER V.
Then came the yearning of the exile's breast,
The haunting sound of voices far away,
And household steps.
HEMANS.
Silverton was a fine estate, and though the country in which it was situated was tame and unlovely in comparison with that to which she had been for so long accustomed, yet Mary Seaham was not so inveterate a mountaineer that she could look, as I know many do, upon the different aspect of the mother country, with the eye of utter aversion and distaste, and though she could not perhaps have gone so far as to agree with old Evelyn when he, asserts Salisbury plain to be in his opinion, the part of Great Britain most worthy of admiration, yet for the gaze to be able to stretch unbounded over a level tract of cultivated land after having been long imprisoned within the massive confines of a mountainous district, she was not ashamed to own, there may be a certain degree of pleasurable relief.
But as may be supposed, any very critical survey of surrounding objects was at an end, when with that degree of nervousness ever more or less attending an arrival of this kind, she drew near the place of her destination in the carriage which had been sent to meet her. There was no one to receive her at the door when she alighted, but the servants, and its being near the dinner-hour, Mary concluded her cousins to have retired to their dressing-rooms. On making inquiries, however, to that effect she was informed that Mrs. de Burgh had not yet returned from her drive, and Mr. de Burgh was also from home.
Mary therefore accepted the offer of the civil domestic to be shown to the room prepared for her, and retired thither, not sorry to be able to rest awhile, after the fatigues of her long journey before a meeting with her relatives. Perhaps her spirits might be a little damped by the reception, or rather non-reception she had met with.