Whilst thus absorbed, a step whose sound the soft carpeting on which it trod had not permitted her to hear, approached near to where Mary Seaham sat, and a voice broke upon her reverie.
She started a little, but perceiving who was the intruder, with a smile and only a slightly heightened colour, she arose and frankly extended her hand with the gentle exclamation: "Mr. Temple!"
The person thus addressed was a man in the full vigour of his days; of tall commanding figure, whose pale and noble countenance seemed to wear less marks of worldly care than of high and chastened thought.
His temples were already partly bare, but the rest of his thick dark curly hair bespoke the strength of manhood, and his eye, full and eloquent, beamed with a spirit and enthusiasm which might have become a martyr. The black dress he wore, seemed to denote his clerical profession.
"I shall not apologize so much as I should otherwise have done, for thus abruptly disturbing you Miss Seaham;" were the words of his rich full-toned voice, "concluding as I do, that this evening, your meditations must naturally be of somewhat melancholy a nature."
"About an hour ago you would have been but too right in your conclusion, Mr. Temple;" responded the young lady. "The bustle of the day over, the dreary feeling of being 'the last left,' was stealing over me to a most insupportable degree, but since I quitted the deserted house, the influence of this lovely evening has worked most effectually on my feelings. In the open air I think this is generally the case," she added. "However, the sense of isolation and separation, may oppress one in the confinement of the house. Here, one can feel at least that the same blue sky," and Miss Seaham as she spoke lifted up her clear serene eyes to the heaven above, "over-canopies us all. I have," she continued with simple feeling, and a slight suffusion of the eye-lid: "great need for my comfort, to realise that perhaps rather vague idea, for we shall be now indeed a most scattered family. Arthur in America, Jane and Selina in India, Alice in Scotland and Aggy so soon to be in Italy."
She paused, her voice slightly faltering, as if the idea of this domestic dispersion, when thus recorded in words, had brought the truth before her with too much painful reality.
"And you, Miss Seaham," interrogated Mr. Temple, a slight tremor also perceptible in his deep clear voice, and which a kind and friendly sympathy in the young lady's sadness might naturally have occasioned, "do you really desert Glan Pennant so very soon?"
"Yes, Mr. Temple, and had I not relied upon your promise of calling this evening, I should have sent to let you know. I could not have gone without seeing you again. I leave Glan Pennant to-morrow morning. I travel part of the way with the Merediths, and some change in their arrangements make this necessary. I own that it is a relief that I am not to linger any longer here, though this speedy departure has come upon me rather suddenly."
She looked up, as her companion did not immediately reply to this intelligence, and then he inquired seriously if she still kept to her resolution of visiting her relations in ——shire.