How long the hours seemed! He kept watching the clock and calculating how soon it was possible to hear. His mother was in Wales, and the telegram station was five miles off. He saw it all in his mind's eye. Saw the slow movements of the post-master and the unkempt Welsh pony, and its rider with the letter-bag. Often the boy, glad of the Castle's hospitality on a wet day, would be told to wait and take back the telegram. The hours flew on and no response arrived. Night came and John was sorely put to it to know what to do—his master was evidently worse, and yet he had been annoyed at the doctor being hurried that morning, and had spoken very sharply. What ailed him that he was so unlike himself, so irritable, so anxious?
All this time a tall grave man was hastening to Lornbay—a man bearing grievous tidings to poor Sir Albert Gerald.
While his telegram was speeding on its way, all the hopes and fears and interests of life had ceased for Lady Gerald. She lay dead; having been startled by the news of her son's terrible accident, her slight hold upon life was not strong enough to sustain a shock so great; and that very afternoon, when his promise to her held him back from speaking to Margaret as he longed to speak, she had died with loving messages upon her lips to him. It was in the morning; John, with a grave face and that air of preparedness for coming evil, came to his master and spoke of evil tidings.
Mercifully, the instant those words are breathed we believe the worst, and are so made ready to bear it. Then his uncle, her brother Mr. Wynston, went up to his side and told him all.
The tidings were unexpected and terrible to him; he loved her dearly, and all his life had taught him to expect her to be delicate. He was so accustomed to her being an invalid, that he never thought of her as more fragile than other people. And while he wept for her, regardless for the time of all else, his poor little love had gone—with that weary pain of a blighted love to make her still childish heart miserable—for ever?
CHAPTER II.
Renton Place looked black and dingy after the clear air and great beauty of Lornbay. Mrs. Dorriman, always susceptible to those influences of natural external things, shivered, and was depressed, and showed it by the marked effort at cheerfulness she thought was due to her brother.
Mr. Sandford was in a mood difficult to understand. He travelled but a short way with them, avoiding Margaret in a manner that both the girls noticed, and interpreted differently.
He went into a smoking-carriage, chiefly because they could not follow him there, and he could be free from their observation. He felt thoroughly uncomfortable. He had carried his point with Mr. Drayton, conditionally, and Margaret's face, with its wistful expression, hurt him. Yes; though he put it differently to himself, he had virtually sacrificed her to save his own position; and his word was given, and more, he had reluctantly put it down in writing.