Mary Lynn had started up with a cry, so surprised was she to see him enter. She stood blushing even to tears. And Robert? Conscious how unworthy he was of her, how impossible it was that he should dare to claim her, while the love within him was beating on his heart with lively pain, he sat down with a groan and covered his face with his hands. She thought he was ill. She went to him and knelt down, and looked up at him in appealing fear.
"Robert, what is it—what is amiss?"
And for answer, Robert Dalrymple, utterly overcome by the vivid sense of the remorseful past, of despair for the future, let his face fall upon her shoulder, and burst into a fit of heart-rending sobs so terrible for a man to yield himself to.
[ VII.]
DESPERATION.
Alone in the oak-parlour at Moat Grange, playing soft bits of melody in the summer twilight, sat Selina Dalrymple, her very pretty face slightly flushed, her bright hair pushed from her face. Ordinarily of a calm and equable temperament, Selina was yet rather given to work herself up to restlessness on occasion. She was expecting Oscar Dalrymple; and though the excitement did not arise for himself, it did for the news he might bring.
"There he is!" she cried, as a step was heard on the gravel. "He has walked up from the station."
Oscar Dalrymple came in, very quiet as usual, not a speck of dust or other sign of travel upon him, looking spick and span, as though he had but come out of the next room. Oscar Dalrymple's place, a small patrimony called Knutford, lay some three or four miles off; he would probably walk on there by-and-by, if he did not sleep at the Grange.
"I thought you would come!" exclaimed Selina, gladly springing towards him.
"I told Mrs. Dalrymple I should return before Saturday," was his answer, as he took her hand, and kept it in his. "Where is she?"