But she only replied, kissing him, “My own boy, you have come home.” And what more was there to be said.
This transport all passed in the dark, with no light in the room except the paleness of twilight in the windows, the dull glow from the fire, which was an ease and softening to the meeting. And then with the lighting of the cheerful lamps the knowledge spread through the house—Wat has come home.
“Already!” cried Ally, with a flush of radiant joy that was more than for her brother.
“Already,” Sir Edward said, with a frown that belied the sudden ease of his heart. To say what that relief was is beyond the power of words. The dark book-room, where he sat with his head in his hands and all the world dark round him, suddenly became light. A load was lifted from his shoulders and from his soul; his mind was freed as from chains. But after that first blessed release and relief a sensation of humiliation, almost of resentment, came into his mind. “Already,” he said. He had tramped about London for days and days and found nothing. Rochford had gone and seen and overcome the same day.
“Edward,” said Lady Penton, who, though so still, so tremulous after the prodigal’s return, had yet felt the other anxiety spring up as soon as the first was laid, “I am sorry for Mr. Rochford. I fear he was making this the foundation for a great many hopes. He expected to find Walter and bring him home, and thus gain our favor for—something else.”
“Well,” said Sir Edward with his frown, “it is astonishing to me how he’s done it. It looks like collusion. I suppose it’s only a piece of luck, a great piece of luck.”
“He has not done it at all,” said Lady Penton, “Wat has not so much as seen him. He has had nothing to do with it at all.”
The cloud rolled off Sir Edward’s brow: he gave expression to the delightful relief of his mind in a low laugh.
“I thought,” he said, “nothing would come of it, he was so cock-sure. I thought from the first nothing would come of it: but of course you were all a great deal wiser than I. So he came home of himself when he was tired? Let me see the boy.”