A moment after, the passengers in the street are turning round in astonishment, to look at that face so livid with rage and disappointment which speeds past them like a flash of lightning, and Mrs. James Melville was called up to administer restoratives to her fainting sister—sweet gentle Mary.
CHAPTER III.
If I may trust the flattering eye of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand;
My bosom’s lord sits lightly in his throne;
And, all this day, an unaccustom’d spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
Romeo and Juliet.
HRISTIAN MELVILLE is seated alone by her fireside, engaged in her usual occupations, and full of her wonted thoughts; but her present anxiety about Mary has taught her to linger less in the past, and to look oftener forward to the future than she has been accustomed to do heretofore, since sorrow made that once bright prospect a blank to her. Nay, Christian, in her happier hours, has grown a dreamer of dreams, and all her architectural fancies terminate in the one grand object, the happiness of Mary. She sees the imminent danger she runs of having to relinquish her one remaining treasure, and that into the keeping of one she distrusts so much as Forsyth. Christian cannot tell how it is that she has such an unaccountable, unconquerable aversion to him. True, his name is the same as that of Halbert’s tempter; and association is the root, doubtless, of all her prejudice—as prejudice everybody calls it—and Christian tries, as she has tried a hundred times, to overcome her repugnance, and to recollect the good traits of character that have been told her of him, and to school her mind into willingness to receive him as Mary’s choice; and she breathes, from the depths of her heart, the fervent petition for guidance and deliverance so often repeated for her innocent Mary—her child, her sister—and then her thoughts speed away, and Halbert rises up before her mental vision. What can be his fate? Long and wearily does she ponder, and bitter fancies often make her groan in spirit as one burdened. Is he still a living man?—still to be hoped and prayed for; or, is Halbert now beyond all human hope and intercession? Her heart grows sick and faint as she thinks of the possibility of this; but she almost instantly rejects it; and again her soul rises to her Lord in earnest ejaculations. Oh! but for this power of prayer, but for this well-ascertained certainty, that there is One who hears the prayers of his people, how should Christian Melville have lived throughout these three long anxious years; how should she have endured the unbroken monotony of every uneventful day, with such a load upon her mind, and such fancies coming and going in her heart; how possibly subdued the longings of her anxious love through all this time of waiting and suspense? But her prayer has never ceased; like the smoke of the ancient sacrifice, it has ascended continually through the distant heaven: the voice of her supplications and intercedings have risen up without ceasing; and surely the Hearer of prayer will not shut his ears to these.
There is some commotion going on below, the sound of which comes up to Christian in a confused murmur, in which she can only distinguish old Ailie’s voice. At first she takes no notice of it; then she begins to wonder what it can be, so strange are such sounds in this quiet and methodical house, though still she does not rise to inquire what it is. Christian is engrossed too much with her own thoughts; and as the sounds grow more indistinct, she bends her head again, and permits herself to be carried away once more in the current of her musings. But the step of old Ailie is coming up the stairs much more rapidly than that old footstep was wont to come; and as Christian looks up again in astonishment, Ailie rushes into the room, spins round it for a moment with uplifted hands, sobbing and laughing mingled, in joyful confusion, and then dropping on the floor, breathless and exhausted with her extraordinary pirouetting, throws her apron over her head, and weeps and laughs, and utters broken ejaculations till Christian, hastening across the room in great alarm to interrogate her, afraid that the old woman’s brain is affected,