They stood thus, making a mutual appeal to each other, he holding her hand, she endeavoring to draw it away, when the sound of a steady and solemn step startled them suddenly.
“If you please, miss,” said Bland, at the door, “there is a gentleman in the hall asking for Mr. Glen; and there is a person as says she’s just come off a journey, and wants Mr. Glen too. Shall I show them into the library, or shall I bring them here?”
Rob had dropped her hand hastily at the first sound of Bland’s appearance; and Margaret, scarcely knowing what she did, her head swimming, her heart throbbing, struggled back into a kind of artificial consciousness by means of this sudden return of the commonplace and ordinary, though she was scarcely aware what the man said.
“I am coming,” she answered, faintly; the singing in her ears sounded like an echo of voices calling her. All the world seemed calling her, assembling to the crisis of her fate. She did not so much as look at Rob, from whom she was thus liberated all at once, but turned and followed Bland with all the speed and quiet of great excitement, feeling herself carried along almost without any will of hers.
The hall at the Grange was a sight to see, that brilliant summer day. The door was wide open, framing a picture of blue sky and flowering shrubs at one end; and the sunshine, which poured in through the south window, caught the wainscot panels and the bits of old armor, converting them into dull yet magical mirrors full of confused reflections. There were two strangers standing here, as far apart as the space would allow, both full of excitement to find themselves there, and each full of wonder to find the other. They both turned toward Margaret as she came in, pale as a ghost in her black dress. Her eye was first caught by him who had come at her call, her only confidant, the friend in whom she had most perfect trust. The sight of him woke her out of her abstraction of terror and helplessness.
“Randal!” she cried, with a gleam of hope and pleasure lighting up her face.
Then she stopped short and paled again, with a horrible relapse into her former panic. Her voice changed into that pitiful “oh!” of wonder and consternation, which the sight of a mortal passenger called forth, as Dante tells us, from the spirits in purgatory. The second stranger was a woman; no other than Mrs. Glen, from Earl’s-lee, in her best clothes, with a warm Paisley shawl enveloping her substantial person, who stood fanning herself with a large white handkerchief in the only shady corner. These were the two seconds whom, half consciously, half willingly, yet in one case not consciously or willingly at all, the two chief belligerents in this strange duel had summoned to their aid.
CHAPTER XLV.
The strangers made their salutations very briefly; as for Randal, he did not approach Margaret at all. He made her a somewhat stiff bow, which once more, in her simplicity, wounded her, though the sight of him was such a relief; but even the comfort she had in his presence was sadly neutralized by this apparent evidence that he did not think so charitably of her as she had hoped. Amidst all the pain and bewilderment of the moment, it was a pang the more to feel thus driven back upon herself by Randal’s disapproval. She gave him an anxious, questioning look, but he only bowed, looking beyond her at Rob Glen; and it was Mrs. Glen who hurried forward with demonstration to take and shake between both her own Margaret’s reluctant hand.
“Eh, but I’m glad to see you, Miss Margret!” Mrs. Glen said. “What a heat! I thought I would be melted, coming from the station, but a’s weel, now I’m safe here.”