“Mellish! A ruined man! And you know my pact with Dreghorn?”
“Your pact, father, but never mine: I should die first. It was the horrid prospect sent me to The Peel to-night. The thing is settled: he gave me his troth with the brooch you hold there in your hand—oh, the dear brooch! the sweet brooch of happy omen!—and you will let us marry, will you not? I would never marry wanting your consent.”
“Then ye will never have it if the man is Mellish!” cried her father. He thundered threats: he almost wept entreaties: every scrap of his affection reft from her and centred now on his blackguard son, but the girl was staunch: that night he drove her from his door.
It was with huge dismay he came upon the gem a fortnight later on the floor of his girl’s deserted chamber. This new appearance for a moment filled his soul with panic—it seemed the very pestilence that walks in darkness—and then he realised she must have left it on the night he sent her forth. With the assassin’s heart and the family humour, that had not been confined to Lady Grace, he wrapped the jewel up and sent it as his wedding-present to The Peel.
To his outcast daughter and the man who loved her he could have done no kinder act, for their marriage hung upon his giving to it something of his countenance, and this ironic gift of what to them was ever a talisman benign, came to relieve a piteous situation. Mirren loved, but she had made a promise not to wed without her father’s willingness, and she was such that she should keep her promise though her life was marred.
With a light heart, then, did Mellish ride with the jewel in his pocket to the house in town where she had taken refuge, and gladly taking the gem as proof of her father’s softening, she married the man of her desire.
“And now, goodwife,” said Mellish, “I will go down to Manor and make peace.”
“You will take our lucky amulet,” she said, as she pinned it in his scarf, and he galloped with the gaiety of a boy through the fallen autumn leaves to the house of Wanlock.
It was as if he came from realms of morning freshness to some Terror Isle. Gloaming was come down upon that sad reclusive lowland country: the silvery fog which often filled the valley where the mansion lay, austere and old and lonely, gave to the natural dusk a quality of dream, an air of vague estrangement, a brooding and expectant sentiment. The trees stood round like sighing ghosts, and evening birds were mourning in the clammy thickets. Only one light burned in the impoverished dwelling; Mellish, through the open window where it beamed uncurtained, saw old Wanlock sunk in meditation with a Bible on his knees, and with a heart of pity left the saddle.
Oh God! that men should die within stark walls in ancient long-descended properties, without a comprehension of the meaning of the misty world!