It is Miss Blessington. In an instant, Esther seems to have jumped back over the past intervening months—to be just entering on her Felton visit. There is the same voice greeting her—the same tones of polite inquiry; the same words almost, except that then it was, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a hot journey, I'm afraid?" and now it is, "How do you do, Miss Craven? You must have had a cold journey, I'm afraid?"—the same undulating walk; the same effect of lilac evening clouds. Involuntarily she turns her head and glances towards the window, half-expecting to see St. John's legs disappearing through it. Instead, an old woman's voice sounds quavering: "Are you Miss Craven, my dear? Come here!"
Esther does not hear. "It was rather cold," she says, answering Constance, in half bewilderment between past and present, her eyes dazed with the light after her long, dark journey.
"Mrs. Blessington is speaking to you," says Constance, in mild reminder.
Esther turns round quickly. "Oh! I beg your pardon—I did not hear—I hope I was not rude," she cries, forgetting the "Ma'am" she had half-purposed employing.
"Who's there?—who's talking?" asks the old man, lifting up his head, and speaking in a voice tremulous indeed, but with a remnant of the power and fire that "youth gone out had left in ashes."
No one answers.
"Who's there, Mrs. Blessington?" he repeats, with querulous anger.
"Miss Craven, uncle—the young lady that we expected to-day—don't you know?" replies Constance, stooping gracefully over him, and putting her lips as close as possible to his withered ear.
"H'm! Tell her to come and speak to me. I want to see what she is like," he rejoins, much as if she had not been in the room.
"Go to him, my dear," says the old lady.