“Oh, the dear room!” exclaimed Fay, in a perfect ecstasy, and then oblivious of her dignity, her fatigue, and the presence of the stately housekeeper, Lady Redmond sat down on the soft white rug, and lifted the kitten on her lap.
“I had a Persian kitten once,” she observed, innocently; “but I took her down to the cowslip meadow and lost her. We called her the White Witch, she was so pretty and so full of mischief. I made myself quite ill crying over her loss, we were so afraid she was killed,” and here Fay buried her face in the little creature’s fur, as she rocked herself to and fro in the fire-light.
Mrs. Heron and Janet exchanged looks. Janet was smiling, but the housekeeper’s face wore a puzzled expression; her new mistress bewildered her.
The worthy soul could make nothing of these sudden changes; first a tiny woman rustling in silks, and holding her head like a little queen, with a plaintive voice speaking sweet words of welcome; then a pale, tired lady peering into corners and averse to shadows; and now, nothing but a pretty child rocking herself to and fro with a kitten in her arms. No wonder Mrs. Heron shook her head rather gravely as she left the room.
“What on earth will my master do with a child like that?” she thought; “she will not be more of a companion to him than that kitten—but there, he knows his own business best, and she is a pretty creature.” But all the same, Mrs. Heron still shook her head at intervals, for all the household knew that Margaret Ferrers, the sister of the blind vicar of Sandycliffe, was to have come to the Hall as its mistress; and the housekeeper’s faithful eyes had already noticed the cloud on her master’s brow.
“‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure,’ that is what many a man has done to his cost,” she soliloquized, as she bustled about her comfortable room. “Well, she is a bonny child, and he’s bound to make her happy; she will be like a bit of sunshine in the old Hall if he does not damp her cheerfulness with his gloomy moods.”
A little while afterward, Ellerton met his little mistress wandering about the Hall, and ushered her into the damask drawing-room. Fay was looking for her husband.
She had escaped from Janet, and had been seeking him some time, opening doors and stumbling into endless passages, but always making her way back somehow to the focus of light—the big hall; and feeling drearily as though she were some forlorn princess shut up in an enchanted castle, who could not find her prince.
She wanted to feel his arms round her, and sob out all her strangeness; and now an ogre in the shape of the gray-haired butler had shut her up in a great, brilliantly lighted room, where the tiny, white woman saw herself reflected in the long mirrors.
Fay, standing dejected and pale in the center of the room, felt like Beauty in the Beast’s palace, and was dreaming out the story in her odd childish way, when the door was flung suddenly open, and the prince, in the person of Sir Hugh, made his appearance.