No one spoke for a few moments, but the old lady bowed her head upon her hands and wept silently. Then she stretched out a hand to the colonel, without raising her head, and said in a half-stifled whisper, “Thank you, thank you, faithful friend. Mary shall undertake the post if she will.”
Ah yes! Light had shone into that clouded spirit; the shadows were passing away. Mary Stansfield knelt her down by the old lady’s side, and in one loving, tearful embrace, such as they had never known before, the icy barrier that had so long chilled that young and loving heart was melted, and there was peace.
The colonel was more than satisfied. He knew, as he quietly stole out of the room without a further word, that he had been privileged to gain that morning two like-minded workers in the shade, instead of one.
Chapter Five.
The Stamp of the Cross.
A few days after Colonel Dawson’s happy interview with Miss Stansfield and her niece, a fête was given by the Wilders at their residence, Holly House, partly for the entertainment of the children who belonged to the Sunday-school classes taught by the Misses Wilder, and partly also as a means of gathering together as many neighbouring friends and acquaintances as might be at leisure to come.
Colonel Dawson and his nephew had received a pressing invitation; and also Lady Willerly and her daughter, though the latter was hardly expected, as it was known how many engagements she had to tie her at home. The invitation, however, decided Grace Willerly to write at once and say that, although she had a very pressing engagement, she would arrange to put it off, as she felt that a good game of play with the dear children on the lawn at Holly House would be just the very thing she wanted to do her good and freshen her up.
So a large party assembled on the day appointed, and among them the colonel and his nephew—the former because he wished to keep on friendly terms with his neighbours, though he anticipated but little pleasure from this particular gathering. Besides this, he was a little anxious to see to what extent the intimacy between the young Wilders and his nephew had gone; for he had something of a misgiving that the young man might be getting entangled in the attractions of one of the young ladies, and this was the last thing he would have desired for him. As for Horace Jackson himself, his impression concerning the younger members of the Wilder family was that they were decidedly “jolly.” He had not yet consciously arrived at a warmer stage of feeling in regard to any one of them, and his estimate was tolerably correct. Somebody had characterised the young ladies of Holly House as “dashing girls,” and such they certainly were.