'And I—ah! how glad I shall be when I see you coming sauntering along the footpath by the river! Shall I tell you what I shall do?'
'Yes.'
'I shall come up to the bank and hold out my hand, you will give me yours, and then you will step into the boat and I shall take you for a row!'
I was delighted. ''Twill be a rare pleasure,' I said.
'And perhaps'—he lowered his voice—'perhaps the day will come when I will take you away in my boat and never, never bring you back.'
After he had gone—carrying with him a short letter from me to my father—and he was perforce obliged to leave me soon, for it would not do to keep the servants waiting—I treasured the memory of those last words of his in my heart, and thought of them many times when feeling homesick or afraid of the troublous days to come. They comforted me, too, when my menservants left me and went home with the horses and litter, which seemed like burning my boats behind me.
I was received with kindness by Lady Jane's servants and others of the household of the Duke of Northumberland, her father-in-law. For he was the owner of the house, although he was allowing his son, Lord Dudley, and Lady Jane to live there. Particularly Mistress Ellen, Lady Jane's other gentlewoman, was good to me and welcomed me right heartily as her fellow lady-in-waiting. Mistress Ellen was older than I was, and much older than Lady Jane, who was a few months my junior, which I was rather glad of at the time, thinking that then thought, I need not be afraid of her.
Mistress Ellen would not allow me to see lady Jane that first night; she said I was too tired and too much overcome by the vastness of the house and its grandeur to appear at my best before her mistress. 'Sleep will restore your strength,' she said, 'and give you the quiet confidence, which perhaps more than anything else betokens a true gentlewoman, who knows what she is, although perhaps others do not at the time. And I should like you to stand well, child,' she said kindly, 'in the regard of Lady Jane, for she has few friends of her own age, being so learned and bookish as to find little sympathy amongst other girls—and, although she is married, she is but a girl, poor young thing!' and she sighed.
Mistress Ellen, I should think, was thirty years old, and looked older, because of her manner of dress, which was handsome but exceedingly cumbrous, especially in regard to her coif, or bonnet, which concealed a large portion of her face and head. She was very kind to me, and when I cried that first night, being so weary and thinking of my father and the boys so far away, and Sir Hubert gone, too, for a while, she comforted me with loving words, saying I was to take courage, for the future might have great things in store for me, and the past was past and I should never again have that first bitterness of homesickness to live through, as every day of my new life would make it easier for me.
And when I fell asleep that first night at Sion House, I dreamt about Sir Hubert coming for me in a boat, which I saw gliding, gliding through the water, ever nearer, ever nearer, yet, alas! never coming quite up to the bank on which I stood, waiting with outstretched arms. They say it is unlucky to dream about water, and I felt rather low spirited when I awoke, but not so much because of that as because, with my first waking thoughts, my homesickness and loneliness returned, and I turned my face to the wall and cried a little, wishing I was a child again at home with Hal and Jack and my father and good old Master Montgomery at the parsonage near by, to say nothing of the serving men and women.