* * * * *
The 20th of January! Stars overhead, and snow underfoot, and a biting frost to make Errickdale as merry as its heiress wished. Winter without, and want and woe perhaps; but who needed to think of that? In the old mansion summer itself was reigning. Orange and lemon trees mingled their golden fruits and spicy bloom in the corridors and halls and up and down the winding stairs. Lamps burned some faintly-scented oil, that filled the warm air with a subtle, delicious odor, and lamps and tall wax tapers flooded the room with golden but undazzling light. Fountains played among beds of rare ferns and exotics; and magnificent blossoms lay in reckless profusion upon the floor, to be trodden upon, and yield their perfume, and die unheeded. And in doublet and hose and cap and plume, and all the gay festival gear of a king’s court of mediæval times, hosts of servants waited upon Eleanora’s word.
The winter twilight fell soon over Errickdale. In its gathering shadows John Rossetti was galloping home from Teal on his swiftest horse, when the creature shied suddenly, then stopped, trembling all over. A woman stood in the path, ghostly and strange to see through the gloom. Fearless John Rossetti started at the unexpected sight.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“Food,” the woman answered, in a voice that thrilled him with inexplicable awe; from some far-off land it seemed to come—a land that knew nothing of ease and joy. “Your people die of want, and cold, and pain,” it said. “In the name of God Almighty, and while you have time, hear me and help them.”
Then this fearless John Rossetti sneered. “While I have time?” he said. “I have no time to-night, I warrant you. Choose better seasons than this for your begging, Bridget O’Rourke.”
He struck the spurs into his horse, but, though it quivered all over again, it would not move an inch. The woman lifted her hands to heaven. “God, my God! I have done all I can,” she said. “I leave it now with thee.” And so she vanished.
In Errick Hall Eleanora was speaking to a servant. “Make haste,” she said. “I had almost forgotten it. Make haste and bring Bridget O’Rourke to me. I promised she should see it all.”
The servant hurried obediently to John O’Rourke’s cottage. Its owner was crouching sullenly over the fire. “Where’s my girl?” he said. “Miss Eleanora wants her to see the sights? See ’em she shall, then. It’s little she gets of brightness now, poor thing. Bridget! Bridget!”
But though he called loudly, no one answered. He climbed the stairs to the dark attic, and still no reply.