With the last echoing sound of the departing footsteps, she opened the door against which she had been leaning, with that temporary strength excitement ever gives—she beckoned to the startled youth, who, half-dreaming, obeyed the signal, and found himself face to face with her whom he had just deemed lost to him forever.
“Ally, dear Ally, what have they done to change you thus,” he exclaimed as he stretched out his arms toward her. She threw herself weeping upon his bosom, clinging to him as if fearful of being again torn away. “Take me home, Dugald, take me home. Thank God I am not quite heartless yet.”
Tenderly as a mother soothes her restless child, did Dugald caress and whisper sweet words of comfort to the trembling one he folded to his heart—and at last she looked up through her tears with her old familiar smile, so that she seemed almost herself again.
By a side-door Dugald reached the street, unobserved by those who deemed him long since gone—a light was in his eye, his step was free and elastic, and his whole face beamed with the inward delight that caused his heart to throb wildly as he traversed the streets toward his temporary residence.
A few hours passed and he came forth again—when he returned he was no longer alone. Like her gentle mother, Adela Moreton fled from wealth and rank to share the lowlier lot of him who had won her heart. But unlike that mother our sweet mountain flower fled from the evil to the stern yet blessed path of duty, and the blessing of Heaven followed upon her steps.
Great was the amazement of the countess and her too sanguine heir when on the following morning they discovered that their dove had escaped from the net laid for her. Bitter were the curses that descended on Dugald’s now unconscious head, but the affectionate little note left on the table of the vacant boudoir, showed too plainly by its gentle but decided tenor that further hope was vain.
The sunshine came back into Donald’s cottage—laughter and mirth were no longer strangers there, for Ally, their “lost and found,” had returned to them, paler and thinner it is true, and with a deeper shadow on her fair brow, but with her loving heart and gentle voice unchanged.
Ally well knew the sacrifice she made, but it was made willingly. Her wealth was all in the power of her aunt, and she hoped for no concession from the disappointed schemers—but Dugald had not been idle during the years of his probation, and he was no longer a poor man.
One bright summer’s day when all nature seemed rejoicing and human hearts were filled with thankfulness, in her own simple cottage-dress, and under her old name of Alice McLane which she had again adopted, Ally, now blooming and happy, stood before the altar in their own dear kirk, and promised to be the wife of him who had loved her so long and so faithfully. Joy beamed from every countenance, as they now felt that no power on earth might rend these ties, and Ally, their own beautiful Ally, was theirs till death should part them.
Only once did the proud countess seek to recall her flown bird to her glittering but uneasy nest, and the day on which she arrived with Sir Frederic, eager and hopeful, was Ally’s wedding-day, and so they became unwittingly sharers in that beautiful scene—the only angry spirits in all that peaceful band of worshipers. Baffled again, they left without even seeking an interview with the object of their long journey, and Ally never heard of them again until the arrival of a strange-looking epistle many years after, announcing the death of her aunt, and her own accession by right of birth to the half of Lord Dundas’ princely fortune.