“Yes,” replied the stranger, starting, for the thought had flashed upon him; “he is the living image of Miss Gourlay! Why do you ask?”
“Bekaise, merely for a raison I have; but if you have patience, you'll find that the longer you live, the more you'll know; only at this time you'll know no more from me, barrin' that this same young officer is to be his lordship's groom's-man. Dr. Sombre, the clergyman of the parish, is to marry them in the baronet's house. A Mrs. Mainwaring, too, is to be there; Miss Gourlay begged that she would be allowed to come, and he says she may. You see now how well I know everything that happens there, don't you?” he asked, with a grin of triumph. “But I tell you there will be more at the same weddin' than he thinks. So now—ah, this pain!—there's another string of it—I feel it go through me like an arrow—so now you may go and see Lady Gourlay, and break the glad tidin's to her.”
With feelings akin to awe and of repugnance, but not at all of contempt—for old Corbet was a man whom no one could despise—the stranger took his departure, and proceeded to Lady Gourlay's, with a vague impression that the remarkable likeness between Lucy and young Roberts was not merely accidental.
He found her at home, placid as usual, but with evidences of a resignation that was at once melancholy and distressing to witness. The struggle of this admirable woman's heart, though sustained by high Christian feeling, was, nevertheless, wearing her away by slow and painful degrees. The stranger saw this, and scarcely knew in what terms to shape the communication he had to make, full as it was of ecstasy to the mother's loving spirit, yet dashed with such doubt and sorrow.
“Can you bear good tidings, Lady Gourlay,” said he, “though mingled with some cause of apprehension?”
“I am in the hands of God,” she replied, “and feel that I ought to receive every communication with obedience. Speak on.”
“Your son is found!”
“What, my child restored to me?”
She had been sitting in an arm-chair, but on hearing these words she started up, and said again, as she placed her hands upon the table at which he sat, that she might sustain herself, “What, Charles, my darling restored to me! Is he safe? Can I see him? Restored! restored at last!”
“Moderate your joy, my dear madam; he is safe—he is in my hotel.”