Some years elapsed before Mrs. Pendarrel revisited the country of her ancestors. She was content to see Mildred and Randolph, when they came to stay a while with the Winstons or Rereworths, which they did every spring. She had subsided into a moping kind of melancholy, which annoyed her husband and grieved her children. The only circumstance which ever seemed to dissipate it was the growing good understanding between Gertrude and Mr. Winston. This appeared to remove some of the weight which oppressed her mind. And it showed, that if those who are cast together by accident, or even against their will, will study one another's merits, instead of seeking for faults and dwelling on discomforts, happiness may be found in circumstances where least it might be expected beforehand. It was a lesson which Gertrude learned with a thankful heart.
The visits of the spring were returned in the autumnal holidays, when a joyous throng of young people met regularly, in the course of time, at Trevethlan Castle. Holidays they were indeed. The Rereworths were always there, and most often the Winstons. Then the base court resounded with the glee of children, with a confusion of tongues and of names worthy of Babel. Griffith, declining gently into the vale of years, presided over the gambols. Sometimes the ancient sport of archery, the loss of which is so much deplored by Cornwall's old surveyor, Carew, was revived, and all the neighbouring country met to try their skill at the butts; while the little ones, escaping from the mild dominion of Polydore Riches, who was now, in green old age, the teacher of a new generation, mimicked the proceedings of their seniors, with bows and arrows suited to their years.
Pendarrel Hall remained a ruin. The estate was settled upon Mildred and her husband, and it seemed unnecessary to maintain two large residences upon the united property. The flower-garden surrounding it was allowed to run to waste, and the blackened walls continued standing, mournful memorials of an outrage which had exiled several of its perpetrators from their native land. Ivy was planted around the foundations, and at some future day, the ruin might become a picturesque feature in the landscape.
It was the doom which its mistress, in the opening of this narrative, anticipated for the towers of Trevethlan. The menace or the desire had been deeply avenged. But Esther was not the only person upon whom the storm left traces of its passage. Mildred was often visited with feelings of compunction and remorse, and the cloud which they brought upon her brow called down a similar shadow upon Randolph's. And when her mother survived Mr. Pendarrel, and in her loneliness accepted the shelter of Trevethlan Castle, her aspect and demeanour were a constant source of self-reproach to her daughter. Without being actually imbecile, she required minute attention. She was very rigid and exacting in all the little business of life. Her temper was uncertain, and it was difficult to gratify her fleeting wishes. At times it might be thought that she remembered how she should have been mistress of the castle, and imagined for a brief space that she in fact occupied that position.
Frequently, too, she fell into long and silent reveries, and then it was that the melancholy which overspread her countenance, caused the greatest anxiety to her children. She always wore the miniature of herself, and used to gaze at it, with a vacant but mournful expression, for an hour at a time. But at length they found a means of diverting her attention. She attached herself particularly to her eldest grand-daughter; and whenever she sank into too prolonged a train of musing, the little girl crept softly to her knees, and took her hand. And then Esther awoke from her dream of the past, and smoothed the dark hair upon the child's forehead, and told many little stories, which delighted the young listener.
Rarely did it happen that this manner of relief failed of effect. But sometimes Esther's abstraction was too deep to yield. At such seasons she murmured to herself in low tones. And the little girl caused her mother a bitter pang, by unwittingly telling her that, on one of these occasions, grandmamma was only repeating, over and over again, and without intermission—
"Pendar'l and Trevethlan shall own one name."