Gradually the recollection of the terrors of the past night came back to her mind, and she shuddered and closed her eyes, as though she would shut them out from her sight.
Dr. Herron bent over her.
“You see, Lettice,” he said, taking possession of her hand, “I was so tired of waiting for an answer to my letter (written no matter how long ago) that I have come myself in person to beg for it.”
“How very undignified!” said Lettice. “It looks almost like being in a hurry.”
“Then it looks like exactly what it is,” replied Dr. Herron, thankful to hear the old ring in Lettice’s voice and to see the old sparkle in her eye; “but we won’t have any talking just yet, please. I want you to have some good food and another long sleep, and then perhaps tomorrow or next day we can begin the journey back to Wales.”
Lettice made no reply, and closed her eyes once more. It was all so unreal to her, like some delicious dream almost, as it might be a falling asleep in purgatory and an awakening in paradise.
But before Dr. Herron returned to Lochiel that evening he had much to hear, and, self-contained and calm-tempered man as he was, he found it difficult to restrain his indignation and anger as Lettice told simply and plainly the whole story of the McCormacks treachery and falsehood. Dr. Forbes and his daughter were present at the time by Dr. Herron’s express wish, “for,” he argued wisely enough, “the story, in one form or another, will be sure to be spread about the country, and it is as well you should hear the real facts of the case from the young lady’s own lips.”
“To think it should be the very same captain after all, father,” sobbed poor Maggie in her father’s arms, after Dr. Herron had gone, and Lettice had been comfortably settled in Maggie’s own room for a good night’s rest. “The very same captain, father, I know, because I showed Miss Tremarten the photograph he gave me, and she said he was the very same captain. And father” (this in a very low whisper), “I’m not at all in love with him now, and never, never want to see him again.”
“Then thank the guid Lord that your eyes are opened, my child,” replied the old pastor, “and another time be sure not to give away your heart till you get something for it in return. Something for nothing is never the way to bring grist to the mill,” concluded the old Scotchman sententiously.
The day which had passed so pleasantly for Lettice and Dr. Herron at the manse had been trying in the extreme to Aunt Rosamond. Hide it as she would, the suspense and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had told upon her terribly. If she had been equal to it she would have gone off with the doctor to fetch back her niece, but after the overnight’s vigil she felt it was perfectly useless to attempt so long a journey.
“If I had screamed like you, Judith, or cried like you, Matthews, I daresay I should not have felt it so much,” said the old lady to her sister after Dr. Herron had started; “but as it is, my only outlet has been a number of small lies, which I daresay have done as much harm as good. You and I, Judith, I am bound to say, cut a very poor figure in the whole affair. We first take this girl away from her father, in order to save her from an entanglement with a country doctor next let her carry on a flirtation under our very eyes with a disreputable captain, and then suffer the country doctor to come upon the scene again to save her from the aforesaid captain. Now I ask you, mightn’t the doctor just as well have had her at first without all this fuss?”
Judith opened her eyes in amazement. “Indeed,” she said humbly, “I thought you really wanted the girl to come to London. I didn’t urge it—”
“Now don’t argue, Judith,” said Aunt Rosamond; “you don’t do it well. You’ve no reasoning powers whatever. There is no satisfaction to be got out of the affair from beginning to end, except—yes, perhaps—a little. Matthews, did you put the large key on the outside of the observatory door?”
Matthews answered in the affirmative, and without another word Miss Tremarten took her way up the steep narrow steps which led to the castle observatory.
It was situated at an angle of the building, and was simply a large square room which had been built out by a former earl who had developed astronomical instead of agricultural tendencies. It had been out of use for more than a generation, and had served at different periods as a receptacle for lumber of various kinds, such as old pictures and antique furniture, which had no special interest for the present earl, and one or two worn-out musical instruments. These with some large old-fashioned telescopes in different stages of dilapidation constituted the sole furniture of the room.
It certainly struck Captain McCormack as very odd that Miss Tremarten should select this out-of-the-way little corner of the house for their interview. There was a damp, unused smell too about the room as he entered which struck him as far from agreeable, and accordingly he went to the rather narrow window, which he succeeded in opening, and leaned out. There was, as might be imagined, a splendid view from this height not only of the castle grounds but also of the surrounding country. Captain Ivie, however, “did not go in for that sort of thing,” as he had more than once phrased it to his intimate friends, and at the present moment his mind could hold but one thought—where was Lettice? what had become of her? In fact, he could not have looked at a
