The carriage which Charles Fairfield had seen rounding the picturesque ruin of Gryce’s Mill, was that of Lady Wyndale. Mrs. Tarnley opened the door to her summons, and acting on her general instructions said “not at home.”
But good Lady Wyndale was not so to be put off. She had old Mildred to the side of the carriage.
“I know my niece will be glad to see me,” she said. “I’m Lady Wyndale, and you are to take this card in, and tell my niece, Mrs. Fairfield, I have come to see her.”
Mrs. Tarnley looked with a dubious scrutiny at Lady Wyndale, for she had no idea that Alice could have an aunt with a title and a carriage. On the whole, however, she thought it best to take the card in, and almost immediately it was answered by Alice, who ran out to meet her aunt and throw her arms about her neck, and led her into Carwell Grange.
“Oh! darling, darling! I’m so delighted to see you! It was so good of you to come. But how did you find me out?” said Alice, kissing her again and again.
“There’s no use, you see, in being secret with me. I made out where” you were, though you meant to keep me quite in the dark, and I really don’t think I ought to have come near you, and I am very much affronted,” said kind old Lady Wyndale, a little high.
“But auntie, darling, didn’t you get my letter, telling you that we were married?” pleaded Alice.
“Yes, and that you had left Wyvern; but you took good care not to tell me where you were going, and in fact if it had not been for the good housekeeper at Wyvern, to whom I wrote, I suppose I should have lived and died within fifteen miles of you, thinking all the time that you had gone to France.”
“We were thinking of that, I told you,” pleaded Alice, eagerly.
“Well, here you have been for three months, and I’ve been living within a two hours’ drive of you, and dreading all the time that you were four hundred miles away. I have never once seen your face. I don’t think that was good-natured.”
“Oh, dear aunt, forgive me,” entreated Alice. “You will when you know all. If you knew how miserable I have often been, thinking how ungrateful and odious I must have appeared, how meanly reserved and basely suspicious, all the time longing for nothing on earth so much as a sight of your beloved face, and a good talk over everything with you, my best and truest friend.”
“There, kiss me, child; I’m not angry, only sorry, darling, that I should have lost so much of your society, which I might have enjoyed often very much,” said the placable old lady.
“But, darling aunt, I must tell you how it was—you must hear me. You know how I idolize you, and you can’t know, but you may imagine, what, in this solitary place, and with cares and fears so often troubling me, your kind and delightful society would have been to me; but my husband made it a point, that just for the present I should divulge our retreat to no one on earth. I pleaded for you, and in fact there is not another person living to whom I should have dreamed of disclosing it; but the idea made him so miserable and he urged it with so much entreaty and earnestness that I could not without a quarrel have told you, and he promised that my silence should be enforced only for a very short time.”
“Dear me! I’m so sorry,” said Lady Wyndale, very much concerned. “It must be that the poor man is very much dipped and is literally hiding himself here. You poor little thing! Is he in debt?”
“I am afraid he is. I can’t tell you how miserable it sometimes makes me; not that he allows me ever to feel it, except in these precautions, for we are, though in a very homely way, perfectly comfortable—you would not believe how comfortable—but we really are,” said poor, loyal little Alice, making the best of their frugal and self-denying life.
“Your room is very snug. I like an old-fashioned room,” said the good-natured old lady, looking round; “and you make it so pretty with your flowers. Is there any ornament like them? And you have such an exquisite way of arranging them. It is an art; no one can do it like you. You know I always got you to undertake ours at Oulton, and you remember Tremaine standing beside you, trying, as he said, to learn the art, though I fancy he was studying something prettier.”
Alice laughed; Lord Tremaine was a distant figure now, and this little triumph a dream of the past. But is not the spirit of woman conquest? Is not homage the air in which she lives and blooms? So Alice’s dark, soft eyes dropped for a moment side-long with something like the faintest blush, and a little dimpling smile.
“But all that’s over, you know,” said Lady Wyndale; “you would insist on putting a very effectual extinguisher upon it, so there’s an end of my match-making, and I hope you may be very happy your own way, and I’m sure you will, and you know any little money trouble can’t last long; for old Mr. Fairfield you know can’t possibly live very long, and then I’m told Wyvern must be his; and the Fairfields were always thought to have some four or five thousand a year, and although the estate, they say, owes something, yet a prudent little woman like you, will get all that to rights in time.”
“You are always so kind and cheery, you darling,” said Alice, looking fondly and smiling in her face, as she placed a hand on each shoulder. “It is delightful seeing you at last. But you are tired, ain’t you? You must take something.”
“Thanks, dear. I’ll have a little tea—nothing else. I lunched before we set out.”
So Alice touched the bell, and the order was taken by Mildred Tarnley.
“And how is that nice, good-natured old creature, Dulcibella Crane? I like her so much. She seems so attached. I hope you have her still with you?”
“Oh, yes. I could not exist without her—dear old Dulcibella, of course.”
There was here a short silence.
“I was thinking of asking you if you could all come over to Oulton for a month or so. I’m told your husband is such an agreeable man, and very unlike Mr. Harry Fairfield, his brother—a mere bear, they tell me; and do you think your husband would venture? We should be quite ............