"Yes, mother; the love may come, but will it?"

"See how good and patient he has been; and father says it is his sole care to see you settled, and to know that if anything happens to him you have a strong right hand to protect you. Come, darling, let me go down and tell them both that you have thought better of it, and that you consent."

"Mother, you do not wish it," said Mary gently. "All this does not come from the heart."

"I think it does, my darling," said Mrs Ellis. "You see, it is my duty to do what your father wishes. Yours to love and obey him."

"No, mother dear," said Mary gently. "Your voice contradicts it all.

This does not come from your heart. You do not wish to see me Daniel Barnett's wife."

Mrs Ellis's face went down on her child's breast, and she let her tears have their course for a few minutes, but raised her head again with a sigh.

"I oughtn't to have done that," she said hurriedly. "Mary, my darling, your father desires it, and it is, indeed it is, your duty to try and meet his wishes. What am I to go down and say?"

"Go and tell him that I cannot forget the past, mother, and tell Mr Barnett to wait. In a few months I will try to think, as you all wish me, if--if I live."

"Oh, my darling, my darling," sobbed the mother.

"Don't cry, dear," said Mary calmly. "I can't help feeling like that sometimes, it is when I think that he must be dead, and then hope comes, and--mother," she whispered, "do you believe in dreams?"

"My darling, no," said Mrs Ellis, "only that they are the result of thinking too much during the day of some particular thing. But I must go down to them now, dear. Father will be so impatient. He was angry last time Daniel came here, because you would keep up-stairs."

"Daniel!" said Mary sadly. "Mother, are you beginning to side against me too?"

Mary Ellis had hardly asked these words when the sound of voices below made her spring to her feet, run to the door, and stand there listening.

"Mary, my child, what is it?" cried Mrs Ellis.

For answer Mary ran down into the little parlour.

"John!" she cried wildly, and the next moment she was clinging to John Grange's neck, while he stood there with one arm about her, holding her tightly to him, and proudly facing her father and Barnett, who stood scowling and trying hard to speak.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

In the dead silence which fell upon all in the bailiff's room when Mary Ellis flung herself upon John Grange's neck, a looker-on might have counted sixty beats of the pendulum which swung to and fro in the old oak-cased "grandfather's clock," before another word was uttered.

Mrs Ellis stood with her face working, as if premonitory to bursting out into a fit of sobbing; James Ellis felt something rising in his throat, and looked on with a grim kind of jealous pleasure at the lovers' embrace; and Barnett broke the silence by making a strange grinding noise with his teeth.

"Do you--are you going to allow this?" he panted out at last.

James Ellis made a deprecating gesture with his hands, and looked uneasily at his wife, who had crossed to Grange, laid her hands upon his shoulder, and said gently--

"And we thought you were dead--we thought you were dead."

"As I should have been, Mrs Ellis, to you all," cried the young man proudly, "if I could not have come back to you like this."

By this time Barnett had fully recovered the speech of which jealous rage and disappointment had nearly deprived him, and after a savage scowl at Grange, he turned upon the bailiff.

"Look here, Mr Ellis, is this your house? Are you master here?"

Ellis made an angry gesture now.

"My good sir," he cried; "you see: what can I do?"

"Order this fellow--this beggar--this impostor out. He has no business here."

Mary turned upon him fiercely, but her angry look faded out, and gave place to a smile of content, as she now linked her hands together about Grange's strong right arm and looked gently in his face, as if to say, "Don't be angry, he hardly knows what he says."

Maddened more by this, Barnett stepped forward to separate them, but, roused now in turn, James Ellis stepped between.

"Yes," he said firmly; "this is my house, and I am master here, Daniel Barnett. No violence, if you please."

"As much violence as is necessary to turn this fellow out," roared the young man. "I claim your promise, my rights. Mary, you are by your father's words my affianced wife; keep away from that man. Mrs Ellis, stand aside, or I will not be answerable for the consequences. You coward!" he cried to Grange; "you screen yourself between two women.

Now then, out with you!"

One moment John Grange had been standing there calm and happy, with the women clinging to him; the next, by a quick movement, strong yet gentle, he had shaken himself free; and as Barnett seized him by the throat to eject him from the room, he was perfectly transformed. For, with almost superhuman strength, he seized his rival in return, quickly bore him back a step or two, and then wrenched his legs from beneath him, bringing him to his knees.

"It is you who are the coward," he cried in a deep voice, "or you would not have forced on this before two helpless women. Mr Ellis, I claim Mary by the ties of our old and faithful love. I, John Grange, thanks to G.o.d, strong, hale, keen of sight again as once I was, a man who can and will protect her while I live. Now, sir, open that door. If there is to be a struggle between us two, it will not take place here."

"John!"

That one word in a tone of appeal from Mary, and he dropped his hands.

"Yes," he said, with the calm a.s.surance of a man who valued his strength; "you are right, dear, Daniel Barnett was half mad. That will do, sir. It is Mary's wish that you should go, and Mr Ellis will not refuse me a hearing when his child's happiness is at stake."

Barnett rose slowly, looking from one to the other, and finally his eyes rested upon Ellis, who nodded gravely.

"Yes," he said, "you'd better go, Daniel Barnett. I should not be doing my duty to my child if I fought against her now."

He walked slowly to the door, opened it, and without another word Barnett followed him out. Five minutes later the latch of the gate was heard to click, and as all stood listening, James Ellis came in and uttered a sigh of relief. There was that in his face which made Mary, with her eyes bright and a flush upon her cheeks such as had not been seen there for a year, run to him and fling her arms about his neck, as she went into a wild fit of joyful hysterical sobbing, which it was long before she could control.

There was not much to tell, but it was to the following effect. It dated from the evening when he had been left busying himself in the garden of old Tummus's cottage, left entirely to himself, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g up the roses, and thinking sadly that there was no future for him in the world.

This had been going on for some time, and he was busily feeling the p.r.i.c.kly rose strands, and taking nails and shreds from his pocket to tack the wild, blossoming shoots neatly in their places, in perfect ignorance, after a while, that he was being watched. For, though he heard hoofs upon the hard green turf beside the road, he supposed the sounds to be made by some horse returning to its stables from its pasture on the common, and did not imagine that it was mounted, as he heard it stop, and begin cropping the young shoots upon the garden hedge.

"Good-evening," said a decisive voice suddenly, speaking as if it was a good evening, and he who spoke would like to hear any one contradict him.

"Good-evening, sir," replied John Grange, adding the "sir," for the voice seemed familiar, and he knew the speaker was riding.

"You remember me, eh?"

There was a slight twitching about the muscles of John Grange's forehead as he craned his neck towards the speaker, and then he seemed to draw back, as he said sadly--

"No, sir; I seem to remember your voice, but I am blind."

"Quite blind?"