No sooner was she out of the room than Lord Ormersfield asked, 'And what have you done with the Spanish woman?'

The answer excited a peal of laughter, which made Louis stand aghast, both at such unprecedented merriment and at the cause; for hitherto he had so entirely felt with Mary, as never to have seen the ludicrous aspect of the elopement. Presently, however, he was amused by perceiving that his father not merely regarded it as a relief from an embarra.s.sing charge, but as an entire acquittal for his own conscience for any slanders he had formerly believed of Dona Rosita.

Louis briefly explained that, the poor lady being provided for by Robson's investments in America, he had thought it right that the Ponsonby share of the firm should bear the loss through these embezzlements; and he had found that her extravagance had made such inroads on the property, that while the Dynevor share (always the largest) resulted in a fair competence, Louis had saved nothing out of the wreck of the Ponsonby affairs but Mary herself. 'Can you excuse it, father?' he said, with all the old debonnaire manner.

'You will never be a rich man, Louis. You and she will have some cares, but--' and his voice grew thick--'you are rich in what makes life happy. You have left me nothing more to ask or wish for!'

'Except that I may be worthy of her, father. You first taught me how she ought to be loved. You have been very patient with me all this time. I feel as if I must thank you for her--' and then, changing his tone as she opened the door--'Look at her now she has her bonnet off--does not she look natural?'

'I am sure I feel so,' said Mary. 'You know this always seemed more like home than anything else.'

'Yes, and now I do feel sure that I have you at last, Mary. That Moorish castle of yours used to make me afraid of wakening: it was so much fitter for Isabel's fantastic Viscount. By-the-bye, has she brought that book out?'

'Oh, yes, and James is nearly as proud of it as he is of his son. He actually wanted me to read it! He tells me it is selling very well, and I hope it may really bring them in something.'

'Now, then--there's the tea. Sit down, Mary, and look exactly as you did the morning I came home and found you.'

'I'm afraid I cannot,' said Mary, looking up in his face with an arch, deprecating expression.

'Why not?'

'Don't you know that I am so much happier?'

Before breakfast next morning Fitzjocelyn must visit his farm, and Mary must come with him.

How delicious was that English morning after their voyage; the slant rays of the sun silvering the turf, and casting rainbows across the gossamer threads from one brown bent to another; the harvest fields on the slopes dotted with rich sheaves of wheat; the coppices, in their summer glory, here and there touched with the gold of early autumn, and the slopes and meadows bright with lively green, a pleasant change for eyes fresh from the bare, rugged mountain-side and the rank unwholesome vegetation of Panama. s.h.a.ggy little Scottish oxen were feeding on the dewy gra.s.s, their black coats looking sleek in the sun beyond the long shadows of the thorns; but as Mary said, laughing, 'Only Farmer Fitzjocelyn's cattle came here now,' and she stopped more than once to be introduced to some notable animal, or to hear the history of experiments in fatting beasts.

'There! they have found you out! That's for you,' said Louis, as a merry peal of bells broke out from the church tower, and came joyously up through the tranquil air. 'Yes, Ormersfield, you are greeting a friend! You may be very glad, old place! I wish Mr. Holdsworth would come up to breakfast! Is it too wet for you this way, Mary?'

This way was into Fernydell, and Mary answered, 'Oh, no--no; it is where I most wanted to go with you. We have never been there together since--'

'No, you never would walk with me after I could go alone!' said Louis, with a playful tone of reproach, veiling deep feeling.

In silence he handed her down the rocky steps, plunging deeper among the hazels and rowan-trees; then pausing, he turned aside the luxuriant leaves of a tuft of hartstongue, and showed her, cut on a stone, veiled both by the verdure and the form of the rock, the letters--

Deo Gratias, L. F. 1847.

'I like that!' was all that Mary's full heart allowed her to say.

'Yes,' said Louis, 'I feel quite as thankful for the accident as for the preservation.'

'And that dear mamma was with us,' added Mary. 'Between her and you, it was a blessing to us all. I see these letters are not new; you must have cut them out long ago.'

'As soon as I could get here without help,' he answered. 'I thought I should be able to find the very spot where I lay, by remembering the cross which the bare mountain-ash boughs made against the sky; but by that time they were all leaf and flower; and now, do you see, there they are, with the fruit just formed and blushing.'

'Like other things,' said Mary, reaching after the spray, 'once all blossom, now--'

'Fruit very unripe,' as he said, between a smile and a sigh; 'but there is some encouragement in the world after all, and every project of mine has not turned out like my two specimens of copper ore. You remember them, Mary and our first encounter?'

'Remember it!' said Mary. 'I don't think I forgot a day of that summer.'

'What I brought you here for,' said Louis, 'was to ask you to let me do what I have long wished--to let me put the letter M here?'

'I think you might have done it without leave,' said Mary.

'So I might at first, but by the time I came here again, Mary, you had become in my estimation 'a little more than kin,' and less than--no, I wont say that, but one could not treat you as comfortably as Clara. I lost a cousin one August day, and never found her again!'

'Never?'

'Never--but the odd thing is, that I cannot believe that what I did find has been away these seven years.'

'Yes, that is very strange,' said Mary; 'I have felt it so. Wo do seem to understand and guess each other's thoughts as if we had been going on together all this time. I believe it is because you gave me the first impulse to think, and taught me the way.'

'And I know who first taught me to think to any purpose,' said Louis, smiling. 'But who is this descending on us?'

It was the Spanish gentleman, reddening all over at such an encounter, in mid-career towards her at the Terrace, and muttering something, breathless and almost surly, about begging pardon.

'Look here, Tom,' said Louis, lifting the leaves to show the letters.

'That is all I ever could feel on that matter, and so should you.

There, no more about it,--you want to be on your way; and tell Mr.

Frost that we shall be at Northwold in the afternoon.'

About half an hour after, Clara was delicately blowing the dust out of the wreath of forget-me-nots on the porcelain shepherdess's hat, when a shriek resounded through the house, and, barely saving the Arcadian in her start, she rushed downstairs. James, in his shirt-sleeves, was already on his way to the kitchen. There Kitty was found, too much frightened, to run away, making lunges with the toasting-fork at a black-bearded figure, who held in his arms Charlotte Arnold, in a fit of the almost forgotten hysterics. The workhouse girl shrieked for the police; Jane was at Master Oliver's door, prepared for flight or defence; Isabel stood on the stairs, with her baby in her arms, and her little flock clinging to her skirts, when Clara darted back, laughing too much to speak distinctly, as she tried to explain who the ruffian really was.

'And Louis is coming, and Mary! Oh! Isabel, he has her at last! Oh!

Jem! Jem! did we ever want dear granny so much! I always knew it would come right at last! Jane, Jane, do you hear, Lord Fitzjocelyn is married! Let me in; I must go and tell Uncle Oliver!'

James looked at Isabel, and read in her smile Clara's final acquittal from all suspicions beneath the dignity of both. Uncle Oliver would have damped her joy, had it been in his power. He gave up his affairs as hopeless, as soon as he found that young Fitzjocelyn had only made them an excuse for getting married, and he was so excessively angry with her for being happy, that she found she must carry her joyous face out of his sight.

It was not easy to be a dignified steady governess that morning, and when the lessons were finished, she could have danced home all the way.

She had scarcely reached the Terrace gate, when the well-known sound of the wheels was heard, and in another moment she was between the two dear cousins; Fitzjocelyn's eyes dancing with gladsomeness, and Mary's broad tranquil brow and frank kindly smile, free from the shadow of a single cloud! Clara's heart leapt up with joy, joy full and unmixed, the guerdon of the spirit untouched by vanity or selfishness, without one taint that could have mortified into jealous, disappointed pain.

It was bliss to one of those whom she loved best, it was the winning of a brother and sister, and perhaps Clara's life had never had a happier moment.

Lord Ormersfield could have thanked her for that joyous, innocent welcome. He had paid her attentions for his son's sake, of which he had become rather ashamed; and as Louis and Mary hastened on to meet James and Isabel, he detained her for a moment, to say some special words of kindness. Clara, perhaps, had an intuitive perception of his meaning, and reference to her past heiress state, for she laughed gaily, and said, 'Yes, I never was more glad of anything! He was so patient that I was sure he deserved it! I always trusted to such a time as this, when he used to talk to me for want of dear grandmamma.'

Mary was led upstairs to be introduced to the five children, while the gentlemen went over the accounts in Oliver's room. Enough had been rescued from the ruin to secure, not wealth, but fair competence; the mines were disposed of to a company which would pay the value by instalments, and all the remainder of the business was in train to be easily wound up by Mr. Ward. Mr. Dynevor's grat.i.tude was not overpowering: he was short and dry, privately convinced that he could have managed matters much better himself, and charging all the loss on Fitzjocelyn's folly in letting Robson escape. But, though James was hurt at his unthankfulness, and Lord Ormersfield could have been very angry, the party most concerned did not take it much to heart; he believed he had done his best, but an experienced eye might detect blunders, and he knew it was hard to trust affairs out of one's own hands.

Even the Earl was glad to escape to the sitting-room, though every one was talking at once, and Mercy the loudest; and Louis, as the children would call him in spite of their mamma, was at once seized on by Kitty to be introduced to 'our brother.'

'And what is his name, Kitty?'

'Woland!' shouted all the young ladies in chorus.

'Sir Woland is in the book that mamma did make,' said Kitty.

Louis looked at Isabel with laughing eyes.

'It was Uncle Oliver's great wish,' she said, 'and we did not wish to remember the days of Sir Hubert.'