ico); the path from which, in imagination, he had seen a girlish figure, a fond, soft face waiting to meet him in the porch!
He finished his pipe; lit another; finished that; heard the distant parish bell ring for morning service; and still no sign of the Squire's carriage was to be seen. It was close after eleven o'clock; long past the time at which it had been arranged Mr. Milliard and Katharine should leave Dora on their way back from the station. Either they had not returned, then, or Dora was remaining for the day at the Dene; and, with rather a chiller feeling than you would have said the occasion warranted, Steven went back to the house to eat his breakfast alone.
Barbara met him at the door. "The Squire is in the parlor, Steven. He came through the fields, and rode up along the back way. I doubt something's wrong," added old Barbara, in a whisper, "for the Squire's got a face like the grave, and would have left his horse standing—only I beckoned across the close to old James—and neither man nor boy to hold by the bridle."
"The Squire—what, alone?" cried Steven; then, without waiting for an answer, he threw down his hat and walked into the little parlor—cheerful with a blazing fire; the breakfast equipage for two upon the table; a few early snowdrops and violets—Barbara's attention—set in a glass by the mistress' plate; the mid-day sun slanting on the window pane; the ticking of the great house clock sounding like a homely voice of welcome for the traveller who was expected.
"Good morning, sir. I suppose, as I see you alone, that Dora means to remain with her cousin for the day?"
Mr. Hilliard, who was standing looking into the fire, turned round with a face, as Barbara had said, like the grave, and passed his hand quickly across his lips. "Dora means to remain? Yes, yes, of course," he cried, speaking very fast. "Steven, lad, how are you?" And he seized his hand and wrung it as if they had not met for years. "We crossed last night as we planned—very fine passage—wind in the northeast, and—and Katharine thought I'd best come round first, just to break it a bit, you understand. And I wish to God some other man had to do it," exclaimed the Squire: still shaking Steven by the hand, and with a purple flush of agitation gathering deeper and deeper upon his kindly face.
"Break? break what, sir?" said Steven, moving a step away as soon as the Squire would release him. "Has Dora not returned with you, after all?"
"Returned? aye, she has returned, but you see . . . It's no good," broke out Mr. Hilliard, vehemently. "I must tell it you in my own way—as one man should tell another such a thing—or not at all. She started off—left us all in Paris on Friday . . . . and Katharine and Lord Petres started too, and caught them, and brought Dora back. There's the truth. I've told my errand, and now you can do as you choose about the rest!"
A speech that would take a page and a half, at least, to write, had been prepared for Mr. Hilliard by Katharine. A speech in which the intelligence itself had been couched in softest terms, in which Steven's heart had been prepared by all manner of persuasive feminine logic for forgiveness; in which a beautiful picture of domestic reunion and happiness had been reserved for the last. And this speech Mr. Hilliard had dutifully repeated, or tried to repeat to himself ever since his departure from home on this the shamefulest errand that, in his whole life, he had ever been called upon to perform. But at the sight of the homely parlor, at the sight of Steven's honest face—"Kate," he confessed afterward, "I felt that every word of our fine oratory, even if I could have remembered it,
