COMING HOME.
"Uncle, I have brought you a daughter."
Sir Noel looked up from the volume he was reading, and saw Lady Rose
standing before him, flushed, agitated, but with a glow of exaltation
in her eyes that he had never seen there before. With one arm she
encircled the waist of Walton's bride, the other hand she extended in
the grace of unconscious pleading; for the young creature she more
than half supported was trembling like a leaf. Touched with exquisite
pity, Sir Noel arose, drew Ruth gently toward him, and kissed her on
the forehead.
"We shall have Walton better now," he said, leading her to a seat.
"With two such nurses he can have no excuse for keeping ill."
"Is he so ill?" questioned Ruth, blushing crimson at the sound of her
own voice. "I thought, I hoped--"
"We all hoped that the short journey up from 'Norston's Rest' would do
him good rather than harm; but he has been more than usually
restless," said Sir Noel. "If Lady Rose will excuse me, I will have
the pleasure of taking you to his room myself."
Ruth stood up, blushing because of her own eager wishes; ready to cry
because of the quiet gentleness with which her intrusion into that
family had been received. Never, in all her short life, had she so
keenly felt the great social barriers that she had overleaped. If
reproaches and coldness had met her on the threshold of that house,
she could have borne them better than the kindness with which Lady
Rose had introduced her, and the gracious reception awarded her by Sir
Noel; for she could not help feeling how much had been suppressed and
forgiven by that proud man, before he could thus offer to present her
with his own hand to his son.
When Sir Noel offered his arm, she took it for the first time in her
life, with such trembling that the old man patted the hand that
scarcely dared to touch him, and smiled as he looked down upon her.
They went up a flight of steps and through several rooms. The house in
Grosvenor Square was by no means so spacious as "Norston's Rest," but
the splendor of its more modern adornment would have won her
admiration at another time. Now she only thought of the husband she
had fled from, to whom his own father was conducting her.
Sir Noel opened a door, paused on the threshold a moment, and then
went into the room where Walton Hurst was sitting.
"My son," he said, in his usual quiet voice, "you must thank Lady Rose
for the surprise I bring you. It is she who has persuaded your wife to
come home to us with a less ceremonious welcome than I was prepared to
give."
Walton Hurst stood up like a healthy man, for astonishment had given
him fictitious strength; he came forward at once, reaching out both
hands. Sir Noel quietly withdrew his arm from the hand that had hardly
dared to rest on it, and left the room.
The marriage of Walton Hurst, only son of Sir Noel Hurst, of
"Norston's Rest," to Miss Ruth Jessup, daughter of the late William
Jessup, was announced in the _Court Journal_ that week. Some few
persons noticed that the usual details were omitted; but the fact
itself was enough to surprise and interest society, for young Hurst
was considered the best match of the season, and no one could learn
more of the bride than that Sir Noel was well pleased with the match,
and the young lady herself was the most intimate friend of his lovely
ward, the Lady Rose.
* * * * *
The joy bells were ringing merrily at "Norston's Rest." Sir Noel and
Lady Rose had been down at the old mansion more than a month, and
guests chosen from the brightest and highest of the land were invited
to receive the young heir and his bride on their return from a brief
wedding tour on the continent. Having once accepted this fair girl as
his daughter, Sir Noel was a man to stand right nobly by the position
he had taken. Born a gardener's daughter, she was now a Hurst, and
must receive in all things the homage due a lady of "Norston's Rest."
For this reason those joy bells were filling the valley with their
sweetest music; for this the streets of the village were arched with
evergreens, and school-children were busy scattering flowers along the
street to be trodden down by the wheels of the carriage or the hoofs
of four black horses, sent to meet the young couple at the station.
It was a holiday in the village. The tenants on the estate turned out
in a body, and were to be entertained now as they had been when the
young heir became of age.
The landlady of the "Two Ravens" stood at the inn door, with her arms
full of yellow lilies, hollyhocks and sweetwilliams, which she
lavished in gorgeous masses on the carriage as it passed. Hurst took
up one of the flowers and gave it to the bride, who held it to her
lips, and smiled pleasantly upon the good friends of her father as she
passed through them.
When the carriage drew up at "Norston's Rest," Sir Noel came down the
steps, took Ruth upon his arm, and led her across the great terrace
into the hall, where Lady Rose stood ready to welcome her. In the
background all the servants of the household were assembled, headed by
the steward and Mrs. Mason, both quiet and reverential in their
reception of the bride, as if they had never seen her before.
Still, in the good housekeeper's face there was a proud lighting up of
the countenance, that might have been traced to an inward
consciousness that it was her protegee and goddaughter who was
receiving all this welcoming homage; but from that day no person ever
heard Mrs. Mason allude to the fact, except once, when Ruth addressed
her by the old endearing title, she said, with simple gravity:
"Do not tempt a fond old woman to forgot that she is only housekeeper
to the mistress of 'Norston's Rest.'"
After all the festivities were over, and Ruth was established in her
new position, Lady Rose, who had been the leading spirit in every
social arrangement, came to Sir Noel in his library one day. There she
announced her resolve to leave "The Rest," and retire to one of her
own estates in another part of England--that which she had once been
willing to bestow on Richard Storms in ransom of Walton Hurst's honor.
The old baronet received this proposal with even less composure than
he had exhibited when the announcement of his son's marriage was made
to him. With grave and pathetic sadness he drew the girl toward him
and kissed her on the forehead.
"I will not ask you to stay, my child," he said, holding her hands in
his until both began to tremble. "I had hoped I--oh, Rose! your own
father could not have parted with you more unwillingly. It will not
seem like the old place without you to any of us."
"Yes, oh, yes. They are both so happy--very happy! Don't you think so?
One is not missed much. There, there, Sir Noel, this parting with you
almost makes me cry!"
It did bring tears into Sir Noel's eyes--the first that Lady Rose had
ever seen there in her life.
THE END.