the bright moonlight, a chaise, in which were seated the young lady whose departure had excited so strange a sensation there, and her faithful old servant, Dulcibella Crane, was driving rapidly through a melancholy but not unpleasing country.
A wide undulating plain, with here and there patches of picturesque natural wood, oak, and whitethorn, and groups of silver-stemmed birch-trees spread around them. Those were the sheep-walks of Cressley Common. The soil is little better than peat, over which grows a short velvet verdure, altogether more prized by lovers of the picturesque than by graziers of Southdowns. Could any such scene look prettier than it did in the moonlight? The solitudes, so sad and solemn, the lonely clumps and straggling trees, the gentle hollows and hills, and the misty distance in that cold illusive light acquire the interest and melancholy of mystery.
The young lady's head was continually out of the window, sometimes looking forward, sometimes back, upon the road they had traversed. With an anxious look and a heavy sigh she threw herself back in her seat.
"You're not asleep, Dulcibella?" she said, a little peevishly.
"No Miss, no dear."
"You don't seem to have much to trouble you?" continued the young lady.
"I? Law bless you, dear, nothing, thank God."
"None of your own, and my troubles don't vex you, that's plain," said her young mistress, reproachfully.
"I did not think, dear, you was troubled about anything -- law! I hope nothing's gone wrong, darling," said the old woman with more energy and a simple stare in her mistress's face.
"Well, you know he said he'd be with us as we crossed Cressley Common, and this is it, and he's not here, and I see no sign of him."
And the young lady again popped her head out of the window, and, her survey ended, threw herself back once more with another melancholy moan.
"Why, Miss Alice, dear, you're not frettin' for that?" said Dulcibella. "Don't you know, dear, if he isn't here he's somewhere else? We're not to be troubling ourselves about every little thing like, and who knows, poor gentleman, what's happened to delay him?"
"That's just what I say, Dulcibella; you'll set me mad! Something has certainly happened. You know he owes money. Do you think they have arrested him? If they have, what's to become of us? Oh! Dulcibella, do tell me what you really think."
"No, no, no -- there now -- there's a darling, don't you be worrying yourself about nothing; look out again, and who knows but he's coming?"
So said old Dulcibella, who was constitutionally hopeful and contented, and very easy about Master Charles, as she still called Charles Fairfield.
She was not remarkable for prescience, but here the worthy creature fluked prophetically; for Alice Maybell, taking her advice, did look out again, and she thought she saw the distant figure of a horseman in pursuit.
She rattled at the window calling to the driver, and the man who sat beside him, and succeeded in making them hear her, and pull the horses up.
"Look back and see if that is not your master coming," she cried eagerly.
He was still too distant for recognition, but the rider was approaching fast. The gentlemen of the road, once a substantial terror, were now but a picturesque tradition; the appearance of the pursuing horseman over the solitudes of Cressley Common would else have been anything but a source of pleasant anticipation. On he came, and now the clink of the horse-shoes sounded sharp on the clear night air. And now the rider passed the straggling trees they had just left behind them, and now his voice was raised and recognised, and in a few moments more, pale and sad in the white moonlight as Leonora's phantom trooper, her stalwart lover pulled up his powerful hunter at the chaise window.
A smile lighted up his gloomy face as he looked in.
"Well, darling, I have overtaken you at Cressley Common; and is my little woman quite well, and happy to see her Ry once more?"
His hand had grasped hers as he murmured these words through the window.
"Oh, Ry, darling -- I'm so happy -- you must let Tom ride the horse on, and do you come in and sit here, and Dulcibella can take my cloaks and sit by the driver. Come, darling, I want to hear everything."
And so this little arrangement was completed, as she said, and Charles Fairfield sat himself beside his beautiful young wife, and as they drove on through the moonlit scene, he pressed her hand and kissed her lovingly.
Chapter XI.
Home
"Oh, darling, I can scarcely believe it," she murmured, smiling, and gazing up with her large soft eyes into his, "it seems to me like heaven that I can look, and speak, and say everything without danger, or any more concealment, and always have my Ry with me--never to be separated again, you know, darling, while we live."
"Poor little woman," said he, fondly, looking down with an answering smile, "she does love me a little bit, I think."
"And Ry loves his poor little bird, doesn't he?"
"Adores her -- idolatry -- idolatry."
"And we'll be so happy!"
"I hope so, darling."
"Hope?" echoed she, chilled, and a little piteously.
"I'm sure of it, darling -- quite certain," he repeated, laughing tenderly; "she's such a foolish little bird, one must watch their phrases; but I was only thinking -- I'm afraid you hardly know what a place this Carwell is."
"Oh, darling, you forget I've seen it -- the most picturesque spot I ever saw -- the very place I should have chosen -- and any place you know, with you! But that's an old story."
His answer was a kiss, and --
"Darling, I can never deserve half your love."
"All I desire on earth is to live alone with my Ry."
"Yes, darling, we'll make out life very well here, I'm sure -- my only fear is for you. I'll go out with my rod, and bring you home my basket full of trout, or sometimes take my gun, and kill a hare or a rabbit, and we'll live like the old Baron and his daughters in the fairy-tale -- on the produce of the streams, and solitudes about us -- quite to ourselves; and I'll read to you in the evenings, or we'll play chess, or we'll chat while you work, and I'll tell you stories of my travels, and you'll sing me a song, won't you?"
"Too delighted -- singing for joy," said little Alice, in a rapture at his story of the life that was opening to them, "oh, tell more."
"Well -- yes -- and you'll have such pretty flowers."
"Oh, yes -- flowers -- I love them -- not expensive ones -- for we are poor, you know; and you'll see how prudent I'll be -- but annuals, they are so cheap -- and I'll sow them myself, and I'll have the most beautiful you ever saw. Don't you love them, Ry?"
"Nothing so pretty, darling, on earth, except yourself."
"What is my Ry looking out for?"
Charles Fairfield had more than once put his head out of the window, looking as well as he could along the road in advance of the horses.
"Oh, nothing of any consequence, I only wanted to see that our man had got on with the horse, he might as well knock up the old woman, and see that things were, I was going to say, comfortable, but less miserable than they might be."
He laughed faintly as he said this, and he looked at his watch, as if he did not want her to see him consult it, and then he said--
"Well, and you were saying -- oh -- about the flowers -- annuals -- Yes."
And so they resumed. But somehow it seemed to Alice that his ardour and his gaiety were subsiding, that his thoughts were away, and pale care stealing over him like the chill