Part 8 (2/2)

”That'll do. Good night, then.”

As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram.

He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay--the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy.

He slept and dreamt about this.

Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony's hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude.

It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy.

”Have you got good news?” was Meta's first question.

She answered it herself before he got time to speak.

”Yes, you have,” she said; ”I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?”

Claude's face fell just a little.

”I wish it were,” he replied. ”No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram.”

They went and sat down to read it.

”I don't like it,” she said. ”Why didn't she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!”

Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public doc.u.ment, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines.

Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening suns.h.i.+ne.

Claude laughed again, and caught her hand.

”I don't mean in that way, silly child,” he said. ”There; we will read between the words in the way I mean.”

Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart--and a deal more I need not note.

”Don't you see, Meta?”

”Dark and dim, as through a gla.s.s,” said Meta, musing. ”Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy.”

”Well, I am, because I feel she will relent.”

”I wonder what she is doing now?”

And Meta's question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.

I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on suns.h.i.+ny days, and call him ”Diogenes?” But here comes Janet at last.

<script>