第85章

Seeing Donal, and divining that he had been by his bedside all the night, he thanked him with a smile and a little nod--which somehow brought to his memory certain words Andrew had spoken on another occasion: "There's ane, an' there's a'; an' the a' 's ane, an' the ane 's a'."

When Donal reached the castle, he found his breakfast and Mrs.

Brookes waiting for him. She told him that Eppy, meeting her in the passage the night before, had burst into tears, but she could get nothing out of her, and had sent her to her room; this morning she had not come down at the proper time, and when she sent after her, did not come: she went up herself, and found her determined to leave the castle that very day; she was now packing her things to go, nor did she see any good in trying to prevent her.

Donal said if she would go home, there was plenty for her to do there; old people's bones were not easy to mend, and it would be some time before her grandfather was well again!

Mrs. Brookes said she would not keep her now if she begged to stay; she was afraid she would come to grief, and would rather she went home; she would take her home herself.

"The lass is no an ill ane," she added: " but she disna ken what she wud be at. She wants some o' the Lord's ain discipleen, I'm thinkin!"

"An' that ye may be sure she'll get, mistress Brookes!" said Donal.

Eppy was quite ready to go home and help nurse her grandfather. She thought her conduct must by this time be the talk of the castle, and was in mortal terror of lord Morven. All the domestics feared him--it would be hard to say precisely why; it came in part of seeing him so seldom that he had almost come to represent the ghost some said lived in the invisible room and haunted the castle.

It was the easier for Eppy to go home that her grandmother needed her, and that her grandfather would not be able to say much to her.

She was an affectionate girl, and yet her grandfather's condition roused in her no indignation; for the love of being loved is such a blinding thing, that the greatest injustice from the dearest to the next dearest will by some natures be readily tolerated. God help us! we are a mean set--and meanest the man who is ablest to justify himself!

Mrs. Brookes, having prepared a heavy basket of good things for Eppy to carry home to her grandmother, and made it the heavier for the sake of punishing her with the weight of it, set out with her, saying to herself, "The jaud wants a wheen harder wark nor I hae hauden till her han', an' doobtless it's preparin' for her!"

She was kindly received, without a word of reproach, by her grandmother; the sufferer, forgetful of, or forgiving her words of rejection in the garden, smiled when she came near his bedside; and she turned away to conceal the tears she could not repress. She loved her grand-parents, and she loved the young lord, and she could not get the two loves to dwell together peaceably in her mind--a common difficulty with our weak, easily divided, hardly united natures--frangible, friable, readily distorted! It needs no less than God himself, not only to unite us to one another, but to make a whole of the ill-fitting, roughly disjointed portions of our individual beings. Tearfully but diligently she set about her duties; and not only the heart, but the limbs and joints of her grandmother were relieved by her presence; while doubtless she herself found some refuge from anxious thought in the service she rendered. What she saw as her probable future, I cannot say; one hour her confidence in her lover's faithfulness would be complete, the next it would be dashed with huge blots of uncertainty; but her grandmother rejoiced over her as out of harm's way.