Her step-mother was under orders to spend the winter in Italy and the wedding had therefore taken place in Venice, so that Cecil might finish her journey as a wife. She had been very happy and fully occupied; Raymond, being younger and stronger than her parents, was more competent to escort her to every height or depth to which she wished to go, hunted up information for her, and was her most obedient servant, only resisting any prolongation of the journey beyond the legitimate four weeks; nor indeed had Cecil been desirous of deferring her introduction to her new sphere.
There she stood, her hair and pretty Parisian winter dress arranged to perfection, contemplating with approval the sitting-room that had been appropriated to her, the October sunshine lighting up the many-tinted trees around the smooth-shaven dewy lawn, and a bright fire on the hearth, shelves and chiffoniers awaiting her property, and piles of parcels, suggestive of wedding presents, awaiting her hand. She was standing at the table, turning out her travelling-bag with the comfortable sensation that it was not to be immediately re- packed, and had just disinterred a whole library of note-books, when her husband opened the door. "I believe Jenkins is waiting for your appearance to bring in the urn, my dear."
"I'm coming; but surely there ought to be a bell or gong to assemble the family."
"It might disturb my mother. What sleep she gets is in the morning. I never go to her till eleven o'clock, unless I am going out for the day."
"And what will she want me to do for her?" asked Cecil, glancing at her empty shelves.
"A woman's tact will soon find out. All I wish is that she should be your first object."
It was a much larger all than could be realized by the son whose happiest moments had been spent in devotion to her, and who thought the motherless girl must rejoice doubly in such a mother.
"But I am free till eleven," said Cecil.
"Free always, I hope," he returned, with a shade of vexation. Therewith they descended the broad stairs into the panelled hall, where a great fire was blazing on the hearth, and Rosamond and the two young brothers were standing chatting merrily before it.
Julius, she said, had his primary sermon heavy on his mind, and had risen before day to attack it; and she sped away to summon him from Mrs. Poynsett's beautiful old dressing-room, where he sat writing amid all the old associations. Anne was discovered hanging over the dining-room fire, looking whiter and more exhausted than the night before, having indeed been the first to come down-stairs. She was rebuked for fatiguing herself, and again murmured something about family worship.
"We must begin to-morrow," said Raymond. "We have got a chaplain now."
Julius, however, on entering excused himself, saying that after Sunday he should be at Matins at nine o'clock; whereupon Anne looked at him in mute astonishment.
Raymond, feeling that he ought to cultivate the solitary sister-in-law, began asking about Miles; but unlike the typical colonist, she was very silent, and her replies were monosyllabic, till Rosamond created a diversion by talking to Frank; and then Raymond elicited that Glen Fraser was far up the country-King Williamstown nearer than any other town. They had sent thither for a doctor for Miles, and he stayed one night, but said that mother's treatment was quite right; and as it was thirty miles off he did not come again. Thirty miles! what sort of roads? Not bad for wagons. It only took two days to get there if the river was not in flood. Had she not been married there? Yes, they all rode in thither for the purpose. Was it the nearest church, then? There was one only nine miles off, to which papa went when there was service-one Sunday in three, "for he is an Episcopalian, you know."
"And not your mother?" asked Cecil.
"I don't think she was at home," said Anne.
"Then had you a Presbyterian Kirk?" asked Cecil, remembering that in Scotland gentle blood and Anglicanism did not go together as uniformly as she believed them to do in England.
"There was one at Schneyder's Kloof, but that was Dutch."
"Then did you go nowhere?" asked Cecil.
"There was Mr. Pilgrim's."
"A clergyman?"
"No, a settler. He used to pray and expound every Sunday."
"What does he call himself?" said Cecil, growing more severe.
"I don't know," said Anne. "He gathers together a little flock of all denominations, who only care to hear the word."
"Such a voice in the wilderness as often does good service," said Julius, with a perception that the side with which he least agreed best deserved support.
He and Rosamond were bent on a tour of parochial inspection, as were Raymond and Cecil on a more domestic one, beginning with the gardens.
Cecil was the first lady down-stairs, all in claret colour trimmed with gray fur, with a little fur and velvet cap upon her head.
"There! it is a clear morning, and you can see the view," said Raymond, opening the hall door.
"Very prettily undulating ground," she said, standing on the steps, and looking over a somewhat rapid slope scattered with trees to the opposite side of the valley, where a park with a red mansion in the midst gleamed out among woods of green, red, orange, and brown tints. "How you are shut in! That great Spanish chestnut must be a perfect block when its leaves are out. My father would never let it stand so near the house."
"It is too near, but it was planted at the birth of my mother's brother."
"Who died?"
"Yes, at seven years old. It was her first grief."
"Then it would vex her if you cut it."
Raymond laughed. "It is hers, not mine."
"I forgot." There was a good deal in the tone; but she added, "What is that place opposite?"
"Sirenwood. It belongs to Sir Harry Vivian; but he does not live there."
"Yes, he does," said Cecil. "Your brothers say he has come back with his two daughters."
"There is only one unmarried."
"There is a widow come to keep house for him-Lady Tyrrell."
"Very likely," said Raymond; "my mother only writes with difficulty, so I hear little when I am from home."
"Is it true that they are horrid people, very dissipated, and not fit for me to associate with?"
"That is putting it strongly," said Raymond, quietly. "They are not likely to be very desirable acquaintances for you, but there is no reason you should not associate with them on ordinary terms of courtesy."
"Ah! I understand-as member's wife."
"I don't see what that has to do with it," said Raymond. "Ah! Rosamond!" as she came down in a Galway cloak over her black velveteen, "on the way to view your domain?"
"Yes, and yours," she said, nodding to Cecil. "You appreciate such English apple-pie order. It looks as if you never suffered a stray leaf to dance without an old woman to hunt it down. And what's that red house smiling across the valley?"
"Sirenwood," repeated Raymond; then to Julius he said, "Did you know it was inhabited again?"
"Frank said so," answered Julius, without further remark, giving his arm to his wife, who clasped both hands on it; while the other couple looked on as if doubtful whether this were a trying duty incumbent on them.
"What is it all about?" said Rosamond, as they walked down the avenue of walnuts leading to the iron gates in the opposite direction from Sirenwood. "Which of you was that woman's victim? Was it a sailor love of Miles's? I hope not! That poor little African might not stand a gay ghost cropping up again."