Grace burst into a flood of tears, as her lover, interested deeply in their cause, gently drew her towards him.  Her head sank on his shoulder, as she faintly whispered something that was inaudible, but which he did not fail to interpret into everything he most wished to hear.  John was in ecstasies.  Every unpleasant feeling of suspicion had left him.  Of Grace’s innocence of manoeuvring he never doubted, but John did not relish the idea of being entrapped into anything, even a step which he desired.  An uninterrupted communication followed; it was as confiding as their affections:  and the return of the dowager and her children first recalled them to the recollection of other people.

One glance of the eye was enough for Lady Chatterton.  She saw the traces of tears on the cheeks and in the eyes of Grace, and the dowager was satisfied; she knew his friends would not object; and as Grace attended her to her dressing-room, she cried on entering it, “Well, child, when is the wedding to be?  You will wear me out with so much gaiety.”

Grace was shocked, but did not as formerly weep over her mother’s interference in agony and dread.  John had opened his whole soul to her, observing the greatest delicacy towards her mother, and she now felt her happiness placed in the keeping of a man whose honor she believed much exceeded that of any other human being.

Chapter XXXII.

The seniors of the party at Benfield Lodge were all assembled one morning in a parlor, when its master and the baronet were occupied in the perusal of the London papers.  Clara had persuaded her sisters to accompany her and Francis in an excursion as far as the village.

Jane yet continued reserved and distant to most of her friends; while Emily’s conduct would have escaped unnoticed, did not her blanched cheek and wandering looks at times speak a language not to be misunderstood.  With all her relatives she maintained the affectionate intercourse she had always supported; though not even to her aunt did the name of Denbigh pass her lips.  But in her most private and humble petitions to God, she never forgot to mingle with her requests for spiritual blessings on herself, fervent prayers for the conversion of the preserver of her life.

Mrs. Wilson, as she sat by the side of her sister at their needles, first discovered an unusual uneasiness in their venerable host, while he turned his paper over and over, as if unwilling or unable to comprehend some part of its contents, until he rang the bell violently, and bid the servant to send Johnson to him without a moment’s delay.

“Peter,” said Mr. Benfield doubtingly, “read that—­your eyes are young, Peter; read that.”

Peter took the paper, and after having adjusted his spectacles to his satisfaction, he proceeded to obey his master’s injunctions; but the same defect of vision as suddenly seized the steward as it had affected his master.  He turned the paper sideways, and appeared to be spelling the matter of the paragraph to himself.  Peter would have given his three hundred a year to have had the impatient John Moseley a hand, to relieve him from his task; but the anxiety of Mr. Benfield overcoming his fear of the worst, he inquired in tremulous tone—­