They lowered us down in boats at last, the captain going ashore with us, the porters following with our luggage.  The great hall-door below stood open, and the familiar servants were there to give us greeting, and we stayed but for a hand’s-shake, except that my old nurse, where she caught it, wet my shawl with her sudden weeping, so that Effie had run up the stairs before me, and was in the drawing-room and was folded in the tender grasp, and had first received the welcome.  A moment after, and I was among them.  Mrs. Strathsay stood there under the chandelier in the sunshine, with all its showering rainbow-drops,—­so straight and stately she, so superb and splendid,—­her arms held out,—­and I ran forward, and paused, for my veil had blown over my face, to throw it back and away,—­and, with the breath, her shining blue eyes opened and filled with fire, her proud lips twisted themselves in pain, she struck her two hands together, crying out, “My God! how horrible!” and fainted.

Mrs. Strathsay was my mother.  I might have fallen, too,—­I might have died, it seems to me, with the sudden snap my heart gave,—­but all in a word I felt Mary Strathsay’s soft curls brushing about my face, and she drew it upon her white bosom, and covered the poor thing with, her kisses.  Margray was bending over my mother, with the hartshorn in her hands, and I think—­the Lord forgive her!—­she allowed her the whole benefit of its battery, for in a minute or two Mrs. Strathsay rose, a little feeble, wavered an instant, then warned us all away and walked slowly and heavily from the place, up the stairs, and the door of her own room banged behind her and hasped like the bolt of a dungeon.

I drank the glass of wine Mary brought me, and tried hard not to sadden them, and to be a woman.

“Poor thing!” said Margray, when she’d taken off my bonnet and looked at the fashion of my frock, “but you’re sorely altered.  Never fret,—­it’s worth no tear; she counted much on your likely looks, though,—­you never told us the accident took them.”

“I thought you’d know, Margray.”

“Oh, for sure, there’s many escapes.—­And this is grenadine?  I’d rather have the old mohair.—­Well, well, give a man luck and throw him into the sea; happen you’ll do better than us all.  If my mother cannot marry you as she’d choose, you’ll come to less grief, I doubt.”  And Margray heaved a little sigh, and ran to tumble up her two-year-old from his rose-lined basket.

I went home with Margray that night; I couldn’t bear to sleep in the little white bed that was mine when a happy child, and with every star that rose I felt a year the older; and on the morrow, when I came home, my mother was still in the same taking, so I went back again and whiled the day off as I could; and it was not so hard, for Mary Strathsay came over, and Effie, and there was so much to tell, and so much to ask, and Effie had all along been so full of some grand company she had met that last year in Edinboro’,