“We’ll take the hint, John,” said Lady Arthur; and in a little while longer most of Mr. Ormiston’s unexpected guests had lost sight of the day’s adventure in sleep.

IX.

By dawn of the winter’s morning all the company, the railway pilgrims, were astir again—­not to visit a shrine, or attend a tournament, or to go hunting or hawking, or to engage in a foray or rieving expedition, as guests of former days at the castle may have done, but quietly to make their way to the station as the different trains came up, the fresh wind having done more to clear the way than the army of men that had been set to work with pickaxe and shovel.  But although the railways and the tweeds and the India-rubbers were modern, the castle and the snow and the hospitality were all very old-fashioned—­the snow as old as that lying round the North Pole, and as unadulterated; the hospitality old as when Eve entertained Raphael in Eden, and as true, blessing those that give and those that take.

Mr. Eildon left with the first party that went to the station; Lady Arthur and the young ladies went away at midday; John was left to take care of himself and his carriage till both should be more fit for traveling.

Of the three ladies, Alice had suffered most from the severe cold, and it was some time before she entirely recovered from the effects of it.  Lady Arthur convinced herself that it was not merely the effects of cold she was suffering from, and talked the case over with Miss Adamson, but that lady stoutly rejected Lady Arthur’s idea.  “Miss Garscube has got over that long ago, and so has Mr. Eildon,” she said dryly.  “Alice has far more sense than to nurse a feeling for a man evidently indifferent to her.”  These two ladies had exchanged opinions exactly.  George Eildon had only called once, and on a day when they were all from home:  he had written several times to his aunt regarding Lord Eildon’s health, and Lady Arthur had written to him and had told him her anxiety about the health of Alice.  He expressed sympathy and concern, as his mother might have done, but Lady Arthur would not allow herself to see that the case was desperate.

She had a note from her sister-in-law, Lady George, who said “that she had just been at Eildon, and in her opinion Frank was going, but his parents either can’t or won’t see this, or George either.  It is a sad case—­so young a man and with such prospects—­but the world abounds in sad things,” etc., etc.  But sad as the world is, it is shrewd with a wisdom of its own, and it hardly believed in the grief of Lady George for an event which would place her own son in a position of honor and affluence.  But many a time George Eildon recoiled from the people who did not conceal their opinion that he might not be broken-hearted at the death of his cousin.  There is nothing that true, honorable, unworldly natures shrink from more than having low, unworthy feelings and motives attributed to them.