“Woman! what ails you?” cried the invalid.  “Reach me the drink.”

Elinor mechanically obeyed; but her head was turned the other way, and her eyes still fixed upon the window.  A light flashed along the dark avenue, now lost, and now again revealed through the trees.  The cup fell from her nerveless grasp, and faintly articulating, “Yes—­’tis he!” she sank senseless across the foot of the bed, as a carriage and four drove rapidly into the court-yard.

The miser, with difficulty, reached the bell-rope that was suspended from the bed’s head, and, after ringing violently for some minutes, the unusual summons was answered by the appearance of Ruth, who, thrusting her brown; curly head in at the door, said, in breathless haste: 

“The company’s come, ma’arm!  Such a grand coach!  Four beautiful hosses, and two real gemmen in black a’ standing behind—­and two on hossback a’ riding afore.  What are we to do for supper?  Doubtless they maun be mortal hungry arter their long ride this cold night, and will ’spect summat to eat, and we have not a morsel of food in the house fit to set afore a cat.”

“Pshaw!” muttered the sick man.  “Silence your senseless prate!  They will neither eat nor drink here.  Tell the coachman that there are excellent accommodations at the Hurdlestone Arms for himself and his horses.  But first see to your mistress—­she is in a swoon.  Carry her into the next room.  And, mark me, Ruth—­lock the door, and bring me the key.”

The girl obeyed the first part of the miser’s orders, but was too eager to catch another sight of the grand carriage, and the real gentlemen behind it, to remember the latter part of his injunction.

CHAPTER V.

    Is this the man I loved, to whom I gave
    The deep devotion of my early youth?—­S.M.

Algernon Hurdlestone in his forty-second, and Algernon Hurdlestone in his twenty-fourth year, were very different men.  In mind, person, and manners, the greatest dissimilarity existed between them.  The tall graceful figure for which he had once been so much admired, a life of indolence, and the pleasures of the table, had rendered far too corpulent for manly beauty.  His features were still good, and there was an air of fashion about him which bespoke the man of the world and the gentleman; but he was no longer handsome or interesting.  An expression of careless good-humor, in spite of the deep mourning he wore for the recent death of his wife, pervaded his countenance; and he seemed determined to repay Fortune for the many ill turns he had received from her in his youth, by enjoying, to their full extent, the good things that she had latterly showered upon him.

He had been a kind manageable husband to a woman whom he had married more for convenience than affection; and was a fatally indulgent father to the only son, the sole survivor of a large family that he had consigned to the tomb during the engaging period of infancy.  Godfrey, a beautiful little boy of two years old, was his youngest and his best beloved, on whom he lavished the concentrated affections of his warm and generous heart.