’Nonsense!  How can you be so taken in!  Don’t go and disappoint granny—­I’ll settle him.’

’Take care, Jem—­it is Oliver, and no mistake!  Why, he is as like you as Pendragon blood can make him!  Go and beg his pardon.’

James hastened down stairs, as Louis bounded up—­sought Mrs. Frost in the sitting-rooms, and, without ceremony, rushed up and knocked at the bed-room door.  Jane opened it.

‘He is come!’ cried Louis—­’Oliver is come.’

Old Jane gave a shriek, and ran back wildly, clapping her hands.  Her mistress started forward—­’Come!—­where?’

‘Here!—­in the hall with Jem.’

He feared that he had been too precipitate, for she hid her face in her hands; but it was the intensity of thanksgiving; and though her whole frame was in a tremor, she flew rather than ran forward, never even seeing Louis’s proffered arm.  He had only reached the landing-place, when beneath he heard the greeting—­’Mother, I can take you home—­Cheveleigh is yours.’  But to her the words were drowned in her own breathless cry—­’My boy! my boy!’ She saw, knew, heard nothing, save that the son, missed and mourned for thirty-four years, was safe within her arms, the longing void filled up.  She saw not that the stripling had become a worn and elderly man,—­she recked not how he came.  He was Oliver, and she had him again!  What was the rest to her?

Those words?  They might be out of taste, but Fitzjocelyn guessed that to speak them at the first meeting had been the vision of Oliver’s life—­the object to which he had sacrificed everything.  And yet how chill and unheeded they fell!

Louis could have stood moralizing, but his heart had begun to throb at the chance that Oliver brought tidings of Mary.  He felt himself an intrusive spectator, and hastened into the drawing-room, when Clara nearly ran against him, but stood still.  ’I beg your pardon, but what is Isabel telling me?  Is it really?’

‘Really!  Kindred blood signally failed to speak.’

Clara took a turn up and down the room.  ’I say, Louis, ought I to go down?’

‘No; leave him and granny to their happiness,’ said Louis; and James, at the same moment running up, threw himself into a chair, with an emphatic ‘There!’

‘Dear grandmamma!’ said Isabel; ‘I hope it is not too much for her.’

James made no answer.

‘Are you disappointed in him, dear James?’ she continued.

‘I could not be disappointed,’ he answered, shortly.

‘Poor man—­he has a poor welcome among you,’ said Louis.

‘Welcome is not to be bought,’ said James.  ’I could not stand hearing him reply to poor granny’s heartfelt rapture with his riches and his Cheveleigh, as if that were all she could prize.’

Steps were mounting the stairs, and the alert, sharp tones of Oliver were heard—­’Married then?  Should have waited—­done it in style.’