Long before she reached home, Mrs Catanach had left—not
without communication with her ally, in spite of a
certain precaution adopted by her mistress, the first
thing the latter did when she entered being to take
the key of the cellar stairs from her pocket, and
release Jean, who issued crestfallen and miserable,
and was sternly dismissed to bed. The next day,
however, for reasons of her own, Miss Horn permitted
her to resume her duties about the house without remark,
as if nothing had happened serious enough to render
further measures necessary.
Abandoning all her remaining effects to Jean’s
curiosity, if indeed it were no worse demon that possessed
her, Miss Horn, carrying a large reticule, betook
herself to the Lossie Arms, to await the arrival of
the mail coach from the west, on which she was pretty
sure of a vacant seat.
It was a still, frosty, finger pinching dawn, and
the rime lay thick wherever it could lie; but Miss
Horn’s red nose was carried in front of her
in a manner that suggested nothing but defiance to
the fiercest attacks of cold. Declining the offered
shelter of the landlady’s parlour, she planted
herself on the steps of the inn, and there stood until
the sound of the guard’s horn came crackling
through the frosty air, heralding the apparition of
a flaming chariot, fit for the sun god himself, who
was now lifting his red radiance above the horizon.
Having none inside, the guard gallantly offered his
one lady passenger a place in the heart of his vehicle,
but she declined the attention—to him, on
the ground of preferring the outside,—for
herself, on the ground of uncertainty whether he had
a right to bestow the privilege. But there was
such a fire in her heart that no frost could chill
her; such a bright bow in her west, that the sun now
rising in the world’s east was but a reflex
of its splendour. True, the cloud against which
it glowed was very dark with bygone wrong and suffering,
but so much the more brilliant seemed the hope now
arching the entrance of the future. Still, although
she never felt the cold, and the journey was but of
a few miles, it seemed long and wearisome to her active
spirit, which would gladly have sent her tall person
striding along, to relieve both by the discharge of
the excessive generation of muscle working electricity.
At length the coach drove into the town, and stopped
at the Duff Arms. Miss Horn descended, straightened
her long back with some difficulty, shook her feet,
loosened her knees, and after a douceur to the guard
more liberal than was customary, in acknowledgment
of the kindness she had been unable to accept, marched
off with the stride of a grenadier to find her lawyer.
Their interview did not relieve her of much of the
time, which now hung upon her like a cloak of lead,
and the earliness of the hour would not have deterred
her from at once commencing a round of visits to the
friends she had in the place; but the gates of the
lovely environs of Fife House stood open, and although
there were no flowers now, and the trees were leafless,
waiting in poverty and patience for their coming riches,
they drew her with the offer of a plentiful loneliness
and room. She accepted it, entered, and for two
hours wandered about their woods and walks.
