“It has come,” said Lady Montfort, solemnly;
“and Heaven grant that it may bear the blessed
results which were in my thoughts when I took Sophy
as my own adopted daughter, and hailed in yourself
the reconciler of conflicting circumstance.
Not under this roof should you woo William Losely’s
grandchild. Doubly are you bound to ask Guy Darrell’s
consent and blessing. At his hearth woo your
Sophy—at his hands ask a bride in his daughter’s
child.”
And to her wondering listener, Cayoline Montford told
her grounds for the belief that connected the last
of the Darrells with the convict’s grandchild.
Credulous crystal-seers,
young lovers, and grave Wise
men—all in
the same category.
George Morley set out the next day for Norwich, in
which antique city, ever since the ’Dane peopled
it, some wizard or witch, star-reader, or crystal-seer’
has enjoyed a mysterious renown, perpetuating thus
through all change in our land’s social progress
the long line of Vala and Saga, who came with the
Raven and Valkyr from Scandinavian pine shores.
Merle’s reserve vanished on the perusal of Sophy’s
letter to him. He informed George that Waife
declared he had plenty of money, and had even forced
a loan upon Merle; but that he liked an active, wandering
life; it kept him from thinking, and that a pedlar’s
pack would give him a license for vagrancy, and a
budget to defray its expenses; that Merle had been
consulted by him in the choice of light popular wares,
and as to the route he might find the most free from
competing rivals. Merle willingly agreed to
accompany George in quest of the wanderer, whom, by
the help of his crystal, he seemed calmly sure he
could track and discover. Accordingly, they both
set out in the somewhat devious and desultory road
which Merle, who had some old acquaintances amongst
the ancient profession of hawkers, had advised Waife
to take. But Merle, unhappily confiding more
in his crystal than Waife’s steady adherence
to the chart prescribed, led the Oxford scholar the
life of a will-of-the-wisp; zigzag, and shooting to
and fro, here and there, till, just when George had
lost all patience, Merle chanced to see, not in the
crystal, a pelerine on the neck of a farmer’s
daughter, which he was morally certain he had himself
selected for Waife’s pannier. And the girl
stating in reply to his inquiry that her father had
bought that pelerine as a present for her, not many
days before, of a pedlar in a neighbouring town, to
the market of which the farmer resorted weekly, Merle
cast an horary scheme, and finding the Third House
(of short journeys) in favourable aspect to the Seventh
House (containing the object desired), and in conjunction
with the Eleventh House (friends), he gravely informed
the scholar that their toils were at an end, and that
the Hour and the Man were at hand. Not over-sanguine,
George consigned himself and the seer to an early
train, and reached the famous town of Oazelford, whither,
when the chronological order of our narrative (which
we have so far somewhat forestalled) will permit,
we shall conduct the inquisitive reader.
