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.'