As the clock pointed to four, we steamed slowly away, leaving her on the platform dissolved in tears, and Lady Hildegarde looking after us with a glare of stony incredulity.
We were met at Chalgrove station by the coroneted carriage and high-stepping horses, as foreseen by Miss Skuce’s eager imagination. My scanty, shabby baggage was entirely the affair of a tall footman, who ushered me to this splendid equipage with an air of solemn deference, which afforded ample testimony that Lord Chalgrove’s niece was _somebody_.
“I’m extremely anxious about Dolly,” said my uncle as we bowled along at a rapid rate.
This was the third or fourth time, within three or four hours, that he had made the same remark.
“She won’t give in—she has such a spirit—but I know she is more injured than we suspect, and that Dr. Harwood has rather a grave opinion of her case. An accident to the spine is always a serious matter.”
“I should think it was,” I assented. “But then, she has youth on her side, which is something.”
“And she will have _you_ by her side, which will be something,” he replied. “It seems almost providential—_quite_ providential, indeed—that I should have been able to lay claim to a relation, to a young companion for her, just at this critical time.”
“Most providential for _me_, uncle, seeing that I have neither friends nor home.”
“And here _is_ your home now, my dear,” he said, as we dashed between a pair of great stone pillars. “This is Chalgrove, where your mother was born. There were only two of us, and we were always greatly attached to one another—and she was the leading spirit of the two, afraid of nothing not even of my father; and many a scrape we got into together, though I was the elder by five years.”
Chalgrove Chase was a lovely place—not a new place in old clothes, nor an old place decked out in modern garments; but a beautiful, dignified, venerable pile, standing among sloping green glades and fine forest trees. We entered through a hall or armory lined with coats of mail and feudal banners, and passed into a great gallery paneled with carved oak, and hung with impressive-looking portraits; everything around me spoke of generations of magnificence, and of dignified prosperity. And I was, in a way, a daughter of this wealthy and ancient house!