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.' James and Isabel glanced at each other in amused indignation; and Mrs. Frost entered, tremulous with joy, and her bright hazel eyes lustrous with tears, as she leant on the arm of her recovered son. He was a little, spare, shrivelled man, drolly like his nephew, but with all the youthfulness dried out of him, the freckles multiplied by scores, and the keen black eyes sunken, sharpened, and surrounded with innumerable shrewd puckers. The movements were even more brisk, as if time were money; and in speech, the small change of particles was omitted, and every word seemed bitten off short at the end; the whole man, in gesture, manner, and voice, an almost grotesque caricature of all James's peculiarities. 'Mrs. Roland Dynevor, I presume? said Oliver, as Isabel came forward to meet him.