Ingleside; $b or, Without Christ and with HimLeslie, Madeline
Religion
Ingleside; $b or, Without Christ and with Him
Leslie, Madeline
Christian fiction, American; Christian life -- Fiction; Country life -- Fiction; Invalids -- Fiction; Rural churches -- Fiction
This was the first time Marion had seen him since her discovery that
Mr. Regy, of whom she had heard so much, was only the double of her
old friend. She longed to ask him about it, but would not before
strangers. She contented herself with inquiries about Neddy Carter,
who was soon to be admitted to the mission school.
Only two days after Mrs. Asbury's return to Grantbury,
Marion received a thick letter with a foreign postmark,—Leyden,
Yorkshire. She retired quickly to her own chamber, and sat down with
blooming cheeks to its perusal.
I have no intention of copying the letter, but will say that, after
giving her an account of his visit to his home,—a visit which
almost overwhelmed him with its painful memories,—and visiting the
graves of father, mother, and brother as they lay side by side under
the old yew-trees, he took the cars for Ingleside, his father's
ancestral home in Leyden. He told her he found only an old servant,
a retainer of the family, who received him as one from the dead.
His grandfather had four children born here,—one son and three
daughters. When he died, in Harold's twelfth year, his property was
divided equally between them, except Ingleside, which was always
to be kept in the family, and after the death of his daughters
to revert to his oldest grandson.
Estelle Angus, for whom Stella was named, made a will and left her
namesake her heir. Mary and Sarah died without making a will, and the
property came to Harold, as the nearest of kin. It was not a great
fortune that he found awaiting him, Mr. Angus told Marion, but, with
the money left in the bank by his father, it was sufficient to enable
him to carry out some cherished plans.
One of these plans was to build a pretty home on a certain knoll
in Grantbury (the very one Mr. Asbury had given to the church), to be
called Ingleside; but there was one word from her which must come
before the new Ingleside could be built.
Then followed certain statements in regard to a diagnosis recently
made of his heart, which conveyed to the young lady a pretty accurate
idea of what the word must be, in order that the English cottage be
erected.
By this time Marion, by certain unwelcome symptoms, which had forced
themselves on her notice was aware of the strength of her own
attachment for her pastor, and, being naturally frank and outspoken,
she wrote the word (a very short one), which, could he have known it,
would have set good Farmer Rand's mind at rest in regard "to holding
on" to his pastor.
In a note added to his letter, immediately following the receipt of
the call from the London church, Mr. Angus added:—
"I have just forwarded to Mr. Asbury an invitation to settle in our
great metropolis. Would you prefer to live in England? Of course I
could not give the parish an idea of what my answer will be till
I hear from you. Am I presumptuous? You first taught me to be
hopeful. Am I too daring to hope now?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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