“But I must kiss you, Sophy,” the mother said. “You are going away with your aunt and Rosalind, on a visit. Is not that better than coming down to dessert?” “Oh, mamma!” The child jumped up with one shoe on, and threw herself against her mother’s breast. “Oh, I am so glad. Aunt Sophy lets us do whatever we please.” She gave a careless kiss in response to Mrs. Trevanion’s embrace. “I should like to stay there forever,” Sophy said. There was a smile on the mother’s face as she withdrew it, as there had been a smile of strange wonder and wistfulness when she took leave of Rex. The little ones were asleep. She went and stood for a moment between the two white cots. Then all was done; and the hour had come to which, without knowing what awaited her, she had looked with so much terror on the previous night. A dark night, with sudden blasts of rain, and a sighing wind which moaned about the house, and gave notes of warning of the dreary wintry weather to come. As Mrs. Lennox and Rosalind sat silent over the fire, there suddenly seemed to come in and pervade the luxurious house a blast, as if the night had entered bodily, a great draught of fresh, cold, odorous, rainy air, charged with the breath of the wet fields and earth. And then there was the muffled sound as of a closed door. “What is that?” said Aunt Sophy, pricking up her ears, “It cannot be visitors come so late, and on such a day as this.” “It sounds like some one going out,” Rosalind said, with a shiver, thinking on what she had seen last night. “Perhaps,” she added eagerly, after a moment, with a great sense of relief, “Mr. Blake going away.” “It will be that, of course, though I did not hear wheels; and what a dismal night for his drive, poor old gentleman. That wind always makes me wretched. It moans and groans like a human creature. But it is very odd, Rosalind, that we did not hear any wheels.” “The wind drowns other sounds,” Rosalind said. “That must be so, I suppose. Still, I hope he doesn’t think of walking, Rosalind; an old man of that age.” And then once more all fell into silence in the great luxurious house. Outside the wind blew in the faces of the wayfarers. The rain drenched them in sudden gusts, the paths were slippery and wet, the trees discharged sharp volleys of collected rain as the blasts blew. To struggle across the park was no easy matter in the face of the blinding sleet and capricious wind; and you could not hear your voice under the trees for the din that was going on overhead. CHAPTER XXI.