My Lady Lochore arrived towards that falling hour of the day when the shadows are growing long and soft, when the slanting light is amber: it might be called the coloured hour, for the sun begins to veil its splendour, so that eyes, undazzled, may rejoice. The swallows were dipping across the sward of golden-emerald and Bindon stood proudly golden-grey in the light, silver-grey in the shadows and against the blue. This daughter of the house came back to it with a fine clatter of horses and a blasting of post horns; followed by a retinue of valets and maids; acclaimed along the village street by shouting children, while aged gaffers and gammers bobbed on their cottage door-steps and showered interested blessings. (Margery had prepared that ground in good time.) She was welcomed in stately fashion by the chief servants and the master of the house himself on the threshold of her old home. Ellinor, half hidden behind the statue of Diana and its spreading green, watched the scene, waiting for her own moment. How different had been, she thought to herself, the return of poor Ellinor Marvel, that other daughter of Bindon, upon the cold September night, solitary, travel-worn, penniless, knocking in vain at the door her forefathers had built, creeping round back ways like a beggar, with the bats circling by her in the darkness and the watchdog growling at her from his kennel; unbidden, entering her old house, unwelcomed.—Unwelcomed? Was cousin Maud welcomed? In her rustling thin silk spencer and her fluttering muslin, with hectic, handsome face, looking anxiously out from under the wide befeathered bonnet, Lady Lochore advanced her thin sandalled foot on the step of the coach and rested her hand upon David’s extended arm. This was their meeting after years of estrangement! For a second she wavered, made a movement as if she would fling herself into her brother’s arms; the ribbons on her bosom fluttered—was it with a heaving sob? She glanced up at David’s severe countenance and suddenly stiffened herself. He bent and brushed the gloved wrist with his lips. “Sister, Bindon greets you!” She tossed her head, and her plumes shook. It seemed to the watching Ellinor as if she would have twitched her hand from his fingers; but he led her on. And the two last Cheverals walked up the steps together. The servants, Margery at their head, breathed respectful whispers of welcome. The lady nodded haughtily and vaguely. She stood in the hall and David dropped her hand. His eye was cold, there was a faint sneer on his lips. Welcomed? Ah, no! Ellinor would not have exchanged her dark night of home-coming for her cousin’s golden ceremonious day. Ellinor had cared little at heart—absorbed in her young freedom and her new confidence in life—how she should be received, but the lord of Bindon had looked into her eyes and bade her “welcome,” and laid his lips, lips that could not lie, upon hers.