"Please, ma'am?" inquired the girl in perplexity. "No matter. Ethel, dear, it is he. Yes, I'll see him," she said to the girl, in an agitated way; "show him up. Ethel, it's Harry Rokestone--don't go; he is so stern--I know how he'll speak to me--but I ought not to refuse to see him." I was angry at my mother's precipitation. If it had rested with me, what an answer the savage old man should have had! I was silent. By this time the girl was again at the hall-door. The first moment of indignation over, I was thunderstruck. I could not believe that anything so portentous was on the eve of happening. The moments of suspense were not many. My eyes were fixed on the door as if an executioner were about to enter by it. It opened, and I saw--need I tell you?--the very same tall, handsome old man I had seen in the chapel of Cardyllion Castle. "Oh! Mabel," he said, and stopped. It was the most melancholy, broken voice I had ever heard. "My darling!" My mother stood with her hand stretched vaguely towards him, trembling. "Oh! Mabel, it is you, and we've met at last!" He took her hand in one of his, and laid the other suddenly across his eyes and sobbed. There was silence for a good while, and then he spoke again. "My pretty Mabel! I lost ye; I tried to hate ye, Mabel; but all would not do, for I love ye still. I was mad and broken-hearted--I tried to hate ye, but I couldn't; I'd a' given my life for you all the time, and you shall have Malory--it's your own--I've bought it--ye'll not be too proud to take a gift from the old man, my only darling! The spring and summer are over, it's winter now wi' the old fellow, and he'll soon lie under the grass o' the kirk-garth, and what does it all matter then? And you, bonny Mabel, there's wonderful little change wi' you!" He was silent again, and tears coursed one another down his rugged cheeks. "I saw you sometimes a long way off, when you didn't think I was looking, and the sight o' ye wrung my heart, that I didn't hold up my head for a week after. A lonely man I've been for your sake, Mabel; and down to Gouden Friars, and among the fells, and through the lonnins of old Clusted Forest, and sailin' on the mere, where we two often were, thinkin' I saw ye in the shaddas, and your voice in my ear as far away as the call o' the wind--dreams, dreams--and now I've met ye." He was holding mamma's hand in his, and she was crying bitterly.