"After a little while, though, I told him how badly my head ached, and he was very sympathetic about it. 'You ought not to have come down to dinner,' he said, 'the dining-room gets so hot and stuffy; it is a low room, and Uncle Douglas never will have the window open, even on a lovely night like this.' There is a door at the foot of the stairs, opposite the gun-room, and as he spoke he drew back the bolt. 'Come out into the garden for a few minutes,' he said, holding the door open for me to pass, 'a little fresh air will do you more good than anything.'

"The night was warm, I suppose, for Scotland, but cool enough to seem wonderfully fresh and invigorating after the enclosed air within the house. It was very dark, and the sky was overcast, though just above us a star or two was shining, very large and clear. Otherwise I could hardly distinguish anything at all, except the line, about fifty yards away, where the lawn came to an end, and the ground dipped abruptly down towards the loch, so that the level edge of the grass showed up against the less opaque darkness of the sky, like a black velvet border to a piece of black silk.

"We stood there a little while, till I remembered I must go to the library. My head was already much better when I turned back into the house; Sir David didn't follow me; he seemed to be staring through the gloom in front of him. 'I am going in,' I said. 'What are you looking at?' 'I thought I saw something move over there on the skyline,' he replied; 'do you see anything?' I looked, but could make out nothing. 'Well,' he said, 'if you are going in, I think I'll just go over and see if there's anyone about; you might leave the door open, will you?'

"And so I left him, and made my way to the library. As I passed through the billiard-room, Mr. McConachan, who was knocking the balls about, asked me if I had seen his cousin, and I told him Sir David was outside on the lawn by the gun-room door.

"Lord Ashiel--my father--was waiting for me, and he came to meet me and kissed me tenderly. We were both very much agitated: I was still feeling the effects of my escape from drowning, and he, poor dear, was weak and ill. In short, neither of us was in a fit state to meet the situation calmly; and, if my tears flowed, they were not the only ones that were shed. For a few moments we cried like babies, in each other's arms, and then I pulled myself together, for I knew how bad it was for his health to get into this nervous state. Mr. Gimblet, I needn't tell you all the conversation that followed between us. He told me that you know the whole story, that you are the one person in the world in whom he had confided; so it is unnecessary for me to repeat what he said of his marriage to my mother, of her death, and of his resolve never willingly to look upon me, the baby who had taken her from him. He told me also of the years that had intervened between that day when he had shuffled off his responsibilities on to Mrs. Meredith, and the day, not long ago, when he at last decided to hunt out his daughter.




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