When the Countess of Dashleigh, with bitter words of reproach, had departed from the cottage of Bardon, she left her late entertainers in a state of mind little to be envied. The unfortunate Cecilia was for the rest of the day much in the position of one who, with hands tied, is caged up with a large hornet which has been irritated, and which goes about buzzing with evident determination to find or to make a foe. Everything went wrong with the doctor, and his daughter was the only being within reach of the hornet’s sting!

Bardon’s temper broke out especially at dinner, where every little luxury which had been prepared for Annabella served as a provocation to her irritated host. The unfortunate chicken (a delicacy till lately almost unknown at the little cottage), could not have been more denounced as tough, tasteless, and uneatable, if it had been a roasted owl. The tartlets (made surreptitiously by poor Cecilia in the absence of Mrs. Bates) roused such an angry storm against all the inventors, makers, and eaters of such abominable trash, that Cecilia silently resolved that they should never appear on the table again; she would rather throw them into the road! Miss Bardon’s gaily tinted bubble of grandeur had broken, and left behind nothing but bitterness and—bills!

The fact was that Dr. Bardon was angry with himself, though a great deal too proud to own it. He was haunted by the countenance of the unfortunate Dashleigh as he last had seen it in the car, and had a strong persuasion on his mind that the earl, in a fit of frenzy, would fling himself out of the balloon, and be dashed to pieces in the fall! The subject of the ascent of the Eaglet was one so painful to Bardon that he would endure no allusion to it; and Cecilia soon discovered that there was no method of raising a storm so certain, as that of uttering aloud the conjectures and apprehensions to which such an event naturally gave rise. Silence, particularly on so interesting a subject, was a cruel penance to the poor lady, to whom gossip was one of the few remaining pleasures of life, but to that penance she was obliged to submit as being the lesser of two evils.

The anxious vicar himself had not passed a more disturbed night with the images of his child and his brother breaking his rest, than did the proud old doctor. Conscience had at length made him miserable, although it had not made him meek. He was no longer stormy, but he was sullen; and he did not even choose to communicate to his daughter his intention of calling on the Aumerles as soon as his breakfast should be concluded, in order to inquire whether anything had been heard of the missing balloon.

The postman, who had just left at the vicarage “The Fairy Lake” for the Countess of Dashleigh, now called at the cottage with a letter. The doctor’s correspondents were so very few in number that such an event was sufficiently rare to excite attention; and Bardon’s mind was so pre-occupied with the idea of coming misfortune and death, that he turned pale on seeing that the epistle directed to him was sealed and deep-bordered with black.

Cecilia, who had her full allowance of natural curiosity, watched the countenance of her father as he broke open and perused the letter. She saw his colour return, while his eye-brows were elevated as if in surprise; he read the epistle twice without comment, and then silently handed it over to his daughter.

The letter was a formal notification from the executors of the late Thomas Auger, Esq., that that gentleman had, by a will executed but a few days previous to his decease, given and bequeathed the dwelling-house called Nettleby Tower, and the land appertaining thereto, to Timon Bardon, M.D., the only surviving son of their former proprietor; and that he willed also that the said Timon Bardon should be paid from his estate a sum equal to that which had been expended by him in his lawsuit with the testator for the property above mentioned.

Cecilia, almost as much delighted as she was surprised, glanced up eagerly at her father. She read no exultation in his countenance, but rather a thoughtful sorrow, which his daughter could scarcely understand. Could she have penetrated his reflections, they would have appeared somewhat like the following: “Such, then, was the last act of the man whom I hated, over the announcement of whose death I gloated with malignant triumph! He remembered me on his death-bed; while struggling with the last enemy, he sought to make reparation for a wrong committed years ago, but never forgotten or forgiven by me. Through his sense of justice, I am at length restored to the home and estate of my fathers. Prosperity is sent to me, but through a channel so unexpected, and at a moment so painful, that I scarcely know how to welcome it, for I feel as though I did not deserve it.”

“Papa,” cried Cecilia, “do you not rejoice?”

Bardon turned silently away. To compare greater things with less, his were something of the emotions of a child who has justly incurred a parent’s displeasure, and who, while awaiting in a spirit of sullen rebellion a further manifestation of wrath, is surprised by a sudden token of love, unexpected as unmerited. The child, if a spark of generous feeling be left in his nature, is more pained by the kindness of his offended parent than he would have been by a sign of anger. His heart is melted; his conscience is touched. Timon Bardon had hardened his heart in adversity; he had girt on the panoply of pride; he had gloried in his powers of endurance, as one ready to do battle with the world, and to trample down all its frivolous distinctions. He had been ever trying to conceal the fact that he was a sad and disappointed man, both from himself and others, by affecting a contempt for all the worldly advantages which Providence had seen fit to deny; but to have these advantages suddenly restored to him, and at a period when he was conscious,—could not but be conscious,—that he had merited a Father’s chastening rod, had a much more softening effect upon him than would have been produced by adversity’s heaviest stroke. The tidings which came in the evening of the safety of the travellers in the Eaglet, gave a much keener sense of pleasure to Bardon than had been produced by the news of the morning.

And now we will return to the countess and her companions. The horses of their carriage were urged to speed, yet were they barely in time to catch the train, and the party had scarcely taken their seats before it began to move on. Oh, how Annabella longed to give the wings of her own impatience to the lagging engine! How her yearning spirit realized the complaint,—

Night had closed around before the travellers reached the little station which was nearest to the place of their destination,—a small, lonely post at which the train merely stopped for two minutes to suffer the party to alight.

“Can any conveyance be procured here?” asked Aumerle of the solitary station official who was assisting to put down their luggage.

“No, sir,” was the unsatisfactory reply. “There was a chaise sent here two hours ago for a gentleman who came by last train; nothing of the kind is to be had here, unless it’s ordered aforehand from the town.”

“Is that chaise likely to return hither?”

“Can’t say, sir,” answered the man. “I believe that it took a doctor and nurse to a place where a nobleman’s lying ill, who was picked up to-day from the sea.”

“The sea!” echoed the astonished listeners.

“Fallen out of a balloon, as I understand,” said the man. “There was a party of three, and they were all saved by one of our fishing-smacks that was just coming in from a cruise.”

“Oh, guide us to the place where they are!” exclaimed the countess.

“Can’t leave the station, ma’am,” replied the official, looking with some curiosity and interest on the pale, eager face on which the light of the gas-lamp fell; “besides, I’ve not been long at this place, and don’t know exactly where the cottage lies.”

“What are we to do?” exclaimed Ida.

“Now I think on it,” said the station-man, slowly, “the doctor asked me when the last train would go back to Exeter to-night. I take it he’s likely to return; and you could have the chaise that brings him.”

“When does that train pass?” inquired the vicar.

“Within an hour,” replied the man, glancing round at the large clock behind him. “Will not the ladies walk into the waiting-room?—it is better than standing out here on the platform.”

“It appears our best course,” said the vicar, addressing the countess, “to await here the return of the doctor, and avail ourselves of the only conveyance that seems likely to call here to-night.”

“Oh no, no!” exclaimed Annabella, wildly; “every minute of delay is an age in purgatory! The doctor may never come. Augustine will not suffer him to quit Dashleigh for an hour! I wait for no one; I will try to find my way to the cottage;—I go at once, even if I go alone!”

As Annabella remained firm in her resolution, the party, after gleaning such scanty information as the man at the station could give, and procuring from him a lantern, set out on their dreary way. Perfect darkness is seldom known in Devon on a night in May, but clouds and the absence of the moon rendered the atmosphere unusually obscure. Strange and phantom-like looked the black shadows of their own forms to the travellers, as the glare of the lantern cast them on the chalky cliffs that bordered their road. The path was rough and steep, strewn with stone boulders here and there, which seemed to have rolled down from the rocky heights above.

After a long, toilsome struggle up a gorge, where the countess much needed the aid of the vicar’s arm, the party emerged on the summit of a hill, whence in daylight they would have commanded an extensive prospect. Now faint gleams of summer light alone revealed to them by glimpses what appeared to be a wild, rocky valley, sloping down on the left to the sea, the mournful murmur of whose billows came upon the sighing breeze. Viewed by the imperfect light, the scene was very desolate and drear, and in its gloomy sublimity struck a chill to the heart of Annabella.

“It is like the valley of the shadow of death!” she whispered to Ida Aumerle.

“Even were it so, dearest,” was the reply, “is it not beyond the dark valley that the land of promise lies?”

“To those who are sure of a welcome,” faltered forth the unhappy countess.

“I think that I hear the sound of wheels,” observed the vicar; “yes,—some vehicle is evidently slowly ascending the steep hill before us.”

“Surely that of Dr. G—— upon its return,” suggested Ida.

The idea made all quicken their steps. Ida’s guess had been partially correct; in front was the expected chaise, moving as if towards the station.

As soon as the vehicle was sufficiently near, Mr. Aumerle hailed the driver:—

“Whence do you come, my friend?”

“From Cliff Cottage,” replied a rough voice through the darkness, and then the panting of a horse was heard.

“Is it the doctor?” exclaimed Annabella, pressing eagerly forward.

“No,” replied the voice. “A gentleman is ill; the doctor is staying the night; I’m to return for him in the morning;” and the speaker cracked his whip as a signal to the weary horse to move forward.

Arrangements were speedily made with the driver by Mr. Aumerle; the conveyance was turned round at the first convenient spot, and in it the ladies and the vicar were soon on their way to the cottage in which the Earl of Dashleigh lay ill.

Few words were interchanged as the travellers descended the rough, and almost precipitous road; indeed, the violent jolting would, under any circumstances, have rendered conversation impossible. Progress was necessarily slow, and it was some time before the party reached a lonely, shingle-built cottage belonging to a fisherman, which stood almost on the margin of the sea.

There was no need to knock at the low, rude door, for a quick ear within had caught the sound of wheels, most unusual in that lonely spot, and the vicar had scarcely had time to alight, before Mabel was in the arms of her father!