"
Isabel could hardly finish reading it; for she heard a quick sobbing
breath behind her, and felt a wrinkled old hand caressing her hair and
cheek as her voice faltered.
Meanwhile Hubert was in town. Sir Nicholas had at first intended him to
go down at once and take charge of the estate; but Piers was very
competent, and so his father consented that he should remain in London
until the beginning of October; and this too better suited Mr. Norris'
plans who wished to send Isabel off about the same time to Northampton.
When Hubert at last did arrive, he soon showed himself extremely capable
and apt for the work. He was out on the estate from morning till night on
his cob, and there was not a man under him from Piers downwards who had
anything but praise for his insight and industry.
There was in Hubert, too, as there so often is in country-boys who love
and understand the life of the woods and fields, a balancing quality of a
deep vein of sentiment; and this was now consecrated to Isabel Norris. He
had pleasant dreams as he rode home in the autumn evening, under the
sweet keen sky where the harvest moon rose large and yellow over the
hills to his left and shed a strange mystical light that blended in a
kind of chord with the dying daylight. It was at times like that, when
the air was fragrant with the scent of dying leaves, with perhaps a touch
of frost in it, and the cottages one by one opened red glowing eyes in
the dusk, that the boy began to dream of a home of his own and pleasant
domestic joys; of burning logs on the hearth and lighted candles, and a
dear slender figure moving about the room.
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