Page:A Nameless Nobleman.djvu/77

Rh "Why, Tab, surely you are never going to be lonesome, and so soon too! You and I are the garrison of the fortress, and must make a brave show, though it be with quaking hearts beneath."

She gave the cat her breakfast, and then busied her self in clearing the table, washing the dishes, and various household details, all performed in the rapid, noiseless, and thorough fashion of one who brings to such homely work the will, the mind, and the conscience that would fitly administer the affairs of a castle or a palace, had the individual been so placed.

Her active work finished, Molly drew the great spinning-wheel to the centre of the glittering kitchen; and humming cheerily a hunting-song, in which her father often indulged when alone with her in his boat or tossing the hay upon the meadows, she began the graceful toil, than which no sport was ever more be coming to lithe maiden form or shapely hands and arms.

The song had given place to a quaint old hymn, when a sharp tap upon the southern window made the spinner snap her thread, as she hastily turned to see a man's face pressed against the glass and smiling upon her. Not an unknown or alarming face, but yet a very repulsive face,—mean, sordid, cruel, with small gray eyes, too closely set, a narrow hollow brow, scant red hair, hardly perceptible in eyebrows and lashes, although straggling in patches over the cheeks and around the thin-lipped, deceitful mouth.

And this was the man to whom Deborah Wilder fain would give her only child, and that immediately.