CHAPTER XXXIIIA BIRD IN THE HANDHARRY’Semployment was not so congenial as to keep him one day at work after the news of his legacy had reached him, and, as soon as it was possible, he started for home.He was now his own master, and Isoline, that star for which he had sighed through so many weary months, was within his reach; it was a glorious thought. He could hardly resist throwing his hat into the air as he drove along the road between Hereford and Waterchurch again, and saw all the familiar objects he had passed with her when they had travelled along it together in the early days of their acquaintance.There would be no need for shilly-shallying now, no waiting on luck, on circumstances, on the tardy decisions of other people, for the trumps were in his hand and he had only to declare them and lead the game as he liked. Two thousand a year was a fortune to make him perfectly independent of anything his father might say or do, for were he to cut him out of the place itself, his future would still be assured, and he did not suppose that the Squire would take such a desperate line as that. Where would be the sense of leaving the poverty-stricken estate away from the only one of his sons who had the money to change its fortunes?His departure for London had not upset Mr. Fenton very greatly, but the news that he had found work and was actually doing it came as a surprise. He had sat him down complacently in the belief that his prodigal son would soon return, wiser and sadder, to throw himself into the arms of a forgivingparent—for he meant to be forgiving. He was very fond of his children, and, though he stormed about the folly and ingratitude of this one’s behaviour, he looked forward to the day when he should receive him back, and, having magnanimously dismissed the subject of his infatuation in a few sentences, should welcome him again to reason and acquiescence in the saner judgment of older and more sober heads. It never struck him that there could be any other ending to the episode.But as time passed and the letters which came to Lady Harriet gave no sign of change, he began to fear that the drudgery which he had promised himself would soon quench the young man’s thirst for work was doing no such thing. He could not understand it, for he had never supposed that Harry, careless, scatter-brained Harry, with his youth and light heart, had got it in him to show so much steadiness of purpose.To his wife the truth was plain. Harry was growing up. It had taken him some time to begin the process, but the late development had set in at last, and been helped forward, as it so often is, by the influence of a woman. There was nothing to be done, she felt; time might bring things right, and she tried to persuade her husband that expressed opposition could do no good and might do a great deal of harm.“It is all very well for you to talk,” the Squire said; “I am not contemplating a visit of remonstrance to him, though, to hear you, one would imagine I was going to rush up to London and take him by the throat. I shall do nothing about it; I shall simply ignore the whole thing.”Tact was not Harry’s strong point. He had made up his mind that there should be no delay, and that a day should not elapse ere he delivered his ultimatum. Acting upon this resolve, he precipitated himself upon his father before he had been twenty-four hours in the house.The result was direful. The Squire’s policy of mingled indifference and magnanimity which he had been hugging against his son’s return changed to gall and wormwood whenconfronted by the calm request that was made. The young man had not quite robbed his manner of the reflection of what lay behind it, and the knowledge that he was master of the situation peeped out under the formality he had spread smoothly on the top. He did not mean to be discourteous, but the last few months had made him feel twice the man he used to be, and he could not entirely suppress the consciousness.“Consent?” roared Mr. Fenton, furious at being brought up against actualities which he laid decently away, “consent? I tell you the whole thing is a cock-and-bull story! Don’t come here, sir, wasting my precious time over such stuff!”Harry’s answer had at least the merit of simplicity. He went straight out to the stable, took a horse, and set off to Crishowell. Before he reached the village he met Isoline, who was taking an afternoon walk. She sedulously avoided the direction of the mountain now.It was cold, and she was muffled up in a fur tippet. Her eyes were sparkling. A rose-coloured scarf that she had wound round her neck fluttered behind her.“You see, Isoline, now everything has come right,” he said as he let her hand go; “it is well that you trusted me, isn’t it, darling?”Her smile, as she looked at him, was answer enough. She was very happy.They turned into a by-road and he drew the bridle over his arm, walking beside her.There was a shade of embarrassment in his mind; he knew that his chance of seeing and speaking to her was not likely to occur again, and he had so much to say. There were a thousand things he had settled as he came along, and which he must discuss with her. He had rushed over to Crishowell, not only as a sort of protest against his father’s attitude, but because he knew that he would not be allowed to see Isoline were the Vicar to be prepared for his coming. He wanted to tell her more about his legacy too, though, to his unsuspicious heart, money seemed a sordid thing to talk about to her. And therewas something of vital importance, something which he meant to propose. He feared to begin. It was simply providential that he had met her.“I suppose,” he began, “that they would not let you see me if I were to come to the house. I have so much to say. Isoline, I want to ask you something. Could you make a sacrifice, do you think? Dearest, I don’t know where to start. I must tell you heaps of things, horrid things, some of them.”She looked up quickly.“My father is in a dreadful rage. I asked him again to-day, just now, to give in. He will not.”“Yes, but you need not mind him now,” broke in the girl.“No, that’s it. That is what made him so furious.”“But you are not thinking of giving me up?” she said suddenly. “Oh, Harry! you never mean that!”“Give you up? Now, when, at last, I can do as I please? Not likely. Isoline, I believe you are joking.”“I never joke,” said she, with much truth.“What I am going to ask you to do is this,” he said gravely, stopping in the road and looking older than she had ever seen him look before; “I want to make these separations impossible. I want you to come away with me, once and for all.”“What? Now!” she cried, bewildered, stepping a pace or two back.“Not now, but soon. In a few days—a week, perhaps.”She looked at him blankly.“Oh, I cannot!” she exclaimed, “it would never do.”“But why, dear? It has been done before now.”“What would they say?”“That would not matter. You would be my own wife and no one could say or do anything.”She made no reply and they walked on; her face was downcast. She clasped her hands more tightly in her muff and shivered.“It would take a little time,” he went on; “I should have to get a special licence and go to London first. But in a weekeverything could be ready. We can be married in Hereford and then go straight away. Isoline, will you?”She was silent.“Won’t you speak, dearest?” said he at last. “Think; all our troubles would be over and we need never part any more.”“They will be terribly angry,” said Isoline, lifting her eyes suddenly.“No one matters. At least, no one except my mother,” he added, with a half-sigh, “and I know she will forgive me in a little, when she knows you better. You cannot think how good she is, Isoline.”Her face hardened.“We need not see them, I suppose,” she said.“We can go straight abroad, if you like.”“I should like London best,” said the girl.“We need not come back a moment before we wish to. I am quite independent, you see. I have not got much ready money at this moment, but any one will advance it until I am actually receiving my legacy. Want of money need not trouble us again.”“You have two thousand a year, have you not, Harry?”“Two thousand, one hundred and eleven pounds. There are some shillings and pence, too, I believe. I went into it all with the lawyer.”“How fortunately it has happened,” said Isoline fervently, her eyes looking onward to the wintry horizon.He was thinking the same thing. All at once, out of the silence that fell between them, there swam up before him the solemnity of what he meant to undertake. It was for all his life, probably, and for hers too. A vague foreshadowing of the buffets of the world, of time, of chance, of fate, played across his mind. He turned to her, a wave of tenderness in his heart, and looked down into her perplexed face.“If you will do this thing,” he said, “I will try always to make up to you for what I have asked.”She looked straight in front of her.“But I have not decided,” she said, almost petulantly; “how can I all at once?”“This is likely to be my last and only chance of talking to you,” he pleaded; “if we settle anything we must do it to-day. You could not see me if I came; that is the difficulty.”She shook her head. “Not if your father makes all this fuss.”“And writing would not be safe. So you see we must think it out now. Heaven knows when we may meet again.”“Do you think they willnevergive in, Harry?”“Never’s a long day. But it might take time. It might be a year, it might be much more. It does not matter for me, but your uncle will hold to it as long as my father does. Oh, darling! I hate this miserable waiting. Who knows what may happen in a year?”“That is all true, Harry. Oh! whatcanI do?” she cried. “It is so difficult! If I only had a little time!”“Take till to-morrow, Isoline.”“To-morrow? And how can I see you to-morrow?”“You must send to me.”She laughed shortly.“What messenger have I? Howlie is always busy. Besides, he might do something dreadful.”“Well, I must think of some other way,” said he, “and you must think too, Isoline. Between us, we shall light on something. What if you made me some sign?”“Wait—I have it!” he cried. “Will you go out to-morrow?”“Oh, yes.”“Any time?”“Any time within reason.”“Then go for your walk in the morning before twelve o’clock. Do you know the gate at the foot of the lane? The first one as you turn towards Brecon. I passed it just before I met you.”“I do not remember it.”“Then go and look at it after I have gone,” said Harry. “There is a bush beside it—only one—and you will see alast year’s nest in the branches. If you will come away with me, put a stone into it. I will ride by in the afternoon, and, if it is there, I shall know you have said yes.”“But can I reach the nest?”“If you stand on one of the rails of the gate you can. It is not out of reach, for I wondered, as I passed, how it was that the boys had not pulled it down.”He searched her face earnestly for some clue to what she would do.“What an odd idea,” she said at last“But will you do that? It is the only way I can think of, and I must know to-morrow. There is so much to arrange, dear.”“Very well,” said Isoline, “if I mean ‘yes,’ I will put in the stone. But suppose it should rain.”“You must come all the same.”She pouted. Her mind was making itself up, and the surer her decision became, the more she was inclined to play with him.“What will you do if you find there is no stone there?” she asked.But he had gone further in life than when they had parted, and his lingering boyhood was slipping from him.“Do you understand how serious this is?” he said rather sternly. “Don’t trifle, Isoline. It is ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and it is for you to decide it.”She wondered, for a moment, whether she really liked him as much as she had supposed.“I am not angry,” he said, holding out his hand and fearing he had been harsh, “but I am so anxious, darling.”She hesitated a moment before taking hers out of her muff.“It had better be this day week,” he said, “if you can be ready.”“This day week? But I have no new dresses, or anything.”“You can get them after,” said Harry.“So I could; when we go to London. We shall go to London, shall we not?”“I think it would be the best thing to do.”“Perhaps youwillfind the stone in the nest,” she said, smiling.He pressed the fingers he held.“You must slip away early in the morning. It would not do for us to go on the coach, and I cannot let you go alone, so I will get a carriage and have relays of post-horses. We must be in Hereford before midday, and I shall be waiting for you while it is still dark.”“And where must I meet you?” she inquired; “I hope I shall not have to go far alone.”“I cannot wait very near to Crishowell because the carriage might be seen, and when you are missed, as I suppose you will be in an hour or so, they would suspect where you had gone. The longer start we have of any one who may follow, the better.”“Do you think they will come after us, Harry?”“They might. But I hope by the time they see us, that it will be too late to take you away. You are not afraid, are you, dear?”“No, I shall not be then. I need not mind any one when I am Mrs. Fenton.”“We must meet on the other side of the village, for that will be a little bit further on our journey. Be in time, Isoline, because the longer I wait, the more chance there is of being seen. The second milestone out of Llangarth would do; you would not have a mile to walk then.”“Suppose any one should see me.”“If you are there at six o’clock, it will be quite dark; even if any one passed you would not be seen. The earlier we can get off the better.”“But suppose they had a light,” said she, thinking of the man who had seen Rhys.“Who carries a light so near sunrise?” exclaimed Harry. “No one.”“It is horrible having to go alone. I do not like it at all,” said Isoline.“I will go as far to meet you as I dare. Don’t fail me, dear,—but I know you won’t.”“You really talk of it as though it were settled,” said she. Though she spoke in this way, she knew in her inmost heart that her mind was made up, but not for the world would she have admitted it to her lover, even when the admission was to save her a tiresome walk on the morrow. She liked to exact the last farthing that she considered due to herself. She did not look happy as she retraced her steps, and, though it might be said that her troubles were righting themselves, she was not so, entirely. She was giving up what had been one of her dearest dreams.There would be no wedding—at least none in the sense in which it appealed to her—no toilette, no bridesmaids envious of her importance, no favours, no grey horses, none of the flourish and circumstance with which she had pictured herself entering married life. She could not have foreseen herself dispensing with it, but then, neither could she have foreseen the malign chance which had revealed Rhys Walters to the man with the dark lantern. The horror of that discovery was never long out of her mind.It was clear from what the newspapers had said that he was in communication with some one, and, while she and Harry delayed their marriage, every day brought its fresh possibility that Walters might hear a rumour of her engagement. Little as she knew of the deep places of human souls, she had seen, when they parted, that he was desperate, and a sort of dread had come to her of the power she had let loose; since the revelation of his name and character he had become a nightmare. She repented bitterly of her vanity, or, at least, of the toils into which her vanity had led her.At night she would wake and imagine him lying in waitbehind some tree to murder her, like the determined and forsaken heroes of romances she had read. Such things had happened before. Once she was married and clear of Crishowell she would be safe; but she was to pay for the hours in which she had sunned herself in his admiration with the glory that should have been hers as a bride.Next morning while Harry, at Waterchurch, was loitering about, chained to the vicinity of the stable-clock, she was walking briskly along the road with a stone in her muff.
HARRY’Semployment was not so congenial as to keep him one day at work after the news of his legacy had reached him, and, as soon as it was possible, he started for home.
He was now his own master, and Isoline, that star for which he had sighed through so many weary months, was within his reach; it was a glorious thought. He could hardly resist throwing his hat into the air as he drove along the road between Hereford and Waterchurch again, and saw all the familiar objects he had passed with her when they had travelled along it together in the early days of their acquaintance.
There would be no need for shilly-shallying now, no waiting on luck, on circumstances, on the tardy decisions of other people, for the trumps were in his hand and he had only to declare them and lead the game as he liked. Two thousand a year was a fortune to make him perfectly independent of anything his father might say or do, for were he to cut him out of the place itself, his future would still be assured, and he did not suppose that the Squire would take such a desperate line as that. Where would be the sense of leaving the poverty-stricken estate away from the only one of his sons who had the money to change its fortunes?
His departure for London had not upset Mr. Fenton very greatly, but the news that he had found work and was actually doing it came as a surprise. He had sat him down complacently in the belief that his prodigal son would soon return, wiser and sadder, to throw himself into the arms of a forgivingparent—for he meant to be forgiving. He was very fond of his children, and, though he stormed about the folly and ingratitude of this one’s behaviour, he looked forward to the day when he should receive him back, and, having magnanimously dismissed the subject of his infatuation in a few sentences, should welcome him again to reason and acquiescence in the saner judgment of older and more sober heads. It never struck him that there could be any other ending to the episode.
But as time passed and the letters which came to Lady Harriet gave no sign of change, he began to fear that the drudgery which he had promised himself would soon quench the young man’s thirst for work was doing no such thing. He could not understand it, for he had never supposed that Harry, careless, scatter-brained Harry, with his youth and light heart, had got it in him to show so much steadiness of purpose.
To his wife the truth was plain. Harry was growing up. It had taken him some time to begin the process, but the late development had set in at last, and been helped forward, as it so often is, by the influence of a woman. There was nothing to be done, she felt; time might bring things right, and she tried to persuade her husband that expressed opposition could do no good and might do a great deal of harm.
“It is all very well for you to talk,” the Squire said; “I am not contemplating a visit of remonstrance to him, though, to hear you, one would imagine I was going to rush up to London and take him by the throat. I shall do nothing about it; I shall simply ignore the whole thing.”
Tact was not Harry’s strong point. He had made up his mind that there should be no delay, and that a day should not elapse ere he delivered his ultimatum. Acting upon this resolve, he precipitated himself upon his father before he had been twenty-four hours in the house.
The result was direful. The Squire’s policy of mingled indifference and magnanimity which he had been hugging against his son’s return changed to gall and wormwood whenconfronted by the calm request that was made. The young man had not quite robbed his manner of the reflection of what lay behind it, and the knowledge that he was master of the situation peeped out under the formality he had spread smoothly on the top. He did not mean to be discourteous, but the last few months had made him feel twice the man he used to be, and he could not entirely suppress the consciousness.
“Consent?” roared Mr. Fenton, furious at being brought up against actualities which he laid decently away, “consent? I tell you the whole thing is a cock-and-bull story! Don’t come here, sir, wasting my precious time over such stuff!”
Harry’s answer had at least the merit of simplicity. He went straight out to the stable, took a horse, and set off to Crishowell. Before he reached the village he met Isoline, who was taking an afternoon walk. She sedulously avoided the direction of the mountain now.
It was cold, and she was muffled up in a fur tippet. Her eyes were sparkling. A rose-coloured scarf that she had wound round her neck fluttered behind her.
“You see, Isoline, now everything has come right,” he said as he let her hand go; “it is well that you trusted me, isn’t it, darling?”
Her smile, as she looked at him, was answer enough. She was very happy.
They turned into a by-road and he drew the bridle over his arm, walking beside her.
There was a shade of embarrassment in his mind; he knew that his chance of seeing and speaking to her was not likely to occur again, and he had so much to say. There were a thousand things he had settled as he came along, and which he must discuss with her. He had rushed over to Crishowell, not only as a sort of protest against his father’s attitude, but because he knew that he would not be allowed to see Isoline were the Vicar to be prepared for his coming. He wanted to tell her more about his legacy too, though, to his unsuspicious heart, money seemed a sordid thing to talk about to her. And therewas something of vital importance, something which he meant to propose. He feared to begin. It was simply providential that he had met her.
“I suppose,” he began, “that they would not let you see me if I were to come to the house. I have so much to say. Isoline, I want to ask you something. Could you make a sacrifice, do you think? Dearest, I don’t know where to start. I must tell you heaps of things, horrid things, some of them.”
She looked up quickly.
“My father is in a dreadful rage. I asked him again to-day, just now, to give in. He will not.”
“Yes, but you need not mind him now,” broke in the girl.
“No, that’s it. That is what made him so furious.”
“But you are not thinking of giving me up?” she said suddenly. “Oh, Harry! you never mean that!”
“Give you up? Now, when, at last, I can do as I please? Not likely. Isoline, I believe you are joking.”
“I never joke,” said she, with much truth.
“What I am going to ask you to do is this,” he said gravely, stopping in the road and looking older than she had ever seen him look before; “I want to make these separations impossible. I want you to come away with me, once and for all.”
“What? Now!” she cried, bewildered, stepping a pace or two back.
“Not now, but soon. In a few days—a week, perhaps.”
She looked at him blankly.
“Oh, I cannot!” she exclaimed, “it would never do.”
“But why, dear? It has been done before now.”
“What would they say?”
“That would not matter. You would be my own wife and no one could say or do anything.”
She made no reply and they walked on; her face was downcast. She clasped her hands more tightly in her muff and shivered.
“It would take a little time,” he went on; “I should have to get a special licence and go to London first. But in a weekeverything could be ready. We can be married in Hereford and then go straight away. Isoline, will you?”
She was silent.
“Won’t you speak, dearest?” said he at last. “Think; all our troubles would be over and we need never part any more.”
“They will be terribly angry,” said Isoline, lifting her eyes suddenly.
“No one matters. At least, no one except my mother,” he added, with a half-sigh, “and I know she will forgive me in a little, when she knows you better. You cannot think how good she is, Isoline.”
Her face hardened.
“We need not see them, I suppose,” she said.
“We can go straight abroad, if you like.”
“I should like London best,” said the girl.
“We need not come back a moment before we wish to. I am quite independent, you see. I have not got much ready money at this moment, but any one will advance it until I am actually receiving my legacy. Want of money need not trouble us again.”
“You have two thousand a year, have you not, Harry?”
“Two thousand, one hundred and eleven pounds. There are some shillings and pence, too, I believe. I went into it all with the lawyer.”
“How fortunately it has happened,” said Isoline fervently, her eyes looking onward to the wintry horizon.
He was thinking the same thing. All at once, out of the silence that fell between them, there swam up before him the solemnity of what he meant to undertake. It was for all his life, probably, and for hers too. A vague foreshadowing of the buffets of the world, of time, of chance, of fate, played across his mind. He turned to her, a wave of tenderness in his heart, and looked down into her perplexed face.
“If you will do this thing,” he said, “I will try always to make up to you for what I have asked.”
She looked straight in front of her.
“But I have not decided,” she said, almost petulantly; “how can I all at once?”
“This is likely to be my last and only chance of talking to you,” he pleaded; “if we settle anything we must do it to-day. You could not see me if I came; that is the difficulty.”
She shook her head. “Not if your father makes all this fuss.”
“And writing would not be safe. So you see we must think it out now. Heaven knows when we may meet again.”
“Do you think they willnevergive in, Harry?”
“Never’s a long day. But it might take time. It might be a year, it might be much more. It does not matter for me, but your uncle will hold to it as long as my father does. Oh, darling! I hate this miserable waiting. Who knows what may happen in a year?”
“That is all true, Harry. Oh! whatcanI do?” she cried. “It is so difficult! If I only had a little time!”
“Take till to-morrow, Isoline.”
“To-morrow? And how can I see you to-morrow?”
“You must send to me.”
She laughed shortly.
“What messenger have I? Howlie is always busy. Besides, he might do something dreadful.”
“Well, I must think of some other way,” said he, “and you must think too, Isoline. Between us, we shall light on something. What if you made me some sign?”
“Wait—I have it!” he cried. “Will you go out to-morrow?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Any time?”
“Any time within reason.”
“Then go for your walk in the morning before twelve o’clock. Do you know the gate at the foot of the lane? The first one as you turn towards Brecon. I passed it just before I met you.”
“I do not remember it.”
“Then go and look at it after I have gone,” said Harry. “There is a bush beside it—only one—and you will see alast year’s nest in the branches. If you will come away with me, put a stone into it. I will ride by in the afternoon, and, if it is there, I shall know you have said yes.”
“But can I reach the nest?”
“If you stand on one of the rails of the gate you can. It is not out of reach, for I wondered, as I passed, how it was that the boys had not pulled it down.”
He searched her face earnestly for some clue to what she would do.
“What an odd idea,” she said at last
“But will you do that? It is the only way I can think of, and I must know to-morrow. There is so much to arrange, dear.”
“Very well,” said Isoline, “if I mean ‘yes,’ I will put in the stone. But suppose it should rain.”
“You must come all the same.”
She pouted. Her mind was making itself up, and the surer her decision became, the more she was inclined to play with him.
“What will you do if you find there is no stone there?” she asked.
But he had gone further in life than when they had parted, and his lingering boyhood was slipping from him.
“Do you understand how serious this is?” he said rather sternly. “Don’t trifle, Isoline. It is ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and it is for you to decide it.”
She wondered, for a moment, whether she really liked him as much as she had supposed.
“I am not angry,” he said, holding out his hand and fearing he had been harsh, “but I am so anxious, darling.”
She hesitated a moment before taking hers out of her muff.
“It had better be this day week,” he said, “if you can be ready.”
“This day week? But I have no new dresses, or anything.”
“You can get them after,” said Harry.
“So I could; when we go to London. We shall go to London, shall we not?”
“I think it would be the best thing to do.”
“Perhaps youwillfind the stone in the nest,” she said, smiling.
He pressed the fingers he held.
“You must slip away early in the morning. It would not do for us to go on the coach, and I cannot let you go alone, so I will get a carriage and have relays of post-horses. We must be in Hereford before midday, and I shall be waiting for you while it is still dark.”
“And where must I meet you?” she inquired; “I hope I shall not have to go far alone.”
“I cannot wait very near to Crishowell because the carriage might be seen, and when you are missed, as I suppose you will be in an hour or so, they would suspect where you had gone. The longer start we have of any one who may follow, the better.”
“Do you think they will come after us, Harry?”
“They might. But I hope by the time they see us, that it will be too late to take you away. You are not afraid, are you, dear?”
“No, I shall not be then. I need not mind any one when I am Mrs. Fenton.”
“We must meet on the other side of the village, for that will be a little bit further on our journey. Be in time, Isoline, because the longer I wait, the more chance there is of being seen. The second milestone out of Llangarth would do; you would not have a mile to walk then.”
“Suppose any one should see me.”
“If you are there at six o’clock, it will be quite dark; even if any one passed you would not be seen. The earlier we can get off the better.”
“But suppose they had a light,” said she, thinking of the man who had seen Rhys.
“Who carries a light so near sunrise?” exclaimed Harry. “No one.”
“It is horrible having to go alone. I do not like it at all,” said Isoline.
“I will go as far to meet you as I dare. Don’t fail me, dear,—but I know you won’t.”
“You really talk of it as though it were settled,” said she. Though she spoke in this way, she knew in her inmost heart that her mind was made up, but not for the world would she have admitted it to her lover, even when the admission was to save her a tiresome walk on the morrow. She liked to exact the last farthing that she considered due to herself. She did not look happy as she retraced her steps, and, though it might be said that her troubles were righting themselves, she was not so, entirely. She was giving up what had been one of her dearest dreams.
There would be no wedding—at least none in the sense in which it appealed to her—no toilette, no bridesmaids envious of her importance, no favours, no grey horses, none of the flourish and circumstance with which she had pictured herself entering married life. She could not have foreseen herself dispensing with it, but then, neither could she have foreseen the malign chance which had revealed Rhys Walters to the man with the dark lantern. The horror of that discovery was never long out of her mind.
It was clear from what the newspapers had said that he was in communication with some one, and, while she and Harry delayed their marriage, every day brought its fresh possibility that Walters might hear a rumour of her engagement. Little as she knew of the deep places of human souls, she had seen, when they parted, that he was desperate, and a sort of dread had come to her of the power she had let loose; since the revelation of his name and character he had become a nightmare. She repented bitterly of her vanity, or, at least, of the toils into which her vanity had led her.
At night she would wake and imagine him lying in waitbehind some tree to murder her, like the determined and forsaken heroes of romances she had read. Such things had happened before. Once she was married and clear of Crishowell she would be safe; but she was to pay for the hours in which she had sunned herself in his admiration with the glory that should have been hers as a bride.
Next morning while Harry, at Waterchurch, was loitering about, chained to the vicinity of the stable-clock, she was walking briskly along the road with a stone in her muff.