Jeffray leaned back against the wall, and looked out gravely through the open window.
“She has trusted me; God help me to deserve her trust.”
As the morning wore on, Wilson noticed that an increasing restlessness was taking possession of the rebel. He grew moody, distraught, and silent, called for wine, and wandered hesitatingly about the room. The painter began to wonder whether Jeffray’s enthusiasm was abating, and whether he was tempted to regard the adventure in a more cold and calculating light. The affair reminded the painter of love as it was pictured in the old ballads. The beggar’s daughter of Bethnal Green could have had no more monstrously impossible romance than this peasant girl in a Sussex forest.
Mr. Wilson’s surmises, however, were utterly at fault, though logic upheld them with an obvious display of probabilities. It was his ignorance of Lot Hardacre’s fate that was troubling Jeffray at the eleventh hour. No news had come from Rookhurst, and his cousin might have bled to death in the coach for all Jeffray knew to the contrary. Bess’s surrender, the bustle of preparation, had carried Richard above the wreckage of the past for the morning. The memory of Lot’s gray face and bloody body haunted him as the hours passed by.
The restless stirrings of compunction were not to be refused a hearing. Jeffray met his fears with the answer of action. He would ride to Rookhurst, go to Stott’s house, and hear the truth from the surgeon’s own lips.
“I cannot rest, Dick,” he said, “until I have heard the truth about poor Lot.”
Wilson suggested that he might send a servant.
“Dick,” quoth the younger man, sadly, “that would be ungenerous of me. It was my sword that did the deed.”
“You will remain on guard this afternoon? Bess is in the blue parlor beyond the dining-room. You will find my pistols in the library.”
Wilson smiled as though amused at the responsibility that was thrust upon him.
“I will play the Cerberus, sir,” he said. “Go to Rookhurst, and may you find Mr. Hardacre alive.”
Jeffray saw Bess before he left the house, and explained the nature of his purpose to her. She was a little loath for him to go, having learned to feel already a sweet and strange security in his presence. He kissed her, and smiled, not sorry in his heart that even the small leave-takings of love could bring regret into the woman’s eyes. She went with him to the terrace, and parted from him with a pressure of the hand.