They arrived thus flying at the gates of the Rochfords’ house, a big red-brick mansion just outside the town. There was a light in the coachman’s cottage which answered the purpose of a lodge, and the coachman himself came out, half scared, half awake, to open to the pair of lamps that gleamed through the darkness, and the fiery horse from whose nostrils went up what seemed puffs of smoke into the frosty air. “At ’ome? He’ve just got home, and scarce a-bed yet,” said the man. “Whatever can you want of master so early in the morning?” Walter had considered it to be night up to this moment; he recognized it as morning with a sigh of excitement. “Mr. Rochford must be called immediately,” he said, his thoughts tugging at him all the time, saying, Why? Why can’t you let him alone? Is it your business to force him to get up, to produce his papers, to drive half a dozen miles in the chill of the morning? But Walter, though he heard all this, took no notice. “Let him know that I am waiting. Sir Walter Penton is very ill. He must come at once,” he said. He jumped down from the cart, and began to pace rapidly up and down to restore the circulation to his half-frozen limbs, while the groom covered the horse with a cloth and eased the harness. There was no time to put the animal up, to go in-doors and wait. As Walter took his sharp walk up and down, the opposing force in his mind had a time to itself of inaction and silence, and heaped argument upon argument before him. What! hurry like this, drag every one that was wanted from their rest, disturb the whole sleeping world with the clamor of his appeal in order to undo himself! Was this his duty, anyhow that it could be considered? Was it his duty to undo himself? More than ever, now he had seen it, Penton had become the hope of his life, the object of all his wishes; and was it in order to divest himself of the last possibility of being heir of Penton, though this was what Sir Walter had called him, that he was here?
The chill became keener than ever; a sharp air, blighting everything it touched, blew in his face and chilled him to the bone. It was the first breath of the dreary dawning, the dismal rising of a dull day. A faint stir became perceptible in the house, very faint, a light flashed at a window, there was a far-off sound of a voice, the movement of some one coming down-stairs. Then a voice called out, “What is it, Penton? Is it possible I’m wanted? I can’t believe the man. What do you want with me?” And Rochford, shivering, half dressed, with a candle in his hand, appeared at a side door, close to which Walter was performing his march. “You can’t have come all this way for nothing,” he cried, “but it’s not an hour since I came home. It doesn’t seem possible. Am I wanted certainly?”