“Oh!” she cried, “if you can do this, I will forget all the past.”
“At my house,” said Gray. “’Tis near at hand.”
“I will count the minutes till you return,” said Ada. “Oh, go at once.”
“Yes, but not alone. You go with me, or I go not at all. Come, Ada, quick. We shall be back very soon. You are equipped for walking. We will go together.”
“Not leave here? Has your love for this place suddenly grown so strong?”
“Then we part for ever! Farewell! Ada. I go now to destroy—to burn those papers! Carry with you through life the doubts that now harass you!”
“Why force me to accompany you?” said Ada. “I am very weary.”
“Decide! The distance is but short. The next half hour fixes your fate for a life!”
“Half hour!” said Ada. “Will it consume but half an hour?”
“Scarcely so much. A boat will take us where we are going in half the time.”
“Well—well,” replied Gray, avoiding her eyes.
“We shall, assuredly. Then my task shall be to find out this young man—this Albert Seyton.”
“I—I will go,” said Ada. “Let us hasten—but half an hour?”
“You will know all then,” remarked Gray; “who and what you are, you will know; but if you come not now, I leave you this instant for ever! You’ll never see me more! And in losing me, you lose all clue to the solution of mysteries that will torture you through life.”
“I will go—I will go,” said Ada. “Within the hour we shall return.”
“The papers that were above in the chest, where are they?”
“I am weary. Will you not wait until sunset?”
Gray took her by the arm, and they left the house together.
A thousand conflicting thoughts rushed through Ada’s mind. The prominent one, however, was the pleasure it would give her to meet Albert Seyton, no longer the child of mystery, and perhaps of guilt, but the proud descendant of some pure and unsullied house. If she let Gray depart now, with him all chance of unravelling doubts and mysteries which, as he truly said, would torture her through life, would be lost. Albert and his father would come but to encumber themselves with a nameless, destitute girl. That she could not bear, and although she doubted, yet, she trusted Jacob Gray.
Ada, when she made up her mind that she would accompany Gray, quite astonished him by the nervous haste which she showed in urging him along, and his naturally suspicious mind at once surmised that there was some especial reason in the mind of the young girl which induced her desire to return to the house they were leaving within the hour.