David Elginbrod Part 45

"From my father, and from Jesus Christ, and from G.o.d himself, showing them to me in my heart."

"Ah! that is why, as often as you come into my room, even if I am very troubled, I feel as if the sun shone, and the wind blew, and the birds sang, and the tree-tops went waving in the wind, as they used to do before I was taken ill--I mean before they thought I must go abroad. You seem to make everything clear, and right, and plain.

I wish I were you, Margaret."

"If I were you, my lady, I would rather be what G.o.d chose to make me, than the most glorious creature that I could think of. For to have been thought about--born in G.o.d's thoughts--and then made by G.o.d, is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking.

Is it not, my lady?"

"It is," said Lady Emily, and was silent.

The shadows of evening came on. As soon as it was dark, Margaret took her place at one of the windows hidden from Lady Emily by a bed-curtain. She raised the blind, and pulled aside one curtain, to let her have a view of the trees outside. She had placed the one candle so as not to shine either on the window or on her own eyes.

Lady Emily was asleep. One hour and another pa.s.sed, and still she sat there--motionless, watching.

Margaret did not know, that at another window--the one, indeed, next to her own--stood a second watcher. It was Hugh, in Harry's room: Harry was asleep in Hugh's. He had no light. He stood with his face close against the windowpane, on which the moon shone brightly.

All below him the woods were half dissolved away in the moonlight.

The Ghost's Walk lay full before him, like a tunnel through the trees. He could see a great way down, by the light that fell into it, at various intervals, from between the boughs overhead. He stood thus for a long time, gazing somewhat listlessly. Suddenly he became all eyes, as he caught the white glimmer of something pa.s.sing up the avenue. He stole out of the room, down to the library by the back-stair, and so through the library window into the wood. He reached the avenue sideways, at some distance from the house, and peeped from behind a tree, up and down. At first he saw nothing.

But, a moment after, while he was looking down the avenue, that is, away from the house, a veiled figure in white pa.s.sed him noiselessly from the other direction. From the way in which he was looking at the moment, it had pa.s.sed him before he saw it. It made no sound.

Only some early-fallen leaves rustled as they hurried away in uncertain eddies, startled by the sweep of its trailing garments, which yet were held up by hands hidden within them. On it went.

Hugh's eyes were fixed on its course. He could not move, and his heart laboured so frightfully that he could hardly breathe. The figure had not advanced far, however, before he heard a repressed cry of agony, and it sank to the earth, and vanished; while from where it disappeared, down the path, came, silently too, turning neither to the right nor the left, a second figure, veiled in black from head to foot.

"It is the nun in Lady Euphrasia's room," said Hugh to himself.

This pa.s.sed him too, and, walking slowly towards the house, disappeared somewhere, near the end of the avenue. Turning once more, with reviving courage--for his blood had begun to flow more equably--Hugh ventured to approach the spot where the white figure had vanished. He found nothing there but the shadow of a huge tree.

He walked through the avenue to the end, and then back to the house, but saw nothing; though he often started at fancied appearances. Sorely bewildered, he returned to his own room. After speculating till thought was weary, he lay down beside Harry, whom he was thankful to find in a still repose, and fell fast asleep.

Margaret lay on a couch in Lady Emily's room, and slept likewise; but she started wide awake at every moan of the invalid, who often moaned in her sleep.

CHAPTER XX.

THE BAD MAN.

She kent he was nae gentle knight, That she had letten in; For neither when he gaed nor cam', Kissed he her cheek or chin.

He neither kissed her when he cam'

Nor clappit her when he gaed; And in and out at her bower window, The moon shone like the gleed.

Glenkindie.--Old Scotch Ballad.

When Euphra recovered from the swoon into which she had fallen--for I need hardly explain to my readers, that it was she who walked the Ghost's Walk in white--on seeing Margaret, whom, under the irresistible influences of the moonlight and a bad conscience, she took for the very being whom Euphra herself was personating--when she recovered, I say, she found herself lying in the wood, with Funkelstein, whom she had gone to meet, standing beside her. Her first words were of anger, as she tried to rise, and found she could not.

"How long, Count Halkar, am I to be your slave?"

"Till you have learned to submit."

"Have I not done all I can?"

"You have not found it. You are free from the moment you place that ring, belonging to me, in right of my family, into my hands."

I do not believe that the man really was Count Halkar, although he had evidently persuaded Euphra that such was his name and t.i.tle. I think it much more probable that, in the course of picking up a ma.s.s of trifling information about various families of distinction, for which his position of secretary in several of their houses had afforded him special facilities, he had learned something about the Halkar family, and this particular ring, of which, for some reason or other, he wanted to possess himself.

"What more can I do?" moaned Euphra, succeeding at length in raising herself to a sitting posture, and leaning thus against a tree. "I shall be found out some day. I have been already seen wandering through the house at midnight, with the heart of a thief. I hate you, Count Halkar!"

A low laugh was the count's only reply.

"And now Lady Euphrasia herself dogs my steps, to keep me from the ring." She gave a low cry of agony at the remembrance.

"Miss Cameron--Euphra--are you going to give way to such folly?"

"Folly! Is it not worse folly to torture a poor girl as you do me--all for a worthless ring? What can you want with the ring? I do not know that he has it even."

"You lie. You know he has. You need not think to take me in."

"You base man! You dare not give the lie to any but a woman."

"Why?"

"Because you are a coward. You are afraid of Lady Euphrasia yourself. See there!"

Von Funkelstein glanced round him uneasily. It was only the moonlight on the bark of a silver birch. Conscious of having betrayed weakness, he grew spiteful.

"If you do not behave to me better, I will compel you. Rise up!"

After a moment's hesitation, she rose.

"Put your arms round me."

She seemed to grow to the earth, and to drag herself from it, one foot after another. But she came close up to the Bohemian, and put one arm half round him, looking to the earth all the time.

"Kiss me."

"Count Halkar!" her voice sounded hollow and harsh, as if from a dead throat--"I will do what you please. Only release me."

"Go then; but mind you resist me no more. I do not care for your kisses. You were ready enough once. But that idiot of a tutor has taken my place, I see."

"Would to G.o.d I had never seen you!--never yielded to your influence over me! Swear that I shall be free if I find you the ring."

"You find the ring first. Why should I swear? I can compel you.

You know you laid yourself out to entrap me first with your arts, and I only turned upon you with mine. And you are in my power. But you shall be free, notwithstanding; and I will torture you till you free yourself. Find the ring."

"Cruel! cruel! You are doing all you can to ruin me."

"On the contrary, I am doing all I can to save myself. If you had loved me as you allowed me to think once, I should never have made you my tool."

"You would all the same."

"Take care. I am irritable to-night."