Trevlyn Hold Part 33

Mrs. Chattaway rose. "I'll go to bed," she meekly answered, "and get what sleep I can. I remember that you ridiculed this feeling of mine in the old days----"

"Pray did anything come of it then?" interrupted Miss Diana, sarcastically.

"I have said it did not. And the impression left me. But it has come again. Good night, Diana."

"Good night, and a more sensible frame of mind to you!" was the retort of Miss Diana.

Mrs. Chattaway crept softly along the corridor to her own dressing-room, hoping that her husband by that time was in bed and asleep. What was her surprise, then, to see him sitting at the table when she entered, not undressed, and as wide awake as she was.

"You have business late with Diana," he remarked.

Mrs. Chattaway felt wholly and entirely subdued; she had felt so since the previous night, when Rupert was denied admittance. The painful shyness, clinging to her always, seemed partially to have left her for a time. It was as though she had not strength left to be timid; almost as Rupert felt in his weariness of body, she was past caring for anything in her utter weariness of mind. Otherwise, she might not have spoken to Miss Diana as she had just done: most certainly she could never have spoken as she was about to speak to Mr. Chattaway.

"What may your business with her have been?" he resumed.

"It was not much, James," she answered. "I was saying how ill I felt."

"Ill! With what?"

"Ill in mind, I think," said Mrs. Chattaway, putting her hand to her brow. "I was telling her that the old fear had come upon me; the impression that used to cling to me always that some change was at hand regarding Rupert. I lost it for a great many years, but it has come again."

"Try and speak lucidly, if you can," was Mr. Chattaway's answer. "What has come again?"

"It seems to have come upon me in the light of a warning," she resumed, so lucidly that Mr. Chattaway, had he been a few steps lower in social grade, might have felt inclined to strike her. "I have ever felt that Rupert would in some manner regain his rights--I mean what he was deprived of," she hastily added, condoning the word which had slipped from her. "That he will regain Trevlyn Hold, and we shall lose it."

Mr. Chattaway listened in consternation, his mouth gradually opening in bewilderment. "What makes you think that?" he asked, when he found his voice.

"I don't exactly _think_ it, James. Think is not the right word. The feeling has come upon me again within the last few weeks, and I cannot shake it off. I believe it to be a presentiment; a warning."

Paler and paler grew Mr. Chattaway. He did not understand. Like Miss Diana Trevlyn, he was very matter-of-fact, comprehending nothing but what could be seen and felt; and his wife might as well have spoken in an unknown tongue as of "presentiments." He drew a rapid conclusion that some unpleasant fact, bearing upon the dread _he_ had long felt, must have come to his wife's knowledge.

"What have you heard?" he gasped.

"I have heard nothing; nothing whatever. I----"

"Then what on earth are you talking about?"

"Did you understand me, James? I say the impression was once firmly seated in my mind that Rupert would somehow be restored to what--to what"--she scarcely knew how to frame her words with the delicacy she deemed due to her husband's feelings--"to what would have been his but for his father's death. And that impression has now returned to me."

"But you have not heard anything? Any plot?--any conspiracy that's being hatched against us?"

"No, no."

Mr. Chattaway stared searchingly at his wife. Did he fancy, as Miss Diana had done, that her intellect was becoming disordered?

"Then, what do you mean?" he asked, after a pause. "Why should such an idea arise?"

Mrs. Chattaway was silent. She could not tell him the truth; could not say she believed it was the constant dwelling upon the wrong and injustice, which had first suggested the notion that the wrong would inevitably recoil on its workers. They had broken alike the laws of G.o.d and man; and those who do so cannot be sure of immunity from punishment in this world. That they had so long enjoyed unmolested the inheritance gained by fraud, gave no certainty that they would enjoy it to the end.

She felt it, if her husband and Diana Trevlyn did not. Too often there were certain verses of Holy Writ spelling out their syllables upon her brain. "Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee."

All this she could not say to Mr. Chattaway. She could give him no good reason for what she had said; he did not understand imaginative fancies, and he went to rest after bestowing upon her a sharp lecture for indulging them.

Nevertheless, in spite of her denial, the master of Trevlyn Hold could not divest himself of the impression that she must have picked up some sc.r.a.p of news, or heard a word dropped in some quarter, which had led her to say what she did. And it gave him terrible discomfort.

Was the haunting shadow, the latent dread in his heart, about to be changed into substance? He lay on his bed, turning uneasily from side to side until the morning, wondering from what quarter the first glimmer of mischief would come.

CHAPTER XIX

A FIT OF AMIABILITY

Rupert came down to breakfast the next morning. He was cold, sick, shivery; little better than he had felt the previous night; his chest sore, his breathing painful. A good fire burnt in the grate of the breakfast-room--Miss Diana was a friend to fires, and caused them to be lighted as soon as the heat of summer had pa.s.sed--and Rupert bent over it. He cared for it more than for food; and yet it was no doubt having gone without food the previous day which was causing the sensation of sickness within him now.

Miss Diana glided in, erect and majestic. "How are you this morning?"

she asked of Rupert.

"Pretty well," he answered, as he warmed his thin white hands over the blaze. "I have the old pain here a bit"--touching his chest. "It will go off by-and-by, I dare say."

Miss Diana had her eyes riveted on him. The extreme delicacy of his countenance--its lines of fading health--struck upon her greatly. Was he looking worse? or was it that her absence from home for three weeks had caused her to notice it more than she had done when seeing him daily?

She asked herself the question, and could not decide.

"You don't look very well, Rupert."

"Don't I? I have not felt well for this week or two. I think the walking to Blackstone and back is too much for me."

"You must have a pony," she continued after a pause.

"Ah! that would be a help to me," he said, his countenance brightening.

"I might get on better with what I have to do there. Mr. Chattaway grumbles, and grumbles, but I declare, Aunt Diana, that I do my best.

The walk there seems to take away all my energy, and, by the time I sit down, I am unfit for work."

Miss Diana went nearer to him, and spoke in lower tones. "What was the reason that you disobeyed Mr. Chattaway with regard to coming in?"

"I did not do it intentionally," he replied. "The time slipped on, and it got late without my noticing it. I think I told you so last night, Aunt Diana."

"Very well. It must not occur again," she said, peremptorily and significantly. "If you are locked out in future, I shall not interfere."

Mr. Chattaway came in, with a discontented gesture and a blue face. He was none the better for his sleepless night, and the torment which had caused it. Rupert drew away from the fire, leaving the field clear for him: as a schoolboy does at the entrance of his master.

"Don't let us have this trouble repeated," he roughly said to Rupert.

"As soon as you have breakfasted, make the best of your way to Blackstone: and don't lag on the road."

"Rupert's not going to Blackstone to-day," said Miss Diana.

Mr. Chattaway turned upon her: no very pleasant expression on his countenance. "What's that for?"