“I am fortunate, sir,” began the old man in quavering tones, “to find you at home. Sir, I have come a long way to seek you. I went first to your castle at Tollendhal, where your steward, a countryman of my own, to whose politeness I am much indebted, gave me very careful instructions as to the road to your English domicile. A most worthy and amiable person! I should not so soon have had the advantage of making your acquaintance had it not been for the help he gave me. I have come by Yarmouth, sir: the wind was all in our favour. I am informed we had a good passage.” Here he shivered, and a yet greener shade underspread the scars upon his brow. “But I am not accustomed to the sea, and I have been ill, sir, lately, very ill.”
He coughed awkwardly, reached out his trembling hand for the wine, but put down the glass again untasted.
“Surely I am right in believing,” said I, “that you come from some one very dear to me—from one from whom I am parted by a series of unfortunate misunderstandings?” I felt my lips grow cold as I spoke, and I know that I panted.
“If you have a letter,” said I, “give it to me.”
I reached out my hand, and saw, with a strange sort of self-pity, that it shook no less than had the old man’s withered claw.
“Or if you have a message,” cried I, breaking out at last, “speak, for God’s sake!”
He drew back from my impetuosity. There was fear of me in his eye; at the same time, I thought, with a chill about my heart, compassion.
“My good sir,” he said, between “hums” and “ha’s” which well-nigh drove me distracted, “I believe I may say—in fact, I will venture to assert that I have come from the—ahem, ahem!—young lady I apprehend you speak of. I have been made aware of the—ah, hum!—unfortunate circumstances. The young lady——.” Here he hitched himself up in his chair and began to fumble in the skirts of his floating coat. Between his furs and his feebleness this was a sufficiently lengthy operation to give time for my hopes to kindle stronger again and my small stock of patience to fail.
“You are doubtless prepared to hear,” he went on at length, “that the young lady, being now fully alive to the consequence of her—her—ill-considered conduct—a girlish freak, sir, a child’s, I may say!—believes that she will be meeting your wishes, nay, your express desire, by joining with you in an application to his Holiness for the immediate annulment of so irregular a marriage.”
“What?” cried I with a roar, leaping from my chair. So occupied had I been in watching the movements of his hands as he fingered a great pocket-book, expecting him every instant to produce a letter from her to me, that I had scarce heeded the drift of his babble till the last words struck upon my ear.