She stood beside the cot and gazed with a desperate tenderness upon it. There now slept the lord of Bindon! His fortune was secured, and by her deed. She bent her head to kiss the little chubby hand. But before her lips had reached it she shuddered back:—between her and her child’s hand rose the vision of another hand, pale, limp, with a signet-ring.
CHAPTER XIV
JEALOUS WATCHERS OF THE NIGHT
Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’Tis an unweeded garden
That’s gone to seed: things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely....
... Frailty thy name is woman!
—Shakespeare (Hamlet).
It was late at night when Colonel Harcourt dismounted, stiff and tired, in front of the Cheveral Arms. He had successfully sought at Bath a pair of friends who were to call upon Sir David on the morrow; but he had, somewhat morosely, declined their proffered hospitality. For some ill-defined reason he had been drawn back to Bindon.
The sleepy landlord had but a poor supper to serve: per contra an excellent bottle of wine. One, indeed, that so curiously resembled the Clos-Royal of which the colonel had approved at Bindon House that, as he tasted it, he found himself sardonically regretting that he had not pressed a more handsome gratuity into old Giles’s palm.
Indeed, he soon called for another bottle. Yet he was in no better a humour after the cracking of the second seal. The thoughts seething in his brain remained as dark and heavy as the liquor in his glass, but were far from being as generous.