“How darest thou set foot on the premises your chastity should have protected and secured! What wind of transparent touch must have blown its blasts of boldest bravery around your poisoned person and guided you within miles of the mansion I proudly own?
“What spirit but that of evil used its influence upon you to dare to bend your footsteps of foreign tread towards the door through which they once stole unknown? Ah, woman of sin and stray companion of tutorism, arise, I demand you, and strike across that grassy centre as quickly as you can, and never more make your hated face appear within these mighty walls. I can never own you; I can never call you mother; I cannot extend the assistance your poor, poverty-stricken attire of false don silently requests; neither can I ever meet you on this side the grave, before which you so pityingly kneel!”
Speechless and dogged did the dishonoured mother steal for ever from the presence of her son, but not before bestowing one final look at the brightened eye and angry countenance of him who loaded on her his lordly abuse. The bowed form of former stateliness left for ever the grounds she might have owned without even daring to offer one word of repentance or explanation to her son.
Walking leisurely along the road that reached Dilworth Castle, how the trying moments told upon her who shared in pangs of insult and poverty!—how the thoughts of pleasant days piled themselves with parched power upon the hilltop of remembrance and died away in the distance! The whirling brain became more staid as she heard the approach of horses’ feet, and stopping to act the part of Lot’s wife, gave such a haggard stare at the driver of the vehicle as caused him to make a sudden halt. Asking her to have a seat, the weary woman gladly mounted upon its cushion with thankfulness, and alighted on reaching its journey’s end, about three miles from Audley Hall. The drive was a long one, and helped to rest the tired body of temptation.
Returning thanks to the obliging driver, she marched wearily along until she reached the home of her first refuge after flight.
Perceiving the yellow shutters firmly bolted against the light admitters of Audley Hall, she feared disappointment was also awaiting her. Knocking loudly twice before any attempt was made to open the door, there came at last an aged man with halting step and shaking limb.
“Is Major Iddesleigh at home?” asked the saddened widow. “Oh, madam, he has been dead almost twelve years, and since then no one has occupied this Hall save myself, who am caretaker. The Marquis of Orland was deceived by his nephew, who sold it in an underhand manner to the major, and he resolved that never again would he allow it to be occupied since the major’s death by any outsider.”
“You are rather lonely,” said the widow. “Yes, yes,” replied he; “but I have always been accustomed living alone, being an old bachelor, and wish to remain so. It is better to live a life of singleness than torture both body and soul by marrying a woman who doesn’t love you, like the good Sir John Dunfern—a nobleman who lived only some miles from this, and who died lately broken-hearted—who became so infatuated with an upstart of unknown parentage, who lived in Dilworth Castle, with one Lord Dilworth, the previous owner, that he married her offhand, and, what was the result, my good woman?—why she eventually ran off with a poor tutor! and brought the hairs of hoary whiteness of Sir John Dunfern to the grave much sooner than in all probability they would have, had he remained like me.”
Facing fumes of insult again, thought the listener. And asking after Major Iddesleigh’s will, eagerly awaited his reply.
Placing one hand upon her shoulder, and pointing with the other, “Behold,” said he, “yonder church? that was his last will—Iddesleigh Church. It was only when the jaws of death gaped for their prey that the major was forced to alter his will, having had it previously prepared in favour of his niece, whose whereabouts could never be traced until after his death.” “Enough—enough, I must go,” said the painful listener, and thanking the old man for his information, which, like her son’s, had screwed its bolts of deadly weight more deeply down on the lid of abstract need, turned her back on Audley Hall for ever.