He smiled quietly, and kept his softened eyes fixed on mine. I began to struggle against the drowsiness that possessed me; my eyelashes fell together, and I could muster neither strength nor wish to open them. A languid repose stole over my limbs—I did not awake till morning, and then Chaleco stood before me, holding an antique china cup and saucer in his hand full of smoking chocolate.
“Drink!” he said, raking open the embers; “here are roasted eggs and bread—they will give you strength.”
I took the cup. “When shall we start?” I asked, eager to commence my search for Cora.
“Not till after nightfall,” was the reply; “one day of entire rest you must have. Besides, it will not do for us to travel so near Greenhurst by daylight.”
My heart fell at the thought that no one would trouble themselves about us—no one except old Turner, and secrecy was the only kindness I could render him.
After I had breakfasted, Chaleco left me, and all day long I wandered through the vast desolation of that old building, as a ghost might haunt the vaulted passages of a catacomb.
The reaction of all the exciting scenes I had passed through was upon me, and with dull apathy I strolled through those desolated chambers, regardless of all that would, in another state of mind, have filled my brain with the keenest emotions. Everything was so still in the old house—the sunbeams that came through the windows were so dulled with accumulated dust upon the glass, that I seemed gliding through a cloudy twilight quietly as a shadow, and almost as lifeless. I literally cared for nothing; my heart beat so sluggishly that I could hardly feel the life within me. Now I remembered every object in the old house with perfect distinctness. Then everything ran together like an incoherent dream.
Night came, and then I began to wonder about Chaleco, who had been absent all day. I had no apprehension, and but little anxiety; nothing just then seemed important enough for me to care about. I thought even of my father’s death-bed with a sort of stolid gloom.
Lifted high up among the old trees, and opening both to the east and west, the turret in which I sat took the last sunbeams in a perfect deluge, as they broke against the tall windows and shed their golden warmth all around me. I knew that these bright flashes came from behind Greenhurst, and that I might never see it more. This saddened me a little, and a throb of pain was gathering in my bosom when Chaleco came in. I did not know him at first, so completely was he changed. The broad sombrero, the tarnished gold and embroidery of his gipsy habiliments were all gone. A suit of quiet brown, with knee-buckles of gold and leggins of drab cloth, such as the better classes of England wore on their journeys at that time, had quite transfigured him. His coal-black beard was neatly trimmed, and though his flashing eyes and peculiar features bespoke foreign blood, no one would have suspected him of being the picturesque vagrant he had appeared in the morning.
“Well,” he said, cheerfully, “are you rested and quite ready to start? I have been making inquiries.”