"What I fear most is that it may kill his mother." The Squire said it musingly, but his voice held a question.
"She will suffer." The priest pondered his opinion as he gave it, and his words came irregularly by twos and threes. "It may be hard—for some while—to make her see the—the necessity. Women fight for their own by instinct—right or wrong, they do not ask themselves. If you reason, they will seize upon any sophistry to confute you—to persuade themselves. Doubtless the instinct comes from God; but to men, sometimes, it makes them seem quite unscrupulous."
"We have built much upon Walter. If our hopes have come down with a crash, we must rebuild, and build them better. I think that, for the future, you and I must consult one another and make allowances. The fact is, I am asking you—as it were—to make terms with me over the lad. 'A house divided,' you know. . . Let us have an end of divisions. I am feeling terribly old to-night."
The priest met his gaze frankly, and had half extended his hand, when a sudden sound arrested him—a sound at which the eyes of both men widened with surprise and their lips were parted—the sharp report of a gun. Not until it shattered the silence of the woods around Cleeve Court could you have been aware how deep the silence had lain. Its echoes banged from side to side of the valley, and in the midst of their reverberation a second gun rang out.
"The mischief!" exclaimed the Squire. "That means poachers, or I'm a Dutchman. Macklin's in trouble. Will you come?" He stepped quickly to the door. "Where did you fix the sound? Somewhere up the valley, near the White Rock, eh?"
Father Halloran's face was white as a ghost's. "It—it was outside the house," he stammered.
"Outside? What the deuce—Of course it was outside!" He paused, and seemed to read the priest's thought. "Oh, for God's sake, man—" Hurrying into the passage, and along it to the hall, he called up, "Walter! Walter!" from the foot of the staircase. "There, you see!" he muttered, as Walter's voice answered from above.
But almost on the instant a woman's voice took up the cry. "Walter! What has happened to Walter?" and as her son stepped out upon the landing Mrs. à Cleeve came tottering through the corridor leading to her rooms—came in disarray, a dressing-gown hastily caught about her, and a wisp of grey hair straggling across her shoulder. Catching sight of Walter, she almost fell into his arms.
"Thank God! Thank God you are safe!"
"But what on earth is the matter?" demanded Walter, scarcely yet aroused from the torpor of his private misery.