“Owen, I shall not require the car to-day!”
Sometimes she would look in on a humble, fawning culprit in the stable, and say, as she contemplated his beseeching eyes—
“Hah! you bad dog, you bad dog! I wish to goodness you were dead—and you shall wish it yourself before I’ve done with you!”
It was not impossible that these amiable visitations afforded Miss Parrett a delicious, and exquisite satisfaction.
The Drum Inn closed at ten o’clock, and even before the church clock struck, the Hogbens had retired; but the former Hussar officer, accustomed to late hours, and with the long summer night seducing him, found it impossible to retire to his three-cornered chamber—where the walls leant towards him so confidentially, and the atmosphere reeked of dry rot. No, he must breathe the sweet breath of the country, have some exercise, and walk himself weary under the open sky.
Mrs. Hogben—who had now absolute confidence in her lodger, and told him all her most private family affairs—entrusted him with the door-key, that is to say, she showed him the hole in which—as all the village knew—it was concealed. Sometimes it was one in the morning when the chauffeur crept upstairs in stockinged feet, accompanied by Joss—yes, Joss! There were a pair of them, who had equally enjoyed their nocturnal wanderings. The dog slept on a bit of sacking, in his confederate’s room, till Mrs. Hogben was astir, then he flew back to the Manor, and crept through the same hole in the yew hedge by which, in answer to a welcome whistle, he had emerged the preceding evening. Behold him sitting at the kitchen door when the kitchen-maid opened it, the personification of injured innocence—a poor, neglected, hungry animal, who had been turned out of doors for the whole long night.
These were delightful excursions: over meadows and brooks, through deep glens and plantations, the two black sheep scoured the country, and, as far as human beings were concerned, appeared to have earth and heaven to themselves. Wynyard roamed hither and thither as the freak took him, and surrendered himself to the intoxication that comes of motion in the open air—a purely animal pleasure shared with his companion.
They surprised the dozing cattle, and alarmed astonished sheep, sent families of grazing rabbits scuttling to their burrows; they heard the night-jar, the owl, and the corn-crake; bats flapped across their path, and in narrow lanes the broad shoulders of Wynyard broke the webs of discomfited spiders. The extraordinary stillness of the night was what impressed the young man; sometimes, from a distance of four or five miles, he could hear, with startling distinctness, the twelve measured strokes of Ottinge church clock.
During these long, aimless rambles, what Joss’ thoughts were, who can say? Undoubtedly he recalled such excursions in ecstatic dreams. Wynyard, for his part, took many pleasure trips into the land of fancy, and there, amidst its picturesque glamour and all its doubts, distractions, and hopes, his sole companion was Aurea! Nothing but the hope of her return sustained and kept him day after day, pacing the Manor yard, in a sense her prisoner! His devotion would have amazed his sister; she could not have believed that Owen, of all people, would have been so enslaved by a girl, could have become a dumb, humble worshipper, satisfied to listen to her laugh, to catch a radiant glance of her dark eyes, and, when he closed the door of the car, to shield her dainty skirt with reverent fingers.