“Repented—ha, ha!”
“Or if he be not dead—”
“Hush, boy, hush!”
“While there is life, there is hope of repentance.”
“Look you, nephew,” said the Captain, rising, and folding his arms resolutely on his breast,—“look you, I desired that that name might never be breathed. I have not cursed my son yet; could he come to life—the curse might fall! You do not know what torture your words have given me just when I had opened my heart to another son, and found that son in you. With respect to the lost, I have now but one prayer, and you know it,—the heart-broken prayer that his name never more may come to my ears!”
As he closed these words, to which I ventured no reply, the Captain took long, disordered strides across the room; and suddenly, as if the space imprisoned, or the air stifled him, he seized his hat and hastened into the streets. Recovering my surprise and dismay, I ran after him; but he commanded me to leave him to his own thoughts, in a voice so stern, yet so sad, that I had no choice but to obey. I knew, by my own experience, how necessary is solitude in the moments when grief is strongest and thought most troubled.
CHAPTER V.
Hours elapsed, and the Captain had not returned home. I began to feel uneasy, and went forth in search of him, though I knew not whither to direct my steps. I thought it, however, at least probable that he had not been able to resist visiting Lady Ellinor, so I went first to St. James’s Square. My suspicions were correct; the Captain had been there two hours before. Lady Ellinor herself had gone out shortly after the Captain left. While the porter was giving me this information, a carriage stopped at the door, and a footman, stepping up, gave the porter a note and a small parcel, seemingly of books, saying simply, “From the Marquis of Castleton.” At the sound of that name I turned hastily, and recognized Sir Sedley Beaudesert seated in the carriage and looking out of the window with a dejected, moody expression of countenance, very different from his ordinary aspect, except when the rare sight of a gray hair or a twinge of the toothache reminded him that he was no longer twenty-five. Indeed, the change was so great that I exclaimed dubiously,—“Is that Sir Sedley Beaudesert?” The footman looked at me, and touching his hat, said, with a condescending smile, “Yes, sir, now the Marquis of Castleton.”
Then, for the first time since the young lord’s death, I remembered Sir Sedley’s expressions of gratitude to Lady Castleton and the waters of Ems for having saved him from “that horrible marquisate.” Meanwhile my old friend had perceived me, exclaiming,—