“Hist!” interrupted Darrell, dropping the brand, and advancing quickly on the ruffian—“Hist!—let no one know that my daughter’s husband came here with a felon’s purpose. Sit down—down I say; it is for my house’s honour that you should be safe.” And suddenly placing both hands on Losely’s broad shoulder, he forced him into a seat. During these few hurried words, the strokes at the door and the shouts without had been continued, and the door shook on its yielding hinges.
“The key—the key!” whispered Darrell.
But the bravo was stupefied by the suddenness with which his rage had been cowed, his design baffled, his position changed from the man dictating laws and threatening life, to the man protected by his intended victim. And he was so slow in even comprehending the meaning of Darrell’s order, that Darrell had scarcely snatched the keys less from his hand than from the pouch to which he at last mechanically pointed, when the door was burst open, and Lionel Haughton, Alban Morley, and the Colonel’s servant were in the room. Not one of them, at the first glance, perceived the inmates of the chamber, who were at the right of their entrance, by the angle of the wall and in shadow. But out came Darrell’s calm voice:
“Alban! Lionel!—welcome always; but what brings you hither at such an hour, with such clamour? Armed too!”
The three men stood petrified. There sate, peaceably enough, a large dark form, its hands on its knees, its head bent down, so that the features were not, distinguishable; and over the chair in which this bending figure was thus confusedly gathered up leant Guy Darrell, with quiet ease—no trace of fear nor of past danger in his face, which, though very pale, was serene, with a slight smile on the firm lips.
“Well,” muttered Alban Morley, slowly lowering his pistol—“well, I am surprised!—yes, for the first time in twenty years, I and surprised!”
“Surprised perhaps to find me at this hour still up, and with a person upon business—the door locked. However, mutual explanations later. Of course you stay here to night. My business with this—this visitor, is now over. Lionel, open that door—here is the key.—Sir”—(he touched Losely by the shoulder, and whispered in his ear, “Rise and speak not,”)—(aloud) “Sir, I need not detain you longer. Allow me to show you the way out of this rambling old house.”
Jasper rose like one half asleep, and, still bending his form and hiding his face, followed Darrell down the private stair, through the study, the library, into the hall, the Colonel’s servant lighting the way; and Lionel and Morley, still too amazed for words, bringing up the rear. The servant drew the heavy bolts from the front door; and now the household had caught alarm. Mills first appeared with the blunderbuss, then the footman, then Fairthorn.
“Stand back, there!” cried Darrell, and he opened the door himself to Losely. “Sir,” said he then, as they stood in the moonlight, “mark that I told you truly—you were in my power; and if the events of this night can lead you to acknowledge a watchful Providence, and recall with a shudder the crime from which you have been saved, why, then, I too, out of gratitude to Heaven, may think of means by which to free others from the peril of your despair.”
Losely made no answer, but slunk off with a fast, furtive stride, hastening out of the moonlit sward into the gloom of the leafless trees.