CHAPTER XI.
“TAKE it, keep it, and let the poor sinner go!” Through long days and sleepless nights the words echoed and re-echoed in Lord Hardcastle’s ears. That they were spoken by an actual human voice he was positively certain, but all enquiries respecting the grey veiled figure proved fruitless, and from that time he saw her no more.
Very carefully and gently he broke the news of the restoration of Amy’s ring to Mr. Warden, feeling the necessity that every circumstance connected with their search should be known to him as it occurred, for who could tell what might happen next?
Mr. Warden listened very calmly to the strange story—
“It is the beginning of the end,” he said. “Heaven only knows what the end will be! Stranger things than this are, no doubt, in store for us. Keep the ring, Hardcastle, who can have a greater right than you to wear it?”
And Hardcastle kept the ring, and registered yet another vow in his own heart in much the same words he had vowed hand-in-hand with Frank Varley, that “by night and by day, by land and by sea, he would search the whole world through” to clear the name of the girl he loved.
Mr. Warden daily grew weaker and weaker. They rested a week at Boulogne, and then travelled by easy stages to Le Puy. After eight days’ quiet travelling they reached the picturesque old city, and though tired and worn out to the last degree, Mr. Warden insisted on being at once driven to a small quiet inn (it could scarcely be called hotel) situated half way between the town and his old mountain home.
“A l’Aigle des Montagnes” was the sign which hung over this quiet little hostelry, and its dedication could not possibly have been better chosen. Perched high in the second belt of rocks which surrounds Le Puy, it seemed incredible, when looked at from the plateau beneath, that aught but eagle’s wings could mount so far. A narrow, winding path, made to admit the “little cars” of the country, with not an inch to spare on either side, led to the inn. To an inexperienced traveller the road seemed terrible and dangerous, but the hardy, sure-footed mountaineer made but light of it. What to him was a precipice, first on this side, then on that, and occasionally on both? Once arrived at the summit the view was simply magnificent, bounded only by the distant Cevennes, and showing, in all its sparkling beauty, the windings of the Loire and its many tributaries.
Hither some twenty years previously Mr. Warden had first come, and with an artist’s appreciation of the grand and the beautiful, had returned again and again to paint the wild mountain scenery and ruined chateaux which were hung here and there like eagle’s nests among the rocks.
Since those old days the place had twice changed hands, and the present proprietor was totally unknown to him. Nevertheless the place and its surroundings could not fail to revive many bitter memories and days both sad and sweet to him, and on the second day after their arrival, Lord Hardcastle saw in him such a rapid change for the worse, that he at once gave orders that a doctor should be sent for from Le Puy.