Sir Patrick stood firm as a rock before this whirlwind of passion, though filled with horrible amazement, as he beheld the burning glare of the madman's eye, and heard the sharp, shrill, shrieking voice in which he spoke; but if he appeared terrible in his fierce excitement, he seemed more terrible still, when a moment afterwards, with a cold, livid look, as if turned into stone, he added:
"She shall be mine, or she shall never be given to another. I would not spare her for ten thousand lives. If she refuse me, her lips shall be closed forever and ever. I shall destroy and be destroyed. My love or my vengeance must be gratified; and mark my words. You are the friend of Louis De Crespigny. I would it had been himself, and one of us should never have left this spot alive. There is a dark and dreary account to be settled between him and me. My first warning shall be my last," added he, in a hollow whisper, while a look of dangerous meaning gleamed in his eye. "He deserves death at my hands. He wrenched my sister from her home, trampled on her affections, and is born in all things to injure and supplant me! He must die!" added the maniac, with a strange glare in his eye-balls. "It is, perhaps, for his sake that I am rejected! Wild voices are whispering in my ear! Unnameable horrors beset me! Fierce phantoms are hissing and shouting behind me!"
The unfortunate being uttered these words with preternatural fury, while his countenance wore an expression of deadly malignity. He then paused, ground his teeth, and with the frightful levity of a maniac, uttering a howling, fiendish laugh, and rushing away, disappeared into the thickest part of the forest, leaving Sir Patrick horror-struck at the awful spectacle of a shattered intellect, the fragments of which were of so deadly a nature; while, at the same time, amidst a torrent of other thoughts and feelings, chiefly directed to secure the safety of Captain De Crespigny, he could not but smile at his present discovery, that the plainly dressed, shy, reserved, but rather satirical young lady, whom he had been of late patronising and bringing forward, was no other than the superbly endowed heiress, Miss Howard Smytheson, respecting whom he had so often rallied himself.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Sir Patrick gave instant information to the civil authorities at Harrowgate, respecting the dangerous madman now in the neighborhood; and when every particular of his adventure had reached Agnes, she felt an undefined sensation of disappointment that the end had not been of a more exciting nature. Never happy unless her mind were in a complete foam of excitement, she lived for sensation, and would have bought it at any price, being heard often to complain, that now nothing ever happened. Every day she considered as a chapter in her own life, into which she wished as many incidents crowded as possible, caring little whether joy or sorrow prevailed among those around, if the weary vacuum in her thoughts were but filled up. A few elopements or murders made a newspaper extremely acceptable; while even public riots she would have allowed to a certain pitch, provided she could pull the check-string as soon as they became at all inconvenient or alarming to herself; while she often remarked, in a querulous tone, that a revolution had been a thing threatened and talked of all her life, without ever seeming any nearer. The world, in short, if arranged to suit her taste, would have been one shifting scene of accidents and offences, fires, overturns, explosions, narrow escapes, marriages, births, deaths, mournful catastrophes, and astonishing vicissitudes.
On the evening after the pic-nic at Studley, Sir Arthur having gone early to bed, at his lodgings near the Granby, Marion accompanied her sister and Mrs. O'Donoghoe, to fulfil a dinner engagement at the Crown Hotel; and on their way home, the lively widow rallied Agnes on her prospect of walking at the next coronation, saying, that Lord Doncaster had evidently laid down twenty years of his life, lately; and that she had once seen the Doncaster diamonds, then considered the finest family jewels in Britain, which Queen Charlotte herself was supposed to have coveted, and the box containing which required two footmen to carry it.
"The tiara would shine like glow-worms in your dark hair, and the bandeau round your waist would be exquisite! I have heard it remarked, that people in this perverse world will not be happy; that those who have every wish gratified, and not a want upon earth, invent a grievance for themselves, and live upon it; but I wonder where the Marchioness of Doncaster could find one. You might drive away care in that beautiful pony carriage, kill time with your grand pianoforte, and read your own happiness in the envy of every one around. Even your sister seems scarcely so happy at your good fortune as might have been expected!"
"There is no earthly blessing I do not with my whole heart desire for Agnes," replied Marion warmly, when thus appealed to. "But if she has any plans such as you speak of, let no one ask me what I think, as it is quite enough that she should herself know my utter abhorrence of them."
Tears of indignant sorrow sprang into Marion's eyes, and she gazed earnestly out of the window, trying to conceal and to conquer her emotion, while Mrs. O'Donoghoe exclaimed, in a tone of satirical burlesque,
"For of the choice, what heart can doubt,