With these oracular words Mr. McAndrew left the governor, and went to the hotel for his lunch. Several times during the consumption of a modest chop he paused with a morsel on his fork, and stared thoughtfully before him, as if he were struggling with some knotty problem; and after his lunch was finished and paid for, he lit a cigar and sauntered to Hawkwood Woods. He stood in the glade where the murder had been committed and Faradeane arrested, for several minutes, carefully noting the fallen tree, and indeed every inch of ground; then he walked back to the Grange, and back from the Grange to The Maples. Having surveyed that huge pile of red brick for some minutes, he made his way to the railway station and disappeared.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
A PRISONER AND HIS VISITOR.
For more than a fortnight Olivia wandered in the valley of the shadow of death; then the crisis came and passed, and life still counted her among its subjects. But her recovery was so slow that another fortnight elapsed before, thin and pale, a bruised and broken lily, she was carried from her bedroom to her boudoir.
During all the time of almost unendurable anxiety and suspense Bessie had scarcely left her. No nurse could have shown more devotion, no sister more tender and self-sacrificing love.
Almost as thin and pale as Olivia, she watched beside her night and day, fully repaid if Olivia’s hand closed upon hers with a feeble pressure, or if she murmured gratefully her name.
Quite a thrill of relief ran through the county at the news of her convalescence, and attention, which had been mainly devoted to her, concentrated itself upon the man who lay in prison awaiting his trial, and upon Mr. Bartley Bradstone.
He had never been popular; but those who liked him least—and no one liked him overmuch—felt constrained to pity him. He seldom left The Maples, excepting to walk up to the Grange to inquire after his bride, and those few persons who chanced to meet him were struck by the change in his appearance. He had been rather ruddy and robust, but he was now thin and emaciated, and looked ten years older than he had done on the day of his wedding. There was not only a look of age, but an expression of anxious unrest, which struck every one who saw him; and, strange to say, the wan and haggard expression on his face did not leave it when Olivia was pronounced out of danger.
“That poor devil Bradstone has been completely bowled over,” one man said. “Looks as if he had all the care of the world on his shoulders,” and that very exactly described Bartley Bradstone’s appearance.
He haunted the Grange daily; but he had not seen Olivia since the wedding day.
“Keep him away from her, if you wish her recovery to continue,” the doctor had said, and the poor squire repeated his words.