“These were Welsh settlers, it would seem,” cried Hankes, still bending over the papers. “They came originally from Abergedley.”
“Abergedley!” repeated Sybella, three or four times over. “How strange!”
“What is strange, Miss Kellett?” asked Hankes, whose curiosity was eagerly excited by the expression of her features.
Instead of reply, however, she had taken a small notebook from her pocket, and sat with her eyes fixed upon a few words written in her own hand: “The Conways of Abergedley—of what family—if settled at any time in Ireland, and where?” These few words, and the day of the year when they were written, recalled to her mind a conversation she had once held with Terry Driscoll.
“What is puzzling you, Miss Kellett?” broke in Hankes; “I wish I could be of any assistance to its unravelment.”
“I am thinking of 'long ago;' something that occurred years back. Didn't you mention,” asked she, suddenly, “that Mr. Driscoll had been the former proprietor of thia cottage?”
“Yes, in so far as having paid part of the purchase-money. Does his name recall anything to interest you, Miss Kellett?”
If she heard she did not heed his question, but sat deep sunk in her own musings.
If there was any mood of the human mind that had an especial fascination for Mr. Hankes, it was that frame of thought which indicated the possession of some mysterious subject,—some deep and secret theme which the possessor retained for himself alone,—a measure of which none were to know the amount, to which none were to have the key. It would be ignoble to call this passion curiosity, for, in reality, it was less exercised by any desire to fathom the mystery than it was prompted by an intense jealousy of him who thus held in his own hands the solution of some portentous difficulty. To know on what schemes other men were bent, what hopes and fears filled them, by what subtle trains of reasoning they came to this conclusion or to that, were the daily exercises of his intelligence. He was eternally, as the phrase is, putting things together, comparing events, confronting this circumstance with that, and drawing inferences from every chance and accident of life. Now, it was clear to him Miss Kellett had a secret; or, at least, had the clew to one. Driscoll was “in it,” and this cottage was “in it,” and, not impossibly too, some of these Conway s were “in it.” There was something in that note-book; how was he to obtain sight of it? The vaguest line—-a word—would be enough for him. Mr. Hankes remembered how he had once committed himself and his health to the care of an unskilful physician simply because the man knew a fact which he wanted, and did worm out of him during his attendance. He had, at another time, undertaken a short voyage in a most unsafe craft, with a drunken captain, because the stewardess was possessed of a secret of which, even in his sea-sickness, he obtained the key. Over and over again had he assumed modes of life he detested, dissipation the most distasteful to him, to gain the confidence of men that were only assailable in these modes; and now he bethought him that if he only had a glimmering of his present suspicion, the precipice and the narrow path and the booming sea below had all been braved, and he would have followed her unflinchingly through every peril with this goal before him. Was it too late to reinstate himself in her esteem? He thought not; indeed, she did not seem to retain any memory of his defection. At all events, there was little semblance of it having influenced her in her manner towards him.
“We shall meet at Glengariff, Mr. Hankes,” said Sybella, rising, and replacing the papers in the box. “I mean to return by the coast road, and will not ask you to accompany me.”