“I am not wont to be treated as a child whose fortunes are to be in the keeping of others!” said he, sternly. “When Saturday comes, it may be to hear that which I cannot approve of—which I will not accept.”
“Yes, Sir, you will,” said she, calmly. “You charged me to do my best, and when I shall have done so you will not discredit me.”
CHAPTER XLIX. MR. O’RORKE ABROAD
Albeit Mr. O’Rorke had no partiality for the Saxon, he did not dislike his English tour. It was an occasion for much enjoyment in the present, with a prospect of considerable expatiation over in the future. He travelled—and it is a mode which occasionally enhances the enjoyments of travel—at another’s expense; and he indulged in many little luxuries not known to his daily life.
It was towards the close of a glorious day, mellow in all the richness of autumn, that he first caught sight of the great massive towers and battlemented walls of Dalradern Castle. The setting sun had just fallen on the windows, and the vast frontage was illuminated with a golden glory that relieved the stern severity of the heavy masonry, and gave warmth and colour to its cold and stately feudalism.
“And she left this for that rock—that miserable rock in the ocean,” cried he. “What could possess her to do it? She was no fool, that was clear enough. It was no fool could have made herself what she was; and what else than folly could make any one exchange that princely place for the wild and dreary desolation of Arran? There’s more in this than one sees on the surface,” thought O’Rorke. “It’s not in human nature to believe that she did not enjoy the grand life such a house must supply—the very aspect of it suggested everything that wealth could compass, and it could not be that she did not attach herself to its enjoyments. No; there must have been a reason, or something that she thought was a reason, for it. Ay, and that same reason, whatever it was, must have been the source of her great unwillingness to address Sir Within. She left him in anger, that’s plain enough; and about what could it be? Had she wearied him? Had her temper, or her caprice, or her extravagance, tired out his patience? Was it that the self-indulgence of the spoiled child had at last revolted the very spirit that had spoiled her? or was it”—and, to O’Rorke’s thinking, this seemed not improbable—“Sir Within had made her some proposals, not merely offensive to her dignity, but an outrage to her ambition? If I know you, Miss Katty,” said he, aloud, “you never lived in that grand house without dreaming of the time you’d be the mistress of it. And what made you give up the game? That’s what I’d like to know, and it’s what I’ll try to find out before I leave this.”
As he drew nearer the castle, the stately grandeur of the place impressed him still more. Never had he seen such magnificent timber—never before had he witnessed that marvellous order and propriety which give even to a vast park all the elegance of a garden. The clumps of flowery shrubs, in spots that few would probably ever visit—rare trees in out-of-the-way places—seemed to show what immense resources existed where so much that was valuable could be squandered uncared for.
One of the keepers, by whom he was accompanied from the gate-lodge, discoursed to him freely as they went along, telling of the hundreds of acres enclosed within the demesne, the extensive gardens and pleasure-grounds, to keep which in order required quite a regiment of labourers, “and all,” as the man added, “for an old man that sits all day at a window, and only comes out of an evening to take the air on a terrace. Never sees any one, nor goes anywhere; and won’t even dine with his young relation, Mr. Ladarelle, who is down here for the shooting.”
O’Rorke skirmished cautiously, of course, to ascertain whether the man could tell him anything of Kate, but he found that he had only lately entered the service, and never heard of her. He had heard, however, that Sir Within was greatly changed of late; some heavy blow, of what sort he knew not, had befallen him, and he now neither rode out nor drove, did not care to enter the garden, and, in fact, seemed weary of his life, and indifferent to everything.