“'Drink it yourselves!' said Hawke, sulkily.
“'So we will, after we have finished this Burgundy,' said Towers. 'But, meanwhile, what will you have? It's poor fun to sit here with an empty glass.' And he filled him out a goblet of the milk-punch and placed it before him. 'Here's to the yellow jacket with black sleeves,' said he, lifting his glass; 'and may we see him the first “round the corner.”'
“'First “round the corner!”' chorused the rest of us. And Hawke, catching up the spirit of the toast, seized his glass and drank it off.
“'Iknew he 'd drink his own colors if he had one leg in the grave!' said Towers.
“The clock on the mantelpiece struck ten at the moment. It was the hour I was to meet her in the shrubbery; and so, pretending to go in search of my cigar-case, I slipped away and left them. As I was passing behind Hawke's chair, he made a gesture to me to come near him. I bent down my head to him, and he said, 'It won't do this time; she 'll not meet you, Paul.' These were the last words I ever heard him speak.”
When Paten had got thus far, he walked away from his friend, and, leaning his arm on the bulwark, seemed overwhelmed with the dreary retrospect. He remained thus for a considerable time, and only rallied as Stocmar, drawing his arm within his, said, “Come, come, this is no fresh sorrow now. Let me hear the remainder.”
“He spoke truly,” said he, in a broken voice. “She never came! I walked the grounds for above an hour and a half, and then I came back towards the cottage. There was a light in her room, and I whistled to attract her notice, and threw some gravel against the glass, but she only closed the shutters, and did not mind me. I cannot tell you how my mind was racked between the actual terror of the situation and the vague dread of some unknown evil. What had produced this change in her? Why had she broken with me? Could it be that Towers had seen her in that long interval he was absent from the table, and, if so, to what intent? She always hated and dreaded him; but who could tell what influence such a man might acquire in a moment of terrible interest? A horrible sense of jealousy—not the less maddening that it was shadowy and uncertain—now filled my mind; and—would you believe it?—I thought worse of Towers for his conduct towards me than for the dreadful plot against Hawke. Chance led me, as I walked, to the bank of the little lake, where I stood for some time thinking. Suddenly a splash—too heavy for the spring of a fish—startled me, and immediately after I heard the sound of some one forcing his way through the close underwood beside me. Before I had well rallied from my astonishment, a voice I well knew to be that of Towers, cried out,—
“'Who 's there?—who are you?'
“I called out, 'Hunt,—Paul Hunt!'
“'And what the devil brings you here, may I ask?' said he, insolently, but in a tone that showed he had been drinking deeply.