Sir Charles looked at her, and was touched at her silent grief.
“My darling wife,” said he, “I think this is the only thing you and I cannot agree upon. Why not be wise as well as loving, and avoid it.”
“I will never seek it again,” sobbed Lady Bassett. “But oh,” she cried, with sudden wildness, “something tells me it will meet me, and follow me, and rob me of my husband. Well, when that day comes, I shall know how to die.”
And with this she burst away from him, like some creature who has been stung past endurance.
Sir Charles often meditated on this strange scene: turn it how he could he came back to the same conclusion, that she must have an hallucination on this subject. He said to himself, “If Bella really believed the boy was a changeling, she would act upon her conviction, she would urge me to take some steps to recover our true child, whom the gypsies or the fairies have taken, and given us poor dear Reginald instead.”
But still the conversation, and her strange looks of terror, lay dormant in his mind: both were too remarkable to be ever forgotten. Such things lie like certain seeds, awaiting only fresh accidents to spring into life.
The month rolled away, and the day came for Reginald's liberation. A dogcart was sent for him, and the heir of the Bassetts emerged from a county jail, and uttered a whoop of delight; he insisted on driving, and went home at a rattling pace.
He was in high spirits till he got in sight of Huntercombe Hall; and then it suddenly occurred to his mercurial mind that he should probably not be received with an ovation, petty larceny being a novelty in that ancient house whose representative he was.
When he did get there he found the whole family in such a state of commotion that his return was hardly noticed at all.
Master Compton's dinner hour was two P.M., and yet, at three o'clock of this day, he did not come in.