“As she had one purpose, so will I. I’ll free myself from this property that ought not to be mine, and till I have, I’ll seek no good for myself, and I’ll have no other object. Even Constancy shall not come before it. So help me, God!”
Then Godfrey got up from his knees, and felt the sting of shame and self-reproach a little blunted, so that his natural reticence and pride began to revive, and he felt that he would behave properly and not make the family affairs a spectacle for surprised and disapproving Palmers.
He did not again go near Guy, who was, indeed, quite unfit to talk to him, and who puzzled Cuthbert more than ever, as, even while the perilous faintness was hardly kept at bay, he whispered, with a sort of triumph—
“Remember; if I die, I’m not beaten.”
“I shall remember,” said Cuthbert, quietly. He could not himself resist the discomfort of the creaks and the whispers, the cracks and the murmuring which were always the talk of visitors to Waynflete; he noticed the low, incessant sound of the horseman coming nearer and never coming close. He turned his head to the window as the dusk was closing in, and Guy said, coolly—
“That’s the horseman, I suppose, I never heard it before. Miss Vyner says it is certainly the effect of wind in the narrow valley.”
“I suppose all old houses have odd noises,” was Cuthbert’s original remark.
“Yes; there’s nothing in these. I say, where are those two wills?”
“I have them safe till the solicitor comes.”
“Read the last one over. I must know about the mill. Excite me? No. I’m getting better.”