"O no, no," she said, "I cannot see her yet--I am not able--I don't know--there's something, there's something."
It might have struck Mr. Carruthers and Mark Felton too, had they not been too much alarmed to think of anything but Mrs. Carruthers's emotion, that when they both approached her eagerly, George did not attempt to do so. He rose, indeed, but it was to push back his chair and get out of their way. Mr. Carruthers asked her tenderly what was the matter, but she replied only by laying her head upon his breast in a passion of tears.
In the evening, when Dr. Merle had seen Mrs. Carruthers, had said a great deal about absolute quiet, but had not interdicted the purposed return to England, when it had been decided that there was to be no leave-taking between her and her brother and son, who were to commence their journey on the morrow, Mr. Carruthers, sitting by his wife's bed, where she then lay quietly asleep, arrived at the conclusion that the old nurse was connected with the "shock." The idea gave him acute pain. It must have been, then, something that had some reference to his wife's past life, something in which he and the present had no share. Very old, and worn, and troubled Mr. Carruthers looked as the darkness came on and filled the room, and once more the night wind arose, and whistled and shrieked over Taunus. He began to wish ardently, earnestly, to get home. It was very strange to look at his wife, always before his eyes, and know she had a terrible secret grief, which had thus powerfully affected her, and not to dare to question her about it. This fresh confirmation of the fact, this new manifestation of her sufferings, after so peaceful an interval, had in it something awful to the mind of Mr. Carruthers.
The brother and the son in their different ways were equally disturbed by the occurrence--Mark Felton in his ignorance and conjecture, George in the painful fulness of his knowledge and his self-reproach.
And as Mark Felton's look had alone arrested George's impulsive desire to reveal his knowledge of Poynings to Mr. Carruthers, so the remembrance of all Routh and Harriet had said to him of the difficulty, the embarrassment, the probable danger of an acknowledgment, alone arrested his desire to inform his uncle of the dreadful error which had caused his mother's illness.
Mark Felton and George Dallas left Homburg for Paris on the following day. They had separated for the night earlier than usual, and George had employed himself for some hours in writing a long and confidential letter to his friend Cunningham. It was addressed to that gentleman at the Mercury office, and it contained full details of every particular which he had been able to learn connected with his missing cousin. The purpose of the letter was an urgent request that Cunningham would at once communicate with the police on this matter, and it concluded with these words:
"I cannot conquer my apprehensions, and I will not yet communicate them to my uncle. But, mark this, I am convinced we shall learn nothing good at Paris; and we have done very wrong in not putting the police to work long ago. Don't laugh at me, and call me a novelist in action. I never felt so sure of anything I had not seen as I am of Arthur Felton's having come to serious grief."
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
PAUL WARD.
The autumn tints were rich and beautiful upon the Kent woods, and nowhere more rich or more beautiful than in Sir Thomas Boldero's domain. The soft grass beneath the noble beeches was strewn with the russet leaves a little earlier than usual that year, and somewhat more plentifully, for the storm had shaken them down, and had even rent away a branch here and there from some of the less sturdy trees. And then the forester made his inspection, and the fallen branches were removed, and duly cut and housed for winter fire-wood, and it chanced that the hitherto forgotten log on which George Dallas had sat one spring morning was carried away with them.