Long before Mr. Carruthers, impelled by the irresistible force of routine, which not all the concern, and even alarm, occasioned him by Mrs. Carruthers's condition could subdue, had issued forth upon his daily tour of inspection, Clare's letters had been safely posted by her own hand at the village. She had slept but little on the night which had fallen on her first experience of fear and grief; and waking at dawn, oppressed by a heavy sense of some dimly-understood calamity, she had recalled it all in a moment; and having hurriedly dressed herself, she went down to the breakfast-room, and let herself out through the window, accompanied by her dog, whose joyous gambols in the bright morning air she did not notice. That morning air struck chill to the weary limbs and aching head of the sad, bewildered girl as she pursued her rapid way through the shrubbery, brushing the dew from the branches of the trees as she passed hurriedly along heart-sick, and yet wandering and confused in her thoughts.
Her walk was quite solitary and uninterrupted. She slid the letters into a convenient slit of a window-shutter of the general-shop, to which the dignity and emoluments of a post-office were attached; glanced up and down the little street, listened to certain desultory sounds which spoke of the commencement of activity in adjacent stable-yards, and to the barking with which some vagabond dogs of her acquaintance greeted her and Cæsar; satisfied herself that she was unobserved, and then retraced her steps as rapidly as possible. The large white-faced clock over the stables at Poynings--an unimpeachable instrument, never known to gain or lose within the memory of man--was striking six as Clare Carruthers carefully replaced the bolt of the breakfast-room window, and crept upstairs again, with a faint flutter of satisfaction that her errand had been safely accomplished contending with the dreariness and dread which filled her heart. She put away her hat and cloak, changed her dress, which was wet with the dew, and sat down by the door of the room to listen for the first stir of life in the house.
Soon she heard her uncle's step, lighter, less creaky than usual, and went out to meet him. He did not show any surprise on seeing her so early, and the expression of his face told her in a moment that he had no good news of the invalid to communicate.
"Brookes says she has had a very bad night," he said gravely. "I am going to send for Munns at once, and to telegraph to London for more advice." Then he went on in a state of subdued creak; and Clare, in increased bewilderment and misery, went to Mrs. Carruthers's room, where she found the reign of dangerous illness seriously inaugurated.
Doctor Munns came, and early in the afternoon a grave and polite gentleman arrived from London, who was very affable, but rather reserved, and who was also guilty of the unaccountable bad taste of suggesting a shock in connection with Mrs. Carruthers's illness. He also was emphatically corrected by Mr. Carruthers, but not with the same harshness which had marked that gentleman's reception of Dr. Munns's suggestion. The grave gentleman from London made but little addition to Dr. Munns's treatment, declined to commit himself to any decided opinion on the case, and went away, leaving Mr. Carruthers with a sensation of helplessness and vague injury, to say nothing of downright misery and alarm, to which the Grand Lama was entirely unaccustomed.
Before the London physician made his appearance Clare and her uncle had met at breakfast, and she had learned all there was to be known on the subject which had taken entire and terrible possession of her mind: It seemed to Clare now that she had no power of thinking of anything else, that it was quite impossible that only yesterday morning she was a careless unconscious girl musing over a romantic incident in her life, speculating vaguely upon the possibility of any result accruing from it in the future, and feeling as far removed from the crimes and dangers of life as if they had no existence. Now she took her place opposite her uncle with a face whose pallor and expression of deep-seated trouble even that unobservant and self-engrossed potentate could not fail to notice. He did observe the alteration in Clare's looks, and was not altogether displeased by it. It argued deep solicitude for Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings--an extremely proper sentiment; so Mr. Carruthers consoled his niece after his stately fashion, acknowledging, at the same time, the unaccountable vagaries of fever, and assuring Clare that there was nothing infectious in the case--a subject on which it had never occurred to the girl to feel any uneasiness. Not so with Mr. Carruthers, who had a very great dread of illness of every kind, and a superstitious reverence for the medical art. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the post, and Mr. Carruthers's attention was again drawn to the subject of the murder and the possibility of promoting his own importance in connection with it. Clare's pale face turned paler as her uncle took up the first letter of the number presented to him by Thomas (footman), that official looking peculiarly intelligent on the occasion; for the letter bore the magic inscription, "On Her Majesty's Service," and the seal of the Home Office.
Mr. Carruthers took some time to read the letter, even with the aid of the gold eye-glasses. It came from Mr. Dalrymple, who wrote an abnormally bad hand even for a government official--a circumstance which Mr. Carruthers mentally combined with the beard, of which he retained an indignant remembrance as a sign of the degeneracy of the age. The irrepressible pompousness of the man showed itself even in this crisis of affairs, as he perused the document, and laid it down upon the table under the hand armed with the eye-glasses.
Clare waited breathless.
"Hem! my dear," he began; "this letter is connected with the matter I mentioned to you yesterday. You remember, I daresay, about the murder, and the inquiry I was requested by the government to make at Amherst."
O yes, Clare remembered; she had been very much interested. Had anything since transpired?