“God allowing!” gravely interposed the old lady. “There be winds and waves atween Cardiff and Ireland, fair Daughter.”
Did she think only of winds and waves?
No news reached them until the evening of the following Thursday. They had sat down to supper, about four o’clock, when the blast of a horn outside broke the stillness. The Lady Le Despenser, whom the basin of rose-water had just reached for the opening washing of hands, dropped the towel and grew white as death.
“Jesu have mercy! yonder is Master Lyngern’s horn!”
“He is maybe returned with a message, Lady,” suggested Father Ademar, the chaplain; but all eyes were fixed on the door of the hall until Bertram entered.
The worst apprehensions which each imagination could form took vivid shape in the minds of all, when they saw his face. So white and woe-begone he looked—so weary and unutterably sorrowful, that all anticipated the news of some heavy and irreparable calamity, from which he only had escaped alone to tell them.
“Where left you your Lord, Master Lyngern?”
It was the Dowager who was the first to break the spell of silence.
“Madam,” said Bertram, in a husky, faltering voice, “I left him not at all—till he left me.”
He evidently had some secret meaning, and he was afraid to tell the awful truth at once. Constance had risen, and stood nervously grasping the arm of her state chair, with a white, excited face; but she did not ask a question.