There was no time to say more, even if Miles had thought it wise to argue the point with his mother's maid, for Lady Paton's room was reached, and Deborah hurried forward to prepare her mistress for the coming of Miles.
She had told her early that morning that he would probably visit them soon, but she seemed too ill to take very much notice of anything just now, and in fact Miles stood by her bedside for several minutes before she quite took in the fact that he was there.
When she had grasped the idea it seemed to waken in her other trains of thought, for she said, quickly, "I am glad you have come, Miles. Now you can marry Audrey, and the sheep need not be sold, and—and—" And then she fell into an incoherent murmur about his father being tired, and not able to come to see her, and soon she had sunk back into a state of semi-unconsciousness.
"She's asleep now, Master Miles, and she mustn't be disturbed any more to-day." And then Miles learned that about once in the twenty-four hours his mother woke for a few minutes like this, and lapsed into the stupor that seemed to have seized and benumbed all her faculties the last few weeks.
Miles sat for a few minutes beside his mother, and then, finding that she was wholly unconscious of his presence, he went to the room where a meal had been placed on the table in readiness for him.
To his great relief it was his father's old servant who stood near the door when he went into the room, and he bade the man stay and tell him all about his father's illness, while he ate his dinner.
But there was not a great deal to tell. Sir Thomas had been ailing for some time, like his wife, and a severe cold, brought on by a change in the weather, had resulted in the last illness, in spite of all that Father Boniface had been able to do in the way of doctoring, and the exertions of another monk at the monastery, who was a famous witch-finder, and held to his opinion that the illness of the old people was caused by the spells of some witch who had a grudge against them.
Unfortunately the way things had been managed lately, both in the house and village, and on the land, had given occasion enough for the poor to have a grudge against Sir Thomas. But still Miles only smiled, and shook his head, when old Roger talked of witchcraft.
Not that he disbelieved in it. But he thought there were causes enough at work to account for the illness of both father and mother without seeking for it in witchcraft; unless it was that malign influence that had first set his father on the quest for more money than the ordinary rent of the land would bring in. This might have been the work of witchcraft, he was willing to believe, but then it was one that had seized so many other English landlords at the same time, and they all seemed so eager to engage in the race for wealth that the witchcraft must have been on a mighty scale to seize upon so many at once.
Miles tried to explain this to old Roger, but the man only shook his head. He had lived a good many years at Paton Hall, and it was his world, and the ideas gathered from his master and the monks at the monastery were enough for him; and these had said again and again that the changes which had come the last few years had been the work of the new learning. That might be another word for witchcraft. He did not know, nor was he sure whether his master had died from witch spells, but the holy father, learned in such matters, had given it as his opinion that he had.