Rees grew hot with fright. How on earth was he to keep her from carrying out this fatal intention? Unluckily for him, she noticed his hesitation, and putting a shrewd interpretation upon it, she ran on past him, and had burst open the door of the custodian’s room before he could stop her.
Rees was beside himself. In his rage, impatience, and confusion, no plan for stopping her occurred to him, and he stood by the great gateway of the castle, kicking his heels against its huge beams in blank despair. As he did so, the gate, which alone was used now, creaked and slowly gave way behind him. He turned, and perceived that the big key of the gate had been left in the lock by Mrs. Crow when she admitted Lady Marion. He thrust it open, putting his shoulder against it impatiently, and found himself face to face with Amos Goodhare.
Rees uttered an exclamation of relief and joy. Here was advice and help.
“What am I to do?” he whispered hurriedly. “Lady Marion is here, suspects something, and insists on searching the place.”
“Make up to her, of course,” said Amos, who had very nearly added “you fool.” “Let her think you are crazy about her, and she’ll hold her tongue safe enough. Just the kind of girl—mad as a hatter and not too handsome; nothing like that sort to keep a man’s secret. Go in.”
Rees obeyed; indeed, Amos emphasized his injunction by a push which sent him staggering. But as the door was drawn softly to behind him, he felt his spirit rising in resentment at this change in the librarian’s manner towards him. For Amos had suddenly dropped his pedantic respectfulness, his gentle movements, had looked at him with fierce impatience, and had been both rough and rude.
“I shall just wash my hands of the whole thing, and go home,” he said to himself. But he hesitated, with his hand upon the gate. At that moment Lady Marion appeared at the door of the lodge, candle in hand, and with just a glance at him, made swiftly across the courtyard in the direction of the “dungeons,” as the vaulted apartments overlooking the river were called.
“You needn’t come with me, Mrs. Crow,” he heard her call out as she ran. Rees followed her, all his anxiety about the safety of his secret alive again. She flew over the grass, a great sparrow-legged girl, not yet grown out of immature gawkiness, and got down the wooden steps somehow in a wonderfully short space of time. But in her haste she let the candle fall, and the light went out. Rees, at the top of the steps, looked down into the black vault, where he heard her groping about, and conceived the project of passing her again in the darkness, finding his way into the next and lower apartment, in which he had discovered the grating, and flattening down the earth to cover the traces of his work.
At the doorway, however, were two steps; stumbling on the damp and slippery surface of the second, he made enough noise for her to find him.
“Rees,” she cried, “don’t go away. This is a horrid place; something flapped past me. I feel quite frightened. It is you there, isn’t it?”