Mrs. Crow was rather cross, not having expected to be disturbed so late.
“Really, Master Rees,” she said, using, as most people did, his boyish name, “I can’t think what you’re up to, a-wandering about them ruins at all hours of the day and night. And if it’s to meet Lady Marion, who came in here after you last night, I can tell you I’ll not be a party to it, that I won’t.”
“My dear old soul,” said Rees, throwing his arm round her in his fascinatingly affectionate way, “there’s nothing I want less than to have Lady Marion always at my heels. So, if she turns up while I’m inside, you just tell her I’m not there. Why, I come here so that I may study in peace away from the girls, they pester one so.”
And, with a light air of all-conqueror, he tossed up into the air a book which he had taken care to bring as evidence of his veracity.
Mrs. Crow shook her head and began to chuckle indulgently.
“Oh, what a lad you are, with your carneying ways. I suppose it’s poor Miss Deborah you mean, since everybody knows she’s dying for ye. Well, well, some hearts are made to be broken, and others made to break them, I suppose. But it’s a pity, for sure, that you don’t make it up together, for you’d make a handsome couple!”
Rees laughed, and passed in not ill-pleased. His was not a nature with any great depth of passion to bestow on any woman. But he knew that Deborah was the handsomest and altogether the nicest girl in the neighborhood. So it pleased him to hear that she was in love with him. In his way, too, he loved her, and would most probably have proposed to her on his father’s death but for the influences which had lately been brought to bear upon him. At present, however, no woman held any but the most insignificant place in his heart or mind, and as he hurried to the vaulted chamber all thought of Deborah went out of his head.
Everything was secure. After one glance in the dusk, he returned to the inner court, and climbing to the outer western wall of the castle by the help of a broken turret staircase and the branches of one of the trees which had sprung up in what once were rooms, he leaned over the broken battlements and whistled softly. The trees grew tall and thick outside the walls on this side, and the ivy clung to the ruins with the strong clasp of a couple of centuries. Amid the mass of foliage Rees could not for several minutes distinguish the two men’s figures in the obscurity far below him, though he could hear their voices softly answering him.
Assured that all was safe, and that they were ready, he made one end of the rope he carried fast to one of the iron bars used in the building of the castle, which time and weather had laid bare, and threw the other end over the wall.
“All right!” said Sep’s voice in a husky whisper.