“It did look like it,” said the young man, shortly.
The old man glanced at the weapon, which was still in his nephew’s hand.
“Well, well, you were mistaken. People don’t do those things,” said he. “So now you can put that down and get out as quickly as you like.”
As he spoke he opened the door, letting a gust of cold night air blow into the hall, force back the heavy door, and whirl the skirt of his dressing-gown about him like a sheath. And so, inhospitable, grim to the last, he let his nephew pass out without another word, and shut the door behind him with a loud clang.
Young Bayre shuddered, not with the remembrance of the peril he could not doubt that he had escaped, but at the thought that Olwen was shut up in the house with this half-insane old man, who was no doubt irritated against her on account of the part she had played in the events of his own visit.
Bayre could not endure this thought. It was true that his uncle had shown towards the young girl none of the strange and startling animosity which he had not scrupled to exhibit to himself. But with the belief strong in his mind that such eccentricity as that of the old man could not be far removed from insanity, Bayre wondered whether the fact of her having interfered on his behalf, as she had done, might not have inflamed her guardian against her.
Yet what could he do? He could not return to the house; indeed, any such attempt would be more likely to do harm than good to the object of his solicitude.
Bayre was perplexed, troubled, confounded by all he had gone through.
That there was a mystery about his uncle and his great lonely house was undoubted: that he had someone shut up there, as Olwen believed, seemed almost as certain. The strange manner in which he had taken care to open no room too quickly, and to give any person who might be within ample time for concealment, remained in the young man’s mind as a most significant fact.
Was it his young wife? And if so, what was her mental condition? Remembering that ghastly display of soiled and ancient finery in the room with the barred windows, Bayre was inclined to think that imprisonment might have turned the brain of the captive, whoever she might be. And ugly doubts of his uncle, of whose malignity he had had ample proofs, rose in his mind again. What if he should make an attempt to reduce his bright young ward to the condition of the mysterious prisoner whose existence Olwen herself suspected?