“Then you must assume that he is dead,” said Agnes; “and pray that you may never have sufficient curiosity to lead you to seek to know more about him.”
Clare looked at her with some surprise on her face.
“What! You know”—she began.
“I know nothing,” said Agnes quickly, interrupting her. “I have heard that he was not a good man, and I know that if he had had anything of good in his nature, your mother would not have parted from him. But he is dead, and we have no need to talk about him. Now let me tell you the names of all the places we can see from here.”
They had driven to the summit of one of the low Brackenshire hills, and from there Agnes pointed out the various landmarks. Far away to the north the great manufacturing town of Linnborough lay beneath the great shadow of its own smoke, and to the right the exquisite spire of Scarchester Cathedral was seen, and by the side of the old minster ran the river Leet. All through the valley lay the villages of Nessvale, with its Norman church, from the tower of which the curfew is still rung; Green-ledge, with its tall maypole, and Holmworth, with its grey castle and moat. Then on every hand were to be seen the splendid park lands surrounding the manor houses, the broad meadows, the brown furrowed fields of Brackenshire, with here and there a farmhouse, and down where the Lambeck flowed, a brown mill with its slow-moving water wheel. The quacking of ducks that swam in the little stream was borne up from the valley at intervals and mingled with the melancholy whistle of a curlew, and the occasional notes of a robin sitting on a gate at the side of the road.
“England—England—this is England!” cried Clare. “I never wish to see any other land so long as I live. Ah, my poor mother! This is what she was longing to see before she died.”
Agnes did not speak. She knew that the girl saw all the incidents of the English landscape through a mist of tears.
It was not until the phaeton was making the homeward circuit and had just come abreast of the wall of Westwood Court, that a word was exchanged between Agnes and Clare. All the interest of the girl was once more awakened when she learned that Claude Westwood had been born in that great house which was just visible through the trees of the park, and that he was now the owner of all.
“And the murder—it was done among those trees?” said Clare, in a whisper.
Agnes nodded.