"They have resolved on your destruction. Fly at once. Perhaps hereafter I shall see you again. Think no more of what I said. I will never marry him. I had rather die first."
That was all, but it set John Garnet acting as well as thinking. His preparations were soon made, a small valise was packed, his arms were carefully examined and fresh primed, finally he visited his horse in the stable, saw to his corn, his shoes, his saddle and bridle, all the requirements indispensable for the morrow, when, with the first appearance of day, he would have to ride for his life.
Lastly, he passed once more under Nelly's windows, and watched, with a strange, sad longing, the point of light that denoted her vigil by the dying man's bed. Then he turned back to his lodging for a few hours' rest, more depressed and sick at heart than he had ever felt before. The north wind howled angrily, stripping their autumn leaves in scores from the bending boughs of the orchard, while every now and then, an ungathered apple came to the ground with a thud. It was a dreary night, pain and sorrow within, cold and desolation without. A hopeless mourner above, a weary watcher below, for something told John Garnet that old Carew's life was ebbing away with every passing minute, and that death was busy up yonder, while here the snow fell thick and fast.
[CHAPTER XXIX.]
REMORSE.
In the gipsies' camp a night of snow and storm was accepted without a murmur, and provided against in a spirit of ingenuity and forethought peculiar to such wayfarers, as love the shelter of no roof so well as the canopy of heaven. Fin Cooper in his tent, at the door of which crackled a liberal fire of roots and brushwood, filling the interior with warmth, and indeed smoke, declared himself as happy as a king! He had all his comforts about him, and most of his possessions within call, nor wanted a sufficient share of such superfluities as made the luxuries of his hard unsophisticated life. There was a dressed skin for his couch, a good blanket for his coverlet, and a soft shawl doubled over an anker of brandy for his pillow. In the kettle steamed a hare, a brace of partridges, and a haunch from the fore-quarter of a red-deer. With food, rest, and warmth, good liquor in his cup and good tobacco in his pipe, Fin could not but admit that, so long as his tent held waterproof, he was not much to be pitied, even on a Devonshire moor under an early fall of snow. To-night, also, he considered himself more fortunate than usual, as he shared these advantages with no less welcome a visitor than Waif, accompanied, for reasons of propriety, by her grandmother, an old Egyptian, reputed to have once been handsome, and of fascinating demeanour, now, to say the least, a remarkable person in appearance, grim, taciturn, given to drink, and seldom condescending to remove a short black pipe from her mouth.
His promised wife, on the contrary, seemed in high spirits, as she was unquestionably in great beauty. Her black eyes, flushed and sparkled, her tawny cheek glowed with a rich deep crimson, while her manner betrayed no little self-assertion, her tone something, amounting almost to defiance, when addressed by her future lord. Talkative she never had been from childhood, but to-night she was less taciturn than usual, and seemed strangely eager to break such occasional silence as gave scope for her own thoughts.
Fin, looking on her with admiring eyes, did not fail to notice that in figure she had grown thin, to leanness, and that there shone a brilliancy, unnatural even for a gipsy, in the uneasy glances that watched his movements so narrowly, yet never rested for an instant on his face.