"Because he never showed the least feeling of any kind for his brother," said Rose. "I do not think all this agitation, all this distraction is natural, unless he is moved by stronger and more personal feelings than either regard for his brother, or fears of disgrace through him. But you must not ask me, my dear father, what I think, what I feel, or why. I have often heard you say, that women have more instinct than reason. God grant that my instinct be wrong in the present instance."
"Rose, Rose," cried her father, "this is really too much, my love. Be more generous; be more candid!"
"Well, papa," she answered, "I may be wrong, very wrong; but it would be a great satisfaction to me to know, if Sir William Winslow ever saw his brother yesterday--if he has taken any measures, or provided any means for his defence."
Rose, to her own horror and dismay, had been suddenly led very near the truth, by the doubts created in her mind by the wild and rambling tone of Sir William Winslow's letter. Two or three facts presented themselves to her memory in an instant, which, if she had not quite forgotten them, had not connected themselves before in her thoughts with the crime which had been committed. She now remembered that while speaking with Chandos by the side of the pond, she had heard the voice of his brother coming towards the very spot where the deed was done; she remembered that there was another voice also speaking in tones not familiar to her; and she also recollected that the sound of both was loud and angry. She dared not express what she thought, without further consideration; she feared to cast an unjust doubt upon a man who might be innocent; but she determined, without the slightest consideration of how it might affect herself, to state all that she knew, if necessary, to Chandos Winslow's justification.
"You shall have your doubts solved this very day, my Flower;" her uncle replied to her last words; "for I will go over to S----, and see our poor prisoner. I like the lad much; I am quite sure he is innocent; and I think with you, that this letter is not written in a natural tone. As soon as I have seen dear Lily, I will have horses, and go."
General Tracy did not fail to execute the intention thus expressed; but it may be as well to state at once, what had been the course of Sir William Winslow, without waiting for the old officer's report. On quitting Northferry, the baronet sunk back in his carriage, and gazed forth from the windows with a straining eye, full of horror and dismay, for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then, with a start, he raised himself, and looked at the letter which he held crumpled up in his hand. He smoothed it out, he tried to read it; but his hand shook so fearfully, that he could with difficulty make out the characters. "You had better quit England as soon as possible!" he repeated. "He is right--he is right!" Then turning to the page, he read--"I will not betray you--but facts may be elicited at the trial of a dangerous kind." "Not betray me," continued the baronet, commenting upon what he read; "to be sure he will to save his own life--I will not trust him--no, no! He is right. I will quit England. Shall I see him first? It might be better, perhaps--No, I cannot, I will not--I must try and be calm, however. People will suspect something. What shall I do with this?" and he looked at the letter. "I wonder how he got them to bring it without breaking the seal?--By the lawyer, I dare say--I must destroy it."
He proceeded to do so, tearing it into very minute pieces. But then he feared that they might be found, and put together again; and some he strewed upon the road from the carriage window, letting piece by piece blow away, each at a great distance from the other.
Some he let fall into the bottom of the carriage, taking care that they should be disunited from the rest, and that they bore nought but the most ordinary words without the context. Some he actually ate. Do not let the reader think it improbable or exaggerated. He actually ate them. When he arrived at the inn at S----, he did not either walk or drive to the prison; but he ordered horses on to the sea-coast, and then entering the hotel, wrote the short note we have already read to Mr. Tracy. In ten hours his feet were no longer upon British ground.
CHAPTER XXIII.
It was in a cell of the prison of S----. The prison had not been modernized. It was not a red brick building picked out with white: a gaol in a harlequin's jacket. Nor was it a snug, free-stone, gentlemanly house, with big fetters and a figure of Justice over the door, looking half asleep under her bandage, and ready to drop both scales and sword. It was an old-fashioned English prison--not a bit the better for that--heavy, massive, soiled with the smoke of manufactories, and turning its black unmeaning shoulder to the street, with one window looking out, like the eye of Polyphemus, over the huge mouth-like door, where so many victims went in. The interior accommodation corresponded well with the unpromising exterior. Nobody could say he had been deceived into high expectations by the outside, when he found himself ushered into a cell of nine feet by six, with a grated window high up, a chair, a table, and a bed. It was just what the bricks in the wall foretold. There sat Chandos Winslow, by the table, with fetters on his legs. The magistrates were very fond of fetters. They fettered everybody and everything--oven their own intellects--and they instantly fettered Chandos Winslow, though the utility of the thing was not apparent, seeing that he could sooner have eaten the prison than got out of it; and the injustice of the act was self-evident, for he had neither committed nor been found guilty of any crime "worthy of death or bonds."