At length Arabella cried, "Here is some one now, Ida;" and the girl, leaning her head a little forward, exclaimed, "That is he, that is he!" drawing back instantly from the window with a shudder.
Arabella watched him as he crossed towards the gate. "'Tis strange," she said, "I can discover in his appearance none of those deadly signs you speak of. To me, he would seem but that pitiful thing, a vain old coxcomb, affecting the air and step of youth, dressed in the butterfly finery of early thoughtlessness, and banishing the comely gravity of years. He trips along like some Court dancing master, fancying himself a treasury of graces, which he bestows as a bounty on less gifted men. But he is gone, Ida. Now we will set out together. Nay, I will go with you; for if you are afraid of his company, I am afraid of my solitude. Sometimes, when I am alone, I think I shall go mad."
In execution of their design, the lady and her attendant went out and walked slowly along the wall, towards the tower in which the unhappy Overbury was confined. But the orders of the guard were by this time changed; and the man at the angle nearest to the Knight's prison dropped his partizan, saying, "You cannot pass here, ladies, unless you give the countersign."
"That we are not able to do," answered Arabella, pausing; "we are not soldiers, my good sir, to take the fortress by surprise; and I think they never furnish us poor women with signs or countersigns."
"You cannot pass here, madam, without," replied the man, bluffly; "there are new orders given for the custody of the close prisoners; so you must take your walk another way."
Arabella turned sadly back towards her room. But while she did so, we must pursue, for a short time, the course of the dark and infamous villain who had just left the chamber of Sir Thomas Overbury. Although his step was as light as air, and debonair as ever, Doctor Foreman did not feel altogether well satisfied and at ease.
"The man suspects something," he said, speaking evidently of Overbury; "and I doubt this new Lieutenant does his duty well."
What the duty was which he spoke of would not be difficult to say, for the most corrupt hearts apply to their own purposes, however dark and horrible they may be, the highest and the holiest terms; and the reluctant apprehension which, it would seem, Sir Gervase always felt in yielding himself to the criminal designs of his patrons, was construed by their less scrupulous accomplice into a lack of due devotion to their cause.
"That girl, too," continued the charlatan to himself, pursuing his way; "she must be provided for. She would make a cruel witness against one, if anything were to come out. Weston's the man, however.--My boy Dick has no scruples; he can settle both affairs at once; but he must have full power, and not be always hampered by this knave of a Lieutenant. I must see my Lord of Rochester, and get his authority, otherwise we shall make no progress. To-morrow, I hear, is to be his wedding-day with our fair Countess, so he will be in good humour."
Such reveries brought him to the water side, and calling one of the wherries, which were, perhaps, more plentiful upon the Thames in those days than in our own, he made the boatman conduct him at once to Whitehall.