CHAPTER XXIX.
Sir John Slingsby returned to Tarningham Park at about the hour of "dark midnight;" but he found both daughter and niece still up to receive him. That Sir John Slingsby had imbibed a portion of wine more abundant than most men could carry discreetly was evident from the increased depth of the rose in his complexion, and from a certain watery lustre in his eyes; but it must not thence be inferred that the baronet was even in the least degree drank. How many he had left drunk behind him matters not to this history; but he himself, though gay as usual, was perfectly sober, quite gentlemanly and at his ease; for he had not even arrived at that pitch where a consciousness of wine makes one careful of not showing its effects.
"Well, young ladies," he said, seating himself in his armchair for a moment, and sticking his thumb into his white waistcoat, "you have passed a dull night, I dare say, with the old gentleman out, and the two young gentlemen Lord knows where. Well, how are we to wear away to-morrow?"
"I shall wear away the morning, my dear uncle," said Mary Clifford, who had held long councils with her cousin, "in going to Tarningham; and I will ask you to lend me the carriage for an hour at eight o'clock."
"Certainly, dear Mary," said the baronet; "but Tarningham? what takes your pretty little self to Tarningham?"
"Why the truth is I want some money," answered Miss Clifford, "I think the bank opens at half-past eight."
"Money in the bank!" cried Sir John Slingsby, "was there ever such a girl? She has money in the bank! Well! take the carriage, Mary, when you like, and be back to breakfast at half-past nine, otherwise you shall have cold tea, and not a bit of pasty. Now to bed, to bed; for if people have to go to Tarningham early in the morning, they must go to bed at night."
The breakfast-table was laid, as usual, by nine o'clock in the morning; but before that hour Isabella Slingsby had been down and had wandered about in the drawing-room and in the library with a nervous sort of unsettledness in her manner, which struck even the servants, who happened to pass. She looked out of almost every window in the house which was accessible to her; she gazed down every road that wound through the park; she scanned every moving figure, that was within the range of sight; and she felt every moment a terror of what the next would bring, which she had never experienced in life before. She wished that Mary had not left her, that they had sent some one for the money; and she conjured up difficulties and distresses, obstacles that she would not know how to meet, questions of law and form of which she was unaware, to trouble herself and agitate her mind still more. At length, with a bold resolution, she rang the bell, and ordered the servant, who appeared, to go down to Doctor Miles's, with her compliments, and say she would be glad to see him. The moment after her father entered the room as gay, as bustling, as jovial as ever; his face resplendent with small red veins; his eyes sparkling like the wine of the night before; his ample stomach rolling unrepressed under an easy waistcoat; and his stout legs and neat foot carrying him about with the light step of one-and-twenty. To have looked at him one would have thought that there was not such a thing as care or sorrow in the while world, much less in his own house.
"Ah, Bella!" he cried, kissing her, "how have you slept, my love?--Where's Mary?--not come back? How's your aunt?--pining, pining, eh?--see what comes of a melancholy constitution, too much bile and twenty years' trial of a puritanical husband! Well, what's o'clock?--five-and-twenty minutes after nine--come along, we'll have breakfast. Mary shall have a fresh jot of tea when she comes," and in went Sir John Slingsby to the breakfast-room, ringing the bell as if he would have pulled it down the moment he got it.
"Breakfast," he exclaimed, when the butler appeared; "has not the postbag come?"