"Has nothing at all been heard of him?" asked Edward.
"Very little that can be at all relied upon," replied Lord Montagu. "The servant who was with him when he so rashly leaped his horse into the river was apprehended and questioned. He says that Sir Richard was on his way to Lyons when the accident occurred; but on that road no trace of him can be discovered. A peasant declares he met with a man of an appearance like his, without boots, hat, or sword, wandering along the mountain-paths toward Les Echelles, and a little boy says he saw the same person at a distance; but this is all that has yet been discovered."
"I would fain beseech the Abbé Scaglia to drop all pursuit," said the young man; "but I fear they will not let me write. It is useless to seek for him now that I am, as they say, recovering; and, moreover, my lord, I think I was myself a good deal in fault. My words were rash and intemperate. I could not have borne them myself had I been in his place."
"They certainly were not very sweet," said Lord Montagu, with a laugh; "and I will tell the abbé what you say, Ned. But you will soon be well, I do trust, and then this affair will terminate of itself."
The conversation was not prolonged much further; and Lord Montagu left his young friend to the care of Pierrot and Jacques Beaupré and the attendance of the good sisters. Every kindness was shown him. The room in which he had been placed was large and airy; the sunshine and the sweet summer air came streaming in at his window, and day by day his health improved; but still illness is ever tedious, and the hours passed heavily along. Thought was his only resource; but, for a young man of his character, thought—even enforced thought—is a blessing. The adventure which had so nearly closed his life was not without its good results. He reproached himself for the harsh words he had uttered and the harsh feelings he had entertained toward his brother, and he resolved to nourish better things in his heart. The five or six preceding years and the events they had brought with them had all had a hardening tendency; but, one by one, during the few last months, softening lessons of various kinds had disciplined and entendered without enfeebling his spirit; and on the sixth day after Lord Montagu's departure Edward rose for an hour or two from his bed of sickness, a very different being from him whom we first introduced to the reader.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Every thing is irrevocable. The word spoken, the deed done, is registered in that book of fate from the page of which no solvent can blot it out. Nay, more: every word or action, however small, has some effect on all that surrounds it; and that effect is often quite out of all proportion to the cause. It is hard for the narrow, slippery mind of man to conceive and hold fast the fact that a pebble dropped into the Atlantic produces a ripple which is more or less felt to all the Atlantic's shores: yet it is a fact. The eye may not be keen enough to detect it ten yards from the spot where the stone displaced the waters; but, though unseen, it exists. It may be crossed by counteracting causes, but still it acts upon them while they act upon it; and it has its effect,—permanent, persisting, never ending.
It is the same with man's actions. Deeds done a thousand years ago are affecting every one of us now; and Julius Cæsar has more to do with a common-councilman of the city of London than that common-councilman ever dreams of.