"You are right, Isadore," replied Mrs. Falkland: "the fact may be of no importance, but it may be of much; and, consequently, it is worth our own examination. I will go with you, my love, if Marian be still asleep. Wait one moment, and we will go and judge together."
Mrs. Falkland was not long absent. Marian was still lying overpowered with the opium; and the two ladies, having joined the boy in the hall, set out upon the search. While her mother was absent, however, Isadore called her own maid, and stationed her at one of the windows, whence she could see the spot to which the boy referred, and the path leading to it. She gave her also directions to remain there, and, in case of either Mrs. Falkland or herself making a signal, to send or come down to them in all haste. "I feel a sort of presentiment," thought Isadore, as she gave the orders, "that this expedition will end in something of importance."
Whatever it was likely to end in, the maid obeyed her orders as punctually as such orders generally are obeyed; that is to say, she remained two minutes at the window; and having seen Mrs. Falkland and Isadore walk about a hundred steps upon the path, she thought, "Dear me! I can just get the cap I was trimming, and be back again here long before they are at the other side of the park." But, as she crossed the hall, she met with the old butler, who detained her just to ask her where his mistress and Miss Falkland were gone; and then told her a story, which he had heard when he was young, and the incidents of which were very like those connected with the fate of poor Mr. Edward de Vaux. Every hair on the maid's head stood on end, and gave her so much occupation, that, ere she could get back to her post, it was too dark to trim the cap any further; she therefore, immediately and punctually, turned her eyes on the spot which her mistress had directed her to observe, and watched most carefully, now that she could see nothing at that distance.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Isadore and Mrs. Falkland, in the meantime, took the little path towards the brink of the river, in the immediate neighbourhood of which lay the spot where the boy had remarked the footsteps. Mrs. Falkland had lived too long in the great school of disappointment, human life, to suffer her expectations to be greatly excited; but Isadore, with a spirit naturally more enthusiastic, and as yet unchastened by any deep sorrows, felt her heart beat high, and her hopes struggle up against her fears, as she set out to take a more active part than she had hitherto been able to assume in the search for her cousin. The path wound along through the park, meandering considerably, perhaps in conformity to the taste of some ancient layer out of parks, or perhaps in consequence of the usual roundabout and circuitous nature of man's paths. Isadore, like all ardent minds, was tempted to make a more direct way for herself across the lawns; but Mrs. Falkland, in a more practical spirit, remembered that the grass was damp, and that it was not worth while to wet her feet for the purpose of saving half a minute. She adhered, therefore, to the gravel; and, as her more venturous daughter met with a little swamp occasioned by a spring, which obliged her to go round, they arrived at the spot they sought about the same time.
The spot itself, however, needs some description, and, indeed, it has been already described once before, with a special injunction to the reader to remember all the points and bearings which were then detailed. However, lest memory should be treacherous, we will once more take a view of the scene, as it was presented to the eyes of Mrs. Falkland and her daughter, who were at that moment looking exactly west-north-west. Before them was a little shrubbery of evergreens and indigenous plants, kept as low as possible, so as just to hide the wall of the park, against which it rested, and yet not to cut off from the windows of the house a beautiful rocky bank, which rose on the other side of the wall to the height of a great number of feet. This bank formed one of the faces of a small wooded promontory, or rather peninsula, which was joined on to the hills by a narrow neck, over which the high-road passed after having skirted the other wall of the grounds. It was surrounded everywhere but at that point by the river. The summit was covered with rich wood; and down the sides also, in every place where the rock did not rise up abrupt and bare, a thousand various trees and shrubs had rooted themselves in the clefts and crevices, or towered up like pinnacles from the top of every detached fragment, and overhung the calm, still bend of the river, which served as a mirror to all the beauties round about it. The setting sun, with his lower limb just resting on the western hills, was pouring a flood of splendour down the valley of the stream; and his full light bursting upon the face of the rock to the left of Mrs. Falkland and Isadore, found its way round in bright catches of purple light, illuminating every tree and angle of the rock that stood forward before the rest.
Pouring on, too, the beams streamed down the little footway which--cut through the low shrubbery to a door in the wall--led out to another path running from the high-road to the river, between the park and the cliff; and by the clear light thus afforded it was easy to see the marks of which the boy had spoken. They seemed to have been made by some one coming from the grass on the side of the river upon the soft gravel of the path, and had turned suddenly towards the door, where they disappeared, as if the person had passed through. They were small, too, as the boy had described, and were evidently not a woman's; but neither Mrs. Falkland nor Isadore were sufficiently well acquainted with De Vaux's footprints to feel anything like certainty concerning them. It were vain to deny, however, that the hopes of both were raised, though Heaven knows those hopes were vague and indistinct enough. Had either Mrs. Falkland or Isadore been asked what they expected to find, they would probably have answered, "Edward de Vaux;" but had they been required to assign a reason for such expectations, to account for his absence, or to point out any principle upon which he could have abandoned the society of those he loved, and yet linger in their neighbourhood, they would have been embarrassed for a reply. But affection does not pause to argue. Hope, too, is ever most powerful when she triumphs over reason, and, though it may seem a paradox, expectation is never so vivid as when we know not what we expect. Hope, then, as bright as sunshine, but as vague and undefined as that sunshine when it streams through the morning mist, was lighted up by the sight of those footsteps. As Mrs. Falkland gazed on them, and traced them distinctly to the door, she exclaimed, "How very stupid it was of me not to bring the key!"
"I have a key, ma'am," said the boy, groping in the pocket of his jacket; and producing it accordingly, he advanced to the door and opened it. Mrs. Falkland now looked eagerly for more traces; but none were to be seen close to the door, though the ground was composed of a reddish sort of sand, which would easily have taken the print of even a light foot. At the distance, however, of about five feet were to be seen two deep marks of the same kind, but close together, with the heels more profoundly indented in the sand than the front of the foot; and it became evident that some one had leaped from the top of the wall. This was made still clearer, when, turning back, Mrs. Falkland examined the door, on the top of the lock of which several patches of gravel had been left by the foot of some one who had taken that means to reach the summit of the wall. In the mean time Isadore was eagerly tracing on the footprints, which led straight from the deeper marks to the bank; and on one of the large stones close by the river, she soon found the impression of a foot in red sand stamped upon the green mould with which the fragment of rock was covered.
"Here, mamma, here," cried Isadore. "He must have passed here, and that since the rain of last night, too; for if you look, the marks are quite sharp, while some old ones going down towards the water are nearly washed away. I should not wonder if he were here now."
"Hark!" said Mrs. Falkland; "did you not hear a noise above there?"