Manners, however, as the peer expected, persisted in his design; and, taking leave, he walked out into the park, while Lord Dewry left the room, as if to proceed to the apartment of Sir Roger Millington. Before following him, however, it may be as well to say, that Manners did not direct his steps, in the first instance, to Morley House; but thinking, "His lordship, in his concern for this Sir Roger Millington, seems entirely to have forgotten the poor keeper they talked of," he stopped at the gate, and inquired whither the wounded man had been carried. The old woman at the lodge gave him the necessary direction; and proceeding to the cottage which she described, Manners entered with that sort of frank good feeling that stands on no ceremonies where the object is humane.
He found the wounded keeper still suffering considerably; and he found also, as he had been inclined to suspect, that the attention of the surgeon having been hitherto occupied by the patient of higher rank, the keeper had been entirely neglected. He was consequently more ill and feverish than the nature of his wound would otherwise have accounted for; and Manners, knowing, from much experience in such occurrences, that if proper care were not taken, a slight injury might have a fatal termination, instantly despatched a messenger for the surgeon who was attending Miss De Vaux, and kindly waited his arrival.
In conversation with the keeper, he learned that Pharold had not been present when the guns were fired, and from him, also, he heard the particulars of the affray in Dimden Park, the wound the man had received not having been sufficiently severe to deprive him of the power of observing everything that occurred around him afterward. By the whole of his narrative the character of Pharold rose in Manners's opinion, and his hopes of De Vaux's safety were strengthened: but still he determined to act as if such hopes did not exist; and accompanying the surgeon on his late return to the village near Morley House, he prepared to pursue the search for the gipsy as ardently as ever. What followed his arrival we have already seen.
In the mean while Lord Dewry proceeded through the long and somewhat dreary galleries of Dimden House to a distant apartment, but not to the chamber in which the participator in his dark schemes lay on a bed of agony and distress. The room he sought was solitary; and, ringing the bell, he ordered Harvey, the head keeper, to be sent to him. The man was already in the house, waiting his orders, and somewhat apprehensive of his lord's displeasure at the failure of his plans. But as long as Pharold was alive and free, there was a demon of fear in the bosom of Lord Dewry that cowed the more violent passions of his nature in the presence of those whom he used as his tools. The consciousness of the designs in which he employed them made him treat them gently, from vague but anxious surmises that, notwithstanding all his care, they might suspect the motives of the plans they mingled with.
Although, then, in his heart, he could have felled the keeper to the earth for letting Pharold escape him. In addressed him mildly when he presented himself. "Why, how is this, Harvey?" he said: "you have let the game escape us. There must have been a fault somewhere."
"The fault was in the cursed cowardice of the fellows that were with me, my lord," replied the keeper; "if they would but have followed me, we should have taken the blackfaced villain any how. Two or three of us might have got wounded, but no matter for that; we should have had him safe here, if they would but have come on. But one fell back, and another fell back; so that when I had got them up against the wall there were but two with me, and two could do nothing against a good dozen."
"Let me hear how the whole business took place," said the peer: "remember that I have no full account of it from any one; and we must try to remedy what has gone wrong."
The park-keeper was, of course, glad enough to tell his story in the way that best suited him; and he related the events which we already know according to his own particular version. The first error, he declared, was, that several of the men whom he had hired for the purpose of capturing the gipsies were too late at the rendezvous, and several did not come at all. These disappointments, and the delay they occasioned, had prevented his taking advantage of the moment when the gipsies' guns were discharged after the slaughter of the deer, and, as time lost is never regained, had caused the ultimate failure of his whole plan. He assured the peer, however, that Pharold had been one of the party engaged in the destruction of the game; and that he had been active in the affray wherein Sir Roger Millington and the keeper had been wounded. Some of the other men, he said, were not very clear about these facts, but he was ready to swear to it. He then related how the boy William had been seized by two of his party, who had been detached for that purpose; and he added a long account of the measures which he had taken in order to trace the gipsies in their flight.
"Is the keeper badly wounded?" demanded the peer, thoughtfully.
"He did not seem bad at first, my lord," replied the man; "but they say he is much worse this afternoon, and his wife is afraid he will die."