"Yours knows my object in coming to-day already," interrupted Lord Harold, "and must, of course, know the result. Mine has given his fullest consent, upon my honour, to my seeking your hand. All I ask is, that he may not know I have sought it and it has been refused. Let me visit here as usual, let me--"
"I had heard," said Alice, "that you are going up to London. Why not do so at once?"
"I will," he answered; "I will. But that will be only for a few days; and, at my return, there must be no difference, Alice. Promise me that; promise, if but for the sake of early friendship, for the sake of childish companionship."
"Well," she said, after a moment's pause; "well, but there must be no mistaking, Edward."
He looked pained. "Do not suppose, Alice," he replied, "that I have any ungenerous object. When I ask this favour, I ask it for your sake as well as my own. You must not ask me how or why, but trust me."
"I will," she said; "I will! I have always found you honourable and generous; but, indeed, let me say, without thinking me unkind, that for your own sake, with such feelings as you possess towards me, it were better to be here as little as may be till you have conquered them."
"That will never be, Alice," he answered. "It is enough that you shall never hear more of them. But here comes Silly John, as people call him," he added, bitterly. "It is fit that a fool should break off a conversation begun with such mad and silly hopes as mine! Let us so back to the Manor, Alice; we shall never get rid of him."
The person who thus interrupted the painful interview between Lord Harold and Alice Herbert, was one of a class now much more rarely seen than in those times. There were, it is true, even then, hospitals and asylums for the insane, but they were few; and Silly John, as he was called, was not one of those whom the men of that day would ever have dreamed of putting in confinement. He was perfectly harmless, though often very annoying; and the malady of the brain under which he suffered was rather an aberration of intellect than the complete loss of judgment. It went a deal further, indeed, than in the case of the half saved, in that most beautiful of biographies, that quintessence of rare learning and excellent thought, The Doctor. He was decidedly insane upon many points; and upon all, the intellect, if not weak, was wandering and unsettled. His real name was John Graves: he had been an usher in a small school, and consequently was not without a portion of learning, such as it was. But his great passion was for music and poetry: the one would call him into a state of sad though tranquil silence, the very name of the other would excite him to an alarming pitch of loquacity. Withal, he was not without a certain degree of shrewdness in some matters; and what was still more singular and apparently anomalous, his memory of events and dates was peculiarly strong, and his adherence to truth invariable.
He now approached Alice and her companion with a quick step, dressed in an old wide coat of philomot colour, with a steeple-crowned hat, which had seen the wars of the great rebellion, rusty and battered, but still whole, and decorated with two cock's feathers which he had torn himself from the tail of some luckless chanticleer. His grey worsted hose were darned with many a colour; and in his lean but muscular hand, he carried a strong cudgel, which steadied his steps, being slightly lame in the right leg. When he had come within a few feet of the lady and her suitor, he stopped directly in the path, so that they could not pass without going amongst the trees; and, for a moment or two, looked intently in both their faces, with his small grey eyes peering into theirs, and his large head leaning considerably to the side, so as to bring the heavy ashy features quite out of the natural line.
"Well, John, what do you want?" demanded Alice, who had been familiar with the sight of the poor man from her childhood. "Is there anything I can do for you?"