Sir Walter, however, was detained at Moorhurst much longer than he expected, for everybody was anxious to give testimony before him, and many more crowded forward than could afford any satisfactory information, or throw the most trifling light upon the case; and yet, as each and all of them had something to say in favour of Langford, Sir Walter could not find it in his heart to refuse to listen to any. The clerk of the parish was called upon to take down their depositions: and certainly, if the fact of having established a good character in a country town could have assisted any man in a similar predicament, it might have done so with Langford in the present instance.
Sir Walter Herbert, however, did not lose sight of the great object, though he suffered himself to be deluged by much irrelevant matter; and he soon found that the only legitimate cause for supposing Langford at all connected with the death or disappearance of Lord Harold was the fact of the half-witted man, John Graves, having run down, during the preceding evening, and besought several persons to come up and prevent Langford and the young nobleman from killing each other. As he was known to adhere invariably to the truth, two or three of the town's-people had gone up with him into the park in order to keep the peace, but on finding all quiet, and nobody there, had returned without further search.
Sir Walter discovered also that the two magistrates who had preceded him in the investigation had not even demanded to see John Graves himself, though his testimony, taken second-hand, was that in fact on which the whole case rested. This he determined immediately to remedy; but the half-witted man was by that time nowhere to be found, and though Sir Walter waited for many hours while persons were despatched to seek for him in all directions, the good knight was at length obliged to give the matter up for the day, and return to the Manor House.
During his absence, Alice was left for several hours with no companion but her own painful thoughts. She felt, as she might well feel, quite sure that Langford was innocent of any base, or cowardly, or treacherous action; she felt sure of his honour, his integrity, his uprightness. But that certainty, that confidence, though it gave her support, could not deliver her from apprehension. All her thoughts were gloomy. The bright joy which Langford's acknowledgment of his love on the preceding evening had afforded her, had been like one of those sweet warm summer-like days in the unconfirmed infancy of the year, which are succeeded immediately by storms and tempests. Her mind had rested for a moment in a vision of perfect happiness; but now, whichever way she turned her waking eyes, there was something painful in the prospect. Although she was very willing to believe that her father's pecuniary affairs were not in near so bad a state as Lord Danemore's lawyer had made them appear, yet there could be no doubt that they were greatly embarrassed, and that his income and resources were so much smaller than those of his ancestors, that it would be a duty to curtail his expenses, to diminish his establishment, and, in an age when luxury and splendour were daily increasing, to forego many of the conveniences and comforts which he had hitherto enjoyed, and all that dignified but unostentatious state which his family had kept up for many generations.
She knew, too, that to do so would be a bitter pang, well nigh to the breaking of the heart that felt it; and although, for her own part, there was scarcely a pretty cottage in the neighbourhood in which she could not have made her home with cheerfulness and happiness, she looked forward with painful apprehension to the time when her father might have to quit the Manor House, and discharge the old servants who had served him so long, and be no more what he had been amongst the many who looked up to and reverenced him.
Such was one dark subject of contemplation; the death of Lord Harold was another. She thought of him as she had seen him the evening before, full of youth, and health, and energy; she thought of him as she had seen him in other days, full of joy and gaiety, and that bright exuberant life which it is difficult to imagine can ever be extinguished, when we gaze upon it in all its activity and brightness; and yet a single moment had ended it for ever.
Her mind then turned to the father of him who was gone; and she pictured him sitting in his lonely halls, childless, solitary, desolate, left without hope and without consolation to pass through the chill winter of his age, till he reached the dark and cheerless resting-place of the tomb. She pitied him from her very heart; she could have wept for him; but then her thoughts turned to Langford, and she asked herself, if it were possible that a man who had just suffered so severely as Lord Danemore himself, could seek to bring misery and sorrow upon others? Abstractedly, she would have thought such a thing impossible; but when she reflected upon the character of the man, she felt but too deeply convinced that his own misery would but make him seek to render others as miserable; that his despair would be bitter and turbulent, not calm and mild; and that to see the hearths of others desolate, the hearts of others broken, would in all probability be the consolation he would choose.
She was pondering sadly upon these gloomy subjects of contemplation, as well upon that chief and still more absorbing one, the situation of him whom she so dearly loved, when the servant Halliday appeared to announce to her that Master Kinsight, Lord Danemore's attorney, was at the gate, and would not go away. He had told him, the servant said, that his worship was out, and that she herself was busy, and not to be disturbed; "but he still hangs there, Mistress Alice," continued the man, "and he is no way civil; so much so, indeed, that if I did not know his worship is averse to having anybody cudgelled, I would drub him for his pains."
"Do no such thing, Halliday," replied Alice, "but bring him in here; I will speak to him myself."
In a few minutes the lawyer entered the room, and threw himself down into a chair with very little ceremony. "So, Mistress Alice," he said, in a tone, the natural insolence of which was increased by the unconcealed hatred of Sir Walter's servants, "I find your father's out; gone out, I suppose to avoid me, for he knew I was coming about this time for his answer and yours, as to what we were speaking of last night."