"Nothing but a musket-ball, Somers," answered his master, carelessly. "You've seen such a thing before, I fancy."
"Yes, sir, but not often in a gentleman's bedroom," replied the man. "Who could send it in here, I wonder?"
"Some smugglers, I suppose they were," replied Sir Edward, "who took me for Sir Robert Croyland, as I was leaning out of the window, and gave me a ball as they passed. I never saw a worse shot in my life; for I was put up like a target, and it went a foot and a half above my head. Give me those boots, Somers;" and having drawn them on, Sir Edward Digby descended to the drawing-room, while his servant commented upon his coolness, by saying, "Well, he's a devilish fine young fellow, that master of mine, and ought to make a capital general some of these days!"
In the drawing-room, Sir Edward Digby found nobody but a pretty country girl in a mob-cap sweeping out the dust; and leaving her to perform her functions undisturbed by his presence, he sauntered through a door which he had seen open the night before, exposing part of the interior of a library. That room was quite vacant, and as the young officer concluded that between it and the drawing-room must lie the scene of his morning's operations, he entertained himself with taking down different books, looking into them for a moment or two, reading a page here and a page there, and then putting them up again. He was in no mood, to say the truth, either for serious study or light reading. Gay would not have amused him; Locke would have driven him mad.
He knew not well why it was, but his heart beat when he heard a step in the neighbouring room. It was nothing but the housemaid, as he was soon convinced, by her letting the dustpan drop and making a terrible clatter. He asked himself what his heart could be about, to go on in such a way, simply because he was waiting, in the not very vague expectation of seeing a young lady, with whom he had to talk of some business, in which neither of them were personally concerned.
"It must be the uncertainty of whether she will come or not," he thought; "or else the secrecy of the thing;" and yet he had, often before, had to wait with still more secrecy and still more uncertainty, on very dangerous and important occasions, without feeling any such agitation of his usually calm nerves. She was a very pretty girl, it was true, with all the fresh graces of youth about her, light and sunshine in her eyes, health and happiness on her cheeks and lips, and
"La grace encore plus belle que la beauté"
in every movement. But then, they perfectly understood each other; there was no harm, there was no risk, there was no reason why they should not meet.
Did they perfectly understand each other? Did they perfectly understand themselves? It is a very difficult question to answer; but one thing is very certain--that, of all things upon this earth, the most gullible is the human heart; and when it thinks it understands itself best, it is almost always sure to prove a greater fool than ever.
Sir Edward Digby did not altogether like his own thoughts; and therefore, after waiting for a quarter of an hour, he walked out into one of the little passages, which we have already mentioned, running from the central corridor towards a door or window in the front, between the library and what was called the music-room. He had not been there a minute when a step--very different from that of the housemaid--was heard in the neighbouring room; and, as the officer was turning thither, he met the younger Miss Croyland coming out, with a bonnet--or hat, as it was then called,--hanging on her arm by the ribbons.