He was out of sight of the garden now, and its occupants, for he shrunk from watching Claude and her companion; but he was still well within view of a portion of the Fort and its defences.
“It is all very well,” he thought, as he threw himself back, with his straw hat off, and his hands behind his head; “but if a clever, resolute burglar made up his mind to get into the old man’s stronghold after all was locked up, how easy it would be. Why, I could climb up the sea-face quickly enough, and over the south wall, and then there is nothing to hinder one but the moat, across which a man might wade in a pair of fishing-stockings.”
A curious tingling sensation here attacked Chris Lisle, and the colour mounted into his cheek at the thoughts which came rushing through his brain.
Suppose he played the part of burglar, not to obtain any of the old man’s hoarded-up coin, but that which was the sole desire of his life? Claude would never consent to a meeting, but if he took her by surprise, and once more clasped her in his arms, she could not really be so very angry, for she loved him; of that there could, after all, be no doubt, and for the sake of that sweet delight he would risk her displeasure. It would only be right, for he would be showing her how his heart was hers, and hers alone.
The cliff face? A bit dangerous, but he could do it easily, even the wall. Bah! he could climb a higher wall than that, while as to the drop of water in Gartram’s moat, if he couldn’t have waded it, he could have swam it, and would a thousand times so as to be once more near her.
“It’s a puzzle,” said Chris aloud. “Why, I ought to have done it long enough ago. How was it I didn’t think of it before?”
There was no mental answer to this, and his thoughts took another direction. He was comparatively a rich man now, but somehow he did not feel disposed to go and speak out again to Gartram, whose first question would be, “And, pray, how did you get this money?”
The cash had in each case been paid over to him the settling day with quite commercial promptitude, and lay at his bankers at Toxeter; but somehow Chris felt no richer, and the exultation he had expected was not there. Forty thousand pounds all his own, but he did not feel proud of it, and had sat up a night in his own room thinking of how little difference it made to a man, and, on the whole, feeling rather disappointed than otherwise at the result of his speculation.
But when was it to be? That night? The next night?
“I’ll try till I do meet her, and if the old man sees me, and flies at me—