Fortunately for Sir Mark, his old acquaintance Sir Thomas Beckley came forward to offer his hospitality, and he took up his abode with him, feeling that he could not leave the place with his task undone, and in a bitter mood he received the attempts at consolation offered to him by Anne, who, however, always kept very much aloof, playing the part of the injured woman, but promising herself a sharp revenge, if ever the King’s messenger should again lay siege unto her heart.
Up to the day of the funeral the founder had been almost childish from the effects of the shock; but after that he seemed to have recovered himself, though he looked aged and bent, and changed to a remarkable degree.
“I was very hard upon you, Gil,” he said to him one evening, as they stood leaning against one of the posts that had helped to support the swing bridge now completely swept away, and whose place was occupied by a couple of stout planks laid across the race. “I was very hard upon you, my lad, but, though I made that affair of Abel Churr’s an excuse, I don’t think I believed at heart that you did away with the poor wandering wretch.”
Gil looked at him sadly, and bowed his head without speaking.
“What are you going to do now, my lad?” continued the founder, gazing at him with a yearning look as one his lost child had loved.
“To do?” said Gil, in a low hopeless tone, “to do? What is there left to do, sir, but die?”
“Hush, my lad,” said the founder, laying a trembling hand upon the young man’s arm; “that is for me to say. I am old and stricken: the storm has torn one great branch from the trunk, and the old tree will slowly wither and die. You are young yet, and hope will come to you again as time goes on.”
“Hush, for God’s sake, hush!” cried Gil, turning upon him almost fiercely; then, gazing round him in the gathering gloom of the evening, he let himself sink, upon his knees lower and lower, with his hands covering his face, as for the first time in the solitude of that blasted home he gave full vent to the pent-up agony that for days and days he had striven to hide.
“Hope,” he groaned, “hope?” as his broad shoulders heaved and the despairing sobs tore their way from his weary breast. “He does not know what she was to me—he cannot tell how I loved her. Mace, Mace, my darling, would to God I were lying by thy side!”
It had grown quite dark now, and the founder sank upon his knees in the black ashes to lay his hands upon the young man’s head.