Such was the case in the present instance.
The entire party started from their seats; and the smiles that were a moment before upon their countenances gave place to looks of profound horror and intense curiosity.
The feelings thus denoted did not experience any mitigation from the inquiring glances that were cast towards the gardener; for the entire appearance of the old man was far more calculated to augment than diminish the alarm which his strange cry had originated. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets—his quivering lips were livid—his frame seemed to be influenced by one continuous shudder, and his breath came with difficulty.
In fact, the mysterious sounds of footsteps in the passage had worked up his feelings, already greatly moved by the discovery and exhumation of the rotting carcass of a female, to a degree of excitement doubly painful to behold in one so bowed with the weight of years as he; and he sank into a seat, as we have before said, in a state of almost complete exhaustion.
The wine that Egerton compelled him to swallow partially restored him; and in the course of a few minutes he was enabled to relate the particulars which we have succinctly placed before the reader.
The ladies were cruelly shocked by the narrative that thus met their ears; and they one and all declared that nothing should ever again induce them to visit a place into possession of which their relative seemed to have entered under the most inauspicious circumstances. They also requested to be taken back to London with the least possible delay; and Sir Rupert Harborough, with his friend Chichester, hastened to give the servants orders to get the vehicles ready.
Mrs. Bustard and her daughters retired into an ante-room to put on their bonnets and shawls: Egerton, Dunstable, Cholmondeley, and Tedworth Jones remained standing round the chair on which the old gardener was still seated.
"This is a most extraordinary thing," said Dunstable, after a pause, during which he had reflected profoundly: then, addressing himself to his friend the Colonel, he asked in a serious tone, "Does not the strange discovery just made remind you of something that I mentioned to you nearly two years ago?"
"I recollect!" cried the Colonel: "you allude to the mysterious disappearance of Lydia Hutchinson."
"I do," answered the nobleman. "That event occurred while I was lying wounded in this house."