"Keep off!" thundered Rainford: "you know not whom you would strike!"
"No—touch him not!" cried Sir Ralph, catching the Earl by the arm, and holding him back. "I have seen my niece—Dr. Lascelles is now alone with her: she is more composed—though very far from well;—and she begs that this person may be allowed to depart without the slightest molestation."
"Her ladyship shall be obeyed, Sir Ralph," returned the nobleman. "Mr. Rainford, you have heard the message that has been sent relative to yourself."
Having thus spoken, Arthur turned aside;—for a strange misgiving—a vague suspicion—no, not a suspicion either,—but a feeling of dissatisfaction had stolen into his mind. If Rainford had alarmed or insulted Lady Hatfield, wherefore should she allow him to go unpunished? Was it not more probable that he had brought her some evil tidings? But how could there exist any connexion, however remote or slight, between that man of equivocal character and Georgiana Hatfield? What business could possibly bring them together, and produce so strange—so powerful an impression upon her?
All these ideas rushed to the Earl's mind in rapid and bewildering succession; and the reader need not be astonished if we repeat that a sentiment of dissatisfaction—almost amounting to a vague suspicion, but of what he knew not—had suddenly taken a firm hold of his imagination.
Who was this Rainford, after all? Was he other than he seemed? Could he be in any way connected with that narrative of the Black Mask which the Earl supposed to have partially affected his Georgiana's mind, and which he looked upon as the cause of that apparent fickleness or caprice which had first led her to refuse his proffered hand? The more he involved himself in conjecture, the deeper did he plunge into a labyrinth which grew darker and more bewildering at every step.
When he turned round again towards the place where he had left Rainford standing, that individual was gone; and the noblemen was alone with Sir Ralph Walsingham.
"You have seen Georgiana?" said Arthur, advancing towards the baronet and grasping his hand with the convulsive violence of deep emotion.
"I have, my dear Earl; and she appears as if she had received some severe shock," was the reply.
"What, in the name of God! does all this mean?" exclaimed the nobleman, with wildness in his tone.