“You are not so far wrong. Lord Barnstaple has just killed himself. Things had come to his knowledge that I hope you may never hear. But he is dead, and to-morrow you will have gone.”
They were standing close together.
“You will not return to California with us.”
“I would never leave Cecil Maundrell for an hour again if I could help it.”
They exchanged a long look, and when it was over each understood the other. Lee looked down; then, in the unendurable silence, raised her eyes again. She averted them hastily. His were the eyes of men who look their last. It was the second time she had looked into a man’s soul to-night, and she felt cold and faint. What should she see in Cecil’s?
And how was she to speak of the Abbey in the face of a tragedy like this? She turned to go, but her feet clung to the floor. The Abbey was Cecil’s, and Cecil’s it must remain if its rescue were within the compass of her determined hands. But words were hard to find.
Then she remembered that she had very eloquent eyes, and that Randolph was versed in their speech. She raised them slowly and let them travel about the beautiful old room, then out to the cloisters under whose crumbling arches hooded shadows seemed passing to and fro; then raised them once more to his with an expression of yearning and appeal.
“Is it true that Lady Barnstaple is ruined?”
“She has not a penny.”
There was another silence, so intense that they heard the echo of a laugh, far out on the moor.