This man was the tall, fair-haired gentleman, with waxed mustaches, sinister eyes and cynical smile, who, nearly three months before, had witnessed from the pier head at Brighton the rescue of Mrs. Hathaway from the sea by Sir Harold Wynde. And now this man muttered:
“The game prospers. Octavia is Lady Wynde. The first act is played. The next act requires more time, deliberation, caution. Every move must be considered carefully. We are bound to win the entire game.”
CHAPTER II.
A DECISIVE MOVE COMMANDED.
Sir Harold and Lady Wynde ate their wedding breakfast in Bloomsbury Square, at the house of Lady Wynde’s miserly aunt, Mrs. Hyde. A few of the baronet’s choice friends were present. The absence of Sir Harold’s daughter was not especially remarked save by the father, who longed with an anxious longing to see her face smiling upon him, and to hear her young voice whispering congratulations upon his second marriage. Neva had been especially near and dear to him. Her mother had died in her babyhood, and he had been both father and mother to his girl. He had early sent his son to school, but Neva he had kept with him until, a year before, his first wife’s relatives had urged him to send her to a “finishing school” at Paris, and he had reluctantly yielded. Not even his passionate love for his bride could overcome or lessen the fatherly love and tenderness of years.
Immediately after the breakfast the newly married pair proceeded to Canterbury by special train. The gray companion and Lady Wynde’s maid traveled in another compartment of the same coach. The Hawkhurst carriage was in waiting for the bridal pair at the station. Sir Harold assisted his wife into it, addressed a few kindly words to the old coachman on the box, and entered the vehicle. The gray companion and the maid entered a dog-cart, also in waiting. Hawkhurst was several miles distant, but the country between it and Canterbury was a charming one, and Lady Wynde found sufficient enjoyment in looking at the handsome seats, the trim hedges, and thrifty hop-gardens, and in wondering if Hawkhurst would realize her expectations. She found indeed more enjoyment in her own speculations than in the society of her husband.
About five o’clock of the afternoon, the bridal pair came in sight of the ancestral home of the Wynde’s. The top of the low barouche was lowered and Sir Harold pointed out her future home to his bride with pardonable pride, and she surveyed it with eager eyes.
It was, as we have said, a magnificent estate, divided into numerous farms of goodly size. The home grounds of Hawkhurst proper, including the fields, pastures, meadows, parks, woods, plantations and gardens, comprised about four hundred acres. The mansion stood upon a ridge of ground some half a mile wide, and was seen from several points at a distance of three or four miles. It was a grand old building of gray stone, with a long facade, and was three stories in height. Its turrets and chimneys were noted for their picturesqueness. Its carved stone porches, its quaint wide windows, its steep roof, from which pert dormer-windows, saucily projected, were remarkable for their beauty or oddity. Despite its age, and its air of grandeur and stateliness, there was a home-like look about the great mansion that Lady Wynde did not fail to perceive at the first glance.
The house was flanked on either side by glass pineries, grape houses, hothouses, greenhouses and similar buildings. Further to the left of the dwelling, beyond the sunny gardens, was the great park, intersected with walks and drives, having a lake somewhere in the umbrageous depths, and herds of fallow-deer browsing on its herbage. In the rear of the house, built in the form of a quadrangle, of gray stone, were the handsome stables and offices of various descriptions. The mansion with its dependencies covered a great deal of ground, and presented an imposing appearance.
The house was approached by a shaded drive a half mile or more in length, which traversed a smooth green lawn dotted here and there with trees. A pair of bronze gates, protected and attended by a picturesque gray stone lodge, gave ingress to the grounds.
These gates swung open at the approach of Sir Harold Wynde and his bride, and the gate-keeper and his family came out bowing and smiling, to welcome home the future lady of Hawkhurst. Lady Wynde returned their greetings with graceful condescension, and then, as the carriage entered the drive, she fixed her eager eyes upon the long gray facade of the mansion, and said: