"Good-bye."
A kiss, and he was gone up the old staircase towards his own room. When he gained the first landing he turned and looked at her once more, standing alone in the centre of the old hall in the light of a solitary lamp. A lonely, beautiful little figure, with her arms drooping at her sides, and the quiet, dark eyes turned towards him, so lovingly! And there, in his ruin and desolation, he began to see, for the first time, what others, keener-eyed, had seen long ago. Something that might have been, but could not be now! And so, saying, "I must not see her again," he went up to his own room, and shut the door on his misery.
Once again he was seen that night. William invaded the still-room, and got some coffee, which he carried up to him. He found him packing his portmanteau, and he asked William to see to this and to that for him, if he should sleep too long. William made him sit down and take coffee and smoke a cigar, and sat on the footstool at his feet, before the fire, complaining of cold. They sat an hour or two, smoking, talking of old times, of horses and dogs, and birds and trout, as lads do, till Charles said he would go to bed, and William left him.
He had hardly got to the end of the passage, when Charles called him back, and he came.
"I want to look at you again," said Charles; and he put his two hands on William's shoulders, and looked at him again. Then he said, "Good night," and went in.
William went slowly away, and, passing to a lower storey, came to the door of a room immediately over the main entrance, above the hall. This room was in the turret above the porch. It was Cuthbert's room.
He knocked softly, and there was no answer; again, and louder. A voice cried querulously, "Come in," and he opened the door.
Cuthbert was sitting before the fire with a lamp beside him and a book on his knee. He looked up and saw a groom before him, and said, angrily—
"I can give no orders to-night. I will not be disturbed to-night."
"It is me, sir," said William.