So saying Heronsbeck of Heronsbeck lit a candle for his guest, showed him to his chamber, then went gloomily to his own.
There was no sleep, however, for him that night, for he dreaded the morning and the astounded look of his darling Lily—his only child—when he had to tell her of Mosenthal's proposal.
'Of course she won't do it—she couldn't. There'll be no harm done, for she'd as soon accept a Hottentot as a rich Jew.' So her father reflected aloud.
But she wouldn't like it. He hated to think of her expression when he conveyed Mosenthal's offer to her.
The Jew's notes positively burned in his fingers as he had laid them down on his dressing-table; the fellow's offer was extraordinarily tempting. Ah, welladay! This was the end, then, of Heronsbeck Hall, which he prized above every earthly possession after his daughter. His father had lost the half of it over cards; now he himself had thrown away the rest in like manner. There was the grouse moor; he counted up the 'amenities' as he lay in bed, even as a lover enumerates the charms of his mistress.
The wine-dark moorland—how he loved it! And the great days in autumn after grouse and blackcock. Then the fishing in the beck for trout as a boy, and the call of the sounding 'forces.' Then the huntings afoot on the high fells, and the reckless gallops on the haughs below. No wonder he loved it, for he and his forefathers were part and parcel of the land. They had been there and owned it since the days of the Testa de Nevil. He was 'hefted' to it, as the farmers said of their stock.
Well, all was now over. The 'lament' must sound over Heronsbeck. Mosenthal must take the estate; he himself would take Lily abroad and live forgotten, for he had rejected Mosenthal's proposal now, absolutely.
Just at this decisive moment he distinctly heard the cry of a peacock sound—weird and discordant—without.
'The peacock's cry!' It was as the wail of the banshee in his ear.
Peacocks had long since disappeared from the Hall, yet their fateful cry, which had sounded through the night of the strange death of his ancestor who first brought them there, had been wonderfully allied with the fortunes of his house.