Morley was pale with concealed annoyance.
Ethel perceived this, and that he was distressed by the double prospect of a rival living in the same house with her, and embittering the few days that intervened before their long—alas! it might be final—separation.
With her eyes full of tears, she drew Hawkshaw's gift from her finger, and gave it to Morley, begging him to return it to the donor at a fitting time.
This was, to say the least of it, a most unwise request, with which he readily enough undertook to comply, and secured the ring in his portemonnaie, as they rejoined their friends, who were now gathered round the shamble oak in the centre of the chase.
When Morley reflected on the story told by Hawkshaw, it seemed that there must have existed between him and those lawless brothers, Pedro and Zaures Barradas, a greater intimacy than he had admitted in the narrative; and he became convinced that, under a nonchalant and swaggering air, his rival concealed a real spirit of latent ferocity, with a dark character that had been inured to cruelty and promptitude to vengeance, when such could be taken with safety and secrecy; so Morley Ashton resolved, but somewhat vainly, as we shall show, to be on his guard against him.
CHAPTER VI.
FOR THE LAST TIME.
Mr. Scriven Basset had made all his arrangements for departing to his legal charge in the distant Isle of France.
He had secured passages for himself, his two daughters, and an old and valued servant, Nance, or, as she was more frequently termed, Nurse Folgate, in the Hermione, a fine ship of 500 tons burden, which was advertised to sail from the London Docks in fourteen days from the time we now write of.
Meanwhile, poor Morley resolved to make the most of the present, and endeavoured to shut his eyes to the future; but while striving to be blindfolded, he knew that this future, with all its separation and sorrow, its fears, and, alas! its doubts, must ensue.