He rose and paced the room for a few minutes with unequal strides, then suddenly pausing, he muttered,—
“All must be safe. This girl, Ada, as she is called,—and now I recollect me, it was the name of her mother—she must know but very little, too little evidently, to enable Sir Francis Hartleton to annoy me in any way, or he would have swooped upon my devoted head like an eagle on its prey. He may surmise much, but he can know nothing; and now for some plan of operation in which this lover can play his part, and when all is done, should he suspect anything or prove troublesome, it is but another deed, and he is gone to his last account. He leaves no clamouring confession behind him, to enable him to have a posthumous revenge upon those whom he hates. Perhaps after all my hopes and fears, a greater triumph than any I have experienced is at hand for me. My wealth may, after all, insure me some, if not all the advantages I so much coveted, and I may, really free and unshackled, attain the high station my panting soul has longed for.”
For the first time for many a day, Learmont gazed proudly around him upon the many articles of rare magnificence that crowded his chamber.
“I shall triumph yet—I shall triumph yet,” he exclaimed. “I must mature some plan of operations now that will result in the possession of this girl, the destruction of Gray and Britton, and the recovery of all papers of a dangerous tendency. Methinks it will be easy now. This hair-brained boy, Seyton, if I tell him I can put him on the track of Gray, will surely hunt him down; and then my prey is in my grasp, for he has not now two safeguards, as he had before. I will to the park, and there, beneath the grateful shadows of the trees, mature my plans. Tremble, Britton, Gray, Hartleton—you have one to deal with that will yet triumph over you.”
He hastily wrapped himself in his cloak, and with a haughtier stride, and a prouder and more confident mien than he had worn since his first arrival in the metropolis, he left his lordly home, and took his way to the great mall of St. James’s Park.
Leaving Learmont to pursue his walk, and to congratulate himself upon what he considered his improved prospects, we will, with the reader’s permission, present ourselves at the breakfast table of Sir Francis Hartleton, where sat the magistrate himself, his lady, and Ada.
Sir Francis had passed nearly a sleepless night in reflecting, over and over again, upon the various circumstances connected with the fortunes of his beautiful guest. His great object was, if possible, to decide upon some regular course of action, which might be safely and perseveringly pursued with a prospect of an ultimate result of a successful nature.
After much thought, repugnant as he was to any step which savoured of trespassing upon the undoubted rights of another, he determined secretly and quietly, unknown to every one, to make a visit to the village of Learmont, and explore the old Smithy, with a faint hope that he might find there some indications of what had occurred on that fearful night of the storm and the fire, which he could never forget.
He had slept calmly after making this resolve, and arose more refreshed than he expected from the anxious night he had passed, and now his object was, before he undertook his journey, to have some conversation with Ada, in order by leading her mind to the occurrences at the Old Smithy, to discover if her memory, young as she was, retained any traces of the event; for that she was the child brought from the burning ruins, and that Jacob Gray was the man who so brought her, he entertained but a very faint doubt indeed.
“Ada,” he said, “does any event of very early life come ever to your memory?”