CHAPTER CIX.
The Meeting of the Lovers.
Sir Francis Hartleton’s officers paid but little heed to the loud and angry remonstrances of Albert Seyton, but hurried him the short distance between the park and the magistrate’s house, at which in a few minutes they arrived, and in obedience to their orders fastened him in the same room from where he had come so recently.
As Sir Francis stood for a moment on the threshold of the apartment, Albert turned to him and said—
“Sir Francis Hartleton, for the treacherous and ungentlemanly conduct of which I have been the victim, I will now denounce you as a disgrace to the office you hold. I look upon you as—”
“Nay, nay—hold,” cried the magistrate, “I will hear no more. The less you say, the less you will have to retract and ask my pardon for.”
“Your pardon?” cried Albert; “I—”
“Shut the door, he is raving,” interposed the magistrate, and in a moment Albert was alone.
The young man stood in the middle of the floor, in deep disgust with Sir Francis, and revolving in his own mind what he should do in the situation he was now placed in. He walked to the window which overlooked a garden, but there were iron bars across the frame-work, which appeared too firmly let into solid oak to be removed without appropriate tools.
“I will not, however, be caged here if I can help it,” thought Albert; and he seized one of the bars, and exerted all his strength to move it, but it was in vain, for it showed no signs of giving way. Albert then glanced around him for some weapon, but none such was in the room. He then threw himself into a chair, and after a few hasty expressions of indignation, relapsed into melancholy silence. Suddenly, then, he recollected a small knife that he had in his pocket, and he thought he might possibly be able to cut away sufficient of the wood-work to wrench out one of the bars from the window, which, could he accomplish it, would leave a space sufficiently large for him to get through, and drop into the garden, which was at no very great depth, although amply sufficient to make any one, not labouring under the excitement of mind that Albert was, pause ere they adventured the leap.