"Oh! brother, I am glad we have still that dear old place. Oh, let us go down and live there together, among the quiet glens, and the old green woods; for amongst its pleasant shades I have known happier times than shall ever come again for me. I would like to ramble there again in the pleasant summer time, and hear the birds sing, and the sound of the rustling leaves, and the clear winding brook, as I used to hear them long ago. There I could think over many things, that it breaks my heart to think of here; and you and I, brother, would be always together, and we would soon be as happy as either of us can be in this sorrowful world."
She threw her arms around her brother's neck, and while the tears flowed fast and silently, she kissed his pale and wasted cheeks again and again.
"In the meantime," said Ashwoode, starting up abruptly, and looking at his watch, "I must go into town, and see some of these harpies—usurers—that have gotten their fangs in me. It is as well to keep out of jail as long as one can," and, with a very joyless laugh, he strode from the room.
As he rode into town, his thoughts again and again recurred to his old scheme respecting Lady Stukely.
"It is after all my only chance," said he. "I have made my mind up fifty times to it, but somehow or other, d——n me, if I could ever bring myself to do it. That woman will live for five-and-twenty years to come, and she would as easily part with the control of her property as with her life. While she lives I must be her dependent—her slave: there is no use in mincing the matter, I shall not have the command of a shilling, but as she pleases; but patience—patience, Henry Ashwoode, sooner or later death will come, and then begins your jubilee."
As these thoughts hurried through his brain, he checked his horse at Lady Betty Stukely's door.
As he traversed the capacious hall, and ascended the handsome staircase—"Well," thought he, "even with her ladyship, this were better than the jail."
In the drawing-room he found Lady Stukely, Emily Copland, and Lord Aspenly. The two latter evidently deep in a very desperate flirtation, and her ladyship meanwhile very considerately employed in trying a piece of music on the spinet.
The entrance of Sir Henry produced a very manifest sensation among the little party. Lady Stukely looked charmingly conscious and fluttered. Emily Copland smiled a gracious welcome, for though she and her handsome cousin perfectly well understood each other, and both well knew that marriage was out of the question, they had each, what is called, a fancy for the other; and Emily, with the unreasonable jealousy of a woman, felt a kind of soreness, secretly and almost unacknowledged to herself, at Sir Henry's marked devotion to Lady Stukely, though, at the same time, no feeling of her own heart, beyond the lightest and the merest vanity, had ever been engaged in favour of Henry Ashwoode. Of the whole party, Lord Aspenly alone was a good deal disconcerted, and no wonder, for he had not the smallest notion upon what kind of terms he and Henry Ashwoode were to meet;—whether that young gentleman would shake hands with him as usual, or proceed to throttle him on the spot. Ashwoode was, however, too completely a man of the world to make any unnecessary fuss about the awkward affair of Morley Court; he therefore met the little nobleman with cold and easy politeness; and, turning from him, was soon engaged in an animated and somewhat tender colloquy with the love-stricken widow, whose last words to him, as at length he arose to take his leave, were,—
"Remember to-morrow evening, Sir Henry, we shall look for you early; and you have promised not to disappoint your cousin Emily—has not he, Emily? I shall positively be affronted with you for a week at least if you are late. I am very absolute, and never forgive an act of rebellion. I'm quite a little sovereign here, and very despotic; so you had better not venture to be naughty."