Outside the sombre precincts of Malory Margaret Fanshawe would not go. Old Miss Sheckleton had urged her. Perhaps it was a girlish perversity; perhaps she really disliked the idea of again meeting or making an acquaintance. At all events, she was against any more excursions. Thus the days were dull at Malory, and even Miss Sheckleton was weary of her imprisonment.
It is a nice thing to hit the exact point of reserve and difficulty at which an interest of a certain sort is piqued, without danger of being extinguished. Perhaps it is seldom compassed by art, and a fluke generally does it. I am absolutely certain that there was no design here. But there is a spirit of contrariety—a product of pride, of a sensitiveness almost morbid, of a reserve gliding into duplicity, a duplicity without calculation—which yet operates like design. Cleve was piqued—Cleve was angry. The spirit of the chase was roused, as often as he looked at the dusky woods of Malory.
And now he had walked on three successive days past the old gateway, and on each of them, loitered long on the wind-beaten hill that overlooks the grounds of Malory. But in vain. He was no more accustomed to wait than Louis XIV. Now wonder he grew impatient, and meditated the wildest schemes—even that of walking up to the hall-door, and asking to see Sir Booth and Miss Sheckleton, and, if need be, Miss Fanshawe. He only knew that, one way or another, he must see her. He was a young man of exorbitant impatience, and a violent will, and would control events.
There are consequences, of course, and these subjugators are controlled in their turn. Time, as mechanical science shows us, is an element in power; and patience is in durability. God waits, and God is might. And without patience we enter not into the kingdom of God, which is the kingdom of power, and the kingdom of eternity.
Cleve Verney's romance, next morning, was doomed to a prosaic interruption. He was examining a chart of the Cardyllian estuary, which hangs in the library, trying to account for the boat's having touched the bank at low water, at a point where he fancied there was a fathom to spare, when the rustic servant entered with—
"Please, sir, a gentleman which his name is Mr. Larkin, is at the door, and wishes to see you, sir, on partickler business, please."
"Just wait a moment, Edward. Three fathom—two—four feet—by Jove! So it is. We might have been aground for five hours; a shame there isn't a buoy there—got off in a coach, by Jove! Larkin? Has he no card?"
"Yes, sir, please."
"Oh! yes—very good. Mr. Larkin—The Lodge. Does he look like a gatekeeper?"
"No, sir, please; quite the gentleman."