The Squire was glad to see Tom Ward that night, and had a second tankard of punch.
“Old servant, Tom; I believe the old folk’s the best after all,” said he. “It’s a d—d changed world, Tom. Things were otherwise in our time; no matter, I’ll pay ’em off yet.”
And old Harry Fairfield fell asleep in his chair, and after an hour wakened up with a dream of little Ally’s music still in his ears.
“Play it again, child, play it again,” he said, and listened—to silence and looked about the empty room, and the sudden pain came again, with a dreadful yearning mixed with his anger.
The Squire cursed her for a devil, a wild-cat, a viper, and he walked round the room with his hands clenched in his coat pockets, and the proud old man was crying. With straining and squeezing the tears oozed and trickled from his wrinkled eyelids down his rugged cheeks.
“I don’t care a d—n, I hate her; I don’t know what it’s for, I be such a fool; I’m glad she’s gone, and I pray God the sneak she’s gone wi’ may break her heart, and break his own d—d neck after, over Carwell scaurs.”
The old man took his candle and from old habit, in the hall, was closing the door of the staircase that led up to her room.
“Ay, ay,” said he, bitterly, recollecting himself, “the stable-door when the nag’s stole. I don’t care if the old house was blown down to-night—I wish it was. She was a kind little thing before that d—d fellow—what could she see in him—good for nothing—old as I am, I’d pitch him over my head like a stook o’ barley. Here was a plot, she was a good little thing, but see how she was drew into it, d—n her, they’re all so false. I’ll find out who was in it, I will; I’ll find it all out. There’s Tom Sherwood, he’s one. I’ll pitch ’em all out, neck and crop, out o’ Wyvern doors. I’d rather fill my house wi’ rats than the two-legged vermin. Let ’em pack away to Carwell and starve with that big pippin-squeezing ninny. I hope in God’s justice he’ll never live to put his foot in Wyvern. I could shoot myself, I think, but for that. She might ’a waited till the old man died, at any rate; I was kind to her—a fool—a fool.”
And the tall figure of the old man, candle in hand, stalked slowly from the dim hall and vanished up the other staircase.
While this was going on at Wyvern, nearly forty miles away, under the bright moonlight, a chaise, in which were seated the young lady whose departure had excited so strange a sensation there, and her faithful old servant, Dulcibella Crane, was driving rapidly through a melancholy but not unpleasing country.