“And your yeoman’s manners offer a handsome return for the hospitality which made you acquainted with my house,” said Fareham, with a contemptuous laugh.
He followed Denzil, leaving Sir John to grope alone. The house had been deserted but for a few days, yet the corridors and rooms had the heavy atmosphere of places long shut from sunshine and summer breezes; while the chilling hour, the grey ghostly light, added something phantasmal and unnatural to the scene.
Denzil entered room after room—below stairs and above—explored the picture-gallery, the bed-chambers, the long low ball-room in the roof, built in Elizabeth’s reign, when a wing had been added to the Abbey, and of late used only for lumber. Fareham followed him close, stalking behind him in sullen silence, with an unalterable gloom upon his face which betrayed no sudden apprehensions, no triumph or defeat. He followed like doom, stood quietly on one side as Denzil opened a door; waited on the threshold while the searcher made his inspection, always with the same iron visage, offering no opposition to the entrance of this or that chamber; only following and watching, silent, intent, sphinx-like; till at last, fairly worn out by blank disappointment, Denzil turned upon him in a sudden fury.
“What have you done with her?” he cried, desperately. “I will stake my life she has not left this house, and by Him who made us you shall not leave it living unless I find her.”
He glanced downward at the naked sword he had carried throughout his search. Fareham’s was in the scabbard, and he answered that glance with an insulting smile.
“You think I have murdered her, perhaps,” he said. “Well, I would rather see her dead than yours. So far I am in capacity a murderer.”
They met Sir John in Lady Fareham’s drawing-room, when Denzil had gone over the whole house, trusting nothing to the father’s scrutiny.
“He has stabbed her and dropped her murdered body down a well,” cried the Knight, half distraught. “He cannot have spirited her away otherwise. Look at him, Denzil; look at that haggard wretch I have called my son. He has the assassin’s aspect.”
Something—it might be the room in which they were standing—brought back to Angela’s betrothed the memory of that Christmas night when aunt and niece had been missing, and when he, Denzil, had burst into this room, where Fareham was seated at chess; who, at the first mention of Angela’s name, started up, white with horror, to join in the search. It was he who found her then; it was he who had hidden her now; and in the same remote and secret spot.
“Fool that I was not to remember sooner!” cried Denzil. “I know where to find her. Follow me, Sir John. Andrew”—calling to the servant who waited in the hall—“follow us close.”