“Your daughter is as spotless a saint as the day she left her Convent, and you are a blatant old fool to traduce her,” said Fareham, exasperated, as the Usher led him away.
His detention was no more than a formality; and as he had been previously allowed his liberty upon bail, he was now permitted to return to his own house, where by an order upon his banker he paid the fine, and was henceforward a free man.
The first use he made of his freedom was to rush to Sir John’s lodgings, only to hear that the Cavalier, with his daughter and two servants, had left half an hour earlier in a coach-and-four for Buckinghamshire. The people at the lodgings did not know which road they had taken, or at what Inn they were to lie on the way.
“Well, there will be a better chance of seeing her at the Manor than in London,” Fareham thought; “he cannot keep so close a watch upon her there as in the narrow space of town lodgings.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
BRINGERS OF SUNSHINE.
It was December, and the fields and pastures were white in the tardy dawn with the frosty mists of early winter, and Sir John Kirkland was busy making his preparations for leaving Buckinghamshire and England with his daughter. He had come from Spain at the beginning of the year, hoping to spend the remnant of his days in the home of his forefathers, and to lay his old bones in the family vault; but the place was poisoned to him for evermore, he told Angela. He could not stay where he and his had been held in highest honour, to have his daughter pointed at by every grinning lout in hob-nailed shoes, and scorned by the neighbouring quality. He only waited till Denzil Warner should be pronounced out of danger and on the high-road to recovery, before he crossed the Channel.
“There is no occasion you should leave Buckinghamshire, sir,” Angela argued. “It is the dearest wish of my heart to return to the Convent at Louvain, and finish my life there, sheltered from the world’s contempt.”
“What, having failed to get your fancy, you would dedicate yourself to God?” he cried. “No, madam. I am still your father, though you have disgraced me; and I require a daughter’s duty from you. Oh, child, I so loved you, was so proud of you! It is a bitter physic you have given me to drink.”
She knelt at his feet, and kissed his sunburnt hands shrunken with age.
“I will do whatever you desire, sir. I wish no higher privilege than to wait upon you; but when you weary of me there is ever the Convent.”