"I'm sure I beg pardon, my lady, and meant no offence," the maid answered, meekly. "But she don't like it for all that," the damsel thought, with an inward chuckle.
Roland Lansdell kept himself aloof from his kindred; but he was not suffered to go his own way unmolested. The road to perdition is not quite so smooth and flower-bestrewn a path as we are sometimes taught to believe. A merciful hand often flings stumbling-blocks and hindering brambles in our way. It is our own fault if we insist upon clambering over the rocky barriers, and scrambling through the briery hedges, in a mad eagerness to reach the goal. Roland had started upon the fatal descent, and was of course going at that rapid rate at which we always travel downhill; but the road was not all clear for him. Charles Raymond of Conventford was amongst the people who heard accidentally of the young man's return; and about a week after Roland's arrival, the kindly philosopher presented himself at the Priory, and was fortunate enough to find his kinsman at home. In spite of Mr. Lansdell's desire to be at his ease, there was some restraint in his manner as he greeted his old friend.
"I am very glad to see you, Raymond," he said. "I should have ridden over to Conventford in a day or two. I've come home, you see."
"Yes, and I am very sorry to see it. This is a breach of good faith, Roland."
"Of what faith? with whom?"
"With me," answered Mr. Raymond, gravely. "You promised me that you would go away."
"I did; and I went away."
"And now you have come back again."
"Yes," replied Mr. Lansdell, folding his arms and looking full at his kinsman, with an ominous smile upon his face,—"yes; the fact is a little too evident for the basis of an argument. I have come back."
Mr. Raymond was silent for a minute or so. The younger man stood with his back against the angle of the embayed window, and he never took his eyes from his friend's face. There was something like defiance in the expression of his face, and even in his attitude, as he stood with folded arms leaning against the wainscot.