My trunks have been packed two days, for my first resolve was to go from this place and from England. I shall take the chariot in which you came down and fresh horses, but I will send them back to you from London.
God bless you, Edward. I dare not speak of my feelings to you now, lest I should lose the strength and self-command I need so much. God bless you.
H. D. Maitland.
Stealthily did Sir Horace move through the wide halls and ascend the lofty stairs of this home of his life, feeling at every step the rushing tide of memory conflicting with the sad thought that he was treading them for the last time. Having reached his sleeping apartments, he rang a bell which he knew would summon his own man. Rapidly as the man moved, the time seemed long to him ere the summons was obeyed, and he had given the necessary orders to have the carriage prepared and the trunks brought down as soon as possible, "and as quietly," he added, "as he did not wish to disturb Mr. Edward, who had retired to bed late."
"Will you not take breakfast, sir, before you set out?" asked the man.
"No, John. Let the carriage follow me. I shall walk on. Be quick, and make no noise."
A faint streak of light was just beginning to appear in the east, when the heretofore master of that lordly mansion went out into a world which held for him no other home. Accident, as short-sighted mortals name events controlled by no human will, decided whither he should direct his course from London. He had called at his lawyer's—the already mentioned "nephew of old Harris"—determined to communicate his discovery to him, perhaps with some faint hope of learning that the entail had been in some way set aside, before Sir Thomas had ventured to make his sister's son his heir. Mr. Decker was not in his rooms, and sitting down to wait for him he took up mechanically the morning paper that lay on his table. The first thing on which his eye rested was the advertisement of a steam packet about to sail from Liverpool for America.
"America; the very place for me. I shall meet no acquaintances there," was the thought which flashed through his mind. Another glance at the paper of the day and hour of the packet's sailing, an examination of his watch, an impatient look from the window up and down the street, and again he mused, "I have not a moment to spare, and if I wait for Decker I may be kept for hours, and so lose the packet; and why should I wait? Have I not seen the deed? This indecision is folly."
The result of these reflections was a note rapidly written to Mr. Decker, stating his discovery of the deed of entail, his consequent surrender of all claim to the property to Edward Maitland, and his determination to quit England immediately. All arrangements respecting the settlement of his claims on the estate, and the claims of the present proprietor upon him, he left to Sir Edward and Mr. Decker, empowering the latter to receive and retain for his use and subject to his order, whatever, on such a settlement, should appertain to him.
This note was left on Mr. Decker's table, and in one hour after leaving his office Horace Maitland was advancing to Liverpool with the rapidity of steam. The packet waited but the arrival of the train in which he was a passenger, to leave the shores of England. With what bitterness he watched those receding shores, while memory wrote upon his bare and bleeding heart the record of joys identified with them, and fading like them for ever from his life, let each imagine for himself, for to such emotions no language can do justice.