Berwick, haggard-looking, and evidently in a mood which his servants knew and dreaded, was looking sharply round the stable yard. If he, the master, was up and about by nine o'clock, the morning after the Halnakeham Castle ball, then surely his coachman could be the same.
"Dean's in trouble, Sir. He will be sending to ask if you can spare him to-day. Wife was taken ill last night, babby dead."
The laconic words struck Berwick with a curious chill, and served to rouse him from his self-absorption. He was fond of Dean. The man had been with him for many years. They were the same age,—Berwick could remember him as a stolid Chancton child—and he had only been married about a year, after one of those long, faithful engagements common in those parts. Heavens! If Dean felt for his wife a tenth of what he, Berwick, felt for Barbara Rebell, what must not the man have gone through that night—that early morning?
Muttering some expression of concern, he turned and went off into the house, there to consult with the housekeeper as to the sending of practical relief to the stricken household, and to write a note telling Dean he could be absent for as long as he wished.
CHAPTER XIV.
"Men may have rounded Seraglio Point: they have not yet doubled Cape Turk."
George Meredith.
Miss Vipen's cottage was exactly opposite the Chancton Post Office. Even in winter it was a pretty, cheerful-looking little house closely covered with evergreen creepers, the path up to the porch guarded by four lemon trees cut into fantastic shapes.
From her sitting-room window, the old lady could see all that went on in the main street of Chancton village, and take note of the coming and going both of familiars and of strangers, thus providing herself with the material whereby she wove the web of the destinies of those about her.