"Bless you, my lovey!" answered Priscilla, with emotion—"Go and sleep with the angels, like the little angel you are yourself! And mind you think twice, and more than twice, before you say 'No' to Mr. Robin!"
With a deprecatory shake of her head, and a faint smile, Innocent turned away, and passed through the curious tortuous little corridor that led to her own room. Once safely inside that quiet sanctum where the Sieur Amadis of long ago had "found peace," she set her candle down on the oak table and remained standing by it for some moments, lost in thought. The pale glimmer of the single light was scarcely sufficient to disperse the shadows around her, but the lattice window was open and admitted a shaft of moonlight which shed a pearly radiance on her little figure, clothed in its simple white gown. Had any artist seen her thus, alone and absorbed in sorrowful musing, he might have taken her as a model of Psyche after her god had flown. She was weary and anxious—life had suddenly assumed for her a tragic aspect. Old Jocelyn's manner had puzzled her—he was unlike himself, and she instinctively felt that he had some secret trouble on his mind. What could it be? she wondered. Not about herself and Robin—for were he as keen on "putting up the banns" as he had been in the morning he would not have allowed the matter to rest. He would have asked straight questions, and he would have expected plain answers,—and they would, in accordance with the secret understanding they had made with each other, have deceived him. Now there was no deception necessary—he seemed to have forgotten—at least for the present—his own dearest desire. With a sigh, half of pain, half of relief, she seated herself at the table, and opening its one deep drawer with a little key which she always wore round her neck, she began to turn over her beloved pile of manuscript, and this occupied her for several minutes. Presently she looked up, her eyes growing brilliant with thought, and a smile on her lips.
"I really think it might do!" she said, aloud—"I should not be afraid to try! Who knows what might happen? I can but fail—or succeed. If I fail, I shall have had my lesson—if I succeed—"
She leaned her head on her two hands, ruffling up her pretty hair into soft golden-brown rings.
"If I succeed!—ah!—if I do! Then I'll pay back everything I owe to Dad and Briar Farm!—oh, no! I can never pay back my debt to Briar Farm!—that would be impossible! Why, the very fields and trees and flowers and birds have made me happy!—happier than I shall ever be after I have said good-bye to them all!—good-bye even to the Sieur Amadis!"
Quick tears sprang to her eyes—and the tapering light of the candle looked blurred and dim.
"Yes, after all," she went on, still talking to the air, "it's better and braver to try to do something in the world, rather than throw myself upon Robin, and be cowardly enough to take him for a husband when I don't love him. Just for comfort and shelter and Briar Farm! It would be shameful. And I could not marry a man unless I loved him quite desperately!—I could not! I'm not sure that I like the idea of marriage at all,—it fastens a man and woman together for life, and the time might come when they would grow tired of each other. How cruel and wicked it would be to force them to endure each other's company when they perhaps wished the width of the world between them! No—I don't think I should care to be married—certainly not to Robin."
She put her manuscript by, and shut and locked the drawer containing it. Then she went to the open lattice window and looked out—and thought of the previous night, when Robin had swung himself up on the sill to talk to her, and they had been all unaware that Ned Landon was listening down below. A flush of anger heated her cheeks as she recalled this and all that Robin had told her of the unprepared attack Landon had made upon him and the ensuing fight between them. But now? Was it not very strange that Landon should apparently be in such high favour with Hugo Jocelyn that he had actually been allowed to stay in the market-town and enjoy a holiday, which for him only meant a bout of drunkenness? She could not understand it, and her perplexity increased the more she thought of it. Leaning far out over the window-sill, she gazed long and lovingly across the quiet stretches of meadowland, shining white in the showered splendour of the moon—the tall trees—the infinite and harmonious peace of the whole scene,—then, shutting the lattice, she pulled the curtains across it, and taking her lit candle, went to her secluded inner sleeping-chamber, where, in the small, quaintly carved four-poster bed, furnished with ancient tapestry and lavendered linen, and covered up under a quilt embroidered three centuries back by the useful fingers of the wife of Sieur Amadis de Jocelin, she soon fell into a sound and dreamless slumber.
The hours moved on, bearing with them different destinies to millions of different human lives, and the tall old clock in the great hall of Briar Farm told them off with a sonorous chime and clangour worthy of Westminster itself. It was a quiet night; there was not a breath of wind to whistle through crack or key-hole, or swing open an unbolted door,—and Hero, the huge mastiff that always slept "on guard" just within the hall entrance, had surely no cause to sit up suddenly on his great haunches and listen with uplifted ears to sounds which were to any other creature inaudible. Yet listen he did—sharply and intently. Raising his massive head he snuffed the air—then suddenly began to tremble as with cold, and gave vent to a long, low, dismal moan. It was a weird noise—worse than positive howling, and the dog himself seemed distressfully conscious that he was expressing something strange and unnatural. Two or three times he repeated this eerie muffled cry—then, lying down again, he put his nose between his great paws, and, with a deep shivering sigh, appeared to resign himself to the inevitable. There followed several moments of tense silence. Then came a sudden dull thud overhead, as of a heavy load falling or being thrown down, and a curious inexplicable murmur like smothered choking or groaning. Instantly the great dog sprang erect and raced up the staircase like a mad creature, barking furiously. The house was aroused—doors were flung open—Priscilla rushed from her room half dressed—and Innocent ran along the corridor in her little white nightgown, her feet bare, and her hair falling dishevelled over her shoulders.
"What is it?" she cried piteously—"Oh, do tell me! What is it?"