"My pale Aileen!" he said, kissing her fondly, "my poor, patient girl. I am sorry you must undergo this trial, and," knitting his brows, "such talk as it will make."
"Don't think of me, papa—my share is surely the lightest. But Rupert,—" wistfully faltering.
"There's something odd about Rupert; he was very fond of his mother, and he takes this a great deal too quietly. He looks like a man slowly turning to stone, with a face white and stern, and inscrutable; and he never asked for you. He sat there with folded arms, and that petrified face, gazing on his dead, until it chilled my blood to look at him. There's something odd and unnatural in this frozen calm. And, oh! by-the-by? I forgot to tell you the strangest thing—May Everard it was who told me; that painter fellow—what's his name—"
"Legard, papa?"
"Yes, Legard. He turns out to be the son of Mrs. Weymore—they discovered it last night. He was there in the room with the most dazed and mystified, and altogether bewildered expression of countenance I ever saw a man wear; and May and Mrs. Weymore sat crying incessantly. I couldn't see what occasion there was for the governess and the painter there in that room of death—and I said so to Miss Everard. There's something mysterious in the matter, for her face flushed, and she stammered something about startling family secrets that had come to light, the over-excitement of which had hastened Lady Thetford's end. I don't like the look of things, and I'm altogether in the dark. That painter resembles the Thetfords a great deal too closely for the mere work of chance; and yet, if Mrs. Weymore is his mother, I don't see how there can be anything in that. It's odd—confoundedly odd!"
Col. Jocyln rambled on as he walked the floor, his brows knitted into a swarthy frown. His daughter sat and eyed him wistfully.
"Did no one ask for me, papa? Am I not to go over?"
"Sir Rupert didn't ask for you. May Everard did, and I promised to fetch you to-morrow. Aileen, things at Thetford Towers have a suspicious look to-day; I can't see the light yet, but I suspect something wrong. It may be the very best thing that could possibly happen, this postponed marriage. I shall make Sir Rupert clear matters up completely before my daughter becomes his wife."
Col. Jocyln, according to promise, took his daughter to Thetford Towers next morning. With bated breath, and beating heart, and noiseless tread, Aileen Jocyln entered the house of mourning, which yesterday she had thought to enter a bride. Dark and still, and desolate it lay, the brilliant morning light shut out, unbroken silence everywhere.
"And this is the end of earth, its glory and its bliss," Aileen thought, as she followed her father slowly up stairs, "the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet and the grave."