With these enigmatical words, he followed the colonel into the library, and the polished oaken door closed between him and Aileen.
CHAPTER XIV.
PARTED.
Half an hour had passed.
Up and down the long drawing-room Aileen wandered aimlessly, oppressed with a dread of she knew not what, a prescience of evil, vague as it was terrible. The dark gloom of the rainy evening was not darker than that brooding shadow in her deep, dusky eyes.
In the library Col. Jocyln stood facing his son-in-law elect, staring like a man bereft of his senses. The melancholy, half light coming through the oriel window by which he stood, fell full upon the face of Rupert Thetford, white and cold, and set as marble.
"My God!" the Indian officer said, with wild eyes of terror and affright, "what is this you are telling me?"
"The truth, Col. Jocyln—the simple truth. Would to Heaven I had known it years ago—this shameful story of wrong-doing and misery!"
"I don't comprehend—I can't comprehend this impossible tale, Sir Rupert."