“I don't particularly desire to see the illumination, as I know of; but I will ride, nevertheless. What am I to do when I get there?”
“You will enter the ruins, and go on till you discover a spiral staircase leading to what was once the vaults. The flags of these vaults are loose from age, and if you should desire to remove any of them, you will probably not find it an impossibility.”
“Why should I desire to remove them?” asked Sir Norman, who felt dubious, and disappointed, and inclined to be dogmatical.
“Why, you may see a glimmering of light—hear strange noises; and if you remove the stones, may possibly see strange sights. As I told you before, it is rumored to be haunted, which is true enough, though not in the way they suspect; and so the fools and the common herd stay away.”
“And if I am discovered peeping like a rascally valet, what will be the consequences?”
“Very unpleasant ones to you; but you need not be discovered if you take care. Ah! Look there!”
She pointed to the river, and both her companions looked. A barge gayly painted and gilded, with a light in prow and stern, came gliding up among less pretentious craft, and stopped at the foot of a flight of stairs leading to the bridge. It contained four persons—the oarsman, two cavaliers sitting in the stern, and a lad in the rich livery of a court-page in the act of springing out. Nothing very wonderful in all this; and Sir Norman and Ormiston looked at her for an explanation.
“Do you know those two gentlemen?” she asked.
“Certainly,” replied Sir Norman, promptly; “one is the Duke of York, the other the Earl of Rochester.”
“And that page, to which of them does he belong?”