Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"How did he manage that?"

"I don't think he knew, sir. His foot slipped as he was stepping out, and he swung round in some way, keeping hold of the carriage with his hand bent behind. It was rather a bad sprain."

"Miss Davenal is quite well?"

"Yes, sir. Miss Sara has had a cold lately, and is looking ill. The captain went abroad, sir, without coming to Hallingham, and they all felt it much."

Oswald bade the man goodnight, and walked on. He did not care, in his fastidious sensitiveness, to hear the looks of Sara Davenal commented on. If she did look ill, was it for his, Oswald's, sake!--or was she haunted with that unhappy secret which Neal had once so darkly hinted at?

Neal stood within the shade of the house looking after Mr. Oswald Cray, or rather after the young lady leaning on his arm. Neal was very curious as to this young lady, for young she looked in Neal's eyes. While apparently his whole attention was absorbed by his conversation with Mr. Oswald Cray, he had been studying the face turned to him; a fair and sensible face, as Mr. Neal could read, though less good-looking than Miss Sara Davenal's. What with Neal's legitimate observation and his illegitimate ferreting habits, he had contrived to arrive at a very ingenious conjecture of the tacit relations which had existed between Mr. Oswald Cray and Dr. Davenal's daughter; and Neal had of late been entertaining a rather shrew guess that Mr. Oswald Cray intended those relations to cease. He judged by the fact that the gentleman had never once, since Lady Oswald's funeral, been inside the doctor's doors. A formal call and a left card during one of his visits to Hallingham, had comprised all the notice taken. Tolerably safe appearances these, from which Neal drew his conclusions; and it perhaps may be pardoned one of Neal's conclusion-drawing mind, that he asked himself whether this young lady had superseded Miss Sara.

"It looks uncommonly like it," he repeated to himself, as his gaze followed them in the distance. "I should like to be certain, and to know who she is. She looks like a lady--and he'd not take up with anybody that was not one. Suppose I just see where they go? I have nothing particular on my hands this evening."

Gingerly treading the streets, as one who knows he is bent upon some surreptitious expedition is apt to tread them, Neal stepped along, keeping Mr. Oswald Cray and his companion sufficiently in view not to lose them. After a sufficiently long walk, they entered a house on the confines of Chelsea, bordering upon Brompton; the middle one of a row of moderate-sized houses, with small gardens before the doors. Neal saw Mr. Oswald Cray knock; and a young servant-maid admitted them.

But this left Neal as wise as before. He could see the house, could read the name of the Terrace, "Bangalore Terrace," in large black letters at either end; but this did not tell the name of the lady, or who she was; and Bangalore Terrace, though sufficiently respectable-looking, was certainly not the class of terrace to which it might be expected Mr. Oswald Cray would go for a wife.

Neal might have remained in his ignorance until now but for a fortunate accident. He was taking a last look at the house ere he turned away, at the light which shone behind the blinds of the first-floor windows, when the same servant who had opened the door came running out, her bonnet just perched on her head, its strings flying, and a jug and latch-key in her hand. As she passed Neal, the unsecured bonnet flew off, and Neal gallantly picked it up.