DINING AT GREYLANDS' REST.
It was yet early morning. The sky was darkly blue, the sea indolent and calm, the air intensely hot. Mr. George North, sitting on the bench outside the Dolphin Inn, his straw hat tilted over his brows, gazed at the placid sea before him, and felt as lazy as was the atmosphere.
He had slept well, and breakfasted to his perfect content. Young, sanguine, healthy, the mystery encompassing his brother Anthony's fate had not sufficed to break his rest. The more than hinted-at doubts of Charlotte Guise--that Anthony had been vat out of the world for ever by Mr. Castlemaine--failed to find their response in George North's mind. The mere thought of it appeared to him to be absurd: the suspicion far-fetched and impossible; the implied doubt of the Master of Greylands little less than a libel on the name of Castlemaine. Men of the world are inclined to be practical in their views, rather than imaginative: and the young and hopeful look ever on the bright side of all things.
That Anthony's disappearance was most unaccountable, George North felt; his continued absence, if indeed he still lived, was more strange still. There was very much to be unravelled in connection with that past February night, and George North intended to do his best to bring its doings to light: but that his brother had been destroyed in the dreadful manner implied, he could not and would not believe. Without giving credit to anything so terrible, there existed ground enough, ay and more than enough, for distrust and uncertainty. And, just as his sister-in-law, poor bereaved Charlotte, had taken up her abode at Greylands under false colours, to devote herself to search out the mystery of that disappearance within the Friar's Keep, so did George North resolve to take up his. Nothing loth, was he, to make a sojourn there. Had Anthony presented himself before him at that moment, safe and well, George would still have felt inclined to stay; for the charms of Ethel Reene had made anything but a transient impression on him. The world was his own, too; he had no particular home in it; Greylands was as welcome to him as an abode as any other resting-place.
John Bent came forth from the open door to join his guest. Landlords and their ways in those days were different folks from what they are in these. He wore no waistcoat under his loose linen coat, and his head was bare.
"A nice stretch of water, that, sir," he said, respectfully, indicating the wide sea, shining out in the distance.
"It is indeed," replied George North. "I think the place is a nice place altogether. That sea, and the cliff, rising up there, would be worth sketching. And there must be other pretty spots also."
"True enough, sir."
"I feel inclined to bring over my pencils and take up my quarters with you for a bit, and sketch these places. What do you say to it, Mr. Bent?"
"There's nothing I could say, sir, but that it would give me and my wife pleasure if you did. We'd try and make you comfortable."