The Master of Greylands: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"The door," said Mr. Blake-Gordon.

"Good-bye," she said to him, holding out her hand.

He wrung it almost to pain. "You will allow me to see you to your carriage?"

She took the arm he held out to her and they went through the hall and down the steps together. The footman had the carriage door open, and he, her ex-lover, placed her in. Not another word was spoken. The man sprang up to his place behind, and the chariot rolled away. For a full minute after its departure, William Blake-Gordon was still standing looking after it, forgetting to put his hat on: forgetting, as it seemed, all created things.

[CHAPTER XXX.]

LOVE'S YOUNG DREAM.

Combined With Mr. Walter Dance's remorse for having betrayed to Miss Castlemaine what he did betray, in that paroxysm of fear when he thought the world was closing for him, was a wholesome dread of the consequences to himself. What his father's anger would be and what Mr. Castlemaine's punishment of him might be, when they should learn all that his foolish tongue had said, Walter did not care to contemplate. As he lay that night in the Grey Nunnery after the surgeon's visit, Sister Ann watching by his pallet, he went through nearly as much agony of fear from this source as he had just gone through from the other. While he believed his life was in peril, that that mysterious part of him, the Soul, was about to be summoned to render up its account, earth and earth's interests were as nothing: utterly lost, indeed, beside that momentous hour which he thought was at hand. But, after reassurance had set in, and the doctor had quietly convinced him there was no danger, that he would shortly be well again, then the worldly fear rose to the surface. Sister Ann assumed that his starts and turns in the bed arose from bodily pain or restlessness: in point of fact it was his mind that was tormenting him and would not let him be still.

Of course it was no fault of his that Miss Castlemaine had found him in the cloistered vaults,--or that he had found her, whichever it might be called--or that there was a door that he never knew of opening into them, or a passage between them and the Grey Nunnery, or that the pistol had gone off and shot him. For all this he could not be blamed. But what he could, and would be blamed for was, that he had committed the astounding folly of betraying the secret relating to the Friar's Keep; for it might, so to say, destroy all connected with it. Hence his resolve to undo, so far as he could, the mischief with Miss Castlemaine, by denying to her that his disclosure had reason or foundation in it: and by asserting that it must have been the effect of his disordered brain.

Believing that he had done this, when his morning interview with Sister Mary Ursula was over: believing that he had convinced her his words had been but the result of his sick fancies, he began next to ask himself why he need tell the truth at all, even to his father. The only thing to be accounted for was the shot to himself and his turning up at the Grey Nunnery: but he might just as well stand to the tale that he had told the doctor, to his father, as well as to the world: namely, that he had met with the injury in the chapel ruins, and had crawled to the Grey Nunnery for succour.

This happy thought he carried out; and Tom Dance was no wiser than other people. When once deception is entered upon, the course is comparatively easy: "ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute," say the French: and Mr. Walter Dance, truthful and honest though he loved to be, found himself quite an adept at farce-relating before the first day was over.