“You—think—that Ashlydyat will pass away from the Godolphins, Janet?”
Janet shook her head. “We have been reared in the belief,” she answered. “That the estate is to pass finally away from them, the Godolphins have been taught to fear ever since that unhappy time. Each generation, as they have come into possession, have accepted it as an uncertain tenure: as a thing that might last them for their time, or might pass away from them ere their earthly sojourn was completed. The belief was; nay, the tradition was; that so long as a reigning Godolphin held by Ashlydyat, Ashlydyat would hold by him and his. My father was the first to break it.”
Janet had taken up her dress, and sat down on a dusty, faded bench, the only article of furniture of any description that the square room contained. That strangely speculative look—it was scarcely an earthly one—had come into her eyes: and though she answered when spoken to, she appeared to be lost in sad, inward thought. Maria, somewhat awed with the turn the conversation had taken, with the words altogether, stood against the opposite window, her delicate hands clasped before her, her face slightly bent forward, pale and grave.
“Then, do you fear that the end for the Godolphins is at hand?”
“I seem to see that it is,” replied Janet. “I have looked for it ever since my father left Ashlydyat. I might say—but that I should be laughed at more than I am for an idealist—that the strangers to whom he resigned it in his place, would have some bearing upon our fall, would in some way conduce to it. I think of these things ever,” continued Janet, almost as if she would apologize for the wildness of the confession. “They seem to unfold themselves to me, to become clear and more clear: to be no longer fanciful fears darting across the brain, but realities of life.”
Maria’s lips slightly parted as she listened. “But the Verralls have left Ashlydyat a long while?” she presently said.
“I know they have. But they were usurpers here for the time. Better—as I believe—that my father had shut it up: better, far better, that he had never left it! He knew it also: and it preyed upon him on his death-bed.”
“Oh, Janet! the ill may not come in our time!”
“It may not. I am anxious to believe it may not, in defiance of the unalterable conviction that has seated itself within me. Let it pass, Maria; talking of it will not avert it: indeed, I do not know how I came to be betrayed into speaking of it openly.”
“But you have not told me about the sounds in the passages?” urged Maria, as Janet rose from her dusty seat.