Mrs. Chattaway was silent. She could not tell him the truth; could not say she believed it was the constant dwelling upon the wrong and injustice, which had first suggested the notion that the wrong would inevitably recoil on its workers. They had broken alike the laws of God and man; and those who do so cannot be sure of immunity from punishment in this world. That they had so long enjoyed unmolested the inheritance gained by fraud, gave no certainty that they would enjoy it to the end. She felt it, if her husband and Diana Trevlyn did not. Too often there were certain verses of Holy Writ spelling out their syllables upon her brain. "Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee."
All this she could not say to Mr. Chattaway. She could give him no good reason for what she had said; he did not understand imaginative fancies, and he went to rest after bestowing upon her a sharp lecture for indulging them.
Nevertheless, in spite of her denial, the master of Trevlyn Hold could not divest himself of the impression that she must have picked up some scrap of news, or heard a word dropped in some quarter, which had led her to say what she did. And it gave him terrible discomfort.
Was the haunting shadow, the latent dread in his heart, about to be changed into substance? He lay on his bed, turning uneasily from side to side until the morning, wondering from what quarter the first glimmer of mischief would come.
CHAPTER XIX
A FIT OF AMIABILITY
Rupert came down to breakfast the next morning. He was cold, sick, shivery; little better than he had felt the previous night; his chest sore, his breathing painful. A good fire burnt in the grate of the breakfast-room—Miss Diana was a friend to fires, and caused them to be lighted as soon as the heat of summer had passed—and Rupert bent over it. He cared for it more than for food; and yet it was no doubt having gone without food the previous day which was causing the sensation of sickness within him now.
Miss Diana glided in, erect and majestic. "How are you this morning?" she asked of Rupert.
"Pretty well," he answered, as he warmed his thin white hands over the blaze. "I have the old pain here a bit"—touching his chest. "It will go off by-and-by, I dare say."