"One moment"—he said, delaying her. "You must be dead tired—too tired for romance. Else I should say to you, turn aside an instant and look at the library. It is a sight to remember."
Inevitably she glanced behind her, and saw that the library door was ajar. He flung it open, and the great room showed wide, its high domed roof lost in shadow, while along the bare floor and up the latticed books crept, here streaks and fingers, and there wide breadths of light from the unshuttered and curtainless windows.
"Isn't it the very poetry of night and solitude?" he said, looking in with her. "You love the place; but did you ever see it so lovable? The dead are here; you did right to come and seek them! Look at your namesake, in that ray. To-night she lives! She knows that is her husband opposite—those are her books beside her. And the rebel!"—he pointed smiling to the portrait of John Boyce. "When you are gone I shall shut myself up here—sit in his chair, invoke him—and put my speech together. I am nervous about to-morrow" (he was bound, as she knew, to a large Labour Congress in the Midlands, where he was to preside), "and sleep will make no terms with me. Ah!—how strange! Who can that be passing the avenue?"
He made a step or two into the room, and put up his hand to his brow, looking intently. Involuntarily, yet with a thrill, Marcella followed. They walked to the window.
"It is Hurd!" she cried in a tone of distress, pressing her face against the glass. "Out at this time, and with a gun! Oh, dear, dear!"
There could be no question that it was Hurd. Wharton had seen him linger in the shadowy edge of the avenue, as though reconnoitring, and now, as he stealthily crossed the moonlit grass, his slouching dwarf's figure, his large head, and the short gun under his arm, were all plainly visible.
"What do you suppose he is after?" said Wharton, still gazing, his hands in his pockets.
"I don't know; he wouldn't poach on our land; I'm sure he wouldn't! Besides, there is nothing to poach."—Wharton smiled.—"He must be going, after all, to Lord Maxwell's coverts! They are just beyond the avenue, on the side of the hill. Oh! it is too disappointing! Can we do anything?"
She looked at her companion with troubled eyes. This incursion of something sadly and humanly real seemed suddenly to have made it natural to be standing beside him there at that strange hour. Her conscience was soothed.
Wharton shook his head.