She stood there for a moment after he was gone, and held up her candle again, as if that could pierce instead of increasing the darkness around her, and looked first in one direction, then in the other. Then she stood for a second minute as if listening, and then slightly shaking her head, turned and went in again. If she could have seen the two set faces watching her out of the darkness, within the deep shadow of the opposite wall! Lew grasped Rob’s arm as in a vice, and with the other hand sought that pocket to which he turned so naturally: while Rob followed the movement in a panic, and got his hand upon that which already had half seized the revolver. “You wouldn’t be such an idiot, Lew!”
“If I gave her a bullet,” said the other in the darkness, “it would be the least of her deserts, and the cheapest for the world.” Their voices could not have been audible to Mrs Ainslie, turning to shut her door, but something must have thrilled the air, for she came out and looked up and down again. Was she as fearless as the others, and fired with excitement too? And then the closing of the door echoed out into the stillness,—not the report of the revolver, thank heaven! She had shown no signs of alarm: but the two men, as they went away, trembled in every limb—Rob with alarm and excitement, and the sense that murder had been in the air; his companion with other feelings still.
It was very late when Mrs Ogilvy woke, and then not of herself, but by Robbie’s call, whom she suddenly roused herself to see standing in the dark by her bedside. It was quite dark, not any lingering of light in the sky, which showed how far on in the night it was. She sprang up from her bed, crying out, “What has happened—what have I been doing?” with something like shame. “Have I been sleeping all this time?” she cried with dismay.
“Don’t hurry, mother—you were tired out. I’m very glad you have slept. Nothing’s wrong. Don’t get up in a hurry. I should like to speak to you here. I’ve—got something to say.”
“What is it, Robbie?—whatever it is, my dear, would you not like a light?”
“No; I like this best. I used to creep into your room in the dark, if you remember, when I had something to confess. I had always plenty to confess, mother.”
“Oh, my Robbie, my dear, my dear!”
She stretched out her hands to him to touch his, to draw him near: but he still hung at a little distance, a tall shadow in the dark.
“It is not for myself this time. It is Lew: he was very much touched with what you said to-day. He’ll go, I believe—whether with me or not. I might see him away, and then come back. But the chief thing after all, you know, is the money. You said you would give him——”
“Oh, Robbie, God be praised!—whatever he required for his passage, and to give him a new beginning; but you’ll not leave me again, not you, not you!”