“I am sorry to do it, Cousin Hilary; but I know quite well what I am about. And none of your military ways of going on can mislead me as to your character. You want to be off. We are quite aware of it. You can scarcely put two feet to the ground.”
“Oh dear, how many ought I to be able to put?”
“You know best—at least four, I should hope. But you are not equal to argument. And we are all particularly ordered to keep you from what is too much for you. Now I shall take away these things—whatever they are called, I have no idea; but I do what I am told to do. And after this you will take that glass of red wine declared to be wonderful; and then you will shut both your eyes, if you please, till my father comes home from his hunting.”
The lively girl departed with a bow of light defiance, carrying away her father’s small clothes (which had been left for Hilary), and locking the door of his bedroom with a decisive turn of a heavy key. “Mother, you may go to sleep,” she said, as she ran down into the drawing-room: “I defy him to go, if he were Jack Sheppard: he has got no breeches to go in.”
“Cecil, you are almost too clever! How your father will laugh, to be sure!” And the excellent lady began her nap.
As the afternoon wore away, Hilary grew more and more impatient of his long confinement. Not only that he pined for the open air—as, of course, he must do, after living so long with the free sky for his canopy—but also that he felt most miserable at being so near the old house on the hill, yet doubtful of his reception there. More than once he rang the bell; but the old nurse, who alone of the servants was allowed to enter, would do no more than scold or coax him, and quietly lock him in again. So at last he got out of bed, and feebly made his way to the window, and thence beheld, betwixt him and the grassy mounds of the churchyard, that swift black stream which had so surprised him on the night of his arrival.
Since then he had been persuaded himself, or allowed others to persuade him, that the water had been a vision only of his weak and exited brain. But now he saw it clearly, calmly, and in a very few moments knew what it was, and of what dark import.
“How can I have let them keep me here?” he exclaimed, with indignation. “My father and sister must believe me dead, while I play at this miserable hide-and-seek. Perhaps they will think that I had better have been dead; but, at any rate, they shall know the truth.”
With these words he took up his sailor-clothes, which the clever Cecil had overlooked, and which had been left in his room for fear of setting the servants talking; and he dressed himself as well as he could, and tried to look clean and tidy. But do what he might, he could only cut a poor and sorry figure; and looking in the glass, he was frightened at his wan and worn appearance. Then, knowing the habits of the house, and wishing to avoid excitement, he waited until the two elder daughters were gone down the village for their gossip, and Cecil was seeing the potatoes dug, and Mrs. Hales sleeping over Fisher or Patrick, while the cook was just putting the dinner down; and then, without trying the door at all, he quietly descended from the window, with the help of a stack-pipe and a spurry pear-tree.