Mistress Hazlehurst, perceiving that one piece of each color was left on the board as a result of an exchange which she had thought would leave two blacks and one white, gave a little shrug of the shoulders; then rose, and walked toward her chamber.
Marryott swiftly seized the candle, and offered it to her, saying:
"We set forth again at midnight. I will knock at your door a little before."
She took the candle, and went from the room; but on her threshold she turned for a moment, and said, softly:
"Good night!"
Marryott stood in a glow of incredulous joy. Her tone, her gracious look, the mere fact of her uttering the civility, or of her volunteering a speech to him, could not but mean that she had softened. Had she come to doubt whether he was indeed her brother's slayer? Or had her heart come to incline toward him despite the supposed gulf of bloodshed that parted them? Either conjecture intoxicated him; the first as with an innocent bliss, the second as with a poignant ecstasy darkly tinged with horror and guilt.
Francis and Tom had fallen asleep where they had sat at supper. Anthony, as Marryott knew, had long since ridden out to keep his cold and lonely watch. Kit and the other men in the hall were asleep, for the sounds of their supper merriment had ceased to come up from below. The horses were in the stables, resting, in readiness for a swift departure. The fire crackled; the wind, having risen again, wailed around the turrets and gables of Foxby Hall, and the snow beat against the window. Marryott took a large book from the case, put it on a chest as a pillow, wrapped himself in his cloak, and lay down with his new and delicious dreams. From waking dreams, they soon became dreams indeed. For the first night in three, he slept.