"I had promised my dead friend that I would care for the boy as if he were my own, and, had you not come between me and him, it was a promise I was resolved to keep at every cost. I had already decided on my plans for the future, and when I left England I should have taken the boy with me."
"When you left England, Mr. Dare?"
"I have some relations settled in Virginia who have more than once pressed me to go out to them. It was, and remains, my intention to settle there, and there to lay the foundations of a new life, very different from the old one. Now I shall have to go alone. But first I shall see this business through of my missing godson."
Why did Nell's heart sink so unaccountably at this statement of Dare's intentions? What did it matter where he might choose to make his future home? Whatever he might secretly be to her, she was nothing to him, and it was out of the question that she ever could be. She knew, and she made no attempt to disguise the fact from herself, that when he sailed away from England he would take her heart with him. But what then? Of how many women was it not the lot to give away their hearts in secret, and to go through life hopeless of a return? nay, in many cases without the man to whom it was given knowing that he had such a thing in his keeping? Her case would be merely one more added to the number.
Nell was to return to Stanbrook on the morrow, and before she and Dare parted it was arranged that he should communicate with her there as soon as he had any tidings of the missing child, and that the Bow Street authorities on their part should do the same.
There was one point with regard to which Nell wished that Dare had seen fit to enlighten her, and that was as to the nature of the relationship between himself and the mysterious Mr. Ellerslie of Rockmount, for that a relationship of some sort existed between them she now felt more convinced than ever. She had seen Mr. Ellerslie but once, and that merely for an hour by candlelight, and, while conscious of a strange illusive likeness on his part to some one, more especially about the eyes, she had been unable to recall to mind who that some one was. She knew now, and had known for some time, that the original of the shadowy likeness was none other than Geoffrey Dare. But no mention of Mr. Ellerslie's name had escaped the latter's lips, and it was certainly not her place to question him.
There was one more point as to which her curiosity seemed doomed to remain equally unsatisfied. She was still ignorant whether she was indebted for the return of her mask to Mr. Ellerslie or to Geoffrey Dare.
[CHAPTER XX.]
THE ADVENTURES OF A SNUFF-BOX.
It may or may not be remembered by the reader that in an early chapter of this veracious history mention was made of a certain Sir Peter Warrendale, and of his unavailing pursuit of his runaway niece and her lover when on their way to Gretna Green. It was also told how, on his return journey, he was stopped by a highwayman, whom, under the title of "Colonel Delnay," he had met before under rather peculiar circumstances, and was politely relieved of his purse, snuff-box, and other trifles.