Lucy's opinion proved to be merely a confirmation of those already enunciated by Gruding and Mark Finch, except that it was expressed in still more emphatic terms. Anybody, she said, who was acquainted with Miss Pengarvon would know quite well that on no account whatever would that lady allow a stranger, who could allege the gratification of an idle curiosity as his only motive for wanting to do so, to set foot across the threshold of Broome. Many people in Clem's place would have given up the point as hopeless; but he was composed of more stubborn stuff. Mark Finch was told to come again in the evening, when he would have time for a long talk with Dr. Hazeldine.
Into the details of the conversation that passed between the two it is not needful that we should enter. Mark and Lucy, it seemed, were desirous of getting married, and were saving up towards housekeeping with that end in view. Towards the fund thus being accumulated Clem offered to contribute five pounds, on condition that Lucy, unknown to the other inmates, should admit him to the Hall, and show him over that part of it which was shut up and unoccupied. The girl would be at his heels the whole time he was inside the house, and would be able to watch his every movement; while, finally, he engaged that an hour and a half at most should elapse between the time of his entering the house and leaving it.
The temptation proved too strong for the lovers to resist. Lucy foresaw no difficulty in carrying out her part of the scheme. Once a month her uncle, Barney Dale, went to Marrowfield, as he had done for the last quarter of a century, to dispose of the work of his mistress's needle. Three days hence was his time for going, and Dr. Hazeldine's exploration must take place while he was away. Breakfast would be over, and Miss Pengarvon, intent on her work in the Green Parlor, would hear nothing. As a further safeguard, however, it might be as well if the young doctor were to wear a pair of list slippers over his boots.
As it was arranged so it was carried out. Clement was surreptitiously admitted at the side entrance about half-an-hour after Barney had taken his departure. Under the guidance of the girl he tramped upstairs and down in his list slippers, passing from one unused room to another, having here a shutter opened for him, so as to let in a modified daylight, and there a blind partly drawn up. Many of the rooms were entirely denuded of furniture, while in others what there was of it was sheeted up in brown holland. Everywhere the dust lay thick and heavy; the clouded mirrors could but reflect the ghosts, as it were, of the young man and the girl as they passed in front of them. Nearly every corner was festooned with huge cobwebs; behind the wainscoting the mice squeaked and scampered; everything was touched by the mouldering finger of decay. When Clement and his guide spoke to each other it was as people speak in the chamber of death.
Last of all they came to the picture-gallery, where hung some score or more portraits of dead and gone Pengarvons. A lozenge-paned oriel window at one end, the upper half of which was filled with painted glass, suffused the gallery with a faintly-tinted half-light, which seemed fitly to accord with the place and the throng of dumbly-staring effigies on its walls. Clem walked up to the oriel and gazed out into the grounds, while Lucy proceeded to open the shutters of two of the long windows which fronted the portraits. Presently Clem's eyes came back to the window, and to a recognition of the fact that sundry names and initials had been scratched with a diamond here and there on its panes. Among them he found one which sent a sudden rush of blood to his heart the moment his eyes lighted on it. Surmounted by a true lover's knot, and with the date 1649 below, were the two names "Hermia Moray" and "Rupert Pengarvon." Here was proof positive of one thing--that "Hermia" was a name not unknown in the Pengarvon annals upwards of two centuries ago. Clem felt that this discovery alone amply rewarded him for his exploration of the Hall. Presently he turned to examine the portraits. One after another his gaze took them in till the series was exhausted. They comprised both sexes, and some of the oldest of them, judging from their costumes, seemed to date back to the time of the First or Second Charles, but apparently none were more modern than the first decade of the present century. Then Clement went back to one of the portraits, and stood gazing at it in silence for a long time. It was the likeness of a girl of nineteen or twenty, wearing a short-waisted white robe, a broad blue sash, and a wide-brimmed hat with sweeping plumes over an elaborate arrangement of curls and loosely-coiled tresses. Taken simply as a work of art, it was the gem of the gallery, and Clem at once set it down as being from the brush of either Lawrence or Sir Joshua. But what struck him more than aught else was the strange, haunting likeness it bore to Hermia. Not merely was it that the eyes and hair of one and the other approximated closely in color, and that the features of both might almost have been cast in the same mould, there was an indescribable something, a sort of spiritual likeness, so to call it, which brought them into closer affinity than any mere similarity of physical attributes would have served to do. Long and earnestly did Clement gaze at the beautiful face with its hovering smile, and its fathomless violet eyes which seemed as if they were reading his inmost thoughts. Lucy, when questioned, could tell him nothing about the original. She had only been in the gallery once before, and felt anything but comfortable with all those staring eyes following her every movement. But it would not do to linger there forever. Clem had brought sketching materials with him in readiness for any emergency that might arise, and he now proceeded, with a few bold, swift touches, to secure the salient points of the likeness which had for him an interest far exceeding that of all the other portraits put together.
He left Stavering by the afternoon train that same day, and a few hours later was back at home.
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
ANOTHER LINK.
But Clement Hazeldine's business at Stavering was by no means at an end. A certain purpose, the outcome of his visit to Broome, had taken him back to Ashdown; but that accomplished to his satisfaction, which it was in the course of a few days, he lost no time in returning to the scene of his further operations.
Among other information for which he was indebted to Lucy Grice, he had learned that her uncle, Barney Dale, was in the habit of spending a couple of hours, two or three evenings a week, in the bar-parlor of the "Chequers" Inn at Dritton, where he smoked his pipe and imbibed his tankard of ale in the company of sundry cronies whose tastes in that respect were similar to his own. On inquiry, Clem found that they had one spare bed at the "Chequers," which he at once engaged, and there he proceeded to take up his quarters, leaving his portmanteau, however, in his old lodging at Stavering. Dritton was a tiny hamlet of some three or four hundred inhabitants, and as there were more than one good trout stream in the neighborhood, Clem, who had brought his rod and tackle with him, passed for a disciple of the gentle craft, and was welcomed as such among the frequenters of the bar-parlor. The advent of a stranger who was in no way "stuck-up," and not above hobnobbing with one or another of them, made a pleasant break in the monotony of their meetings, and freshened up their provincial wits for the time in a way which surprised no one more than themselves.