So, when luncheon was over, and her ladyship was sufficiently rested, Janet rang the bell and, as instructed, asked for a guide to the tarn. The guide, who was indeed the landlord of the house, was ready in five minutes, and after waiting till her ladyship was duly shawled for the excursion, they set out, Lady Pollexfen and Janet being each mounted on a small sure-footed pony, while the guide trudged along on foot. The road they took was a gloomy and narrow defile that wound precipitously up among the further hills. It was scarcely wide enough for four pedestrians to walk along it shoulder to shoulder. Here and there the rocks on either hand overhung the road, so that a mere ribbon of sky could be seen between them. Here and there the road wound under rude archways that had been hewn out of the rock in years long gone by. The profound silence was broken only by the clatter of their ponies' hoofs on the flinty roadway. Anything so desolate and lonely Janet had never seen. After journeying thus for a mile and a half they reached a small circular opening among the hills, in the middle of which, like a table of black steel, spread the darkling waters of Ben Dulas tarn.
"You can come for us in an hour," said Lady Pollexfen to the guide as she and Janet dismounted.
"Give me your arm, child," added her ladyship. Then they walked slowly down to the margin of the tarn, which was set about with thick coarse rushes, and seated themselves on two large boulders, as round and smooth as if they had been worn by the action of the waves for a thousand years.
The place was wild and desolate in the extreme. On every side it was shut in by great hills, bare, treeless, solemn--giants who for unnumbered ages had stood there with furrowed brows as if guarding the entrance to some holy place.
Janet had brought her sketching apparatus with her, but she sat without attempting to make use of it, overcome by the solemnity of the scene. When Lady Pollexfen spoke, the interruption was almost a relief.
"I daresay you have wondered, Miss Holme, what can be my motive for dragging you and myself about, with such apparent caprice, during the last fortnight. Not, indeed, that your wonder would be a matter of any moment either to me or to any one else," added her ladyship, ungraciously.
"And yet my madness, if you like to term it such, has not been without a method. The only idyl with which my life was ever beautified was enacted among the scenes which you and I have lately visited together. And at this spot, at this gloomy tarn of Ben Dulas, was enacted the crowning scene of all. On this very spot I first heard the sweet whisper of love, and from one whom I loved passionately in return, although my pride would not let me avow it. Yes, here, by the marge of this Avernian lake, he told me that he loved me, that I was the star of his life, and that if I would only wait for him and promise to be his, he would carve for himself a name and a fortune that I should not be ashamed to share. I was young and handsome then, rich and admired, and I smiled Graham coldly down, although my heart was burning towards him. He went his way and I went mine. He went out as an explorer to the wilds of Africa, and was never heard of more. For me, I married a man rich and well-born, but whom I hated; and I gradually became the--well, the wretched being you see me now."
Her ladyship ceased. What could Janet say--what answer could she make to so strange a confession? Probably none was required. In any case, Janet sat without speaking, gazing with melancholy eyes into the black depths of the tarn. Lady Pollexfen, too, was silent. Janet glanced at her face. All its lines were fixed and stern. Her eyes seemed bent on the tops of the opposite hills, but they saw nothing unless it were some vision of inner things--some bit of salvage rescued by memory from the wreck-strewn shores of the past.
They sat thus a long time without speaking, and were only disturbed at last by the approach of their guide with the ponies. In silence they rode back to the hotel.
All that evening Lady Pollexfen's thoughts seemed more abstracted than usual--farther away from the people and things immediately surrounding her. Still, she seemed cheerful and in good spirits, and, after partaking of a light supper, she retired about ten o'clock. Janet sat with her till midnight, reading aloud Beckford's "Vathek." At twelve she was dismissed, and at once went to her own room, which was immediately adjoining that of her ladyship, the door of communication between the two rooms being kept open all night, so that Janet might be within hearing in case she were called.