“I suppose, if I really had murder on my soul, I should have no appetite—unless I were a hardened villain indeed. Being innocent, I’ll make the best of things, until they come to the worst.”
With this wise resolution, he dined well, and drank an excellent bottle of wine. The world beginning to look a little better, in direct consequence, he lit a cigar, and put the matter philosophically before himself.
“Men have been hung, I know, on slighter evidence than that which connects me with the dead girl. Yet, after all”—he derived very considerable satisfaction from the remembrance of this point—“I am not Dandy Chater—and never was. If I can only as readily persuade people that I am not my twin brother, as I have persuaded them that I am—I’ve nothing to fear. That’s the point. However, I must know what the danger of discovery is, and exactly where I stand, before I do anything else. Then—if there is nothing for it but flight, the question will be: can I as readily drop my mask as I have assumed it? Frankly, I’m afraid I can’t.”
Knowing the impossibility of doing anything alone, by reason of his ignorance of the neighbourhood, he rang the bell, and requested that Harry might be sent to him. In a few moments, the servant who had answered the summons returned, and, standing just within the door, announced that Harry was not to be found.
“What do you mean?” asked Philip. “Look about for him, man; he must be somewhere about the place.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” replied the man—“’e ’as been seen leavin’ the grounds a little while since.”
“Very well; it doesn’t matter,” said Philip, carelessly. “Send him to me when he returns.”
The man withdrew, leaving Philip Chater in an uneasy frame of mind. He saw at once that, great as this lad’s devotion might be to Dandy Chater, he had already, in a moment of passion, defied his master. He was scarcely more than a boy—and in that boy’s hands hung the life of Philip Chater. That he should have gone out, in this fashion, without a word, was a circumstance suspicious enough at any time; that he should have done so now, was alarming in the extreme to the man who dreaded every moment to hear unaccustomed sounds in the house, which should denote that the secret of the wood was a secret no longer, and that men had come to take him.
“I can’t stay here; I shall go mad, if I do,” said Philip to himself. “After all, there may be only a few hours of liberty left to me—perhaps only a matter of minutes. Come—what shall I do with the time?”
A certain recklessness was upon the man—the recklessness which will make a man laugh sometimes, in the certain approach of death. With that feeling, too, came a softer one; in that hour of difficulty and danger, he turned, as it were instinctively, towards the woman who had kissed him—the woman who had whispered that she loved him. In his bitter loneliness, as has been said, his thoughts had turned to her, more often than was good for his peace of mind; and now a longing, greater than he could master, came upon him, to touch her hand—perhaps, by great good fortune, her lips—once again.