CHAPTER XV.
On the twenty-third day of September, Sir Sidney Delaware had some slight symptoms of a fit of gout, which rendered him somewhat irritable and anxious. Three times did he give particular directions, that, when Mr. Tims of Ryebury came, he was to be shown into the library, and, as often, when he heard any unusual sound in the mansion, usually so still and tranquil, he demanded whether Mr. Tims had arrived. Still Mr. Tims did not make his appearance, though about two o'clock Mr. Burrel did; and the worthy baronet, in conversation with his young friend, forgot his anxiety for a time. At length, however, it began to resume its ascendency, and its first struggle was of course with politeness. He was evidently uneasy; he moved to and fro in his chair; he complained of some pain; and, at length, was in the very act of desiring his son to take a walk, and see why Mr. Tims had not kept his promise, when the daily bag arrived from the post, and--together with a billet or two, apparently from some female friends, for Miss Delaware, which she carried away to her own room; and a letter for Captain Delaware--appeared a lawyer-like epistle, addressed to Sir Sidney, and bearing the London post-mark.
"I will go to Mr. Tims as soon as I have looked over this letter, sir," said Captain Delaware; but Sir Sidney at the same moment opened his own, and, after he had read, he exclaimed, "No, no, William, there is no necessity! You and Blanche were going to walk with Mr. Burrel; and here Lord Ashborough's lawyer tells me that he can not be down on the precise day--that is, to-morrow--but will come the day after, or the day after that, with a thousand apologies for not coming. If I be well enough, I will go to this person, Tims, myself, to-morrow. If not, you can go. So call Blanche, and take your ramble while it is fine. The clouds are beginning to gather."
Captain Delaware went to seek his sister, who, as we have said, had retired to her own apartment; but he soon returned, saying that she had a slight headache, and would stay at home. He would show Burrel the way himself, he added, to what the people called the Sea Hill, so named because the sea was thence first visible; and though the spirit of their proposed expedition had all evaporated, Burrel did not choose to decline. "If she did but know!" he thought--"If she did but know what is going on here in my heart, I do not think a slight headache would keep her at home! But I must bring this matter to some certainty--it is growing painful!" and more than one-half of his walk passed in silent musing.
On his return, he went into the library with Captain Delaware. Blanche was there with her father, but she was deadly pale, and Burrel felt more than anxious--alarmed. As soon almost as he entered, Sir Sidney Delaware pressed him to stay to dinner, and Burrel, who had often declined, mastered by strong anxiety, agreed to do so on the present occasion; though, as the invitation was given and accepted, he saw a passing blush, and then a relapse to snowy paleness, come over the countenance of her he loved.
The evening was no longer of joy. Burrel hoped that some opportunity would present itself of gaining a single moment of private conversation with Blanche Delaware in the course of his stay; but it was evident that she avoided every thing of the kind, and, at an early hour, complaining of increased headache, she retired once more to her room. Soon after, her lover took his leave, and returned home in a state of feverish anxiety, difficult to be described; while Captain Delaware perceived that something had gone wrong, but could not divine what; and Sir Sidney, without seeing any thing deeper, felt that the evening which had just passed to its predecessors, was the dullest he had spent since he had become acquainted with Henry Burrel.
To Burrel the night went by in sleepless restlessness; and, though we would fain see how it flew with Blanche Delaware, we must take up her story in the course of the morning after, when, rising as pale as the night before, she found that the hour, instead of nine--which she had fancied it must be at least--was only seven. Putting on her bonnet, she glided down the old stone staircase, and proceeded into the park; but it was not toward Emberton that she took her way. On the contrary, turning her steps through the wild woodlands that lay at the back of the mansion, she trod very nearly the same path which she had pursued with Henry Burrel during the first days of their acquaintance.
She traced the walk by the bank of the stream. The kingfishers were flitting over the bosom of the river; the waters were pouring on, fretting at the same pebbles, dashing over the same little falls, lying quiet in the same still pools, as when she had last seen them. But the feelings of her heart were changed, and the light, which nature had then borrowed from joy, was now all overshadowed by the clouds of care. As she gazed upon the stream, and the wild banks, and the hawthorn dingles round her, and felt that a bitter change in her own bosom had stripped them of all their beauties, as ruthlessly as the hand of winter itself could have done, the pain was too much, and she wept.
Still she trod her way onward, pondering slowly and gloomily, till she came so near the little glen that had terminated that happy walk with Burrel, that she could not refrain from going on. A few minutes brought her to the spot where the Prior's Well was first visible, and a few minutes more found her standing under the rich carved canopy of gray stone that covered over the fountain.
For several moments she gazed wistfully and mournfully upon the waters, as, with a calm, unobtrusive ripple, and a low, whispering murmur, they welled from the basin of the fountain, and trickled through the grass and pebbles. "Oh, would to Heaven!" she thought, "that yon calm water did really possess the mysterious power the old legends attribute to it. But two days since, nothing on earth would have made me taste it, though I believed not a word; and now I am almost tempted to drink, though I still believe as little."