The ex-cavalry officer remembered well enough that interview between Sir Sykes and Hold, at which he had played the part of an unsuspected audience. The demand to which his father had acceded was that Sir Sykes should receive in a false character Hold’s sister as an inmate of Carbery. True the seafaring fellow—smuggler, pirate, or whatever he might be—had laughed mockingly, and had spoken in strangely ironical accents when dictating to the baronet on this subject. But be she who she might, Ruth must be either an accomplished schemer or the willing instrument of others, or she would not have been where she was.
It may have been a petty malice, suited to his feline nature, that caused Jasper on that particular night to remain down-stairs later than usual, causing his sisters also to defer their retiring to rest for an extra half-hour. They kept early hours at Carbery as a rule, as rich people, in the profound dullness of the dignified ease which is not enlivened by guests, are sometimes apt to do. Sir Sykes, who always stayed long enough in the drawing-room to sip his coffee, was the first to disappear; but no one save himself and his valet knew when he left the library for his bedroom. When the captain was in health it was his custom to spend an hour or two in trying rare combinations of skill and luck among the ivory balls in the billiard-room; but since the steeplechase he had been glad to retire unfashionably early.
It was because he fancied that Miss Willis was impatiently awaiting the moment for separating for the night, that Jasper chose to delay it; but at length the time came when the good-nights had been exchanged, and the drawing-room was abandoned. Captain Denzil’s room, which adjoined the picture-gallery on the first-floor, was immediately beneath that occupied by the Indian orphan. Repeatedly, after he reached it, did Jasper fancy that he heard a light swift step overhead, as if Sir Sykes’s ward were hurrying to and fro; and then his sharpened ear caught the sound of a stealthy tread upon the oaken staircase.
Extinguishing the lights for the time being, Captain Denzil threw open his window, which overlooked the park; and by the time his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the darkness, he saw, or thought he saw, a female form glide from under the black shadow of the giant sycamores and flit bat-like away through the solitary gloom.
‘If it were not for this provoking arm,’ said the captain, who was still, despite the skilful care of worthy little Dr Aulfus from Pebworth, suffering less from his hurts than from the Nemesis that dogs the steps of the hard-liver, ‘I’d win the odd trick to-night. But if I can’t follow to see who it is that she meets, at anyrate I shall get a second peep at yonder ingenuous creature when she comes back. A rare moonless night it is for such an errand!’
Jasper’s eyes had not deceived him. It was Ruth whose slight figure had passed away into the deepening shadows of the night, crossing the park towards its northern boundary, which abutted upon the broken country leading to the royal forest, treeless, but none the less in sound law the forest of Dartmoor. It was so dark that even one better accustomed to the locality might have failed to keep to the right course among narrow and grass-grown paths, many of them trodden by no human foot, but by the cloven hoofs of the deer trooping down to pool or pasture.
Yet Ruth threaded her devious way past holt and thicket, past pond and hollow, almost as well as the oldest keeper on the estate would have done, and presently gained the gate which, as has been already remarked, stood always open on the northern side of the park, corresponding to that on the southern or seaward side, for, as has been said, the public had an ancient right or user to traverse Carbery Chase. But as a right of ingress for men might imply a right of egress for deer, some zigzag arrangement of iron bars had been set up, screen-like, at either extremity of the footpath, and this effectually restrained the roving propensities of the antlered herd within.
‘So—you are late, Ruth! I have kicked about here, till I began to think you’d thrown me over. No wonder, living among fine folks, that you’re getting to care little how long a rough fellow like yours to command is kept on the look-out.’
Such was the surly greeting of the stout sailor-like man whom Ruth found irritably pacing to and fro under the lee of the wall.
‘I could not come, brother, one moment earlier without arousing suspicion that might be the ruin of us both,’ answered the girl steadily, but in a conciliatory tone. ‘And what, after all, signify a few minutes more or less of expectation, compared with a life of constant effort, constant watchfulness, and the sense of depending on one’s self alone in the midst of enemies who sleep beneath the same roof and feed at the same table? I tell you that the tension on my nerves is far greater than I ever dreamed that it could be, and that there are times when I even fancy that I shall be driven mad by the strain imposed upon me of playing a part, ever and always, without rest or respite!’