Carice put her hand to her brow, and tried to think, but merely succeeded in bewildering herself with images of horror. That frightful word, murderer, continually sounded in her ears, to the effectual hindrance of anything like connected thought. Only one idea presented itself to her confused brain with even tolerable distinctness,—Bergan was near, Bergan was in possession of knowledge that might yet relieve her, to some extent, from a burden too heavy to be borne,—a burden which she ought never to have consented to take upon herself, nor ever would have done, had she not first been bound fast with a torpor that benumbed both feeling and will. Still, having so consented, she would have tried, but for Rosa's terrible revelation, to endure it patiently. Now, it seemed to her, this was no longer possible.
Again she fixed her eyes upon the gleaming light from the old Hall; the only star of hope or suggestion that had yet risen upon her darkness. What could she do, in her mortal terror and bewilderment, but follow it?
"Rosa," she said, suddenly, "I am going to the Hall. I must see Bergan, and hear what he has to say; then I can decide what it is right to do."
"And so I would," rejoined Rosa, approvingly. "Just let me slip this dark wrapper on you, and wind this scarf round your head, and well over your face,—so;—why, your own father wouldn't know you, if he were to meet you! Now, we'll be off."
Carice hesitated. "No, Rosa, that will never do; our absence would be quickly discovered. You must stay and keep the door."
"But, Miss Carice, you can't go alone!"
"I can, and must. It is the only way to prevent discovery. Remember, no one is to be let in, upon any consideration, until I return."
"Let me alone for that," responded Rosa, emphatically. And having seen Carice safely down the steps from the upper piazza, and watched her light form till it was lost among the trees, Rosa returned to mount guard over the door of the deserted chamber.
Godfrey Bergan had been unaccountably shaken by that brief meeting and parting with his daughter, in the hall. Watching her slender form as it toiled up the staircase, with the languid step that betrays a heavy or a reluctant heart, he sighed to think with what a graceful alacrity she had used to flit upward, as if lifted on invisible wings, her happy smile seeming to make a little illuminated space about her, like the light which is seen irradiating angelic forms, in old pictures. A sudden burden of despondency fell upon his heart, whereof he understood neither the purport, nor whether it bore reference to her or himself, but only knew that it quite unfitted him for playing the part of a gay and gracious host to his guests. Seeing Miss Ferrars coming toward him, with her stereotyped smile, an impulse of flight seized him; and hastily stepping through one of the long windows, he soon found himself once more under the sighing trees, which were swaying to and fro under the first breathings of a rising wind.
The night was no longer dark. Here and there, a star looked through the broken clouds, and lighted him to the river's bank, down which he walked slowly; torturing himself, as he went, with that weary after-birth of doubts and questions, which often follows hard upon the accomplishment of a cherished purpose. Had he done well in wedding Carice to the doctor? Had he not done wrong in refusing to listen to Bergan, at least with courtesy and calmness? Was it barely possible that there could have been some small grain of truth at the bottom of the young man's turbid story? What was the meaning of that odd, wild look in Carice's eyes? Had he been thrusting himself, as it were, into the awful place of Providence, only, by reason of his human short-sightedness, to work irremediable ruin?