“Your son,” replied the Doctor, “wrote to me by the same messenger: he seldom fails to do so, being aware of what importance it is that I should know every thing that passes. Means of escape are provided on the coast, and Master Kerneguy must be ready to start with your son the instant he appears.”
“It is strange,” said the knight; “for forty years I have dwelt in this house, man and boy, and the point only was how to make the day pass over our heads; for if I did not scheme out some hunting match or hawking, or the like, I might have sat here on my arm-chair, as undisturbed as a sleeping dormouse, from one end of the year to the other; and now I am more like a hare on her form, that dare not sleep unless with her eyes open, and scuds off when the wind rustles among the fern.”
“It is strange,” said Alice, looking at Dr. Rochecliffe, “that the roundhead steward has told you nothing of this. He is usually communicative enough of the motions of his party; and I saw you close together this morning.”
“I must be closer with him this evening,” said the Doctor gloomily; “but he will not blab.”
“I wish you may not trust him too much,” said Alice in reply.—“To me, that man’s face, with all its shrewdness, evinces such a dark expression, that methinks I read treason in his very eye.”
“Be assured, that matter is looked to,” answered the Doctor, in the same ominous tone as before. No one replied, and there was a chilling and anxious feeling of apprehension which seemed to sink down on the company at once, like those sensations which make such constitutions as are particularly subject to the electrical influence, conscious of an approaching thunder-storm.
The disguised Monarch, apprised that day to be prepared on short notice to quit his temporary asylum, felt his own share of the gloom which involved the little society. But he was the first also to shake it off, as what neither suited his character nor his situation. Gaiety was the leading distinction of the former, and presence of mind, not depression of spirits, was required by the latter.
“We make the hour heavier,” he said, “by being melancholy about it. Had you not better join me, Mistress Alice, in Patrick Carey’s jovial farewell?—Ah, you do not know Pat Carey—a younger brother of Lord Falkland’s?”
“A brother of the immortal Lord Falkland’s, and write songs!” said the Doctor.
“Oh, Doctor, the Muses take tithe as well as the Church,” said Charles, “and have their share in every family of distinction. You do not know the words, Mistress Alice, but you can aid me, notwithstanding, in the burden at least—