"Go out!" reiterated Mr. Treverton. "And hold your tongue henceforth and forever about my brother and my brother's daughter. I never have set eyes upon the player-woman's child, and I never will. Hold your tongue—leave me alone—go out!"
"I'll be even with him for this," thought Shrowl as he slowly withdrew from the room.
When he had closed the door, he listened outside of it, and heard Mr. Treverton push aside his chair, and walk up and down, talking to himself. Judging by the confused words that escaped him, Shrowl concluded that his thoughts were still running on the "player-woman" who had set his brother and himself at variance. He seemed to feel a barbarous sense of relief in venting his dissatisfaction with himself, after the news of Captain Treverton's death, on the memory of the woman whom he hated so bitterly, and on the child whom she had left behind her.
After a while the low rumbling tones of his voice ceased altogether. Shrowl peeped through the key-hole, and saw that he was reading the newspaper-slips which contained the account of the shipwreck and the Memoir of his brother. The latter adverted to some of those family particulars which the vicar of Long Beckley had mentioned to his guest; and the writer of the Memoir concluded by expressing a hope that the bereavement which Mr. and Mrs. Frankland had suffered would not interfere with their project for repairing Porthgenna Tower, after they had gone the length already of sending a builder to survey the place. Something in the wording of that paragraph seemed to take Mr. Treverton's memory back to his youth-time when the old family house had been his home. He whispered a few words to himself which gloomily referred to the days that were gone, rose from his chair impatiently, threw both the newspaper-slips into the fire, watched them while they were burning, and sighed when the black gossamer ashes floated upward on the draught, and were lost in the chimney.
The sound of that sigh startled Shrowl as the sound of a pistol-shot might have startled another man. His bull-terrier eyes opened wide in astonishment, and he shook his head ominously as he walked away from the door.
CHAPTER II.
WILL THEY COME?
The housekeeper at Porthgenna Tower had just completed the necessary preparations for the reception of her master and mistress, at the time mentioned in Mrs. Frankland's letter from St. Swithin's-on-Sea, when she was startled by receiving a note sealed with black wax, and surrounded by a thick mourning border. The note briefly communicated the news of Captain Treverton's death, and informed her that the visit of Mr. and Mrs. Frankland to Porthgenna was deferred for an indefinite period.
By the same post the builder, who was superintending the renovation of the west staircase, also received a letter, requesting him to send in his account as soon as the repairs on which he was then engaged were completed; and telling him that Mr. Frankland was unable, for the present, to give any further attention to the project for making the north rooms habitable. On the receipt of this communication, the builder withdrew himself and his men as soon as the west stairs and banisters had been made secure; and Porthgenna Tower was again left to the care of the housekeeper and her servant, without master or mistress, friends or strangers, to thread its solitary passages or enliven its empty rooms.
From this time eight months passed away, and the housekeeper heard nothing of her master and mistress, except through the medium of paragraphs in the local newspaper, which dubiously referred to the probability of their occupying the old house, and interesting themselves in the affairs of their tenantry, at no very distant period. Occasionally, too, when business took him to the post-town, the steward collected reports about his employers among the old friends and dependents of the Treverton family.