Part 34 (2/2)

Find me my child! Oh, _man_, help me, in some way!”

He cries this in an impa.s.sioned tone. He is totally overcome. His poor old white head falls helplessly upon his clasped arms.

Sartoris, pale as death, and visibly affected, can make no reply. He trembles, and stands before the humble miller as one oppressed with guilt.

Annersley mistakes his meaning, and, striding forward, lays his hand upon his arm.

”You are silent,” he says, in a terrible tone, made up of grief and anguish more intense than words can tell. ”You do not think she is in the wrong, do you? You believe her innocent? Speak!--speak!”

”I do,” responds Sartoris, and only his own heart knows that he lies.

Yet his tone is so smothered, so unlike his usual one, that he hardly recognizes it himself.

”If Mr. Brans...o...b.. were only here,” says Annersley, in a stricken voice, after a lengthened pause, ”he would help me. He has always been a kind friend to me and mine.”

Lord Sartoris draws a deep breath, that is almost a sob.

”When does he return, my lord?”

”On Sat.u.r.day. He said so, at least, when leaving.”

”A long time,” murmurs the old man, mournfully. ”She will be home before that,--if she ever comes at all.” His head sinks upon his breast. Then he rouses himself, and, glancing at Lord Sartoris, says entreatingly, ”Won't you write to him, my lord? Do, I implore of you, and conjure him to return. If any one can help me it will be Mr.

Dorian.”

”I shall write to him now,--now,--at once,” says Sartoris, mechanically, feeling how hideous is the mockery of this promise, knowing what he thinks he knows. Even yet he clings to the hope that he has been mistaken.

Thus he soothes the old man with vain promises, and so gets rid of him, that he may be left alone with his own thoughts.

Shall he go to Dorian? This is the first engrossing idea. Yet it affords but little consolation. To see him, to hear him, to listen to a denial from his lips; that is what it holds out to him, and it is all insufficient. How shall he believe him, knowing the many things that have occurred? How treat his very most eager denial as anything but a falsehood?

For hours he paces to and fro, pondering on what is the best course to pursue. He is not his father, that he can coerce him. By nature suspicious (though tender-hearted and indulgent in other ways), it comes easily to him to believe that even the man in whom he has trusted has been found wanting.

”To doubt is worse than to have lost,” says Ma.s.singer; and surely he is right. Sartoris, in deep perplexity, acknowledges the truth of this line, and tells himself that in his old age he has been sorely tried.

The whole world seems changed. Suns.h.i.+ne has given place to gloom; and he himself stands alone,--

”Stoynde and amazde at his own shade for dreed, And fearing greater daungers than was nede.”

Not until he is thoroughly exhausted, both in mind and body, does he decide on leaving for town by the mid-day train next day.

In the mean time he will telegraph to Claridge's, some faint remembrance lingering with him of Dorian's having made mention of that hotel as being all any one's fancy could possibly paint it.

But the morrow brings its own tidings.

It is almost noon, and Sartoris, sitting in his library, writing some business letters,--preparatory to catching the up train to town,--is disturbed by a light knock at the door.

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