Part 32 (1/2)

She had two hours to wait for the coming of Lady Juliana, and she must live through the dreary time somehow, so, weary of the silence of the castle, she flung a large dark mantle about her, and went out for a walk upon the Waaste.

It was nearing the shortest day of the year, and the early twilight was already setting over the distant hill and forest.

The dun leaves, heaped high under the oaks of the front park, were white with h.o.a.ry frost, crackled like paper under her feet, and, starting with every sound, she soon quitted the shadows of the trees, and paced over the sere turf down to the inky mere, where the long, brown flags p.r.i.c.ked up in paper-like spikes, and the dank rushes pierced the filmy ices at the margin of the water, and the hazel shrubs cl.u.s.tered close about the slippery banks, and hid them from the Waaste.

She walked round and round in this dreary spot, while the dusk grew darker, and the frost fell whiter on her foot-prints; and, when fatigue began to demand rest, she chose a seat on the gnarled root of a giant willow, whose branches swept the ground on every side, or dipped into the mere at her feet.

She became completely absorbed in her thoughts, but presently a distant pattering, like rain upon the dry foliage, recalled her, with a disagreeable start.

She opened the branches of her yellow-leaf screen and looked about.

Nearer came the pattering steps, slow and soft; then she heard a long sniff, and a swifter pattering of the coming feet.

Her heart stood still with horror.

She saw a long, lean blood-hound leap into view, and circle slowly round the mere, his nose on the ground, his blood-shot eyes flaming through the dusk.

_The colonel's sleuth-hound tracking her steps!_

With what helpless fascination she watched the animal gliding like a phantom round and round, down to the lip of the mere, where she had bent to pluck a stalk, diverging a pace when she had diverged.

And behind the dog came Colonel Brand, with hands clasping each other by the wrists, and drooping figure, and head down on his breast, shuffling his dragging feet among the withered gorse as if weights held them down brooding along with the heavy and spiritless gait of an old man, or of one whose shoulders have been bowed thus by labor.

He looked not to right or left, but slouched on after his dog upon the bank, and, as he pa.s.sed the woman in her hiding place, she saw that in his face, which no Brand of knightly English blood ever wore, since Sir Hildebrand broke his lance at Cressy.

That crafty and sinister half smile, that green, scintillating s.h.i.+mmer of the introverted eye, that gathered brow, seamed with the hideous lines of crime and cunning!

Could such a face belong to St. Udo, the dare-man and dare-devil? That coward's shuffle, and murderous, nervous hand clutching the empty air, or thrust into his bosom! Could such belong to the gallant soldier who had stormed the Rocky Ridge, and braved the cannon's mouth in the thickest of the fight? Thank Heaven, no! He lay in his hidden grave, and his bravery was glowing in the mouths of a hundred heroes, and his honor should be kept untarnished, if a woman's hand could uphold the proud escutcheon!

Closer stole the blood hound to the willow tree, but though she eyed his approach with curling blood, she would not utter a cry which might betray her to the man she hated.

For the nervous hand he had thrust into his bosom had brought out something which glittered with a steel-blue flash in the indistinct gloom, and he had come to a dead stand with it, and was looking at it with the glare of a hungry wolf.

He was but a few paces from Margaret Walsingham, and the sleuth-hound was gliding on her track, making his last circle round the mere. She knew it by his glaring eyes and watering fangs, and his short, deep groans of eagerness.

”I must have recourse to you again, my tiny talisman?” hissed Colonel Brand to his stiletto. ”She insists on having you, and I am going to humor her.”

He hissed these words through his teeth slowly, deliberately, as if it was a sort of joy to utter them aloud, but once, and then he thrust it into his bosom again.

And the woman tore off her heavy cloak and dropped it beneath the willow tree, and, rising to her feet, she glided through the hazel copse across the Waaste, and fled for her life, just when the snarling hound sprang upon her garment and tore it into pieces, with many a wolfish bay!

CHAPTER XVII.

CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE.

Margaret soon went to her own apartment and changed her damp garments, and then she went down stairs to the echoing reception-room, to wait for Lady Juliana Ducie.

At last came the sound of carriage wheels, the great door was opened, and a gentle stir ensued in the lower hall.