Part 39 (2/2)

The quick gallop of the horses' feet shortly became audible, and she knew that the squire, with his groom, were clattering up to the court-yard of the castle.

Five minutes afterward a hissing whistle was answered by a snort from the patient blood-hound, which had watched so long at the door, his light feet scratched their way down the slippery oaken stairs, and once more Margaret was alone.

She had been saved through a night of peril such as turns the jetty locks of youth to the l.u.s.trous white; she had been saved to rush for aid and have the murderer arrested with the pistol still in his hand.

She was a free woman once more, and G.o.d had been kind to her this long dread night.

She rose from her paralyzing att.i.tude and approached her little bed to sink on her knees beside it and pour out her full heart of grat.i.tude to Heaven, but she only went a little way and fell on her face and fainted.

And the first sun-ray of another dawning smote across the weary old world, flus.h.i.+ng its icy bosom, and stole through the hole in the shutter, and touched the ceiling, thus casting a reflected beam, like a faint smile, upon the unconscious face of the orphan girl.

CHAPTER XX.

THE IMPOSTOR FOILED.

At ten o'clock of the morning Mrs. Chetwode was knocking at Miss Walsingham's bedroom door.

”Excuse me, miss, for disturbing you, but the colonel is here, and wishes most particular to see you.”

”Oh, please leave me alone,” answered the young lady from within, weakly and plaintively: ”I am ill and can see no one.”

The housekeeper returned to Colonel

Brand, who was pacing about in the gallery, under the long lines of dead Brands, among which was not the face of the latest dead, and informed him with a lugubrious face that Miss Walsingham was wild yet as she had been last night, and seemed afraid to open the door, which was one of her meagrims, poor dear, to have it locked, and her not well.

”Keep her quiet,” answered the colonel, with that crafty smile of his behind his long and stealthy hand, ”she is going to have a serious illness. Keep her very quiet. Poor lady, she shows signs of insanity; keep her perfectly quiet.”

Then, to be on hand, in case the young lady should consent to see him, as he informed Mrs. Chetwode, he made himself at home in a quiet way at Castle Brand, sauntering, with his hands in his pockets, through the wide rooms; smoking on the front steps, eating lunch in a room which commanded a view of the stairway, with his ugly companion by his side, whose dripping fangs and blood-shot eyes were his master's admiring study, and often slapping his own chest with an angry malediction, because a certain rawness, or hoa.r.s.eness, had got into his windpipe.

No adoring lover could have expressed more anxiety concerning the lady of his heart than did the gallant colonel for Miss Walsingham. He sent up a bulletin in the shape of John the footman every hour, to listen at the young lady's door whether she was moving--not to disturb her, only to listen, and bring back word to this anxious well-wisher.

Thus pa.s.sed the morning below stairs.

How fared it with poor Margaret?

Nature had suffered a complete collapse. The horror of the night was telling upon her pale, drawn face, her bloodless lips, and nerveless hands. Utter exhaustion was weighing her down.

If her enemy had been making a bonfire of Castle Brand beneath her, profound exhaustion would have compelled her to lie there and doze, even while she perished in the flames.

She lay in bed with half-closed eyes, tossing from side to side as the piercing light from the hole in the shutter worried her; dozing heavily, often waking to murmur some feverish thought, starting up and listening--sinking back in her weakness to sleep again.

Toward the middle of the afternoon she roused herself, came to a completer sense of reality than she had done yet, and sprang from her bed. She had to sit for several minutes upon the side of it, with her hands tightly clasped upon her brow, before she could come to a decision as to what her next move could be.

”I am mad to waste the few hours of grace in sleep, instead of putting myself, under the protection of my friends!” she said.

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