Part 32 (1/2)
”Plague on that dog, your lover, Cynthia,” he growled from the mountain of pillows that propped hi me to the wainscot of my own hall may I be for ever damned”
”How?” quoth she ”Do you say that Kenneth did it?”
”Aye, did he He ran at me ere I could draw, like the coward he is, sink hi of an eye”
Here was so from her? She set her wits to the discovery and plied her father with another question
”How ca you, child,” replied Gregory at random, and unable to think of a likelierroaned in despair ”Go, child I airl Go; let me sleep”
”But tell me, father, what passed”
”Unnatural child,” whined Gregory feebly, ”will you plague a sick man with questions? Would you keep him from the sleep that may mean recovery to hiht it was as you say, I would leave you But you know that you are but atte that I should know, that I must know
Bethink you that it is of my lover that you have spoken”
By a stupendous effort Gregory shaped a story that to him seemed likely
”Well, then, since know you must,” he answered, ”this is what befell: we had all drunk over-deep to our sha tenderhearted for you, and bethinking me of your professed distaste to Kenneth's suit, I told him that for all the results that were likely to attend his sojourn at Castle Marleigh, he ht as well bear Crispin company in his departure He flared up at that, and demanded ofhim that ere like to have snow on midsummer's day ere he 'beca as he was all addled ine and ripe for anyup and drew on et between us, but he was over-quick, and before I could do h my shoulder and into the wainscot at my back After that it was clear he could not remain here, and I demanded that he should leave upon the instant
Hi loath, for he realized his folly, and he leam of Joseph's eye--which can be wondrous wicked upon occasion
Indeed, but for my intercession Joseph had laid him stark”
That both her uncle and her father had lied to her--the one cunningly, the other stupidly--she had never a doubt, and vaguely uneasy was Cynthia to learn the truth Later that day the castle was busy with the bustle of Joseph's departure, and this again was a matter that puzzled her
”Whither do you journey, uncle?” she asked of hi carriage
”To London, sweet cousin,” was his brisk reply ”I ae Have you commands for me?”
”What is it you look to do in London?”
”There, child, let that be for the present I will tell you perhaps when I return The door, Stephen”
She watched his departure with uneasy eyes and uneasy heart A fear pervaded her that in all that had befallen, in all that was befalling still--what ever it ht be--some evil was at work, and an evil that had Crispin for its scope She had neither reason nor evidence from which to draw this inference It was no more than the instinct whose voice cries out to us at tie of ill, and oftentiher than any evidence could coed her to seek what information she could on every hand, but without success From none could she cull the merest scrap of evidence to assist her
But on the al as it was unlooked-for, and from the unlikeliest of sources--her father hi at his inaction and lured into indiscretions by the subsiding of the pain of his wound, Gregory quitted his bed and cahter As his wont had been for years, he drank freely That done, alive to the voice of his conscience, and seeking to drown its loud-tongued cry, he drank more freely still, so that in the end his henchman, Stephen, was forced to carry hirey in the service of the Ashburns, and ae that he had a ounds and a wide understanding of the ways to go about healing thee ory's debauch, and sorrowfully did he wag his head over his rave fears concerning hiory awoke on fire with the fever They su knave, with a view to adding importance to the cure he was co difficulty, shook his head with o to do ”all that his skill perory make his peace with God For the leech had no cause to suspect that the whole of the Sacred College ht have found the task beyond its powers