against I come back, or come you here no more."
Soon after this scene he retired to tell Mercy; and, on his departure, the suppressed tongues went like mill-clacks.
Dick came round saddled at peep of day; but Mercy had been up more than an hour, and prepared her man's breakfast. She clung to him at parting, and cried a little; and whispered something in his ear, for nobody else to hear: it was an entreaty that he would not be long gone, lest he should be far from her in the hour of her peril.
Thereupon he promised her, and kissed her tenderly, and bade her be of good heart; and so rode away northwards with dogged resolution.
As soon as he was gone, Mercy's tears flowed without restraint.
Her father set himself to console her. "Thy good man," he said, "is but gone back to the high road for a night or two, to follow his trade of 'stand and deliver.' Fear naught, child; his pistols are well primed: I saw to that myself; and his horse is the fleetest in the county. You'll have him back in three days, and money in both pockets. I warrant you his is a better trade than mine; and he is a fool to change it."
Griffith was two days upon the road, and all that time he was turning over and discussing in his mind how he should conduct the disagreeable but necessary business he had undertaken.
He determined, at last, to make the visit one of business only: no heat, no reproaches. That lovely, hateful woman might continue to dishonor his name, for he had himself abandoned it. He would not deign to receive any money that was hers; but his own two thousand pounds he would have; and two or three hundred on the spot by way of instalment. And, with these hard views, he drew near to Hernshaw; but the nearer he got, the slower he went; for what at a distance had seemed tolerably easy began to get more and more difficult and repulsive. Moreover, his heart, which he thought he had steeled, began now to flutter a little, and somehow to shudder at the approaching interview.
CHAPTER XXX.
Caroline Ryder went to the gate of the Grove, and stayed there two hours; but, of course, no Griffith came.
She returned the next night, and the next; and then she gave it up, and awaited an explanation. None came, and she was bitterly disappointed, and indignant.
She began to hate Griffith, and to conceive a certain respect, and even a tepid friendship, for the other woman he had insulted.
Another clew to this change of feeling is to be found in a word she let drop in talking to another servant. "My mistress," said she, "bears it like a man."
In fact, Mrs. Gaunt's conduct at this period was truly noble.
She suffered months of torture, months of grief; but the high-spirited creature hid it from the world, and maintained a sad but high composure.
She wore her black, for she said, "How do I know he is alive?" She retrenched her establishment, reduced her expenses two thirds, and busied herself in works of charity and religion.
Her desolate condition attracted a gentleman who had once loved her, and now esteemed and pitied her profoundly,—Sir George Neville.
He was still unmarried, and she was the cause; so far at least as this: she had put him out of conceit with the other ladies at that period when he had serious thoughts of marriage: and the inclination to marry at all had not since returned.
If the Gaunts had settled at Boulton, Sir George would have been their near neighbor; but Neville's Court was nine miles from Hernshaw Castle: and when they met, which was not very often, Mrs. Gaunt was on her guard to give Griffith no shadow of uneasiness.
