At Love's Cost. Charles Garvice
a faint smile crossed her face. At this moment Donald and Bess strolled out to join her. They would much have preferred to have remained roasting themselves in front of the Hall fire, but, ridiculous as it was for their mistress to leave the warm house for the comparatively cold terrace, they felt themselves in duty bound to join her. Perhaps they might catch sight of a rabbit to repay them for their exertions. Donald walked with stately steps toward his mistress, and Bess was following, with a shiver of reluctance and a backward glance towards the fire-light which shone through the open door, when suddenly she sniffed the presence of a stranger, and, with a sharp yap, hurled herself down the broad steps and towards the spot where Stafford still stood. Donald, with a loud bay, followed with his long stride, and Ida, startled from her reverie, followed as far as the top of the steps, and waited.
"I might have expected the faithful watch-dog," said Stafford to himself. "Now, what on earth am I to do? I suppose they'll spring on me—the collie, at any rate. It's no use running; I've got to stop and face it. What a confounded nuisance! But it serves me right. I've no business to be loafing about the place."
As the dogs came up, he put on that air of conciliation which we all know, and murmuring "Good dog! All right, old chap!" tried to pacify Donald and Bess. But they were not accustomed to intruders, especially at that time of night, and they were legitimately furious. Dancing round him, and displaying dazzling teeth threateningly, they drew nearer and nearer, and they would certainly have sprung upon him; but the girl came, not running, but quickly, down the steps and straight across the dewy grass towards them, calling to the dogs as she came in her clear, low voice, which had not a trace of fear in it. Their loud barking changed to sullen growls as she approached; and, motioning them to be still, she stopped and gazed at Stafford, who stepped out into the moonlight.
She said not a word, but, as she recognised him, a faint colour came into the ivory pallor of her cheek and an expression of surprise in the dark, fearless eyes.
Stafford raised his cap.
"I am very sorry!" he said. "I am afraid you must think me a great nuisance; this is the second time I have been guilty of trespass."
She was silent for a moment, not with shyness, but as if she were noticing the change in his dress, and wondering how he came to be in evening-clothes, and where he had come from. The expression was one of simple girlish curiosity, which softened in a delicious way the general pride and hauteur of her face.
"You are not trespassing," she said, and the voice sounded very sweet and musical after the din of the dogs. "There is public right of way along this road."
"I am immensely relieved," said Stafford. "It looks so unfrequented, that I was afraid it was private, and that I had made another blunder; all the same, I am very sorry that I should have disturbed you and made the dogs kick up such a row. I would have gone on or gone back if I had known you were coming out; but the place looked so quiet—"
"It does not matter," she said; "they bark at the slightest noise, and we are used to it. The place is so quiet because only my father and I live here, and there are only a few servants, and the place is so big."
All this was said not repiningly, but softly and a little dreamily. By this time Donald and Bess had recovered their tempers, and after a close inspection of the intruder had come to the conclusion that he was of the right sort, and Donald was sitting close on his launches beside Stafford, and thrusting his nose against Stafford's hand invitingly. The girl's beauty seemed to Stafford almost bewildering, and yet softly and sweetly a part of the beauty of the night; he was conscious of a fear, that was actually a dread, that she would bow, call the dogs and leave him; so, before she could do so, he made haste to say:
"Now I am here, will you allow me to apologise for my trespass of this afternoon?"
She inclined her head slightly.
"It does not matter," she said; "you were very kind in helping me with the lamb; and I ought to have told you that my father would be very glad if you would fish in the Heron; you will find some better trout higher up the valley."
"Thank you very much," said Stafford.
Calling the dogs, she turned away; then, fortunately, Stafford remembered the case of instruments.
"Oh, I beg your pardon!" he said; "I forgot this wallet. I found it by the stream after you had gone."
"Oh, my wallet!" she cried. "I am so glad you have found it. I don't know what I should have done if you had not; I should have had to send to Preston or to London; and, besides, it was a present from the old veterinary surgeon; he left it to me. There were some beautiful instruments in it."
Still smiling, she opened it, as if to show him. Stafford drew near, so near as to become conscious of the perfume of the rose in her bosom, of the still fainter but more exquisite perfume of her hair. He bent over the case in silence, and while they were looking a cloud sailed across the moon.
The sudden disappearance of the light roused her, as it were, to a sense of his presence.
"Thank you for bringing it to me," she said; "it was very good of you."
"Oh, I hadn't to bring it far," said Stafford. "I am staying at The
Woodman Inn, at Carysford."
"Oh," she said; "you are a tourist—you are fishing?"
Stafford could not bring himself to say that he was the son of the man who had built the great white house, which, no doubt, her father and she resented.
"You have a very beautiful place here," he said, after a pause.
She turned and looked at the house in the dim light, with a touch of pride in her dreamy eyes.
"Yes," she said, as if it were useless to deny the fact.
"It is very old, and I am very fond—"
She stopped suddenly, her lips apart, her eyes fixed on the farther end of the terrace; for while she had been speaking a figure, only just perceptible in the semi-darkness, had moved slowly across the end of the terrace, paused for a moment at the head of the flight of steps, and then slowly descended.
Stafford also saw it, and glancing at her he saw that she was startled, if not frightened. She scarcely seemed to breathe, and she turned her large, dark eyes upon him questioningly, somewhat appealingly.
"What is that?" she said, in a whisper, more to herself than to him.
"Someone—a man has gone down the steps from the house," he said.
"Don't you know who it is?"
"No," she replied in as low a voice. "It is not Jason—there is no one else—who can it be? I will go and see."
She moved towards the terrace, and Stafford said:
"I will come with you; you will let me?"
She did not refuse; indeed, she appeared to have forgotten his presence: together they crossed the lawn and reached the corner of the house near which the figure had disappeared. It struck Stafford as strange that the dogs did not bark. In profound silence they went in the direction the figure had taken, and Stafford presently saw a ruined building, which had evidently been a chapel. As they approached it the figure came out of it and towards them. As it passed them, so close that they instinctively drew back, Stafford saw that it was an old man in a dressing-gown; his head was bare, his hair touched the collar of the gown. His eyes were wide open, and gazing straight in front of him.
Stafford was about to step forward and arrest his progress, when suddenly the girl's hand seized his and gripped it.
"Hush!" she whispered, with subdued terror. "It is my father. He—yes, he is asleep! Oh, see, he is asleep! He will fall—hurt himself—"
She, in her turn, was about to spring forward, but Stafford caught her arm.
"No, no, you must not!" he said, in a hurried whisper. "I think it would be dangerous. I think he is all right if you let him alone. He is walking in his sleep. Don't speak—don't cry out."
"No,