you say, Mrs. Balk?”
“I don’t say so, sir, no more did Miss Ringwood; but they said so.”
“Whom do you mean by they?”
“The people at The Mere – the young doctor, a friend of Squire Maryon’s, who was brought over from York, and the rest; he fell heavily from his chair, and his head struck against the fender.”
“Playing at cards with Mr. Maryon, I think you said.”
“Yes, sir; he was too fond of cards, I believe, was Mr. Geoffrey.”
“Is Mr. Maryon seen much in the county – is he hospitable?”
“Well, sir, he goes up to London a good deal, and has some friends down from town occasionally; but he does not seem to care much about the people in the neighborhood.”
“He has some children, Mrs. Balk?”
“Only one daughter, sir; a sweet pretty thing she is. Her mother died when Miss Agnes was born.”
“You have no idea, Mrs. Balk, what my aunt Aldina’s great misfortune was?”
“Well, sir, I can’t help thinking it must have been a love affair. She always hated men so much.”
“Then why did she leave The Shallows to me, Mrs. Balk?”
“Ah, you are laughing, sir. No doubt she considered that The Mere ought to belong to you, as the heir of the Ringwoods, and she placed you here, as near as might be to the place.”
“In hopes that I might marry Miss Maryon, eh, Mrs. Balk?”
“You are laughing again, sir. I don’t imagine she thought so much of that, as of the possibility of your discovering something about the missing will.”
I bade the communicative Mrs. Balk good night and retired to my bedroom – a low, wide, sombre, oak-panelled chamber. I must confess that family stories had no great interest for me, living apart from them at school and college as I had done; and as I undressed I thought more of the probabilities of sport the eight hundred acres of wild shooting belonging to The Shallows would afford me, than of the supposed will my poor aunt had evidently worried herself about so much. Thoroughly tired after my long journey, I soon fell fast asleep amid the deep shadows of the huge four-poster I mentally resolved to chop up into firewood at an early date, and substitute for it a more modern iron bedstead.
How long I had been asleep I do not know, but I suddenly started up, the echo of a long, sad cry ringing in my ears.
I listened eagerly – sensitive to the slightest sound – painfully sensitive as one is only in the deep silence of the night.
I heard the old-fashioned clock I had noticed on the stairs strike three. The reverberation seemed to last a long time, then all was silent again. “A dream,” I muttered to myself, as I lay down upon the pillow; “Madeira is a heating wine. But what can I have been dreaming of?”
Sleep seemed to have gone altogether, and the busy mind wandered among the continental scenes I had lately visited. By and by I found myself in memory once more within the Weggis churchyard. I was satisfied; I had traced my dream to the cries that I had heard there. I turned round to sleep again. Perhaps I fell into a doze – I cannot say; but again I started up at the repetition, as it seemed outside my window, of that cry of sadness and despair. I hastily drew aside the heavy curtains of my bed – at that moment the room seemed to be illuminated with a dim, unearthly light – and I saw, gradually growing into human shape, the figure of a woman. I recognized in it my aunt, Miss Ringwood. Horror-struck, I gazed at the apparition; it advanced a little – the lips moved – I heard it distinctly say:
“Reginald Westcar, The Mere belongs to you. Compel John Maryon to pay the debt of honor!”
I fell back senseless.
When next I returned to consciousness, it was when I was called in the morning; the shutters were opened, and I saw the red light of the dawning winter sun.
There is a strange sympathy between the night and the mind. All one’s troubles represent themselves as increased a hundredfold if one wakes in the night, and begins to think about them. A muscular pain becomes the certainty of an incurable internal disease; and a headache suggests incipient softening of the brain. But all these horrors are dissipated with the morning light, and the after-glow of a cold bath turns them into jokes. So it was with me on the morning after my arrival at The Shallows. I accounted most satisfactorily for all that had occurred, or seemed to have occurred, during the night; and resolved that, though the old Madeira was uncommonly good, I must be careful in future not to drink more than a couple of glasses after dinner. I need scarcely say that I said nothing to Mrs. Balk of my bad dreams, and shortly after breakfast I took my gun, and went out in search of such game as I might chance to meet with. At three o’clock I sent the keeper home, as his capacious pockets were pretty well filled, telling him that I thought I knew the country, and should stroll back leisurely. The gray gloom of the November evening was spreading over the sky as I came upon a small plantation which I believed belonged to me. I struck straight across it; emerging from its shadows, I found myself by a small stream and some marshy land; on the other side another small plantation. A snipe got up, I fired, and tailored it. I marked the bird into this other plantation, and followed. Up got a covey of partridges – bang, bang – one down by the side of an oak. I was about to enter this covert, when a lady and gentleman emerged, and, struck with the unpleasant thought that I was possibly trespassing, I at once went forward to apologize.
Before I could say a word, the gentleman addressed me.
“May I ask, sir, if I have given you permission to shoot over my preserves?”
“I beg to express my great regret, sir,” I replied, as I lifted my hat in acknowledgment of the lady’s presence, “that I should have trespassed upon your land. I can only plead, as my excuse, that I fully believed I was still upon the manor belonging to The Shallows.”
“Gentlemen who go out shooting ought to know the limits of their estates,” he answered harshly; “the boundaries of The Shallows are well defined, nor is the area they contain so very extensive. You have no right upon this side the stream, sir; oblige me by returning.”
I merely bowed, for I was nettled by his tone, and as I turned away I noticed that the young lady whispered to him.
“One moment, sir,” he said, “my daughter suggests the possibility of your being the new owner of The Shallows. May I ask if this is so?”
It had not occurred to me before, but I understood in a moment to whom I had been speaking, and I replied:
“Yes, Mr. Maryon – my name is Westcar.”
Such was my introduction to Mr. and Miss Maryon. The proprietor of The Mere appeared to be a gentleman, but his manners were cold and reserved, and a careful observer might have remarked a perpetual restlessness in the eyes, as if they were physically incapable of regarding the same object for more than a moment. He was about sixty years of age, apparently; and though he now and again made an effort to carry himself upright, the head and shoulders soon drooped again, as if the weight of years, and, it might be, the memory of the past, were a heavy load to carry. Of Miss Maryon it is sufficient to say that she was nineteen or twenty, and it did not need a second glance to satisfy me that her beauty was of no ordinary kind.
I must hurry over the records of the next few weeks. I became a frequent visitor at The Mere. Mr. Maryon’s manner never became
