Chapter IX · A SNARE.

She rushed to the window and drew back the heavy damask curtains. Snow—snow and hail on the bitter blustering wind of March had whitened all the moorland waste, and was deepening fast there.

She permitted the curtain to drop from her tremulous hand, and returned in a kind of despair to her seat; for although the distance between her and home was short, the night was too wild for her to venture forth alone.

"It will serve no purpose your taking this little delay so much to heart," said Chesters. "You must have patience. Pray compose yourself, and do lay aside your wraps."

"Excuse me, I cannot," replied Mary, in a choking voice.

"And so you came to ask about young Wedderburn?"

"Yes," faltered Mary; "but only of the gatekeeper as I was passing."

"That young muff, the Master of Ernescleugh, is making himself excessively busy in the affair."

"But they are—alas! must we say were—neighbours—friends," urged Mary, with surprise at his tone.

"That is no reason why he should have come to me thrice with the people of the Procurator Fiscal in the prosecution of inquiries. He should join his regiment in London, or his papa, my Lord Ernescleugh, at his government in the Ionian Isles, and leave Cyril Wedderburn and his fate to the family and the local authorities; but he'll linger on here no doubt, and enter stakes for the heiress."

"What heiress?"

"Haven't you heard about her?" asked Chesters, with a languid but malevolent smile.

"No."

"Sir John Wedderburn's brother William has died lately at Madras, and left his whole fortune, some three hundred thousand pounds at least, with a palace in the Choultry, to his only daughter—a girl, who is coming to Willowdean as her new home. She is a great beauty, they say; and Mamma Wedderburn," he added, a little spitefully, "had an eye on her as a wife for Cyril."

"I know nothing of it," sighed Mary.

"Ah, but I do. I was at breakfast with the family on the morning the news came, and I read the whole intention in Lady Wedderburn's face and manner; but now, as Cyril has gone, that legal prig Bob will very likely have a chance of making her a prize."

Mary only answered these surmises so slangily expressed by her silent tears; but while he spoke she remembered, as one in a dream—for she had not slept since she heard them—the words of the Doctor about a rich bride in prospect for her lost Cyril.

But the rumour excited neither jealousy nor fear. Oh, what did it matter now!

She looked so exquisitely lady-like as she sat with her little hands folded in her tiny muff which rested on her knees, and her veiled face upturned to Chesters, that he—no bad judge of breeding in women or horses—thought what a creditable-looking wife she would make for him or any man; but she was poor, and he was up to the ears in debt; thus neither her poverty nor her beauty excited his pity, though they gave quick suggestion to his worst passions. He loved Mary in a fashion of his own: but he knew that the wife for him must have money, and poor Mary had none.

Full of grief as he saw she was for the terrible and mysterious disappearance of Cyril Wedderburn, Captain Rooke Chesters was far too judicious, or far too cunning, to press any suit of his own just then. He could wait his opportunity; but he thought that if by luring or detaining her under any pretence in his own house for a few hours, he could compromise, or place her in a false position, it would achieve all he wanted at the time.

All that day, we have said, she had not taken food, yet he pressed her in vain to join him at dinner. She felt weak, ill, and giddy. The room seemed to become larger and larger still; its further end appeared to recede as if to a vast distance; all around her became like a species of phantasmagoria, and only by a violent effort of her own will did she resist the faintness that was stealing over her.

She was in an agony of mind as the hours of the stormy night wore on.

She pictured to herself her ailing and querulous father asking for her, in an alarm that might prove detrimental to his shaken system—missing the poor wan girl, who, in her faded dressing-gown, was at all hours of the weary night ever at hand to give him the medicines or soothing draughts prescribed for him by Doctor Squills; ever ready to arrange the pillows; to caress him and bathe his hot and tremulous hands or aching head with cold water, with Rimmel or other aromatic vinegar; and she was here—here at Chesterhaugh, imprisoned by the darkness, the hail, and the snow!

Chesters had his own dark purpose to achieve, and as he forsook champagne for claret, and idled over his walnuts, he viewed her impatience and her mental agony with perfect composure, though treating her with well-bred sympathy the while.

But, as the night wore on, Mary felt more and more the awkwardness, the ultimate doubt and danger of her position, in being thus alone, without a lady friend or chaperon, in the house of a bachelor; and more than all, one who bore such a local reputation as Ralph Rooke Chesters! She was conscious that the very servant—he of the inevitable calves and plush—who removed the dinner and brought in maraschino and coffee, inspired by some of Mr. Bill Trayner's knowing remarks and cruel inferences in the servants' hall below, regarded her with curious eyes.

It has been said that "even bad men have some good traits in them, and that selfish men are capable of feeling."

Perhaps it may be so; but Chesters was incapable of sensibility or caring for any one but himself, and was destitute of a single good trait or generous emotion; so even while watching Mary's restlessness, agitation, and her evident dread of the detention she was undergoing, he muttered, inwardly—

"Pshaw! women can't help loving those who love them; so I'll make a bold attempt to cozen, if I cannot crush or win her!"

It was perhaps a little dangerous for Mary that, though she often expressed and displayed a great aversion of Chesters, there were times when she did not altogether feel it; for few women can hate a man who professes to love and consequently admire them: yet, seeing the full sense of her false position, she began to hate and fear him now.

Should the story get abroad that she had spent some hours in his house, under any circumstances, it was a contretemps that might cost her dear; for how would the censorious world interpret her conduct or acknowledge her reason? That she had come to inquire about the fate of Cyril Wedderburn, and been storm stayed, few would believe, for what vital interest was she supposed to have in the lost heir of Willowdean?

Alas, alas! for secret loves.

Secluded though her life had been at Lonewoodlee, she knew quite enough of the world to be aware that a young lady could not, with propriety, visit a gay young bachelor as she appeared to have done—one to whom she was neither related nor engaged—and it was this consciousness, together with the craving desire to be again by her father's side, that made her so steadily resist taking any refreshment, even coffee, or doffing any part of her costume, and which made her writhe under the well-bred commonplaces uttered by Chesters, such as that he "hoped she wouldn't fret. What the deuce was the good of it! The storm must soon abate; indeed, it was abating now. It is very unfortunate, no doubt," and all that sort of thing; adding, "but it is very stupid work this, and we should do something to amuse each other."

Yet he could neither soothe nor amuse her; he could not leave her for the smoking-room; neither could he smoke in her presence, and so betook him to champagne dashed with brandy, a perilous mixture, through the influence of which some very daring ideas began to form in his cunning brain.

Bad, bold, and daring as he was, Rooke Chesters would scarcely have ventured to trepan a girl of Mary Lennox's undoubted rank in the county into a false position, but for his perfect knowledge of her father's helplessness, his poverty, and the bill he possessed. Moreover, the only man who would have protected her—the lover whose arms he had seen around her in the thicket—was gone, no one knew where or how.

"There is a climax in this life," says a writer, with stern truth, "a climax in mental and bodily pain, after which we can feel no more, and after it all other sources of emotion appear tame by comparison." And this climax had poor Mary passed already.

Cyril was gone; her father she knew was dying; and when he went, who would she have to care for, to study, or to love? Hence for a time, perhaps, she cared less what happened to herself, till the massive black marble clock on the mantelpiece struck the alarming hour of eleven.

"Eleven! I have been here five whole hours! Oh, I shall go afoot, if I die on the moor! I cannot and must not stay here another moment!" she exclaimed, starting from her chair and moving towards the door. "Oh, papa—my own papa—how much you may have missed me!"

"Be not in such a hurry, pray. I had a pleasant surprise for you," said he, laughing.

"How, Captain Chesters?"

"Trayner must have patched up the springs of the waggonette by this time. He is a clever fellow, Trayner, and if the horses are put to, I shall take you over in a few minutes."

"Oh, thanks—a thousand times thanks!"

"No thanks are necessary."

Again he rang the bell, and said, with perfect calmness, to the servant who answered the summons—

"Trayner to get out the waggonette, if it is ready; trace the horses, and bring it round to the front door."

Without perceiving in the least the intelligent glance that passed between Chesters and his domestic, Mary could know that she had been deluded and drawn into a species of snare, the object of which she did not then quite clearly comprehend.

In a few minutes more the tramp of horses' hoofs and the muffled sound of wheels amid the snow without were heard, and Mary rose, her face almost beaming with delight through her veil, as she took his proffered arm to be led forth on her way home at last.

The waggonette, a very handsome "bang-up affair," as Chesters deemed it, was drawn up close to the flight of steps which led to the entrance door; and the long lines of radiance from its two silver lamps shone far amid the white waste of snow in the now treeless park. The storm had ceased, the wind had passed away, and the clouds were divided in Heaven overhead; the stars shone out with frosty brilliance, and the night was calm and clear. The steam from the quivering nostrils of the impatient horses curled up in white wreaths above their heads.

Chesters lifted Mary—somewhat lingeringly, even caressingly perhaps, as he did so—upon the front seat, and carefully folded a warm railway-rug over her shoulders; then buttoning the leather apron across her knees as he took his seat beside her. Mr. Bill Trayner vaulted up behind, and away they went, yet it was close on the hour of twelve (midnight) ere they were clear of the lodge-gates, the drowsy keeper of which observed with surprise the lady who was still his master's companion—Miss Lennox of Lonewoodlee!

As Chesters bent his face close to hers, he thought the time had come when he might venture to say something tender, and the champagne he had imbibed caused him to do it bluntly.

"Women, like men, may love many times in life; but none, Miss Lennox, as I now love you—believe me, I speak from my heart."

"At this time I entreat you not to torment me in that way," said Mary; "in Heaven's name, I implore you!" she continued.

"Ah, you think only of Cyril Wedderburn!" was the spiteful rejoinder.

"I do," said Mary, a dash of anger mingling with her grief, as her tears fell fast again.

"I am a lover as well as he was."

"Of mine, do you mean?"

"Yes."

"No, sir—no," replied Mary, firmly. "I cannot permit you to talk thus, and take advantage of my situation."

"What the deuce do you mean?" he asked, bluntly.

"That you are no lover, though a love-maker."

"Are they not the same?" asked Chesters, with unaffected surprise.

"Nay, Captain Chesters, the difference between them is great."

"As you please," said he, biting his nether lip, while he lightly touched the horses with the lash about the ears.

The lodge-gate had scarcely closed behind them when a mounted gentleman, wearing an Inverness cape of rough material (which, like his half-bullet hat, was well coated with snow), and long black overalls, came up at a hard trot, accompanied by a diminutive groom. On passing the waggonette, he curbed his horse abruptly back upon his haunches, and half looking round, cried, cheerily—

"Hallo, Chesters, old fellow, where are you going? A bitter night for March!"

"Very. Good night," replied Chesters, without stopping; for the speaker was young Everard Home, the Master of Ernescleugh, who was very much surprised to see a young lady leaving the gate of Chesterhaugh at that time of night, and alone with Rooke Chesters! But in a few minutes he was perfectly enlightened on the subject by his groom, who rang the lodge-bell on pretence of wanting a light for his cigar.

A terror seized Mary lest she might have been recognised by these men. She said nothing of it to Chesters, for the deduction was humiliating; but her tears fell again, and she whispered in her heart—

"Oh, what matter is it. I have no Cyril now!"

She was soon deposited, with great politeness on the part of Chesters, at her own door, and in her anxiety and irritation she darted in and closed it, forgetting even to thank him for his escort.

Her father had slept soundly for hours; but now he was awake, and calling alternately for her and his dead son Harry, upbraiding them both for neglect, and threatening that he would break his own neck when next he rode to the hounds, "even as he once hoped that fellow Wedderburn had done;" and Mary's heart died within her, when she found his intellect thus wandering. But the brave girl cast aside her wrappings, took his old head carefully in her tender arms, and strove to forget, what might be nervous fancy only, that her two drowsy domestics who had seen her arrive in Chesters' equipage, looked somewhat oddly on her, and at each other.