West Town Dewsbury

West Town Dewsbury and on that side of it retraced our steps. But Elijah passed on, "Isn't it funny how familiar that antique room looks?" said Patricia with enjoyment. "I feel quite like an old residenter already. By the time my clay comes I'll have the sensations of the oldest inhabitant.","What have I said?" she asks, half plaintively. "You laugh, yet I did not mean to be funny. Tell me what I said.",She hastens her steps, and runs down hurriedly into the hall below, which is almost as light as day. Turning aside, she makes for the library, and now (and not till now) remembers she has no light, and that the library, its shutters carefully closed every night by the invaluable Jenkins himself, is of necessity in perfect darkness.,Up the gangplank she walked, entirely alone, and looking around with a radiantly happy face.,“H’m—they are not bruised, these two.”，“Why, Betty?”，“True, so it is. I suppose you are very busy nowadays?”，There is a look upon his face that recalls to her his dead father, and Lady Rodney grows silent. The husband of her youth had been dear to her, in a way, until age had soured him, and this one of all his three children most closely resembled him, both in form and in feature; hence, perhaps, her love for him. She lowers her eyes, and a slow blush—for the blood rises with difficulty in the old—suffuses her face.Some time previously Major Jen had asked Etwald about the devil-stick, but only to be informed that the doctor knew nothing of the missing article.

'You are now to learn that, about a century ago, this castle was in the possession of Vincent, third marquis of Mazzini, my grandfather. At that time there existed an inveterate hatred between our family and that of della Campo. I shall not now revert to the origin of the animosity, or relate the particulars of the consequent feuds—suffice it to observe, that by the power of our family, the della Campos were unable to preserve their former consequence in Sicily, and they have therefore quitted it for a foreign land to live in unmolested security. To return to my subject.—My grandfather, believing his life endangered by his enemy, planted spies upon him. He employed some of the numerous banditti who sought protection in his service, and after some weeks past in waiting for an opportunity, they seized Henry della Campo, and brought him secretly to this castle. He was for some time confined in a close chamber of the southern buildings, where he expired; by what means I shall forbear to mention. The plan had been so well conducted, and the secrecy so strictly preserved, that every endeavour of his family to trace the means of his disappearance proved ineffectual. Their conjectures, if they fell upon our family, were supported by no proof; and the della Campos are to this day ignorant of the mode of his death. A rumour had prevailed long before the death of my father, that the southern buildings of the castle were haunted. I disbelieved the fact, and treated it accordingly. One night, when every human being of the castle, except myself, was retired to rest, I had such strong and dreadful proofs of the general assertion, that even at this moment I cannot recollect them without horror. Let me, if possible, forget them. From that moment I forsook those buildings; they have ever since been shut up, and the circumstance I have mentioned, is the true reason why I have resided so little at the castle.',Then Mona rises, and they both come to the entrance of the small room, and stand where Lady Rodney can overhear what they are saying.,"The Phœbe.",His companions crept forward and peered through the trees. Sure enough from the one unglazed window of the old building came the twinkle of a light, which bobbed about in weird, uncertain fashion.,Suddenly Patricia spoke. "It's a horrid mess, and I'm sorry that it had to come out, but there's no use shirking, is there? If someone, no matter who, stole your hat, you'd feel they should be brought to justice. Isn't stealing an idea a lot worse? I don't really think you ought to feel so badly, Elinor. If Doris Leighton could do such a thing, and then be friends with you afterward, she isn't worth breaking your heart over. I felt badly enough when Ju told me, but I've kept getting madder and madder, as I've seen how she goes on acting her part of kind friend to you.",Not far from the large old-fashioned hearth[Pg 65] beside a little table on which stood a work-basket, sat in a tall-backed arm-chair fit for a queen to be crowned in, a figure that must have carried the memory of a middle-aged or old man of that time well back into the past century. She was Miss Acton, Lucy's Aunt Caroline, sister of Captain Acton, a lady of about seventy years of age, who trembled with benevolence and imaginary alarms, who was always doing somebody good, and was now at work upon some baby clothing for an infant that had been born a week or two before.,Mr. Johnston smiled darkly and nodded. "As I thought. The one who did it is too much of a coward to confess it," he grated, his voice shaking. "Well, there remains but one thing to do. If the guilty party is to be punished, I must punish you one and all.","No; but I can fancy him, with his horrid bald head. Now, you know," holding up his hand to stop her as she is about to speak, "you know you said he hadn't a hair left on it.",Geoffrey, stooping over to wake her with a kiss, marks all this, and also that her eyelids are tinged with pink, as though from excessive weeping.,But Elinor, far from showing rancor, shook the bony hands and kissed the sunken cheeks with as good grace as though she were receiving her dearest friends. She even made some little speech to each, though Patricia was too far away to catch more than a word or two.,He walked back to the hotel, too overcome by the beauty of the thing he had seen to attempt talking of it. Evidently Steve Whitney knew how the boy felt, for he did not break the silence. But once inside the house Bob realized that it had been a long time since luncheon.,"I can't exactly describe it. A rich, heavy, deadly sort of thing, likely, I should think, to dull the sharpest senses.".