Not much sleep visited the pillow of Burgo Brabazon that night. The mere thought that a possibility of escape seemed to be opening itself out before him would alone have been enough to break his rest. Supposing that when he saw her next Miss Roylance should ask him in what way she could help him best, ought he not to be ready with an answer to her question? And what ought that answer to be? But at this point he was confronted by a puzzle of which no solution was forthcoming. If Miss Roylance was so far mistress of the situation that neither bolts nor bars sufficed to hinder her from penetrating as far as the outside of his prison door, what was there to prevent her from opening the door itself and so setting him at liberty? It was a perplexing question, and as futile as perplexing, which was just the reason why it kept putting itself to him again and again. And yet he had only to wait patiently to have both this and other things made plain to him; but that is what most of us find it so hard to do.
The spell which Dacia Roylance had unwittingly thrown over him was not broken with her own evanishment. It possessed him and would not let him go. Some magnetic chord of his being had been struck which no one had ever sounded before, and of the existence of which he had been wholly ignorant, and its subtle vibrations thrilled him as he had never been thrilled before. It was not love, it had no touch of passion in it, it was an experience altogether fresh and strange. "I am bewitched, and that\'s the simple fact," he said to himself. "I never believed in \'possession\' before; I do now." And yet he seemed in no way put about, but probably in a process of that sort everything depends upon the sorceress. In any case, Burgo found himself longing, as he had rarely longed for anything, for the time when he should see Dacia Roylance again.
From the first day of Burgo\'s imprisonment till now there had been no break in the weather. The sun had shone in an all but unclouded sky, the nights had been soft and balmy, the winds hushed. Hour after hour had Burgo spent at the window of his prison watching the tide as it seethed creamily up the sands and broke in softest foam or else its slow recession as wave by wave it was drawn backward by a force it was powerless to resist. To-night, however, had brought a change. The sun had set in a gorgeous cloud-pageant, like some conqueror with torn ensigns and blood-stained banners marching through tottering battlements and ruined towers into some great city\'s flaming heart. Later the wind had begun to rise, and by midnight it was blowing half a gale. At high-water every minute or two some thunderous pulsation of the tide would smite the face of the cliff with such terrific impact as for a time to almost deafen Burgo. More than once the old tower seemed to quiver to its foundations. Even if Burgo had had nothing out of the ordinary to occupy his thoughts, it would have been next to impossible for him to sleep.
Forming, as it were, a separate note of the elemental diapason outside, while yet being in full accord with it, was a sound which Burgo long lay listening to without being able to satisfy himself whence or how it originated. It was something between a rush and roar and a sort of Titanic gurgle, and seemed to reach his ear, not from without, but as if it ascended through the floor of his room. Then all at once he said to himself, "Can it be that the tower is undermined, and that what I hear is the noise of the tide as it is being alternately forced into and sucked out of some natural hollow or opening in the face of the cliff?" The longer he pondered this explanation the more satisfied he became that it was the real one.
But when at length sleep came to him he was not thinking of any weird cavern in the cliff, haunted by mermaid or siren, but of the young witch with her red-gold hair and wonderful eyes who had cast a spell over him, the potency of which was already beginning to make itself felt.
In the course of the forenoon the wind went down, but there was a heavy sea running for hours to come.
Breakfast and dinner came in due course, but with the latter meal a letter was handed to Burgo, the address of which--simply his own name--he at once recognised as being in the calligraphy of Miss Roylance. He opened it with a sinking of the heart. Had she written to say that something had intervened, and that she would not be able to visit him as promised? He motioned to Mrs. Sprowle to remain till he had read it. There might be something in it which would necessitate an answer.
"I was about to explain to you yesterday, when interrupted," it began abruptly, "the reasons by which I was actuated in seeking an interview in the way I did, with one who was a complete stranger to me. To you, I have no doubt, it seemed a bold and unmaidenly thing to do, and only under very special circumstances could such a step be at all excusable. That the circumstances in this case are of a very special kind you will, I trust, be ready to admit by the time you have read to the end of what is here written.
"For various reasons I have deemed it best to put my explanation in writing, the chief one being that at present I am far from sure I shall be able to see you again this evening; indeed, it is by no means unlikely that I may be unable to do so at all. You will understand why when you have read further.
"I must ask you to bear with me while I jot down, as briefly as may be, a few details of my early history which are needful for the due understanding of what follows. I will try not to weary you over-much.
"I was born in India, where my father was in the Civil Service, and was sent to Lausanne at an early age to be educated. My mother died when I was too young to remember her, and I lost my father when I was about twelve years old. Of the two guardians appointed by my father, one is a London solicitor whom I have never seen, the other being Colonel Innes, my mother\'s brother. To finish this part of my explanation, I may add that when I am twenty-one I shall come into a fortune of ten thousand pounds, and that I am debarred from marrying before that age (I am now just turned twenty) without the consent of my guardians--or rather, of the one who is still living, for my uncle, Colonel Innes, died a year and a half ago.
"When my uncle Innes retired from the army he came to Europe, and, after spending some months in England, he settled down for the winter at Nice. It was there I joined him on leaving school, for his home, he said, was henceforth to be my home; and it was there he met La Signora Offredi, whom he shortly afterwards married, and who is now known to the world as the wife of Sir Everard Clinton.
"The courtship was a very brief one, for my uncle was simply infatuated. His marriage was to make no difference to me; my home was to be still with him--an arrangement which his wife most cordially seconded. Indeed, from the hour I was introduced to her, Lady Clinton--to give her the title by which she is now known--accorded me an amount of affection which my more frigid temperament made it impossible for me to reciprocate in anything like an equivalent degree. On two occasions she took me with her on her visits to her son, a boy of twelve, who was at school also at Lausanne.
"When my uncle had been married about eighteen months a great misfortune befell him. He lost nearly the whole of his fortune by a bank failure. No doubt it preyed deeply on his mind, and a few weeks after the news came he broke down completely. He never rallied, but lingered on for three months, growing gradually weaker, and then died, his wife having scarcely left his side during the whole of his illness. On his deathbed he exacted from me a promise to remain with her, and to be guided by her in everything, in any case till I should come of age. I gave the promise without a thought of any possible consequences which it might entail.
"Very shortly after my uncle\'s death I went to stay for a time with some relatives, who, having settled some years before in New Zealand, were now over in England on a visit. Circumstances kept them in this country for more than a year, and when they finally went back, and I--having no other home--returned to the shelter of Lady Clinton\'s roof, for she had been married again in the interim, it was to Garion Keep that I came.
"Although I had heard of the existence of such a person, it was not till then that I made the acquaintance of Signor Sperani, her ladyship\'s brother, who had arrived at the Keep two or three days later than I.
"The first knowledge I had of your existence, Mr. Brabazon, was when your insensible body was brought into the house late one night by Signor Sperani and Jared Sprowle, the latter being the son of the old woman who waits on you, and the man, as I learnt afterwards, who had been employed to dog your footsteps for days before. I happened to be crossing the gallery at the moment when they brought your body in and laid it on the hall table. A single lamp was burning below, the gallery was in gloom, and from where I stood I could look down on all that passed, myself unseen.
"Apparently the first thing Sperani did was to satisfy himself that you were not dead (I have learnt since that he was brought up to the medical profession, as was his father before him), after which he went in search of her ladyship, who came back with him two minutes later. Then a hurried consultation was held between the two, Sprowle standing somewhat apart meanwhile, but they spoke so guardedly that not a word of what they said reached me. Then her ladyship went, and ............