Chapter XVI: The Discovery

How silver sweet sound lovers' tongues by night!
Like softest music to attending ears.
_Romeo and Juliet._

Leaving the lovers to their rapture, let us glance in at the warm drawing-room, and at the philosophic whist-table: Captain Heath is standing with his back to the fire; Tom Wincot having "cut in" in his place; Violet and Rose are knitting.

"Blanche, my dear," said Meredith Vyner.

"She has gone to bed, papa," said Rose.

"Oh, very well. Is Mr. Chamberlayne come in? No! Our deal, is it not?"

This little fragment of the conversation suddenly made Captain Heath suspicious. He was before aware that Blanche and Cecil were absent; but he had not before coupled their two exits in his own mind, so as to draw therefrom a conclusion. "Can they have arranged this?" flashed across his brain. He quietly left the room, took his hat, and walked out. Though by no means of a jealous disposition, he could not help commenting in his own mind on a hundred insignificant traits of what appeared to him Blanche's passion for Cecil, and the conclusion he drew from them was, that she not only loved him, but studiously concealed her love. As he said, with him "once to be in doubt was once to be resolved;" his was none of that petty, querulous jealousy, irritated at self-inflicted tortures, and yet too weak to finish them by making doubts certainties. Like a brave man, as he was, he paused not an instant in endeavouring to arrive at certitude in all things. Instead, therefore, of worrying himself with doubts and arguments, with hopes that she might not love Cecil, and fears that she did, he determined to settle the point, and place it beyond a doubt.

He had not gone far when his quick ears detected the indistinct murmur of conversation. He paused for a moment, and leaned against a tree. A cold perspiration stood on his brow; a feeling of sickness, which he could not subdue, arrested him; the first spasm of despair clutched his heart, as the murmur fell upon his ear, and told him that what he had suspected was the truth.

That he might not be mistaken; that he might not act without thorough conviction, he approached still closer to the spot from whence the murmur came, and there he saw the lovers seated under the dark branches of a gigantic larch, which served to make Blanche's white dress more visible.

Little did that happy pair suspect with what heartbroken interest they were contemplated. They pressed each other's hand, and repeated endless variations of that phrase, of all phrases most dulcet to mortal ear, "I love you;" and if they thought at all, thought themselves forgotten by the world they so entirely forgot.

In the midst of their dreamy bliss, a low, half-stifled sob startled them. They sprang up. She clung tremblingly to him. He looked eagerly around, piercing through the shadowy pathways with a glance of terror. He could discover nothing. All was silent. Nothing stirred.

"Did you not hear a groan?" he whispered.

"It seemed like a sob."

"All is silent. I see no one. Listen!"

They listened for some seconds; not a sound was audible.

"It must have been fancy," he said.

"No; I heard it too plainly."

"Perhaps it was a noise made by one of the cows yonder."

"At any rate, let us go in. Do you return by the shrubbery. I will go round by the garden."