He got himself in doubt about them the moment he failed to
find the key of the oak door. When he asked himself what then could
have become of his niece, he would reply that doubtless she was all
right: she did not want to marry Forgue, and had slipped out of the
way: she had never cared about the property! To have their own will
was all women cared about! Would his factor otherwise have dared
such liberties with him, the lady's guardian? He had not yet
rendered his accounts, or yielded his stewardship. When she died the
property would be his! if she was dead, it was his! She would never
have dreamed of willing it away from him! She did not know she
could: how should she? girls never thought about such things!
Besides she would not have the heart: he had loved her as his own
flesh and blood!
At intervals, nevertheless, he was assailed, at times overwhelmed,
by the partial conviction that he had starved her to death in the
chapel. Then he was tormented as with all the furies of hell. In his
night visions he would see her lie wasting, hear her moaning, and
crying in vain for help: the hardest heart is yet at the mercy of a
roused imagination. He saw her body in its progressive stages of
decay as the weeks passed, and longed for the process to be over,
that he might go back, and pretending to have just found the lost
room, carry it away, and have it honourably buried! Should he take
it for granted that it had lain there for centuries, or suggest it
must be lady Arctura--that she had got shut up there, like the bride
in the chest? If he could but find an old spring lock to put on the
door! But people were so plaguy sharp nowadays! They found out
everything!--he could not afford to have everything found out!--God
himself must not be allowed to know everything!
He stood staring.
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