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Having safely deposited his royal guest at a whist table, and thus left himself a free agent, the Earl, inviting Aram to join him, sauntered among the loiterers on the terrace for a few moments, and then descended a broad flight of steps, which brought them into a more shaded and retired walk; on either side of which rows of orange-trees gave forth their fragrance, while, to the right, sudden and numerous vistas were cut among the more irregular and dense foliage, affording glimpses now of some rustic statue now of some lone temple now of some quaint fountain, on the play of whose waters the first stars had begun to tremble.
"Pshaw!" said he, as if indignant at himself, "what! scruples at a shadow! "Fool!" said Aram, scornfully, "I should dread you dead yet more than living."
"Aram!" said Walter, in a tone trembling with emotion, and passionately clasping his hands, "I entreat, I implore you, at this awful time, if it be within your power, to lift from my heart a load that weighs it to the dust, that if left there, will make me through life a crushed and miserable man; I implore you, in the name of common humanity, by your hopes of Heaven, to remove it!
Madeline and Aram sat apart at one corner of the hearth, and Ellinor leaned over the chair of the former; the mirth that she struggled to suppress from being audible, mantling over her arch face and laughing eyes; while the Squire, taking the pipe from his mouth, turned round on his easy chair, and nodded complacently to the little corps, and the great commander.
Its very order is the progress of oblivion. And I I give me your hand, Madeline, I, ha! ha! I forget too!" As Aram spoke thus wildly, his countenance worked; but his voice was slow, and scarcely audible; he seemed rather conferring with himself, than addressing Madeline.
"Not at all; but being distantly related, and Houseman being a familiar, pushing sort of a fellow, Aram could not, perhaps, always shake him off; and Aram allowed that Houseman had spent the evening with him." "And no suspicion rested on Aram?" The host turned round in amazement. "Heavens above, no! One might as well suspect the lamb of eating the wolf!"
A bold front would have saved them, for the evidence against them was weak. Aram stood firm, but Houseman quailed, and presently he turned "state's evidence" and denounced Aram as the murderer of Clarke. The accused scholar spoke in his own defence, and with astonishing skill, but he failed to defeat the direct and decisive evidence of his accomplice.
Meanwhile, Aram, drawn out of his habitual solitude by the sweet influence of Madeline, became a frequent visitor to the manor house and the acknowledged suitor for Madeline's hand. As for Walter, when he set out for London, with Corporal Bunting as his servant, he had found consolation in the discovery that Ellinor's regard for him had gone beyond mere cousinly affection.
Edwin Aram in?" he asked. A clerk raised his head and looked behind him. "No," he said; "his desk is closed. I guess he's gone home for the day." The reporter nudged the editor savagely with his elbow, but his face gave no sign. "That's a pity," he said; "we have an appointment with him. He still lives at Sixty-first Street and Madison Avenue, I believe, does he not?"
Say what we will, wander as we will, it is to this point that we must return at last." Aram gasped for breath, and as usual with him in emotion, made several strides forward, muttering rapidly, and indistinctly to himself, and then returned.
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