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A growing anxiety, however, to ascertain from one who had seen her lately, how Flora had borne his absence, at length induced Charles Holland to break his self-imposed silence. "Jack," he said, "you have had the happiness of seeing her lately, tell me, does Flora Bannerworth look as she was wont to look, or have all the roses faded from her cheeks?"
Moreover, I have accepted the two cartels, and I am ready and willing to fight; one at a time, I presume?" "Sir Francis, after what you have said, I must take upon myself, on the part of Mr. Henry Bannerworth, to decline meeting you, if you cannot name a friend with whom I can arrange this affair." "Ah!" said Jack Pringle, "that's right enough.
After many thoughts and reflections, Henry Bannerworth fell into a deep sleep, and slept several hours in calmness and quietude, and at an early hour he awoke, and saw Marchdale sitting by him. "Is it time, Marchdale? I have not overslept myself, have I?" "No; time enough time enough," said Marchdale. "I should have let you sleep longer, but I should have awakened you in good time."
Charles Holland followed Jack Pringle for some time in silence from Bannerworth Hall; his mind was too full of thought concerning the past to allow him to indulge in much of that kind of conversation in which Jack Pringle might be fully considered to be a proficient.
Without forestalling the interest of our story, or recording a fact in its wrong place, we now call our readers' attention to a circumstance which may, at all events, afford some food for conjecture. Some distance from the Hall, which, from time immemorial, had been the home and the property of the Bannerworth family, was an ancient ruin known by the name of the Monks' Hall.
"'Marmaduke Bannerworth, I said, 'you can do what you please, and take the consequences of what you do, but I will not again, if I can help it, look upon the face of that corpse. It is too fearful a sight to contemplate again. You have a large sum of money, and what need you care now for the title deeds of a property comparatively insignificant?
It is from the veins of such as thou art, Flora Bannerworth, that I would seek the sustenance I'm compelled to obtain for my own exhausted energies. But never yet, in all my long career a career extending over centuries of time never yet have I felt the soft sensation of human pity till I looked on thee, exquisite piece of excellence.
"What is the object of this intrusion?" demanded Henry Bannerworth, rising and confronting the stranger. "This is a strange introduction." "Yes, but not an unusual one," said the stranger, "in these cases being unavoidable, at the least."
Bannerworth. "Shall I ring for the servants, and let them remain in the room with us, until they who are our best safeguards next to Heaven return?" "Hush hush hush, mother!" "What do you hear?" "I thought I heard a faint sound." "I heard nothing, dear." "Listen again, mother. Surely I could not be deceived so often.
"And you reject my communication," said Varney, "because I will not give you leave to expose it to Flora Bannerworth?" "It must be so." "And you are most anxious to hear that which I have to relate?" "Most anxious, indeed indeed, most anxious." "Then have I found in that scruple which besets your mind, a better argument for trusting you, than had ye been loud in protestation.
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