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Updated: May 12, 2025
We had several hours still to wait for the arrival of the post. For both of us the delay was a suspense; for me an almost agonising one. At length, at an unlooked-for moment, Branston did enter the room with the post-bag. There was a large letter, with the Feltram post-mark, addressed to Lady Knollys it was Doctor Bryerly's despatch; we read it together.
The people drew back a little as Sir Bale entered with a quick step and a sharp pallid frown on his face. There was a silence as he stooped over Philip Feltram, who lay on a low bed next the wall, dimly lighted by two or three candles here and there about the room. He laid his hand, for a moment, on his cold wet breast.
"Do you see it?" asked Feltram. Sir Bale was watching patiently, but he had observed nothing of the kind. Sharper, darker, more eager grew the face of Philip Feltram, as his eyes traversed the surface of that huge horizontal block. "Now?" asked Feltram again. No, he had seen nothing.
The end of it was, that before a week Sir Bale told Feltram that he would go by boat, since that fellow insisted on it; and he did not very much care if he were drowned. It was a beautiful autumnal day.
The battle about the bank-note proceeded. Sir Bale certainly had doubts, and vacillated; for moral evidence made powerfully in favour of poor Feltram, though the evidence of circumstance made as powerfully against him.
Julaper had one Sunday evening when she drank tea at the Vicar's, told his good lady very mysteriously, and with many charges of secrecy, that Sir Bale was none the better of his late-found wealth; that he had a load upon his spirits, that he was afraid of Feltram, and so was every one else, more or less, in the house; that he was either mad or worse; and that it was an eerie dwelling, and strange company, and she should be glad herself of a change.
Feltram had chosen to work his own way, being proud, and also prosperous enough to prevent his pride, in this respect, from being placed under too severe a pressure of temptation. He heard not from but of his brother, through a friend in London, and more lately from Gertrude, whose account of him was sad and even alarming. When Lady Mardykes came in, her delight knew no bounds.
One tiny pretty little baby indeed was born, and lived for two years, and then died; and none had come to supply its place and break the childless silence in the great old nursery. That was her sorrow; a greater one than men can understand. Another source of grief was this: that Sir Bale Mardykes conceived a dislike to William Feltram that was unaccountable.
It took some time; and when he had got them back into the leather bag, and tied them up again, Feltram, with a sudden start, said sharply, "Come, take your oar unless you like the lake by night; and see, a wind will soon be up from Golden Friars!"
Sir Bale knew that a crisis had happened in his own life. He felt faint and ill, and returned to the room where he had been sitting. Throughout that melancholy night he did not go to his bed. In the morning he learned that Marlin, who had been out late, saw Feltram get the boat off, and sail towards the other side.
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