Henry Dunbar: A NovelBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Henry Dunbar: A Novel
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Fiction
Mr. Dunbar winced, as if the announcement of the girl's refusal had
stung him to the quick.
"Since it must be so," he said, "I will see this importunate woman. But
not to-day. To-day I must and will have rest. Tell her to come to me
to-morrow morning at ten o'clock. I will see her then."
Arthur Lovell carried this message to Margaret.
The girl looked at him with an earnest questioning glance.
"You are not deceiving me?" she said.
"No, indeed!"
"Mr. Dunbar said that?"
"He did."
"Then I will go away. But do not let Henry Dunbar try to deceive me!
for I will follow him to the end of the world. I care very little where
I go in my search for the man who murdered my father!"
She went slowly away. She went down into the cathedral yard, across
which the murdered man had gone arm-in-arm with his companion. Some
boys, loitering about at the entrance to the meadows, answered all her
questions, and took her to the spot upon which the body had been found.
It was a dull misty day, and there was a low wind wailing amongst the
wet branches of the old trees. The rain-drops from the fading leaves
fell into the streamlet, from whose shallow waters the dead man's face
had looked up to the moonlit sky.
Later in the afternoon, Margaret found her way to a cemetery outside
the town, where, under a newly-made mound of turf, the murdered man
lay.
A great many people had been to see this grave, and had been very much
disappointed at finding it in no way different from other graves.
Already the good citizens of Winchester had begun to hint that the
grove near St. Cross was haunted; and there was a vague report to the
effect that the dead man had been seen there, walking in the twilight.
Punctual to the very striking of the clock, Margaret Wilmot presented
herself at the George at the time appointed by Mr. Dunbar.
She had passed a wretched night at a humble inn a little way put of the
town, and had been dreaming all night of her meeting with Mr. Dunbar.
In those troubled dreams she had met the rich man perpetually: now in
one place, now in another: but always in the most unlikely places: yet
she had never seen his face. She had tried to see it; but by some
strange devilry or other, peculiar to the incidents of a dream, it had
been always hidden from her.
The same waiter was lounging in the same attitude at the door of the
hotel. He looked up with an expression of surprise as Margaret
approached him.
"You've not gone, then, miss?" he exclaimed.
"Gone! No! I have waited to see Mr. Dunbar!"
"Well, that's queer," said the waiter; "did he tell you he'd see you?"
"Yes, he promised to see me at ten o'clock this morning."
"That's uncommon queer."
"Why so?" asked Margaret, eagerly.
"Because Mr. Dunbar, and that young gent as was with him, went away,
bag and baggage, by last night's express."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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