restrained as much
as possible; I believe I have been oftener on guard and on court-martial
than any officer of my standing in the service; but about once in a
fortnight I could contrive to ride down to a little wayside inn where I
kept a fresh horse, also a livery coat and hat. I tied up my horse in
a barn on the borders of the park, and put on a black vizard, so as
to pass for my uncle's negro in the dark. I could get admittance to my
uncle's rooms unknown to any servant save faithful Jumbo--who has been
the sole depository of our secret. However, since my mother's return
from Bath, where the compact with Lady Aresfield was fully determined,
the persecution has been fiercer. I may have aroused suspicion by
failing to act my part when she triumphantly announced my uncle's
marriage to me, or else by my unabated resistance to the little
termagant who is to be forced on me. At any rate, I have been so
intolerably watched whenever I was not on duty, that my hours of
bliss became rarer than ever. Well, sir, my uncle charges me with
indiscretion, and says my ardour aroused unreasonable suspicions. He
was constantly anxious, and would baulk me in my happiest and most
tantalising moments by making some excuse for breaking up the evening,
and then would drive me frantic by asking whether he was to keep up my
character for consistency in my absence. However, ten days since, the
twelfth of May, after three weeks' unendurable detention in town on one
pretext or another, I escaped, and made my way to Bowstead at last. My
uncle told me that he had been obliged unwillingly to consent to our
precious charge going to meet her sister at Brentford, and that she was
but newly come home. Presently she entered, but scarcely had I accosted
her before a blaze broke out close to us. The flame caught the dry old
curtains, they flamed up like tinder, and as I leaped up on a table to
tear them down, it gave way with me, I got a blow on the head, and knew
no more. It seems that my uncle, as soon as the fire was out, finding
that my arm was broken, set out to send the groom for the doctor--he
being used to range the park at night. The stupid fellow, coming
home half tipsy from the village, saw his white hair and beard in the
moonlight, took him for a ghost, and ran off headlong. Thereupon my
uncle, with new energy in the time of need, saddled the horse, changed
his dressing-gown with the groom's coat, and rode off to Brentford.
Then, finding that Dr