e. Our one remaining chance was an alliance with new
aristocrats; and we have failed. We are past and done for. Our line has
had five hundred years of glory, and we ought to be content. Enfin les
renards se trouvent chez le pelletier.'

'Speak for yourself, young Consequence, and leave the destinies of old
families to respectable philosophers. This fiasco is the direct result
of evil conduct, and of nothing else at all. I have managed badly; I
countenanced you too far. When I saw your impish tendencies I should
have forsworn the alliance.'

'Don't sting me, captain. What I have told you is true. As for my
conduct, cat will after kind, you know. You should have held your tongue
on the wedding morning, and have let me take my chance.'

'Is that all I get for saving you from jail? Gad--I alone am the
sufferer, and feel I am alone the fool!... Come, off with you--I never
want to see you any more.'

'Part we will, then--till we meet again. It will be a light night
hereabouts, I think, this evening.'

'A very dark one for me.'

'Nevertheless, I think it will be a light night. Au revoir!'

Dare went his way, and after a while De Stancy went his. Both were soon
lost in the shades.

V.

The castle to-night was as gloomy as the meads. As Havill had explained,
the habitable rooms were just now undergoing a scour, and the main block
of buildings was empty even of the few servants who had been retained,
they having for comfort's sake taken up their quarters in the detached
rooms adjoining the entrance archway. Hence not a single light shone
from the lonely windows, at which ivy leaves tapped like woodpeckers,
moved by gusts that were numerous and contrary rather than violent.
Within the walls all was silence, chaos, and obscurity, till towards
eleven o'clock, when the thick immovable cloud that had dulled the
daytime broke into a scudding fleece, through which the moon forded her
way as a nebulous spot of watery white, sending light enough, though
of a rayless kind, into the castle chambers to show the confusion that
reigned there.

At this time an eye might have noticed a figure flitting in and about
those draughty apartments, and making no more noise in so doing than a
puff of wind. Its motion hither and thither was rapid, but methodical,
its bearing absorbed, yet cautious. Though it ran more or less through
all the principal rooms, the chief scene of its operations was the Long
Gallery overlooking the Pleasance,