look, Harry thought. He cursed and kicked away his dogs,
which came jumping about him--then he walked up to the fountain in the
centre of the court, and leaned against a pillar and looked into the
basin. As Esmond crossed over to his own room, late the chaplain's, on the
other side of the court, and turned to enter in at the low door, he saw
Lady Castlewood looking through the curtains of the great window of the
drawing-room overhead, at my lord as he stood regarding the fountain.
There was in the court a peculiar silence somehow; and the scene remained
long in Esmond's memory;--the sky bright overhead; the buttresses of the
building and the sundial casting shadow over the gilt _memento mori_
inscribed underneath; the two dogs, a black greyhound and a spaniel nearly
white, the one with his face up to the sun, and the other snuffing amongst
the grass and stones, and my lord leaning over the fountain, which was
plashing audibly. 'Tis strange how that scene and the sound of that
fountain remain fixed on the memory of a man who has beheld a hundred
sights of splendour, and danger too, of which he has kept no account.

It was Lady Castlewood, she had been laughing all the morning, and
especially gay and lively before her husband and his guest, who, as soon
as the two gentlemen went together from her room, ran to Harry, the
expression of her countenance quite changed now, and with a face and eyes
full of care, and said, "Follow them, Harry, I am sure something has gone
wrong." And so it was that Esmond was made an eavesdropper at this lady's
orders: and retired to his own chamber, to give himself time in truth to
try and compose a story which would soothe his mistress, for he could not
but have his own apprehension that some serious quarrel was pending
between the two gentlemen.

And now for several days the little company at Castlewood sat at table as
of evenings: this care, though unnamed and invisible, being nevertheless
present alway, in the minds of at least three persons there. My lord was
exceeding gentle and kind. Whenever he quitted the room, his wife's eyes
followed him. He behaved to her with a kind of mournful courtesy and
kindness remarkable in one of his blunt ways and ordinary rough manner. He
called her by her Christian name often and fondly, was very soft and
gentle with the children, especially with the boy, whom he did not love,
and being lax about church generally, he went thither and performed all
the of