ABSTRACT
Four days had passed, in which D’Alonville appeared to be occupied as usual. He had forborne, at the earnest entreaties of Mrs. Denzil, to visit Aberlynth, while he might be missed by the family at Rock-March; but as he did not always sup with them, and the young men were now entering more regularly on that course of life they were to follow when Lord Aberdore had left them, he contrived to be dismissed by Lord Aurevalle, to whom alone he referred himself, at an early hour of the evening, when he hastened to pass the rest of it at ‘the Cottage of the Cliffs.’ He observed, though without giving himself the trouble to inquire into the cause, that Mr. Paunceford was more than usually constrained in his manner; but he imputed it to the discontent with which he beheld the increasing friendship of Lord Aurevalle for his foreign tutor, and to the natural malignity and supercilious insolence of his character. He sometimes fancied that Paunceford watched him, and was half tempted to contrive to detect him in doing so, that he might chastise him as he deserved; but he resisted this temptation as it arose, on reflecting, that any fracas of this sort could not fail of distressing Mrs. Denzil, and of occasioning the discovery she so much wished to avoid. The manner, however, of Paunceford, served to render their meetings more than usually uncomfortable, and to irritate the impatience with which D’Alonville awaited the hour that should set him at liberty to fly to Angelina; impatience which he could not always so well conceal, but that Paunceford, though a man of no great penetration, was every day more strongly confirmed in his opinion that something, which he wished to hide, was on his mind. The extreme eagerness with which he read the newspapers, and the solicitude he expressed for letters, together with the agitation he had sometimes unwillingly betrayed on receiving them; his restlessness, and frequent walks of an evening, which Paunceford had discovered (though he knew not that D’Alonville was absent the whole night), were altogether observations that put strange thoughts into the round head of the sagacious Paunceford. Every hour that passed, and every look of D’Alonville’s, served to strengthen these suspicions; for it is not only to the doubting lover, that, 452‘Trifles light as air,Are to the jealous, confirmation strong, as proofs of holy writ.’59
