In the improved state of his spirits, Sir Bale had taken a shrewd interest in this negotiation; and was actually persuaded to cross the lake that morning with his adviser, and to walk over the grounds with him.

Sir Bale had seemed unusually well, and talked with great animation.  He was more like a young man who had just attained his majority, and for the first time grasped his estates, than the grim elderly Baronet who had been moping about Mardykes, and as much afraid as a cat of the water, for so many years.

As they were returning toward the boat, at the roots of that same scathed elm whose barkless bough had seemed, in his former visit to this old wood, to beckon him from a distance, like a skeleton arm, to enter the forest, he and his companion on a sudden missed an old map of the grounds which they had been consulting.

“We must have left it in the corner tower of Cloostedd House, which commands that view of the grounds, you remember; it would not do to lose it.  It is the most accurate thing we have.  I’ll sit down here and rest a little till you come back.”

The man was absent little more than twenty minutes.  When he returned, he found that Sir Bale had changed his position, and was now walking to and fro, around and about, in what, at a distance, he fancied was mere impatience, on the open space a couple of hundred paces nearer to the turn in the valley towards the boat.  It was not impatience.  He was agitated.  He looked pale, and he took his companion’s arm—­a thing he had never thought of doing before—­and said, “Let us away quickly.  I’ve something to tell at home,—­and I forgot it.”

Not another word did Sir Bale exchange with his companion.  He sat in the stern of the boat, gloomy as a man about to glide under traitor’s-gate.  He entered his house in the same sombre and agitated state.  He entered his library, and sat for a long time as if stunned.

At last he seemed to have made-up his mind to something; and applied himself quietly and diligently to arranging papers, and docketing some and burning others.  Dinner-time arrived.  He sent to tell Lady Mardykes that he should not join her at dinner, but would see her afterwards.

“It was between eight and nine,” she continued, “I forget the exact time, when he came to the tower drawing-room where I was.  I did not hear his approach.  There is a stone stair, with a thick carpet on it.  He told me he wished to speak to me there.  It is an out-of-the-way place—­a small old room with very thick walls, and there is a double door, the inner one of oak—­I suppose he wished to guard against being overheard.

“There was a look in his face that frightened me; I saw he had something dreadful to tell.  He looked like a man on whom a lot had fallen to put some one to death,” said Lady Mardykes.  “O, my poor Bale! my husband, my husband! he knew what it would be to me.”

Here she broke into the wildest weeping, and it was some time before she resumed.