Four days passed without any sign from either Julia or my father.  I wrote to him detailing my interview with her, but no reply came.  My mother and I had the house to ourselves; and, in spite of her frettings, we enjoyed considerable pleasure during the temporary lull.  There were, however, sundry warnings out-of-doors which foretold tempest.  I met cold glances and sharp inquiries from old friends, among whom some rumors of our separation were floating.  There was sufficient to justify suspicion:  my father’s absence, Julia’s prolonged sojourn with the Careys at the Vale, and the postponement of my voyage to England.  I began to fancy that even the women-servants flouted at me.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.

DEAD TO HONOR.

The mail from Jersey on Monday morning brought us no letter from my father.  But during the afternoon, as I was passing along the Canichers, I came suddenly upon Captain Carey and Julia, who wore a thick veil over her face.  The Canichers is a very narrow, winding street, where no conveyances are allowed to run, and all of us had chosen it in preference to the broad road along the quay, where we were liable to meet many acquaintances.  There was no escape for any of us.  An enormously high, strong wall, such as abound in St. Peter-Port, was on one side of us, and some locked-up stables on the other.  Julia turned away her head, and appeared absorbed in the contemplation of a very small placard, which did not cover one stone of the wall, though it was the only one there.  I shook hands with Captain Carey, who regarded us with a comical expression of distress, and waited to see if she would recognize me; but she did not.

“Julia has had a letter from your father,” he said.

“Yes?” I replied, in a tone of inquiry.

“Or rather from Dr. Collas,” he pursued.  “Prepare yourself for bad news, Martin.  Your father is very ill; dangerously so, he thinks.”

The news did not startle me.  I had been long aware that my father was one of those medical men who are excessively nervous about their own health, and are astonished that so delicate and complicated an organization as the human frame should ever survive for sixty years the ills it is exposed to.  But at this time it was possible that distress of mind and anxiety for the future might have made him really ill.  There was no chance of crossing to Jersey before the next morning.

“He wished Dr. Collas to write to Julia, so as not to alarm your mother,” continued Captain Carey, as I stood silent.

“I will go to-morrow,” I said; “but we must not frighten my mother if we can help it.”

“Dr. Dobree begs that you will go,” he answered—­“you and Julia.”

“Julia!” I exclaimed.  “Oh, impossible!”

“I don’t see that it is impossible,” said Julia, speaking for the first time.  “He is my own uncle, and has acted as my father.  I intend to go to see him; but Captain Carey has promised to go with me.”