Crossing the road, as he emerged from the lane, the Squire entered the chapel ruins, and went to the edge of the land there. He saw the narrow, tortuous, and certainly, for those who had not a steady foot and head, dangerous path that led down to the strip of beach below: which beach was not discernible now, for it was high water. The path was rarely trodden by man: the ill reputation of the Friar's Keep kept the village away from it: and, otherwise, there was no possible inducement to tempt men down it. Neither, as some instinct taught Squire Dobie, had it been taken that night by young Anthony Castlemaine.
Madam Guise sat buried in a reverie. Ethel was reading a French book aloud; Flora was practising: but Madame, supposed to be listening to both, heard neither the one nor the other.
Every minute of the hours that had passed since she saw the diamond ring of her unfortunate husband concealed in Mr. Castlemaine's bureau had been one of agony. The fright and horror she had experienced in the search was also telling upon her: her head ached, her pulses throbbed, her brain was fevered: and but for the dread of drawing attention to herself, that, in her nervousness, she feared might lead to suspicion, she would have pleaded illness and asked permission to remain that day in her chamber. No one but herself knew how she shrunk from Mr. Castlemaine: she could not be in the same room with him without feeling faint; to sit next to him at the dinner-table, to be inadvertently touched by him, was nothing less than torture. The finding of the ring was a proof to her that her husband had in truth met with the awful fate suspected; the concealment of the ring in the bureau, a sure and certain sign that Mr. Castlemaine was its author. When they were intruded upon at table by Squire Dobie with his accusing words, Charlotte Guise had been scarcely able to suppress her emotion. Mr. Castlemaine, in catching sight of the pallor of her face, had attributed it simply to the abrupt mention of the disagreeable subject: could he have suspected its true cause he had been far more put out than even by Squire Dobie's words. An idea had crossed Charlotte Guise--what if she were to declare herself to this good old gentleman, and beseech him to take up her cause.