“Peace,” cried Ada, “and profane nor that you cannot comprehend. I repeat I will leave you, without sufficient reason for my stay be given me. Blind obedience to you is past. There was a plan which would have ensured its continuance.”
“A simple one,” said Ada, mournfully: “Uncle Gray, you might have bound me to you by the ties of such dear affection that I should have smiled upon my bondage, and obedience without inquiry would have seemed to me a pleasant virtue.”
“I—I have used you well,” stammered Gray.
“Well!” cried Ada; “Uncle, you have scoffed at my childish tears. I have felt even your blows: you would kill even my poor dog. Used me well?”
Gray looked down for a few moments; then he said,—
“To-night—or—or—say to-morrow morning. Yes, let it be to-morrow morning, and I will tell you all.”
“Yes,” continued Gray, “give me but till to morrow morning, and you shall ask me no more questions.”
“Tell me, though, now,” said the girl, kindly, “is Ada my name?”
“Wait—wait till to-morrow. I—I have breakfasted—take yours. I have business abroad.”
Jacob Gray rose, and keeping his small, keen, grey eyes fixed on Ada, he left the room. Outside the door he paused, and, raising his clenched hand, while his face was distorted with passion, he muttered, “To-morrow, to-morrow, you shall be a stiffened corpse!”
Learmont at Home.—His Exultation.—The Smith.—The Plot.
Learmont, after committing the cold-blooded and brutal murder in the Bishop’s Walk, hastily wiped his blood-stained sword, and walked quickly onwards till he came to the further extremity of the avenue. He then darted down a narrow opening, which led him first away from, and then by a circuitous route, to the back of the river.
“Boat!—Boat!” he cried, impatiently, and from a mean habitation a boy immediately emerged.
“Yes, your worship,” replied the boy. “This way, an’ it please your honour.”
He led the way to a wherry which was moored close to some little wooden steps, and Learmont, seating himself in the boat, said,—
The boy handled his skulls with dexterity, and the boat soon reached the Middlesex shore. Throwing him a piece of silver, Learmont strided over the boy, and was soon at his own house in Westminster. Without deigning the slightest notice to his servants at the hall of the mansion, who made obsequious way for him as he entered, he strode onwards till he came to the room in which he had sat the preceding evening, when his thoughts had been so great a torment to him, and, flinging himself into a chair, he began to think over the singular events of the night, and to arrange the plan that he had already conceived for the destruction of Gray, and the possession of his young charge.