Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/152

 fondly beloved of English nobles—Let me but share the secret with my dear father!—Let me but end his misery on my unworthy account—they say he is ill, the good old kind-hearted man!”

“They say?” asked the Earl, hastily; “who says? Did not Varney convey to Sir Hugh all we dare at present tell him concerning your happiness and welfare? and has he not told you that the good old knight was following, with good heart and health, his favourite and wonted exercise? Who has dared put other thoughts into your head?”

“O, no-one, my lord, no one,” said the Countess, something alarmed at the tone in which the question was put; “but yet, my lord, I would fain be assured by mine own eye-sight that my father is well.”

“Be contented, Amy—thou canst not now have communication with thy father or his house. Were it not a deep course of policy to commit no secret unnecessarily to the custody of more than must needs be, it were sufficient reason for secrecy, that yonder Cornish man, yonder Trevanion, or Tressilian, or whatever his name is, haunts the old knight’s house, and must necessarily know whatever is communicated there.”

“My lord,” answered the Countess, “I do not think it so. My father has been long noted a worthy and honourable man; and for Tressilian, if we can pardon ourselves the ill we have wrought him I will wager the coronet I am to share with you one day, that he is incapable of returning injury for injury.”