The fact that Crossjay was considered to have Miss Middleton on the brain, threw a series of images of everything relating to Crossjay for the last forty hours into relief before him: and as he did not in the slightest degree speculate on any one of them, but merely shifted and surveyed them, the falcon that he was in spirit as well as in his handsome face leisurely allowed his instinct to direct him where to strike. A reflective disposition has this danger in action, that it commonly precipitates conjecture for the purpose of working upon probabilities with the methods and in the tracks to which it is accustomed: and to conjecture rashly is to play into the puzzles of the maze. He who can watch circling above it awhile, quietly viewing, and collecting in his eye, gathers matter that makes the secret thing discourse to the brain by weight and balance; he will get either the right clue or none; more frequently none; but he will escape the entanglement of his own cleverness, he will always be nearer to the enigma than the guesser or the calculator, and he will retain a breadth of vision forfeited by them. He must, however, to have his chance of success, be acutely besides calmly perceptive, a reader of features, audacious at the proper moment.
De Craye wished to look at Miss Dale. She had returned home very suddenly, not, as it appeared, owing to her father's illness; and he remembered a redness of her eyelids when he passed her on the corridor one night. She sent Crossjay out to him as soon as the boy was well filled. He sent Crossjay back with a request. She did not yield to it immediately. She stepped to the front door reluctantly, and seemed disconcerted. De Craye begged for a message to Miss Middleton. There was none to give. He persisted.
But there was really none at present, she said.
"You won't entrust me with the smallest word?" said he, and set her visibly thinking whether she could dispatch a word. She could not; she had no heart for messages.
"I shall see her in a day or two, Colonel De Craye."
"She will miss you severely."
"We shall soon meet."
"And poor Willoughby!"
Laetitia coloured and stood silent.
A butterfly of some rarity allured Crossjay.
"I fear he has been doing mischief," she said. "I cannot get him to look at me."
"His appetite is good?"
"Very good indeed."
De Craye nodded. A boy with a noble appetite is never a hopeless lock.
The colonel and Crossjay lounged over the garden.
"And now," said the colonel, "we'll see if we can't arrange a meeting between you and Miss Middleton. You're a lucky fellow, for she's always thinking of you."
"I know I'm always thinking of her," said Crossjay.
"If ever you're in a scrape, she's the person you must go to."
"Yes, if I know where she is!"
"Why, generally she'll be at the Hall."
There was no reply: Crossjay's dreadful secret jumped to his throat. He certainly was a weaker lock for being full of breakfast.
"I want to see Mr. Whitford so much," he said.
"Something to tell him?"
"I don't know what to do: I don't understand it!" The secret wriggled to his mouth. He swallowed it down. "Yes, I want to talk to Mr. Whitford."
"He's another of Miss Middleton's friends."
"I know he is. He's true steel."
"We're all her friends, Crossjay. I flatter myself I'm a Toledo when I'm wanted. How long had you been in the house last night before you ran into me?"
"I don't know, sir; I fell asleep for some time, and then I woke! . . ."
"Where did you find yourself?"
"I was in the drawing-room."
"Come, Crossjay, you're not a fellow to be scared by ghosts? You looked it when you made a dash at my midriff."
"I don't believe there are such things. Do you, colonel? You can't!"
"There's no saying. We'll hope not; for it wouldn't be fair fighting. A man with a ghost to back him'd beat any ten. We couldn't box him or play cards, or stand a chance with him as a rival in love. Did you, now, catch a sight of a ghost?"
"They weren't ghosts!" Crossjay said what he was sure of, and his voice pronounced his conviction.
"I doubt whether Miss Middleton is particularly happy," remarked the colonel. "Why? Why, you upset her, you know, now and then."
The boy swelled. "I'd do ... I'd go ... I wouldn't have her unhappy ... It's that! that's it! And I don't know what I ought to do. I wish I could see Mr. Whitford."
"You get into such headlong scrapes, my lad."
"I wasn't in any scrape yesterday."
"So you made yourself up a comfortable bed in the drawing-room?
Luckily Sir Willoughby didn't see you."
"He didn't, though!"
"A close shave, was it?"
"I was under a covering of something silk."
"He woke you?"
"I suppose he did. I heard him."
"Talking?"
"He was talking."
"What! talking to himself?"
"No."
The secret threatened Crossjay to be out or suffocate him. De Craye gave him a respite.
"You like Sir Willoughby, don't you?"
Crossjay produced a still-born affirmative.
"He's kind to you," said the colonel; "he'll set you up and look after your interests."
"Yes, I like him," said Crossjay, with his customary rapidity in touching the subject; "I like him; he's kind and all that, and tips and plays with you, and all that; but I never can make out why he wouldn't see my father when my father came here to see him ten miles, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain, to go by rail a long way, down home, as far as Devonport, because Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him, though he was at home, my father saw.
We all thought it so odd: and my father wouldn't let us talk much about it. My father's a very brave man."
"Captain Patterne is as brave a man as ever lived," said De Craye.
"I'm positive you'd like him, colonel."
"I know of his deeds, and I admire him, and that's a good step to liking."
He warmed the boy's thoughts of his father.
"Because, what they say at home is, a little bread and cheese, and a glass of ale, and a rest, to a poor man--lots of great houses will give you that, and we wouldn't have asked for more than that.