"Can I be assured of that?"
"Most certainly. Go to your mother now. Here we are, you see, fairly within doors. Go to your mother, dear Flora, and keep yourself quiet. I will return to this mysterious man now with a cooler judgment than I left him."
"You will watch him, Charles?"
"I will, indeed."
"And you will not let him approach the house here alone?"
"I will not."
"Oh, that the Almighty should allow such beings to haunt the earth!"
"Hush, Flora, hush! we cannot judge of his allwise purpose."
'"Tis hard that the innocent should be inflicted with its presence."
Charles bowed his head in mournful assent.
[Illustration]
"Is it not very, very dreadful?"
"Hush--hush! Calm yourself, dearest, calm yourself. Recollect that all we have to go upon in this matter is a resemblance, which, after all, may be accidental. But leave it all to me, and be assured that now I have some clue to this affair, I will not lose sight of it, or of Sir Francis Varney."
So saying, Charles surrendered Flora to the care of her mother, and then was hastening back to the summer-house, when he met the whole party coming towards the Hall, for the rain was each moment increasing in intensity.
"We are returning," remarked Sir Francis Varney, with a half bow and a smile, to Charles.
"Allow me," said Henry, "to introduce you, Mr. Holland, to our neighbour, Sir Francis Varney."
Charles felt himself compelled to behave with courtesy, although his mind was so full of conflicting feelings as regarded Varney; but there was no avoiding, without such brutal rudeness as was inconsistent with all his pursuits and habits, replying in something like the same strain to the extreme courtly politeness of the supposed vampyre.
"I will watch him closely," thought Charles. "I can do no more than watch him closely."
Sir Francis Varney seemed to be a man of the most general and discursive information. He talked fluently and pleasantly upon all sorts of topics, and notwithstanding he could not but have heard what Flora had said of him, he asked no questions whatever upon that subject.
This silence as regarded a matter which would at once have induced some sort of inquiry from any other man, Charles felt told much against him, and he trembled to believe for a moment that, after all, it really might be true.
"Is he a vampyre?" he asked himself. "Are there vampyres, and is this man of fashion--this courtly, talented, educated gentleman one?" It was a perfectly hideous question.
"You are charmingly situated here," remarked Varney, as, after ascending the few steps that led to the hall door, he turned and looked at the view from that slight altitude.
"The place has been much esteemed," said Henry, "for its picturesque beauties of scenery."
"And well it may be. I trust, Mr. Holland, the young lady is much better?"
"She is, sir," said Charles.
"I was not honoured by an introduction."
"It was my fault," said Henry, who spoke to his extraordinary guest with an air of forced hilarity. "It was my fault for not introducing you to my sister."
"And that was your sister?"
"It was, sir."
"Report has not belied her--she is beautiful. But she looks rather pale, I thought. Has she bad health?"
"The best of health."
"Indeed! Perhaps the little disagreeable circumstance, which is made so much food for gossip in the neighbourhood, has affected her spirits?"
"It has."
"You allude to the supposed visit here of a vampyre?" said Charles, as he fixed his eyes upon Varney's face.
"Yes, I allude to the supposed appearance of a supposed vampyre in this family," said Sir Francis Varney, as he returned the earnest gaze of Charles, with such unshrinking assurance, that the young man was compelled, after about a minute, nearly to withdraw his own eyes.
"He will not be cowed," thought Charles. "Use has made him familiar to such cross-questioning."
It appeared now suddenly to occur to Henry that he had said something at Varney's own house which should have prevented him from coming to the Hall, and he now remarked,--
"We scarcely expected the pleasure of your company here, Sir Francis Varney."
"Oh, my dear sir, I am aware of that; but you roused my curiosity. You mentioned to me that there was a portrait here amazingly like me."
"Did I?"
"Indeed you did, or how could I know it? I wanted to see if the resemblance was so perfect."