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38663	----	Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/affairatsemirami00maso THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL BY A. E. W. MASON CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK :: :: :: 1917 Copyright, 1917, by A. E. W. MASON THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL THE AFFAIR AT THE SEMIRAMIS HOTEL I Mr. Ricardo, when the excitements of the Villa Rose were done with, returned to Grosvenor Square and resumed the busy, unnecessary life of an amateur. But the studios had lost their savour, artists their attractiveness, and even the Russian opera seemed a trifle flat. Life was altogether a disappointment; Fate, like an actress at a restaurant, had taken the wooden pestle in her hand and stirred all the sparkle out of the champagne; Mr. Ricardo languished--until one unforgettable morning. He was sitting disconsolately at his breakfast-table when the door was burst open and a square, stout man, with the blue, shaven face of a French comedian, flung himself into the room. Ricardo sprang towards the new-comer with a cry of delight. "My dear Hanaud!" He seized his visitor by the arm, feeling it to make sure that here, in flesh and blood, stood the man who had introduced him to the acutest sensations of his life. He turned towards his butler, who was still bleating expostulations in the doorway at the unceremonious irruption of the French detective. "Another place, Burton, at once," he cried, and as soon as he and Hanaud were alone: "What good wind blows you to London?" "Business, my friend. The disappearance of bullion somewhere on the line between Paris and London. But it is finished. Yes, I take a holiday." A light had suddenly flashed in Mr. Ricardo's eyes, and was now no less suddenly extinguished. Hanaud paid no attention whatever to his friend's disappointment. He pounced upon a piece of silver which adorned the tablecloth and took it over to the window. "Everything is as it should be, my friend," he exclaimed, with a grin. "Grosvenor Square, the _Times_ open at the money column, and a false antique upon the table. Thus I have dreamed of you. All Mr. Ricardo is in that sentence." Ricardo laughed nervously. Recollection made him wary of Hanaud's sarcasms. He was shy even to protest the genuineness of his silver. But, indeed, he had not the time. For the door opened again and once more the butler appeared. On this occasion, however, he was alone. "Mr. Calladine would like to speak to you, sir," he said. "Calladine!" cried Ricardo in an extreme surprise. "That is the most extraordinary thing." He looked at the clock upon his mantelpiece. It was barely half-past eight. "At this hour, too?" "Mr. Calladine is still wearing evening dress," the butler remarked. Ricardo started in his chair. He began to dream of possibilities; and here was Hanaud miraculously at his side. "Where is Mr. Calladine?" he asked. "I have shown him into the library." "Good," said Mr. Ricardo. "I will come to him." But he was in no hurry. He sat and let his thoughts play with this incident of Calladine's early visit. "It is very odd," he said. "I have not seen Calladine for months--no, nor has anyone. Yet, a little while ago, no one was more often seen." He fell apparently into a muse, but he was merely seeking to provoke Hanaud's curiosity. In this attempt, however, he failed. Hanaud continued placidly to eat his breakfast, so that Mr. Ricardo was compelled to volunteer the story which he was burning to tell. "Drink your coffee, Hanaud, and you shall hear about Calladine." Hanaud grunted with resignation, and Mr. Ricardo flowed on: "Calladine was one of England's young men. Everybody said so. He was going to do very wonderful things as soon as he had made up his mind exactly what sort of wonderful things he was going to do. Meanwhile, you met him in Scotland, at Newmarket, at Ascot, at Cowes, in the box of some great lady at the Opera--not before half-past ten in the evening _there_--in any fine house where the candles that night happened to be lit. He went everywhere, and then a day came and he went nowhere. There was no scandal, no trouble, not a whisper against his good name. He simply vanished. For a little while a few people asked: 'What has become of Calladine?' But there never was any answer, and London has no time for unanswered questions. Other promising young men dined in his place. Calladine had joined the huge legion of the Come-to-nothings. No one even seemed to pass him in the street. Now unexpectedly, at half-past eight in the morning, and in evening dress, he calls upon me. 'Why?' I ask myself." Mr. Ricardo sank once more into a reverie. Hanaud watched him with a broadening smile of pure enjoyment. "And in time, I suppose," he remarked casually, "you will perhaps ask him?" Mr. Ricardo sprang out of his pose to his feet. "Before I discuss serious things with an acquaintance," he said with a scathing dignity, "I make it a rule to revive my impressions of his personality. The cigarettes are in the crystal box." "They would be," said Hanaud, unabashed, as Ricardo stalked from the room. But in five minutes Mr. Ricardo came running back, all his composure gone. "It is the greatest good fortune that you, my friend, should have chosen this morning to visit me," he cried, and Hanaud nodded with a little grimace of resignation. "There goes my holiday. You shall command me now and always. I will make the acquaintance of your young friend." He rose up and followed Ricardo into his study, where a young man was nervously pacing the floor. "Mr. Calladine," said Ricardo. "This is Mr. Hanaud." The young man turned eagerly. He was tall, with a noticeable elegance and distinction, and the face which he showed to Hanaud was, in spite of its agitation, remarkably handsome. "I am very glad," he said. "You are not an official of this country. You can advise--without yourself taking action, if you'll be so good." Hanaud frowned. He bent his eyes uncompromisingly upon Calladine. "What does that mean?" he asked, with a note of sternness in his voice. "It means that I must tell someone," Calladine burst out in quivering tones. "That I don't know what to do. I am in a difficulty too big for me. That's the truth." Hanaud looked at the young man keenly. It seemed to Ricardo that he took in every excited gesture, every twitching feature, in one comprehensive glance. Then he said in a friendlier voice: "Sit down and tell me"--and he himself drew up a chair to the table. "I was at the Semiramis last night," said Calladine, naming one of the great hotels upon the Embankment. "There was a fancy-dress ball." All this happened, by the way, in those far-off days before the war--nearly, in fact, three years ago today--when London, flinging aside its reticence, its shy self-consciousness, had become a city of carnivals and masquerades, rivalling its neighbours on the Continent in the spirit of its gaiety, and exceeding them by its stupendous luxury. "I went by the merest chance. My rooms are in the Adelphi Terrace." "There!" cried Mr. Ricardo in surprise, and Hanaud lifted a hand to check his interruptions. "Yes," continued Calladine. "The night was warm, the music floated through my open windows and stirred old memories. I happened to have a ticket. I went." Calladine drew up a chair opposite to Hanaud and, seating himself, told, with many nervous starts and in troubled tones, a story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was as fabulous as any out of the "Arabian Nights." "I had a ticket," he began, "but no domino. I was consequently stopped by an attendant in the lounge at the top of the staircase leading down to the ballroom. "'You can hire a domino in the cloakroom, Mr. Calladine,' he said to me. I had already begun to regret the impulse which had brought me, and I welcomed the excuse with which the absence of a costume provided me. I was, indeed, turning back to the door, when a girl who had at that moment run down from the stairs of the hotel into the lounge, cried gaily: 'That's not necessary'; and at the same moment she flung to me a long scarlet cloak which she had been wearing over her own dress. She was young, fair, rather tall, slim, and very pretty; her hair was drawn back from her face with a ribbon, and rippled down her shoulders in heavy curls; and she was dressed in a satin coat and knee-breeches of pale green and gold, with a white waistcoat and silk stockings and scarlet heels to her satin shoes. She was as straight-limbed as a boy, and exquisite like a figure in Dresden china. I caught the cloak and turned to thank her. But she did not wait. With a laugh she ran down the stairs a supple and shining figure, and was lost in the throng at the doorway of the ballroom. I was stirred by the prospect of an adventure. I ran down after her. She was standing just inside the room alone, and she was gazing at the scene with parted lips and dancing eyes. She laughed again as she saw the cloak about my shoulders, a delicious gurgle of amusement, and I said to her: "'May I dance with you?' "'Oh, do!' she cried, with a little jump, and clasping her hands. She was of a high and joyous spirit and not difficult in the matter of an introduction. 'This gentleman will do very well to present us,' she said, leading me in front of a bust of the God Pan which stood in a niche of the wall. 'I am, as you see, straight out of an opera. My name is Celymène or anything with an eighteenth century sound to it. You are--what you will. For this evening we are friends.' "'And for to-morrow?' I asked. "'I will tell you about that later on,' she replied, and she began to dance with a light step and a passion in her dancing which earned me many an envious glance from the other men. I was in luck, for Celymène knew no one, and though, of course, I saw the faces of a great many people whom I remembered, I kept them all at a distance. We had been dancing for about half an hour when the first queerish thing happened. She stopped suddenly in the midst of a sentence with a little gasp. I spoke to her, but she did not hear. She was gazing past me, her eyes wide open, and such a rapt look upon her face as I had never seen. She was lost in a miraculous vision. I followed the direction of her eyes and, to my astonishment, I saw nothing more than a stout, short, middle-aged woman, egregiously over-dressed as Marie Antoinette. "'So you do know someone here?' I said, and I had to repeat the words sharply before my friend withdrew her eyes. But even then she was not aware of me. It was as if a voice had spoken to her whilst she was asleep and had disturbed, but not wakened her. Then she came to--there's really no other word I can think of which describes her at that moment--she came to with a deep sigh. "'No,' she answered. 'She is a Mrs. Blumenstein from Chicago, a widow with ambitions and a great deal of money. But I don't know her.' "'Yet you know all about her,' I remarked. "'She crossed in the same boat with me,' Celymène replied. 'Did I tell you that I landed at Liverpool this morning? She is staying at the Semiramis too. Oh, let us dance!' "She twitched my sleeve impatiently, and danced with a kind of violence and wildness as if she wished to banish some sinister thought. And she did undoubtedly banish it. We supped together and grew confidential, as under such conditions people will. She told me her real name. It was Joan Carew. "'I have come over to get an engagement if I can at Covent Garden. I am supposed to sing all right. But I don't know anyone. I have been brought up in Italy.' "'You have some letters of introduction, I suppose?' I asked. "'Oh, yes. One from my teacher in Milan. One from an American manager.' "In my turn I told her my name and where I lived, and I gave her my card. I thought, you see, that since I used to know a good many operatic people, I might be able to help her. "'Thank you,' she said, and at that moment Mrs. Blumenstein, followed by a party, chiefly those lap-dog young men who always seem to gather about that kind of person, came into the supper-room and took a table close to us. There was at once an end of all confidences--indeed, of all conversation. Joan Carew lost all the lightness of her spirit; she talked at random, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the grotesque slander on Marie Antoinette. Finally I became annoyed. "'Shall we go?' I suggested impatiently, and to my surprise she whispered passionately: "'Yes. Please! Let us go.' "Her voice was actually shaking, her small hands clenched. We went back to the ballroom, but Joan Carew did not recover her gaiety, and half-way through a dance, when we were near to the door, she stopped abruptly--extraordinarily abruptly. "'I shall go,' she said abruptly. 'I am tired. I have grown dull.' "I protested, but she made a little grimace. "'You'll hate me in half an hour. Let's be wise and stop now while we are friends,' she said, and whilst I removed the domino from my shoulders she stooped very quickly. It seemed to me that she picked up something which had lain hidden beneath the sole of her slipper. She certainly moved her foot, and I certainly saw something small and bright flash in the palm of her glove as she raised herself again. But I imagined merely that it was some object which she had dropped. "'Yes, we'll go,' she said, and we went up the stairs into the lobby. Certainly all the sparkle had gone out of our adventure. I recognized her wisdom. "'But I shall meet you again?' I asked. "'Yes. I have your address. I'll write and fix a time when you will be sure to find me in. Good-night, and a thousand thanks. I should have been bored to tears if you hadn't come without a domino.' "She was speaking lightly as she held out her hand, but her grip tightened a little and--clung. Her eyes darkened and grew troubled, her mouth trembled. The shadow of a great trouble had suddenly closed about her. She shivered. "'I am half inclined to ask you to stay, however dull I am; and dance with me till daylight--the safe daylight,' she said. "It was an extraordinary phrase for her to use, and it moved me. "'Let us go back then!' I urged. She gave me an impression suddenly of someone quite forlorn. But Joan Carew recovered her courage. 'No, no,' she answered quickly. She snatched her hand away and ran lightly up the staircase, turning at the corner to wave her hand and smile. It was then half-past one in the morning." So far Calladine had spoken without an interruption. Mr. Ricardo, it is true, was bursting to break in with the most important questions, but a salutary fear of Hanaud restrained him. Now, however, he had an opportunity, for Calladine paused. "Half-past one," he said sagely. "Ah!" "And when did you go home?" Hanaud asked of Calladine. "True," said Mr. Ricardo. "It is of the greatest consequence." Calladine was not sure. His partner had left behind her the strangest medley of sensations in his breast. He was puzzled, haunted, and charmed. He had to think about her; he was a trifle uplifted; sleep was impossible. He wandered for a while about the ballroom. Then he walked to his chambers along the echoing streets and sat at his window; and some time afterwards the hoot of a motor-horn broke the silence and a car stopped and whirred in the street below. A moment later his bell rang. He ran down the stairs in a queer excitement, unlocked the street door and opened it. Joan Carew, still in her masquerade dress with her scarlet cloak about her shoulders, slipped through the opening. "Shut the door," she whispered, drawing herself apart in a corner. "Your cab?" asked Calladine. "It has gone." Calladine latched the door. Above, in the well of the stairs, the light spread out from the open door of his flat. Down here all was dark. He could just see the glimmer of her white face, the glitter of her dress, but she drew her breath like one who has run far. They mounted the stairs cautiously. He did not say a word until they were both safely in his parlour; and even then it was in a low voice. "What has happened?" "You remember the woman I stared at? You didn't know why I stared, but any girl would have understood. She was wearing the loveliest pearls I ever saw in my life." Joan was standing by the edge of the table. She was tracing with her finger a pattern on the cloth as she spoke. Calladine started with a horrible presentiment. "Yes," she said. "I worship pearls. I always have done. For one thing, they improve on me. I haven't got any, of course. I have no money. But friends of mine who do own pearls have sometimes given theirs to me to wear when they were going sick, and they have always got back their lustre. I think that has had a little to do with my love of them. Oh, I have always longed for them--just a little string. Sometimes I have felt that I would have given my soul for them." She was speaking in a dull, monotonous voice. But Calladine recalled the ecstasy which had shone in her face when her eyes first had fallen on the pearls, the longing which had swept her quite into another world, the passion with which she had danced to throw the obsession off. "And I never noticed them at all," he said. "Yet they were wonderful. The colour! The lustre! All the evening they tempted me. I was furious that a fat, coarse creature like that should have such exquisite things. Oh, I was mad." She covered her face suddenly with her hands and swayed. Calladine sprang towards her. But she held out her hand. "No, I am all right." And though he asked her to sit down she would not. "You remember when I stopped dancing suddenly?" "Yes. You had something hidden under your foot?" The girl nodded. "Her key!" And under his breath Calladine uttered a startled cry. For the first time since she had entered the room Joan Carew raised her head and looked at him. Her eyes were full of terror, and with the terror was mixed an incredulity as though she could not possibly believe that that had happened which she knew had happened. "A little Yale key," the girl continued. "I saw Mrs. Blumenstein looking on the floor for something, and then I saw it shining on the very spot. Mrs. Blumenstein's suite was on the same floor as mine, and her maid slept above. All the maids do. I knew that. Oh, it seemed to me as if I had sold my soul and was being paid." Now Calladine understood what she had meant by her strange phrase--"the safe daylight." "I went up to my little suite," Joan Carew continued. "I sat there with the key burning through my glove until I had given her time enough to fall asleep"--and though she hesitated before she spoke the words, she did speak them, not looking at Calladine, and with a shudder of remorse making her confession complete. "Then I crept out. The corridor was dimly lit. Far away below the music was throbbing. Up here it was as silent as the grave. I opened the door--her door. I found myself in a lobby. The suite, though bigger, was arranged like mine. I slipped in and closed the door behind me. I listened in the darkness. I couldn't hear a sound. I crept forward to the door in front of me. I stood with my fingers on the handle and my heart beating fast enough to choke me. I had still time to turn back. But I couldn't. There were those pearls in front of my eyes, lustrous and wonderful. I opened the door gently an inch or so--and then--it all happened in a second." Joan Carew faltered. The night was too near to her, its memory too poignant with terror. She shut her eyes tightly and cowered down in a chair. With the movement her cloak slipped from her shoulders and dropped on to the ground. Calladine leaned forward with an exclamation of horror; Joan Carew started up. "What is it?" she asked. "Nothing. Go on." "I found myself inside the room with the door shut behind me. I had shut it myself in a spasm of terror. And I dared not turn round to open it. I was helpless." "What do you mean? She was awake?" Joan Carew shook her head. "There were others in the room before me, and on the same errand--men!" Calladine drew back, his eyes searching the girl's face. "Yes?" he said slowly. "I didn't see them at first. I didn't hear them. The room was quite dark except for one jet of fierce white light which beat upon the door of a safe. And as I shut the door the jet moved swiftly and the light reached me and stopped. I was blinded. I stood in the full glare of it, drawn up against the panels of the door, shivering, sick with fear. Then I heard a quiet laugh, and someone moved softly towards me. Oh, it was terrible! I recovered the use of my limbs; in a panic I turned to the door, but I was too late. Whilst I fumbled with the handle I was seized; a hand covered my mouth. I was lifted to the centre of the room. The jet went out, the electric lights were turned on. There were two men dressed as apaches in velvet trousers and red scarves, like a hundred others in the ballroom below, and both were masked. I struggled furiously; but, of course, I was like a child in their grasp. 'Tie her legs,' the man whispered who was holding me; 'she's making too much noise.' I kicked and fought, but the other man stooped and tied my ankles, and I fainted." Calladine nodded his head. "Yes?" he said. "When I came to, the lights were still burning, the door of the safe was open, the room empty; I had been flung on to a couch at the foot of the bed. I was lying there quite free." "Was the safe empty?" asked Calladine suddenly. "I didn't look," she answered. "Oh!"--and she covered her face spasmodically with her hands. "I looked at the bed. Someone was lying there--under a sheet and quite still. There was a clock ticking in the room; it was the only sound. I was terrified. I was going mad with fear. If I didn't get out of the room at once I felt that I should go mad, that I should scream and bring everyone to find me alone with--what was under the sheet in the bed. I ran to the door and looked out through a slit into the corridor. It was still quite empty, and below the music still throbbed in the ballroom. I crept down the stairs, meeting no one until I reached the hall. I looked into the ballroom as if I was searching for someone. I stayed long enough to show myself. Then I got a cab and came to you." A short silence followed. Joan Carew looked at her companion in appeal. "You are the only one I could come to," she added. "I know no one else." Calladine sat watching the girl in silence. Then he asked, and his voice was hard: "And is that all you have to tell me?" "Yes." "You are quite sure?" Joan Carew looked at him perplexed by the urgency of his question. She reflected for a moment or two. "Quite." Calladine rose to his feet and stood beside her. "Then how do you come to be wearing this?" he asked, and he lifted a chain of platinum and diamonds which she was wearing about her shoulders. "You weren't wearing it when you danced with me." Joan Carew stared at the chain. "No. It's not mine. I have never seen it before." Then a light came into her eyes. "The two men--they must have thrown it over my head when I was on the couch--before they went." She looked at it more closely. "That's it. The chain's not very valuable. They could spare it, and--it would accuse me--of what they did." "Yes, that's very good reasoning," said Calladine coldly. Joan Carew looked quickly up into his face. "Oh, you don't believe me," she cried. "You think--oh, it's impossible." And, holding him by the edge of his coat, she burst into a storm of passionate denials. "But you went to steal, you know," he said gently, and she answered him at once: "Yes, I did, but not this." And she held up the necklace. "Should I have stolen this, should I have come to you wearing it, if I had stolen the pearls, if I had"--and she stopped--"if my story were not true?" Calladine weighed her argument, and it affected him. "No, I think you wouldn't," he said frankly. Most crimes, no doubt, were brought home because the criminal had made some incomprehensibly stupid mistake; incomprehensibly stupid, that is, by the standards of normal life. Nevertheless, Calladine was inclined to believe her. He looked at her. That she should have murdered was absurd. Moreover, she was not making a parade of remorse, she was not playing the unctuous penitent; she had yielded to a temptation, had got herself into desperate straits, and was at her wits' ends how to escape from them. She was frank about herself. Calladine looked at the clock. It was nearly five o'clock in the morning, and though the music could still be heard from the ballroom in the Semiramis, the night had begun to wane upon the river. "You must go back," he said. "I'll walk with you." They crept silently down the stairs and into the street. It was only a step to the Semiramis. They met no one until they reached the Strand. There many, like Joan Carew in masquerade, were standing about, or walking hither and thither in search of carriages and cabs. The whole street was in a bustle, what with drivers shouting and people coming away. "You can slip in unnoticed," said Calladine as he looked into the thronged courtyard. "I'll telephone to you in the morning." "You will?" she cried eagerly, clinging for a moment to his arm. "Yes, for certain," he replied. "Wait in until you hear from me. I'll think it over. I'll do what I can." "Thank you," she said fervently. He watched her scarlet cloak flitting here and there in the crowd until it vanished through the doorway. Then, for the second time, he walked back to his chambers, while the morning crept up the river from the sea. * * * * * This was the story which Calladine told in Mr. Ricardo's library. Mr. Ricardo heard it out with varying emotions. He began with a thrill of expectation like a man on a dark threshold of great excitements. The setting of the story appealed to him, too, by a sort of brilliant bizarrerie which he found in it. But, as it went on, he grew puzzled and a trifle disheartened. There were flaws and chinks; he began to bubble with unspoken criticisms, then swift and clever thrusts which he dared not deliver. He looked upon the young man with disfavour, as upon one who had half opened a door upon a theatre of great promise and shown him a spectacle not up to the mark. Hanaud, on the other hand, listened imperturbably, without an expression upon his face, until the end. Then he pointed a finger at Calladine and asked him what to Ricardo's mind was a most irrelevant question. "You got back to your rooms, then, before five, Mr. Calladine, and it is now nine o'clock less a few minutes." "Yes." "Yet you have not changed your clothes. Explain to me that. What did you do between five and half-past eight?" Calladine looked down at his rumpled shirt front. "Upon my word, I never thought of it," he cried. "I was worried out of my mind. I couldn't decide what to do. Finally, I determined to talk to Mr. Ricardo, and after I had come to that conclusion I just waited impatiently until I could come round with decency." Hanaud rose from his chair. His manner was grave, but conveyed no single hint of an opinion. He turned to Ricardo. "Let us go round to your young friend's rooms in the Adelphi," he said; and the three men drove thither at once. II Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls, overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht; an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his rooms. "So you live here, Mr. Calladine?" said Hanaud, taking off his hat and laying it down. "Yes." "With your servants, of course?" "They come in during the day," said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at him curiously. "Do you mean that you sleep here alone?" "Yes." "But your valet?" "I don't keep a valet," said Calladine; and again the curious look came into Hanaud's eyes. "Yet," he suggested gently, "there are rooms enough in your set of chambers to house a family." Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "I prefer at night not to be disturbed," he said, stumbling a little over the words. "I mean, I have a liking for quiet." Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy. "Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as my holiday," he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo. "However"--he turned towards Calladine--"no doubt, now that you are at home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and smoke your cigarettes." Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who, seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections. "You have an idea, my friend," cried Hanaud. "It demands to express itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray." Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed. "I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city! How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'" "But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr. Livingstone?" Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently. "Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body alert. "Yes," he said, "I have." He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets, looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging down the river. "You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room such a very few hours ago," said Ricardo. "The girl in her masquerade dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her throat----" Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open. Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the shoulders he replaced them and shut the box. "You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity. "I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china, and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so drew and held Hanaud's eyes. Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and crossed once more to the window. "Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr. Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you, too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his shoulders in astonishment. "Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes, good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put a question or two to Calladine." "Yes," said Ricardo. "He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?" Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man. It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago, turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?" "No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?" Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and brown. "Look!" he said. "What is that?" Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly. "It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus." Hanaud nodded. "It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name." "What name?" asked Ricardo. "Mescal." Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever. "There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the mantelshelf," said Hanaud. Ricardo looked quickly up. "Why?" he asked. "Mescal is a drug." Ricardo started. "Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi Terrace." Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers. "You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said. "Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud. "Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of their number beats perpetually upon a drum." Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet, its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer. "It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of London," said Hanaud. "Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little corner of wild Mexico." A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another. "It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I suppose," he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table. Hanaud picked it up. "No," he replied. "It's not quite like any other drug. It has a quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you and me. Yes, my friend"--and he nodded his head very seriously--"we must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this affair." "There," Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, "I am entirely with you." "Now, why?" Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but Hanaud did not wait. "I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams." "Colour-dreams?" Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice. "Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic brown button." He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the porcelain cup. "Are you sure of this?" Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and closed it again. "I am quite sure," he returned. "I have for a friend a very learned chemist in the Collège de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug." "Yes," Ricardo said in a quieter voice. "And what did he see?" "He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions." Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold. "Out of the real world," Mr. Ricardo quoted. "I begin to see." "Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the Collège de France saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?" "You mean," cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, "that Calladine came to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the false world was the real one still for him." "I do not know," said Hanaud. "At present I only put questions. I ask them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror, and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to change his clothes, he is knocking at your door." Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved. "Ah! You see a flaw in my argument," said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for a careless remark. "Let me hear the end of your argument," he said. "There was then to your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word, no Celymène? She was born of recollections and the music of the Semiramis." "No!" cried Hanaud. "Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that there was no Celymène." With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a few paces away from it. "Look!" Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a bewildered face to his friend. "You see nothing?" Hanaud asked. "Nothing!" "Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymène is posing before you?" Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew. Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr. Ricardo's face. "Ah, you understand," he said. "Do you dream, my friend? At times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things, people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there, logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window, intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his mantelpiece?" Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned to him. "What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely convinced but for one thing." "Yes?" said Hanaud, watching his friend closely. "I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask myself"--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming a manner of extreme pomposity--"I ask myself, whether a young man who has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when alone?" Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a chair. "Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it. Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait." "For what?" asked Ricardo, beaming with pride. "For the answer to a telephone message," replied Hanaud, with a nod towards the door. Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been guilty. "You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?" said Hanaud cheerfully. Calladine grew red. "Yes," he stammered. "Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic connection in your country of leisure," Hanaud continued. "I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this room." "Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid." Hanaud was playing with his victim. "And when may we expect Miss Carew?" "I can't say," replied Calladine. "It's very strange. She is not in the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled." Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now. There was no word of truth in Calladine's story. "Then there is no reason for us to wait," said Hanaud. "I shall have my holiday after all." And while he was yet speaking the voice of a newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again, confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him, coughing and out of breath. "What's the matter?" he gasped. "Listen," said Hanaud. At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to them mispronounced but decipherable. "Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel." Ricardo stared at his companion. "You were wrong then!" he cried. "Calladine's story was true." For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted. "I don't know yet," he said. "We will buy a paper." But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended. "Let us go back," said Hanaud. III Mr. Ricardo could no longer complain. It was half-past eight when Calladine had first disturbed the formalities of his house in Grosvenor Square. It was barely ten now, and during that short time he had been flung from surprise to surprise, he had looked underground on a morning of fresh summer, and had been thrilled by the contrast between the queer, sinister life below and within and the open call to joy of the green world above. He had passed from incredulity to belief, from belief to incredulity, and when at last incredulity was firmly established, and the story to which he had listened proved the emanation of a drugged and heated brain, lo! the facts buffeted him in the face, and the story was shown to be true. "I am alive once more," Mr. Ricardo thought as he turned back with Hanaud, and in his excitement he cried his thought aloud. "Are you?" said Hanaud. "And what is life without a newspaper? If you will buy one from that remarkably raucous boy at the bottom of the street I will keep an eye upon Calladine's house till you come back." Mr. Ricardo sped down to Charing Cross and brought back a copy of the fourth edition of the _Star_. He handed it to Hanaud, who stared at it doubtfully, folded as it was. "Shall we see what it says?" Ricardo asked impatiently. "By no means," Hanaud answered, waking from his reverie and tucking briskly away the paper into the tail pocket of his coat. "We will hear what Miss Joan Carew has to say, with our minds undisturbed by any discoveries. I was wondering about something totally different." "Yes?" Mr. Ricardo encouraged him. "What was it?" "I was wondering, since it is only ten o'clock, at what hour the first editions of the evening papers appear." "It is a question," Mr. Ricardo replied sententiously, "which the greatest minds have failed to answer." And they walked along the street to the house. The front door stood open during the day like the front door of any other house which is let off in sets of rooms. Hanaud and Ricardo went up the staircase and rang the bell of Calladine's door. A middle-aged woman opened it. "Mr. Calladine is in?" said Hanaud. "I will ask," replied the woman. "What name shall I say?" "It does not matter. I will go straight in," said Hanaud quietly. "I was here with my friend but a minute ago." He went straight forward and into Calladine's parlour. Mr. Ricardo looked over his shoulder as he opened the door and saw a girl turn to them suddenly a white face of terror, and flinch as though already she felt the hand of a constable upon her shoulder. Calladine, on the other hand, uttered a cry of relief. "These are my friends," he exclaimed to the girl, "the friends of whom I spoke to you"; and to Hanaud he said: "This is Miss Carew." Hanaud bowed. "You shall tell me your story, mademoiselle," he said very gently, and a little colour returned to the girl's cheeks, a little courage revived in her. "But you have heard it," she answered. "Not from you," said Hanaud. So for a second time in that room she told the history of that night. Only this time the sunlight was warm upon the world, the comfortable sounds of life's routine were borne through the windows, and the girl herself wore the inconspicuous blue serge of a thousand other girls afoot that morning. These trifles of circumstance took the edge of sheer horror off her narrative, so that, to tell the truth, Mr. Ricardo was a trifle disappointed. He wanted a crescendo motive in his music, whereas it had begun at its fortissimo. Hanaud, however, was the perfect listener. He listened without stirring and with most compassionate eyes, so that Joan Carew spoke only to him, and to him, each moment that passed, with greater confidence. The life and sparkle of her had gone altogether. There was nothing in her manner now to suggest the waywardness, the gay irresponsibility, the radiance, which had attracted Calladine the night before. She was just a very young and very pretty girl, telling in a low and remorseful voice of the tragic dilemma to which she had brought herself. Of Celymène all that remained was something exquisite and fragile in her beauty, in the slimness of her figure, in her daintiness of hand and foot--something almost of the hot-house. But the story she told was, detail for detail, the same which Calladine had already related. "Thank you," said Hanaud when she had done. "Now I must ask you two questions." "I will answer them." Mr. Ricardo sat up. He began to think of a third question which he might put himself, something uncommonly subtle and searching, which Hanaud would never have thought of. But Hanaud put his questions, and Ricardo almost jumped out of his chair. "You will forgive me. Miss Carew. But have you ever stolen before?" Joan Carew turned upon Hanaud with spirit. Then a change swept over her face. "You have a right to ask," she answered. "Never." She looked into his eyes as she answered. Hanaud did not move. He sat with a hand upon each knee and led to his second question. "Early this morning, when you left this room, you told Mr. Calladine that you would wait at the Semiramis until he telephoned to you?" "Yes." "Yet when he telephoned, you had gone out?" "Yes." "Why?" "I will tell you," said Joan Carew. "I could not bear to keep the little diamond chain in my room." For a moment even Hanaud was surprised. He had lost sight of that complication. Now he leaned forward anxiously; indeed, with a greater anxiety than he had yet shown in all this affair. "I was terrified," continued Joan Carew. "I kept thinking: 'They must have found out by now. They will search everywhere.' I didn't reason. I lay in bed expecting to hear every moment a loud knocking on the door. Besides--the chain itself being there in my bedroom--her chain--the dead woman's chain--no, I couldn't endure it. I felt as if I had stolen it. Then my maid brought in my tea." "You had locked it away?" cried Hanaud. "Yes. My maid did not see it." Joan Carew explained how she had risen, dressed, wrapped the chain in a pad of cotton-wool and enclosed it in an envelope. The envelope had not the stamp of the hotel upon it. It was a rather large envelope, one of a packet which she had bought in a crowded shop in Oxford Street on her way from Euston to the Semiramis. She had bought the envelopes of that particular size in order that when she sent her letter of introduction to the Director of the Opera at Covent Garden she might enclose with it a photograph. "And to whom did you send it?" asked Mr. Ricardo. "To Mrs. Blumenstein at the Semiramis. I printed the address carefully. Then I went out and posted it." "Where?" Hanaud inquired. "In the big letter-box of the Post Office at the corner of Trafalgar Square." Hanaud looked at the girl sharply. "You had your wits about you, I see," he said. "What if the envelope gets lost?" said Ricardo. Hanaud laughed grimly. "If one envelope is delivered at its address in London to-day, it will be that one," he said. "The news of the crime is published, you see," and he swung round to Joan. "Did you know that, Miss Carew?" "No," she answered in an awe-stricken voice. "Well, then, it is. Let us see what the special investigator has to say about it." And Hanaud, with a deliberation which Mr. Ricardo found quite excruciating, spread out the newspaper on the table in front of him. IV There was only one new fact in the couple of columns devoted to the mystery. Mrs. Blumenstein had died from chloroform poisoning. She was of a stout habit, and the thieves were not skilled in the administration of the anæsthetic. "It's murder none the less," said Hanaud, and he gazed straight at Joan, asking her by the direct summons of his eyes what she was going to do. "I must tell my story to the police," she replied painfully and slowly. But she did not hesitate; she was announcing a meditated plan. Hanaud neither agreed nor differed. His face was blank, and when he spoke there was no cordiality in his voice. "Well," he asked, "and what is it that you have to say to the police, miss? That you went into the room to steal, and that you were attacked by two strangers, dressed as apaches, and masked? That is all?" "Yes." "And how many men at the Semiramis ball were dressed as apaches and wore masks? Come! Make a guess. A hundred at the least?" "I should think so." "Then what will your confession do beyond--I quote your English idiom--putting you in the coach?" Mr. Ricardo now smiled with relief. Hanaud was taking a definite line. His knowledge of idiomatic English might be incomplete, but his heart was in the right place. The girl traced a vague pattern on the tablecloth with her fingers. "Yet I think I must tell the police," she repeated, looking up and dropping her eyes again. Mr. Ricardo noticed that her eyelashes were very long. For the first time Hanaud's face relaxed. "And I think you are quite right," he cried heartily, to Mr. Ricardo's surprise. "Tell them the truth before they suspect it, and they will help you out of the affair if they can. Not a doubt of it. Come, I will go with you myself to Scotland Yard." "Thank you," said Joan, and the pair drove away in a cab together. Hanaud returned to Grosvenor Square alone and lunched with Ricardo. "It was all right," he said. "The police were very kind. Miss Joan Carew told her story to them as she had told it to us. Fortunately, the envelope with the aluminium chain had already been delivered, and was in their hands. They were much mystified about it, but Miss Joan's story gave them a reasonable explanation. I think they are inclined to believe her; and, if she is speaking the truth, they will keep her out of the witness-box if they can." "She is to stay here in London, then?" asked Ricardo. "Oh, yes; she is not to go. She will present her letters at the Opera House and secure an engagement, if she can. The criminals might be lulled thereby into a belief that the girl had kept the whole strange incident to herself, and that there was nowhere even a knowledge of the disguise which they had used." Hanaud spoke as carelessly as if the matter was not very important; and Ricardo, with an unusual flash of shrewdness, said: "It is clear, my friend, that you do not think those two men will ever be caught at all." Hanaud shrugged his shoulders. "There is always a chance. But listen. There is a room with a hundred guns, one of which is loaded. Outside the room there are a hundred pigeons, one of which is white. You are taken into the room blind-fold. You choose the loaded gun and you shoot the one white pigeon. That is the value of the chance." "But," exclaimed Ricardo, "those pearls were of great value, and I have heard at a trial expert evidence given by pearl merchants. All agree that the pearls of great value are known; so, when they come upon the market----" "That is true," Hanaud interrupted imperturbably. "But how are they known?" "By their weight," said Mr. Ricardo. "Exactly," replied Hanaud. "But did you not also hear at this trial of yours that pearls can be peeled like an onion? No? It is true. Remove a skin, two skins, the weight is altered, the pearl is a trifle smaller. It has lost a little of its value, yes--but you can no longer identify it as the so-and-so pearl which belonged to this or that sultan, was stolen by the vizier, bought by Messrs. Lustre and Steinopolis, of Hatton Garden, and subsequently sold to the wealthy Mrs. Blumenstein. No, your pearl has vanished altogether. There is a new pearl which can be traded." He looked at Ricardo. "Who shall say that those pearls are not already in one of the queer little back streets of Amsterdam, undergoing their transformation?" Mr. Ricardo was not persuaded because he would not be. "I have some experience in these matters," he said loftily to Hanaud. "I am sure that we shall lay our hands upon the criminals. We have never failed." Hanaud grinned from ear to ear. The only experience which Mr. Ricardo had ever had was gained on the shores of Geneva and at Aix under Hanaud's tuition. But Hanaud did not argue, and there the matter rested. The days flew by. It was London's play-time. The green and gold of early summer deepened and darkened; wondrous warm nights under England's pale blue sky, when the streets rang with the joyous feet of youth, led in clear dawns and lovely glowing days. Hanaud made acquaintance with the wooded reaches of the Thames; Joan Carew sang "Louise" at Covent Garden with notable success; and the affair of the Semiramis Hotel, in the minds of the few who remembered it, was already added to the long list of unfathomed mysteries. But towards the end of May there occurred a startling development. Joan Carew wrote to Mr. Ricardo that she would call upon him in the afternoon, and she begged him to secure the presence of Hanaud. She came as the clock struck; she was pale and agitated; and in the room where Calladine had first told the story of her visit she told another story which, to Mr. Ricardo's thinking, was yet more strange and--yes--yet more suspicious. "It has been going on for some time," she began. "I thought of coming to you at once. Then I wondered whether, if I waited--oh, you'll never believe me!" "Let us hear!" said Hanaud patiently. "I began to dream of that room, the two men disguised and masked, the still figure in the bed. Night after night! I was terrified to go to sleep. I felt the hand upon my mouth. I used to catch myself falling asleep, and walk about the room with all the lights up to keep myself awake." "But you couldn't," said Hanaud with a smile. "Only the old can do that." "No, I couldn't," she admitted; "and--oh, my nights were horrible until"--she paused and looked at her companions doubtfully--"until one night the mask slipped." "What--?" cried Hanaud, and a note of sternness rang suddenly in his voice. "What are you saying?" With a desperate rush of words, and the colour staining her forehead and cheeks, Joan Carew continued: "It is true. The mask slipped on the face of one of the men--of the man who held me. Only a little way; it just left his forehead visible--no more." "Well?" asked Hanaud, and Mr. Ricardo leaned forward, swaying between the austerity of criticism and the desire to believe so thrilling a revelation. "I waked up," the girl continued, "in the darkness, and for a moment the whole scene remained vividly with me--for just long enough for me to fix clearly in my mind the figure of the apache with the white forehead showing above the mask." "When was that?" asked Ricardo. "A fortnight ago." "Why didn't you come with your story then?" "I waited," said Joan. "What I had to tell wasn't yet helpful. I thought that another night the mask might slip lower still. Besides, I--it is difficult to describe just what I felt. I felt it important just to keep that photograph in my mind, not to think about it, not to talk about it, not even to look at it too often lest I should begin to imagine the rest of the face and find something familiar in the man's carriage and shape when there was nothing really familiar to me at all. Do you understand that?" she asked, with her eyes fixed in appeal on Hanaud's face. "Yes," replied Hanaud. "I follow your thought." "I thought there was a chance now--the strangest chance--that the truth might be reached. I did not wish to spoil it," and she turned eagerly to Ricardo, as if, having persuaded Hanaud, she would now turn her batteries on his companion. "My whole point of view was changed. I was no longer afraid of falling asleep lest I should dream. I wished to dream, but----" "But you could not," suggested Hanaud. "No, that is the truth," replied Joan Carew. "Whereas before I was anxious to keep awake and yet must sleep from sheer fatigue, now that I tried consciously to put myself to sleep I remained awake all through the night, and only towards morning, when the light was coming through the blinds, dropped off into a heavy, dreamless slumber." Hanaud nodded. "It is a very perverse world, Miss Carew, and things go by contraries." Ricardo listened for some note of irony in Hanaud's voice, some look of disbelief in his face. But there was neither the one nor the other. Hanaud was listening patiently. "Then came my rehearsals," Joan Carew continued, "and that wonderful opera drove everything else out of my head. I had such a chance, if only I could make use of it! When I went to bed now, I went with that haunting music in my ears--the call of Paris--oh, you must remember it. But can you realise what it must mean to a girl who is going to sing it for the first time in Covent Garden?" Mr. Ricardo saw his opportunity. He, the connoisseur, to whom the psychology of the green room was as an open book, could answer that question. "It is true, my friend," he informed Hanaud with quiet authority. "The great march of events leaves the artist cold. He lives aloof. While the tumbrils thunder in the streets he adds a delicate tint to the picture he is engaged upon or recalls his triumph in his last great part." "Thank you," said Hanaud gravely. "And now Miss Carew may perhaps resume her story." "It was the very night of my début," she continued. "I had supper with some friends. A great artist. Carmen Valeri, honoured me with her presence. I went home excited, and that night I dreamed again." "Yes?" "This time the chin, the lips, the eyes were visible. There was only a black strip across the middle of the face. And I thought--nay, I was sure--that if that strip vanished I should know the man." "And it did vanish?" "Three nights afterwards." "And you did know the man?" The girl's face became troubled. She frowned. "I knew the face, that was all," she answered. "I was disappointed. I had never spoken to the man. I am sure of that still. But somewhere I have seen him." "You don't even remember when?" asked Hanaud. "No." Joan Carew reflected for a moment with her eyes upon the carpet, and then flung up her head with a gesture of despair. "No. I try all the time to remember. But it is no good." Mr. Ricardo could not restrain a movement of indignation. He was being played with. The girl with her fantastic story had worked him up to a real pitch of excitement only to make a fool of him. All his earlier suspicions flowed back into his mind. What if, after all, she was implicated in the murder and the theft? What if, with a perverse cunning, she had told Hanaud and himself just enough of what she knew, just enough of the truth, to persuade them to protect her? What if her frank confession of her own overpowering impulse to steal the necklace was nothing more than a subtle appeal to the sentimental pity of men, an appeal based upon a wider knowledge of men's weaknesses than a girl of nineteen or twenty ought to have? Mr. Ricardo cleared his throat and sat forward in his chair. He was girding himself for a singularly searching interrogatory when Hanaud asked the most irrelevant of questions: "How did you pass the evening of that night when you first dreamed complete the face of your assailant?" Joan Carew reflected. Then her face cleared. "I know," she exclaimed. "I was at the opera." "And what was being given?" "_The Jewels of the Madonna_." Hanaud nodded his head. To Ricardo it seemed that he had expected precisely that answer. "Now," he continued, "you are sure that you have seen this man?" "Yes." "Very well," said Hanaud. "There is a game you play at children's parties--is there not?--animal, vegetable, or mineral, and always you get the answer. Let us play that game for a few minutes, you and I." Joan Carew drew up her chair to the table and sat with her chin propped upon her hands and her eyes fixed on Hanaud's face. As he put each question she pondered on it and answered. If she answered doubtfully he pressed it. "You crossed on the _Lucania_ from New York?" "Yes." "Picture to yourself the dining-room, the tables. You have the picture quite clear?" "Yes." "Was it at breakfast that you saw him?" "No." "At luncheon?" "No." "At dinner?" She paused for a moment, summoning before her eyes the travellers at the tables. "No." "Not in the dining-table at all, then?" "No." "In the library, when you were writing letters, did you not one day lift your head and see him?" "No." "On the promenade deck? Did he pass you when you sat in your deck-chair, or did you pass him when he sat in his chair?" "No." Step by step Hanaud took her back to New York to her hotel, to journeys in the train. Then he carried her to Milan where she had studied. It was extraordinary to Ricardo to realise how much Hanaud knew of the curriculum of a student aspiring to grand opera. From Milan he brought her again to New York, and at the last, with a start of joy, she cried: "Yes, it was there." Hanaud took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. "Ouf!" he grunted. "To concentrate the mind on a day like this, it makes one hot, I can tell you. Now, Miss Carew, let us hear." It was at a concert at the house of a Mrs. Starlingshield in Fifth Avenue and in the afternoon. Joan Carew sang. She was a stranger to New York and very nervous. She saw nothing but a mist of faces whilst she sang, but when she had finished the mist cleared, and as she left the improvised stage she saw the man. He was standing against the wall in a line of men. There was no particular reason why her eyes should single him out, except that he was paying no attention to her singing, and, indeed, she forgot him altogether afterwards. "I just happened to see him clearly and distinctly," she said. "He was tall, clean-shaven, rather dark, not particularly young--thirty-five or so, I should say--a man with a heavy face and beginning to grow stout. He moved away whilst I was bowing to the audience, and I noticed him afterwards walking about, talking to people." "Do you remember to whom?" "No." "Did he notice you, do you think?" "I am sure he didn't," the girl replied emphatically. "He never looked at the stage where I was singing, and he never looked towards me afterwards." She gave, so far as she could remember, the names of such guests and singers as she knew at that party. "And that is all," she said. "Thank you," said Hanaud. "It is perhaps a good deal. But it is perhaps nothing at all." "You will let me hear from you?" she cried, as she rose to her feet. "Miss Carew, I am at your service," he returned. She gave him her hand timidly and he took it cordially. For Mr. Ricardo she had merely a bow, a bow which recognised that he distrusted her and that she had no right to be offended. Then she went, and Hanaud smiled across the table at Ricardo. "Yes," he said, "all that you are thinking is true enough. A man who slips out of society to indulge a passion for a drug in greater peace, a girl who, on her own confession, tried to steal, and, to crown all, this fantastic story. It is natural to disbelieve every word of it. But we disbelieved before, when we left Calladine's lodging in the Adelphi, and we were wrong. Let us be warned." "You have an idea?" exclaimed Ricardo. "Perhaps!" said Hanaud. And he looked down the theatre column of the _Times_. "Let us distract ourselves by going to the theatre." "You are the most irritating man!" Mr. Ricardo broke out impulsively. "If I had to paint your portrait, I should paint you with your finger against the side of your nose, saying mysteriously: '_I_ know,' when you know nothing at all." Hanaud made a schoolboy's grimace. "We will go and sit in your box at the opera to-night," he said, "and you shall explain to me all through the beautiful music the theory of the tonic sol-fa." They reached Covent Garden before the curtain rose. Mr. Ricardo's box was on the lowest tier and next to the omnibus box. "We are near the stage," said Hanaud, as he took his seat in the corner and so arranged the curtain that he could see and yet was hidden from view. "I like that." The theatre was full; stalls and boxes shimmered with jewels and satin, and all that was famous that season for beauty and distinction had made its tryst there that night. "Yes, this is wonderful," said Hanaud. "What opera do they play?" He glanced at his programme and cried, with a little start of surprise: "We are in luck. It is _The Jewels of the Madonna_." "Do you believe in omens?" Mr. Ricardo asked coldly. He had not yet recovered from his rebuff of the afternoon. "No, but I believe that Carmen Valeri is at her best in this part," said Hanaud. Mr. Ricardo belonged to that body of critics which must needs spoil your enjoyment by comparisons and recollections of other great artists. He was at a disadvantage certainly to-night, for the opera was new. But he did his best. He imagined others in the part, and when the great scene came at the end of the second act, and Carmen Valeri, on obtaining from her lover the jewels stolen from the sacred image, gave such a display of passion as fairly enthralled that audience, Mr. Ricardo sighed quietly and patiently. "How Calvé would have brought out the psychological value of that scene!" he murmured; and he was quite vexed with Hanaud, who sat with his opera glasses held to his eyes, and every sense apparently concentrated on the stage. The curtains rose and rose again when the act was concluded, and still Hanaud sat motionless as the Sphynx, staring through his glasses. "That is all," said Ricardo when the curtains fell for the fifth time. "They will come out," said Hanaud. "Wait!" And from between the curtains Carmen Valeri was led out into the full glare of the footlights with the panoply of jewels flashing on her breast. Then at last Hanaud put down his glasses and turned to Ricardo with a look of exultation and genuine delight upon his face which filled that season-worn dilettante with envy. "What a night!" said Hanaud. "What a wonderful night!" And he applauded until he split his gloves. At the end of the opera he cried: "We will go and take supper at the Semiramis. Yes, my friend, we will finish our evening like gallant gentlemen. Come! Let us not think of the morning." And boisterously he slapped Ricardo in the small of the back. In spite of his boast, however, Hanaud hardly touched his supper, and he played with, rather than drank, his brandy and soda. He had a little table to which he was accustomed beside a glass screen in the depths of the room, and he sat with his back to the wall watching the groups which poured in. Suddenly his face lighted up. "Here is Carmen Valeri!" he cried. "Once more we are in luck. Is it not that she is beautiful?" Mr. Ricardo turned languidly about in his chair and put up his eyeglass. "So, so," he said. "Ah!" returned Hanaud. "Then her companion will interest you still more. For he is the man who murdered Mrs. Blumenstein." Mr. Ricardo jumped so that his eyeglass fell down and tinkled on its cord against the buttons of his waistcoat. "What!" he exclaimed. "It's impossible!" He looked again. "Certainly the man fits Joan Carew's description. But--" He turned back to Hanaud utterly astounded. And as he looked at the Frenchman all his earlier recollections of him, of his swift deductions, of the subtle imagination which his heavy body so well concealed, crowded in upon Ricardo and convinced him. "How long have you known?" he asked in a whisper of awe. "Since ten o'clock to-night." "But you will have to find the necklace before you can prove it." "The necklace!" said Hanaud carelessly. "That is already found." Mr. Ricardo had been longing for a thrill. He had it now. He felt it in his very spine. "It's found?" he said in a startled whisper. "Yes." Ricardo turned again, with as much indifference as he could assume, towards the couple who were settling down at their table, the man with a surly indifference, Carmen Valeri with the radiance of a woman who has just achieved a triumph and is now free to enjoy the fruits of it. Confusedly, recollections returned to Ricardo of questions put that afternoon by Hanaud to Joan Carew--subtle questions into which the name of Carmen Valeri was continually entering. She was a woman of thirty, certainly beautiful, with a clear, pale face and eyes like the night. "Then she is implicated too!" he said. What a change for her, he thought, from the stage of Covent Garden to the felon's cell, from the gay supper-room of the Semiramis, with its bright frocks and its babel of laughter, to the silence and the ignominious garb of the workrooms in Aylesbury Prison! "She!" exclaimed Hanaud; and in his passion for the contrasts of drama Ricardo was almost disappointed. "She has nothing whatever to do with it. She knows nothing. André Favart there--yes. But Carmen Valeri! She's as stupid as an owl, and loves him beyond words. Do you want to know how stupid she is? You shall know. I asked Mr. Clements, the director of the opera house, to take supper with us, and here he is." Hanaud stood up and shook hands with the director. He was of the world of business rather than of art, and long experience of the ways of tenors and prima-donnas had given him a good-humoured cynicism. "They are spoilt children, all tantrums and vanity," he said, "and they would ruin you to keep a rival out of the theatre." He told them anecdote upon anecdote. "And Carmen Valeri," Hanaud asked in a pause; "is she troublesome this season?" "Has been," replied Clements dryly. "At present she is playing at being good. But she gave me a turn some weeks ago." He turned to Ricardo. "Superstition's her trouble, and André Favart knows it. She left him behind in America this spring." "America!" suddenly cried Ricardo; so suddenly that Clements looked at him in surprise. "She was singing in New York, of course, during the winter," he returned. "Well, she left him behind, and I was shaking hands with myself when he began to deal the cards over there. She came to me in a panic. She had just had a cable. She couldn't sing on Friday night. There was a black knave next to the nine of diamonds. She wouldn't sing for worlds. And it was the first night of _The Jewels of the Madonna!_ Imagine the fix I was in!" "What did you do?" asked Ricardo. "The only thing there was to do," replied Clements with a shrug of the shoulders. "I cabled Favart some money and he dealt the cards again. She came to me beaming. Oh, she had been so distressed to put me in the cart! But what could she do? Now there was a red queen next to the ace of hearts, so she could sing without a scruple so long, of course, as she didn't pass a funeral on the way down to the opera house. Luckily she didn't. But my money brought Favart over here, and now I'm living on a volcano. For he's the greatest scoundrel unhung. He never has a farthing, however much she gives him; he's a blackmailer, he's a swindler, he has no manners and no graces, he looks like a butcher and treats her as if she were dirt, he never goes near the opera except when she is singing in this part, and she worships the ground he walks on. Well, I suppose it's time to go." The lights had been turned off, the great room was emptying. Mr. Ricardo and his friends rose to go, but at the door Hanaud detained Mr. Clements, and they talked together alone for some little while, greatly to Mr. Ricardo's annoyance. Hanaud's good humour, however, when he rejoined his friend, was enough for two. "I apologise, my friend, with my hand on my heart. But it was for your sake that I stayed behind. You have a meretricious taste for melodrama which I deeply deplore, but which I mean to gratify. I ought to leave for Paris to-morrow, but I shall not. I shall stay until Thursday." And he skipped upon the pavement as they walked home to Grosvenor Square. Mr. Ricardo bubbled with questions, but he knew his man. He would get no answer to any one of them to-night. So he worked out the problem for himself as he lay awake in his bed, and he came down to breakfast next morning fatigued but triumphant. Hanaud was already chipping off the top of his egg at the table. "So I see you have found it all out, my friend," he said. "Not all," replied Ricardo modestly, "and you will not mind, I am sure, if I follow the usual custom and wish you a good morning." "Not at all," said Hanaud. "I am all for good manners myself." He dipped his spoon into his egg. "But I am longing to hear the line of your reasoning." Mr. Ricardo did not need much pressing. "Joan Carew saw André Favart at Mrs. Starlingshield's party, and saw him with Carmen Valeri. For Carmen Valeri was there. I remember that you asked Joan for the names of the artists who sang, and Carmen Valeri was amongst them." Hanaud nodded his head. "Exactly." "No doubt Joan Carew noticed Carmen Valeri particularly, and so took unconsciously into her mind an impression of the man who was with her, André Favart--of his build, of his walk, of his type." Again Hanaud agreed. "She forgets the man altogether, but the picture remains latent in her mind--an undeveloped film." Hanaud looked up in surprise, and the surprise flattered Mr. Ricardo. Not for nothing had he tossed about in his bed for the greater part of the night. "Then came the tragic night at the Semiramis. She does not consciously recognise her assailant, but she dreams the scene again and again, and by a process of unconscious cerebration the figure of the man becomes familiar. Finally she makes her début, is entertained at supper afterwards, and meets once more Carmen Valeri." "Yes, for the first time since Mrs. Starlingshield's party," interjected Hanaud. "She dreams again, she remembers asleep more than she remembers when awake. The presence of Carmen Valeri at her supper-party has its effect. By a process of association, she recalls Favart, and the mask slips on the face of her assailant. Some days later she goes to the opera. She hears Carmen Valeri sing in _The Jewels of the Madonna_. No doubt the passion of her acting, which I am more prepared to acknowledge this morning than I was last night, affects Joan Carew powerfully, emotionally. She goes to bed with her head full of Carmen Valeri, and she dreams not of Carmen Valeri, but of the man who is unconsciously associated with Carmen Valeri in her thoughts. The mask vanishes altogether. She sees her assailant now, has his portrait limned in her mind, would know him if she met him in the street, though she does not know by what means she identified him." "Yes," said Hanaud. "It is curious the brain working while the body sleeps, the dream revealing what thought cannot recall." Mr. Ricardo was delighted. He was taken seriously. "But of course," he said, "I could not have worked the problem out but for you. You knew of André Favart and the kind of man he was." Hanaud laughed. "Yes. That is always my one little advantage. I know all the cosmopolitan blackguards of Europe." His laughter ceased suddenly, and he brought his clenched fist heavily down upon the table. "Here is one of them who will be very well out of the world, my friend," he said very quietly, but there was a look of force in his face and a hard light in his eyes which made Mr. Ricardo shiver. For a few moments there was silence. Then Ricardo asked: "But have you evidence enough?" "Yes." "Your two chief witnesses, Calladine and Joan Carew--you said it yourself--there are facts to discredit them. Will they be believed?" "But they won't appear in the case at all," Hanaud said. "Wait, wait!" and once more he smiled. "By the way, what is the number of Calladine's house?" Ricardo gave it, and Hanaud therefore wrote a letter. "It is all for your sake, my friend," he said with a chuckle. "Nonsense," said Ricardo. "You have the spirit of the theatre in your bones." "Well, I shall not deny it," said Hanaud, and he sent out the letter to the nearest pillar-box. Mr. Ricardo waited in a fever of impatience until Thursday came. At breakfast Hanaud would talk of nothing but the news of the day. At luncheon he was no better. The affair of the Semiramis Hotel seemed a thousand miles from any of his thoughts. But at five o'clock he said as he drank his tea: "You know, of course, that we go to the opera to-night?" "Yes. Do we?" "Yes. Your young friend Calladine, by the way, will join us in your box." "That is very kind of him, I am sure," said Mr. Ricardo. The two men arrived before the rising of the curtain, and in the crowded lobby a stranger spoke a few words to Hanaud, but what he said Ricardo could not hear. They took their seats in the box, and Hanaud looked at his programme. "Ah! It is _Il Ballo de Maschera_ to-night. We always seem to hit upon something appropriate, don't we?" Then he raised his eyebrows. "Oh-o! Do you see that our pretty young friend, Joan Carew, is singing in the rôle of the page? It is a showy part. There is a particular melody with a long-sustained trill in it, as far as I remember." Mr. Ricardo was not deceived by Hanaud's apparent ignorance of the opera to be given that night and of the part Joan Carew was to take. He was, therefore, not surprised when Hanaud added: "By the way, I should let Calladine find it all out for himself." Mr. Ricardo nodded sagely. "Yes. That is wise. I had thought of it myself." But he had done nothing of the kind. He was only aware that the elaborate stage-management in which Hanaud delighted was working out to the desired climax, whatever that climax might be. Calladine entered the box a few minutes later and shook hands with them awkwardly. "It was kind of you to invite me," he said and, very ill at ease, he took a seat between them and concentrated his attention on the house as it filled up. "There's the overture," said Hanaud. The curtains divided and were festooned on either side of the stage. The singers came on in their turn; the page appeared to a burst of delicate applause (Joan Carew had made a small name for herself that season), and with a stifled cry Calladine shot back in the box as if he had been struck. Even then Mr. Ricardo did not understand. He only realised that Joan Carew was looking extraordinarily trim and smart in her boy's dress. He had to look from his programme to the stage and back again several times before the reason of Calladine's exclamation dawned on him. When it did, he was horrified. Hanaud, in his craving for dramatic effects, must have lost his head altogether. Joan Carew was wearing, from the ribbon in her hair to the scarlet heels of her buckled satin shoes, the same dress as she had worn on the tragic night at the Semiramis Hotel. He leaned forward in his agitation to Hanaud. "You must be mad. Suppose Favart is in the theatre and sees her. He'll be over on the Continent by one in the morning." "No, he won't," replied Hanaud. "For one thing, he never comes to Covent Garden unless one opera, with Carmen Valeri in the chief part, is being played, as you heard the other night at supper. For a second thing, he isn't in the house. I know where he is. He is gambling in Dean Street, Soho. For a third thing, my friend, he couldn't leave by the nine o'clock train for the Continent if he wanted to. Arrangements have been made. For a fourth thing, he wouldn't wish to. He has really remarkable reasons for desiring to stay in London. But he will come to the theatre later. Clements will send him an urgent message, with the result that he will go straight to Clements' office. Meanwhile, we can enjoy ourselves, eh?" Never was the difference between the amateur dilettante and the genuine professional more clearly exhibited than by the behaviour of the two men during the rest of the performance. Mr. Ricardo might have been sitting on a coal fire from his jumps and twistings; Hanaud stolidly enjoyed the music, and when Joan Carew sang her famous solo his hands clamoured for an encore louder than anyone's in the boxes. Certainly, whether excitement was keeping her up or no, Joan Carew had never sung better in her life. Her voice was clear and fresh as a bird's--a bird with a soul inspiring its song. Even Calladine drew his chair forward again and sat with his eyes fixed upon the stage and quite carried out of himself. He drew a deep breath at the end. "She is wonderful," he said, like a man waking up. "She is very good," replied Mr. Ricardo, correcting Calladine's transports. "We will go round to the back of the stage," said Hanaud. They passed through the iron door and across the stage to a long corridor with a row of doors on one side. There were two or three men standing about in evening dress, as if waiting for friends in the dressing-rooms. At the third door Hanaud stopped and knocked. The door was opened by Joan Carew, still dressed in her green and gold. Her face was troubled, her eyes afraid. "Courage, little one," said Hanaud, and he slipped past her into the room. "It is as well that my ugly, familiar face should not be seen too soon." The door closed and one of the strangers loitered along the corridor and spoke to a call-boy. The call-boy ran off. For five minutes more Mr. Ricardo waited with a beating heart. He had the joy of a man in the centre of things. All those people driving homewards in their motor-cars along the Strand--how he pitied them! Then, at the end of the corridor, he saw Clements and André Favart. They approached, discussing the possibility of Carmen Valeri's appearance in London opera during the next season. "We have to look ahead, my dear friend," said Clements, "and though I should be extremely sorry----" At that moment they were exactly opposite Joan Carew's door. It opened, she came out; with a nervous movement she shut the door behind her. At the sound André Favart turned, and he saw drawn up against the panels of the door, with a look of terror in her face, the same gay figure which had interrupted him in Mrs. Blumenstein's bedroom. There was no need for Joan to act. In the presence of this man her fear was as real as it had been on the night of the Semiramis ball. She trembled from head to foot. Her eyes closed; she seemed about to swoon. Favart stared and uttered an oath. His face turned white; he staggered back as if he had seen a ghost. Then he made a wild dash along the corridor, and was seized and held by two of the men in evening dress. Favart recovered his wits. He ceased to struggle. "What does this outrage mean?" he asked, and one of the men drew a warrant and notebook from his pocket. "You are arrested for the murder of Mrs. Blumenstein in the Semiramis Hotel," he said, "and I have to warn you that anything you may say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you." "Preposterous!" exclaimed Favart. "There's a mistake. We will go along to the police and put it right. Where's your evidence against me?" Hanaud stepped out of the doorway of the dressing-room. "In the property-room of the theatre," he said. At the sight of him Favart uttered a violent cry of rage. "You are here, too, are you?" he screamed, and he sprang at Hanaud's throat. Hanaud stepped lightly aside. Favart was borne down to the ground, and when he stood up again the handcuffs were on his wrists. Favart was led away, and Hanaud turned to Mr. Ricardo and Clements. "Let us go to the property-room," he said. They passed along the corridor, and Ricardo noticed that Calladine was no longer with them. He turned and saw him standing outside Joan Carew's dressing-room. "He would like to come, of course," said Ricardo. "Would he?" asked Hanaud. "Then why doesn't he? He's quite grown up, you know," and he slipped his arm through Ricardo's and led him back across the stage. In the property-room there was already a detective in plain clothes. Mr. Ricardo had still not as yet guessed the truth. "What is it you really want, sir?" the property-master asked of the director. "Only the jewels of the Madonna," Hanaud answered. The property-master unlocked a cupboard and took from it the sparkling cuirass. Hanaud pointed to it, and there, lost amongst the huge glittering stones of paste and false pearls, Mrs. Blumenstein's necklace was entwined. "Then that is why Favart came always to Covent Garden when _The Jewels of the Madonna_ was being performed!" exclaimed Ricardo. Hanaud nodded. "He came to watch over his treasure." Ricardo was piecing together the sections of the puzzle. "No doubt he knew of the necklace in America. No doubt he followed it to England." Hanaud agreed. "Mrs. Blumenstein's jewels were quite famous in New York." "But to hide them here!" cried Mr. Clements. "He must have been mad." "Why?" asked Hanaud. "Can you imagine a safer hiding-place? Who is going to burgle the property-room of Covent Garden? Who is going to look for a priceless string of pearls amongst the stage jewels of an opera house?" "You did," said Mr. Ricardo. "I?" replied Hanaud, shrugging his shoulders. "Joan Carew's dreams led me to André Favart. The first time we came here and saw the pearls of the Madonna, I was on the look-out, naturally. I noticed Favart at the back of the stalls. But it was a stroke of luck that I noticed those pearls through my opera glasses." "At the end of the second act?" cried Ricardo suddenly. "I remember now." "Yes," replied Hanaud. "But for that second act the pearls would have stayed comfortably here all through the season. Carmen Valeri--a fool as I told you--would have tossed them about in her dressing-room without a notion of their value, and at the end of July, when the murder at the Semiramis Hotel had been forgotten, Favart would have taken them to Amsterdam and made his bargain." "Shall we go?" They left the theatre together and walked down to the grill-room of the Semiramis. But as Hanaud looked through the glass door he drew back. "We will not go in, I think, eh?" "Why?" asked Ricardo. Hanaud pointed to a table. Calladine and Joan Carew were seated at it taking their supper. "Perhaps," said Hanaud with a smile, "perhaps, my friend--what? Who shall say that the rooms in the Adelphi will not be given up?" They turned away from the hotel. But Hanaud was right, and before the season was over Mr. Ricardo had to put his hand in his pocket for a wedding present. 
40353	----	Google Books (Oxford University) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http://books.google.com/books?id=3DcPAAAAQAAJ _THE DATCHET DIAMONDS_ [Illustration: "Shall I shoot all three of you?" Page 265. _Frontispiece_.] THE DATCHET DIAMONDS BY RICHARD MARSH AUTHOR OF "THE CRIME AND THE CRIMINAL," "PHILIP BENNION'S DEATH," "THE BEETLE," ETC., ETC. _ILLUSTRATED BY STANLEY L. WOOD_ LONDON WARD, LOCK & CO., Limited WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C. NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. TWO MEN AND A MAID. CHAPTER II. OVERHEARD IN THE TRAIN. CHAPTER III. THE DIAMONDS. CHAPTER IV. MISS WENTWORTH'S RUDENESS. CHAPTER V. IN THE BODEGA. CHAPTER VI. THE ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT. CHAPTER VII. THE DATCHET DIAMONDS ARE PLACED IN SAFE CUSTODY. CHAPTER VIII. IN THE MOMENT OF HIS SUCCESS. CHAPTER IX. A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE. CHAPTER X. CYRIL'S FRIEND. CHAPTER XI. JOHN IRELAND'S WARRANT. CHAPTER XII. A WOMAN ROUSED. CHAPTER XIII. THE DETECTIVE AND THE LADY. CHAPTER XIV. AMONG THIEVES. CHAPTER XV. PUT TO THE QUESTION. CHAPTER XVI. A MODERN INSTANCE OF AN ANCIENT PRACTICE. CHAPTER XVII. THE MOST DANGEROUS FOE OF ALL. CHAPTER XVIII. THE LAST OF THE DATCHET DIAMONDS. CHAPTER XIX. A WOMAN'S LOGIC. CHAPTER I TWO MEN AND A MAID The band struck up a waltz. It chanced to be the one which they had last danced together at the Dome. How well he had danced, and how guilty she had felt! Conscious of what almost amounted to a sense of impropriety! Charlie had taken her; it was Charlie who had made her go--but then, in some eyes, Miss Wentworth might not have been regarded as the most unimpeachable of chaperons. That Cyril, for instance, would have had strong opinions of his own upon that point, Miss Strong was well aware. While Miss Strong listened, thinking of the last time she had heard that waltz, the man with whom she had danced it stood, all at once, in front of her. She had half expected that it would be so--half had feared it. It was not the first time they had encountered each other on the pier; Miss Strong had already begun to more than suspect that the chance of encountering her was the magnet which drew Mr. Lawrence through the turnstiles. She did not wish to meet him; she assured herself that she did not wish to meet him. But, on the other hand, she did not wish to go out of her way so as to seem to run away from him. The acquaintance had begun on the top of the Devil's Dyke in the middle of a shower of rain. Miss Strong, feeling in want of occupation, and, to speak the truth, a little in the blues, had gone, on an unpromising afternoon in April, on the spur of the moment, and in something like a temper, on a solitary excursion to the Devil's Dyke. On the Downs the wind blew great guns. She could hardly stand against it. Yet it did her good, for it suited her mood. She struggled on over the slopes, past Poynings, when, suddenly--she, in her abstraction, having paid no heed to the weather, and expecting nothing of the kind--it came down a perfect deluge of rain. She had a walking-stick, but neither mackintosh nor umbrella. There seemed every likelihood of her having to return like a drowned rat to Brighton, when, with the appropriateness of a fairy tale, some one came rushing to her with an umbrella in his hand. She could hardly refuse the proffered shelter, and the consequence was that the owner of the umbrella escorted her first to the hotel, then to the station, and afterwards to Brighton. Nor, after such services had been rendered, when they parted at the station did she think it necessary to inform him that, not under any circumstances, was he to notice her again; besides, from what she had seen of him, she rather liked the man. So, when, two days afterwards, he stopped her on the pier to ask if she had suffered any ill-effects from her exposure, it took her some five-and-twenty minutes to explain that she had not. There were other meetings, mostly on the pier; and then, as a climax, that Masonic Ball at the Dome. She danced with him five times! She felt all the time that she ought not; she knew that she would not have done it if Cyril had been there. Miss Wentworth, introduced by Miss Strong, danced with him twice, and when asked by Miss Strong if she thought that she--Miss Strong--ought to have three dances with him Miss Wentworth declared that she did not see why, if she liked, she should not have thirty. So Miss Strong had five--which shows that Miss Wentworth's notions of the duties of a chaperon were vague. And now the band was striking up that identical waltz; and there was Mr. Lawrence standing in front of the lady with whom he had danced it. "I believe that that was ours, Miss Strong," he said. "I think it was." He was holding her hand in his, and looking at her with something in his eyes which there and then she told herself would never do. They threaded their way through the crowd of people towards the head of the pier, saying little, which was worse than saying much. Although Charlie had been working, Miss Strong wished she had stayed at home with her; it would have been better than this. A sense of pending peril made her positively nervous; she wanted to get away from her companion, and yet for the moment she did not see her way to do it. Beyond doubt Mr. Lawrence was not a man in whose favour nothing could be said. He was of medium height, had a good figure, and held himself well. He was very fair, with a slight moustache, and a mouth which was firm and resolute. His eyes were blue--a light, bright blue--beautiful eyes they were, but scarcely of the kind which could correctly be described as sympathetic. His complexion was almost like a girl's, it was so pink and white; he seemed the picture of health. His manners were peculiarly gentle. He moved noiselessly, without any appearance of exertion. His voice, though soft, was of so penetrating a quality and so completely under control that, without betraying by any movement of his lips the fact that he was speaking, he could make his faintest whisper audible in a way which was quite uncanny. Whatever his dress might be, on him it always seemed unobtrusive; indeed, the strangest thing about the man was that, while he always seemed to be the most retiring of human beings, in reality he was one of the most difficult to be rid of, as Miss Strong was finding now. More than once, just as she was about to give him his dismissal, he managed to prevent her doing so in a manner which, while she found it impossible to resent it, was not by any means to her taste. Finally, finding it difficult to be rid of him in any other way, and being, for some reason which she would herself have found it difficult to put into words, unusually anxious to be freed from his companionship, she resolved, in desperation, to leave the pier. She acquainted him with her determination to be off, and then, immediately afterwards, not a little to her surprise and a good deal to her disgust, she found herself walking towards the pier-gates with him at her side. Miss Strong's wish had been to part from him there and then; but again he had managed to prevent the actual expression of her wish, and it seemed plain that she was still to be saddled with his society, at any rate, as far as the gates. Before they had gone half-way down the pier Miss Strong had cause to regret that she had not shown a trifle more firmness, for she saw advancing towards her a figure which, at the instant, she almost felt that she knew too well. It was Cyril Paxton. The worst of it was that she was not clear in her own mind as to what it would be best for her to do--the relations between herself and Mr. Paxton were of so curious a character. She saw that Mr. Paxton's recognition of her had not been so rapid as hers had been of him; at first she thought that she was going to pass him unperceived. In that case she would go a few steps farther with Mr. Lawrence, dismiss him, return, and discover herself to Cyril at her leisure. But it was not to be. Mr. Paxton, glancing about him from side to side of the pier, observed her on a sudden--and he observed Mr. Lawrence too; on which trivial accident hinges the whole of this strange history. Miss Strong knew that she was seen. She saw that Mr. Paxton was coming to her. Her heart began to beat. In another second or two he was standing in front of her with uplifted hat, wearing a not very promising expression of countenance. "Where's Charlie?" was his greeting. The lady was aware that the question in itself conveyed a reproach, though she endeavoured to feign innocence. "Charlie's at home; I couldn't induce her to come out. Her 'copy' for _Fashion_ has to be ready by the morning; she says she's behind, so she stayed at home to finish it." "Oh!" That was all that Mr. Paxton said, but the look with which he favoured Mr. Lawrence conveyed a very vivid note of interrogation. "Cyril," explained Miss Strong, "this is Mr. Lawrence. Mr. Lawrence, this is Mr. Paxton; and I am afraid you must excuse me." Mr. Lawrence did excuse her. She and Mr Paxton returned together up the pier; he, directly Mr. Lawrence was out of hearing, putting to her the question which, though she dreaded, she knew was inevitable. "Who's that?" "That is Mr. Lawrence." "Yes, you told me so much already; who is Mr. Lawrence?" As she walked Miss Strong, looking down, tapped with the ferrule of her umbrella on the boards. "Oh! he's a sort of acquaintance." "You have not been long in Brighton, then, without making acquaintance?" "Cyril! I have been here more than a month. Surely a girl can make an acquaintance in that time?" "It depends, I fancy, on the girl, and on the circumstances in which she is placed. What is Mr. Lawrence?" "I have not the faintest notion. I have a sort of general idea that, like yourself, he is something in the City. It seems to me that nowadays most men are." "Who introduced him?" "A shower of rain." "An excellent guarantor of the man's eligibility, though, even for the average girl, one would scarcely have supposed that that would have been a sufficient introduction." Miss Strong flushed. "You have no right to talk to me like that. I did not know that you were coming to Brighton, or I would have met you at the station." "I knew that I should meet you on the pier." The lady stood still. "What do you mean by that?" The gentleman, confronting her, returned her glance for glance. "I mean what I say. I knew that I should meet you on the pier--and I have." The lady walked on again; whatever she might think of Mr. Paxton's inference, his actual statement was undeniable. "You don't seem in the best of tempera, Cyril. How is Mr. Franklyn?" "He was all right when I saw him last--a good deal better than I was or than I am." "What is the matter with you? Are you ill?" "Matter!" Mr. Paxton's tone was bitter. "What is likely to be the matter with the man who, after having had the luck which I have been having lately, to crown it all finds the woman he loves philandering with a stranger--the acquaintance of a shower of rain--on Brighton pier." "You have no right to speak to me like that--not the slightest! I am perfectly free to do as I please, as you are. And, without condescending to dispute your inferences--though, as you very well know, they are quite unjust!--any attempt at criticism on your part will be resented by me in a manner which you may find unpleasant." A pause followed the lady's words, which the gentleman did not seem altogether to relish. "Still the fact remains that I do love you better than anything else in the world." "Surely if that were so, Cyril, at this time of day you and I would not be situated as we are." "By which you mean?" "If you felt for me what you are always protesting that you feel, surely sometimes you would have done as I wished." "Which being interpreted is equivalent to saying that I should have put my money into Goschens, and entered an office at a salary of a pound a week." "If you had done so you would at any rate still have your money, and also, possibly, the prospect of a career." They had reached the end of the pier, and were leaning over the side, looking towards the Worthing lights. Miss Strong's words were followed by an interval of silence. When the gentleman spoke again, in his voice there was the suspicion of a tremor. "Daisy, don't be hard on me." "I don't wish to be hard. It was you who began by being hard on me." He seemed to pay no heed to her speech, continuing on a line of his own-- "Especially just now!" She glanced at him. "Why especially just now?" "Well----" He stopped. The tremor in his voice became more pronounced. "Because I'm going for the gloves." If the light had been clearer he might have seen that her face assumed a sudden tinge of pallor. "What do you mean by you're going for the gloves?" "I mean that probably by this time tomorrow I shall have either won you or lost you for ever." "Cyril!" There was a catching in her breath. "I hope you are going to do nothing--wild." "It depends upon the point of view." He turned to her with sudden passion. "I'm sick of things as they are--sick to death! I've made up my mind to know either the best or the worst." "How do you propose to arrive at that state of knowledge?" "I've gone a bull on Eries--a big bull. So big a bull that if they fall one I'm done." "How done?" "I shall be done, because it will be for reasons, good, strong, solid reasons, the last deal I shall ever make on the London Stock Exchange." There was silence. Then she spoke again-- "You will lose. You always do lose!" "Thanks." "It will be almost better for you that you should lose. I am beginning to believe, Cyril, that you never will do any good till you have touched bottom, till you have lost all that you possibly can lose." "Thank you, again." She drew herself up, drawing herself away from the railing against which she had been leaning. She gave a gesture which was suggestive of weariness. "I too am tired. This uncertainty is more than I can stand; you are so unstable, Cyril. Your ideas and mine on some points are wide apart. It seems to me that if a girl is worth winning, she is worth working for. As a profession for a man, I don't think that what you call 'punting' on the Stock Exchange is much better than pitch-and-toss." "Well?" The word was an interrogation. She had paused. "It appears to me that the girl who marries a man who does nothing else but 'punt' is preparing for herself a long line of disappointments. Think how many times you have disappointed me. Think of the fortunes you were to have made. Think, Cyril, of the Trumpit Gold Mine--what great things were to come of that!" "I am quite aware that I did invest every penny I could beg, borrow, or steal in the Trumpit Gold Mine, and that at present I am the fortunate possessor of a trunkful of shares which are not worth a shilling a-piece. The reminder is a pleasant one. Proceed--you seem wound up to go." Her voice assumed a new touch of sharpness. "The long and the short of it is, Cyril--it is better that we should understand each other!--if your present speculation turns out as disastrously as all your others have done, and it leaves you worse off than ever, the relations, such as they are, which exist between us must cease. We must be as strangers!" "Which means that you don't care for me the value of a brass-headed pin." "It means nothing of the kind, as you are well aware. It simply means that I decline to link my life with a man who appears incapable of keeping his own head above water. Because he insists on drowning himself, why should I allow him to drown me too?" "I observe that you take the commercial, up-to-date view of marriage." "What view do you take? Are you nearer to being able to marry me than ever you were? Are you not farther off? You have no regular income--and how many entanglements? What do you propose that we should live on--on the hundred and twenty pounds a year which mother left me?" There came a considerable silence. He had not moved from the position he had taken up against the railing, and still looked across the waveless sea towards the glimmering lights of Worthing. When he did speak his tones were cold, and clear, and measured--perhaps the coldness was assumed to hide a warmer something underneath. "Your methods are a little rough, but perhaps they are none the worse on that account. As you say so shall it be. Win or lose, to-morrow evening I will meet you again upon the pier--that is, if you will come." "You know I'll come!" "If I lose it will be to say goodbye. Next week I emigrate." She was still, so he went on-- "Now, if you don't mind, I'll see you to the end of the pier, and say goodbye until tomorrow. I'll get something to eat and hurry back to town." "Won't you come and see Charlie?" "Thank you, I don't think I will. Miss Wentworth has not a sufficiently good opinion of me to care if I do or don't. Make her my excuses." Another pause. Then she said, in a tone which was hardly above a whisper-- "Cyril, I do hope you'll win." He stood, and turned, and faced her. "Do you really mean that, Daisy?" "You know that I do." "Then, if you really hope that I shall win--the double event!--as an earnest of your hopes--there is no one looking!--kiss me." She did as he bade her. CHAPTER II OVERHEARD IN THE TRAIN It was with a feeling of grim amusement that Mr. Paxton bought himself a first-class ticket. It was, probably, the last occasion on which he would ride first-class for some considerable time to come. The die had fallen; the game was lost--Eries had dropped more than one. Not only had he lost all he had to lose, he was a defaulter. It was out of his power to settle, he was going to emigrate instead. He had with him a Gladstone bag; it contained all his worldly possessions that he proposed to take with him on his travels. His intention was, having told Miss Strong the news, and having bidden a last farewell, to go straight from Brighton to Southampton, and thence, by the American line, to the continent on whose shores Europe dumps so many of its failures. The train was later than are the trains which are popular with City men. It seemed almost empty at London Bridge. Mr. Paxton had a compartment to himself. He had an evening paper with him. He turned to the money article. Eries had closed a point lower even than he had supposed. It did not matter. A point lower, more or less, would make no difference to him--the difference would be to the brokers who had trusted him. Wishing to do anything but think, he looked to see what other news the paper might contain. Some sensational headlines caught his eye. "ROBBERY OF THE DUCHESS OF DATCHET'S DIAMONDS! "AN EXTRAORDINARY TALE." The announcement amused him. "After all that is the sort of line which I ought to have made my own--robbing pure and simple. It's more profitable than what Daisy says that I call 'punting.'" He read on. The tale was told in the usual sensational style, though the telling could scarcely have been more sensational than the tale which was told. That afternoon, it appeared, an amazing robbery had taken place--amazing, first, because of the almost incredible value of what had been stolen; and, second, because of the daring fashion in which the deed had been done. In spite of the desperate nature of his own position--or, perhaps, because of it--Mr. Paxton drank in the story with avidity. The Duchess of Datchet, the young, and, if report was true, the beautiful wife of one of England's greatest and richest noblemen, had been on a visit to the Queen at Windsor--the honoured guest of the Sovereign. As a fitting mark of the occasion, and in order to appear before Her Majesty in the splendours which so well became her, the Duchess had taken with her the famous Datchet diamonds. As all the world knows the Dukes of Datchet have been collectors of diamonds during, at any rate, the last two centuries. The value of their collection is fabulous--the intrinsic value of the stones which the duchess had taken with her on that memorable journey, according to the paper, was at least £250,000--a quarter of a million of money! This was the net value--indeed, it seemed that one might almost say it was the trade value, and was quite apart from any adventitious value which they might possess, from, for instance, the point of view of historical association. Mr. Paxton drew a long breath as he read: "Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds--a quarter of a million! I am not at all sure that I should not have liked to have had a finger in such a pie as that. It would be better than punting at Eries." The diamonds, it seemed, arrived all right at Windsor, and the duchess too. The visit passed off with due _éclat_. It was as Her Grace was returning that the deed was done, though how it was done was, as yet, a profound mystery. "Of course," commented Mr. Paxton to himself, "all criminal London knew what she had taken with her. The betting is that they never lost sight of those diamonds from first to last; to adequately safeguard them she ought to have taken with her a regiment of soldiers." Although she had not gone so far as a regiment of soldiers, that precaution had been taken--and precautions, moreover, which had been found to be adequate, over and over again, on previous occasions--was sufficiently plain. The duchess had travelled in a reserved saloon carriage by the five minutes past four train from Windsor to Paddington. She had been accompanied by two servants, her maid, and a man-servant named Stephen Eversleigh. Eversleigh was one of a family of servants the members of which had been in the employment of the Dukes of Datchet for generations. It was he who was in charge of the diamonds. They were in a leather despatch-box. The duchess placed them in it with her own hand, locked the box, and retained the key in her own possession. Eversleigh carried the box from the duchess's apartment in the Castle to the carriage which conveyed her to the railway station. He placed it on the seat in front of her. He himself sat outside with the maid. When the carriage reached the station he carried it to the duchess's saloon. The duchess was the sole occupant of the saloon. She travelled with the despatch-box in front of her all the way to London. The duke met her at Paddington. Eversleigh again placed the box on the front seat of the carriage, the duke and duchess, sitting side by side, having it in full view as the brougham passed through the London streets. The diamonds, when not in actual use, were always kept, for safe custody, at Bartlett's Bank. The confidential agent of the bank was awaiting their arrival when the brougham reached the ducal mansion in Grosvenor Square. The despatch-box was taken straight to him, and, more for form's sake than anything else, was opened by the duchess in his presence, so that he might see that it really did contain the diamonds before he gave the usual receipt. It was as well for the bank's sake that on that occasion the form was observed. When the box was opened, it was empty! There was nothing of any sort to show that the diamonds had ever been in it--they had vanished into air! When he had reached this point Mr. Paxton put the paper down. He laughed. "That's a teaser. The position seems to promise a pleasing problem for one of those masters of the art of detection who have been cutting such antics lately in popular fiction. If I were appointed to ferret out the mystery, I fancy that I should begin by wanting to know a few things about her Grace the Duchess. I wonder what happened to that despatch-box while she and it were _tête-à-tête?_ It is to be hoped that she possesses her husband's entire confidence, otherwise it is just possible that she is in for a rare old time of it." The newspaper had little more to tell. There were the usual attempts to fill a column with a paragraph; the stereotyped statements about the clues which the police were supposed to be following up, but all that they amounted to was this: that the duchess asserted that she had placed the diamonds in the despatch-box at Windsor Castle, and that, as a matter of plain fact, they were not in it when the box reached Grosvenor Square. Mr. Paxton leaned back in his seat, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and mused. "What lucky beggars those thieves must be! What wouldn't any one do for a quarter of a million--what wouldn't I? Even supposing that the value of the stones is over-stated, and that they are only worth half as much, there is some spending in £125,000. It would set me up for life, with a little over. What prospect is there in front of me--don't I know that there is none? Existence in a country which I have not the faintest desire to go to; a life which I hate; a continual struggling and striving for the barest daily bread, with, in all human probability, failure, and a nameless grave at the end. What use is there in living out such a life as that? But if I could only lay my hands on even an appreciable fraction of that quarter of a million, with Daisy at my side--God bless the girl! how ill I have treated her!--how different it all would be!" Mr. Paxton was possessed by a feeling of restlessness; his thoughts pricked him in his most secret places. For him, the train was moving much too slowly; had it flown on the wings of the wind it could scarcely have kept pace with the whirlwind in his brain. Rising to his feet, he began to move backwards and forwards in the space between the seats--anything was better than complete inaction. The compartment in which he was travelling was not a new one; indeed, so far was it from being a new one, that it belonged to a type which, if not actually obsolete, at any rate nowadays is rarely seen. An oblong sheet of plate-glass was let into the partition on either side, within a few inches of the roof. This sheet of plate-glass was set in a brass frame, the frame itself being swung on a pivot. Desirous of doing anything which would enable him, even temporarily, to escape from his thoughts, Mr. Paxton gave way to his idle and, one might almost add, impertinent curiosity. He stood, first on one seat, and peered through the glass into the adjoining compartment. So far as he was able to see, from the post of vantage which he occupied, it was vacant. He swung the glass round on its pivot. He listened. There was not a sound. Satisfied--if, that is, the knowledge gave him any satisfaction!--that there was no one there, he prepared to repeat the process of espial on the other seat. But in this case the result was different. No sooner had he brought his eyes on a level with the sheet of glass, than he dropped down off the seat again with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box. "By George! I've seen that man before! It would hardly do to be caught playing the part of Peeping Tom." Conscious of so much, he was also conscious at the same time of an increase of curiosity. Among Mr. Paxton's attributes was that one which is supposed to be the peculiar perquisite of royalty--a memory for faces. If, for any cause, a face had once been brought to his notice, he never afterwards forgot it. He had seen through that sheet of glass a countenance which he had seen before, and that quite recently. "The chances are that I sha'n't be noticed if I am careful; and if I am caught I'll make a joke of it. I'll peep again." He peeped again. As he did so audible words all but escaped his lips. "The deuce! it's the beggar who was last night with Daisy on the pier." There could not be a doubt about it; in the carriage next to his sat the individual whose companionship with Miss Strong had so annoyed him. Mr. Paxton, peering warily through the further end of the glass, treated Mr. Lawrence to a prolonged critical inspection, which was not likely to be prejudiced in that gentleman's favour. Mr. Lawrence sat facing his observer, on Mr. Paxton's right, in the corner of the carriage. That he was not alone was plain. Mr. Paxton saw that he smiled, and that his lips were moving. Unfortunately, from Mr. Paxton's point of view, it was not easy to see who was his associate; whoever it was sat just in front of him, and therefore out of Mr. Paxton's line of vision. This was the more annoying in that Mr. Lawrence took such evident interest in the conversation he was carrying on. An idea occurred to Mr. Paxton. "The fellow doesn't seem to see me. When I turned that other thing upon its pivot it didn't make any sound. I wonder, if I were to open this affair half an inch or so, if I could hear what the fellow's saying?" Mr. Paxton was not in a mood to be particular. On the contrary, he was in one of those moods which come to all of us, in some dark hour of our lives, when we do the things which, being done, we never cease regretting. Mr. Paxton knelt on the cushions and he opened the frame, as he had said, just half an inch, and he put his ear as close to the opening as he conveniently could, without running the risk of being seen, and he listened. At first he heard nothing for his pains. He had not got his ear just right, and the roar of the train drowned all other sounds. Slightly shifting his position Mr. Paxton suddenly found, however, that he could hear quite well. The speakers, to make themselves audible to each other, had to shout nearly at the top of their voices, and this, secure in their privacy, they did, the result being that Mr. Paxton could hear just as well what was being said as the person who, to all intents and purposes, was seated close beside him. The first voice he heard was Mr. Lawrence's. It should be noted that here and there he lost a word, as probably also did the person who was actually addressed; but the general sense of the conversation he caught quite well. "I told you I could do it. You only want patience and resolution to take advantage of your opportunities, and a big coup is as easily carried off as a small one." Mr. Lawrence's voice ceased. The rejoinder came from a voice which struck Mr. Paxton as being a very curious one indeed. The speaker spoke not only with a strong nasal twang, but also, occasionally, with an odd idiom. The unseen listener told himself that the speaker was probably the newest thing in races--"a German-American." "With the assistance of a friend--eh?" Mr. Lawrence's voice again; in it more than a suggestion of scorn. "The assistance of a friend! When it comes to the scratch, it is on himself that a man must rely. What a friend principally does is to take the lion's share of the spoil." "Well--why not? A man will not be able to be much of a friend to another, if, first of all, he is not a friend to himself--eh?" Mr. Lawrence appeared to make no answer--possibly he did not relish the other's reasoning. Presently the same voice came again, as if the speaker intended to be apologetic-- "Understand me, my good friend, I do not say that what you did was not clever. No, it was damn clever!--that I do say. And I always have said that there was no one in the profession who can come near you. In your line of business, or out of it, how many are there who can touch for a quarter of a million, I want to know? Now, tell me, how did you do it--is it a secret, eh?" If Mr. Lawrence had been piqued, the other's words seemed to have appeased him. "Not from you--the thing was as plain as walking! The bigger the thing you have to do the more simply you do it the better it will be done." "It does not seem as though it were simple when you read it in the papers--eh? What do you think?" "The papers be damned! Directly you gave me the office that she was going to take them with her to Windsor, I saw how I was going to get them, and who I was going to get them from." "Who--eh?" "Eversleigh. Stow it--the train is stopping!" The train was stopping. It had reached a station. The voices ceased. Mr. Paxton withdrew from his listening place with his brain in a greater whirl than ever. What had the two men been talking about? What did they mean by touching for a quarter of a million, and the reference to Windsor? The name which Mr. Lawrence had just mentioned, Eversleigh--where, quite recently, had he made its acquaintance? Mr. Paxton's glance fell on the evening paper which he had thrown on the seat. He snatched it up. Something like a key to the riddle came to him in a flash! He opened the paper with feverish hands, turning to the account of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds. It was as he thought; his memory had not played him false--the person who had been in charge of the gems had been a man named Stephen Eversleigh. Mr. Paxton's hands fell nervelessly on to his knees. He stared into vacancy. What did it mean? The train was off again. Having heard so much, Mr. Paxton felt that he must hear more. He returned to the place of listening. For some moments, while the train was drawing clear of the station, the voices continued silent--probably before exchanging further confidences they were desirous of being certain that their privacy would remain uninterrupted. When they were heard again it seemed that the conversation was being carried on exactly at the point at which Mr. Paxton had heard it cease. The German-American was speaking. "Eversleigh?--that is His Grace's confidential servant--eh?" "That's the man. I studied Mr. Eversleigh by proxy, and I found out just two things about him." "And they were--what were they?" "One was that he was short-sighted, and the other was that he had a pair of spectacles which the duke had given him for a birthday present, and which he thought no end of." "That wasn't much to find out--eh?" "You think so? Then that's where you're wrong. It's perhaps just as well for you that you don't have to play first lead." "The treasury is more in my line--eh? However, what was the use which you made of that little find of yours?" "If it hadn't been for that little find of mine, the possibility is that the sparklers wouldn't be where they are just now. A friend of mine had a detective camera. Those spectacles were kept in something very gorgeous in cases. My friend snapped that spectacle case with his camera. I had an almost exact duplicate made of the case from the print he got--purposely not quite exact, you know, but devilish near. "I found myself at Windsor Station just as Her Grace was about to start for town. There were a good many people in the booking-office through which you have to pass to reach the platform. As I expected, the duchess came in front, with the maid, old Eversleigh bringing up the rear. Just as Eversleigh came into the booking-office some one touched him on the shoulder, and held out that duplicate spectacle case, saying, 'I beg your pardon, sir! Have you lost your glasses?' Of old Eversleigh's fidelity I say nothing. I don't call mere straightness anything;--but he certainly wasn't up to the kind of job he had in hand--not when he was properly handled. He has been heard to say that he would sooner lose an arm than those precious spectacles--because the duke gave them to him, you know. Perhaps he would; anyhow, he lost something worth a trifle more than his arm. When he felt himself touched on the shoulder, and saw what looked like that almighty goggle-box in the stranger's hand, he got all of a flurry, jabbed his fist into the inside pocket of his coat, and to enable him to do so popped the despatch-box down on the seat beside him--as I expected that he would do. I happened to be sitting on that seat with a rug, very nicely screened too by old Eversleigh himself, and by the stranger with the goggle-box. I nipped my rug over his box, leaving another one--own brother to the duchess's--exposed. Old Eversleigh found that the stranger's goggle-box was not his--that his own was safe in his pocket!--picked up my despatch-box, and marched off with it, while I travelled with his by the South-Western line to town; and I can only hope that he was as pleased with the exchange as I was." The German-American's voice was heard. "As you say, in the simplicity of your method, my good friend, was its beauty. And indeed, after all, simplicity is the very essence, the very soul, of all true art--eh?" CHAPTER III THE DIAMONDS Mr. Paxton heard no more--he made no serious attempt to hear. As the German-American ceased to speak the train slowed into Preston Park. At the station Mr. Paxton saw that some one else got into the next compartment, forming a third, with its previous occupants, the rest of the way to Brighton. Mr. Paxton had heard enough. The whirlwind in his brain, instead of becoming less, had grown more. His mental confusion had become worse confounded. He seemed unable to collect his ideas. He had attained to nothing like an adequate grasp of the situation by the time the train had arrived at its journey's end. He alighted, his Gladstone in his hand, feeling in a sort of intellectual fog. He saw Mr. Lawrence--also carrying a Gladstone--get out of the next compartment. A tall, thin man, with high cheekbones, a heavy moustache, and a pronounced stoop, got out after him--evidently the German-American. Mr. Paxton allowed the pair to walk down the platform in front, keeping himself a respectful distance in the rear. They turned into the refreshment-room. He went in after them, taking up his position close beside them, with, however, no sort of definite intention in his head. Mr. Lawrence recognised him at once, showing that he also had a memory for faces. He nodded. "Mr. Paxton, I believe." Mr. Paxton admitted that that was his name, conscious, on a sudden, of a wild impulse to knock the fellow down for daring to accost him. "What is your drink, Mr. Paxton?" That was too much; Mr. Paxton was certainly not going to drink with the man. He responded curtly-- "I have ordered." "That doesn't matter, does it? Drink up, and have another with me." The fellow was actually pressing him to accept of his pestilent charity--that was how Mr. Paxton put it to himself. He said nothing--not because he had nothing to say, but because never before in his life had he felt so stupid, with so little control over either his senses or his tongue. He shook his head, walked out of the refreshment-room, got into a cab, and drove off to Makell's hotel. Directly the cab had started and was out of the station yard he told himself that he had been a fool--doubly, trebly, a fool--a fool all round, from every possible point of view. He ought never to have let the scoundrels out of his sight; he ought to have spoken to the police; he ought to have done something; under the circumstances no one but an idiot would have done absolutely nothing at all. Never mind--for the moment it was too late. He would do something to repair his error later. He would tell Miss Strong the tale; she would rejoice to find a friend of her own figuring as the hero of such a narrative; it would be a warning to her against the making of chance acquaintance! He would ask her advice; it was a case in which two heads might be better than one. Reaching the hotel, he went straight to his bedroom, still in a sort of mental haze. He had a wash--without, however, managing to wash much of the haze out of his head. He turned to unlock his Gladstone, intending to take out of it his brush and comb. There was something the matter with the key, or else with the lock--it would not open. It was a brand-new Gladstone, bought with a particular intent; Mr. Paxton was very far from being desirous that his proposed voyage to foreign parts should prematurely be generally known. Plainly, the lock was not in the best of order. Half abstractedly he fumbled with it for some seconds, before it could be induced to open, then it was opened rather by an exertion of force, than in response to the action of the key. Having opened it, Mr. Paxton found himself a little puzzled by the arrangement of its contents. He could not at first remember just where he had put his brush and comb. He felt on the one side, where he had a sort of dim idea that it ought to be, and then on the other. He failed to light on it on either side. He paused for a moment to consider. Then, by degrees, distinctly remembered having placed it in a particular corner. He felt for it. It was not there. He wondered where it had contrived to conceal itself. He was certain that he had placed it in the bag. It must be in it now. He began to empty the bag of all its contents. The first thing he took out was a shirt. He threw it from him on to the bed. As it passed through the air something fell from it on to the floor--something which came rolling against his foot. He picked it up. It was a ring. He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. He sat staring at the trinket in a stupor of surprise. And the more he stared the more his wonder grew. That it was a ring there could not be the slightest shadow of doubt. It was a woman's ring, a costly one--a hoop of diamonds, the stones being of unusual lustre and size. How could such an article as that have found its way into his Gladstone bag? He picked up another shirt, and as he did so felt that in the front there was something hard. He opened the front to see what it was. The shirt almost dropped from his hand in the shock of his amazement. Something gleamed at him from inside the linen. Taking this something out he found himself holding in his hand a magnificent tiara of diamonds. As he knelt there, on one knee, gazing at the gaud, he would have presented a promising study for an artist possessed of a sense of humour. His mouth was open, his eyes distended to their fullest; every feature of his countenance expressed the bewilderment he felt. The presence of a ring in that brand-new bag of his was sufficiently surprising--but a tiara of diamonds! Was he the victim of some extraordinary hallucination, or the hero of a fairy tale? He stared at the jewel, and from the jewel to the shirt, and from the shirt to the bag. Then an idea, beginning at first to glimmer on him dimly, suddenly took vivid shape, filling him with a sense of strange excitement. He doubted if the bag were his. He leant over it to examine it more closely. New brown Gladstone bags, thirty inches in length, are apt to be as like each other as peas. This was a new bag, his was a new bag--he perceived nothing in the appearance of this one to suggest that it was not his. And yet that this was not his bag he was becoming more and more convinced. He turned to the shirt he had been holding. The contents of his bag had all been freshly purchased--obviously, this shirt had just come from the maker's too. He looked at the maker's name inside the neckband. This was not his shirt--it had been bought at a different shop; it had one buttonhole in front instead of three; it was not his size. He looked hastily at the rest of the things which were in the bag--they none of them were his. Had he had his wits about him he would have discovered that fact directly the bag was opened. Every garment seemed to have been intended to serve as cover to a piece of jewellery. He tumbled on to the bed rings, bracelets, brooches, necklets; out of vests, shirts, socks, and drawers. Till at last he stood, with an air of stupefaction, in front of a heap of glittering gems, the like of which he had scarcely thought could have existed outside a jeweller's shop. What could be the meaning of it? By what accident approaching to the miraculous could a bag containing such a treasure trove have been exchanged for his? What eccentric and inexcusably careless individual could have been carrying about with him such a gorgeous collection in such a flimsy covering? The key to the situation came to him as borne by a flash of lightning. They were all diamonds on the bed--nothing but diamonds. He caught up the evening paper which he had brought with him from town. He turned to the list which it contained of the diamonds which had been stolen from the Duchess of Datchet. It was as he thought. Incredible though it seemed, unless his senses played him false, in front of him were those priceless jewels--the world-famed Datchet diamonds! Reflection showed him, too, that this astounding climax had been brought about by the simplest accident. He remembered that Mr. Lawrence had alighted from the railway carriage on to the Brighton platform with the Gladstone in his hand;--he remembered now, although it had not struck him at the time, that that bag, like his own, had been brown and new. In the refreshment-room Mr. Lawrence had put his bag down upon the floor. Mr. Paxton had put his down beside it. In leaving, he must have caught up Mr. Lawrence's bag instead of his own. He had spoiled the spoiler of his spoils. Without intending to do anything of the kind, he had played on Mr. Lawrence exactly the same trick which that enterprising gentleman had himself--if Mr. Paxton could believe what he had overheard him say in the railway carriage--played on the Duchess of Datchet. When Mr. Paxton realised exactly how it was he sat down on the side of the bed, and he trembled. It was so like a special interposition of Providence--or was it of the devil? He stared at the scintillating stones. He took them up and began to handle them. This, according to the paper, was the Amsterdam Necklace, so called because one of the Dukes of Datchet had bought all the stones for it in Amsterdam. It, alone, was worth close in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand pounds. A hundred thousand pounds! Mr. Paxton's fingers tingled as he thought of it. His lips went dry. What would a hundred thousand pounds not mean to him?--and he held it, literally, in the hollow of his hand. He did not know with certainty whose it was. Providence had absolutely thrown it at his head. It might not be the Duchess's, after all. At any rate, it would be but robbing the robber. Then there was the Datchet Tiara, the Begum's Brooch, the Banee's Bracelet; if the newspaper could be credited, every piece in the collection was historical. As he toyed with them, holding them to the light, turning them this way and that, looking at them from different points of view, how the touch of the diamonds seemed to make the blood in Mr. Paxton's veins run faster! He began to move about the bedroom restlessly, returning every now and then to take still another look at the shimmering lumps of light which were beginning to exercise over him a stronger and stronger fascination. How beautiful they were! And how low he himself had fallen! He could scarcely sink much lower. Anyhow, it would be but to pass from one ditch to another. Supposing he obtained for them even a tithe of their stated value! At this crisis in his career, what a fresh start in life five-and-twenty thousand pounds would mean! It would mean the difference between hope and helplessness, between opportunity and despair. With his experience, on such a foundation he could easily build up a monstrous fortune--a fortune which would mean happiness--Daisy's and his own. Then the five-and-twenty thousand pounds could be easily returned. Compared with what he would make with it, it was but a trifle, after all. And then the main point was--and Mr. Paxton told himself that on that point rested the crux of the position--it would not be the Duchess of Datchet who would be despoiled; it was the robbers who, with true poetic justice, would be deprived of their ill-gotten gains. She had lost them in any case. He--he had but found them. He endeavoured to insist upon it, to himself, that he had but found them. True, there was such a thing as the finder returning what he had found--particularly when he suspected who had been the loser. But who could expect a man situated as he was to throw away a quarter of a million of money? This was not a case which could be judged by the ordinary standards of morality--it was an unparalleled experience. Still, he could not bring himself to say, straight out, that he would stick to what he had got, and make the most of it. His mind was not sufficiently clear to enable him to arrive at any distinct decision. But he did what was almost equally fatal, he allowed himself, half unconsciously--without venturing to put it into so many words--to drift. He would see which way the wind blew, and then, if he could, go with it. For the present he would do nothing, forgetting that, in such a position as his, the mere fact of his doing nothing involved the doing of a very great deal. He looked at his watch, starting to find it was so late. "Daisy will be tired of waiting. I must hurry, or she'll be off before I come." He looked into the glass. Somehow there seemed to be a sort of film before his eyes which prevented him from seeing himself quite clearly, or else the light was bad! But he saw enough of himself to be aware that he was not looking altogether his usual self. He endeavoured to explain this in a fashion of his own. "No wonder that I look worried after what I've gone through lately, and especially to-day--that sort of thing's enough to take the heart out of any man, and make him look old before his time." He set his teeth; something hard and savage came into his face. "But perhaps the luck has turned. I'd be a fool to throw a chance away if it has. I've gone in for some big things in my time; why shouldn't I go in for the biggest thing of all, and with one bold stroke more than win back all I've lost?" He suffered his own question to remain unanswered; but he stowed the precious gems, higgledy-piggledy, inside the copy of the evening paper which contained the news of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds; the paper he put into a corner of the Gladstone bag which was not his; the bag he locked with greater care than he had opened it. When it was fastened, he stood for a moment, surveying it a little grimly. "I'll leave it where it is. No one knows what there is inside it. It'll be safe enough. Anyhow, I'll give the common or garden thief a chance of providing for himself for life; his qualms on the moral aspect of the situation will be fewer than mine. If it's here when I come back I'll accept its continued presence as an omen." He put on his hat, and he went out to find Miss Strong. CHAPTER IV MISS WENTWORTH'S RUDENESS Miss Strong was growing a little tired of waiting. Indeed, she was beginning to wonder if Mr. Paxton was about to fail in still another something he had undertaken. She loitered near the gates of the pier, looking wistfully at every one who entered. The minutes went by, and yet "he cometh not," she said. It was not the pleasantest of nights for idling by the sea. A faint, but chilly, breeze was in the air. There was a suspicion of mist. Miss Strong was growing more and more conscious that the night was raw and damp. To add to the discomfort of her position, just inside the gates of Brighton pier is not the most agreeable place for a woman to have to wait at night--she is likely to find the masculine prowler conspicuously in evidence. Miss Strong had moved away from at least the dozenth man who had accosted her, when she referred to her watch. "I'll give him five minutes more, and then, if he doesn't come, I'm off." Scarcely had she uttered the words than she saw Mr. Paxton coming through the turnstile. With a feeling of no inconsiderable relief she moved hastily forward. In another moment they were clasping hands. "Cyril! I'm glad you've come at last! But how late you are!" "Yes; I've been detained." The moment he opened his mouth it struck her that about his manner there was something odd. But, as a wise woman in her generation, she made no comment. Together they went up the pier. Now that he had come Mr. Paxton did not seem to be in a conversational mood. They had gone half-way up; still he evinced no inclination to speak. Miss Strong, however, excused him. She understood the cause of his silence--or thought she did. Her heart was heavy--on his account, and on her own. Her words, when they came, were intended to convey the completeness of her comprehension. "I am so sorry." He turned, as if her words had startled him. "Sorry?" "I know all about it, Cyril." This time it was not merely a question of appearance. It was an obvious fact that he was startled. He stood stock still and stared at her. Stammering words came from his lips. "You know all about it? What--what do you mean?" She seemed to be surprised at his surprise. "My dear Cyril, you forget that there are papers." "Papers?" Still he stammered. "Yes, papers--newspapers. I've had every edition, and of course I've seen how Eries have fallen. "Eries? Fallen? Oh!--of course!--I see!" She was puzzled to perceive that he appeared positively relieved, as though he had supposed and feared that she had meant something altogether different. He took off his hat to wipe his brow, although the night was very far from being unduly warm. He began walking again, speaking now glibly enough, with a not unnatural bitterness. "They have fallen, sure enough--just as surely as if, if I had gone a bear, they would have risen. As you were good enough to say last night, it was exactly the sort of thing which might have been expected." "I am so sorry, Cyril." "What's the use of being sorry?" His tone was rough, almost rude. But she excused him still. "Is it very bad?" Then a wild idea came to him--one which, at the moment, seemed to him almost to amount to inspiration. In the disordered condition of his faculties--for, temporarily, they were disordered--he felt, no doubt erroneously enough, that in the girl's tone there was something besides sympathy, that there was contempt as well--contempt for him as for a luckless, helpless creature who was an utter and entire failure. And he suddenly resolved to drop at least a hint that, while she was despising him as so complete a failure, even now there was, actually within his grasp, wealth sufficient to satisfy the dreams of avarice. "I don't know what you call very bad; as regards the Eries it is about as bad as it could be. But----" He hesitated and stopped. "But what?" She caught sight of his face. She saw how it was working. "Cyril, is there any good news to counteract the bad? Have you had a stroke of luck?" Yet he hesitated, already half regretting that he had said anything at all. But, having gone so far, he went farther. "I don't want you to reckon on it just at present, but I think it possible that, very shortly, I may find myself in possession of a larger sum of money than either of us has dreamed of." "Cyril! Do you mean it?" Her tone of incredulity spurred him on. "Should I be likely to say such a thing if I did not mean it? I mean exactly what I said. To be quite accurate, it is possible, nay, probable, that before very long I shall be the possessor of a quarter of a million of money. I hope that will be enough for you. It will for me." "A quarter of a million! Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, Cyril!" "It sounds a nice little sum, doesn't it? I hope that it will feel as nice when it's mine!" "But, Cyril, I don't understand. Is it a new speculation you are entering on?" "It is a speculation--of a kind." His tone was ironical, though she did not seem to be conscious of the fact. "A peculiar kind. Its peculiarity consists in this, that, though I may not be able to lay my hands on the entire quarter of a million, I can on an appreciable portion of it whenever I choose." "What is the nature of the speculation? Is it on the Stock Exchange?" "That, at present, is a secret. It is not often that I have kept a secret from you; you will have to forgive me, Daisy, if I keep one now." Something peculiar in his tone caught her ear. She glanced at him sharply. "You are really in earnest, Cyril? You do mean that there is a reasonable prospect of your position being improved at last?" "There is not only a reasonable prospect, there is a practical certainty." "In spite of what you have lost in Eries?" "In spite of everything." A ring of passion came into his voice. "Daisy, don't ask me any more questions now. Trust me! I tell you that in any case a fortune, or something very like one, is within my grasp." He stopped, and she was silent. They went and stood where they had been standing the night before--looking towards the Worthing lights. Each seemed to be wrapped in thought. Then she said softly, in her voice a trembling-- "Cyril, I am so glad." "I am glad that you are glad." "And I am so sorry for what I said last night." "What was it you said that is the particular occasion of your sorrow?" She drew closer to his side. When she spoke it was as if, in some strange way, she was afraid. "I am sorry that I said that if luck went against you to-day things would have to be over between us. I don't know what made me say it. I did not mean it. I thought of it all night; I have been thinking of it all day. I don't think that, whatever happens, I could ever find it in my heart to send you away." "I assure you, lady, that I should not go unless you sent me!" "Cyril!" She pressed his arm. Her voice sank lower. She almost whispered in his ear, while her eyes looked towards the Worthing lights. "I think that perhaps it would be better if we were to get married as soon as we can--better for both of us." Turning, he gripped her arms with both his hands. "Do you mean it?" "I do; if you do the great things of which you talk or if you don't. If you don't there is my little fortune, with which we must start afresh, both of us together, either on this side of the world or on the other, whichever you may choose." "Daisy!" His voice vibrated with sudden passion. "Will you come with me to the other side of the world in any case?" "What--even if you make your fortune?" "Yes; even if I make my fortune!" She looked at him with that something on her face which is the best thing that a man can see. And tears came into her eyes. And she said to him, in the words which have been ringing down the ages-- "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God; where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me!" It may be that the words savoured to him of exaggeration; at any rate, he turned away, as if something choked his utterance. She, too, was still. "I suppose you don't want a grand wedding." "I want a wedding, that's all I want. I don't care what sort of a wedding it is so long as it's a wedding. And"--again her voice sank, and again she drew closer to his side--"I don't want to have to wait for it too long." "Will you be ready to marry me within a month?" "I will." "Then within a month we will be married." They were silent. His thoughts, in a dazed sort of fashion, travelled to the diamonds which were in somebody else's Gladstone bag. Her thoughts wandered through Elysian fields. It is possible that she imagined--as one is apt to do--that his thoughts were there likewise. All at once she said something which brought him back from what seemed to be a waking dream. She felt him start. "Come with me, and let's tell Charlie." The suggestion was not by any means to Mr. Paxton's taste. He considered for a few seconds, seeming to hesitate. She perceived that her proposition had not been received with over-much enthusiasm. "Surely you don't mind our telling Charlie?" "No"--his voice was a little surly--"I don't mind." Miss Charlotte Wentworth, better known to her intimates as Charlie, was in some respects a young woman of the day. She was thirty, and she wrote for her daily bread--wrote anything, from "Fashions" to "Poetry," from "Fiction" to "Our Family Column." She had won for herself a position of tolerable comfort, earning something over five-hundred a year with satisfactory regularity. To state that is equivalent to saying that, on her own lines, she was a woman of the world, a citizen of the New Bohemia, capable of holding something more than her own in most circumstances in which she might find herself placed, with most, if not all, of the sentiment which is supposed to be a feminine attribute knocked out of her. She was not bad-looking; dressed well, with a suggestion of masculinity; wore pince-nez, and did whatsoever it pleased her to do. Differing though they did from each other in so many respects, she and Daisy Strong had been the friends of years. When Mrs. Strong had died, and Daisy was left alone, Miss Wentworth had insisted on their setting up together, at least temporarily, a joint establishment, an arrangement from which there could be no sort of doubt that Miss Strong received pecuniary advantage. Mr. Paxton was not Miss Wentworth's lover--nor, to be frank, was she his; the consequence of which was that her brusque, outspoken method of speech conveyed to his senses--whether she intended it or not--a suggestion of scorn, being wont to touch him on just those places where he found himself least capable of resistance. When the lovers entered, Miss Wentworth, with her person on one chair and her feet on another, was engaged in reading a magazine which had just come in. Miss Strong, desiring to avoid the preliminary skirmishing which experience had taught her was apt to take place whenever her friend and her lover met, plunged at once into the heart of the subject which was uppermost in her mind. "I've brought you some good news--at least I think it is good news." Miss Wentworth looked at her--a cross-examining sort of look--then at Mr. Paxton, then back at the lady. "Good news? One always does associate good news with Mr. Paxton. The premonition becomes a kind of habit." The gentleman thus alluded to winced. Miss Strong did not appear to altogether relish the lady's words. She burst out with the news of which she spoke, as if with the intention of preventing a retort coming from Mr. Paxton. "We are going to be married." Miss Wentworth displayed a possibly intentional mental opacity. "Who is going to be married?" "Charlie! How aggravating you are! Cyril and I, of course." Miss Wentworth resumed her reading. "Indeed! Well, it's no affair of mine. Of course, therefore, I should not presume to make any remark. If, however, any one should invite me to comment on the subject, I trust that I shall be at the same time informed as to what is the nature of the comment which I am invited to make." Miss Strong went and knelt at Miss Wentworth's side, resting her elbows on that lady's knees. "Charlie, won't you give us your congratulations?" Miss Wentworth replied, without removing her glance from off the open page of her magazine-- "With pleasure--if you want them. Also, if you want it, I will give you eighteenpence--or even half a crown." "Charlie! How unkind you are!" Miss Wentworth lowered her magazine. She looked Miss Strong straight in the face. Tears were in the young lady's eyes, but Miss Wentworth showed not the slightest sign of being moved by them. "Unfortunately, as it would seem, though I am a woman, I do occasionally allow my conduct to be regulated by the dictates of common sense. When I see another woman making a dash towards suicide I don't, as a rule, give her a helping push, merely because she happens to be my friend; preferentially, if I can, I hold her back, even though it be against her will. I have yet to learn in what respect Mr. Paxton--who, I gladly admit, is personally a most charming gentleman--is qualified to marry even a kitchen-maid. Permit me to finish. You told me last night that Mr. Paxton was going a bull on Eries; that if they fell one he would be ruined. In the course of the day they have fallen more than one; therefore, if what you told me was correct, he must be ruined pretty badly. Then, without any sort of warning, you come and inform me that you intend to marry the man who is doubly and trebly ruined, and you expect me to offer my congratulations on the event offhand! On the evidence which is at present before the court it can't be done." "Why shouldn't I marry him, even if he is ruined?" "Why, indeed? I am a supporter of the liberty of the female subject, if ever there was one. Why, if you wished to, shouldn't you marry a crossing-sweep? I don't know. But, on the other hand, I don't see on what grounds you could expect me to offer you my congratulations if you did." "Cyril is not a crossing-sweep." "No; he has not even that trade at his finger-ends." "Charlie!" Mr. Paxton made as if to speak. Miss Strong motioned him to silence with a movement of her hand. "As it happens, you are quite wrong. It is true that Cyril lost by Eries, but he has more than made up for that loss by what he has gained in another direction. Instead of being ruined, he has made a fortune." "Indeed! Pray, how did he manage to do that? I always did think that Mr. Paxton was a remarkable man. My confidence in him is beginning to be more than justified. And may I, at the same time, ask what is Mr. Paxton's notion of a fortune?" "Tell her, Cyril, all about it." Thus suffered at last to deliver his soul in words, Mr. Paxton evinced a degree of resentment which, perhaps, on the whole, was not unjustified. "I fail to see that there is any necessity for me to justify myself in Miss Wentworth's eyes, who, on more than one occasion, has shown an amount of interest in my affairs which was only not impertinent because it happened to be feminine. But since, Daisy, you appear to be anxious that Miss Wentworth should be as satisfied on the subject of my prospects and position as you yourself are, I will do the best I can. And therefore Miss Wentworth, I would explain that my notion of a fortune is a sum equivalent to some ten or twenty times the amount you yourself are likely to be able to earn in the whole of your life." "That ought to figure up nicely. And do you really mean to say, Mr. Paxton, that you have lost one fortune and gained another in the course of a single day?" "I do." "How was it done? I wish you would put me in the way of doing it for myself." "Surely, Miss Wentworth, a woman of your capacity is qualified to do anything she pleases without prompting, and solely on her own initiative!" "Thanks, Mr. Paxton, it's very kind of you to say such pretty things, but I am afraid you estimate my capacity a thought too highly." Miss Wentworth turned in her seat, so as to have the gentleman within her range of vision. "You understand, Mr. Paxton, very well how it is. Daisy is a lonely child. She belongs to the order of women who were in fashion before the commercial instinct became ingrained in the feminine constitution. She wants looking after. There are only Mr. Franklyn and myself to look after her. Satisfy me that, after all liabilities are settled, there is a substantial balance on the right side of your account, and I will congratulate you both." "That, at the moment, I cannot do. But I will do this. I will undertake, in less than a fortnight, to prove myself the possessor of possibly something like a quarter of a million, and certainly of a hundred thousand pounds." "A quarter of a million! A hundred thousand pounds! Such figures warm one's blood. One will almost begin to wonder, Mr. Paxton, if you can have come by them honestly." The words were uttered lightly. Mr. Paxton chose to take them as if they had been meant in earnest. His cheeks flushed. His eyes flamed fire. He stood up, so beside himself with rage that it was a second or two before he could regain sufficient self-control to enable him to speak. "Miss Wentworth, how dare you say such a thing! I have endured more from you than any man ought to endure from any woman. But when you charge me with dishonesty it is too much, even from you to me. You take advantage of your sex to address to me language for which, were the speaker a man, I would thrash him within an inch of his life." Miss Strong, with white face, looked from one to the other. "Cyril, she didn't mean what you think. Tell him, Charlie, that you didn't mean what he thinks." Through her glasses Miss Wentworth surveyed the angry man with shrewd, unfaltering eyes. "Really, Mr. Paxton puts me in a difficult position. He is so quick to take offence where none was intended, that one hardly knows what to think. Surely, when a man shows such heat and such violence in resenting what only a distorted imagination could twist into an actual imputation of dishonesty, it suggests that his own conscience can scarcely be quite clear." Mr. Paxton seemed struggling as if to speak, and then to put a bridle on his tongue. The truth is, that he was only too conscious that he was in no mood to be a match in argument--or, for the matter of that, in retort either--for this clear-sighted lady. He felt that, if he was not careful, he would go too far; that he had better take himself away before he had made a greater exhibition of himself than he had already. So he contented himself with what was meant as an assumption of dignity. "That is enough. Between you and me nothing more need, or can, be said. I have the honour, Miss Wentworth, of wishing you goodnight." She showed no symptoms of being crushed. On the contrary, she retained her coolness, and also her powers of exasperation. "Good-night, Mr. Paxton. Shall I ring the bell, Daisy, or will you show Mr. Paxton to the door?" Miss Strong darted at her a look which, on that occasion at any rate, was not a look of love, and followed Mr. Paxton, who already had vanished from the room. Finding him in the hall, she nestled up to his side. "I am sorry, Cyril, that this should have happened. If I had had the least suspicion of anything of the kind, I never would have asked you to come." Mr. Paxton wore, or attempted to wear, an air of masculine superiority. "My dear Daisy, I have seldom met Miss Wentworth without her having insulted me. On this occasion, however, she has gone too far. I will never, willingly, darken her door again. I hope you will not ask me; but if you do I shall be compelled to decline." "It's my door as well as hers. But it won't be for long. Still, I don't think she meant what you thought she did--she couldn't be so absurd! It's a way she has of talking; she often says things without considering the construction of which they are capable." "It is only the fact of her being a woman, my dear Daisy, which gives her the impunity of which she takes undue advantage." "Cyril, you mustn't brand all women because of one. We are not all like that. Do you suppose that I am not aware that the person, be it man or woman, who imagines you to be capable of dishonesty either does not know you, or else is stark, raving mad? Do you think that I could love you without the absolute certainty of knowing you to be a man of blameless honour? I don't suppose you are an angel--I'm not one either, though perhaps you mightn't think it, sir! And I take it for granted that you have done plenty of things which you would rather have left undone--as I have too! But I do know that, regarded from the point of view of any standard, whether human or Divine, in all essentials you are an honest man, and that you could be nothing else." The eulogium was a warm one--it made Mr. Paxton feel a trifle queer. "Thank you, darling," So he murmured, and he kissed her. "You will meet me again to-morrow night to tell me how the fortune fares?" He tried to avoid doing so; but the effort only failed--he had to wince. He could only hope that she did not notice it. "I will, my darling--on the pier." "And mind you're punctual!" "I promise you I'll be punctual to a second." CHAPTER V IN THE BODEGA As Mr. Paxton walked away from the house in which the two ladies resided, it was with the consciousness strong upon him that his position had not been made any easier by what he had said to the lady of his love, not to speak of that lady's friend. Before he had met Miss Strong he had been, comparatively, free--free, that is, to return the diamonds to their rightful owner. Now, it seemed to him, his hands were tied--he himself had tied them. He had practically committed himself to a course of action which could only point in one direction, and that an ugly one. "What a fool I've been!" One is apt to tell oneself that sort of thing when the fact is already well established, and also, not only without intending to undo one's folly, but even when one actually proposes to make it more! As Mr. Paxton did then. He told himself, frankly, and with cutting scorn, what a fool he had been, and then proceeded to take what, under similar circumstances, seems to be a commonly accepted view of the situation--assuring, or endeavouring to assure himself, that to pile folly on to folly, until the height of it reached the mountain-tops, and then to undo it, would be easier than to take steps to undo it at once, while it was still comparatively a little thing. It was perhaps this line of reasoning which induced Mr. Paxton to fancy himself in want of a drink. He turned into the Bodega. He treated himself to a whisky and soda. While he was consuming the fluid and abusing Fate, some one touched him on the shoulder. Looking round he found himself confronted by Mr. Lawrence and his friend the German-American. Not only was their appearance wholly unexpected, but obviously the surprise was not a pleasant one. Mr. Paxton clutched at the edge of the bar, glaring at the two men as if they had been ghosts. "Good evening, Mr. Paxton." It was Mr. Lawrence who spoke, in those quiet, level tones with which Miss Strong was familiar. To Mr. Paxton's lively imagination their very quietude seemed to convey a threat. And Mr. Lawrence kept those beautiful blue eyes of his fixed on Mr. Paxton's visage with a sustained persistence which, for some cause or other, that gentleman found himself incapable of bearing. He nodded, turned his face away, and picked up his glass. But to do Mr. Paxton justice, he was very far from being a coward; nor, when it came to the sticking-point, was his nerve at all likely to fail him. He realised instantly that he was in a very delicate situation, and one on which, curiously enough, he had not reckoned. But if Mr. Lawrence and his friend supposed that Mr. Paxton, even if taken by surprise, was a man who could, in the long run, be taken at an advantage, they were wrong. Mr. Paxton emptied his glass, and replied to Mr. Lawrence-- "It's not a pleasant evening, is it? I think that up at the station you asked me to have a drink with you. Now, perhaps, you'll have one with me?" As he spoke Mr. Paxton was conscious that the German-American was regarding him, if possible, even more intently than his friend. This was the man to whom he had taken an instinctive dislike. There was about the fellow a suggestion of something animal--of something almost eerie. He did not strike one as being a person with whom it would be wise to quarrel, but rather as an individual who would stick at nothing to gain his ends, and who would be moved by no appeals for either sympathy or mercy. "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment, Mr. Paxton?" "Outside? Why?" Mr. Paxton's air of innocence was admirably feigned. It might be that he was a better actor with a man than with a woman. "There is something which I rather wish to say to you." "To me? What is it?" "I would rather, if you don't mind, speak to you outside." Mr. Paxton turned his back against the bar facing Mr. Lawrence with a smile. "Aren't we private enough in here? What is it you can have to say to me?" "You know very well what it is I have to say to you. If you take my advice, you'll come outside." Mr. Lawrence still spoke softly, but with a softness which, if one might put it so, had in it the suggestion of a scratch. A gleam came into his eyes which was scarcely a friendly gleam. The smile on Mr. Paxton's countenance broadened. "I know! You are mistaken. I do not know. You are the merest acquaintance; I have never exchanged half a dozen words with you. What communication of a private nature you may have to make to me, I have not the faintest notion, but, whatever it is, I would rather you said it here." Mr. Paxton's tones were, perhaps purposely, as loud as Mr. Lawrence's were soft. What he said must have been distinctly audible, not only to those who were close to him but also to those who were at a little distance. Especially did the high words seem audible to a shabby-looking fellow who was seated at a little table just in front of them, and wore his hat a good deal over his eyes, but who, in spite of that fact, seemed to keep a very keen eye on Mr. Paxton. Perceiving that his friend appeared to be slightly nonplussed by Mr. Paxton's manner, the German-American came a little forward, as if to his assistance. This was a really curious individual. As has been already mentioned, he was tall and thin, and, in spite of his stoop, his height was accentuated by the fashion of his attire. He wore a long, straight black overcoat, so long that it reached almost to his ankles. It was wide enough to have admitted two of him. He kept it buttoned high up to his chin. His head was surmounted by a top hat, which could scarcely have been of English manufacture, for not only was it a size or two too large for him, but, relatively, it was almost as long as his overcoat. Thus, since his hat came over his forehead, and his overcoat came up to his chin, not much of his physiognomy was visible, and what was visible was not of a kind to make one long for more. His complexion was of a dirty red. His cheekbones were high, and his cheeks were hollow. They were covered with tiny bristles, which gleamed in the light as he moved his head. His eyes were small, and black, and beady, and he had a trick of opening and shutting them, as if they were constantly being focussed. His nose was long, and thin, and aquiline--that aquiline which suggests a vulture. His voluminous moustache was black; one wondered if it owed that shade to nature. But, considerable though it was, it altogether failed to conceal his mouth, which, as the Irishman said, "rolled right round his jaws." Indeed, it was of such astonishing dimensions that the surprise which one felt on first encountering it, caused one, momentarily, to neglect to notice the practically entire absence of a chin. This pleasing-looking person, coming to Mr. Paxton, raised a long, lean forefinger, capped by what rather resembled a talon than a human fingernail, and crooked it in Mr. Paxton's face. And he said, speaking with that pronounced German-American accent-- "Permit me, my dear friend, to ask of Mr. Paxton just one question--just one little question. Mr. Paxton, what was the colour of your Gladstone bag, eh?" Mr. Paxton felt, as he regarded the speaker, that he was looking at what bore a stronger resemblance to some legendary evil creature than to a being of our common humanity. "I fail to understand you, sir." "And yet my question is a very simple one--a very simple one indeed. I ask you, what was the colour of your Gladstone bag, eh?" "My Gladstone bag!--which Gladstone bag?" "The Gladstone bag which you brought with you in the train from town, eh?" Mr. Paxton gazed at his questioner with, on his countenance, an entire absence of any sort of comprehension. He turned to Mr. Lawrence-- "Is this a friend of yours?" [Illustration: "What was the colour of your Gladstone bag, eh?" _The Datchet Diamonds_. _Page_ 82.] The pair looked at Mr. Paxton, then at each other, then back at Mr. Paxton, then again at each other. The German-American waggled his lean forefinger. "He is very difficult, Mr. Paxton--very difficult indeed, eh? He understand nothing. It is strange. But it is like that sometimes, eh?" Mr. Lawrence interposed. "Look here, I'll be plain enough, even for you, Mr. Paxton. Have you got my Gladstone bag?" Mr. Lawrence still spoke softly, but as he put his question Mr. Paxton was conscious that his eyes were fixed on him with a singular intentness, and his friend's eyes, and the eyes of the man who half concealed them with his hat, and, unless he was mistaken, the eyes of another shabby individual who was seated at a second table, between himself and the door. Indeed, he had a dim perception that sharp eyes were watching him from all over the spacious room, and that they waited for his words. Still, he managed to retain very fair control over his presence of mind. "Your Gladstone bag! I! What the deuce do you mean?" "What I say--have you got my Gladstone bag?" Mr. Paxton drew himself up. Something of menace came on to his face and into his eyes. His tone became hard and dry. "Either I still altogether fail to understand you, Mr. Lawrence, or else I understand too much. Your question is such a singular one that I must ask you to explain what construction I am intended to place upon it." The two men regarded each other steadily, eye to eye. It is possible that Mr. Paxton read more in Mr. Lawrence's glance than Mr. Lawrence read in his, for Mr. Paxton perceived quite clearly that, in spite of the man's seeming gentleness, on the little voyage on which he was setting forth he would have to look out, at the very least, for squalls. The German-American broke the silence. "It is that Mr. Paxton has not yet opened the Gladstone bag, and seen that a little exchange has taken place--is that so, eh?" Mr. Paxton understood that the question was as a loophole through which he might escape. He might still rid himself of what already he dimly saw might turn out to be something worse than an Old Man of the Sea upon his shoulders. But he deliberately declined to avail himself of the proffered chance. On the contrary, by his reply he burnt his boats, and so finally cut off his escape--at any rate in that direction. "Opened it? Of course I opened it! I opened it directly I got in. I've no more idea of what you two men are talking about than the man in the moon." Once more the friends exchanged glances, and again Mr. Lawrence asked a question. "Mr. Paxton, I've a particular reason for asking, and I should therefore feel obliged if you will tell me what your bag was like?" Mr. Paxton never hesitated--he took his second fence in his stride. "Mine? It's a black bag--rather old--with my initials on one side--stuck pretty well all over with luggage labels. But why do you ask?" Again the two men's eyes met, Mr. Lawrence regarding the other with a glance which seemed as if it would have penetrated to his inmost soul. This time, however, Mr. Paxton's own eyes never wavered. He returned the other's look with every appearance of _sang froid_. Mr. Lawrence's voice continued to be soft and gentle. "You are sure that yours was not a new brown bag?" "Sure! Of course I'm sure! It was black; and, as for being new--well, it was seven or eight years old at least." "Would you mind my having a look at it?" "What do you want to have a look at it for?" "I should esteem it a favour if you would permit me." "Why should I?" Again the two men's glances met. The German-American spoke. "Where are you stopping, Mr. Paxton, eh?" Wheeling round, Mr. Paxton treated the inquirer to anything but an enlightening answer. "What has that to do with you? Although a perfect stranger to me--and one to whom I would rather remain a stranger--you appear to take a degree of interest in my affairs which I can only characterize as--impertinent." "It is not meant to be impertinent, oh, dear no; oh, no, Mr Paxton, eh?" Putting up his clawlike hand, the fellow began to rub it against his apology for a chin. Mr. Paxton turned his attention to Mr. Lawrence; it was a peculiarity of that gentleman's bearing that since his appearance on the scene he had never for a single instant removed his beautiful blue eyes from Mr. Paxton's countenance. "You have asked me one or two curious questions, without giving me any sort of explanation; now perhaps you won't mind answering one or two for me. Have you lost a bag?" "I can scarcely say that I have lost it. I am parted from it--for a time." Mr. Paxton stared, as if not comprehending. "I trust that the parting may not be longer than you appear to anticipate. Was there anything in it of value?" "A few trifles, which I should not care to lose." "Where, as you phrase it, did the parting take place?" "In the refreshment-room at the Central Station--when you went out of it." Mr. Paxton flushed--it might have been a smart bit of acting, but it was a genuine flush. He looked at the soft-toned but sufficiently incisive speaker as if he would have liked to have knocked him down; possibly, too, came very near to trying to do it. Then seemed to remember himself, confining himself instead to language which was as harsh and as haughty as he could conveniently make it. "That is not the first time you have dropped a similar insinuation. But it shall be the last. I do not wish to have a scene in a public place, but if you address me again I will call the attention of the attendants to you, and I will have you removed." So saying, Mr. Paxton, wheeling round on his heels, favoured the offender with a capital view of his back. To be frank, he hardly expected that his Bombastes Furioso air would prove of much effect. He had reason to think that Mr. Lawrence was not the sort of person to allow himself to be cowed by such a very unsubstantial weapon as tall-talk. His surprise was, therefore, the greater when, the words being scarcely out of his mouth, the German-American, touching his associate on the arm, made to him some sort of a sign, and without another word the two marched off together. Somewhat oddly, as it seemed, when they went out two or three other persons went out also; but Mr. Paxton particularly noticed that the man with the hat over his eyes who was seated at the little table remained behind, suddenly appearing, however, to have all his faculties absorbed in a newspaper which had been lying hitherto neglected just in front of him. Mr. Paxton congratulated himself on the apparent effect which his words had had. "That's a good riddance, anyhow. I don't think that I'm of the sort that's easily bluffed, but the odds were against me, and--well--the stakes are high--very high!" As Mr. Paxton took off his hat to wipe his forehead it almost seemed that his temperature was high as well as the stakes. He called for another whisky and soda, As he sipped it, he inquired of himself how long it would be advisable for him to stop before taking his departure; he had no desire to find the enterprising associates waiting for him in the street. While he meditated some one addressed him from behind, in precisely the same words which Mr. Lawrence had originally used. Commonplace though they were, as they reached his ears they seemed to give him a sort of thrill. "Good evening, Mr. Paxton." Mr. Paxton turned round so quickly that some of the liquor which was in the glass that he was holding was thrown out upon the floor. The speaker proved to be a rather short and thick-set man, with a stubbly grey beard and whiskers, and a pair of shrewd, brown eyes. Mr. Paxton beheld him with as few signs of satisfaction as he had evinced on first beholding Mr. Lawrence. He tried to pass off his evident discomposure with a laugh. "You! You're a pretty sort of fellow to startle a man like that!" "Did I startle you?" "When a man's dreaming of angels, he's easily startled. What's your liquid?" "Scotch, cold. Who was that you were talking to just now?" Mr. Paxton shot at the stranger a keen, inquisitorial glance. "What do you mean?" "Weren't you talking to somebody as I came in?--two men, weren't there?" "Oh yes! One of them I never met in my life before, and I never want to meet again. The other, the younger, I was introduced to yesterday." "The younger--what's his name?" "Lawrence. Do you know him?" The stranger appeared not to notice the second hurried, almost anxious look which Mr. Paxton cast in his direction. "I fancied I did. But I don't know any one of the name of Lawrence. I must have been wrong." Mr. Paxton applied himself to his glass. It appeared, he told himself, that he was in bad luck's way. Only one person could have been more unwelcome just at the moment than Mr. Lawrence had been, and that person had actually followed hard on Mr. Lawrence's heels. As is the way with men of his class, who frequent the highways and the byways of great cities, Mr. Paxton had a very miscellaneous acquaintance. Among them were not a few officers of police. He had rather prided himself on this fact--as men of his sort are apt to do. But now he almost wished that he had never been conscious that such a thing as a policeman existed in the world; for there--at the moment when he was least wanted--standing at his side, was one of the most famous of London detectives; a man who was high in the confidence of the dignitaries at the "Yard"; a man, too, with whom he had had one or two familiar passages, and whom he could certainly not treat with the same stand-off air with which he had treated Mr. Lawrence. He understood now why the associates had stood not on the order of their going; it was not fear of him, as in his conceit he had supposed, which had sped their heels; it was fear of John Ireland. Gentlemen of Mr. Lawrence's kidney were pretty sure to know a man of Mr. Ireland's reputation, at any rate by sight. The "office" had been given him that a "tec." was in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Lawrence had taken himself away just in time, as he hoped, to escape recognition. That that hope was vain was obvious from what John Ireland had said. In spite of his disclaiming any knowledge of a man named Lawrence, Mr. Paxton had little doubt that both men had been "spotted." A wild impulse came to him. He seemed to be drifting, each second, into deeper and deeper waters. Why not take advantage of what might, after all, be another rope thrown out to him by chance? Why not make a clean breast of everything to Ireland? Why not go right before it was, indeed, too late--return her diamonds to the sorrowing Duchess, and make an end of his wild dreams of fortune? No; that he would--he could not do. At least not yet. He had committed himself to Daisy, to Miss Wentworth. There was plenty of time. He could, if he chose, play the part of harlequin, and with a touch of his magic wand at any time change the scene. He even tried to flatter himself that he might play the part of an amateur detective, and track the criminals on original--and Fabian!--lines of his own; but self-flattery of that sort was too gross even for his digestion. "Nice affair that of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds." The glass almost dropped from Mr. Paxton's hand. The utterance of the words at that identical instant was of course but a coincidence; but it was a coincidence of a kind which made it extremely difficult for him to retain even a vestige of self-control. Fortunately, perhaps, Mr. Ireland appeared to be unconscious of his agitation. Putting his glass down on the bar-counter, he twisted it round and round by the stem. He tried to modulate his voice into a tone of complete indifference. "The Duchess of Datchet's diamonds? What do you mean?" "Haven't you heard?" Mr. Paxton hesitated. He felt that it might be just as well not to feign too much innocence in dealing with John Ireland. "Saw something about it as I came down in the train." "I thought you had. Came down from town?" "Yes--just for the run." "Came in the same train with Mr. Lawrence?" "I rather fancy I did." "He was in the next compartment to yours, wasn't he?" Mr. Ireland's manner was almost ostentatiously careless, and he seemed to be entirely occupied in the contents of his glass, but for some reason Mr. Paxton was beginning to feel more and more uncomfortable. "Was he? I wasn't aware of it. I noticed him on the platform when the train got in." "With his friend?" "Yes--the other man was with him." "Went into the refreshment-room with them, didn't you, and had a drink?" Mr. Paxton turned and looked at the speaker; Mr. Ireland seemed, as it were, to studiously refrain from looking at him. "Upon my word, Ireland, you seem to have kept a keen eye upon my movements." "I came down by that train too; you didn't appear to notice me." Mr. Paxton wished--he scarcely knew why, but he did wish--that he had. He admitted that the detective had gone unrecognised, and there was a pause, broken by Mr. Ireland. "I am inclined to think that I know where those diamonds are." Odd how conscience--or is it the want of experience?--plays havoc with the nervous system of the amateur in crime. Ordinarily, Mr. Paxton was scarcely conscious that he had such things as nerves; he was about as cool an individual as you would be likely to meet. But since lighting on those sparkling pebbles in somebody else's Gladstone bag, he had been one mass of nerves, and of exposed nerves, too. Like some substance which is in the heart of a thunderstorm, and which is peculiarly sensitive to the propinquity of electricity, he had been receiving a continual succession of shocks. When Mr. Ireland said in that unexpected and, as Mr. Paxton felt, uncalled-for fashion that he thought that he knew where those diamonds were, Mr. Paxton was the recipient of another shock upon the spot. Half a dozen times it had been with an effort that he had just succeeded in not betraying himself; he had to make another and a similar effort then. "You think that you know where those diamonds are?" "I do!" There was silence; then the officer of the law went on. Mr. Paxton wished within himself that he would not. "You're a sporting man, Mr. Paxton. I wouldn't mind making a bet that they're not far off! There's a chance for you!" "Oh!" It was not at all a sort of bet which Mr. Paxton was disposed to take, nor a kind of chance he relished. "Thanks; but it's a thing about which you're likely to know more than I do; I'm not betting. Are you on the job?" "Half the Yard is on the job already." Silence once more; then again Mr. Ireland. He stood holding his glass in his hand, twiddling it between his finger and thumb, and all his faculties seemed to be engaged in making an exhaustive examination of the liquor it contained; but Mr. Paxton almost felt as if his voice had been the voice of fate. "The man who has those diamonds will find that they won't be of the slightest use to him. He'll find that they'll be as difficult to get rid of as the Koh-i-Nor. Like the chap who stole the Gainsborough, he'll find himself in possession of a white elephant. Every dealer of reputation, in every part of the world, who is likely to deal in such things knows the Datchet diamonds as well as, if not better than, the Duke himself. The chap who has them will have to sell them to a fence. That fence will give him no more for them than if they were the commonest trumpery. And for this very good reason--the fence will either have to lock them up, and bequeath them to his great-grandson, on the offchance of his having face enough to put them on the market; or else he will have to break them up and offer them to the trade as if they were the ordinary stones of commerce, just turned up by the shovel. If I were on the cross, Mr. Paxton, I wouldn't have those sparklers if they were offered me for nothing. I should be able to get very little for them; the odds are they would quod me; and you may take this from me, that for the man--I don't care who he is, first offender or not--who is found with the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds in his possession, it's a lifer!" Mr. Paxton was silent for a moment or two after the detective had ceased. He took another drink; it might have been that his lips stood in need of being moistened. "You think it would be a lifer, do you?" "I'm certain. After all the jewel thieves who have got clean off, if a judge does get this gentleman in front of him--which I think he will!--he'll make it as hot for him as ever he can. I shouldn't like to see you in such a position, Mr. Paxton, I assure you." Again Mr. Paxton raised his glass to his lips. "I hope that you won't, Mr. Ireland, with all my heart." "I hope I sha'n't, Mr. Paxton. You know, perhaps as well as I do, it's an awful position for a man to stand in. What did you say your friend's name was--Lawrence? It's queer that I should have thought that I knew his face, and yet I don't think that I ever knew any one of that name. By the way, I fancy that you once told me that you didn't mind having a try at anything in which there was money to be made. Now, if you could give me a hint as to the whereabouts of the Duchess's diamonds, you might find that there was money in that." As he emptied his glass Mr. Paxton looked the detective in the face. "I wish I could, John--I'd be on for the deal! Only, I'm sorry that I can't." CHAPTER VI THE ADVENTURES OF A NIGHT "There was something about Mr. John Ireland's manner which I couldn't quite make out." This was what Mr. Paxton told himself as he came out of the Bodega. He turned down Ship Street, on to the front, meaning to stroll along the King's Road to his hotel. As he came out of the hotel his eye caught a glimpse of a loiterer standing in the shadow of a door higher up the street. When he had gone a little distance along the King's Road, glancing over his shoulder, he perceived that some one was standing at the corner of Ship Street, with his face turned in his direction. "It occurs to me as being just possible that the events of the night are going to form a fitting climax to a day of adventure. That Ireland can have the slightest inkling of how the case really stands is certainly impossible; and yet, if I didn't know it was impossible, I should feel just a trifle uneasy. His manner's queer. I wonder if he has any suspicions of Lawrence, or of Lawrence's friend. That he knew the pair I'll bet my boots. Plainly, Lawrence is not the fellow's real name; it is simply the name by which he chose to be known to Daisy. If Ireland has cause to suspect the precious pair, seeing me with them twice, under what may seem to him to be curious circumstances, may cause him to ask himself what the deuce I am doing in such a galley. Undoubtedly, there was something in Mr. Ireland's manner which suggested that, in his opinion, I knew more about the matter than I altogether ought to." Again Mr. Paxton glanced over his shoulder. About a hundred yards behind him a man advanced in his direction. Looking across the road, on the seaward side, he perceived that another man was there--a man who, as soon as Mr. Paxton turned his head, stopped short, seeming to be wholly absorbed in watching the sea. The man immediately behind him, however, was still advancing. Mr. Paxton hesitated. A fine rain was falling. It was late for Brighton. Except these two, not a creature was in sight. "I wonder if either of those gentlemen is shadowing me, and, if so, which?" He turned up West Street. When he had gone some way up it he peeped to see. A man was coming up the same side of the street on which he was. "There's Number One." He went farther; then looked again. The same man was coming on; at the corner of the street a second man was loitering. "There's Number Two. Unless I am mistaken that is the gentleman who on a sudden found himself so interested in the sea. The question is, whether they are both engaged by the same person, or if they are in separate employ. I have no doubt whatever that one of them defies the chances of catching cold in the interests of Mr. Lawrence. Until the little mystery connected with the disappearance of his Gladstone bag is cleared up, if he can help it, he is scarcely likely to allow me to escape his constant supervision. For him I am prepared; but to be attended also by a myrmidon of Ireland's is, I confess, a prospect which I do not relish." He trudged up the hill, pondering as he went. The rain was falling faster. He pulled his coat collar up about his ears. He had no umbrella. "This is for me an experience of an altogether novel kind, and uncommonly pleasant weather it is in which to make its acquaintance. One obvious reason why Mr. Lawrence should have me shadowed is because of the strong desire which he doubtless feels to know where it is that I am staying. The natural deduction being that where I stay, there also stays my Gladstone bag. The odds are that Mr. Lawrence feels a quite conceivable curiosity to know in what the difference exactly consists between my Gladstone bag, and the one from which he, as he puts it, for a time has parted. Why John Ireland should wish to have my movements dogged I do not understand; and I am bound to add I would much rather not know either." Mr. Paxton had reached the top of West Street. The man on the same side of the road still plodded along. On the opposite side of the street, much farther behind, came the other man too. Mr. Paxton formed an immediate resolution. "I have no intention of tramping the streets of Brighton to see which of us can be tired first. I'm off indoors. The Gladstone, with its contents, I'll confide to the landlord of the hotel, to hold in his safe keeping. Then we'll see what will happen." He swept round the corner into North Street, turning his face again towards the front. As he expected, first one follower, then the other, appeared. "It's the second beggar who bothers me. I wonder what it means?" Arrived at the hotel, Mr. Paxton went straight to the office. He asked for the landlord. He was told that the landlord did not reside in the building, but that he could see the manager. He saw the manager. "I have property of considerable value in my Gladstone bag. Have you a strong room in which you could keep it for me till the morning?" The manager replied in the affirmative, adding that he was always pleased to take charge of valuables which guests might commit to his charge. Mr. Paxton went to his bedroom. He unlocked the Gladstone bag--again with some difficulty--unwrapped the evening paper which served as an unworthy covering for such priceless treasures. There they were--a sight to gladden a connoisseur's heart; to make the blood in his veins run faster! How they sparkled, and glittered, and gleamed! How they threw off coruscations, each one a fresh revelation of beauty, with every movement of his hands and of his eyes. He would get nothing for them--was that what John Ireland said? Nothing, at any rate, but the lowest market price, as for the commonest gems. John Ireland's correctness remained to be proved. There were ways and means in which a man in his position--a man of reputation and of the world--could dispose of such merchandise, of which perhaps John Ireland, with all his knowledge of the shady side of life, had never dreamed. Putting the stones back into the bag, Mr. Paxton took the bag down into the office. Then he went into the smoking-room. It was empty when he entered. But hardly had he settled himself in a chair, than some one else came in, a short, broad-shouldered individual, with piercing black eyes and shaven chin and cheeks. Mr. Paxton did not fancy his appearance; the man's manner, bearing, and attire were somewhat rough; he looked rather like a prizefighter than the sort of guest one would expect to encounter in an hotel of standing. Still less was Mr. Paxton pleased with the familiarity of his address. The man, placing himself in the adjoining chair, plunged into the heart of a conversation as if they had been the friends of years. After making one or two remarks, which were of so extremely confidential a nature that Mr. Paxton hardly knew whether to smile at them as the mere gaucheries of an ill-bred person, or to openly resent them as an intentional impertinence, the man began to subject him to a species of cross-examination which caused him to eye the presumptuous stranger with suddenly aroused but keen suspicion. "Stopping here?" "It seems that I am, doesn't it?" "On what floor?" "Why do you ask?" "On the third floor, ain't you?" "Why should you suppose that I am on the third floor?" "I don't suppose nothing. Perhaps you're on the fourth. Are you on the fourth?" "The world is full of possibilities." The man took a pull or two at his pipe; then, wholly unabashed, began again-- "What's your number?" "My number?" "What's the number of your room?" "I see." "Well--what is it?" "What is what?" "What is what! Why, what's the number of your room?" "Precisely." "Well, you haven't told me what it is." "No." "Aren't you going to tell me?" "I am afraid that I must wish you good-night." Rising, Mr. Paxton moved towards the door. Turning in his chair, the stranger stared at him with an air of grievance. "You don't seem very polite, not answering a civil question when you're asked one." Mr. Paxton only smiled. "Good-night." He could hear the stranger grumbling to himself, even after the door was closed. He asked the porter in the hall casually who the man might be. "I don't know, sir. He came in just after you. I don't think I have ever seen him before. He has taken a bed for the night." Mr. Paxton went up the stairs, smiling to himself as he went. "They are hot on the scent. Mr. Lawrence evidently has no intention of allowing the grass to grow under his feet. He means, if the thing is possible, to have a sight of that Gladstone bag, at any rate by deputy. I may be wrong, but the deputy whom I fancy he has selected is an individual possessed of such a small amount of tact--whatever other virtues he may have--that I hardly think I am. In any case it is probably just as well that that Gladstone bag sleeps downstairs, while I sleep up." The door of Mr. Paxton's bedroom was furnished with a bolt as well as a lock. He carefully secured both. "I don't think that any one will be able to get through that door without arousing me. And even should any enterprising person succeed in doing so, I fear that his success will go no farther. His labours will be unrewarded." Mr. Paxton was master of a great art--the art of being able to go to sleep when he wished. Practically, in bed or out of it, whenever he chose, he could treat himself to the luxury of a slumber; and also, when he chose, he could wake out of it. This very desirable accomplishment did not fail him then. As soon as he was between the sheets he composed himself to rest; and in an infinitesimally short space of time rest came to him. He slept as peacefully as if he had not had a care upon his mind. And his sleep continued far into the night. But, profound and restful though it was, it was light. The slightest unusual sound was sufficient to awake him. It was indeed a sound which would have been inaudible to nine sleepers out of ten which actually did arouse him. Instantly his eyes were wide open and his senses keenly on the alert. He lay quite still in bed, listening. And as he listened he smiled. "I thought so. My friend of the smoking-room, unless I err. Trying to turn the key in the lock with a pair of nippers, from outside. It won't do, my man. You are a little clumsy at your work. Your clumsiness betrayed you. You should get a firm hold of the key before you begin to turn, or your nippers are apt to slip, and when they slip they make a noise." Mr. Paxton permitted no sign to escape him which could show the intruder who was endeavouring to make an unceremonious entrance into the apartment that he had ceased to sleep. He continued to lie quite still and to listen, enjoying what he heard. Either the lock was rusty or the key refractory, or, as Mr. Paxton said, the operator clumsy, but certainly he did take what seemed to be an unconscionable length of time in performing what is supposed to be a rudimentary function in the burglar's art. He fumbled and fumbled, time after time, in vain. One could hear in the prevailing silence the tiny click which his nippers made each time they lost their hold. Some three or four minutes probably elapsed before a slight grating sound--which seemed to show that the lock was rusty--told that, after all, the key had been turned. Mr. Paxton almost chuckled. "Now for the scattering of the labourer's hopes of harvest!" The person who was outside the door, satisfied that the lock had been opened, firmly, yet no doubt gently, grasped the handle of the door. He turned it. With all his gentleness it grated. One could hear that he gave it an inward push, only to discover that the bolt was shot inside. And that same moment Mr. Paxton's voice rang out, clear and cold-- "Who's there?" No answer. Mr. Paxton's sharp ears imagined that they could just detect the shuffling along the passage of retreating footsteps. "Is any one at the door?" Still no reply. Mr. Paxton's next words were uttered _sotto voce_ with a grin. "I don't fancy that there is any one outside the door just now; nor that to-night there is likely to be again. I'll just jump out and undo the result of that poor man's patient labours." Re-locking the door, Mr. Paxton once more composed himself to rest, and again sleep came to him almost in the instant that he sought it. And for the second time he was aroused by a sound so faint that it would hardly have penetrated to the average sleeper's senses. On this occasion the interruption was unexpected. He turned himself slightly in bed, so that he might be in a better position for listening. "What's that? If it's my friend of the smoking-room again, he's a persevering man. It doesn't sound as if it were coming from the door; it sounds more as if it were coming from the window--and, by George, it is! What does it mean? It occurs to me that this is a case in which it might be advisable that I should make personal inquiries." Slipping out of bed, Mr. Paxton thrust his legs into a pair of trousers. He took a revolver from underneath his pillow. "It's lucky," he said to himself, as his fingers closed upon the weapon, "that my prophetic soul told me that this was a plaything which might be likely to come in handy." In his bare feet he moved towards the window, holding the revolver in his hand. The room was in darkness, but Mr. Paxton was aware that in front of the window stood the dressing-table. He knew also that the window itself was screened, not only by the blind, but by a pair of heavy curtains. Placing himself by the side of the dressing-table, he gingerly moved one of the curtains, with a view of ascertaining if his doing so would enable him to see what was going on without. One thing the movement of the curtains did reveal to him, that there was a dense fog out of doors. The blind did not quite fit the window, and enough space was left at the side to show that the lights in the King's Road were veiled by a thick white mist. Mr. Paxton moved both the blind and the curtain sufficiently aside to enable him to see all that there was to be seen, without, however, unnecessarily exposing himself. For a moment or so that all was nothing. Then, gradually becoming accustomed to the light, or want of it, he saw something which, while little enough in itself, was yet sufficient to have given a nervous person a considerable shock. Something outside seemed to reach from top to bottom of the window. At first Mr. Paxton could not make out what it was. Then he understood. "A ladder--by George, it is! It would almost seem as if my friend of the smoking-room had given his friends outside the 'office,' and that they are taking advantage of the fog to endeavor to succeed where he has failed. If I had expected this kind of thing, I should have preferred to sleep a little nearer to the sky. Instead of the first floor, it should have been the third, or even the fourth, beyond the reach of ladders. Messrs. Lawrence and Co. seem resolved to beat the iron while it's hot. The hunt becomes distinctly keen. It is perhaps only natural to expect that they should be anxious; but, so far as I am concerned, a little of this sort of thing suffices. They are slow at getting to work, considering how awkward they might find it if some one were to come along and twig that ladder. Hallo, the fun begins! Unless my ears deceive me, some one's coming now." Mr. Paxton's ears did not deceive him. Even as he spoke a dark something appeared on the ladder above the level of the window. It was a man's head. The head was quickly followed by a body. The acute vision of the unseen watcher could dimly make out, against the white background of fog, the faint outline of a man's figure. This figure did an unexpected thing. Without any sort of warning, the shutter of a dark lantern was suddenly opened, and the light thrown on the window in such a way that it shone full into Mr. Paxton's eyes. That gentleman retained his presence of mind. He withdrew his head, while keeping his hold on the blind; if he had let it go the movement could scarcely have failed to have been perceived. The light vanished almost as quickly as it came. It was followed by a darkness which seemed even denser than before. It was a second or two before Mr. Paxton could adapt his dazzled eyes to the restoration of the blackness. When he did so, he perceived that the man on the ladder was leaning over towards the window. If the lantern had been flashed on him just then, it would have been seen that an ugly look was on Mr. Paxton's countenance. "You startled me, you brute, with your infernal lantern, and now I've half a mind to startle you." Mr. Paxton made his half-mind a whole one. He brought his revolver to the level of his elbow; he pointed it at the window, and he fired. The figure on the ladder disappeared with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box. Whether the man had fallen or not, there was for the moment no evidence to show. Mr. Paxton dragged the dressing-table away, threw up the window, and looked out. The mist came streaming in. In the distance could be heard the stampede of feet. Plainly two or three persons were making off as fast as their heels would carry them. An imperious knocking came at the bedroom door. "Anything the matter in there?" Mr. Paxton threw the door wide open. A porter was standing in the lighted corridor. "A good deal's the matter. Burglary's the matter." "Burglary?" "Yes, burglary. I caught a man in the very act of opening my window, so I had a pop at him. He appears to have got off; but his ladder he has left behind." Other people came into the room, among them the manager. An examination of the premises was made from without. The man had escaped; but the precipitancy of his descent was evidenced by the fact that his lantern, falling from his grasp, had been shattered to fragments on the ground. The fragments he had not stayed to gather. Still less had he and his associates stood on the order of their going sufficiently long to enable them to remove the ladder. CHAPTER VII THE DATCHET DIAMONDS ARE PLACED IN SAFE CUSTODY When the morning came, and Mr. Paxton found himself being cross-examined by the manager, with every probability of his, later on, having to undergo an examination by the police, he was as taciturn as possible. Although he was by no means sorry that he had fired that shot, and so effectually frightened the man upon the ladder, he would infinitely rather that less fuss had been made about it afterwards. One thing Mr. Paxton had decided to do before he left his bedroom. He had decided to remove the Datchet diamonds to a place of safety. That Mr. Lawrence and his friends had a very shrewd notion that they were in his possession was plain; that they were disposed to stick at nothing which would enable them to get hold of them again was, if possible, plainer. Mr. Paxton was resolute that they should not have them, who ever did. It happened that, in his more prosperous days, he had rented one of the Chancery Lane Deposit Company's safes. Nor was the term of his tenancy at an end. He determined to do a bold, and, one might add, an impudent thing. He would carry the duchess' diamonds back with him to town, lock them in the safe he rented, and then, whatever might happen, nobody but himself would ever be able to have access to them again. He had the Gladstone bag brought up to his bedroom, removed from it the precious parcel, returned the bag itself to the manager's keeping, and, declining to have his morning meal at the hotel, went up by the Pullman train to town, and breakfasted on board. He flattered himself that whoever succeeded in taking from him the diamonds before his arrival with them in Chancery Lane, would have to be a very clever person. Still, he did not manage to reach his journey's end without having had one or two little adventures by the way. He drove up from the hotel to the station in a hansom cab. As he stepped into the cab he noticed, standing on the kerbstone a little to the left of the hotel entrance, a man who wore his billycock a good deal on the side of his head, and who had a cigar sticking out of the corner of his mouth. He should not have particularly observed the fellow had not the man, as soon as he found Mr. Paxton's eyes turned in his direction, performed a right-about-face on his heels, and presented an almost ostentatious view of the middle of the back. When Mr. Paxton's cab rattled into the central yard, and Mr. Paxton proceeded to step out from it on to the pavement, another hansom came dashing up behind his own, and from it there alighted the man who had turned his back on him in front of the hotel. As Mr. Paxton took his ticket this man was at his side. And, having purchased his morning paper, as he strolled up the platform towards the train, he noticed that the fellow was only a few steps in his rear. There seemed to be no reasonable room for doubt that the man was acting as his shadow. No one likes to feel that he is under espionage. And Mr. Paxton in particular felt that just recently he had endured enough of that kind of thing to last--if his own tastes were to be consulted--for the remainder of his life. He decided to put a stop there and then to, at any rate, this man's persecution. Suddenly standing still, wheeling sharply round, Mr. Paxton found himself face to face with the individual with his hat on the side of his head. "Are you following me?" Mr. Paxton's manner as he asked the question, though polite, meant mischief. The other seemed to be a little taken aback. Then, with an impudent air, taking what was left of his cigar out of his mouth, he blew a volume of smoke full into Mr. Paxton's eyes. "Were you speaking to me?" Mr. Paxton's fingers itched to knock the smoker down. But situated as he was, a row in public just then would have been sheer madness. He adopted what was probably an even more effective plan. He signalled to a passing official. "Guard!" The man approached. "This person has been following me from my hotel. Be so good as to call a constable. His proceedings require explanation." The man began to bluster. "What do you mean by saying I've been following you? Who are you, I should like to know? Can't any one move about except yourself? Following you, indeed! It's more likely that you've been following me!" A constable came up. Mr. Paxton addressed him in his cool, incisive tones. "Officer, this person has followed me from my hotel to the station; from the station to the booking-office; from the booking-office to the bookstall; and now he is following me from the bookstall to the train. I have some valuable property on me, with which fact he is possibly acquainted. Since he is a complete stranger to me, I should be obliged if you would ask him what is the cause of the unusual interest which he appears to take in my movements." The man with the cigar became apologetic. "The gentleman's quite mistaken; I'm not following him; I wouldn't do such a thing! I'm going to town by this train, and it seems that this gentleman's going too, and perhaps that's what's made him think that I was following. If there's any offence, I'm sure that I beg pardon." The man held out his hand--it was unclean and it was big--as if expecting Mr. Paxton to grasp it. Mr. Paxton, however, moved away addressing a final observation to the constable as he went. "Officer, be so good as to keep an eye upon that man." Mr. Paxton entered the breakfast carriage. What became of the too attentive stranger he neither stopped to see nor cared to inquire. He saw no more of him; that was all he wanted. As the train rushed towards town he ate his breakfast and he read his paper. The chief topic of interest in the journals of the day was the robbery on the previous afternoon of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds. It filled them to the almost complete exclusion of other news of topical importance. There were illustrations of some of the principal jewels which had been stolen, together with anecdotes touching on their history--very curious some of them were! The Dukes of Datchet seemed to have gathered those beautiful gems, if not in ways which were dark, then occasionally, at any rate, in ways which were, to say the least of it, peculiar. Those glittering pebbles seemed to have been mixed up with a good deal of trickery and fraud and crime. The papers gave the most minute description of the more important stones. Even the merest novice in the knowledge of brilliants, if he had mastered those details, could scarcely fail to recognise them if ever they came his way. It appeared that few even royal collections possessed so large a number of really fine examples. Their valuation at a quarter of a million was the purest guesswork. The present duke would not have accepted for them twice that sum. Half a million! Five hundred thousand pounds! At even 3 per cent.--and who does not want more for his money than a miserable 3 per cent.?-- that was fifteen thousand pounds a year. Three hundred pounds a week. More than forty pounds a day. Over three pounds for every working hour. And Mr. Paxton had it in his pockets! It was not strange that Mr. Lawrence and his associates should betray such lively anxiety to regain possession of such a sum as that; it would have been strange if they had not! It was a sum worth having; worth fighting for; worth risking something for as well. And yet there was something; indeed, there was a good deal, which could be said for the other side of the question. Mr. Paxton owned to himself that there was. He could not honestly--if it were still possible to speak of honesty in connection with a gentleman who had launched himself on such a venture--lay his hand upon his heart, and say that he was happier since he had discovered what were the contents of somebody else's Gladstone bag. On the contrary, if he could have blotted out of his life the few hours which had intervened since the afternoon of the previous day, he would have done so, even yet, with a willing hand. Nor was this feeling lessened by an incident which took place on his arrival at London Bridge. If he were of an adventurous turn of mind, evidently he could not have adopted a more certain means of gratifying his peculiar taste than by retaining possession of the duchess's diamonds. Adventures were being heaped on him galore. As he was walking down the platform, looking for a likely cab, some one came rushing up against him from behind with such violence as to send him flying forward on his face. Two roughly dressed men assisted him to rise. But, while undergoing their kindly ministrations, it occurred to him, in spite of his half-dazed condition, that they were evincing a livelier interest in the contents of his pockets than in his regaining his perpendicular. He managed to shake them off, however, before their interest had been carried to too generous a length. The inevitable crowd had gathered. A man, attired as a countryman, was volubly explaining--with a volubility which was hardly suggestive of a yokel--that he was late for market, and was hurrying along without looking where he was going, when he stumbled against the gentleman, and was so unfortunate as to knock him over. He was profuse, and indeed almost lachrymose, in his apologies for the accident which his clumsiness had occasioned. Mr. Paxton said nothing. He did not see what there was to say. He dusted himself down, adjusted his hat, got into a cab and drove away. Drove straight away to Chancery Lane. And, when he had deposited the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds in his safe, and had left them behind him in that impregnable fortress, where, if the statements of the directors could be believed, fire could not penetrate, nor water, nor rust, nor thieves break through and steal, he felt as if a load had been lifted off his mind. CHAPTER VIII IN THE MOMENT OF HIS SUCCESS Diamonds worth a quarter of a million! And yet already they were beginning to hang like a millstone round Mr. Paxton's neck. The relief which he felt at having got rid of them from his actual person proved to be but temporary. All day they haunted him. Having done the one thing which he had come to town to do, he found himself unoccupied. He avoided the neighbourhood of the Stock Exchange, and of his usual haunts, for reasons. Eries were still declining. The difference against him had assumed a portentous magnitude. Possibly, confiding brokers were seeking for him high and low, anxious for security which would protect them against the necessity of having to make good his losses. No, just then the City was not for him. Discretion, of a sort, suggested his confining himself to the West-end of town. Unfortunately, in this case, the West-end meant loitering about bars and similar stimulating places. He drank not only to kill time but also to drown his thoughts, and the more he tried to drown them, the more they floated on the surface. What a fool he had been--what an egregious fool! How he had exchanged his talents for nothing, and for less than nothing. How he had thrown away his prospects, his opportunities, his whole life, his all! And now, by way of a climax, he had been guilty of a greater folly than any which had gone before. He had sold more than his birthright for less--much less--than a mess of pottage. He had lost his soul for the privilege of being able to hang a millstone round his neck--cast honour to the winds for the sake of encumbering himself with a burden which would crush him lower and lower, until it laid him level with the dust. Wherever he went, the story of the robbery met his eyes. The latest news of it was announced on the placards of the evening papers. Newsboys bawled it in his ears. He had only to listen to what was being said by the other frequenters of the bars against which he lounged to learn that it was the topic of conversation on every tongue. All England, all Europe, indeed, one might say that the whole of the civilised world was on tiptoe to catch the man who had done this thing. As John Ireland had said, he might as soon think of being able to sell the diamonds as of being able to sell the Koh-i-Nor. Every one who knew anything at all of precious stones was on the look-out for them, from pole to pole. During his lifetime he would not even venture to attempt their disposal, any attempt of the kind would inevitably involve his being instantaneously branded as a felon. Last night, when he left London, he had had something over two hundred pounds in his pockets. Except debts, and certain worthless securities, for which no one would give him a shilling, it was all he had left in the world. It was not a large sum, but it was sufficient to take him to the other side of the globe, and to keep him there until he had had time to turn himself round, and to find some means of earning for himself his daily bread. He had proposed to go on to Southampton this morning, thence straight across the seas. Now what was it he proposed to do? Every day that he remained in England meant making further inroads into his slender capital. At the rate at which he was living, it would rapidly dwindle all away. Then how did he intend to replenish it? By selling the duchess's diamonds? Nonsense! He told himself, with bitter frankness, that such an idea was absolute nonsense; that such a prospect was as shadowy as, and much more dangerous than, the proverbial mirage of the desert. He returned by an afternoon train to Brighton, in about as black a mood as he could be. He sat in a corner of a crowded compartment--for some reason he rather shirked travelling alone--communing with the demons of despair who seemed to be the tenants of his brain; fighting with his own particular wild beasts. Arrived at Brighton without adventure, he drove straight to Makell's Hotel. As he advanced into the hall, the manager came towards him out of the office. "Good evening, Mr. Paxton. Did you authorise any one to come and fetch away your bag?" "No. Why?" "Some fellow came and said that you had sent him for your Gladstone bag." "I did nothing of the kind. Did you give it him?" The manager smiled. "Hardly. You had confided it to my safe keeping, and I was scarcely likely to hand it to a stranger who was unable to present a more sufficient authority than he appeared to have. We make it a rule that articles entrusted to our charge are returned to the owners only, on personal application." "What sort of a man was he to look at?" "Oh, a shabby-looking chap, very much down at heel indeed, middle-aged; the sort of man whom you would expect would run messages." "Tell me, as exactly as you can, what it was he said." "He said that Mr. Paxton had sent him for his Gladstone bag. I asked him where you were. He said you were at Medina Villas, and you wanted your bag. You had given him a shilling to come for it, and you were to give him another shilling when he took it back. I told him our rule referring to property deposited with us by guests, and he made off." Medina Villas? Miss Strong resided in Medina Villas, and Miss Wentworth; with which fact Mr. Lawrence was possibly acquainted. Once more in this latest dash for the bag Mr. Paxton seemed to trace that gentleman's fine Roman hand. He thanked the manager for the care which he had taken of his interests. "I'm glad that you sent the scamp empty away, but, between you and me, the loss wouldn't have been a very serious one if you had given him what he wanted. I took all that the bag contained of value up with me to town, and left it there." The manager looked at him, as Mr. Paxton felt, a trifle scrutinisingly, as if he could not altogether make him out. "There seems to be a sort of dead set made at you. First, the attempted burglary last night--which is a kind of thing which has never before been known in the whole history of the hotel--and now this impudent rascal trying to make out that you had authorised him to receive your Gladstone bag. One might almost think that you were carrying something about with you which was of unique importance, and that the fact of your doing so had somehow become known to a considerable proportion of our criminal population." Mr. Paxton laughed. He had the bag carried upstairs, telling himself as he went that it was already more than time that his sojourn at Makell's Hotel should be brought to a conclusion. He ate a solitary dinner, lingering over it, though he had but a scanty appetite, as long as he could, in order to while away the time until the hour came for meeting Daisy. Towards the end of the meal, sick to death of his own thoughts, for sheer want of something else to do, he took up an evening paper, which he had brought into the room with him, and which was lying on a chair at his side, and began to glance at it. As he idly skimmed its columns, all at once a paragraph in the City article caught his eye. He read the words with a feeling of surprise; then, with increasing amazement, he read them again. "The boom in the shares of the Trumpit Gold Mine continues. On the strength of a report that the reef which has been struck is of importance, the demand for them, even at present prices, exceeded the supply. When our report left, buyers were offering £10--the highest price of the day." After subjecting the paragraph to a second reading, Mr. Paxton put the paper down upon his knees, and gasped for breath. It was a mistake--a canard--quite incredible. Trumpits selling at £10--it could not be! He would have been glad, quite lately, to have sold his for 10d each; only he was conscious that even at that price he would have found no buyer. £10 indeed! It was a price of which, at one time, he had dreamed--but it had remained a dream. He read the paragraph again. So far as the paper was concerned, there seemed to be no doubt about it--there it was in black and white. The paper was one of the highest standing, of unquestionable authority, not given to practical jokes--especially in the direction of quotations in its City article. Could the thing be true? He felt that something was tingling all over his body. On a sudden, his pulses had begun to beat like sledge-hammers. He rose from his seat, just as the waiter was placing still another plate in front of him, and, to the obvious surprise of that well-trained functionary, he marched away without a word. He made for the smoking-room. He knew that he should find the papers there. And he found them, morning and evening papers--even some of the papers of the day before--as many as he wished. He ransacked them all. Each, with one accord, told the same tale. The thing might be incredible, but it was true! While he was gambling in Eries, losing all, and more than all, that he had; while he was gambling in stolen jewels, losing all that was left of his honour too, a movement had been taking place in the market which was making his fortune for him all the time, and he had not noticed it. The thing seemed to him to be almost miraculous. And certainly it was not the least of the miracles which lately had come his way. Some two years before a friend had put him on--as friends do put us on--to a real good thing--the Trumpit Gold Mine. The friend professed to have special private information about this mine, and Mr. Paxton believed that he had. He still believed that he thought he had. Mr. Paxton was not a greenhorn, but he was a gambler, which now and then is about as bad. He looked at the thing all round--in the light of his friend's special information!--as far as he could, and as time would permit, and it seemed to him to be good enough for a plunge. The shares just then were at a discount--a considerable discount. From one point of view it was the time to buy them--and he did. He got together pretty well every pound he could lay his hands on, and bought ten thousand--bought them out and out, to hold--and went straight off and told Miss Strong he had made his fortune. It was only the mistake of a word--what he ought to have told her was that he had lost it. The certainly expected find of yellow ore did not come off, nor did the looked-for rise in the shares come off either. They continued at a discount, and went still lower. Purchasers could not be discovered at any price. It was a bitter blow. Almost, if not quite, as bitter a blow to Miss Strong as to himself. Indeed, Mr. Paxton had felt ever since as if Miss Strong had never entirely forgiven him for having made such a fool of her. He might--he could not help fancying that some such line of reasoning had occupied her attention more than once--before telling her of the beautiful chickens which were shortly about to be hatched, at least have waited till the eggs were laid. He had been too much engaged in other matters to pay attention to quotations for shares, which had long gone unquoted, and which he had, these many days, regarded as a loss past praying for. It appeared that rumours had come of gold in paying quantities having been found; that the rumours had gathered strength; that, in consequence, the shares had risen, until, on a sudden, the market was in a frenzy--as occasionally the market is apt to be--and ten pounds a-piece was being offered. Ten thousand at ten pounds a-piece--why, it was a hundred thousand pounds! A fortune in itself! By the time Mr. Paxton had attained to something like an adequate idea of the situation, he was half beside himself with excitement. He looked at his watch--it was time for meeting Daisy. He hurried into the hall, crammed on his hat, and strode into the street. Scarcely had he taken a dozen steps, when some one struck him a violent blow from behind. As he turned to face his assailant, an arm was thrust round his neck, and what felt like a damp cloth was forced against his mouth. He was borne off his feet, and, in spite of his struggles, was conveyed with surprising quickness into a cab which was drawn up against the kerb. CHAPTER IX A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE "It's too bad of him!" Miss Strong felt that it was much too bad! Twenty minutes after the appointed time, and still no signs of Mr. Paxton. The weather was, if anything, worse even than the night before. The mist was more pronounced; a chillier breeze was in the air; a disagreeable drizzle showed momentary symptoms of falling faster. The pier was nearly deserted; it was not the kind of evening to tempt pleasure-seekers out. Miss Strong had been at the place of meeting in front of time. After Mr. Paxton's departure on the previous evening, between Miss Wentworth and herself there had been certain passages. Bitter words had been said--particularly by Miss Strong. In consequence, for the first time on record, the friends had parted in anger. Nor had the quarrel been made up afterwards. On the contrary, all day long the atmosphere had been charged with electricity. Miss Strong was conscious that in certain of the things which she had said she had wronged her friend, as, she assured herself, her friend had wronged her lover. It is true two wrongs do not make a right; but Miss Strong had made up her mind that she would not apologise to Miss Wentworth for what she had said to her, until Miss Wentworth had apologised for what she had said to Cyril. As Miss Wentworth showed no disposition to do anything of the kind, the position was more than a trifle strained. So strained indeed that Miss Strong, after confining herself to the bedroom for most of the day, rushed out of the house a full hour before it was time for meeting Cyril, declaring to herself that anything--mist, wind, or rain--was better than remaining prisoned any longer under the same roof which sheltered an unfriendly friend. Under such circumstances, to her, it seemed a cardinal crime on Cyril's part that he should actually be twenty minutes late. "After what he said last night, about not keeping me waiting for a second--considering the way in which he said it--I did think that he would be punctual. How can he expect me to trust him in larger things, if he does not keep faith with me in small? If anything had happened to detain him, he might have let me know in time." The indignant lady did not stay to reflect that she had left home unnecessarily early, and that an explanation of the gentleman's absence might, even now, be awaiting her there. Besides, twenty minutes is not long. But perhaps in the case of a lovers' rendezvous, by some magnifying process proper to such occasions, twenty minutes may assume the dimensions of an hour. "I'll go once more up and down the pier, and then if he hasn't come I'll go straight home. How Charlie will laugh at me, and triumph, and say 'I told you so!' Oh, Cyril, how unkind you are, not to come when you promised! I don't care, but I do know this, that if Charlie Wentworth is not careful what she says, I will never speak to her again--never--as long as I live!" It seemed as if the young lady did not quite know whether to be the more angry with her lover or her friend. She went up the pier; then started to return. As she came back a man wearing a mackintosh advanced to her with uplifted cap and outstretched hand. "Miss Strong!" It was Mr. Lawrence. The last man whom, just then, she would have wished to see. Could anything have been more unfortunate? What would Cyril think if, again, he found them there together. She decided to get rid of the man without delay. But the thing was easier decided on than done. Especially as Mr. Lawrence immediately said something which caused her to postpone his dismissal longer than she had intended. "I saw Mr. Paxton this afternoon, in town." He had fallen in quite naturally by her side. She had moderated her pace, wishing to rid herself of him before she reached the gates. "Indeed! In the City, I suppose? He is there on business." "He wasn't in the City when I saw him. And the business on which he was employed was of an agreeable kind. He seemed to be making a day of it at the Criterion bar." "Are you not mistaken? Are you sure that it was Mr. Paxton?" "Quite sure. May I ask if he is an intimate friend of yours?" "He is--a very intimate friend indeed. I am expecting him here every moment." "Expecting him here! You really are!" Mr. Lawrence stopped, and turned, and stared, as if her words surprised him. "I beg your pardon, Miss Strong, but--he is stopping to-night in town." "Stopping to-night in town!" It was Miss Strong's turn to stand and stare. "How do you know? Did he tell you so?" "Not in so many words, but--I think you will find that he is. The--the fact is, Miss Strong, I heard an ugly story about Mr. Paxton, and--I am afraid you will find that there is something wrong." The lady grasped the handle of her umbrella with added vigour. Her impulse was to lay it about the speaker's head. But she refrained. "You must be too acute of hearing, Mr. Lawrence. If I were you, I should exchange your ears for another pair. Good evening." But she was not to escape from him so easily. He caught her by the arm. "Miss Strong, don't go--not for a moment. There is something which I particularly wish to say to you." "What there is, Mr. Lawrence, which you can particularly wish to say to me I am unable to conceive." "I fear that may be so, Miss Strong. But there is something, all the same. These are early days in which to say it; and the moment is not the most propitious I could have chosen. But circumstances are stronger than I. I have a feeling that it must be now or never. You know very little of me, Miss Strong. Probably you will say you know nothing--that I am, to all intents and purposes, a stranger. But I know enough of you to know that I love you: that you are to me what no woman has ever been before, or will ever be again. And what I particularly wish to say to you is to ask you to be my wife." His words were so wholly unexpected, that, for the moment, they took the lady's breath away. He spoke quietly, even coldly; but, in his coldness there was a vibrant something which was suggestive of the heat of passion being hidden below, while the very quietude of his utterance made his words more effective than if he had shouted them at the top of his voice. It was a second or two before the startled lady answered. "What you have said takes me so completely by surprise that I hardly know whether or not you are in earnest." "I am in earnest, I assure you. That I am mad in saying it, I am quite aware; how mad, even you can have no notion. But I had to say it, and it's said. If you would only be my wife, you would do a good deed, of the magnitude of which you have no conception. There is nothing in return which I would not do for you. On this occasion in saying so I do not think that I am using an empty form of words." "As you yourself pointed out, you are a stranger to me; nor have I any desire that you should be anything but a stranger." "Thank you, Miss Strong." "You brought it upon yourself." "I own that it is not your fault that I love you; nor can I admit that it is my misfortune." "There is one chief reason why your flattering proposals are unwelcome to me. I happen already to be a promised wife. I am engaged to Mr. Paxton." "Is that so? Then I am sorry for you." "Why are you sorry?" "Ere long, unless I am mistaken, you will learn that I have cause for sorrow, and that you have cause for sorrow too." Without another word the lady, the gentleman making no effort to detain her, walked away. She went straight home. She found Miss Wentworth in her favourite attitude--feet stretched on a chair in front of her--engaged, as Miss Strong chose to phrase it, in "her everlasting reading." When Miss Wentworth was not writing she was wont to be reading. Miss Strong occasionally wished that she would employ herself in more varying occupations. Momentarily oblivious of the coolness which had sprung up between her friend and herself, Miss Strong plumped herself down on to a chair, forgetful also of the fact that she had brought her umbrella with her into the room, and that the rain was trickling down it. "Charlie, whatever do you think has happened?" Miss Wentworth had contented herself with nodding as her friend had entered. Now, lowering her book, she glanced at her over the top of it. "I don't know what has happened, my dear, but I do know what is happening--your umbrella is making a fish-pond on the carpet." Miss Strong got up with something of a jump. She deposited her mackintosh and umbrella in the hall. When she returned her friend greeted her with laughter in her eyes. "Well, what has happened? But perhaps before you tell me you might give an eye to those elegant boots of yours. They never struck me as being altogether waterproof." With tightened lips Miss Strong removed her boots. It was true that they badly wanted changing. But that was nothing. In her present mood she resented having her attention diverted to unimportant details. She expressed herself to that effect as she undid the buttons. "I do believe that you are the hardest-natured girl I ever knew. You've no sense of feeling. If I were dying for want of it, I should never dream of coming to you for sympathy." Miss Wentworth received this tirade with complete placidity. "Quite so, my dear. Well, what has happened?" Miss Strong snuggled her feet into her slippers. She began to fidget about the room. Suddenly she burst out in what could only be described as a tone of angry petulance. "You will laugh at me--I know you will. But you had better not. I can tell you that I am in no mood to be laughed at. I feel as if I must tell it to some one, and I have no one in the world to tell things to but you--Mr. Lawrence has dared to make me a proposal of marriage." The complete, and one might almost say, the humorous repose of Miss Wentworth's manner was in striking contrast to her friend's excitability. "Mr. Lawrence? Isn't that the individual whom you met on the Dyke, and who was introduced to you by his umbrella?" "Of course it is!" "And he has proposed to you, has he? Very good of him, I'm sure. The sex has scored another victory. I did not know that matters had progressed with you so far as that! But now and then, I suppose, one does move quickly. I offer you my congratulations." "Charlie! You are maddening!" "Not at all. But I believe that it is a popular theory that a woman ought always to be congratulated on receiving a proposal from a man. The idea seems to be that it is the best gift which the gods can possibly bestow--upon a woman. And, pray, where did this gentleman so honour you? Right under Mr. Paxton's nose?" "Cyril wasn't there." "Not there?" Miss Strong turned her face away. Miss Wentworth eyed her for a moment before she spoke again. "I thought that you had an appointment with him, and that you went out to keep it." "He never came." "Indeed!" Miss Wentworth's tone was dry. But, in spite of its dryness, it seemed that there was something in it which touched a secret spring which was hidden in her listener's breast. Suddenly Miss Strong broke into a flood of tears, and, running forward, fell on her knees at her friend's side, and pillowed her face in her lap. "Oh, Charlie, I am so unhappy--you mustn't laugh at me--I am! Everything seems to be going wrong--everything. I feel as if I should like to die!" "There is allotted to every one of us a time for death. I wouldn't attempt to forestall my allotment, if I were you. What is the particular, pressing grief?" "I am the most miserable girl in the world!" "Hush! Be easy! There are girls--myriads of them--myriads--who would esteem such misery as yours happiness. Tell me, what's the trouble?" In spite of the satirical touch which tinged her speech, a strain of curious melody had all at once come into her voice which--as if it had been an anæsthetic--served to ease the extreme tension of the other's nerves. Miss Strong looked up, the tears still streaming down her cheeks, but exhibiting some signs of at least elementary self-control. "Everything's the trouble! Everything seems to be going wrong; that's just the plain and simple truth. Cyril said he would meet me tonight, and promised he'd be punctual, and I waited for him, ever so long, on the pier, in the rain, and after all he never came. And then that wretched Mr. Lawrence came and made his ridiculous proposal, and--and said all sorts of dreadful things of Cyril!" "Said all sorts of dreadful things of Cyril, did he? As, for instance, what?" "He said that he was going to stop in town all night." "Well, and why shouldn't he?" "Why shouldn't he? After saying he would meet me! And promising to be punctual! And keeping me waiting on the pier! Without giving me any sort of hint that he had changed his mind! Charlie!" "Pray, how did Mr. Lawrence come to know that Mr. Paxton intended to spend the night in London?" "He says that he saw him there." "I did not know they were acquainted!" "I introduced them the night before last." "I see." Again Miss Wentworth's tone was significantly dry. "Mr. Paxton has never seemed to me to be a man whose confidence was easily gained, especially by a stranger. Mr. Lawrence must have progressed more rapidly with him even than with you. And, pray, what else was Mr. Lawrence pleased to say of Mr. Paxton?" "Oh, a lot of lies! Of course I knew that they were a lot of lies, but they made me so wild that I felt that I should like to shake him." "Shake me instead, my dear. One is given to understand that jolting is good for the liver. Who's that?" There was a sound of knocking at the front door. Miss Strong glanced eagerly round. A flush came into her cheeks; a light into her eyes. "Possibly that is the recalcitrant Mr. Paxton, in his own proper person, coming with apologies in both his hands. Perhaps you would like to go and see." CHAPTER X CYRIL'S FRIEND Miss Strong did like to go and see. She looked at Miss Wentworth with a make-believe of anger, and, rising to her feet, went quickly across the room. Admission had already been given to the knocker. There advanced towards the girl standing in the open door a man--who was not Mr. Paxton. "Mr. Franklyn! I thought----" There was a note of disappointment in her voice. She stopped short, as if desirous not to allow her self-betrayal to go too far. She moved a little back, so as to allow the newcomer to enter the room. This newcomer was a man of the medium height, about forty years of age. His black hair was already streaked with grey. He had a firm, clear-cut, clean-shaven mouth and chin, and a pair of penetrating grey-black eyes, with which he had a trick of looking every one whom he addressed squarely in the face. His manner, ordinarily, was grave and deliberate, as if he liked to weigh each word he uttered. He held Miss Strong's hand for a moment in his cool, close grasp. "Well; you thought what?" "I'm very glad to see you--you know I am; but I thought it was Cyril." "Are you expecting him?" "I was expecting him, but--it seems he hasn't come." Turning to Miss Wentworth he greeted her. And it was to be noted that as she offered him her hand a humorous twinkle beamed through her glasses, and her whole face was lighted by a smile. He turned again to Miss Strong. "Have you heard the news?" "What news?" "Hasn't Cyril told you?" "He told me something last night, but I really couldn't tell you quite what it was he told me, and I haven't seen him since." "He is in Brighton?" "Is he? I was informed that he was stopping in town." "You were informed? By whom?" "By an acquaintance, who said that he saw him there." Mr. Franklyn waited before speaking again. His unflinching eyes seemed to be studying the lady's face. Probably he saw that there was something unusual in her manner. "That is strange. I was under the impression that he was in Brighton. I have come from town specially to see him. I expected to find him with you here." "He did promise to meet me to-night. He hasn't kept his promise. I don't understand why. To be plain with you, it rather troubles me. "He promised to meet you?" "He did most faithfully." "And you have received no intimation from him to the effect that he was not coming?" "Not a word--not a line!" "Then he may be here at any moment. Something has unexpectedly delayed him. You are acquainted with him sufficiently well to be aware that had anything occurred to cause him to alter his plans, he would immediately have let you know. Your informant was wrong. I have had inquiries made for him everywhere in town, and as a result have good reason to believe that he is in Brighton." "What is the news of which you were speaking?" "Has Cyril said nothing to you about the Trumpit Gold Mine?" "He referred to it casually the night before last in his usual strain, as having been the cause of his destruction." "That really is extraordinary. I confess I do not understand it. It is so unlike Cyril to have communicated neither with you nor with me. Are you sure that he said nothing more?" "About the Trumpit Gold Mine? Not a word. What was there, what is there to say? Do get it out!" The young lady made an impatient movement with her foot. The gentleman looked at her with amusement in his eyes. She was very well worth looking at just then. Her hair was a little out of order; and, though she might not have agreed with such a statement, it suited her when it was slightly disarranged. Her cheeks were flushed. She held herself very straight. Perhaps it was her tears which had lent brightness to her eyes; they were bright. Her small, white teeth sparkled between her blush-rose lips, which were slightly parted as if in repressed excitement. She presented a pretty picture of a young lady who was in no mood for trifling. "I shall have much pleasure, Miss Strong, in getting it out. What seem to be well-founded rumours have reached England that gold has been found at last in considerable quantities. The shares have gone up with a rush. When the Stock Exchange closed this afternoon they were quoted at £12 10s. A little more than a week ago they were unsaleable at twopence each." "£12 10s.! oh, Mr. Franklyn! And has Cyril got rid of his?" "Not a bit of it. They are in my strongbox. There are ten thousand of them--Cyril is one of the largest holders, if he is not the largest; and what that means at £12 10s. apiece you can calculate as well as I." "Oh, Mr. Franklyn!" The young lady brought her hands together with a little clap. She turned in natural triumph towards her friend. "What did I tell you? Now aren't you sorry for what you said last night? Didn't I say that you hadn't the faintest notion of what you were talking about?" Miss Wentworth, though, as was to be expected, not so excited as the lady who was principally concerned, evinced sufficiently lively signs of interest. "You certainly did, and I certainly hadn't; and while you left nothing unsaid which you ought to have said, there can be no sort of doubt whatever that I said everything which I ought to have left unsaid. But, at the same time, I do beg leave to remark that Mr. Paxton need not have worn such an air of mystery." "Why?" Miss Strong tapped the toe of her slipper against the floor. "He wasn't compelled to blurt out his affairs to all the world." Miss Wentworth shrugged her shoulders. "Certainly not--if I am all the world. Are you also all the world? From what I gathered he did not make much of a confidante of you." "Well, he wasn't forced to!" Suddenly Miss Strong made a wholly irrational, but not wholly unnatural, movement in the direction of Miss Wentworth's chair. She placed her hand upon that lady's shoulders. And she kissed her twice, first on the lips, then on the brow. And she exclaimed, "Never mind. I forgive you!" Miss Wentworth was quite as demure as the occasion required. She surveyed her emotional friend with twinkling eyes. "Thank you very much indeed, my dear." Miss Strong moved restlessly about the room, passing, as it seemed, aimlessly from object to object. "It is strange that he should have kept such news to himself! And not have said a word about it! And now not coming after all!" She turned to Mr. Franklyn. "I suppose that it is all quite true? That you have not been building up my hopes simply to dash them down again?" "I have given you an accurate statement of the actual position of affairs when prices were made up for the day, as you may easily prove yourself by a reference to an evening paper." With her hands Miss Strong pushed back her hair from her temples. "After all he had lost in Eries----" Mr. Franklyn interposed a question. "In Eries! Did he lose in Eries?" "I am afraid he did, heavily. And then, in spite of that, on the same day, to see his way to a quarter of a million!" "A quarter of a million! Did he mention that precise amount?" "I think he did,--I feel sure he did. Charlie, didn't you hear him speak of a quarter of a million?" Miss Wentworth, who from the depths of her easy chair had been regarding the two almost as if they had been studies of interesting, though contrasting, types of human nature, smiled as she replied-- "I believe that I did hear Mr. Paxton make a passing and, as it seemed to me, a mysterious allusion to that insignificant sum." "Then he must be acquainted with the movements of the markets." Mr. Franklyn was the speaker. "Though I must tell you candidly, Miss Strong, that at present I am very far from being prepared to advise him to hold until his profits reach what Miss Wentworth, in a truly liberal spirit, calls that insignificant sum. As things stand, he can get out with half of it. If he waits for more, he may get nothing. Indeed, it is an almost vital necessity of the situation that I should see him at once. The shares are in my keeping. Without his direct authority I can do nothing with them. After all, the boom may be but a bubble; it may already have been blown to a bursting-point; in the morning it may have been pricked. Such things are the commonplaces of the Stock Exchange. In any case, it is absolutely necessary that he should be on the spot, ready, if needful, to take prompt, instant advantage of the turn of the market in whatever direction it may be. Or, by the time that he does appear upon the scene, his shares may again be unsaleable at twopence apiece, and all his profits may have gone. Now, tell me, do you know where he stayed last night?" "At Makell's Hotel. He nearly always does stay there when he is in Brighton." "It is possible, then, that he is there now; or, at any rate, that they have news of him. I will go at once and inquire." Miss Strong made a quick movement towards the speaker. "Mr. Franklyn, mayn't I come with you?" He hesitated. "There is not the slightest necessity. If he is there I will bring him back with me; if he is not I will either bring or send you news." "You promise?" "I do--certainly." "You promise that you will let me hear as soon as you can--at once--without a moment's delay?" The girl put her hand to her side. Tears came into her eyes. "Mr. Franklyn, you don't know what all this means to me. All day long I have been conscious of something hanging over me, as it were, a cloud of catastrophe. That something very strange either has happened, or shortly will happen, I am convinced. It frightens me! So, if you wish to do me a kindness, you will not keep me in suspense one moment longer than you can help." Miss Strong had passed, so far as appearances went, instantly, without any sort of warning, from a white heat of excitement to almost preternatural coldness. One had only to look at her to perceive that her mind was not at ease; nor, since mental and physical conditions are closely allied, her body either. Mr. Franklyn proffered reassurance. "Believe me, Miss Strong, there is not the slightest real cause for anxiety. The probability is that Cyril is looking for me, just as I am looking for him; that, in fact, we are chasing each other. Anyhow, you shall have news when I have news, and that without a second's delay. I ought to find a cab upon the nearest stand. If I do, you ought to hear from me in thirty minutes. But even if I don't, I think that I can promise that you shall hear from me within the hour." CHAPTER XI JOHN IRELAND'S WARRANT Mr. Franklyn was unable to find a cab. He walked. And as he walked he wondered. Mr. Paxton's conduct seemed to him to be stranger than, in the presence of Miss Strong, he had cared to admit. It was unlike Cyril to have allowed so amazing a change to have taken place in a holding in which he was so largely interested, and yet to have held his peace. Mr. Franklyn had made more considerable efforts to place himself in communication with Cyril than he had hinted at. There had been several things lately in that gentleman's conduct which had struck him as peculiar. But all his efforts had been vain. It was only by chance that that afternoon he had run across an acquaintance who informed him that he had just seen Mr. Paxton leaving Victoria in a Brighton train. Taking it for granted that he was journeying towards Miss Strong, as soon as he could, Franklyn followed on his heels. And now Miss Strong had seen nothing of him! Indeed, she had been told that he intended to spend the night in town. Coupled with other circumstances, to Mr. Franklyn the thing seemed distinctly odd. Arrived at Makell's Hotel, he accosted the porter who held the door open for him to enter. "Is Mr. Paxton staying here?" "Mr. Paxton is out." "Out? Then he is staying here?" "He has been here. I don't know if he is returning. You had better inquire at the office." Mr. Franklyn inquired. At the office their acquaintance with Mr. Paxton's movements did not appear to be much greater than the porter's. He was out. He might return. He probably would. When, they could not say. "How long ago is it since he went out?" "Something over an hour." "Did he say anything about where he was going to?" "Not to me. I know nothing, it's only what I surmise, but he went hurrying out as if he had an appointment which he wanted to keep." "An appointment? Something over an hour ago? Yes, he had an appointment about that time, but he never kept it." Franklyn looked at his watch. The thirty minutes of which he had spoken to Miss Strong were already nearly past. "Can I have a bed here to-night?" The clerk said that he could. Franklyn took a card out of his pocket-book. He scribbled on it in pencil-- "I shall be at Medina Villas till eleven. Come at once. They are very anxious to have news of you." Securing it in an envelope, he handed it to the clerk, instructing him, should Mr. Paxton return before he did, to let him have it at once. Then Mr. Franklyn left the hotel, meaning to walk to the cab rank, which was distant only a few yards, and then drive straight back to Medina Villas. As he walked along the broad pavement some one stopping him, addressed him by name. "Is that you, Mr. Franklyn?" The speaker was John Ireland. In his professional capacity as a solicitor Mr. Franklyn had encountered the detective on more than one occasion. The detective's next question took Mr. Franklyn a little by surprise. "Where's Mr. Paxton?" Mr. Franklyn looked at his questioner as attentively as the imperfect light would permit. To his trained ear there was something in the inquirer's tone which was peculiar. "Mr. Paxton! Why do you ask?" Ireland seemed to hesitate. Then blurted out bluntly-- "Because I've a warrant for his arrest." Franklyn made a startled movement backwards. "His arrest! Ireland, you're dreaming!" "Am I? I'm not of a dreaming sort, as you ought to know by now. Look here, Mr. Franklyn, you and I know each other. I know you're Mr. Paxton's friend, but if you'll take my advice, you won't, for his sake, try to give him a lead away from us. You've just come out of Makell's Hotel. Is he there?" Mr. Franklyn answered, without pausing a moment for reflection. "He is not there. Nor did they seem to be able to tell me where he is. I'm quite as anxious to see him as you are." Ireland slapped his hand against his legs. "Then I'll be hanged if I don't believe that he's given us the slip. It'll almost serve me right if he has. I ought to have had him without waiting for a warrant, but the responsibility was a bit bigger one than I cared to take. And now some of those pretty friends of his have given him the word, and he's away. If he's clean away, and all because I shirked, I shall almost feel like doing time myself." When he spoke again Franklyn's manner was caustic. "Since, Ireland, you appear to wish me to be a little unprofessional, perhaps you also won't mind being a little unprofessional, by way of a _quid pro quo_. Might I ask you to tell me what is the offence which is specified on the warrant which you say you hold?" "I don't mind telling you, not the least. In the morning you'll see it for yourself in all the papers--as large as life and twice as natural. Mr. Paxton is wanted for the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds." If the other had struck him Mr. Franklyn could scarcely have seemed more startled. "The Duchess of Datchet's diamonds! Ireland, are you mad or drunk?" "Both, if you like. It's as you choose, Mr. Franklyn." Franklyn eyed the detective as if he really thought that he might be mentally deranged. "Seriously, Ireland, you don't mean to say that Mr. Paxton--Mr. Cyril Paxton--the Cyril Paxton whom I know--is charged with complicity in the affair of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds?" "You have hit it, Mr. Franklyn, to a T." Regardless of the falling drizzle, Mr. Franklyn took off his hat, as if to allow the air a chance to clear his brain. "But--the thing is too preposterous!--altogether too outrageous for credibility! You yourself must be aware that in the case of a man in Paxton's position, such a step as that which you propose to take is likely to be fraught, for yourself, with the very gravest consequences. And I, on my part, can assure you that you are on the verge of making another of those blunders for which you police are famous. Who is the author of this incredibly monstrous charge?" "Don't you trouble yourself about that, Mr. Franklyn. People who bring monstrous charges will have to bear the brunt of them. But I tell you what I'll do. You talk about being unprofessional. I'm willing to be a bit more unprofessional for the sake of a little flutter. I'll bet you any reasonable sum you like, at evens, that when we do have him it's proved that at any rate Mr. Paxton knows where the duchess's diamonds are." "You talk utter nonsense." "All right, put it so. Anyhow, I'm willing to back my talk. And I'm giving you a chance to back yours." "Let me understand you. Do you say that you are willing to back your ability to prove that Mr. Paxton has a guilty knowledge of the Datchet diamonds?" "A guilty knowledge--that's it; you keep on hitting it, and you've hit it again. I'm ready to lay an even hundred pounds--we may as well have something on worth having--that when we do get Mr. Paxton it's proved that he has, as you put it, a guilty knowledge of the whereabouts of the Datchet diamonds." "Such a supposition is wholly beyond the bounds of reason." "Will you bet?" "I will." "You understand that I'm betting on a certainty; but since you seem to think that you're betting on a certainty too the thing's about even. It's a bet?" "It is." "Good! Perhaps you'll make a note of it. I'll make one too." As a matter of fact, Mr. Ireland, taking out his pocket-book, made a note of it upon the spot. "When I've proved my point I'll ask you for that hundred." "Say, rather, that when you've failed to prove it, I'll ask you." "All right. And you shall have it, never you fear." Mr. Ireland replaced his pocketbook. "Now I'm going to Makell's to make a few inquiries on my own account. If those inquiries are not satisfactory, I'll at once wire round Mr. Paxton's description. There'll be a reward offered for him in the morning, and if we don't have him within four-and-twenty hours, I'm a Dutchman." Franklyn, knowing his man, was more moved by Ireland's words than he cared to show. "For goodness' sake, Ireland, be careful what you do. As you say, you know me, and you know that it is not my custom to express an opinion rashly. I assure you that it is my solemn conviction that if you take the steps which you speak of taking, you will be doing a possibly irreparable injury to a perfectly innocent man." The detective looked at the lawyer steadily for a second or two. "Quite right, Mr. Franklyn, I do know you, and it is because I know you that I am willing to strain a point, and, without prejudice to that little bet of ours, give you proof that in matters of this sort a man of my experience is not likely to move without good grounds. You see this?" Mr. Ireland took something out of his waistcoat pocket. It was a ring. Slipping it on to the tip of his little finger, he held it up for the other to see. "I see that it's a ring. What of it?" "As Mr. Paxton was coming out of Makell's Hotel this morning he took his handkerchief out of his pocket. As he did so, unnoticed by him, something dropped out of his handkerchief on to the pavement. It was this ring." "Well?" "Ill, I should call it, if I were you, because this ring happens to be one of those which were stolen from the Duchess of Datchet. I had previously had reasons of my own for suspecting that he knew more than was good for him of that business; even you will grant that the discovery in his possession of one of the stolen articles was sufficient to turn suspicion into practical certainty." Mr. Franklyn said nothing, perhaps because he had nothing to say which he felt was equal to the occasion. What Mr. Ireland said astounded him. He perceived that, at any rate in Mr. Paxton's absence, the position presented the appearance of an aggravating puzzle. That Mr. Paxton could, if he chose, furnish a satisfactory solution, he did not doubt. But he wondered what it was. The detective went on. "Now, Mr. Franklyn, since I have been, as you yourself would say, unprofessionally open with you, I must ask you, on your side, to be equally open with me. What are you going to do?" Franklyn reflected before replying. "I fail to see how you are entitled to ask me such a question; unless you suspect me also of being an accomplice in the crime. At any rate I decline to answer." "Very well, Mr. Franklyn, I am sorry, but I must do my duty. I have reason to suspect that you may intend to aid and abet Mr. Paxton in effecting his escape. To prevent your doing so is my obvious duty. Hollier!" Mr. Ireland beckoned to a man who had hitherto been loitering under the shadow of the houses. Mr. Franklyn might or might not have noticed it, but during their conversation two or three other men had been hanging about within hailing distance in apparently similar purposeless fashion. The individual who had been signalled to approached. "Mr. Franklyn, this is George Hollier, an officer of police. Hollier, this gentleman's name is Franklyn. He's a friend of Mr. Paxton. I think it's just possible that he will, if he can, give Mr. Paxton a helping hand to get away. I order you to follow him, to observe his movements as closely as you may, and if he does anything which in your judgment looks like an attempt to place himself in communication with Mr. Paxton, to arrest him on the spot. You understand?" The man nodded. Mr. Franklyn said nothing. He called a cab from the rank in front of them. As the vehicle drew up beside them Mr. Ireland addressed the man upon the box. "Cabman, what's your number?" The cabman gave question for question. "What do you want to know for?" "I'm an officer of police. This gentleman wishes you to drive him somewhere. It is possible that I may require you to tell me where. You won't lose by it; you needn't be afraid." The driver gave his number. The detective noted it, as he had done his bet. He called a second cab, again addressing its Jehu. "Cabman, this man is an officer of police. He's going to ride beside you on the box, and he wants you to keep the cab in which this gentleman is going to be a passenger well in sight. He'll see that you are properly paid for your trouble." As Mr. Franklyn drove off he was almost tickled by the thought that he, a lawyer of blameless reputation, and of the highest standing, was being followed about the streets of Brighton by a policeman as if he had been a criminal. But all disposition towards amusement was banished by the further instant reflection that he had promised Miss Strong to bring her news of her lover. And he was bringing her news--of what a character! CHAPTER XII A WOMAN ROUSED Almost as soon as Mr. Franklyn touched the knocker of the house in Medina Villas, the door was opened from within, and he found himself confronted by Miss Strong. "Oh, Mr. Franklyn, is it you at last?" She saw that some one was standing at Mr. Franklyn's back. "Cyril!" she cried. Then, perceiving her mistake, drew back. "I beg your pardon, I thought it was Mr. Paxton." The man in the rear advanced. "Is Mr. Paxton here?" He turned to Mr. Franklyn. "Unless you want trouble, if he is here, you had better tell me." Mr. Franklyn answered. "Mr. Paxton is not here. If you like you may go in and look for yourself; but if you are a wise man you will take my assurance as sufficient." Mr. Hollier looked at Mr. Franklyn, then at Miss Strong, then decided. "Very well, sir. I don't wish to make myself more disagreeable than I can help. I'll take your word." Directly he was in the hall and the door was closed Miss Strong caught Mr. Franklyn by the arm. He could feel that she was trembling, as she whispered, almost in his ear-- "Mr. Franklyn, what does that man want with Cyril?" He drew her with him into the sitting-room. Conscious that he was about to play a principal part in a very delicate situation, he desired to take advantage of still another moment or two to enable him to collect his thoughts. Miss Wentworth, having relinquished her reading, was sitting up in her armchair, awaiting his arrival with an air of evident expectancy. He looked at Miss Strong. Her hand was pressed against her side; her head was thrown a little back; you could see the muscles working in her beautiful, rounded throat almost as plainly as you may see them working in the throat of a bird. For the moment Mr. Franklyn was inclined to wish that Cyril Paxton had never been his friend. He was not a man who was easily unnerved, but as he saw the something which was in the young girl's face, he found himself, for almost the first time in his life, at a loss for words. Miss Strong had to put her question a second time. "Mr. Franklyn, what does that man want with Cyril?" When he did speak the lawyer found, somewhat to his surprise, that his throat seemed dry, and that his voice was husky. "Strictly speaking, I cannot say that the man wants Cyril at all. What he does want is to know if I am in communication with him." "Why should he want to know that?" While he was seeking words, Miss Strong followed with another question. "But, tell me, have you seen Cyril?" "I have not. Though it seems he is in Brighton, or, rather, he was two hours ago." "Two hours ago? Then where is he now?" "That at present I cannot tell you. He left his hotel two hours ago, as was thought, to keep an appointment; it would almost seem as if he had been starting to keep the appointment which he had with you." "Two hours ago? Yes. I was waiting for him then. But he never came. Why didn't he? You know why he didn't. Tell me!" "The whole affair seems to be rather an odd one, though in all probability it amounts to nothing more than a case of cross-questions and crooked answers. What I have learnt is little enough. If you will sit down I will tell you all there is to tell." Mr. Franklyn advanced a chair towards Miss Strong with studied carelessness. She spurned the proffered support with something more than contempt. "I won't sit down. How can I sit down when you have something to tell me? I can always listen best when I am standing." Putting his hands behind his back, Mr. Franklyn assumed what he possibly intended to be an air of parental authority. "See here, Miss Strong. You can, if you choose, be as sensible a young woman as I should care to see. If you so choose now, well and good. But I tell you plainly that on your showing the slightest symptom of hysterics my lips will be closed, and you will not get another word out of me." If by his attempting to play the part of heavy father he had supposed that Miss Strong would immediately be brought into a state of subjection, he had seldom made a greater error. So far from having cowed her, he seemed to have fired all the blood in her veins. She drew herself up until she had increased her stature by at least an inch, and she addressed the man of law in a strain in which he probably had never been addressed before. "How dare you dictate how I am to receive any scraps of information which you may condescend to dole out to me! You forget yourself. Cyril is to be my husband; you pretend to be his friend. If it is anything but pretence, and you are a gentlemen, and a man of honour, you will see that it is your duty to withhold no tidings of my promised husband from his future wife. How I choose to receive those tidings is my affair, not yours." Certainly the lady's slightly illogical indignation made her look supremely lovely. Mr. Franklyn recognised this fact with a sensation which was both novel and curious. Even in that moment of perturbation, he told himself that it would never be his fate to have such a beautiful creature breathing burning words for love of him. While he wondered what to answer, Miss Wentworth interposed, rising from her chair to do so. "Daisy is quite right, Mr. Franklyn. Don't play the game which the cat plays with the mouse by making lumbering attempts to, what is called, break it gently. If you have bad news, tell it out like a man! You will find that the feminine is not necessarily far behind the masculine animal in fibre." Mr. Franklyn looked from one young woman to the other, and felt himself ill-used. He had known them both for quite a tale of years; and yet he felt, somehow, as if he were becoming really acquainted with them for the first time now. "You misjudge me, Miss Strong, and you, Miss Wentworth, too. The difficulty which I feel is how to tell you, as we lawyers say, without prejudice, exactly what there is to tell. As I said, the situation is such an odd one. I must begin by asking you a question. Has either of you heard of the affair of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds?" "The affair of the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds?" Miss Strong repeated his words, passing her hand over her eyes, as if she did not understand. Miss Wentworth, however, made it quickly plain that she did. "I have; and so of course has Daisy. What of it?" "This. An addle-headed detective, named John Ireland, has got hold of a wild idea that Cyril knows something about it." Miss Wentworth gave utterance to what sounded like a half-stifled exclamation. "I guessed as much! What an extraordinary thing! I had been reading about it just before Mr. Paxton came in last night, and when he began talking in a mysterious way about his having made a quarter of a million at a single coup--precisely the amount at which the diamonds were valued--it set me thinking. I suppose I was a fool." For Miss Wentworth's quickness in guessing his meaning Mr. Franklyn had been unprepared. If she, inspired solely by the evidence of her own intuitions, had suspected Mr. Paxton, what sort of a case might not Mr. Ireland have against him? But Miss Strong's sense of perception was, apparently, not so keen. She looked at her companions as a person might look who is groping for the key of a riddle. "I daresay I am stupid. I did read something about some diamonds being stolen. But--what has that to do with Cyril?" Mr. Franklyn glanced at Miss Wentworth as if he thought that she might answer. But she refrained. He had to speak. "In all probability the whole affair is a blunder of Ireland's." "Ireland? Who is Ireland?" "John Ireland is a Scotland Yard detective, and, like all such gentry, quick to jump at erroneous conclusions." They saw that Miss Strong made a little convulsive movement with her hands. She clenched her fists. She spoke in a low, clear, even tone of voice. "I see. And does John Ireland think that Cyril Paxton stole the Datchet diamonds?" "I fancy that he hardly goes as far as that. From what I was able to gather, he merely suspects him of being acquainted with their present whereabouts." Although Miss Strong did not raise her voice, it rang with scorn. "I see. He merely suspects him of that. What self-restraint he shows! And is that John Ireland on the doorstep?" "That is a man named Hollier, whom John Ireland was good enough to commission to keep an eye on me." "Why on you? Does he suspect you also?" Mr. Franklyn shrugged his shoulders. "He knows that I am Cyril's friend." "And all Cyril's friends are to be watched and spied upon? I see. And is Cyril arrested? Is he in prison? Is that the meaning of his absence?" "Not a bit of it. He seems, temporarily, to have disappeared." "And when he reappears I suppose John Ireland will arrest him?" "Candidly, Miss Strong, I fear he will." "There is something else you fear. And which you fear too!" Miss Strong swung round towards Miss Wentworth with an imperious gesture. Her rage, despite it being tinged with melodrama, was in its way sublime. The young lady's astonishing intensity so carried away her hearers that they probably omitted to notice that there was any connection between her words and manner and the words and manner of, say, the transpontine drama. "You fear, both of you, that what John Ireland suspects is true. You feel that Cyril Paxton, the man I love, who would not suffer himself to come into contact with dishonour, whose shoestrings you are neither of you worthy to unloose--you fear that he may have soiled his hands with sordid crime. I see your fear branded on your faces--looking from your eyes. You cravens! You cowards! You unutterable things! To dare so to prejudge a man who, as yet, has had no opportunity to know even what it is with which you charge him!" Suddenly Miss Strong devoted her particular attention to Miss Wentworth. She pointed her words with a force and a directness which ensured their striking home. "As for you, now I know what it was you meant last night; what it was which in your heart you accused him of, but which your tongue did not dare to quite bring itself to utter. And you have pretended to be my friend, and yet you are so swift to seek to kill that which you know is dearer than life to the man whom I love and hold in honour. Since your friendship is plainly more dangerous than your enmity, in the future we'll be enemies, openly, avowedly, for never again I'll call you friend of mine!" Miss Wentworth moved forward, exclaiming-- "Daisy!" But Miss Strong moved back. "Don't speak to me! Don't come near to me! If you touch me, woman though I am, and woman though you are, I will strike you!" Since Miss Strong seemed to mean exactly what she said, Miss Wentworth, deeming, under certain given circumstances, discretion to be the better part of valour, held her peace. Miss Strong, having annihilated Miss Wentworth, one could but hope to her entire satisfaction, redirected her attention to the gentleman. "And you pretended to be Cyril's friend! Heaven indeed preserve us from our friends, it is they who strike the bitterest blows! This only I will say to you. You have the courage of your opinions when there's no courage wanted, but were Cyril Paxton this moment to enter the room you would no more dare to hint to him what you have dared to hint to me, than you would dare to fly." Then, recollecting herself, with exquisite sarcasm Miss Strong apologised for having confused her meaning. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Franklyn, a thousand times. I said exactly the contrary of what I wished to say. Of course, if Cyril did enter the room, there is only one thing which you would dare to do, dare to fly. I leave you alone together, in the complete assurance that I am leaving you to enjoy the perfect communion of two equal minds." Miss Strong moved towards the door. Mr. Franklyn interposed. "One moment, Miss Strong. Where are you going?" "To look for Cyril. Do you object? I will try to induce him not to hurt you, when I find him." "You understand that you will have to endure the ignominy of having the man outside following you wherever you may go." "Ignominy, you call it! Why, the man may actually be to me as a protection from my friends." "You use hard words. I enter into your feelings sufficiently to understand that, from your own point of view, they may not seem to be unjustified. But at the same time I am sufficiently your friend, and Cyril's friend, to decline to allow you, if I can help it, to throw dust in your own eyes. That Cyril has been guilty of actual theft, I do not for a moment believe. That he may have perpetrated some egregious blunder, I fear is possible. I know him probably as well as you do. I know John Ireland too, and I am persuaded that he would not bring a charge of this kind without having good grounds to go upon. Indeed, I may tell you plainly--slurring over the truth will do no good to any one--Cyril is known to have been in actual possession of one of the missing jewels." "I don't believe it." "Best assured you will do good neither to Cyril's cause nor to your own by a refusal to give credence to actual facts. It is only facts which a judge and jury can be induced to act upon. Satisfactorily explain them if you can, but do not suppose that you will be able to impress other people with the merits of your cause by declining to believe in their existence. I do entreat you to be advised by me before, by some rash, if well-meaning act, you do incalculable mischief to Cyril and yourself." "Thank you, Mr. Franklyn, but one does not always wish to be advised even by one's legal adviser. Just now I should be obliged by your confining yourself to answering questions. Perhaps you will be so good as to tell me where I am most likely to find John Ireland, that immaculate policeman?" "When I left him he was just going to Makell's Hotel to make inquiries as to Cyril's whereabouts upon his own account." "Then I will go to Makell's Hotel to make inquiries of John Ireland upon my account." "In that case you must excuse me if I come with you. I warn you again, that if you are not careful you may do Cyril more mischief than you have any notion of." "I shall come too." This was Miss Wentworth. Miss Strong bowed. "If you will, you will. Evidently the man on the doorstep is not likely to serve me as an adequate protection against my friends." Miss Strong put on her hat and mackintosh in what was probably one of the shortest times on record. Miss Wentworth generally dressed more quickly than her friend; on such an occasion she was not likely to be left behind. The curious procession of three passed through the door and down the steps in Indian file, Miss Strong first, Mr. Franklyn last. At the bottom of the steps stood Mr. Hollier. The leader looked him up and down. "Is your name Hollier?" The man touched his hat. "That's my name, miss." "I am Daisy Strong, Mr. Cyril Paxton's promised wife." She seemed on a sudden to be fond of advertising the fact. "I am going to look for Mr. Paxton now. You may, if you choose, play the part of spy, and follow me; but let me tell you that if he comes to harm through you, or through any of your associates, there'll be trouble." "I see, miss." Mr. Hollier grinned, hurting, as it seemed, the lady's sense of dignity. "I don't know what you see to smile at. A woman has given a man sufficient cause for tears before to-day. You may find, in your own case, that she will again." CHAPTER XIII THE DETECTIVE AND THE LADY Mr. Ireland marched into Makell's Hotel as if he owned the building. He created a sensation in the office. "You know me?" The clerk, who was a good-looking young gentleman, with a curled moustache, eyed the speaker with somewhat supercilious curiosity. Mr. Ireland's manner was more suggestive of his importance than was his appearance. The clerk decided that he did not know him. He owned as much. "I'm Inspector Ireland, of the Criminal Investigation Department. I hold a warrant for the arrest of Cyril Paxton. He is stopping in your hotel. I don't want to cause any more trouble than necessary--my assistants are outside--so, perhaps, you will tell me whereabouts in the house I am likely to find him." The clerk looked the surprise which he felt. "Mr. Paxton is out." "Are you sure?" "I will make inquiries if you wish it. But I know that he is out. I saw him go, and, as I have not left the office since he went, if he had returned I could not have helped seeing him." "Has he any property here?" "I will speak to the manager." The clerk turned as if to suit the action to the word. Reaching through the office window, Mr. Ireland caught him by the shoulder. "All right. You send for him. I'll speak to him instead." The clerk eyed the detaining hand with an air of unconcealed disgust. "Very good. Have the kindness to remove your hand. If you are a policeman, as you say you are, yours is not the kind of grasp which I care to have upon my shoulder." "Hoity-toity! Don't you injure yourself, young man. All I want is to have the first talk with the manager. Are you going to send for the manager, or am I?" "Here is the manager." As the clerk spoke, and before he had had time to properly smooth his ruffled plumes, the dignitary in question entered the office from an inner room. John Ireland accosted him. "Are you the manager of this hotel--name of Treadwater?" "I am Mr. Treadwater." Ireland explained who he was, and what he wanted. Mr. Treadwater was evidently even more surprised than the clerk had been. "You have a warrant for the arrest of Cyril Paxton! Not our Mr. Paxton, surely?" "I don't know about your Mr. Paxton; but it's the Mr. Paxton who's stopping here, so don't you make any mistake about it. I'm told he's out. One of my men will stay here till he returns. In the meantime I want to know if there is any property of his about the place. If there is, I want to have a look at it." The manager considered. "I don't wish to seem to doubt, Mr. Ireland, that you are what you say you are, or, indeed, anything at all that you have said. But an effort has already been made once to-day to gain access--under what turned out to be false pretences--to certain property which Mr. Paxton has committed to our keeping. And I am compelled to inform you that it is a rule of ours not, under any circumstances, to give up property which has been intrusted to us by our guests to strangers without a proper authority." Ireland smiled grimly. "Where is there somewhere I can speak to you in private? I'll show you authority enough, and to spare." The manager, having taken Mr. Ireland into the inner room, the detective lost no time in explaining the position. "You're a sensible man, Mr. Treadwater. You don't want to have any bother in a place of this sort, and I don't want to make any more bother than I'm compelled. Mr. Paxton's wanted for a big thing, about as big a thing as I've ever been engaged in. I wasn't likely to come here without my proper credentials, hardly. Just you cast your eye over this." Ireland unfolded a blue paper which he had taken from among a sheaf of other papers, which were in the inner pocket of his coat, and held it up before the manager's face. "That's a search warrant. If you're not satisfied with what you see of it, I'll read it to you, and that's all I'm bound to do. I've reason to believe that Cyril Paxton has certain stolen property in his possession here, in this hotel. If you choose to give me facilities to examine any property he may have, well and good. If you don't choose, this warrant authorises me to search the building. I'll call my men in, and I'll have it searched from attic to basement--every drawer and every box which the place contains, if it takes us all night to do it." Mr. Treadwater rubbed his hands together. He did not look pleased. "I had no idea, when I spoke, that you were in possession of such a document. As you say, I certainly do not wish to have a bother. A search warrant is authority enough, even for me. All the property Mr. Paxton has in the hotel is in this room. I will show it to you." The manager moved to a door which seemed to have been let into the wall. "This is our strong-room. As you perceive, it is a letter lock. Only one person, except myself, ever has the key to it." While he was speaking he opened the door. He disappeared into the recess which the opening of the door disclosed. Presently he reappeared carrying a Gladstone in his hand. He laid the bag on the table, in front of Mr. Ireland. "That is all the property Mr. Paxton has in the hotel." "How do you know?" The manager smiled--the smile of superiority. "My dear sir, it is part of my duty to know what every guest brings into the hotel. You can, if you like, go up to the room which he occupied last night, but you'll find nothing in it of Mr. Paxton's. All that he brought with him is contained in that Gladstone bag." "Then we'll see what's in it. I'm going to open it in your presence, so that you'll be evidence to prove that I play no hankey-pankey tricks." Mr. Ireland did open it in the manager's presence. With, considering the absence of proper tools, a degree of dexterity which did him credit. But after all it appeared that there was nothing in it to adequately reward him for the trouble he had taken. The bag was filled chiefly with shirts and underclothing. Although every article seemed to be bran-new, there was absolutely nothing which, correctly speaking, could be said to be of value. With total want of ceremony the investigator turned the entire contents of the bag out upon the table. But though he did so, nothing in any way out of the common was discovered. Judging from the expression of his countenance, Mr. Ireland did not seem to be contented. "Wasn't there an attempt at burglary here last night? One's been reported." "There was. For the first time in the history of the hotel. An attempt was made from the street to gain admission through the window, to Mr. Paxton's bedroom." "And didn't you say that an attempt had been made to-day to gain access, by means of false pretences, to Mr. Paxton's property?" "That is so." "And didn't he ask you to keep that property safe in your strong-room?" "He did." "Well--doesn't it seem as if somebody was precious anxious to lay his hands upon that property, and that Mr. Paxton was equally anxious that he shouldn't?" "Precisely." "And yet you go and tell me that all the property he has is contained in that Gladstone bag. What is there that should make any one go out of his way to take it? You tell me that!" When the manager replied, it was with an appreciable amount of hesitation. "I think that is a point on which I may be able to throw some light." "Then throw it--do!" "I shouldn't be surprised if Mr. Paxton took all that the bag contained which was of value up to London with him this morning, and left it there. Indeed, this evening, before he went out, he told me that that was what he had done." Mr. Ireland gave utterance to what, coming from the mouth of any one but an inspector of police, would have sounded like a string of execrations. "I suppose you've no idea what it was that he took with him or where it was he took it?" "Not the faintest notion." "Mr. Treadwater, this is another illustration of the fact that if you want a thing well done you must do it yourself. This morning I set a man to shadow Mr. Paxton--I told him not to let him get out of his sight. What does he do, this utter idiot? He sees our gentleman drop a ring. My man, he picks it up, and he gets into such a state of excitement that he loses his head and tears straight off with it to me. I'm not saying that he'd not chanced upon an important piece of evidence, because he had; but if he'd kept his wits about him, and had his head screwed on straight, he'd have had the ring and Mr. Paxton too. As it was, that was the last he saw of Mr. Paxton." "May I ask what it is you suspect Mr. Paxton of having taken with him up to town?" "Unless I'm out of my reckoning, Mr. Paxton went up to town with the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds stowed away in his pockets." The manager's face was a vivid note of exclamation. "No! My dear sir, I have been acquainted with Mr. Paxton some considerable time. I happen to know that he's a gentleman of position in the City. You must surely be mistaken in supposing that he could be mixed up in such an affair as that--it's incredible!" "Is it? That's all right. If you like, you think so. Gentlemen of position in the City have had their fingers in some queer pies before to-day. If you don't happen to know it, I present you with the information gratis. Have you any idea of where he was going when he went out to-night?" "I fancy that when he comes to Brighton he comes to see a lady. I rather took it for granted that, as usual, he was going to her." "What's her name; and where does she live?" "I don't know her name; but I believe she lives in Medina Villas--that, you know, is at West Brighton." "Medina Villas?" Ireland seemed to be turning something over in his mind. He smiled. "I shouldn't be surprised. If she does, I'm inclined to think that one of my men has got his eye on her address. If Mr. Paxton's there, he's nabbed. But I'm afraid he isn't. On this occasion I'm inclined to think that he had an appointment which he found to be slightly more pressing than that which he had with the lady." Ireland looked at the manager with what he probably intended for a look of frankness. "I don't mind owning that there are features about the case, as it stands at present, which are beyond my comprehension, and I tell you, I would give a good round sum to be able this moment to lay my finger on Mr. Paxton." "So would I. I'd give a great deal to be able to lay my finger on Mr. Paxton. With all my heart I would. Yes, sir, indeed I would." Each of the talkers had been too much interested in what the other had to say to notice that while they talked, without invitation or any sort of announcement, a procession--the procession of three!--had entered the room. The speaker was, of course, Miss Strong. Behind her, gripping the handle of her parasol, as it seemed a little nervously, came Miss Wentworth. Mr. Franklyn, looking distinctly the most uncomfortable of the trio, brought up the rear. Miss Strong, in front, bore herself like a female paladin. She held herself quite straight; her shoulders were thrown well back; her dainty head was gallantly poised upon her lovely neck; she breathed the air of battle. She might not have known it, but seldom had she looked more charming. The detective and the manager both looked at her askance. She only looked at the detective. "Are you John Ireland?" "I am. Though I have not the pleasure, madam, of knowing you." "I am Daisy Strong, who am shortly to be Cyril Paxton's wife. How dare you, Mr. Ireland, so foully slander him!" Mr. Ireland showed symptoms of being surprised. He had an eye for a lady, and still more, perhaps, for a pretty girl. And by neither was he accustomed to being addressed in such a strain. "I trust, madam, that I have not slandered Mr. Paxton." "You trust so, do you? Mr. Franklyn, will you come forward, please, instead of hanging behind there in the shadow of Miss Wentworth's skirts, as if you were afraid?" Mr. Franklyn, thus addressed, came forward, looking, however, as if he would rather not. "You hear what this person says. And yet you tell me he has slandered Cyril Paxton as foully as he could." Mr. Franklyn shot a glance at Mr. Ireland which was meant to be pregnant with meaning. He showed a disposition to hum and to ha. "My dear Miss Strong, I'm sure you will find that Mr. Ireland is not unreasonable. His only desire is to do his duty." Miss Strong stamped her foot upon the floor. "His duty! to slander a gentleman in whose presence he is not worthy to stand! Because a man calls himself a policeman, and by doubtful methods contrives to earn the money with which to keep himself alive, is such an one entitled to fling mud at men of stainless honour and untarnished reputation, and then to excuse himself by pretending that flinging mud is his duty? If you, Mr. Franklyn, are afraid of a policeman, merely because he's a policeman, I assure you I am not. And I take leave to tell Mr. Ireland that there are policemen who are, at least, as much in want of being kept in order as any member of the criminal classes by any possibility could be." Ireland eyed the eloquent lady as if he were half-puzzled, half-amused. "I understand your feelings, madam, and I admire your pluck in standing up for Mr. Paxton." Again the lady stamped her foot. "I care nothing for your approval! And it has nothing at all to do with the matter on hand." The detective coughed apologetically. "Perfectly true, madam. But I can't help it. I assure you I always do admire a young woman who sticks up for her young man when he happens to find himself in a bit of a scrape. But, if you take my tip, Miss Strong, you'll leave us men to manage these sort of things. You'll only do Mr. Paxton harm by interfering. You tell her, Mr. Franklyn, if what I say isn't true." Miss Strong turned towards Mr. Ireland, cutting short the words on Franklyn's lips before they had a chance of getting themselves spoken. "Do not refer to Mr. Franklyn on any matter which concerns me. There is no connection between us. Mr. Franklyn and I are strangers. I am quite capable of taking care of myself. I even think that you may find me almost a match for you." She turned to Treadwater. "Is Mr. Paxton stopping in this hotel?" "He stayed here last night, madam. And he has been here again this evening. At present, he is out." "And what is this?" She motioned towards the open bag, with its contents strewed upon the table. "That is Mr. Paxton's. Mr. Ireland has forced it open." Miss Strong turned towards Ireland--a veritable feminine fury. "You wretched spy! you cowardly thief! To take advantage of a man's back being turned to poke and pry among his private possessions in order to gratify your curiosity! Is that the science of detection?" She transferred her attentions to the manager. "And you--are those the lines on which your hotel is conducted, that you hand over, in their absence, the belongings of your guests to the tender mercies of such a man as this? If so, then your methods of management ought to be known more widely than they are. Decent people will then know what they have to expect when they trust themselves inside your doors." Treadwater did not seem as if he altogether relished the fashion of the lady's speech. He began to make excuses. "I protested against Mr. Ireland's action; but on his producing a search warrant, I yielded to the pressure of necessity." "The pressure of necessity! Do you call this the pressure of necessity?" Miss Strong pointed a scornful finger at Mr. Ireland. Ostentatiously ignoring her, the detective addressed himself to the manager. "I'm going now, Mr. Treadwater. I'll leave one of my men behind me. If Mr. Paxton returns, he'll deal with him." The lady interposed. "What do you mean--he'll deal with him?" "What do I mean? I mean that Mr. Paxton will be arrested as soon as he shows his nose inside the door. And I'll tell you what, Miss Strong, if you were to use fewer hard words, and were to do something to prove Mr. Paxton's innocence, instead of talking big about it, you might do him more good than you're likely to do by the way in which you've been going on up to now. I'll put these things together and take them with me." By "these things" Mr. Ireland meant Mr. Paxton's. He moved towards the table. Miss Strong thrust herself between him and it. "Don't touch them--don't dare to touch them! Don't dare to touch Cyril's property! Do you suppose that, because you're a policeman, all the world can be cowed into suffering you to commit open robbery?" She clutched at the table with both her hands, glaring at him like some wild cat. Shrugging his shoulders, Ireland laughed, shortly, grimly. "Very good, Miss Strong. There is nothing there which is of the slightest consequence in this particular case. You are welcome to take them in your custody. Only, remember, you assume the responsibility for their safe keeping." "The man who forces open another man's portmanteau without the knowledge of its owner becomes, I fancy, at once responsible for its contents. And I promise you that if the slightest article is missing you will be taught that even a policeman can be called to account." Without attempting to answer her, Ireland went towards the door, pausing, as he went, to whisper to Mr. Franklyn-- "Why did you bring her with you? She'll only make bad worse." Mr. Franklyn shrugged his shoulders, as the detective himself had done. "I didn't bring her! She brought me!" Miss Strong's clear tones came after the detective. "You set a man to spy on me, Mr. Ireland, and now I mean to spy on you. We'll see if turn and turn about is not fair play, and if you dare to try to prevent my going exactly where I please." Still ignoring her, Ireland went into the hall. There he found Hollier in waiting. "Any report, Hollier?" "Nothing material, sir. I followed Mr. Franklyn to Medina Villas and back, but saw nothing to cause me to suppose that he was in communication with Mr. Paxton." "You remain here until I relieve you. If Mr. Paxton returns, arrest him. Send for me if I am required. I will leave a man outside, so that you can have help, if it is needed." Ireland went through the hall, and through the door, Miss Strong hard upon his heels. On the steps he turned and spoke to her. "Now, Miss Strong, if you are wise, you'll go home and go to bed. You may do as you like about attempting to follow me, but I promise you, I shall not permit you to dog my footsteps one moment longer than it suits my convenience. On that point you need be under no misapprehension." The detective strode away. Miss Strong was about to follow, when Miss Wentworth caught her by the arm. "Now, Daisy, be reasonable--you'll do no good by persisting--let's go home." "Loose my arm." Miss Wentworth loosed it. In less than a minute Daisy had decreased the distance between Ireland and herself to half a dozen feet. Franklyn and Miss Wentworth came after, splashing through the mud and the mist, somewhat disconsolately, a few paces in the rear. The cavalcade had gone, perhaps, fifty yards, when a figure, dashing out of an entry they were passing, caught Ireland by the lapel of his sleeve. "Guv'nor! I want to speak to you!" The figure was that of a man--an undersized, half-grown, very shabby-looking man. The light was not bad enough to conceal so much. The collar of a ragged, dirty coat was turned up high about his neck, and an ancient billycock was crammed down upon his head. Stopping, Ireland turned and looked at him. "You want to speak to me?" "Yes, Mr. Ireland; don't yer know me?" "Know you?" Suddenly Ireland's arm went out straight from the shoulder, and the stranger, as if he had been a rat, was gripped tightly by the neck. "Yes, Bill Cooper, I do know you. I've been looking for you some time. There's something which I rather wish to say to you. Now, what's your little game?" The man's voice became a whine; the change was almost excusable when one considers how uncomfortable he must have been in the detective's grasp. Daisy, who was standing within a yard, could hear distinctly every word that was uttered. "Don't be nasty, Mr. Ireland, that ain't like you! I know you want me--that's all right--but if you take me without hearing what I've got to say you'll be sorry all the same." "Sorry, shall I? How do you make that out?" "Why, because I'll make your fortune for you if you'll give me half a chance--leastways, I daresay it's made already, but I'll double it for you, anyhow." "And pray how do you propose to do that?" "Why, I'll put you on to the biggest thing that ever you were put on to." "You mean that you'll round on your comrades. I see. Is that it?" The stranger did not seem to altogether like the fashion in which Mr. Ireland summed up his intentions. "You may call it what you please, but if I hadn't been used bad first of all myself, I wouldn't have said a word; red-hot irons wouldn't have made me. But when a chap's been used like I've been used, he feels like giving of a bit of it back again; that's fair enough, ain't it?" "Chuck the patter, Bill. Go on with what you have to say." "Look here, Mr. Ireland, you give me ten thick 'uns, enough to take me to 'Merriker; I'll go there, and I'll put you on to them as had something to do with them there Duchess of Datchet's diamonds what's been and got theirselves mislaid." It was Daisy who answered. She seemed to speak in sudden and uncontrollable excitement. "I don't know what ten thick 'uns are, but if you do what you say I'll give you fifty pounds out of my own pocket." The man regarded Miss Strong with an inquiring eye. "I don't know you, miss. Mr. Ireland, who's the lady?" "The lady's all right. She's a bit interested in the Datchet diamonds herself. If she says she'll give you fifty pounds you'll get 'em, only you've got to earn 'em, mind!" "Fifty pound!" The man drew a long breath. "I'd do pretty nigh anything for fifty pound, let alone the way they've been and used me. I've been having a cruel hard time, I have--cruel hard!" Ireland took Cooper by the shoulder and shook him, with the apparent intention of waking him up. "All right, Mr. Ireland, all right; there ain't no call for you to go handling of me; I ain't doing nothing to you. I don't know the lady, and she don't know me, and I'm only a-trying to see that's it's all right. You wouldn't do a pore bloke, miss, would you? That fifty'll be all right?" Mr. Ireland presented Cooper with a second application of the previous dose. "That fifty'll be all right, or rather it'll be all wrong, if you keep me standing here much longer in the rain." "You are so hasty, Mr. Ireland, upon my word you are. I'm a-coming to it, ain't I? Now I'll tell you straight. Tom the Toff, he done the nicking; and the Baron, he put him up to it." Miss Strong looked bewildered. "Tom the Toff? The Baron? Who are they?" The detective spoke. "I know who they are, Miss Strong. And I may tell Mr. Cooper that I've had an eye on those two gentlemen already. What I want to know is where the diamonds are. They're worth more than the rogues who took them. Now, Bill, where are the shiners?" Cooper stretched out both his hands in front of him with a gesture which was possibly intended to impress Mr. Ireland with a conviction of his childlike candour. "That's where it is--just exactly where it is! I don't know where the shiners are--and that's the trewth! Yet more don't nobody else seem to know where the shiners are! That's what the row's about! Seems as how the shiners has hooked theirselves clean off--and ain't there ructions! So far as I can make out from what I've come across and put together, don't yer know, it seems as how a cove as they calls Paxton----" "Paxton!" The name came simultaneously from Ireland and Miss Strong. "I don't know as that's his name--that's only what I've heard 'em call him, don't yer know. He's a rare fine toff, a regular out-and-outer, whatever his name is. It seems as how this here cove as they calls Paxton has been playing it off on the Toff and the Baron, and taken the whole blooming lot of sparklers for his own--so far as I can make out, he has." "It's a lie!" This was, of course, Miss Strong. The plain speaking did not seem to hurt Mr. Cooper's feelings. "That I don't know nothing at all about; I'm only telling you what I know. And I do know that they've had a go at this here cove as they calls Paxton more than once, and more than twice, and that now they've got him fast enough." Mr. Ireland twisted Cooper round, so that the electric lamplight shone on his face. "What do you mean--they've got him fast enough?" "I mean what I says, don't I? They got hold of him this evening, and they've took him to a crib they got, and if he don't hand over them sparklers they'll murder him as soon as look at him." Miss Strong turned to the detective with shining eyes. "Mr. Ireland, save him! What shall we do?" "Don't put yourself out, Miss Strong. This may turn out to be the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Paxton. Bill, where's this crib of theirs?" Cooper pushed his hat on to the side of his head. "I don't know as how I could rightly describe it to you--Brighton ain't my home, you know. But I daresay I could show it to you if I was to try." "Then you shall try. Listen to me, Bill Cooper. If you take me to this crib of theirs, and if what you say is true, and you don't try to play any of those tricks of yours, I'll add something of my own to this lady's fifty, and it'll be the best stroke of business that you ever did in all your life." Ireland called a cab. He allowed Daisy to enter first. Cooper got in after her. "The police-station, driver--as fast as you can." Cooper immediately wanted to get out again. "Where are you a-taking me to? I ain't going to no police-station!" "Stay where you are, you idiot! So long as you act fairly with me, I'll act fairly with you. You don't suppose that this is a sort of job that I can tackle single-handed? I'm going to the station to get help. Now then, driver, move that horse of yours!" The cab moved off, leaving Miss Wentworth and Mr. Franklyn to follow in another if they chose. CHAPTER XIV AMONG THIEVES Cyril was vaguely conscious of the touch of some one's hand about the region of his throat; not of a soft or a gentle hand, but of a clumsy, fumbling, yet resolute paw. Then of something falling on to him--falling with a splashing sound. He opened his eyes, heavily, dreamily. He heard a voice, speaking as if from afar. "Hullo, chummie, so you ain't dead, after all?--leastways, not as yet you ain't." The voice was not a musical voice, nor a friendly one. It was harsh and husky, as if the speaker suffered from a chronic cold. It was the voice not only of an uneducated man, but of the lowest type of English-speaking human animal. Cyril shuddered as he heard it. His eyes closed of their own accord. "Now then!" The words were accompanied by a smart, stinging blow on Mr. Paxton's cheek, a blow from the open palm of an iron-fronted hand. Severe though it was, Paxton was in such a condition of curious torpor that it scarcely seemed to stir him. It induced him to open his eyes again, and that, apparently, was all. "Look here, chummie, if you're a-going to make a do of it, make a do of it, and we'll bury you. But if you're going to keep on living, move yourself, and look alive about it. I ain't going to spend all my time waiting for you--it's not quite good enough." While the flow of words continued, Cyril endeavoured to get the speaker's focus--to resolve his individuality within the circuit of his vision. And, by degrees, it began to dawn on him that the man was, after all, quite close to him: too close, indeed--very much too close. With a sensation of disgust he realised that the fellow's face was actually within a few inches of his own--realised, too, what an unpleasant face it was, and that the man's horrible breath was mingling with his. It was an evil face, the face of one who had grown prematurely old. Staring eyes were set in cavernous sockets. A month's growth of bristles accentuated the animalism of the man's mouth, and jaw, and chin. His ears stuck out like flappers. His forehead receded. His scanty, grizzled hair looked as if it had been shaved off close to his head. Altogether, the man presented a singularly unpleasant picture. As Paxton grasped, slowly enough, how unpleasant, he became conscious of a feeling of unconquerable repulsion. "Who are you?" he asked. His voice did not sound to him as if it were his own. It was thin, and faint like the voice of some puny child. "Me?" The fellow chuckled--not by any means in a way which was suggestive of mirth. "I'm the Lord Mayor and Aldermen--that's who I am." Paxton's senses were so dulled, and he felt so stupid, that he was unable to understand, on the instant, if the fellow was in earnest. "The Lord Mayor and Aldermen--you?" The man chuckled again. "Yes; and likewise the Dook of Northumberland and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Let alone the Queen's own R'yal physician, what's been specially engaged, regardless of all cost, to bring you back to life, so as you can be killed again." The man's words made Cyril think. Killed again? What had happened to him already? Where was he? Something seemed suddenly to clear his brain, and to make him conscious of the strangeness of his surroundings. He tried to move, and found he could not. "What's the matter? Where am I?" "As for what's the matter, why, there's one or two things as is the matter. And, as for where you are, why, that's neither here nor there. If I was you, I wouldn't ask no questions." Mr. Paxton looked at the speaker keenly. His eyesight was improving. The sense of accurate perception was returning to him fast. The clearer his head became, the more acutely he realised that something beyond the normal seemed to be weighing on his physical frame, and to clog all the muscles of his body. "What tricks have you been playing on me?" The man's huge mouth was distorted by a mirthless grin. "There you are again, asking of your questions. Ain't I told yer, not half a moment since, that if I was you I wouldn't? I've only been having a little game with you, that's all." The man's tone stirred Paxton to sudden anger. It was all he could do to prevent himself giving utterance to what, under the circumstances, would have been tantamount to a burst of childish petulance. He tried again to move, and immediately became conscious that at least the upper portion of his body was sopping wet, and he was lying in what seemed to be a pool of water. "What's this I'm lying in?" For answer the man, taking up a pail which had been standing by his side, dashed its contents full into Cyril's face. "That's what you're lying in--about eighteen gallons or so of that; as nice clean water as ever you swallowed. You see, I've had to give you a sluicing or two, to liven you up. We didn't want to feel, after all the trouble we've had to get you, as how we'd lost you." The water, for which Mr. Paxton had been wholly unprepared, and which had been hurled at him with considerable force, had gone right into his eyes and mouth. He had to struggle and gasp for breath. His convulsive efforts seemed to amuse his assailant not a little. "That's right, choke away! A good plucked one you are, from what I hear. Fond of a bit of a scrap, I'm told. A nice little job they seem to have had of it a-getting of you here." As the fellow spoke, the events of the night came back to Cyril in a sudden rush of memory. His leaving the hotel, flushed with excitement; the glow of pleasure which had warmed the blood in his veins at the prospect of meeting Daisy laden with good tidings--he remembered it all. Remembered, too, how, when he had scarcely started on his quest, some one, unexpectedly, had come upon him from behind, and how a cloth had been thrown across his face and held tightly against his mouth--a wet cloth, saturated with some sticky, sweet-smelling stuff. And how it had dragged him backwards, overpowering him all at once with a sense of sickening faintness. He had some misty recollection, too, of a cab standing close beside him, and of his being forced into it. But memory carried him no further; the rest was blank. He had been kidnapped--that was clear enough; the cloth had been soaked with chloroform--that also was sufficiently clear. The after-effects of chloroform explained the uncomfortable feeling which still prostrated him. But by whom had he been kidnapped? and why? and how long ago? and where had his captors brought him? He was bound hand and foot--that also was plain. His hands were drawn behind his back and tied together at the wrists, with painful tightness, as he was realising better and better every moment. He had been thrown on his back, so that his whole weight lay on his arms. What looked like a clothes line had been passed over his body, fastened to a ring, or something which was beneath him, on the floor, and then drawn so tightly across his chest that not only was it impossible for him to move, but it was even hard for him to breathe. As if such fastenings were not enough, his feet and legs had been laced together and rendered useless, cords having been wound round and round him from his ankles to his thighs. A trussed fowl could not have been more helpless. The wonder was that, confined in such bonds, he had ever been able to escape the stupefying effects of the chloroform--even with the aid of his companion's pail of water. The room in which he was lying was certainly not an apartment in any modern house. The floor was bare, and, as he was painfully conscious, unpleasantly uneven. The ceiling was low and raftered, and black with smoke. At one end was what resembled a blacksmith's furnace rather than an ordinary stove. Scattered about were not only hammers and other tools, but also a variety of other implements, whose use he did not understand. The place was lighted by the glowing embers of a fire, which smouldered fitfully upon the furnace, and also by a lamp which was suspended from the centre of the raftered ceiling--the glass of which badly needed cleaning. A heavy deal table stood under the lamp, and this, together with a wooden chair and a stool or two, was all the furniture the place contained. How air and ventilation were obtained Paxton was unable to perceive, and the fumes which seemed to escape from the furnace were almost stifling in their pungency. While Paxton had been endeavouring to collect his scattered senses, so that they might enable him, if possible, to comprehend his situation, the man with the pail had been eyeing him with a curious grin. Paxton asked himself, as he looked at him, if the man might not be susceptible to the softening influence of a substantial bribe. He decided, at any rate, to see if he had not in his constitution such a thing as a sympathetic spot. "These ropes are cutting me like knives. If you were to loosen them a bit you would still have me tied as tight as your heart could desire. Suppose you were to ease them a trifle." The fellow shook his head. "It couldn't be done, not at no price. It's only a-getting of yer used to what's a-coming--it ain't nothing to what yer going to have, lor' bless yer, no. The Baron, he says to me, says he, 'Tie 'em tight,' he says, 'don't let's 'ave no fooling,' he says. 'So as when the Toff's a-ready to deal with him he'll be in a humbler frame of mind.'" "The Baron?--the Toff?--who are they?" "There you are again, a-asking of your questions. If you ask questions I'll give you another dose from this here pail." The speaker brandished his pail with a gesture which was illustrative of his meaning. Paxton felt, as he regarded him, that he would have given a good round sum to have been able to carry on a conversation with him on terms of something like equality. "What's your name?" "What!" As, almost unconsciously, still another question escaped Mr. Paxton's lips, the fellow, moving forward, brandished his pail at arm's length above his shoulders. Although he expected, momentarily, that the formidable weapon would be brought down with merciless force upon his unprotected face and head, Paxton, looking his assailant steadily in the eyes, showed no signs of flinching. It was, possibly, this which induced the fellow to change his mind--for change it he apparently did. He brought the pail back slowly to its original position. "Next time you'll get it. I'm dreadful short of temper, I am--can't stand no crossing. Talk to me about the state of the nation, or the price of coals, or your mother-in-law, and I'm with you, but questions I bar." Paxton tried to summon up a smile. "Under different circumstances I should be happy to discuss with you the political and other tendencies of the age, but just at present, for conversation on such an exalted plane, the conditions can scarcely be called auspicious." Up went the pail once more. "None of your sauce for me, or you'll get it. Now, what's the matter?" The matter was that Paxton had closed his eyes and compressed his lips, and that a suggestive pallor had come into his cheeks. The pain of his ligatures was rapidly becoming so excruciating that it was as much as he could do to bear it and keep his senses. "These ropes of yours cut like knives," he murmured. Instead of being moved to pity, the fellow was moved to smile. "Like another pailful--hot or cold?" It was a moment or two before Paxton could trust himself to speak. When he did it was once more with the ghastly semblance of a smile. "What a pleasant sort of man you seem to be!" "I am that for certain sure." "What would you say to a five-pound note?" "Thank you; I've got one or two of them already. Took 'em out of your pocket, as you didn't seem to have no use for them yourself." While Paxton was endeavouring, seemingly, to grasp the full meaning of this agreeable piece of information, a door at the further end of the room was opened and some one else came in. Paxton turned his head to see who it was. It was with a sense of shock, and yet, with a consciousness that it was, after all, what he might have expected, that he perceived that the newcomer was the ill-favoured associate of Mr. Lawrence, towards whom he had felt at first sight so strong an aversion. He was attired precisely as he had been when Paxton had seen him last--in the long, loose, black overcoat and the amazingly high tall hat. As he stood peering across the room, he looked like some grotesque familiar spirit come straight from shadowland. "Well, my Skittles, and is our good friend still alive--eh?" The man with the pail thus addressed as Skittles grinned at Paxton as he answered. "The blokey's all right. Him and me's been having a little friendly talk together." "Is that so? I hope, my Skittles, you have been giving Mr. Paxton a little good advice?" The man with the curious foreign accent came, and, standing by Cyril's side, glowered down on him like some uncanny creature of evil origin. "Well, Mr. Paxton, I am very glad to see you, sir, underneath this humble roof--eh?" Paxton looked up at him as steadily as the pain which he was enduring would permit. "I don't know your name, sir, or who you are, but I must request you to give me, if you can, an explanation of this extraordinary outrage to which I have been subjected?" "Outrage--eh? You have been subjected to outrage? Alas! It is hard, Mr. Paxton, that a man of your character should be subjected to outrage--not true--eh?" "You'll be called to account for this, for that you may take my word. My absence has been discovered long ago, and I have friends who will leave no stone unturned till they have tracked you to your lair." "Those friends of yours, Mr. Paxton, will be very clever if they track me to what you call my lair until it is too late--for you! You have my promise. Before that time, if you are not very careful, you will be beyond the reach of help." "At any rate I shall have the pleasure of knowing that, for your share in the transaction, you'll be hanged." The German-American shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps. That is likely, anyhow. It is my experience that, sooner or later, one has to pay for one's little amusements, as, Mr. Paxton, you are now to find." Paxton's lips curled. There was something about the speaker's manner--in his voice, with its continual suggestion of a sneer, about his whole appearance--which filled him with a sense of loathing to which he would have found it impossible to give utterance in words. He felt as one might feel who is brought into involuntary contact with an unclean animal. "I don't know if you are endeavouring to frighten me. Surely you are aware that I am not to be terrified by threats?" "With threats? Oh, no! I do not wish to frighten you with threats. That I will make you afraid, is true, but it will not be with threats--I am not so foolish. You think that nothing will make you afraid? Mr. Paxton, I have seen many men like that. When a man is fresh and strong, and can defend himself, and still has hopes, it takes a deal, perhaps, to make him afraid. But when a man is helpless, and is in the hands of those who care not what he suffers, and he has undergone a little course of scientific treatment, there comes a time when he is afraid--oh, yes! As you will see. Why, Mr. Paxton, what is the matter with you? You look as if you were afraid already." Paxton's eyes were closed, involuntarily. Beads of sweat stood upon his brow. The muscles of his face seemed to be convulsed. It was a second or two before he was able to speak. "These cords are killing me. Tell that friend of yours to loosen them." "Loosen them? Why, certainly. Why not? My Skittles, loosen the cords which give Mr. Paxton so much annoyance--at once." Skittles looked at the Baron with doubtful eyes. "Do you mean it, Baron?" The Baron--as the German-American was designated by Skittles--burst, without the slightest warning, into a frenzy of rage, which, although it was suggested rather than expressed, seemed to wither Skittles, root and branch, as if it had been a stroke of lightning. "Mean it?--you idiot! How dare you ask if I mean it? Do as I say!" Skittles lost no time in doing his best to appease the other's anger. "You needn't be nasty, Baron. I never meant no harm. You don't always mean just exactly what you says--and that's the truth, Baron." "Never you mind what I mean at other times--this time I mean what I say. Untie the ropes which fasten Mr. Paxton to the floor--the ropes about his hands and his feet, they are nothing, they will do very well where they are. A change of position will do him good--eh? Lift him up on to his feet, and stand him in the corner against the wall." Skittles did as he was bid--at any rate, to the extent of unfastening the cords, which, as it were, nailed Paxton to the ground. The relief was so sudden, and, at the same time, so violent, that before he knew it, he had fainted. Fortunately, his senses did not forsake him long. He returned to consciousness just in time to hear the Baron-- "My Skittles, you get a pail of boiling water, so hot it will bring the skin right off him. It's the finest thing in the world to bring a man out of a faint--you try it, quick, you will see." Paxton interposed, feebly--just in time to prevent the drastic prescription being given actual effect. "You needn't put your friend to so much trouble. I must apologise for going off. I was never guilty of such a thing before. But if you had felt as I felt you might have fainted too." "That is so--not a doubt of it. And yet, Mr. Paxton, a little time ago, if I had told you that just because a cord was untied you would faint, like a silly woman, you would have laughed at me. It is the same with fear. You think that nothing will make you afraid. My friends, and myself, we will show you. We will make you so afraid that, even if you escape with your life, and live another fifty years, you will carry your fear with you always--always--to the grave." The Baron rubbed his long, thin, yellow hands together. "Now, my Skittles, you will lift Mr. Paxton on to his feet, and you will stand him in the corner there, against the wall. He is very well again, in the best of health, and in the best of spirits, eh? Our friend"--there was a perceptible pause before the name was uttered--"Lawrence--you know Mr. Lawrence, my Skittles, very well--is not yet ready to talk to our good friend Mr. Paxton--no, not quite, yet. So, till he is ready, we must keep Mr. Paxton well amused, is that not so, my Skittles, eh?" Acting under the Baron's instructions, Skittles picked up Mr. Paxton as if he had been a child, and--although he staggered beneath the burden--carried him to the corner indicated by the other. When Cyril had been placed to the Baron's--if not to his own--satisfaction, the Baron produced from his hip-pocket a revolver. No toy affair such as one sees in England, but the sort of article which is found, and commonly carried, in certain of the Western states of America, and which thereabouts is called, with considerable propriety, a gun. This really deadly weapon the Baron proceeded to fondle in a fashion which suggested that, after all, he actually had in his heart a tenderness for something. "Now, my Skittles, it is some time since I have had practice with my revolver; I am going to have a little practice now. I fear my hand may be a trifle out; it is necessary that a man in my position should always keep it in--eh? Mr. Paxton, I am going to amuse you very much indeed. I am a pretty fair shot--that is so. If you keep quite still--very, very still indeed--I do not think that I shall hit you, perhaps not. But, if you move ever so little, by just that little you will be hit. It will not be my fault, it will be yours, you see. I am going to singe the lobe of your left ear. Ready! Fire!" The Baron fired. Although released from actual bondage to the floor, Mr. Paxton was still, to all intents and purposes, completely helpless. His hands remained pinioned. Cords were wound round his legs so many times, and were drawn so tightly, that the circulation was impeded, and without support he was incapable of standing up straight on his own feet. He had no option but to confront the ingenious Baron, and to suffer him to play what tricks with him he pleased. Whatever he felt he suffered no signs of unwillingness to escape him. He looked his tormentor in the face as unflinchingly as if the weapon which he held had been a popgun. Scarcely had the shot been fired than, in one sense, if not in another, he gave the "shootist" as good as he had sent. "You appear to be a braggart as well as a bully. You can't shoot a bit. That landed a good half-inch wide of my left ear." "Did I not say I fear my hand is a little out? Now it is your right ear which I will make to tingle. Ready! Fire!" Again the Baron fired. So far as one was able to perceive, his victim did not move by so much as a hair's breadth, yet there was a splash of blood upon his cheek. "Now I will try to put a bullet into the wall quite close to the right side of your throat. Ready! Fire!" CHAPTER XV PUT TO THE QUESTION The noise of the report had not yet died away, and the cloud of smoke got wholly clear of the muzzle of the Baron's revolver, when the door of the room was thrown open to admit some one, who in low, clear, even, authoritative tones, asked a question-- "Who's making this noise?" Whether the Baron's aim had this time been truer there was, as yet, no evidence to show. Cyril had, at any rate, escaped uninjured. At the sound of the voice, which, although it had been heard by him so seldom, had already become too familiar, he glanced round towards the questioner. It was Lawrence. He stood just inside the door, looking from the Baron to the involuntary target of that gentleman's little pleasantries. Close behind him were two men, whom Paxton immediately recognised as old acquaintances; the one was the individual who had taken a bed for the night at Makell's Hotel, who had shown such a pertinacious interest in his affairs, and whom he had afterwards suspected of an attempt to effect an entrance through his bedroom door; the second was the person who, the next morning, had followed him to the Central Station, and of whose too eager attentions he had rid himself by summoning a constable. In the looks which Lawrence directed towards the Baron there seemed to be something both of reproach and of contempt. "Pray, what is the meaning of this?" The Baron made a movement in the air with one hand, then pointed with it to the revolver which he held in the other. "My friend, it is only a little practice which I have--that is all! It is necessary that I keep my hand well in--not so--eh?" Lawrence's voice as he replied was alive with quiet scorn. "I would suggest that you should choose a more appropriate occasion on which to indulge yourself in what you call a little practice. Did it not occur to you, to speak of nothing else, that it might be as well to make as little, instead of as much, noise as you conveniently could?" He went and stood in front of Mr. Paxton. "I am sorry, sir, that we should meet again under such disagreeable conditions; but, as you are aware, the responsibility for what has occurred cannot, justly, be laid either on my friends or on myself." Paxton's reply was curt. The abrupt, staccato, contemptuous tone in which he spoke was in striking contrast to Lawrence's mellifluous murmurings. "I am aware of nothing of the sort." Lawrence moved his head with a slight gesture of easy courtesy, which might, or might not, have been significative of his acquiescence in the other's point-blank contradiction. "What is that upon your face--blood?" "That is proof positive of your bungling friend's bad markmanship. He would, probably, have presented me with a few further proofs of his incapacity had you postponed your arrival for a few minutes longer." Lawrence repeated his former courteous inclination. "My friend is a man of an unusual humour. Apt, occasionally, like the rest of us, to rate his capacities beyond their strict deserts." He turned to the two men who had come with him into the room. "Untie Mr. Paxton's legs." Then back again to Cyril. "I regret, sir, that it is impossible for me, at the moment, to extend the same freedom to your arms and hands. But it is my sincerest trust that, in a very few minutes, we may understand each other so completely as to place it in my power to restore you, without unnecessary delay, to that position in society from which you have been withdrawn." Although Paxton was silent outwardly, his looks were eloquent of the feelings with which he regarded the other's well-turned phrases. When his legs had been freed, the two newcomers, standing on either side of him as if they had been policemen, urged him forward, until he stood in front of the heavy table which occupied the centre of the room. On the other side of the table Lawrence had already seated himself on the only chair which the place contained. The Baron, still holding his revolver, had perched himself on a corner of the table itself. Lawrence, leaning a little forward on his chair, with one arm resting on the table, never lost his bearing of apparent impartiality, and, while he spoke with an air of quiet decision, never showed signs of a ruffled temper. "I have already apologised to you, sir, for the discomforts which you may have endured; but, as you are aware, those discomforts you have brought upon yourself." Paxton's lips curled, but he held his peace. "My friends and I are in the position of men who make war upon society. As is the case in all wars, occasions arise on which exceptional measures have to be taken which, though unpleasant for all the parties chiefly concerned, are inevitable. You are an example of such an occasion." Cyril's reply was sufficiently scornful. "You don't suppose that your wind-bag phrases hoodwink me. You're a scoundrel; and, in consort with other scoundrels, you have taken advantage of a gentleman. I prefer to put the matter into plain English." To this little outburst Lawrence paid no attention. For all the notice he seemed to take of them the contemptuous words might have remained unuttered. "It is within your knowledge that, in pursuit of my profession, I appropriated the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds. I do not wish to impute to you, Mr. Paxton, acts of which you may have not been guilty; therefore I say that I think it possible it was by accident you acquired that piece of information. It is in the same spirit of leniency that I add that, at the refreshment-rooms at the Central Station, it was by mistake that you took my Gladstone bag in exchange for your own. I presume that at this time of day you do not propose to deny that such an exchange was effected. In that Gladstone bag of mine, which you took away with you by mistake instead of your own, as you know, were the Datchet diamonds. What I have now to ask you to do--and I desire, I assure you, Mr. Paxton, to ask you with all possible courtesy--is to return those diamonds at once to me, their rightful owner." "By what process of reasoning do you make out that you are the rightful owner of the Datchet diamonds?" "By right of conquest." "Right of conquest! Then, following your own line of reasoning, even taking it for granted that all you have chosen to say of me is correct, I in my turn have become their rightful owner." "Precisely. But the crux of the position is this. If the duchess could get me into her power she would stick at nothing to extort from me the restitution of the stones. In the same way, now that I have you in my power, I intend to stick at nothing which will induce their restoration from you." "The difference between you and myself is, shortly, this--you are a thief, and I am an honest man." "Pray, Mr. Paxton, what is your standard of honesty? If you were indeed the kind of honest man that you would appear to wish us to believe you are, you would at once have handed the stones to the police, or even have restored them to the duchess." "How do you know that I have not?" "I will tell you how I know. If you had been so honest there would not be in existence now a warrant to arrest you on the charge of stealing them. Things being as they are, it happens that there is." "It's an impudent lie!" "Possibly you may believe it to be an impudent lie; still, it is the truth. A warrant for your arrest has been granted to-day to your friend Ireland, of Scotland Yard, on his sworn information. I merely mention this as evidence that you have not handed the stones to the police, that you have not returned them to the duchess, but that you have retained them in your possession with a view of using them for purposes of your own, and that, therefore, your standard of morality is about on a level with ours." "What you say is, from first to last, a tissue of lies. You hound! You know that! Although it is a case of five to one, my hands are tied, and so it's safe to use what words you please." Lawrence, coming closer to the table, leaned both his elbows on the board, and crossed his arms in front of him. "It seems, Mr. Paxton, as if you, a man of whose existence I was unaware until the other day, have set yourself to disappoint me in two of the biggest bids I have ever made for fortune and for happiness. I am a thief. It has never been made sufficiently plain to me that the difference between theft and speculation is such a vital one as to clearly establish the superiority of the one over the other. But even a thief is human--sometimes very human. I own I am. And it chances that, for some days now, I had begun to dream dreams of a most amusing kind--dreams of love--yes, and dreams of marriage. I chanced to meet a certain lady--I do not think, Mr. Paxton, that I need name any names?" "It is a matter of indifference to me whether you do so or not." "Thank you, very much. With this certain lady I found myself in love. I dreamt dreams of her--from which dreams I have recently arisen. A new something came into my life. I even ventured, in my new-learned presumption, to ask her would she marry me. Then for the first time I learned that what I asked for already had been given, that what I so longed for already was your own. It is strange how much one suffers from so small a thing. You'd not believe it. In our first fall, then, it seems that you have thrown me. "Then there is this business of the Datchet jewels. A man of your experience cannot suppose that an affair of this magnitude can be arranged and finished in a moment. It needs time, and careful planning, and other things to boot. I speak as one who knows. Suppose you planned some big haul upon the Stock Exchange, collected your resources, awaited the propitious second, and, when it came, brought off your coup. If in that triumphant moment some perfect stranger were to carry off, from underneath your very nose, the spoils for which you had risked so much, and which you regarded, and rightly regarded, as your own, what would your feelings be towards such an one? Would you not feel, at least, that you would like to have his blood? If you have sufficient imagination to enable you to place yourself in such a situation, you will then be able to dimly realise what, at the present moment, our feelings are towards you." Paxton's voice, when he spoke, was, if possible, more contemptuous than ever. "I care nothing for your feelings." "Precisely; and, by imparting to us that information, you make our task much easier. We, like others, can fight for our own hands--and we intend to. You see, Mr. Paxton, that, although I did the actual conveying of the diamonds, and therefore the major share of the spoil is mine, there were others concerned in the affair as well as myself, and they naturally regard themselves as being entitled to a share of the profits. You have, consequently, others to deal with as well as myself, for we, to be plain, are many. And our desire is that you should understand precisely what it is we wish to do. The first thing which we wish you to do is to tell us where, at the present moment, the diamonds are?" "Then I won't, even supposing that I know!" Lawrence went on without seeming to pay any heed to Cyril's unqualified refusal-- "The second thing which we wish you to do--supposing you to have placed the diamonds where it will be difficult for us to reach them--is to give us an authority which will be sufficient to enable us to demand, as your agents, if you choose, that the diamonds be handed to us without unnecessary delay." "I will do nothing of the kind." Again Lawrence seemed to allow the refusal to go unheeded. "And we would like you to understand that, so soon as the diamonds are restored to us, you will be free to go, and to do, and say exactly what you please, but that you will continue to be our prisoner till they are." "If my freedom is dependent on my fulfilling the conditions which you would seek to impose, I shall continue to be what you call your prisoner until I die; but, as it happens, my freedom is contingent on nothing of the sort, as you will find." "We would desire, also, Mr. Paxton, that you should be under no delusion. It is far from being our intention that what, as you put it, we call your imprisonment should be a period of pleasant probation; on the contrary, we intend to make it as uncomfortable as we can--which, believe me, is saying not a little." "That, while I am at your mercy, you will behave in a cowardly and brutal fashion I have no doubt whatever." "More. We have no greater desire than you have yourself that you should continue to be, what we call, our prisoner. With a view, therefore, to shortening the duration of your imprisonment we shall leave no stone unturned--even if we have to resort to all the tortures of the Spanish Inquisition--to extort from you the things which we require." Paxton laughed--shortly, dryly, scornfully. "I don't know if your intention is to be impressive; if it is, I give you my word that you don't impress me a little bit. Your attempts to wrap up your rascality in fine-sounding phrases strike me as being typical of the sort of man you are." "Mr. Paxton, before we come to actual business, let me advise you--and, believe me, in this case my advice is quite unprejudiced--not to treat us to any more of this kind of talk! Can't you realise that it is not for counters we are playing? That men of our sort, in our position, are not likely to stick at trifles? That it is a case of head you lose, tails we win--for, while it is obviously a fact that we have nothing we can lose, it is equally certainly a fact that there is nothing you can gain? So learn wisdom; be wise in time; endeavour to be what I would venture to call conformable. Be so good as to give me your close attention. I should be extremely obliged, Mr. Paxton, if you would give me an answer to the question which I am about to put to you. Where, at the present moment, are the Datchet diamonds?" "I would not tell you even if I knew." "You do know. On that point there can be no room for doubt. We mean to know, too, before we've done with you. Is that your final answer?" "It is." "Think again." "Why should I think?" "For many reasons. I will give still another chance; I will repeat my question. Before you commit yourself to a reply, do consider. Tell me where, at the present moment, are the Datchet diamonds?" "That I will never tell you." Mr. Lawrence made a movement with his hands which denoted disapproval. "Since you appear to be impervious to one sort of reasoning, perhaps you may be more amenable to another kind. We will do our best to make you." Mr. Lawrence turned to the man who had been addressed as Skittles. "Be so good as to put a branding-iron into the fire, the one on which there is the word 'thief.'" CHAPTER XVI A MODERN INSTANCE OF AN ANCIENT PRACTICE Skittles, when he had, apparently with an effort, mastered the nature of Mr. Lawrence's instructions, grinned from ear to ear. He went to where a number of iron rods with broad heads were heaped together on a shelf. They were branding-irons. Selecting one of these, he thrust it into the heart of the fire which glowed on the blacksmith's furnace. He heaped fuel on to the fire. After a movement or two of the bellows it became a roaring blaze. Lawrence turned to Mr. Paxton-- "Still once more--are you disposed to tell us where the Datchet diamonds are?" "No." Lawrence smiled. He addressed himself to the two men who held Paxton's arms. "Hold him tight. Now, Skittles, bring that iron of yours. Burn a hole under Mr. Paxton's right shoulder-blade, through his clothing." Skittles again moved the iron from the fire. It had become nearly white. He regarded it for a moment with a critical eye. Then, advancing with it held at arm's length in front of him, he took up his position at Mr. Paxton's back. "Don't let him go. Now!" Skittles thrust the flaming iron towards Paxton's shoulder-blade. There was a smell of burning cloth. For a second Paxton stood like a statue; then, leaping right off his feet, he gave first a forward and then a backward bound, displaying as he did so so much vigour that, although his guardians retained their hold, Skittles, apparently, was taken unawares. Possibly, with an artist's pride in good workmanship, he had been so much engrossed by the anxiety to carry out the commission with which he had been entrusted thoroughly well, that he was unprepared for interruptions. However that may have been, when Paxton moved his grip on the iron seemed to suddenly loosen, so that, losing for the moment complete control of it, it fell down between Paxton's arms, the red-hot brand at the further end resting on his pinioned wrists. A cry as of a wounded animal, which he was totally unable to repress, came from his lips--a cry half of rage, half of agony. But the red-hot iron, while inflicting on him frightful pain, had at least done him one good service; if it had burned his flesh, it had also burned the cords which bound his wrists together. Exerting, in his passion and his agony, the strength of half a dozen men, he severed the scorched strands of rope as if they had been straws, and, hurling from him the two fellows who held his arms--who had expected nothing so little as to find his arms unbound--he stood before them, so far as his limbs were concerned, free. Once lost, he was not to be easily regained. He was quicker in his movements than Skittles had ever been, and the latter's quickest days were long since done. Dropping on to one knee, plunging forward under Skittles' guard, he butted that gentleman with his head full in the stomach, and had snatched the iron by its handle from his astonished hands before he had fully realised what was happening. Springing with the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box, to his feet again, he brought the dreadful weapon down heavily on Skittles' head. With a groan of agony, that gentleman dropped like a log on to the floor. Armed with the heated iron--a kind of article with which no one would care to come into close contact--Paxton turned and faced the others, who as yet did not seem fully alive to what had taken place. "Now, you brutes! I may be bested in the end, but I'll be even with one or two of you before I am!" Lawrence stood up. "Will you? That still remains to be seen. Shoot him, Baron!" The Baron fired. Either his marksmanship, or his nerve, or his something, was at fault, for he missed. Before he could fire again Paxton's weapon had crashed through his grotesquely tall high hat, and apparently through his skull as well, for he too went headlong to the floor. Quick as lightning as he fell Cyril took his revolver from his nerveless grasp. Lawrence and his two colleagues were--a little late in the day, perhaps--making for him. But when they saw how he was doubly armed and his determined front they paused--and therein showed discretion. The tables had turned. The fortune of war had gone over to what hitherto had been distinctly the losing side. So at least Paxton appeared to think. "Now, the question is, what shall I do with you? Shall I shoot all three of you--or shall I brain one of you with this pretty little play-thing, which I have literally snatched from the burning?" If one could draw deductions from the manner in which he bore himself, Lawrence never for an instant lost his presence of mind. When he spoke it was in the easy, quiet tones which he had used throughout. "You move too fast, forgetting two things--one, that you are caught here like a rat in a trap, so that, unless we choose to let you, you cannot get out of this place alive; the other, that I have only to summon assistance to overwhelm you with the mere force of numbers." "Then why don't you summon assistance, if you are so sure that it will come at your bidding?" "I intend to summon assistance when I choose." "I give you warning that, if you move so much as a muscle in an attempt to attract the attention of any other of your associates who may be about the place, I will shoot you!" For answer Lawrence smiled. Suddenly, lifting his hand, he put two fingers to his lips and blew a loud, shrill, peculiar whistle. Simultaneously Paxton raised the revolver, and, pointing it straight at the other's head, he pulled the trigger. And that was all. No result ensued. There was the sound of a click--and nothing more. His face darkened. A second time he pulled the trigger; again without result. Mr. Lawrence's smile became more pronounced. His tone was one of gentle badinage. "I thought so. You see, you will move too quickly. It is a six-chambered revolver. I was aware that my highly esteemed friend had discharged two barrels earlier in the evening, and had not reloaded. I knew that he had taken two, if not three, little pops at you, and had had another little pop just now. If, therefore, he had not recharged in my absence the barrels I had seen him empty, and had taken, before I interrupted him, three little pops at you, the revolver must be empty. I thought the risk worth taking, and I took it." While Cyril seemed to hesitate as to what to do next, Lawrence, raising his fingers to his lips, blew another cat-call. While the shrill discord still travelled through the air, Paxton sprang towards him. Stepping back, the whistler, picking up the wooden chair on which he had been sitting, dashed it in his assailant's face. And at the same moment the two men who had hitherto remained passive spectators of what had been, practically, an impromptu if abortive duel, closed in on Paxton from either side. He struck at one with his clubbed revolver. The other, getting his arm about his throat, dragged him backwards on to the floor. He was down, however, only for a second. Slipping from the fellow's grasp like an eel, he was up again in time to meet the renewed attack from the man whom he had already struck with his revolver. He struck at him again; but still the man was not disabled. Meanwhile, his more prudent companion, conducting his operations from the rear, again got his arms about Paxton. The three went in a heap together on the floor. Just then the door was opened and some one entered on the scene. Paxton did not stop to see who it was. Exercising what seemed to be a giant's strength, he succeeded in again freeing himself from the grasp of his two opponents. Leaping to his feet, he made a mad dash at Lawrence. That gentleman, springing nimbly aside, eluded the threatening blow from the clubbed revolver, delivered neatly enough a blow with his clenched fist full in Mr. Paxton's face. The blow was a telling one. Mr. Paxton staggered; then, just as he seemed about to fall, recovered himself, and struck again at Mr. Lawrence. This time the blow went home. The butt of the revolver came down upon the other's head with a sickening thud. The stricken man flung up his arms, and, without a sound, collapsed in an invertebrate heap. The whole place became filled with confusion and shouts. With what seemed to be a sudden inspiration, swinging right round, with the branding-iron, which he had managed to retain in his possession, Paxton struck at the hanging lamp, which was suspended from the ceiling. In a moment the atmosphere began to be choked by the suffocating fumes of burning oil. A sheet of fire was running across the floor. Heedless of all else, Paxton rushed towards the door. Such was the confusion occasioned by the disappearance of the lamp, and by the appearance of the flames, that his frantic flight seemed for the moment to be unnoticed. He tore through the door, up a narrow flight of steps rising between two walls, which he found in front of him, only, however, to find an individual awaiting his arrival at the top. This individual was evidently one who deemed that there are cases in which discretion is the better part of valour, and that the present case was one of them. When Paxton appeared, instead of trying to arrest his progress, he moved hastily aside, evincing, indeed, a conspicuous unwillingness to offer him any impediment in his wild career. Paxton passed him. There was a door in front of him. In his mad haste, throwing it open, he went through it. In an instant it was banged behind him; he heard the sound of a bolt being shot home into its socket, and of a voice exclaiming with a chuckle--on the other side of the door!-- "Couldn't have done it better if I'd tried, I couldn't! Locked hisself in--straight he has!" Too late Paxton learned that, to all intents and purposes, that was exactly what he had done. The place in which he found himself was pitchy dark. He had supposed that it might be a passage leading to a door beyond. It proved to be nothing of the kind. It seemed, instead, to be some sort of cupboard--probably a pantry--for he could feel that there were shelves on either side of him, and that on the shelves were what seemed to be victuals. Though narrow, by stretching out his arms he could feel the wall with either hand; it extended, longitudinally, to some considerable distance--possibly to twenty feet. At the further end there was a window. It was at an inconvenient height from the floor, and directly under it was a shelf. On this shelf, so far as he was able to judge, was an indiscriminate collection of pieces of crockery. The shelf, however, was a broad one, and, disregarding the various impedimenta with which it seemed to be covered, by clambering on to it he was brought within easy reach of the window. It was a small one, and had two sashes. Had the sashes not been there, there might have been sufficient space to enable him to thrust his body through the frame. They were of the ordinary kind, moving up and down, and, in consequence, when they were open to their widest extent, only half the window space was available either for ingress or for egress. He did throw up the lower sash as far as it would go, only to discover that it scarcely gave him room enough to put the whole of his head outside. Taking firm hold of the framework, he tested its solidity; it appeared to be substantially constructed of some kind of heavy wood. Though he exerted considerable force, it could hardly be induced to rattle. To remove it, even if it was removable, would be a work of time and of labour. Time he had not at his command. Although he was fastened in, his assailants were not fastened out. At any moment they might enter; his struggles--against such odds!--would have to be recommenced all over again. He was conscious that the best of his strength was spent. He was stiff and sore, weary and bewildered. Nor had he escaped uninjured. He was covered with bruises--bruises which ached. Where the red-hot branding-iron, slipping from Mr. Skittles' grasp, had struck against his wrists, the flesh felt as if it had been burnt to the bone; it occasioned him exquisite pain. No, in his present plight, recapture would be easy. After the recent transactions, in which he had played so prominent a figure, recapture would mean nameless tortures, if not death outright. His only hope lay in flight, or--the thought came to him as he was endeavouring to marshal his faculties in sufficient order to enable him to take an impartial view of his position--in summoning help. Summoning help? Yes! why not? The thing was feasible. Here was the open window. He could call through it. His cries might be heard, and if he could only make his shouts heard by some one without the alarm would be raised, and he would soon be rescued from this den of thieves. Thrusting his head out as far as possible, he shouted, with might and with main--"Help! Murder! Help!" He listened. He seemed to hear the faint echo of his own words travelling mockingly, mournfully, through the silent air. Naught else was audible. All else was still as the grave. Nor did the prospect of his being able to make himself heard seem promising. He had no notion whereabouts the house in which he was so unwilling a guest was situated. In front of him he could see nothing but open space. There was neither moon nor stars, nor was the atmosphere particularly clear; yet, as his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, it seemed to him that he could see for miles, and that there was nothing to be seen. There was not a light in sight; no glare of lights upon the distant sky; the shadow neither of a house nor of a tree. No murmur of voices; no hum of far-off traffic; not even the unceasing turmoil of the restless sea. Since, so far as he was able to perceive, the place seemed to be given up to such utter and entire solitude, it struck him with unpleasant force that it might be located in the very heart of the open Downs. In that case it was quite upon the cards that there was not another human habitation within miles. At night--even yet!--few places are more deserted than the Brighton Downs. All sorts of deeds without a name, so far as human witnesses are concerned, can be wrought thereon with complete impunity. If the house was really built upon the Downs, his chances of making himself heard were remote indeed. Still, in his desperate position, he was not disposed to give up hope without making at least another trial. Once more he shouted "Help! Murder! Help!" Again he listened. And this time, from what evidently was a considerable distance, there was borne through the night what seemed to be an answering call--"Hollo!" Seldom was so slight a sound so grateful to a listener's ears! With renewed ardour he repeated his shouts, with, if possible, even greater vigour than before: "Quick! Help! Murder! Help!" Again, from afar, there seemed to come the faint response--"Hollo!" And at the same instant he became conscious of voices speaking together outside the door of the cul-de-sac in which, foolishly enough, he had allowed himself to be made, for a second time, a prisoner. CHAPTER XVII THE MOST DANGEROUS FOR OF ALL Mr. Paxton withdrew his face from the window. He turned towards the door, his ears wide open. The speakers were talking so loudly that he could hear distinctly, without moving from his post of vantage on the shelf, every word which was uttered. They seemed to be in a state of great excitement. The first voice he heard belonged evidently to the quick-witted individual who had fastened him in the trap which he himself had entered. "There he is--inside there he is--ran in of his own accord he did, so I shut the door, and I slipped the bolt before he knowed where he was. The winder's only a little 'un--if he gets hisself out, you can call me names." The second voice was one which Mr. Paxton did not remember to have previously noticed. "Blast him!--what do I care where he is? He ain't no affair of mine! There's the Toff, and a crowd of 'em down there--you come and lend a hand!" "Not me! I ain't a-taking any! I ain't going to get myself choked, not for no Toff, nor yet for any one else. I feel more like cutting my lucky--only I don't know my way across these ---- hills." "You ain't got no more pluck than a chicken. Go and put the 'orse in! Me and them other two chaps will bring 'em up. We shall have to put the whole lot aboard, and make tracks as fast as the old mare will canter." A third voice became audible--a curiously husky one, as if its owner was in difficulties with his throat. "Here's the Toff--he seems to be a case. I ain't a-going down no more. It's no good a-trying to put it out--you might as well try to put out 'ell fire!" Then a fourth voice--even huskier than the other. "Catch 'old! If some one don't catch 'old of the Baron I shall drop 'im. My God! this is a pretty sort of go!" There was a pause, then the voice of the first speaker again. "He do look bad, the Baron do--worse nor the Toff, and he don't seem too skittish!" "Strikes me he ain't far off from a coffin and a six-foot 'ole. You wouldn't look lively if you'd had what he 'as. That there ---- brained 'im, and now he's been burned alive. I tell you what it is, we shall have to look slippy if we want to get ourselves well out of this. Them others will have to scorch--it's no good trying to get 'em out--no mortal creature could live down there--it'll only be a bit sooner, anyhow. The whole ---- place is like a ---- tinder-box. It'll all be afire in less than no time, and it'll make a bonfire as'll be seen over all the countryside; and if we was seen a-making tracks away from it, there might be questions asked, and we mightn't find that pretty!" "Where's the ---- as done it all?" "In there--that's where he is!" "In there? Sure? My----! wouldn't I like to strip his skin from off his ---- carcase!" "He'll have his skin stripped off from him without your doing nothing, don't you be afraid--and made crackling of! He'll never get outside of that--he'll soon be warm enough--burnt to a cinder, that's what he'll be!" Suddenly there was a tumult of exclamations and of execrations, sound of the opening of a door, and of a general stampede. Then silence. And Mr. Paxton realised to the full what had happened. For into the place of his imprisonment there penetrated, all at once, the fumes of smoke--fumes which had an unpleasantly irritating effect upon the tonsils of his throat. The house was on fire! The hanging-lamp which he had sent crashing to the floor had done its work--had, indeed, plainly, done more than he intended. Nothing so difficult to extinguish as the flames of burning oil. Nothing which gets faster, fiercer, more rapidly increasing hold--nothing which, in an incredibly short space of time, causes more widespread devastation. The house was on fire! and he was caged there like a rat in a trap! The smoke already reached him--already the smell of the fire was in his nostrils. And those curs, those cowards, those nameless brutes, thinking only of their wretched selves, had left their comrades in that flaming, fiery furnace, to perish by the most hideous of deaths, and had left him, also, there to burn. In a sudden paroxysm of rage, leaping off the shelf, he rushed to the opposite end of what, it seemed, bade fair to be his crematorium, and flung himself with all his weight and force against the door. It never yielded--he might as well have flung himself against the wall. He shouted through it, like a madman-- "Open the door! Open the door, you devils!" In his frenzy a stream of oaths came flooding from his lips. In such situations even clean-mouthed men can swear. There are not many of us who, brought suddenly, under such circumstances, face to face with the hereafter, can calm our minds and keep watch and ward over our tongues. Mr. Paxton, certainly, was not such an one. He was, rather, as one who was consumed with fury. What was that? He listened. It was the sound of wheels and of a horse's hoofs. Those scoundrels were off--fleeing for their lives. And he was there--alone! And in the dreadful furnace, at the bottom of that narrow flight of steps, the miserable creatures with whom he had had such a short and sharp reckoning were being burned. In his narrow chamber the presence of smoke was becoming more conspicuous. He could hear the crackling of fire. It might have been imagination, but it seemed to him that already the temperature was increasing. What was he to do? He recollected the window--clambered back upon the shelf, and thrust his face out into the open air. How sweet it was! and fresh, and cool! Once more he listened. He could hear, plainly enough, the noise of wheels rolling rapidly away, but nothing more. With the full force of his lungs he repeated his previous cry, with a slight variation-- "Help! Fire! Help!" But this time there came no answering "Hollo!" There was no reply. Again he shouted, and again and again, straining his throat and his lungs to bursting-point, screaming himself hoarse, but there was none that answered. It seemed that this was a case in which, if he could not help himself, he, in very deed and in very truth, was helpless. He set himself to remove the sashes from their places, feeling that if he only could, small even then though the space would be, he might, at such a pinch as this, be able to squeeze his body through. But the thing was easier essayed than done. The sashes were small, strongly constructed, and solidly set in firmly fashioned grooves. He attacked them with his hands; he hammered them with the Baron's revolver and the branding-iron, but they remained precisely where they were. He had a suspicion that they were looser, and that in time, say in an hour or so, they might be freed. But he had not an hour to spare. He had not many minutes, for while he still wrestled with their obstinacy there came from behind him a strange, portentous roar. His prison became dimly, fitfully illuminated with a dreadful light--so that he could see. What he could see through the cracks in the bolted door were tongues of fire, roaring in the room beyond--roaring as the waves roar over the stones, or as the sound of a high wind through the tops of trees. The suddenness of the noise, disturbing so unexpectedly the previous stillness, confused him. He remained on the shelf, looking round. Then, oblivious for the moment of the danger which so swiftly was coming nearer, he was filled with admiration. What a beautiful ruddy light it was, which was making the adjacent chamber to gleam like glowing gold! How every instant it was becoming ruddier and ruddier, until, with fairylike rapidity, it became a glorious blaze of colour! The whole place was transfigured and transformed. It was radiant with the splendours of the Fairy Queen's Palace of a Million Marvels. The crackling noise which fire makes when its hungry tongues lick woodwork brought him back to a sense of stern reality. He became conscious of the strong breeze which was blowing through the open window. It was coming from the house, and was bearing with it a rush as of heated breath. Already it seemed to scorch his cheeks--momentarily it seemed to scorch them more and more. The air, as he drew it into his lungs, was curiously dry. He had to draw two breaths where before he had drawn one. It parched his throat. What would he not have given to have been able to glue his lips to cool, fresh water! As in a vision he pictured himself laving his face, splashing in the crystal waters of a running stream, with the trees in leaf above his head. Escape was hopeless. Neither on the one side nor on the other could salvation be attained. Other men, he told himself, with a sardonic twitching of the corners of his lips, had been burnt alive before to-day--then why not he? He, at any rate, could play the man. To attempt to strive against the inevitable was puerile. Better, if one must die, "facing fearful odds," to die with one's arms folded, and with one's pulse marking time at its normal pace. What must be, might be; what cared he? Confound the smoke! It came in thicker and thicker wreaths through the interstices in the panels of the door. It was impossible to continue facing it; it made him cough, and the more he coughed the more he had to. It got into his mouth and up his nose; it made his eyes tingle. To cough and cough until, like a ramshackle cart, one shook oneself to pieces, was not the part of dignity. He turned his back to the door. He thrust his face again through the window. With his lips wide open he gulped in the air with a sense of rapture which amounted to positive pain. What a feeling of life and of freedom there seemed to be under the stars and the far-reaching sky! What a spirit of solitude was abroad on the hills, in the darkness of the night! What a lonely death this was which he was about to die! No one there but God and the fire to see if he died like a man! He tried to collect his thoughts. As he did so, there was borne to him, on a sudden overwhelming flood of recollection, the woman whom he loved. He seemed to see her there in front of him--her very face. What was she doing now? What would she do if she had an inkling of his plight? What, when she knew that he had gone? If he had only had time to hand over to her all the fruits of that rise in the shares of the Trumpit Gold Mine! How hot it was! And the smoke--how suffocating! How the fire roared behind him! The bolted door had been stout enough to keep him captive, but against the fury of the flames it would be as nothing. Any moment they might be through. And then? He had an inspiration. He began to feel in his pockets. Those rogues had stripped them, only leaving, so far as in his haste he could judge, two worthless trifles, which probably had been overlooked because of their triviality. In one pocket was the back of an old letter, in another a scrap of pencil. They were sufficient to serve his purpose. Spreading the half-sheet of notepaper out on the shelf in front of him, he wrote, as well as he could for the blinding, stifling smoke, with the piece of pencil-- "I give and bequeath all that I have in the world to my dear love, Daisy Strong, who would have been my wife. God bless her!--CYRIL PAXTON." CHAPTER XVIII THE LAST OF THE DATCHET DIAMONDS They found him, with the half-sheet of notepaper all crushed in his hand. At the police station, acting on the hints dropped by Mr. Cooper, Mr. Ireland had enlisted the aid of a dozen constables. He had chartered a large waggonette, and with Mr. Cooper and a sergeant beside him on the box-seat had started off for an evening drive across the Downs. Miss Strong had, perforce, to content herself with a seat with Miss Wentworth and Mr. Franklyn in a fly behind. The weather had cleared. By the time they reached the open country the stars were shining, and when they found themselves following the winding road among the hills it was as fine a night as one could wish. Suddenly the occupants of the fly became conscious that the waggonette in front had stopped. A constable, hurrying back, checked the flyman. Miss Strong leant over the side of the vehicle to address him. "What is the matter?" "We don't know yet, miss. Only there's something coming along the road, and we want to see what they look like. They seem to be in a bit of a hurry." As the man said, whoever it was who was approaching did seem to be in a "bit of a hurry." Evidently the horse in the advancing vehicle was being urged to a breakneck gallop. Where the waggonette had stopped the ground rose abruptly on either side. The road turned sharply just in front. The constables, alighting, formed in double line across it. Suddenly the people who were hastening Brightonwards found themselves quite unexpectedly surrounded by the officers of the law. There was the liveliest five minutes Miss Strong had ever known. At the end of it the police found themselves in possession of three prisoners, who had fought as well as, under the circumstances, they knew how, and also of a fly with two men lying apparently dead inside it. When Miss Strong learnt this, she came hurrying up. "Is Cyril there?" Mr. Ireland shook his head. "You are telling me the truth?" "If you doubt it, Miss Strong, you may look for yourself." Just then a constable who, for purposes of observation, had climbed the sloping ground on one side of the road, gave a great shout. "Fire! There's a house on fire on the hills!" Mr. Cooper, who, while his former friends were being captured, had, much against his will, been handcuffed to a policeman, called to Mr. Ireland. "I reckon it's the crib. They been and set it afire, and left the bloke as they calls Paxton to burn inside of it. See if they ain't!" * * * * * It was Miss Strong who found him. Running round the burning building, she came to a little open window through which a man's hand was stretched. The window was too high above the ground to enable her to see into it. Only the hand was visible. She thought it belonged to some one who was seeking to escape. "Who are you?" she cried. None answered. She touched the hand, supposing its owner did not hear. As she did so a piece of crumpled paper fell out of it. She caught at it as it fluttered through the air; looked at it--there was a sufficiency of artificial light to enable her to see--saw her own name--"my dear love, Daisy Strong"--staring her in the face; perceived that it was in the writing which she knew so well. "Cyril, Cyril!" She snatched at the hand which had held that paper--testimony of a love which was resolute to live even beyond the grave--sprang up at the window, through which the smoke was streaming, with the flames beginning to follow after--broke into shrieks. They brought tools, and having by their aid removed the sashes, they dragged him by main force through the window, through which he himself had vainly endeavoured to escape. And slowly, enduring as he went not a little agony, he went through the Valley of the Shadow, branching out of it after all through a pass which led, not unto Death, but back again to the Plain of Life. When, weeks after, he opened his eyes to consciousness, the first thing he saw was, leaning over him, the face of the woman he loved. "Daisy!" In an attenuated whisper the name came from his lips. And, forgetting herself, she fell on his breast and kissed him, and in the tumult of her joy cried as if her heart would break. While still his life was in the balance, never once had she lost her self-control, fearing that if she did she might be banished from his presence. Now that the event seemed clear, the cisterns of her heart were opened, and she wept as one distraught. As the days went by Mr. Paxton understood not only that he was in a bedroom in Miss Wentworth's house, but also that in the adjacent apartment there was something, or some one, whose presence Miss Strong, at any rate, was desirous should be concealed from him. The thing becoming more and more conspicuous, Mr. Paxton insisted at last on having the mystery explained to him. With flashing eyes and faltering lips Miss Strong explained. In the room adjoining that in which he lay was a policeman. He had been there all the time. He intended to remain, at least, as long as Mr. Paxton stayed. Mr. Paxton was, in fact, a prisoner--a prisoner in Miss Wentworth's house. Since it had seemed likely that he would die, the authorities had suffered him to be committed to the hands of friends, in order that, if they could, they might nurse him back to health and strength. But not for an instant had he been out of official supervision. Egress from the sick-chamber was only possible by passing through the adjoining room; in that adjoining room a policeman had been stationed night and day. Now that he was mending, at any moment rough, unfeeling hands might drag him off to gaol. Miss Strong's manner, as she made the situation clear to Mr. Paxton, was reminiscent of the Tragic Muse. Her rage against Mr. Ireland was particularly fierce. When she spoke of him it was with clenched fists and knitted brows and eyes like flaming coals. "He actually dares to pretend to think that you had something to do with the stealing of the Datchet diamonds." Mr. Paxton seemed to hesitate; then took her breath away with his answer. "He is right in thinking so; I had." She was standing at his bedside. When he said that, she looked down at him as if she felt either that her ears must be playing her false or that he must be still delirious. Yet he seemed to speak rationally, and although pale and wan and but the shadow of his old self, he did not look as if he were insane. "Cyril! You don't understand me. I say that he thinks that you had something to do with the stealing of the Datchet diamonds--some improper connection with the crime, I mean." "I understand you perfectly well, my dear. I repeat, I had." She sat down on a chair and gasped. "You had! Goodness gracious! What?" "After they had been stolen. The diamonds came into my possession owing to an accident." "Cyril! Whatever did you do with them?" "They are in my possession now." "The Datchet diamonds! In your possession! Where?" Her eyes, opened at their widest, were round as saucers. She was a living note of exclamation. Obviously, though he did not seem as though he were, she felt that he must be still delirious. He quickly made it plain to her, however, that he was nothing of the kind. He told her, clearly and succinctly, the whole strange history--nothing extenuating, attempting in no whit to whitewash the blackness of his own offending--precisely as it all occurred. And when his tale was at an end, instead of reproaching him by so much as a look, she kissed him, and, pillowing her lovely head upon his undeserving breast, anointed him with her tears, as if by what his criminality had cost him he had earned for himself a niche in hagiology. Later, he repeated the story to Mr. Franklyn and to Mr. Ireland. Neither of them were moved to show signs of sympathy. Plainly his friend was of opinion that, at the very least, he had played the fool; while the detective, whose moral sensibilities had perhaps been dulled by his constant contact with crime, seemed to be struck rather by his impudence than by anything else. Mr. Paxton having voluntarily furnished Mr. Ireland with sufficient authority to enable him to gain access to the safe which he rented in that stronghold in Chancery Lane, the diamonds were found reposing securely in its fastnesses, exactly as he had described. Her Grace of Datchet's heart was gladdened by the knowledge that her priceless treasures would be returned to her in the same condition in which they left her. And the thing, being noised abroad, became a nine days' wonder. The law is very beautiful in its tender mercies. The honest man, being sick, may die in a ditch, and no one cares. On the ailing criminal are lavished all the resources of medical science. Mr. Lawrence and his friend the Baron were far too precious in the eyes of the law to be allowed to die. It was absolutely indispensable that such unmitigated scoundrels should be kept alive. And they were. Although, had not the nicest skill been continually at their disposal, they had been dead a dozen times. Not only had Mr. Paxton broken both their skulls--well broken them too--with a breaking that required not a little mending; but, as if that were not enough, they had been nearly incinerated on top of it. However, the unremitting attention with which the law provided them, because they were such rogues, sufficed to pull them through. And at last there came a day on which they were sufficiently recovered to permit of their taking their places in the dock in order that they might be charged with their offences. The prisoners who stood before the magistrates, charged with various degrees of complicity in the robbery of the Duchess of Datchet's diamonds, were, to begin with, six in number. First and foremost was Reginald Hargraves, _alias_ Arthur Lawrence, _alias_ "The Toff," _alias_, in all probability, twenty other names. From the beginning to the end he bore himself with perfect self-possession, never leading any one to suppose, either by look or gesture, that he took any particular amount of interest in what was going on. A second was Isaac Bergstein, _alias_ "The Baron." His behaviour, especially when the chief and most damning testimony was being given against him, was certainly not marked by the repose which, if we are to believe the poet, is a characteristic of the caste of Vere de Vere. Cyril Paxton was a third; while the tail consisted of the three gentlemen who had fallen into the hands of the Philistines on the road to Brighton. Before the case was opened the counsel for the prosecution intimated that he proposed to offer no evidence against the defendant, Cyril Paxton, but, with the permission of the Bench, would call him as a witness for the Crown. The Bench making no objection, Mr. Paxton stepped from the dock to the box, his whilom fellow-prisoners following him on his passage with what were very far from being looks of love. Mr. William Cooper and Mr. Paxton were the chief witnesses for the prosecution. It was they who made the fate of the accused a certainty. Mr. Cooper, in particular, had had with them such long and such an intimate acquaintance that the light which he was enabled to cast on their proceedings was a vivid one. At the same time, beyond all sort of doubt, Mr. Paxton's evidence was the sensation of the case. Seldom has a more curious story than that which he unfolded been told, even in that place in which all the strangest stories have been told, a court of justice. He had more than one bad quarter of an hour, especially at the hands of cross-examining counsel. But, when he was finally allowed to leave the box, it was universally felt that, so far as hope of escape for the prisoners was concerned, already the case was over. Their defenders would have to work something like a miracle if Mr. Paxton's evidence was to be adequately rebutted. That miracle was never worked. When the matter came before the judge at the assizes, his lordship's summing-up was brief and trenchant, and, without leaving their places, the jury returned a verdict of guilty against the whole of the accused. Mr. Hargraves and Mr. Bergstein--who have figured in these pages under other names--was each sent to penal servitude for twenty years, their colleagues being sentenced to various shorter periods of punishment. Mr. Hargraves--or Mr. Lawrence, whichever you please--bowed to the judge with quiet courtesy as he received his sentence. Mr. Bergstein, or the "Baron," however, looked as if he felt disposed to signify his sentiments in an altogether different fashion. CHAPTER XIX A WOMAN'S LOGIC The boom in the shares of the Trumpit Gold Mine continued long enough to enable Mr. Paxton to realise his holding, if not at the top price--that had been touched while he had been fighting for his life in bed--still for a sum which was large enough to ensure his complete comfort, so far as pecuniary troubles were concerned, for the rest of his life. It was his final speculation. The ready money which he obtained he invested in consols. He lives on the interest, and protests that nothing will ever again induce him to gamble in stocks and shares. Since a lady who is largely interested in his movements has endorsed his promise, it is probable that he will keep his word. Immediately after the trial Mr. Cyril Paxton and Miss Daisy Strong were married quietly at a certain church in Brighton; if you find their names upon its register of marriages you will know which church it was. In the first flush of his remorse and self-reproach--one should always remember that "when the devil was ill, the devil a saint would be"--Mr. Paxton declared that his conduct in connection with the Datchet diamonds had made him unworthy of an alliance with a decent woman. When he said this, urged thereto by his new-born humility and sense of shame, Miss Strong's conduct really was outrageous. She abused him for calling himself unworthy, asserted that all along she had known that, when it came to the marrying-point, he meant to jilt her; and that, since her expectations on that subject were now so fully realised, to her most desperate undoing, all that there remained for her to do was to throw herself into the sea from the end of the pier. She vowed that everything had been her fault, exclaiming that if she had never fallen away from the high estate which is woman's proper appanage, so far as to accept of the shelter of Mr. Lawrence's umbrella in that storm upon the Dyke, but suffered herself to be drowned and blown to shreds instead, nothing would have happened which had happened; and that, therefore, all the evil had been wrought by her. Though she had never thought--never for an instant--that he would, or could, have been so unforgiving! When she broke into tears, affirming that, in the face of his hardheartedness, nothing was left to her but death, he succumbed to this latest example of the beautiful simplicity of feminine logic, and admitted that he might after all be a more desirable _parti_ than he had himself supposed. "You have passed through the cleansing fires," she murmured, when, her reasoning having prevailed, a reconciliation had ensued. "And you have issued from them, if possible, truer metal than you went in." Mr. Paxton felt that that indeed was very possible. He allowed the compliment to go unheeded--conscious, no doubt, that it was undeserved. "God grant that I may never again be led into such temptation!" That was what he said. We, on our part, may hope that his prayer may be granted. 
55378	----	Archive (Emory University) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: https://archive.org/details/36180099.2240.emory.edu (Emory University) [Illustration: Front Cover] MISS MEPHISTOPHELES. _A NOVEL_. (SEQUEL TO MADAME MIDAS.) BY FERGUS HUME, AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB," "MADAME MIDAS," "THE PICCADILLY PUZZLE," ETC. _IN ONE VOLUME_. LONDON: F. V WHITE & CO., 31 SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND, W.C. ----- 1890. [_All Rights reserved_.] CONTENTS CHAP. I. Faces in the Fire II. Keith meets with an Adventure III. Prince Carnival IV. Lazarus V. A Woman's Appeal VI. The Annoyance of Hiram J. Fenton VII. Mirth and Laughter VIII. A Mysterious Affair IX. An Unknown Benefactor X. Naball makes a Discovery XI. What Naball overheard XII. Naball tells a Story XIII. The Gossip of Clubs XIV. A Struggle for Fame XV. The Russell Street Crime XVI. The Inquest XVII. A Council of Three XVIII. Circumstantial Evidence XIX. A Lovers' Meeting XX. The Rivals XXI. A First Night at the Bon-Bon XXII. Eugénie _v_. Naball XXIII. The Cypher XXIV. What Kitty knew XXV. The Evidence of a Bank Note XXVI. On The Track XXVII. Meg proves Useful XXVIII. Malton makes a Discovery XXIX. Light at Last XXX. Exit Kitty Marchurst MISS MEPHISTOPHELES. CHAPTER I. FACES IN THE FIRE. A wet Sunday--dreary, dismal, and infinitely sloppy. Even the bells ringing the people into evening service seemed to feel the depressing influence of the weather, and their brazen voices sounded hoarse and grumbling, as if they rang under protest. Cold, too!--not a brisk sharp frost--for here in Melbourne frost and snow are unknown; but a persevering, insinuating, gnawing cold, just disagreeable enough to make one shiver and shake with anxiety to get home to a bright fire and dry clothes. Overhead a leaden-coloured sky, with great masses of black clouds, from out whose sombre bosoms poured the steady rain, splashing noisily on the shining roofs, and swelling the gutters in the streets to miniature torrents. And then the wind,--a gusty, chilly wind,--that came along unexpectedly, and drove the unwilling rain against the umbrellas of struggling pedestrians, or else took a mean advantage of its power, and turned their umbrellas inside out, with a shrill whistle of triumph. The steady light streamed out from the painted church windows, and the dull, blurred glare of the street lamps was reflected in the wet pavements. Ugh! a night not fit for a dog to be out in, and yet there were a good many people hurrying along to the church, in answer to the clamorous voices of the bells. Some folk, however--wise in their generation--preferred staying at home to sitting in church, with damp boots and a general sense of stickiness about their clothes, and though possibly their souls suffered from such an omission, their bodies were certainly more comfortable. Among these godless people, who thus preferred comfort to religion, were two young men occupying a room on a first floor, the windows of which looked across to the church, now full of damp and steaming worshippers. A room in a boarding-house--especially one where boarders only pay twenty-five shillings a week--is not generally a very luxurious apartment, and this special room was certainly no exception to the rule. It was square, with a fairly lofty ceiling, and the walls were covered with a dull red paper, which, being mellowed by time, had assumed a somewhat rusty hue. It was rapidly growing dark outside, and there was no light in the room, save that which came from a roaring coal fire blazing brightly up the chimney, and illuminating the apartment in a curiously fantastic manner. It sent out red shafts of light into dark corners, as if to find out what was hidden there, and then being disappointed, would sink back into a dull, sulky glow, only to fall into a chaotic mass, and blaze merrily up once more. The apartment wherein the fire played these elfish tricks was furnished comfortably, but the furniture had a somewhat dingy look. The carpet was threadbare, except under the table, where there could be traced some vestiges of its original pattern. A cottage piano was pushed into a corner slanting ways, and beside it was a great untidy pile of music. At one end of the room, a desk covered with papers, and immediately above it a shelf containing a small array of well-worn books. Near the desk stood an aggravatingly bright sideboard, whereon were some glasses, a jug of water, and a half-empty bottle of whisky. Four or five lounging chairs of wicker-work were scattered about, covered with rugs of wallaby fur, whilst the walls and mantelpiece were almost covered with photographs, mostly of women, but here and there a male face, showing the well-known features of Beethoven, Chopin, and other famous musicians. This somewhat incongruous apartment was a private sitting-room in an East Melbourne boarding-house, and was at present in the occupation of Ezra Lazarus, journalist. Ezra Lazarus himself was seated at the piano playing snatches of music, while on the hearth-rug, smoking a pipe, lay a man propped up on his elbow, with his head resting on his hand, staring into the burning coals, and listening to his friend playing. Ezra Lazarus was a young man of medium height, with a slender figure, a pale face, rather dreamy, dark eyes, and black hair and beard carefully trimmed. He dressed neatly, and, in contrast to most of his race, wore no jewellery. Why he had become a journalist no one knew,--himself least of all,--as his tastes did not lie in the direction of newspaper work, for having all the Hebraic love of music, he was an accomplished pianist. As for the rest--staid in his demeanour, soft-spoken in his language, and much given to solitary wanderings. Yet he was no misanthrope, and those who knew him intimately found him a most charming companion, full of quaint ideas and bookish lore, but he was essentially a man of ideality, and shrank from contact with the work-a-day world. For such a nature as this a journalistic sphere was most unsuitable, and he felt it to be so, but having drifted into such a position, he lacked the energy to extricate himself from his uncongenial employment, and accepted his fate with oriental apathy, recompensing himself in some measure by giving every spare moment to the study of music. The man lying before the fire was the direct opposite of Ezra, both in appearance and temperament. A tall, sinewy-figured young fellow of six-and-twenty, with restless keen grey eyes under strongly-marked eyebrows, and a sensitive mouth, almost hidden by a small fair moustache. His nose was thin and straight, with delicately-cut nostrils, and his head was well set on his broad shoulders, albeit he had a trick of throwing it back which gave him a somewhat haughty carriage. He had a fair complexion, with that reddish-brown hue which comes from constantly living in the open air, and altogether looked like a man addicted to sport rather than to study. This was Keith Stewart, who, having passed most of his life in Gippsland, and in wandering about Australia generally, had a year previously come down to Melbourne with the laudable intention of devoting himself to literature. That he was poor might be surmised from his shabby, well-brushed clothes, and his face constantly wore that expression of watchfulness habitual to those who have to fight the world in their youth and be on their guard against everyone. That two such dissimilar natures as these could find any reciprocity appears strange, but curiously enough some undercurrent of sympathy had drawn them together from the first time they met. Jew and Gentile, musician and student, different nationalities, different trains of thought, yet the mere fact that they could both live in an ideal world of their own creation, heedless of the restless life which seethed around, seemed to form a bond of concord between them, and their mutual isolation drew them almost imperceptibly together. Keith had only been boarding in the house a week, consequently Ezra knew nothing about his friend's life, beyond the fact that he was poor and ambitious. As Stewart never volunteered any information about himself, Ezra, with the delicacy of a sensitive nature, shrank from forcing himself on his confidence. The inexhaustible subjects of books and music, a walk by the banks of the Yarra, or an occasional visit to the theatre, had been, so far, the limit of their social companionship. Their inner selves were still unknown to each other. To all, however, there comes a moment when the desire to unburden the mind to a sympathetic nature is strong, and it was in such a moment that Ezra Lazarus first learned the past life of Stewart. On this dreary Sunday night Ezra let his fingers wander over the piano, vaguely following his thoughts, and the result was a queer mingling of melodies--now a bizarre polonaise of Chopin, with its fantastic blending of patriotic joy and despairing pain, then a rush of stormy chords, preluding a Spanish dance, instinct with the amorous languor and fierce passion of the south. Outside, the shrill wind could be heard sweeping past, a sheet of rain would lash wildly against the windows, and at intervals the musical thunder of the organ sounded from the adjacent church. Keith smoked away steadily and listened drowsily to the pleasant mingling of sounds, until Ezra began to play the Traviata music, with its feverish brilliancy and undercurrent of sadness. Then he suddenly started, clenched his hand, and taking his pipe from his mouth, heaved an impatient sigh, upon hearing which, Lazarus stopped playing, and turned slowly round. "A link of memory?" he said, in his soft voice, referring to the music. Stewart replaced his pipe, blew a thick wreath of smoke, and sighed again. "Yes," he replied, after a pause; "it recalls to me--a woman." Ezra laughed half sadly, half mockingly. "Always the Eternal feminine of George Sand." Keith sat up cross-legged in front of the fire and shrugged his shoulders. "Don't be cynical old chap," he said, glancing round; "I'm sick of hearing the incessant railing against women--good heavens! are we men so pure ourselves, that we can afford to cast stones against the sex to which our mothers and sisters belong." "I did not mean to be cynical," replied Ezra, clasping his hands round one of his knees, "I only quoted Sand, because when a man is thinking, it is generally--a woman. "Or a debt--or a crime--or a sorrow," interposed the other quickly; "we can ring the changes on all of them." "Who is cynical now?" asked the Jew, with a smile. "Not I," denied Keith, emphatically, drawing hard at his pipe; "or if I am, it is only that thin veneer of cynicism, under which we hide our natural feelings now-a-days; but the music took me back to the time when 'Plancus was consul'--exactly twelve months ago." "Bah! Plancus is consul still; don't be downhearted, my friend; you are still in the pleasant city of Prague." "Pleasant? that is as it may be. I think it a very disagreeable city without money. Bohemianism is charming in novels, but in real life it is generally a hunt after what Murger calls that voracious animal, the half-crown." "And after women!" "Ah, bah! Lais and Phryne; both charming, but slightly improper, not to say expensive." "Take the other side of the shield," said the Jew gently. "Lucretia, and--and--by Jove, I can't recollect the name of any other virtuous woman." "Who is the lady of the music?" "My affianced wife," retorted Stewart curtly. "Ah!" said Ezra thoughtfully, "then we have a feeling in common, I am also engaged." Stewart laughed gaily. "And we both think our lady-loves perfect," he said lightly. "'Dulcinea is the fairest woman in the world,'--poor Don Quixote." "Mine is to me," said Ezra emphatically. "Of course," answered Stewart, with a smile. "I can picture her, tall, dark, and stately, an imperial daughter of Judah, with the beauty of Bathsheba and the majesty of Esther." "Entirely wrong," replied Lazarus dryly, "she is neither tall, dark, nor stately, but--" "The exact opposite--I take your meaning," said Keith composedly; "well, my Dulcinea is like the sketch I have given--beautiful, clever, poor, and--a governess." "And you haven't seen her for a year?" "No--a whole twelvemonth--she is up Sandhurst way trying to hammer dates and the rule of three into the thick heads of five small brats, and I--well I'm an unsuccessful literary man, doing what is vulgarly known as 'a perish.'" "What made you take up writing?" asked Lazarus. "What made me take up writing?" repeated Stewart, staring vaguely into the fire. "Lord knows--destiny, I suppose--I've had a queer sort of life altogether. I was born of poor but honest parents, quite the orthodox style of thing, isn't it?" "Are your parents alive?" "Dead!" laconically. There was a pause of a few moments, during which time Keith was evidently deep in thought. "According to Sir Walter Scott," he observed at length, "every Scotchman has a pedigree. I've got one as long as the tail of a kite, only not so useful. I'd sell all my ancestors, as readily as Charles Surface did his, for a few pounds. My people claim to be connected with the royal Stewarts." "Your name is spelt differently." "It's spelt correctly," retorted Keith coolly, "in the good old Scottish fashion; as for the other, it's the French method acclimatised by Mary Stuart when she married the Dauphin of France." "Well, now I know your pedigree, what is the story of your life?" "My life?--oh! I'm like Canning's knife-grinder. 'Story, I've got none to tell.' My father and mother found royal descent was not bread and butter, so they sold the paternal acres and came out to Australia, where I was born. The gold fever was raging then, but I suppose they inherited the bad luck of the Stewarts, for they did not make a penny; then they started a farm in Gippsland and ruined themselves. My father died of a broken heart, and my mother soon followed, so I was left an orphan with next to nothing. I wandered all over Australia, and did anything that turned up. Suppressing the family pride, I took a situation in a Sandhurst store, kept by a man called Proggins, and there I met Eugénie Rainsford, who, as I told you, taught the juvenile Progginses. I had a desultory sort of education from my father, and having read a good deal, I determined to take to literature, inspired, I suppose, by the poetic melancholy of the Australian bush. I wrote poetry with the usual success; I then went on the stage, and found I wasn't a heaven-born genius by any means, so I became a member of the staff of a small country paper, wrote brilliant articles about the weather and crops, varied by paste-and-scissors' work. Burned the midnight oil, and wrote some articles, which were accepted in Melbourne, so, with the usual prudence of genius, I threw up my billet and came down here to set the Thames, or rather the Yarra, on fire. Needless to remark, I didn't succeed or I shouldn't be here, so there is my history in a nutshell." "And Miss Rainsford?" "Oh, I engaged myself to her before I left Sandhurst," said Keith, his face growing tender, "bless her--the letters she has written me have been my bulwark against despair--ah! what a poor devil a man is in this world without a good woman's love to comfort him." "Are you doing anything now?" said Ezra thoughtfully. "Nothing. I'm leading a hand-to-mouth, here-to-day-gone-to-morrow existence. I'm a vagabond on the face of the earth, a modern Cain, Bonnie Prince Charlie in exile--the infernal luck of my royal ancestors still sticks to me, but, ah, bah!" shrugging his shoulders, "don't let's talk any more, old chap, we can resume the subject to-morrow, meanwhile play me something. I'm in a poetic mood, and would like to build castles in the air." Ezra laughed, and, turning to the piano, began to play one of Henselt's morceaux, a pathetic, dreamy melody, which came stealing softly through the room, and filled the soul of the young man with vague yearnings. Staring idly into the heart of the burning coals, he saw amid the bluish flames and red glimmer of the fire a vision of the dear dead days of long ago--shadows appeared, the shadows of last year. A glowing sunset, bathing a wide plain in delicate crimson hues; a white gate leading to a garden bright with flowers, and over the gate the shadow of a beautiful woman stood talking to the shadow of a man--himself. Mnenosyne--saddest of deities--waved her wand, and the shadows talked. "And when will you come back, Keith?" asked the girl shadow. "When I am a great man," replied the other shadow proudly. "I am riding forth like Poe's knight in search of El Dorado." "El Dorado is far away," returned the sweet voice of the girl; "it is the Holy Grail of wealth, and can never be discovered." "I will find it," replied the man shadow hopefully. "Meanwhile, you will wait and hope." "I will wait and hope," replied the girl, smiling sadly; and the shadows parted. The rain beat steadily against the panes, the soft music stole through the room, and Stewart, with idle gaze, stared into the burning heart of the fire, as if he expected to find there the El Dorado of his dreams. CHAPTER II. KEITH MEETS WITH AN ADVENTURE. After a storm comes a calm; so next morning the sun was shining brightly in the blue sky, and the earth had that clean, wholesome appearance always to be seen after heavy rains. The high wind had dried the streets, the drenched foliage of the trees in the Fitzroy Gardens looked fresh and green, and there was a slight chilliness in the atmosphere which was highly invigorating. Indeed, it was like a spring morning, mildly inspiriting; whilst all around there seemed to be a pleasant sense of new-born gladness quickening both animal and vegetable life. After breakfast, Ezra, who was going to the office of _The Penny Whistle_, the paper for which he worked, asked Keith to walk into town with him, and, as the young man had nothing particular to do, he gladly assented. They strolled slowly through the gardens, admiring the glistening green of the trees, the white statues sharply accentuated against their emerald back-ground, and the vivid dashes of bright colour given by the few flowers then in bloom. Stewart appeared to have quite recovered from his megrims of the previous night, and strolled gaily along, every now and then inhaling a long breath of the keen air. Ezra, who was watching him closely, saw from his actions his intense appreciation of his surroundings, and was satisfied that the young man possessed in a high degree that poetical instinct which has such an affinity with the joyousness or gloom of Nature. "Ah! this is a morning when it is good to live," said Keith brightly. "I always envied the satyrs and dryades of heathendom, with their intense animal enjoyment of Nature--not sensuality, but exuberant capability of enjoying a simple life." "Like that with which Hawthorn endowed Donatallo?" suggested Ezra. "Poor Donatallo!" said Stewart, with a sigh; "he is a delightful illustration of the proverb, 'Where ignorance is bliss'--he was happy till he loved--so was Undine till she obtained a soul." "You seem to have read a great deal?" observed Lazarus, looking at him. "Oh, faith; my reading has been somewhat desultory," replied Stewart carelessly. "All is fish that comes to my net, and the result is a queer jumble of information; but let us leave this pleasant gossiping, and come down to this matter-of-fact world. How do you think I can better my position?" "I hardly know as yet," replied the Jew, thoughtfully caressing his beard; "but if you want immediate work, I can put you in the way of obtaining employment." "Literary work?" "Unfortunately no--a clerkship in a--a--well, an office." "Ugh! I hate the idea of being cribbed and confined in an office; it's such an artificial existence. However, beggars can't be choosers, so tell me all about it." "My father wants a clerk," said Ezra deliberately, "and if I recommended you I think you could get the position." "Humph! And what is your father's occupation?" "Not a very aristocratic one,--a pawnbroker." Keith stopped short, and looked at his companion in surprise. "I can't imagine you being the son of a pawnbroker," he said in a puzzled tone. "Why not?" asked Ezra serenely. "I must be the son of some one." "Yes; but a pawnbroker, it's so horribly un-poetical. Your father ought to have been a man of letters--of vague speculations and abstruse theories--a modern Rabbi Judah holding disputations about the Talmud." Lazarus shrugged his shoulders, and walked slowly onward, followed by his companion. "My dear lad, the days of Maimonides are past, and we are essentially a money-making race. The curse which Jehovah pronounced on the Jews was the same as that of Midas--they turn everything they touch into gold." "A pleasant enough punishment." "Midas did not find it so; but to resume--my father, Jacob Lazarus, has his shop in Russell Street, so I will speak to him to-day, and if he is agreeable, I will take you with me to-morrow. I've no doubt you'll get the billet, but the wages will be small." "At all events, they will keep body and soul together till I find my El Dorado." "You refer to literary fame, I suppose. How did you first take to writing?" "I think you asked me that question last night," said Keith, smiling, "and I told you I couldn't explain. Like Pope, I lisped in numbers, and the numbers came. I've no doubt they were sufficiently bad. I'm sure I don't know why all authors begin with verse; perhaps it's because rhymes are so easy--fountain suggests mountain, and dove is invariably followed by love." "Have you had any articles accepted since your arrival in Melbourne?" "One or two, but generally speaking, no one acknowledges that a possible Shakespeare or Dickens is embodied in me. I've sent plays to managers, which have been declined on the plea that all plays come from London. I have seen editors, and have been told there was no room on the press--publishers have seen me, and pointed out that a colonial novel means ruination--encouraging for the future brainworkers of Australia, isn't it?" "We must all serve our apprenticeship," answered Lazarus quietly. "The longest lane has a turning." "No doubt; but my particular lane seems devilish long." Ezra laughed, and they walked down Collins Street, watching the crowd of people hurrying along to business, the cabs darting here and there, and the cable tramcars sliding smoothly along. Pausing a moment near the Scotch Church, they heard a street organ playing a bright melody. "What tune is that?" asked Keith, as they resumed their walk. "Sounds awfully pretty." "Song from 'Prince Carnival,'" replied Ezra, referring to an opera then running at the Bon-Bon Theatre. "Caprice sings it." "Oh, Caprice. I'd like to see that opera," said Keith. "You might take me to the theatre to-night to see it." "Very well," assented Ezra. "You will like Caprice--she is very charming." "And if rumour speaks truly, very wicked." "Added to which, she is the best-hearted woman in the world," finished the Jew dryly. "What a contradiction," laughed Stewart. "Women are always contradictory--'tis a privilege of the sex." "And one they take full advantage of." This airy badinage came to an end somewhat abruptly, for just as they arrived near the Victoria Coffee Palace, they were startled by the shriek of a woman. On the other side of the street a gaudily-dressed girl was crying and wringing her hands, while a child of about seven years of age was standing paralysed with fear directly in the way of a tram-car that came rushing down the incline. The two men stood horror-struck at what seemed to be the inevitable death of the child, for, though the driver put on the brakes, the speed was too great, and destruction appeared inevitable. Suddenly Keith seemed to recover the use of his limbs, and, with a sudden spring, bounded forward and tore the child off the fatal track, himself falling together with the child to the ground. He was not a moment too soon, for hardly had he fallen before the car at a slower speed rolled past, and ultimately came to a standstill at the foot of the incline. Stewart arose to his feet considerably shaken, his clothes torn and covered with mud, and a painful feeling in the arm, on which he had fallen. Ezra crossed over to him, and the rescued child was standing on the footpath in the grasp of the gaudily-dressed girl who spoke volubly, regardless of the crowd of people standing by. The conductor of the car came to inquire into the affair, and having found that no one was hurt, retired, and the tram was soon sliding down the street. The crowd dispersed gradually, until only the child, Ezra, Keith, and the shrill-voiced girl were left. "Oh! gracious, good 'eavens!" said this young lady, who appeared to be a nursemaid, and spoke rapidly, without any stops; "to think as you should have bin nearly squashed by that ingine, and all comin' of runnin' out into the road, an' taking no notice of me as was postin' a letter in the pillar-box, not seeing anythin', thro' want of eyes at the back of me 'ead." The child, a quaint, thin-faced little girl, with dark eyes and glorious reddish-coloured hair, took no notice of this outburst, but pulled Keith's coat to attract his attention. "Thank you, man," she said, in a thin, reedy voice; "I will tell mumsey, and she will say nice things to you, and I will give you a kiss." Keith was touched in his soft heart by this naïve appeal, and, bending down, kissed the pale little face presented to him, much to the alarm of the nursemaid, who lifted up her hands in horror. "Oh! gracious, good 'eavens!" she piped shrilly, "as to what your mar will say, Miss Megs, I don't know, a-kissin' strange gents in the h'open street; not but what he don't deserve it, a-dragin' you from under the ingine, as oughtn't to be let run to spile--" "Hold your tongue, Bliggings," said Ezra sharply; "you ought to look more carefully after Meg, or she'll be killed some day." "Oh! gracious and good 'eavens!" cried Bliggings sniffing, "if it ain't Mr. Lazarhouse; and, beggin' your pardon, sir, it ain't my fault, as is well known to you as children will 'ookit unbeknown't to the most wary." "There, there," said Lazarus, bending down to kiss Meg; "least said, soonest mended; thanks to my friend here, it's no worse." "Which he ought to git a meddler," asserted Miss Bliggings, on whose feminine heart Keith's handsome face had made an impression. "But, gracious and good 'eavens, they only gives 'em for drowndin', though I never lets Miss Megs go near water, ingines bein' unexpected in their actions, and not to be counted on in their movin's." "Good-bye, Meg," said Lazarus, cutting short Bliggings in despair. "Tell your mamma I'll call and see her about this." "And bring the man," said Meg, glancing at Keith. "Yes, and bring the man," repeated Ezra, upon which Meg, being satisfied, made a quaint-like curtsey to both men, and was going away, when she suddenly came back, and pulling Keith's coat till he bent down, put her arms round his neck and kissed him. "Mumsey will be nice," she murmured, and then trotted quietly off with Bliggings, who kept expressing her opinion that, "Oh! gracious, good 'eavens! she was red up to her eyes at such conduct," a somewhat unnecessary assertion, seeing her complexion was permanently the colour of beetroot. "Come into Lane's Hotel and have a glass of brandy," said Ezra, when Meg and her attendant had disappeared; "you need it after the shaking you have had." "What is the child's name?" asked Keith, as he went into the bar. "You seem to know her." Ezra laughed softly, and ordered a glass of brandy for his friend. "A curious way Fate has of working," he said, rather irrelevantly. "She has played into your hands to-day, for that child is Kitty Marchurst's, better known as 'Caprice.'" "I didn't know she had a child," said Keith. "Who is the father? Is she married?" "No, she is not married. As to the father, it's a long story; I'll tell you all about it some day. Meanwhile, you have done her a service she will never forget." "Much good it will be to me," said Keith disbelievingly "You've exactly hit it," replied Ezra composedly. "She can do you a great deal of good, seeing that she is the reigning favourite of the stage at present. I will introduce you to her to-night, and then--" "Well?" Ezra shrugged his shoulders, and replied slowly,-- "The best friend an ambitious man can have is a clever woman; a wiser man than I made that remark." CHAPTER III. PRINCE CARNIVAL. The "Bon-Bon" was the smallest, prettiest, and most luxurious theatre in Melbourne, and was exclusively devoted to farcical comedy, burlesque, and opera-bouffe, the latter class of entertainment being now the attraction. There was no pit, the circle and boxes being raised but little above the level of the stalls. The decorations were pink, white, and gold, the seats being covered with pale, rose-coloured plush, with curtains and hangings to match, while the electric lights, shining through pink globes, gave quite a warm glow to the theatre. The dome was decorated with allegorical figures representing Momus, the God of laughter, and Apollo, the God of music, while all round the walls were exquisitely-painted medallions of scenes from celebrated operas and burlesques. The proscenium was a broad frame of dullish gold, the curtain of roseate plush, and on either side of the stage were life-size statues of Offenbach and Planché in white marble. Altogether, a charming theatre, more like a cosy drawing-room than a place of public entertainment. At the entrance was a high flight of white marble stairs, leading to a wide corridor, the walls of which were hidden by enormous mirrors, and at intervals stood white marble statues of the Greek divinities, holding aloft electric lights. On the one side was the smoking-room,--a luxurious lounge,--and on the other a refreshment bar, all glass and glitter, which was crowded between the acts by the thirsty patrons of the play. Ezra and Keith arrived about nine o'clock, just as the first act of "Prince Carnival" was over, and finding the _salon_ tolerably full, Lazarus sat down near one of the small, marble-topped tables, and lighting his cigarette, proceeded to point out to Keith all the notabilities present. The first to whom he called Stewart's attention was a group of three. One, a tall, portly-looking man, with a red, clean-shaven face and black hair, was irreproachably attired in evening dress, and chatted to a fair-haired youth with a supercilious smile, and a short, bald-headed old gentleman. "You see those three?" said Ezra, indicating the group. "The dark man of the ponderous Samuel Johnson type is Ted Mortimer, the lessee of the theatre; the idiot with the eyeglass is Lord Santon, who has come out from London to see us barbarians, and the apoplectic party with the bald head is no less a personage than Mr. Columbus Wilks, the great globe-trotter, who is going to write a book about Australia and New Zealand." "That will take him some time," observed Keith, with a smile. "Not at all," said Lazarus coolly. "He will run through the whole of Australasia in a few weeks, be the guest of the governors of the different colonies, and then give his impressions of our government, politics, trade, amusements, and scenery in a series of brilliant articles, whose truth and accuracy will be quite in accordance with the time which he has taken to collect his materials." "But he cannot judge of things so rapidly." "Of course not; but he will view everything through the rose-coloured spectacles of champagne and adulation, so his book will depict our land as a kind of nineteenth-century Utopia." "And Lord Santon?" "An hereditary legislator, who is being _fêted_ for his title, and will go back to his ancestral halls with the firm conviction that we are a kind-hearted race of--savages." "You are severe," said Keith, in an amused tone; "you ought to give a lecture, entitled 'Men I have noticed;' it would certainly draw." "Yes, all the women, not the men; they don't care for hearing remarks about themselves; but there is the bell for the rising of the curtain, so we had better go to our seats." They left the now empty salon, and went into the dress circle, which holds the same rank in the colonies as the stalls do in the London theatres. Though the house was crowded, they succeeded in getting excellent seats, being, in fact, those always reserved for the critics of _The Penny Whistle_. The orchestra played a lively waltz, to which the gods in the gallery kept time, and then the curtain drew up on a charming scene, representing a square in Rome. "Prince Carnival" was one of those frivolous French operas with a slightly naughty plot, witty dialogue, brilliant music, and plenty of opportunity for gay dresses and picturesque scenery. The principals and chorus consisted mostly of girls, with just a sprinkling of men, so that their deeper voices might balance the shrillness of those of the women. Of the plot, the least said the better, as it was merely a string of intrigues, connected by piquant couplets and sparkling choruses, with occasional ballets intervening. As far as Keith could gather, it had something to do with the adventures of the quack Cagliostra in Rome, who was the comic man of the play, and figured in various disguises, the most successful being that of a prominent politician. Cagliostra tries to gain the affections of a young girl beloved by a mountebank called Prince Carnival, who thwarts him all through the play. The second act was the carnival at Rome, and a crowd of masquers were singing a riotous chorus and pelting one another with flowers. Suddenly, during a lull in this fantastic medley, a high, clear voice was heard executing a brilliant shake, and immediately afterwards Caprice bounded gaily on to the stage, singing a melodious waltz song, to which the masquers moved in measured time. She was dressed in a harlequin costume, a mask on her face, a fool's baton in her hand, and innumerable silver bells hanging from her cap and dress, which jingled incessantly as she danced. But what attracted Keith's attention were the diamonds she wore--several stars and a necklace. She seemed one splendid blaze of jewels, and his eyes ached watching their flash and glitter during the rapid gyrations of her restless figure. "Are those paste jewels?" he asked Ezra, in a whisper. "Paste!" echoed that young man, with a soft, satirical laugh. "Caprice wear paste jewels! Ask the men she's ruined where all their thousands went---where all their lands, horses, shares, salaries, disappeared to! Paste! Bah! my dear fellow, you don't know the number of ruined homes and broken hearts those diamonds represent." The act proceeded; the dialogue scintillating with wit, and the choruses becoming more riotous. Intrigue followed after intrigue, and situation after situation, in all of which Caprice was the central figure, until the climax was reached, in a wild bizarre chorus, in which she danced a vigorous cancan with Cagliostra, and finished by bounding on his shoulders to form the tableau as the curtain fell, amid the enthusiastic applause of the audience. Ezra and Stewart went out into the smoking-room to light their cigarettes, and heard on all sides eulogies of Caprice. "She'd make her fortune on the London stage," said Santon to Mortimer. "Got such a lot of the devil in her--eh?--by Jove! Why the deuce don't she show in town?" "Aha!" replied Mortimer shrewdly, "I'm not going to let her go if I can help it. Don't tempt away my only ewe lamb, when you've got so many flocks of your own." "She doesn't look much like a lamb," said Columbus Wilks dryly. "Then she doesn't belie her looks," retorted Mortimer coolly. "My dear sir, she's got the temper of a fiend, but she's such a favourite, that I put up with her tantrums for the sake of the cash." While this conversation was going on, Ezra and his friend were smoking quietly in a corner of the room chatting about the opera, when the Jew suddenly drew Keith's attention to a tall man talking to a friend in a confidential manner. He had a thin, sharp-looking face, keen blue eyes, and fair hair and beard. "That gentleman," said Lazarus, "could probably tell you something about those diamonds, he is an American called Hiram Jackson Fenton, manager of the 'Never-say-die Life Insurance Company.' Rumour--which is true in this case, contrary to its usual custom--says he is Caprice's latest fancy." "He must have a lot of money to satisfy her whims," said Keith, looking at the American. "Money!" Ezra shrugged his shoulders. "He hasn't much actual cash, for he lives far above his income. However, with a little judicious dabbling in the share market, and an occasional help from the children of Israel, he manages to get along all right. Our friend Caprice will ruin him shortly, and then he'll return to the Great Republic, I presume--good riddance of bad rubbish for Australia." "And who is that colourless-looking little man who has just come up?" "He is rather washed out, isn't he?" said Ezra critically. "That is his assistant manager, Evan Malton. For some inexplicable reason they are inseparable." "Oh, and is Mr. Malton also smitten with Caprice." "Very badly--more shame to him, as he's only been married for twelve months--he neglects his young wife, and dances attendance at the heels of his divinity." "Doesn't Hiram J--what's his name, object?" "Not at all. You see they're both mixed up in speculation, and work together for their mutual benefit. Malton is the Lazarus--I don't mean myself--who picks up the crumbs of love that fall from Mr. Dives Fenton's table." "It can't last long," said Keith in disgust. "It will last till Malton gets rid of Fenton, or Fenton gets the better of Malton--then there'll be a row, and the weakest will go to the wall. Tell me, whom do you think will win?" "I should say Fenton," replied Keith, glancing from the effeminate countenance of Malton to the shrewd, powerful face of the American. "Exactly; he is, I fancy, the stronger villain of the two." "Villain?" "Yes; I call any man a villain who neglects his wife for the sake of a light-o'-love. As for Fenton, he is the most unscrupulous man I know." "You seem to be pretty well acquainted with the scandal of Melbourne society," said Stewart as they went back to their seats. "Of course, it is my duty; the press is ubiquitous. But tell me your opinion of Caprice?" "Judging by her acting to-night, she's a devil." "Wait till the end of this act, and you'll swear she's an angel." "Which will be correct?" "Both--she's a mixture!" The curtain again drew up, amid the shuffling of the audience settling themselves in their places, and represented a _fête_ in the gardens of Cagliostra's palace, brilliant with coloured lights and fantastically-dressed people. According to the story, Cagliostra has obtained possession of his prize, and woos her successfully, when Prince Carnival enters and sings a ballad, "So Long Ago," in the hope of touching the heart of his false love. Caprice, dressed in a tight-fitting costume of silk and velvet, which showed off her beautiful figure to perfection, stood in the centre of the stage with a sad smile, and sang the waltz-refrain of the song with great feeling. "For it was long ago, love, That time of joy and woe, love! Yet still that heart of thine Is mine, dear love, is mine!" She gave to the jingling words a touch of pathos which was exquisitely beautiful. "I believe she feels what she sings," whispered Keith. "If you knew her story you would scarcely wonder at that," said Ezra bitterly. The song was redemanded, but Caprice refused to respond, and, the clamour still continuing, she shrugged her shoulders and walked coolly up the stage. "She's in a temper to-night," said Mortimer to Santon. "They can applaud till they're black in the face, but devil an answer they'll get from her, the jade! She isn't called Caprice for nothing." And so it happened, for the audience, finding she would not gratify them, subsided into a sulky silence, and Caprice went coolly on with the dialogue. Cagliostra, repentant, surrenders the girl to Prince Carnival, and the opera ended with a repetition of the galop chorus, wherein Keith saw the sad-eyed woman of a few moments before once more a mocking jibing fiend, dancing and singing with a reckless _abandon_ that half-fascinated and half-disgusted him. "What a contradiction," said Keith, as they left the theatre; "one moment all tears, the next all laughter!" "With a spice of the devil in both," replied Ezra cynically. "She is the Sphinx woman of Heine--her lips caress while her claws wound." They had a drink and a smoke together, after which they went round to the stage-door, as Ezra, in pursuance of improving Keith's fortunes, was anxious to introduce him to Caprice. Lazarus appeared to be well-known to the door-keeper, for, after a few words with him, they were admitted to the mysterious region behind the scenes. Caprice, wrapped up in a heavy fur cloak, was standing on the stage talking to Fenton. All around was comparatively quiet, as the scene-shifters having ended their duties for the night had left the theatre. Stewart could hardly believe that the little golden-haired woman he saw before him was the brilliant being of the previous hour, she looked so pale and weary. But soon another side of her versatile nature showed itself, for Fenton, saying something to displease her, she rebuked him sharply, and turned her back on the discomfited American. In doing so she caught sight of Lazarus, and ran quickly towards him with outstretched hand. "My dear Mr. Lazarus," she said rapidly, "I'm so glad to see you! Meg told me all about her accident to-day, and how narrowly she escaped death. Good God, if I had lost her! But the gentleman who saved her--where is he?" "He is here," said Lazarus, indicating Keith, who stood blushing and confused before this divinity of the stage. In another moment, with a sudden impulse, she was by his side, holding his two hands in her own. "You have done what I can never repay," she said rapidly, in a low voice. "Saved my child's life, and you will not find me ungrateful. Words are idle, but if actions can prove gratitude, you may command me." "I hope the young lady is all right," stammered Keith, as she dropped his hands. "Oh, yes; rather shaken, but quite well," answered Caprice, in a relieved tone. "Dear me, how careless I am; let me introduce you to these gentlemen--Mr. Fenton, Mr. Malton, and last, but not least, Mr. Mortimer." The three gentlemen bowed coldly, Fenton in particular, eyeing Keith in a supercilious manner, which made him blush with rage, as he thought it was owing to his shabby clothes. "Is my carriage there?" said Caprice, in reply to a speech of Malton's. "Oh, then, I may as well go. Good-night, everybody. Mr. Stewart, will you give me your arm?" and she walked off with the delighted Keith, leaving Fenton and Malton transfixed with rage, while Mortimer and Ezra looked on chuckling. Caprice talked brightly to her new friend till he placed her in her brougham, then suddenly became grave. "Come down and have supper with me on Sunday fortnight," she said, leaning out of the window. "Mr. Lazarus will be your guide. Good-bye at present," giving him her gloved hand. "God bless you for saving my child." The carriage drove off, but not before Keith had seen that tears were falling down her face, whereat he marvelled at this strange nature, and stood looking after the carriage. "She's not as bad as they say," he said aloud. Ezra, who was just behind him, laughed aloud. "I knew you'd say she was an angel." CHAPTER IV LAZARUS. It was a very little shop of squat appearance, as if the upper storey had gradually crushed down the lower. Three gilt balls dangling in mid-air over the wide door indicated the calling of the owner, and, in order that there should be no mistake, the dusty, rain-streaked windows displayed the legend, "Lazarus, Pawnbroker," in blistered golden letters. There were three windows in the upper storey, and these being innocent of blinds or curtains, with the addition of one or two panes being broken, gave the top of the house a somewhat dismantled look. The lower windows, however, made up for the blankness of the upper ones, being full of marvels, and behind their dingy glass could be seen innumerable articles, representing the battered wrecks of former prosperity. Gold and silver watches, with little parchment labels attached, setting forth their value, displayed themselves in a tempting row, and their chains were gracefully festooned between them, intermixed with strings of red coral, old-fashioned lockets, and bracelets of jet and amber. Worn-out silver teapots were placed dismally at the back in company with cracked cups and saucers of apparently rare old Worcester and Sêvres china. Dingy velvet trays, containing innumerable coins and medals of every description, antique jewellery of a mode long since out of date, were incongruously mingled with revolvers, guns, spoons, cruets, and japanned trays, decorated with sprawling golden dragons; richly-chased Indian daggers, tarnished silver mugs, in company with deadly-looking American bowie knives; bank-notes of long since insolvent banks were displayed as curiosities, while a child's rattle lay next to a Book of Beauty, from out whose pages looked forth simpering faces of the time of D'Orsay and Lady Blessington. And over all this queer heterogeneous mixture the dust lay thick and grey, as if trying for very pity to hide these remnants of past splendours and ruined lives. The shop was broad, low-roofed, and shallow, with a choky atmosphere of dust, through which the golden sunlight slanted in heavy, solid-looking beams. On the one side there was a row of little partitions like bathing-boxes, designed to secure secrecy to those who transacted business with Mr. Lazarus, and, on the other, long rows of old clothes were hanging up against the wall, looking like the phantoms of their former owners. At the back, a door, covered with faded green baize, and decorated with brass-headed nails, gave admittance to the private office of the presiding genius of the place. The whole appearance of the shop was gloomy in the extreme, and the floor, being covered with boxes and bundles, with a little clearing here and there, it was naturally rather embarrassing to strangers (especially as the bright sunlight outside prevented them seeing an inch before their noses) when they first entered the dismal den wherein Mr. Lazarus sat like a spider waiting for unwary flies. In one of the bathing machines aforesaid, a large red-faced woman, with a gruff voice and a strong odour of gin, was trying to conclude a bargain with a small, white-faced Jewish youth whose black beady eyes were scornfully examining a dilapidated teapot, which the gruff lady asserted was silver, and which the Jewish youth emphatically declared was not. The gruff female, who answered to the name of Tibsey, grew wrathful at this opposition, and prepared to do battle. "Old 'uns knows more nor youngers," she growled in an angry tone. "'Tain't by the sauce of babes and sucklers as I'm goin' to be teached." "'Old your row," squeaked Isaiah, that being the shrill boy's name. "Five bob, and dear at that." Mrs. Tibsey snorted, and her garments--a tartan shawl and a brown wincey--shook with wrath. "Lor a mussy, 'ear the brat," she said, lifting up her fat hands; "why, five poun' wouldn't buy it noo; don't be 'ard on me, my lovey--me as 'ave popped everythink with you, includin' four silver spoons, a kittle, a girdiron, an' a coal-scuttle; don't be 'ard, ducky; say ten an' a tizy." "Five bob," returned the immovable Isaiah. "You Jewesis is the cuss of hus hall," cried Mrs. Tibsey, whacking the counter with a woefully ragged umbrella. "You cheats an' you swindles like wipers, an' I 'ates the sight of your 'ook noses, I do." "You'll 'ave the boss out," said Isaiah, in a high voice, like a steam whistle, to which Mrs. Tibsey replied in a rolling bass, a duet which grew wilder and wilder till the sudden opening of the green baize door reduced them both to silence. An old man appeared--such a little old man--very much bent, and dressed in a greasy old ulster which covered him right down to his ragged carpet slippers. He had white hair and beard, piercing black eyes under shaggy white eyebrows, sharply-cut features, and a complexion like dirty parchment, seared all over with innumerable lines. "You again?" he said, in a feeble Jewish voice. "Oh, you devil!--you--you--" here a fit of coughing seized him, and he contented himself with glaring at Mrs. Tibsey, upon which he was immediately confronted by that indomitable female, who seized the teapot and shook it in his face. "Five bob!" she shrieked; "five bob for this!" "Too much--far too much," said Lazarus in dismay; "say four, my dear, four." "Ten; I want ten," said Mrs. Tibsey. "No, no; four; you say ten, but you mean four." "Say six." "Four." "Then take it," said Mrs. Tibsey, clashing it down in wrath, "and the devil take you." "All in good time--all in good time," chuckled the old man, and disappeared through the door. "You see, you oughter 'ave taken the five," sniggered Isaiah, making out the pawnticket. "There's four bob, don't spend it in drink." "Me drink, you hugly himp," said the lady, sweeping the money into her capacious pocket, where it reposed in company with an empty gin bottle; "me drink, as takes in washin' and goes hout nussin', an' was quite the lady afore I fell into the company of wipers: me dr-- well," and, language failing her, Mrs. Tibsey sailed majestically out of the shop, coming into collision with Ezra and Keith, who were just entering. "A whirlwind in petticoats," said Keith, startled by this ragged apparition. "Askin' your parding, gents both," said Mrs. Tibsey, dropping a very shaky curtsey, "but a young limb h'insides bin puttin' my back hup like the wrigglin' heel 'e h'are, and if you're goin' to pop anythink, don't let it be a silver teapot, 'cause old Sating h'inside is the cuss of orphens and widders," and, having relieved her mind, Mrs. Tibsey flounced indignantly away to refresh herself with her favourite beverage. "Complimentary to your parent," observed Keith, as they entered the shop. "Oh, they're much worse sometimes," said Ezra complacently. "Isaiah, where's my father?" "In 'is room," replied Isaiah, resuming the reading of a sporting newspaper. Ezra opened the green baize door without knocking, and entered, followed by Keith. A small square room, even dingier than the shop. At one side a truckle bed pushed up against the wall, and next to it a large iron safe. A rusty grate, with a starved-looking fire, had an old battered kettle simmering on its hob. At the back a square dirty-paned window, through which the light fell on a small table covered with greasy green cloth, and piled up with papers. At this table sat old Lazarus, mumbling over some figures. He looked up suddenly when the young men entered, and cackled a greeting to his son, after which effort he was seized with a violent fit of coughing, which seemed to shake him to pieces. The paroxysm having passed, he began to talk in his feeble, Jewish voice. "He, he! my dear," looking sharply at Keith, "is this the young man you spoke of? Well, well--too good-looking, my dear--the women--ah, the women, devil take 'em, they'll be turning his head." "That's his own business, not yours," said Ezra curtly. "He, he! but it is my business--they'll love him, and love means presents--that means money--my money--I can't trust him." "That's rather severe, isn't it?" said Keith, speaking for the first time. "You can't tell a man's character altogether by his face--good looks do not invariably mean libertine principles." "Ah! I know, I know!" muttered Lazarus, rubbing his hands together; "well, well, can you keep books?" "Yes, I have been accustomed to do so." "Are you honest?" Keith laughed. "I'm generally considered so." "He, he! that's not saying much. What wages do you want?" "Three pounds a week," said Stewart modestly. "Oh, my dear, my dear, what a large sum; say two, my dear, two pounds, or forty shillings, it's very large; you can save out of two pounds." "I'm glad you think so," said Keith dryly. "I've got my doubts on the subject; however, beggars must not be choosers, so I agree." "On trial, mind on trial," muttered the old man cautiously. "I'm quite agreeable," replied Keith complacently, hoping that by the time his trial is over he would be on the staff of some paper. "What are the hours?" "Nine, my dear," said Lazarus, stroking his beard, "nine till six, with half-an-hour for something to eat in the day--a bun and a cup of coffee--don't be extravagant." "I can't very well be, on such a salary," replied Stewart. "Well, Mr. Lazarus, as it's all settled, I'll come at nine o'clock to-morrow morning." "Yes! yes! quite right; but no horse-racing, no gambling, no women--they're the devil, my dear, the devil." "You're rather hard on the sex, father," said Ezra satirically, "considering how useful they are to you." "Aha! quite right, quite right," chuckled the old man. "Oh, I know fine ladies; they come to old Lazarus for money--to sell diamonds--ah, my dear, there's lots of diamonds in that safe, he, he!" "I wonder you're not afraid of being robbed," said Keith. The old man looked up with a sudden gleam of suspicion in his eyes. "No, no; I keep the keys under my pillow, and I've got a pistol. I can fire it, oh, yes, I can fire it, then the neighbours, my dear, all round; oh, I'm quite safe--yes, yes, quite safe; no one would hurt old Lazarus. How's Esther, my dear?" turning suddenly to his son. Esther was the girl to whom Ezra was engaged. "Oh, she's all right," he replied. "I took her the other night to see Caprice." "Aha!" cried old Lazarus, lifting up his hands. "Oh, dear, dear, what a woman. I know her, oh, I know her." "Personally?" asked Keith, whereupon Mr. Lazarus suddenly became deaf. "Yes, yes, a fine woman; ruins everybody, ruins 'em body and soul, and laughs at 'em, like the fiend she is." Ezra looked at his paternal relative in disgust, and took Keith's arm. "Come along," he said, "I've got an engagement." "Good boy, good boy," muttered his parent, nodding his head, "make money, my dear, make--" here another fit of coughing interrupted him, and Ezra hurried Keith away. "Faugh!" said Ezra, lifting up his hat when they were in the street; "how I hate the miasma of that place. It's like the upas tree, and kills all who come within its circle." "Do you think your father knows Caprice?" asked Keith, as they walked down Bourke Street. "Can't tell you," answered Lazarus coolly; "I shouldn't be surprised--he knows half the women in Melbourne. When a spendthrift wants money, he goes to my father; when a woman is in trouble, she goes there also; in spite of her lovers, Caprice is such an extravagant woman, that I've no doubt she's had dealings with my father. If the secret life of Lazarus the pawnbroker were only written, it would be very interesting, I assure you." "I'm glad I got the place," said Keith thoughtfully; "it isn't much, but will keep me alive till I get on my feet." "You are sure to drop into a newspaper appointment," replied Ezra, "and of course I will do my best for you." "You're very good," answered Keith gratefully; "ha, ha, what queer tricks the jade Fortune plays us. I come to Melbourne full of poetic dreams, and find my fate in a pawnbroker's office--it isn't romantic, but it's bread and butter." "You're not the first poet who has gone to the pawnbroker." "I expect I'm the first that ever went on such good terms," retorted Keith shrewdly. CHAPTER V A WOMAN'S APPEAL. According to some writer, "Human beings are moulded by circumstances," and truly Kitty Marchurst, better known as Caprice, was an excellent illustration of this remark. The daughter of a Ballarat clergyman, she was a charming and pure-minded girl, and would doubtless have married and become a happy woman, but for the intervention of circumstances in the form of M. Gaston Vandeloup. This gentleman, an ex-convict, and a brilliant and fascinating scoundrel, ruined the simple, confiding girl, and left her to starve in the streets of Melbourne. From this terrible fate, however, she was rescued by Mrs. Villiers, who had known her as a child, and it seemed as though she would once more be happy, when circumstances again intervened, and through her connection with a poisoning case, she was again thrown on the world. Weary of existence, she was about to drown herself in the Yarra, when Vandeloup met her, and tried to push her in. With a sudden craving for life, she struggled with him, and he, being weak for want of food, fell in and was drowned, while the unhappy girl fled away, she knew not whither. A blind instinct led her to "The Home for Fallen Women," founded by a Miss Rawlins, who had herself been an unfortunate, and here for a time the weary, broken-hearted woman found rest. A child, of which Vandeloup was the father, came to cheer her loneliness, and she called the little one Margaret, hoping it would comfort her in the future. But the seeds of evil implanted in her breast by Vandeloup began to bear fruit, and with returning health came a craving; for excitement. She grew weary of the narrow, ascetic life she was leading--for young blood bounded through her veins--and she was still beautiful and brilliant. So, much against the wishes of the matron of the institution, she left the place and returned to the stage. The Wopples family, with whom she had previously acted, had gone to America, and she was alone in the world, without a single friend. She called herself Caprice, for her real name and history were too notorious for such a public career as she had chosen. All avoided her, and this worked her ruin. Had one door been open to her--had one kind hand been stretched forth to save her--she might have redeemed the past; but the self-righteous Pharisees of the world condemned her, and in despair she determined to defy the world by giving it back scorn for scorn. It was a terribly hard and dreary life she led at first--no friends, very little money, and a child to support. The future looked black enough before her; but she determined to succeed, and Fortune at length favoured her. She was playing a minor part in a Christmas burlesque, when the lady who acted the principal character suddenly fell ill, and Kitty had to take her place at a very short notice. She, however, acquitted herself so well that, with one bound, she became a popular favourite, and the star still continuing ill for the rest of the run of the piece, she was able to consolidate the favourable impression she had made. She awoke to find herself famous, and played part after part in burlesque and modern comedy, always with great success. In a word, she became the fashion, and found herself both rich and famous. Ted Mortimer, the manager of the Bon-Bon Theatre, persuaded her to try opera-bouffe, and she made her first appearance in the Grand Duchess with complete success. She followed up her triumph by playing the title _rôles_ in Giroflé Girofla, La Perichole, and Boccaccio, scoring brilliantly each time; and now she had created the part of Prince Carnival, which proved to be her greatest success. Night after night the Bon-Bon was crowded, and the opera had a long and successful run, while Kitty, now at the height of her fame, set herself to work to accomplish her revenge on the world. She hated women for the way they had scorned her, and she detested men for the free and easy manner in which they approached her; so she made up her mind to ruin all she could, and succeeded admirably. One after another, not only the gilded youth of Melbourne, but staid, sober men became entangled in her meshes, and many a man lived to curse the hour he first met Kitty Marchurst. Her house at Toorak was furnished like a palace, and her dresses, jewels, horses, and extravagances formed a fruitful topic of conversation in clubs and drawing-rooms. She flung away thousands of pounds in the most reckless manner, and as soon as she had ruined one man, took up with another, and turned her back on the poor one with a cynical sneer. Her greatest delight was to take away other women's husbands, and many happy homes had she broken up by her wiles and fascinations. Consequently, she was hated and feared by all the women in Melbourne, and was wrathfully denounced as a base adventuress, without one redeeming feature. They were wrong: she loved her child. Kitty simply idolised Meg, and was always in terror lest she should lose her. Consequently, when she heard how Keith had rescued her child from a terrible death, her gratitude knew no bounds. She heard of the young man's ambitions from Ezra, and determined to help him as far as it lay in her power. Thus, for the first time for many years, her conduct was actuated by a kindly feeling. The drawing-room in Kitty's house at Toorak was a large, lofty apartment, furnished in a most luxurious style. Rich carpets, low lounging chairs, innumerable rugs and heavy velvet curtains. A magnificent grand piano, great masses of tropical foliage in fantastically-coloured jars, priceless cabinets of china, and costly, well-selected pictures. One of her lovers, a rich squatter, had furnished it for her. When he had lost all his money, and found her cold and cruel, he went off to the wilds of South America to try and forget her. There were three French windows at the end of the room, which led out on to a broad verandah, and beyond was the lawn, girdled by laurels. Kitty sat at a writing-desk reading letters, and the morning sun shining through the window made a halo round her golden head. No one who saw her beautiful, childish face, and sad blue eyes, would have dreamed how cruel and relentless a soul lay beneath that fair exterior. At her feet sat Meg, dressed in a sage-green frock, with her auburn curls falling over her face, playing with a box of bricks, and every now and then her mother would steal an affectionate glance at her. Curiously enough, Kitty was reading a letter from the very man who had given her the house, and who was now dying in a pauper hospital in San Francisco. "I forgive you freely," he wrote; "but, ah, Kitty, you might have feigned a love you did not feel, if only to spare me the degradation of dying a pauper, alone and without friends!" The woman's face grew dark as she read these pitiful words, and, crushing up the letter in her hands, she threw it into the waste-paper basket with a cynical sneer. "Bah!" she muttered contemptuously, "does he think to impose on me with such tricks? Feign a love! Yes, kiss and caress him to gratify his vanity. Did I not give him fair warning of the end? And now he whimpers about mercy--mercy from me to him--pshaw! let him die and go to his pauper grave, I'll not shed a tear!" And she laughed harshly. At this moment Meg, who had been building two edifices of bricks, began to talk to herself. "This," said Meg, putting the top brick on one building, "is the House of Good, but the other is the House of Sin. Mumsey," raising her eyes, "which house would you like to live in?" "In the House of Good, dear," said Kitty in a tremulous voice, touched by the artless question of the child. "Come to mumsey, darling, and tell her what you have been doing." Meg, nothing loath, accepted this invitation, and, climbing up on her mother's knee, threw her arms round Kitty's neck. "I had some bread and milk," she said confidentially; "then I went and saw my Guinea pigs. Dotty--you know, mumsey, the one with the long hair--oh, he squeaked--he did squeak! I think he was hungry." "Have you been a good little girl?" "Good?" echoed Meg doubtfully. "Well, not very good. I was cross with Bliggings. She put soap into my eyes." "It's naughty to be cross, darling," said her mother, smoothing the child's hair. "What makes you naughty?" "Mother," said Meg, nodding her head sagely, "it's the wicked spirit." Kitty laughed, and, kissing the child, drew her closer to her. "Mumsey!" "Yes, darling?" "I should like to give the man who stopped the wheels a present." "What would you like to give him, my precious?" This took some consideration, and Meg puckered up her small face into a frown. "I think," she decided at length, "the man would like a knife." "A knife cuts love, Meg." "Not if you get a penny for it," asserted Meg wisely. "Bliggings told me; let me get a knife for the man, mumsey." "Very well, dear," said Kitty smiling; "the man will then know my little daughter has a kind heart." "Meg is a very good girl," asserted that small personage gravely; and, climbing down off her mother's knee, she began to play with the bricks, while Kitty went on with her correspondence. The next letter evidently did not give Kitty much satisfaction, judging by the frown on her face. She had written to Hiram J. Fenton asking for some money, and he had curtly refused to give her any more. She tore up the letter, threw it into the waste-paper basket, and smiled sardonically. "You won't, won't you?" she muttered angrily. "Very well, my friend, there are plenty of others to give me money if you won't." At this moment there came a ring at the door, and shortly after the servant entered with a card. Kitty took it carelessly, and then started. "Mrs. Malton," she muttered, in a puzzled tone. "Evan Malton's wife! what does she want, I wonder? I thought I was too wicked for virtue to call on me--it appears I'm not." She glanced at the card again, then made up her mind. "Show the lady in," she said calmly; and, when the servant disappeared, she called Meg. "Mumsey's sweetheart must go away for a few minutes." "What for?" asked mumsey's sweetheart, setting her small mouth. "Mumsey has to see a lady on business." Meg collected the bricks in a pinafore, and walked off to the French window, when she turned. "Meg will play outside," she said, shaking her curls, "and will come in when mumsey calls." Scarcely had Meg vanished when the servant threw open the door and announced,-- "Mrs. Malton." A tall, slender girl entered the room quickly, and, as the door closed behind, paused a moment and looked steadily at Kitty through her thick veil. "Mrs. Malton?" said Kitty interrogatively. The visitor bowed, and, throwing back her veil, displayed a face of great beauty; but she had a restless, pitiful look in her eyes, and occasionally she moistened her dry lips with her tongue. "Will you take a seat?" said the actress politely, taking in at a glance the beautiful, tired face and quiet, dark costume of her visitor. "Thank you," replied Mrs. Malton, in a low, clear voice, and sat down in the chair indicated by her hostess, nervously clasping and unclasping her hands over the ivory handle of her umbrella. She glanced at Kitty again in a shrinking kind of manner, then, with a sudden effort, burst out quickly,-- "I have called--I have called to see you about my--my husband." Kitty's lip curled, and she resumed her seat with an enigmatical smile. "Yes; what about him?" "Cannot you guess?" said Mrs. Malton imploringly. Kitty shook her head in a supercilious manner. "I am at a loss to understand the reason of your visit," she said, in a cold, measured manner. "I am Evan Malton's wife," said the other rapidly. "We have only been married a year--and--and we have one child." "I presume you did not call to inform me of your domestic affairs," replied Kitty mercilessly. "He was so fond of me--we loved one another devotedly till--till--" "Till he met me, I suppose," said Kitty coolly, throwing herself back with an amused laugh. "I've heard that complaint before--you wives never seem to know how to retain your husbands' affections." "Give him back to me--oh give him back to me," cried the young wife, clasping her hands. "You have many richer and better than he. I love my husband, and you have parted us--oh, do--do--give him back to me." "My dear Mrs. Malton," replied the actress coldly, "I do not encourage him, I assure you. He's a bore, and I detest bores." "But he loves you--he loves you--he worships the ground you tread on." "A waste of good material; for his devotion will never be rewarded." "Then you don't love him?" said Mrs. Malton breathlessly. Kitty rose to her feet, and laughed bitterly. "Love him--love any one," she muttered, with a choking cry. "I hate the whole lot of them. Do you think I care for their flattery, their kisses, their protestations--bah! I know the value of such things. Love--I hate the word." "Yet my husband comes here," said the other timidly. Kitty turned on her fiercely. "Can I help that? Is it the candle's fault that the moths are attracted? I don't ask your husband to come; if he finds in me what he misses in you, it is your fault, not mine--your errand is useless, I cannot help you." She turned to go, but the young woman sprang forward and caught her dress. "You shall not go--you shall not!" she almost shrieked. "You and Fenton are dragging us both to perdition; he has ruined himself for your sake, and his friend--God help him--his friend has insulted me with words of love." "Am I the guardian of your virtue?" said Kitty pitilessly. Mrs. Malton stood wringing her hands. "Oh, God, have you no pity? I am a woman like yourself--my husband should protect me, but he leaves me for you--and," in a whisper, "you don't know all--he has given you presents, rich presents, and to do so has committed a crime." "A crime!" "Hush! hush!" glancing fearfully around, "not so loud--not so loud--yes, he has embezzled money, thousands of pounds, for your sake." Kitty gave a cry, and grasped at a chair for support. "I--I--did not--not ask him for his presents." "No; but it was for your sake--your sake. You must help him." "I," laughed Kitty mockingly, "help him? Help him!--help any man! My good woman, if he went into the prisoner's dock to-morrow, I would not lift one finger to save him." Mrs. Malton fell on her knees. "Oh, my God, don't talk like that!" she cried wildly. "You will ruin him--you will ruin him." Kitty swept round with a cold glitter, like steel, in her eyes. "Yes! it is my business to ruin men. When I was poor, and anxious to lead a good life, any outstretched hand might have saved me; but no, I was a pariah and outcast--they closed their doors against me. I asked for bread, they gave me a stone--they made of me a scourge for their own evil doing--this is the time for my revenge; fallen and degraded though I be, I can wring their hearts and ruin their homes through their nearest and dearest, and you come to ask me to relent--you, who, if you saw me to-morrow on the streets, would draw your skirts aside from the moral leper!" "No, no!" moaned the other, beating her breasts with her hands. "Have mercy, have mercy!" "What do you want me to do?" "You know the manager of the company, Mr. Fenton; he is your lover--he can refuse you nothing. Speak to him, and see if anything can be done." "No!" "For God's sake!" "No!" "You have a child?" "What is my child to you?" "Everything. You are a mother--so am I: you love your child--I love mine; yet you would make my innocent child suffer for its father's crime. Oh, if you have any feelings of a mother, spare the father for the sake of the child." Kitty stood irresolute, while the woman at her feet burst into wild and passionate weeping. At this moment Meg entered the room by the window, and paused for a moment. "Mumsey," she said, "why does the lady cry?" Kitty would have interposed, but Mrs. Malton stretched out her hands to Meg with a quiet in-drawing of her breath. "I am crying for my little girl." "Is she dead?" asked Meg, coming to the kneeling woman, and touching her shoulder. "Poor lady--poor, poor lady!" Kitty could contain herself no longer. With a sudden impulse, she bent down and raised the weeping woman. "I will do what I can," she said huskily, and sank into a chair. "Thank God!" cried Mrs. Malton, advancing, but Kitty waved her off, while Meg stood looking from one to the other in amazement. "Go, go!" Mrs. Malton bent down and kissed her hand. "May God be merciful to you, as you have been to me," and, without another word, she departed. "Mumsey," said Meg, trying to take her mother's hands from her face, "were you cross to the lady?" "No, darling, no!" replied Kitty, drawing Meg close to her. "Mother was kind to the lady because of her little girl." "Good mumsey, dear mumsey; Meg loves you," and she put her arms round Kitty's neck, while the poor woman leaned her aching head against the innocent breast of her child, and burst into tears. CHAPTER VI THE ANNOYANCE OF HIRAM J. FENTON. It is a curious fact that Melbourne has, in its social and business aspects, a strong leaven of Americanism, and visitors from the great Republic find themselves quite at home in the Metropolis of the South. There are the same bold, speculative qualities, the same restless pursuit of pleasure, and the same rapidity and promptness of action which characterises the citizen of San Francisco or New York. Consequently, there are many Americans to be found in a city so congenial to their tastes, and of these Hiram J. Fenton was one. He had come over from the States as the agent of a dry-goods firm, and, travelling all through the Australasian colonies, soon saw the enormous capabilities of wealth that lay before him. Gifted with a ready tongue and a persuasive manner, he interested several opulent Victorians in a scheme for floating a Life Insurance Company. A prospectus was drawn up, which promised incalculable wealth to those who would take shares, and, by means of Mr. Fenton's brilliant command of words, and skilful manipulation of figures, The Never-say-die Insurance Company soon became an accomplished fact. A handsome suite of offices was taken in Collins' Street, a large staff of clerks engaged, a genial medical man, whose smile itself was a recommendation, remained on the premises to examine intending policy-holders, and the emissaries of the company went to the four quarters of the globe to trumpet forth the praises of the affair, and persuade people to insure their lives. The company prospered, a handsome dividend was soon declared, and, thanks to his Yankee sharpness, Mr. Fenton now found himself occupying the enviable position of manager with a large salary. He was a handsome man in a bold, sensual way, with a certain dash and swagger about him which impressed strangers favourably, but a physiognomist would have mistrusted his too ready tongue and the keen glance of his eye. There is no greater mistake than to suppose a villain cannot meet an honest eye, for, as a matter of fact, a successful villain having his nerves under admirable control can stare any one out of countenance, and the keen, rapid glance can take in at once the weak points of a stranger. Mr. Fenton occupied pleasant apartments, went into society a great deal, and altogether was a very popular man. Cold, calculating, and far-seeing as he was, he had yet a weak spot in his character, and this was extreme partiality for the female sex. Any woman, provided she was pretty, could twist him round her finger; and as Kitty Marchurst now had him in her toils, she took full advantage of his infatuation. There was a certain amount of notoriety in being the lover of the now famous Caprice; but Fenton had to pay pretty dearly for his position. Kitty spent his money like water, and when he ventured to remonstrate, laughed in his face, and told him he could go if he liked, an intimation which only made him resolve to stick closer to her. Nevertheless, about this time relations were rather strained between them, and any one knowing the facts of the case would have seen that the end was not far off. As to Evan Malton, he was Fenton's assistant manager, and was the moon to the astute American's sun. Weak, irresolute, and foolish, he was, nevertheless, by some strange contradiction, a capital business man. This arose from his long training in office work; he could do nothing by himself, but guided by Fenton, he made an admirable subordinate, and was amenable to his superior in every way. He admired Fenton greatly, copied him in his dress and mannerisms, affected a rakish demeanour towards his friend's mistress, and thoroughly neglected his poor wife, a neglect of which Fenton tried to take advantage. Had Malton known this, it would doubtless have changed his feelings towards the American, for though he thought he was justified in leading a fast life, he strongly objected to his wife showing any liking for any one but himself. Fenton, however, believing in no woman's virtue, did not despair, but protected Kitty openly, to delude Malton into a false security, and made love to Mrs. Malton _sub rosâ_. It was quite warm out of doors in spite of the season, and out on Kitty's lawn were a group of people laughing and talking together. Kitty, in a comfortable chair, was chatting to Keith and Ezra, who had just arrived, and there were several other ladies present, including Milly Maxwell, who was the second lady at the Bon-Bon--dark-browed, majestic, and passionate; Dora Avenant, who looked like a doll and had the brains of one; and Mrs. Wadby, who wrote scandal and dresses for _The Penny Whistle_ under the _nom de plume_ of "Baby." As to the gentlemen, there were present Ted Mortimer, bland and smiling; Slingsby, the parliamentary reporter; Delp, the theatrical critic; Toltby, the low comedian at the Bon-Bon, and about half-a-dozen others, who were more or less connected with the stage and the press. The men were smoking, chatting, or drinking, according to their various tastes, whilst the ladies were sipping their afternoon tea; and, of course, the conversation was mostly about theatrical matters. In the drawing-room, however, close to the window, sat Meg, buried in a big armchair, reading a fairy tale, and a pretty picture she made with her little loose white dress, and her glorious hair falling about her pale face. "And the beautiful Princess," read Meg in ecstasy, "fell asleep in the Magic Castle for one hundred years--oh!" breaking off suddenly, "how hungry she must have been when she woke up." Meg shook her head over this problem and resumed the story. "And a great forest grew round the castle, which could not be got through till the handsome Prince arrived." Here the drawing-room door opened, and Meg looked up, half expecting to see the handsome prince. It was only Fenton, however, and he disliked Meg intensely, a dislike which that young person was by no means backward in returning, so she went calmly on reading her book. "Well, where's mother?" asked Fenton, in his slightly nasal voice, looking at the little figure with a frown. "Mumsey's in the garden," replied Meg with great dignity, flinging back her curls. "Just where you ought to be," said Fenton ill-naturedly, "getting fresh air." "I'm reading a fairy tale," explained Meg, closing her book; "mumsey said I could do what I liked." "Your mother don't rear you well," retorted the American, and he walked away, when a peal of laughter made him turn round. "What funny faces you make," said the child; "I feel quite laughy." "I'd like to spank you," observed Fenton, with no very amiable expression of countenance. "You're a bad man," said Meg indignantly; "I don't know a badder--not a bit like my Mr. Keith." "Oh," sneered Fenton, "and who is Mr. Keith?" "He is a very nice gentleman," replied Meg, pursing up her lips; "he stopped the wheels going over me." "I wish he hadn't," muttered Fenton vindictively. "Meg, go and tell mother I want her right away." "I sha'n't," retorted Meg obstinately; "you're a rude man." "I'll make you smart," said Fenton, catching her arm. "Oh, mumsey," cried the child, in a tone of relief, and Fenton turned just to see Kitty looking at him like an enraged tigress. "You lay a finger on my child," she said viciously, "and I'll kill you!" The American released his hold on Meg with an awkward laugh, and took a seat. "Why don't you teach her manners," he growled. "That's my business," flashed out Kitty haughtily. "And now you are here, I wish to speak with you. Meg, my treasure, run out and say mumsey won't be long." "Mumsey's going to be cross with you now," said Meg consolingly to Fenton, and then ran out laughing, the man looking angrily after her. Left alone, Kitty sat down near Fenton and began to talk. "I asked you for five hundred," she said coldly. "Yes--and I refused," sulkily. "So I saw by your letter. What is your reason?" "That's my business." "Mine also. Why did you refuse?" she reiterated. "I'm sick of your extravagance." Caprice laughed in a sneering way that brought the blush to his cheek. "Do you think I'm dependent on you for money?" she said, with scorn. "I know fifty better men than you who would give me the money if I asked them." "Then go and ask them," he returned brutally. Kitty sprang to her feet. "Of course I will; that means your dismissal." Fenton caught at her dress in genuine alarm. "No, no! don't go; you know I love you--" "So well," she interrupted, "that you refuse me a paltry five hundred pounds." "I would give it to you, but I haven't got it." "Then get it," she said coolly. "I'm nearly ruined," he cried desperately. "Then retire, and make room for better men." "You're a devil!" hissed Fenton. "No doubt. I told you what to expect when I first met you." "Do you mean to say you will throw me over because I've no money left?" he said fiercely, grasping her wrist. "Like an old glove," she retorted. "I'll kill you first." "Bah! you are melodramatic." "Oh, Kitty, Kitty!" with a sudden change to tenderness. "Don't call me by that name," said the woman, in a low, harsh voice. "Kitty Marchurst is dead; she died when she went on the stage, and all womanly pity died with her. You are speaking to Caprice, the most notorious woman in Melbourne." Fenton sat sullenly silent, glancing every now and then at her beautiful, scornful face. "If you won't give me money," she said at length, mindful of her promise to Mrs. Malton, "you can do something else." "What's that?" eagerly. "Mrs. Malton was here--" "Mrs. Malton!" he interrupted, springing to his feet. "What did she say?" "Several unpleasant things about your love for her," said Kitty coolly. "It's a lie," he began, but Kitty shrugged her shoulders. "Bah! I'm not jealous; I only care for your money, not for you. But about this visit; her husband has embezzled money in your office." Fenton turned a little pale, and looked steadily at her. "Embezzled money, the scoundrel!" he said furiously. "Yes, isn't he?" said Kitty derisively. "Not a noble, upright gentleman like Hiram Fenton." He turned from her with an oath. "I've been a good friend to him right along," he said in an angry tone. "He was fixed up for life, if he'd only behaved himself; now I'll put him in prison." "So that you can make love to his wife," retorted Kitty coolly. "I don't care two straws about his wife," replied Fenton, with a scowl. "You are the only woman I love." "Then promise me to help this unhappy man?" "Certainly not; you are asking me to compound a felony." "I'm not a lawyer," she said coldly, "and don't understand legal terms. I am only asking you to save him from gaol for his wife's sake." "You don't love him?" jealously. "Bah! do I love any one except myself?" "And your child," with a sneer. "Let my child be. Will you help Evan Malton?" "No; the law must take its course." "Then I'll help him myself." "But how?" "That's my business--the money must be replaced--find out how much is missing, and let me know." "What's the good? you've not got the cash." "Do what I ask!" "Very well!" sulkily. "I can't pay the money myself; but I'll give him time to repay it." "You will?" "Yes; and Kitty," shamefacedly, "I'll let you have that five hundred.' "Good boy," said Kitty approvingly, and laughed. She had gained both her points, so could afford to do so. At this moment Meg entered the room from the garden, followed by Keith, on seeing whom Fenton's face darkened. "Mumsey!" said Meg, bounding up to Kitty, "I've given him the knife, and he says it's lovely--don't you," turning to Keith. "Words fail me to express my appreciation," said Stewart, with a smile, looking at the large--very large ivory-handled knife, "and it's got an inscription, 'From Meg,'--beautiful." "It will cut love, Mr. Stewart," said Kitty, with a laugh. "Oh, no," interposed Meg, "he's given me a lucky sixpence. He says we're engaged now, and when I grow up, mumsey, I'm going to marry him." "Is this true?" asks Kitty gaily. "Are you going to rob me of my daughter? This is dreadful! What do you say, Mr. Fenton?" Mr. Fenton smiled in a ghastly manner, then hurried away muttering under his breath. "It's bad temper," observed Stewart, looking after him. "No, my dear," said Kitty airily, "it's jealousy." CHAPTER VII. MIRTH AND LAUGHTER. Kitty's supper parties were always delightful, though slightly godless. The guests were usually men and women of the world, connected with art, literature, and the drama, so a general tone of brilliancy permeated the atmosphere. The hostess herself was an admirable conversationalist, and what with the wine, the laughter, and the influence of the midnight hour, the excitement seemed contagious. Every one was amusing, and witty stories, caustic remarks, and sarcastic epigrams followed one after the other in reckless profusion. Very pretty the supper-table looked, though, it must be confessed, rather disorderly. It was not a very large table, but accommodated the present company admirably, and under the soft light of the tapers, with which the room was illuminated, the silver and glass sparked brilliantly. Half-filled glasses of champagne and burgundy, crumbs on the white table-cloth, and a general array of disorderly plates, showed that supper was over. The guests had pushed away their chairs, and were smoking and chatting, while a light breeze came in through the open French window, and somewhat cooled the temperature of the room. The smoky atmosphere, the flashing of the light on the bare shoulders of the women, gay feminine, laughter, and the general air of unconventionality, fascinated Keith as he sat beside his hostess, listening to the desultory conversation, and occasionally joining in. Slingsby was speaking about a new book which had come out, and this gave rise to a brilliant rattle of pungent wit. "It's called 'Connie's Crime,' a mixture of blood and atheism." "Yes, so they say; a hash-up of the Newgate Calendar and Queen Mab, with a dash of realism to render it attractive." "Awfully bad for the public." "Bah! they read worse in papers. _The Penny Whistle_ was bewailing the prevalence of criminal literature, yet you can't take up a night's issue without finding a divorce case or a murder--the pot calling the kettle black with a vengeance." "Don't suppose either it or shilling shockers have much to do with the morals of the public--we're all going to the deuce." "Pessimistic!" "But true. It's a game of follow my leader, with Father Adam at the head." "Gad, he ought to have arrived at his destination by this time!" "Oh! we'll all find that out when we get there." "But' you forget we start in this new country with all the old-world civilisation." "Yes, and all the old-world vices." "Which are a natural concomitant of aforesaid civilisation." "How abusive you all are," said Kitty, shrugging her shoulders; "people are not so bad as you make out." "No, they're worse," said Delp lightly. "Put on your diamonds and go through Victoria like that young person in Moore's song, 'Rich and rare were the gems she wore,' you won't be treated as well, I promise you." "I'm afraid I'm very careless of my diamonds," laughed Kitty; "I certainly take them home from the theatre every night, but I generally put the case safely away in the drawer of my looking-glass." "A very safe place," observed Lazarus approvingly; "for illustration see Poe's story of 'The Purloined Letter.'" "All the same, I wouldn't trust to fiction for suggestions," said Fenton gaily; "some night you'll be minus your jewels." "I'll take the risk," retorted Kitty rising. "I'm going into the drawing-room. Mr. Lazarus, you come also. I have got the score of that new opera-bouffé 'Eblis,' and I want you to try it." "Bah! a failure in town," growled Mortimer. "That doesn't necessarily mean a failure in Melbourne," replied Kitty, and with this parting shot she went away, followed by the ladies and Ezra Lazarus. Keith remained behind, and, lighting a fresh cigarette, listened to the conversation, which was now slightly horsey. "I know what's going to win the cup. "Never knew a man who didn't." "This is true, 'Devil-may-care.'" "An outsider." "They generally win, but don't prophesy too soon." "No, or like Casandra, your prophecies won't be believed." "Who is Casandra--another dark 'un?" "No--a woman." "Talking about women, I wish you'd get more chorus girls, Mortimer." "Got quite enough." "Of course--quantity, not quality." "They've been snubbing you?" "Wrong again; they never snub any one who can give them diamonds." "Which you can't." "No, by Jove. I wish I had some myself--say Caprice's." "Don't grudge them to her, dear boy--the savings of years." Every one grinned. Meanwhile, Keith grew tired of this scintillating talk, and leaving Ezra rattling away at a gallop in the drawing-room, he arose and went out into the hall. Glancing carelessly up the stairs, he saw a little figure in white coming down. "Why, Meg," said Keith, going to the foot of the stairs to receive her, "what are you doing at this hour of the night?" "Meg wants mumsey," said the child, putting her arms round his neck. "Mumsey's busy," replied Keith, lifting her up. "I'll take you back to bed, dear." "Don't want to go to bed," said the child, though she could hardly keep her eyes open. Keith laughed, and rocked her slowly to and fro in his arms for a few minutes, humming softly till Meg grew tired. "Will Meg go to bed now?" he whispered, seeing she had closed her eyes. "Yes! Meg's sleepy." Keith went upstairs with the quiet little figure in his arms, and seeing an open door leading to a room in which there was a subdued light, caused by the lowering of the gas, he went in, and finding Meg's cot, placed her in it, and tucked her carefully in. "Good-night, dear," he whispered, kissing her. "Good-night, mumsey; good-night, God," murmured Meg, thinking she was saying her prayers, and fell fast asleep. Keith went downstairs again, and met Fenton in the hall. "Say!" exclaimed that gentleman, "where have you been?" "Putting Meg to bed," replied Stewart, laughing. "I found her wandering about like an unquiet spirit," and having no desire for a conversation with Fenton, he strolled off to the drawing-room leaving the American looking after him with an angry frown. No one was in the drawing-room but Ezra and the ladies--the former being seated at the piano playing over the music of "Eblis," while Kitty Marchurst stood beside him, looking over his shoulder. Lazarus had just finished a valse, which was not by any means original, being made out of reminiscences of other music. "There's only one decent thing in the whole opera," said Kitty impatiently--"this," and she hummed a few bars; "it's called, 'Woman's Deceit.'" "Disagreeable title," said Keith idly. "But a capital song," retorted Kitty "Eblis sings it--that's the principal character." "You seem anxious to play the devil," said Stewart, with a smile. "What do you mean?" Keith shrugged his shoulders. "Eblis is the Oriental name for the Devil." "Oh, I understand." Kitty's quick perception seized the idea at once. "Yes, there would be some fun in playing such a character." "Then give myself and Lazarus a commission to write you a part. I am anxious to make a start, and I think Lazarus would write charming music. I'll be librettist, and, of course, can write the character to suit you." Kitty glanced critically at him. "Can you compose music," she asked Lazarus. In answer, he played a charming gavotte, bright and crisp, with a quaint rhythm. "Very pretty," said Kitty critically, "but not my style. Play something with a little more 'go' in it." "Like this?" He brought his hands down on the ivory keys with a tremendous crash, and plunged into a wild fantastic galop that made everybody long to dance. Kitty clapped her hands, and her whole face lighted up with enthusiasm as the brilliancy and dash of the melody carried her away. "Bravo!" she cried, when he finished. "That's what I want; write me music like that, and I'll engage to have it produced. You'll do. Now, sir," turning to Keith, "what's your idea?" "Rather a burlesque than opera-bouffe," he answered; "what would you say to 'Faust Upset?'" "Ah, bah! we've had so many burlesques on Faust." "Not such a one as I propose to write. I intend to twist the whole legend round; make Miss Faust a Girton girl who has grown old, and longs for love, invokes the Power of Evil, enter Caprice as Miss Mephistopheles, a female demon, rejuvenates Miss Faust by paint and powder, takes her to see Mr. Marguerite, who is a young athlete, and so throughout the whole legend; to conclude with Miss Mephistopheles falling in love with Mr. Marguerite, and disputing possession with Miss Faust." "Ha! ha!" laughed Kitty, "what a capital idea. It will be new, at all events; but I won't decide till I see the first act complete; if it's as good as it promises, I'll get Mortimer to stage it after 'Prince Carnival.'" Keith was delighted, as now he seemed to have obtained a chance of seeing what he could do. Ezra smiled, and nodded to Stewart. "I told you she'd be a good friend," he said. The gentlemen all came into the room, and in a short time there was a perfect babel of voices talking about everything and everyone. Suddenly Fenton, with a half-smoked cigar in his hand, entered the room and crossed over to Kitty. "There's a rough-looking man outside who wants to see you," he said quietly. "What's his name?" "Villiers." Kitty turned a little pale. "The husband of Madame Midas," she said, in an annoyed tone. "Where is he?" "Walking up and down in front of the dining-room." "Remain here; I'll see him," she said, in a decided tone, and, without being noticed, left the room. On entering the dining-room, she found Mr. Villiers seated at the supper-table drinking champagne from a half-empty bottle, having entered through the window. "What do you want?" she asked, coming down to him. Mr. Villiers was in his usual condition of intoxication, and began to weep. "It's Kitty, dear little Kitty," he said, in a maudlin tone, "the friend of my dear wife." "Your dear wife," said Kitty scornfully; "the woman you deceived so shamefully; she was well quit of you when she went to live in England." "She left me to die alone," wept Villiers, filling his glass again, "and only lets me have a hundred pounds a year, and she's rolling in money." "Quite enough for you to get drunk on," retorted Kitty. "What do you want?" "Money." "You sha'n't get a penny." "Yes I shall. You talk about me treating my wife badly; what about you--eh?" Kitty clenched her hands. "I did treat her badly," she said, with a cry. "God help me, I've repented it often enough since!" "You were a nice girl till you met Vandeloup," said Villiers. "Ah, that confounded Frenchman, how he made me suffer!" "Leave Vandeloup alone; he's dead, and it will do no good you reviling him now. At all events, he was a man, not a drunkard." "She loves him still, blow me!" hiccupped Mr. Villiers rising--"loves him still." "Here's a sovereign," said Kitty, thrusting some money into his hand. "Now, go away at once." "I want more." "You won't get more. Get away, or I'll order my servants to turn you out." Villiers staggered up to her. "Will you, indeed? Who are you to talk to me like this? I'll go now, but I'll come back, my beauty! Don't try your fine airs on me. I'll get money from you when I want it; if I don't, I'll make you repent it." Kitty stood looking at him like a statue of marble, and pointed to the open window. "I spare you for your wife's sake," she said coldly. "Go!" Villiers lurched towards the window, then, turning round, shook his fist at her. "I've not done with you yet, my fine madam," he said thickly. "You'll be sorry for these fine airs, you----" He staggered out without saying the vile word, and disappeared in the darkness. A vile word, and yet what was that Mrs. Malton said about her child blushing for her father? God help her, would Meg live to blush for her mother? Kitty put out her hands with a sob, when a burst of laughter from the next room sounded in her ears. The momentary fit of tenderness was over, and, with a harsh laugh, she poured out a glass of champagne and drank it off. "My world is there," she muttered. "I must part with the child for her own good, and she will lead that virtuous, happy life which a miserable wretch like myself can never hope to reach." CHAPTER VIII. A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR. _The Penny Whistle_ was a purely sensational newspaper, and all those who liked spicy articles and exaggerated details purchased it, in order to gratify their tastes. Its circulation was enormous, and its sale increased still more when the following article appeared in its columns on the Tuesday after Kitty's supper party:-- "Burglary at the House of a well-known Actress. "We often hear accounts of great jewel robberies having taken place in London, but nothing of the kind, at least in any noticeable degree, has been perpetrated in the colonies until last Sunday night, or, to speak more exactly, Monday morning, when the house of Caprice, the well-known actress, was entered, and jewels to the amount of £5000 were stolen. The house in question is situated in Toorak, almost immediately on the banks of the Yarra-Yarra, and, as far as we can learn, the following are the circumstances connected with the affair:-- "On Sunday night Caprice entertained a number of friends at a supper party, and the servants all being downstairs attending to the guests, the upper part of the house was left entirely uninhabited. It is at this time, probably between twelve and one o'clock, that the burglary is supposed to have been perpetrated. The company departed about three o'clock, and on going up to her room, Caprice found the window wide open. Knowing that it had been closed, she suspected something was wrong, and went to the place where she kept her diamonds, only to find them gone. She sent at once for her servants, and an examination was made. It was found that the house had evidently been entered from the outside, as the window was not very far from the ground, and some ivy growing on the wall made a kind of natural ladder, which any man of ordinary agility could scale. Curiously enough Caprice's child, aged seven, was asleep in the room, but appears to have heard nothing. Next morning another examination was made, and it was found that the ivy was broken in several places, showing clearly the mode of entrance. The window had not been latched, as no chance of a burglary was apprehended, the house always having been looked upon as a remarkably safe one. The diamonds were usually kept in a small safe, but on returning from the theatre on Saturday night they had been placed in the drawer of the looking-glass, where they were judged to be safe, as it was not thought likely any thief would look in so unlikely a place for valuable jewellery. Below will be found a plan of the house and grounds as furnished by our special reporter, and the probable track of the burglars indicated." [Illustration: Floor Plan of First and Ground Floor.] "It will be seen from this plan that the drawing-room and dining-room, in both of which the guests were assembled, are in the front of the house, so that the most likely thing is that the burglar or burglars entered the grounds by the gate, or along the banks of the river, and climbed up into the house by the window C shown on the plan. "After securing the plunder, two modes of exit were available, either as indicated by the dotted line which would take the thief out of the gate into the road, from whence it would be easy to escape, or along the banks of the river, as shown by the other lines. In either case escape was perfectly easy. Of course the danger lay in detection while in the house, but this was considerably guarded against by the fact that the noise and laughter going on below effectually drowned all sounds of any one entering the house. "The thief must have known that the diamonds were in the bedroom, and that a number of people would be present on Sunday night, therefore he chose a time when he would be most likely to escape detection. We believe that a detective has gone down to Toorak to make inquiries, and we have no doubt that the thief will soon be secured, as it would be impossible for such valuable jewels to be disposed of in Melbourne or other colonial cities without arousing suspicion." It was Fenton who insisted upon a detective being employed to investigate the robbery, as, for some extraordinary reason, Kitty seemed unwilling to allow the matter to be inquired into. The detective who accompanied Fenton to Kitty's house was known by the name of Naball, and on the retirement of Kilsip had taken his place. He was only of the age of thirty, but remarkably clever, and had already distinguished himself in several difficult cases. Detective work was a positive mania with him, and he was never so happy as when engaged on a difficult case--it had for him the same fascination as an abstruse mathematical problem would have for an enthusiastic student. To Kilsip belonged the proud honour of having discovered this genius, and it seemed as though the pupil would soon surpass the master in his wonderful instinct for unravelling criminal puzzles. Mr. Naball was an ordinary-looking young man, who always dressed fashionably, and had very little to say for himself, so that few guessed the keen astute brain that was hidden under this somewhat foppish exterior. He listened to everything said to him, and rarely ventured an opinion, but the thieves of Melbourne well knew that when "The Toff," as they called Naball, was on their track, there was very little chance of escape from punishment. On this day when they were on their way to Toorak, Fenton was excited over the matter, and ventured all kinds of theories on the subject, while Mr. Naball smoked a cigarette, and admired the fit of his gloves. "Do you think the thief will try and dispose of them in Melbourne?" he asked. "Possibly," returned Naball, "if he's a born fool." "I'm certain I know the thief," said Fenton quietly. "I told you that the man Villiers was seen about the place on the night of the robbery." "By whom?" "Myself and Caprice." "Who saw him last?" "Caprice." "Oh," said Naball imperturbably, "then she's the best person to see on the subject." "He's a bad lot," said Fenton; "he was mixed up in that poisoning case eight years ago." "The Midas case?" "Yes. Caprice, or rather Kitty Marchurst, was concerned in it also." "So I believe," replied Naball; "every one was innocent except Jarper and Vandeloup--one was hanged, the other committed suicide. I don't see what it has to do with the present case." "Simply this," said Fenton sharply, annoyed at the other's tone, "Villiers is a scoundrel, and wouldn't stop at robbery if he could make some money over it." "He knew Caprice had diamonds worth five thousand?" "Of course; every one in Melbourne knows that." "Did he know where they were kept?" "There's a safe in the room, and a thief, of course--" "Would go there first--precisely--but you forget the diamonds were taken out of the drawer of her looking-glass--a most unlikely place for a thief to examine. The man who stole the jewels must have known where they were kept." "Oh," said Fenton, and looked astonished, as he was quite unable to explain this. He was about to reply, when the train having arrived at its destination, they got out, and walked to Kitty's house. She was in the drawing-room writing letters and looked pale and haggard, her eyes having dark circles beneath them, which told of a sleepless night. When the two men entered the room she welcomed them gracefully, and then resumed her seat as they began to talk. "I have brought you Mr. Naball to look after this affair," said Fenton, looking at her. "You are very kind," she replied coldly; "but, the fact is, I have not yet decided about placing it in the hands of the police." "But the diamonds?"--began Fenton in amazement. "Were mine," finished Kitty coolly; "and as the loss is mine, not yours, I will act as I think fit in the matter." Then, turning her back on the discomfited Fenton, she addressed herself to the detective. "I should like your opinion on the subject," she said graciously, "and then I will see if the case can be gone on with." Naball, who had been keeping his keen eyes on her face the whole time, bowed. "Tell me all the details of the robbery," he observed cautiously. "They are simple enough," replied Kitty, folding her hands. "I bring them home from the theatre every night, and usually put them in the safe, which is in my room. On Saturday night, however, I was tired, and, I must confess, rather careless, and as the case was on my dressing-table, I placed it in the drawer of my looking-glass, to save me the trouble of going to the safe. I gave a supper party on Sunday night, and when every one had gone away, I went upstairs to bed, and found the window open; recollecting where I had put the diamonds, I opened the drawer and found them gone. My servants examined the ground beneath the window, and found footmarks on the mould of the flower-bed, so I suppose the thief must have entered by the window, stolen the jewels, and made off with them." When she had finished, Naball remained silent for a minute, but just as Fenton was about to speak, he interposed. "I will ask you a few questions, madame," he said thoughtfully. "When did you see the diamonds last?" "About six o'clock on Sunday night. I opened the drawer to get something, and saw the case." "Not the diamonds?" "They were in the case." "Are you sure?" "Where else would they be?" "Some one might have stolen them previously, and left the case there to avert suspicion." Kitty shook her head. "Impossible. The case is also gone besides, I locked the case on Saturday night, and had the key with me. No other key could have opened it, and had the case been forced, I would have seen it at once. See," lifting up her arm, "I always wear this bracelet, and the key is attached to it by a chain." Naball glanced carelessly at it, and went on with his questions. "You generally kept the diamonds in the safe?" "Yes." "And it was quite an oversight not placing them in there on Saturday?" "Quite." "No one knew they were in the drawer of your looking-glass on that particular night?" "No one." Here Fenton interposed. "You get along too fast," he said quickly. "Everyone at the supper-table knew you kept them there; you said it to them yourself." Naball glanced sharply at Kitty. "I know I did," she replied quietly; "but I spoke as if the diamonds were always kept there, which they were not. I did not say they were in the drawer on that particular night." "You mentioned it generally?" said Naball tranquilly. "Yes. All the people present were my guests, and I hardly think any of them would rob me of my diamonds." "Were any of the servants in the room when you made the remark?" said the detective slowly. "No, none; and the door was closed." Naball paused a moment. "I tell you what," he said slowly, "the diamonds were stolen between six o'clock and the time you went to bed." "About three o'clock," said Kitty. "Precisely. You saw the diamonds last at six; they were gone by three; you mentioned where you kept them at the supper-table; now, the thief must have overheard you." "You--you suspect my guests, sir," cried Kitty angrily. "Certainly not," said the detective quietly; "but I suspect Villiers." "Villiers!" "Yes. Mr. Fenton tells me you saw him on that night." Kitty flashed a look of anger on the American, who bore it unmoved. "Yes, he was outside, and wanted to see me. I saw him, gave him some money, and he left." "Then I tell you he overheard you say where you kept the diamonds, because he was hiding outside the window; so, after seeing you, he committed the robbery." "That's what I think," said Fenton. "You!" cried Kitty. "What have you got to do with it? I don't believe he stole them, and, whether he did or not, I'm not going to continue this case." "You'll lose your diamonds," cried Fenton. "That's my business," she returned, rising haughtily; "at all events, I have decided to let the matter rest, so Mr. Naball will have all his trouble for nothing. Should I desire to reopen the affair, I will let you both know. At present, good morning," and, with a sweeping bow, she turned and left the room. Fenton stared after her in blank amazement. "Good God! what a fool!" he cried, rising. "What's to be done now?" Naball shrugged his shoulders. "Nothing," he replied, "since she declines to give me power to investigate. I must throw the affair up. But," also rising, and putting on his hat, "I'd like to have a look at the ground beneath the window." They both went out, Naball silent, and Fenton in great wrath, talking of Kitty's conduct. "What an idiot she is!" he cried. "What is she going on in this way for?" "I don't know." "She must have some motive." "Women don't require a motive for anything," said Naball, imperturbably proceeding to examine the ground under the window, through which the thief had made his exit. The flower-bed was filled with tall hollyhocks, and some of these were broken as if some heavy body had fallen from above. "He clambered down by the ivy," murmured Naball to himself, as he bent down. "The ivy is broken here and there; the flowers are also broken, so he fell on them in a heap--probably having missed his footing. Humph! Clever man, as he did not step again on the flower-bed, but jumped from where he fell on to the grass. Humph! grass hard and rather dry; no chance of footmarks. Question is, which way did he go?" "By the gate, of course," said Fenton impatiently. The detective walked across the lawn to the gate, but could find no trace of footmarks, as the lawn was dry, and the footpath, leading out into the pavement of the street was asphalted. "No; he did not go by the gate, as a man in such rags as Villiers would have been sure to be seen coming out of a private house. That would be suspicious; besides, he would have been afraid." "Of the police?" "Exactly; he's been in prison two or three times since his connection with the Midas case, and has got a wholesome dread of the law. No; he did not go by the gate, but by the river." "The river!" repeated Fenton, in amazement. Naball did not answer, but walked back to the window, then along the side of the house, turned the corner, and went down the sloping green bank which led to the river. Still he could see no footmarks. The grass ended at an iron fence, and beyond was the uncultivated vegetation, rank and unwholesome, that clothed the banks of the river. Between this and the grass, however, there was a strip of black earth, and this Naball examined carefully, but could find nothing. If Villiers had come this way, he could only have climbed the fence by first standing on this earth in order to get near enough, but apparently he had not done so. "He did not come this way," he said, as they walked back. "But how could he have left the place?" asked Fenton. "By the gate." "The gate? You said he would be afraid of the police." "So he would, had he been doing anything wrong. Had he stolen the diamonds, he would have gone down by the bank of the river rather than chance meeting a policeman on the street." "But what does this prove?" "That, had he met a policeman, he could have explained everything, and referred him to Caprice as to his interview, and right to come out of the house. In a word, it proves he did not steal the diamonds." "Then who, in Heaven's name, did?" "I don't give an opinion unless I'm certain," said Naball deliberately; "but I'll tell you what I think. You heard Caprice say she won't go on with the case? "Yes; I can't understand her reason." "I can; she stole the diamonds herself." CHAPTER IX. AN UNKNOWN BENEFACTOR. Everyone was greatly excited over the great jewel robbery, especially as it had taken place at the house of so celebrated a person as Caprice, and numerous were the conjectures as to the discovery of the thieves. When, however, it became known that the lady in question declined to allow an investigation to be made, and was apparently contented to lose five thousand pounds' worth of diamonds, the excitement grew intense. What was her motive for acting in such a strange way? All Melbourne asked itself this question, but without obtaining a satisfactory answer. Reference was made to Kitty's antecedents in connection with the Midas poisoning case, and the public were quite prepared to hear any evil of her, particularly as her career since then had been anything but pure. The name of Villiers was mentioned, and then it transpired that Villiers had been seen outside her house on the night of the robbery It was curious that another crime should have happened where these two, formerly implicated in a murder case, should have come together, and disagreeable rumours began to circulate. Then, by some unexplained means, the opinion of Naball became known regarding his assertion that Caprice had stolen the diamonds herself. Here was another mystery. Why on earth should she steal her own jewels? One theory was that she required money, and had sold them for this purpose, pretending that they were stolen, in order to satisfy the lovers who gave them to her. This was clearly absurd, as Caprice cared nothing for the opinion of her lovers, and, moreover, the donors of the diamonds were long since dead or ruined, so the idea of the detective was unanimously laughed at. But then the fact remained, she would not allow an investigation to be made; and how was this to be accounted for? One idea was mooted, that Villiers had stolen the diamonds, and she would not prosecute him because he was the husband of the woman who had been kind to her. In this case, however, she would have easily got back her jewels by a threat of prosecution, whereas they were still missing. Other solutions of the problem were offered, but they were unsatisfactory, and Melbourne settled itself down to the opinion that the whole affair was a mystery which would never be solved. Keith and Ezra had both been puzzled over the affair, and offered Kitty their services to unravel the mystery, but she curtly dismissed them with the remark that she wished the affair left alone, so they had to obey her, and remain in ignorance like the rest of the public. Affairs thus went on as usual, and the weeks slipped by with no further information being forthcoming. Meanwhile, "Prince Carnival" was still running to crowded houses, and Kitty appeared nightly, being now a still greater attraction on account of the robbery of which she was the heroine. She had fulfilled her promise to Keith, in seeing Mortimer about the chances of production for "Faust Upset." The manager was doubtful about the success of the experiment of trying Colonial work, and told Kitty plainly he could not afford to lose money on such a speculation. "It's all stuff," he said to her when she urged him to give the young men a chance; "I can get operas from London whose success is already assured, and I don't see why I should waste money on the crude production of two unknown Colonials." "That's all very true," retorted Caprice, "and, from a business point of view, correct; but considering you make your money out of Colonial audiences, I don't see why you shouldn't give at least one chance to see what Colonial brains can do. As to crudity, wait and see. I don't want you to take the opera if it is bad, but if you approve of it, give it a chance." In the end Mortimer promised, that if he approved of the libretto and music, he would try the piece at the end of the run of "Prince Carnival," but put "Eblis" in rehearsal, in case his forebodings of failure should be justified. When, however, the first act was finished and shown to him, he was graciously pleased to say there was good stuff in it, and began to be a little more hopeful as to its success. So Keith worked hard all day at his employment, and at night on his libretto, to which Ezra put bright, tuneful music. With the usual sanguine expectations of youth, they never dreamt of failure, and Keith wrote the most enthusiastic letters to his betrothed, announcing the gratifying fact that he had got his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder of fame. As to his uncongenial employment at the pawnshop, he strove to conquer his repugnance to it, and succeeded in winning the approval of old Lazarus by his assiduous attention to business. He attended to the books, and, as time went on, the pawnbroker actually let him pay money into the bank, so great had his confidence in the young man become. He increased Keith's salary, and even then chuckled to himself over his cleverness in retaining such a clever servant at so low a price. Though his business was ostensibly that of a pawnbroker, he was in the habit of conducting very much more delicate transactions. In his dingy little den at the back of the shop he sat like a great spider waiting for flies, and the flies generally came in at a little door which led from the room into a dirty yard, and there was a kind of narrow right-of-way which gave admittance to this yard from the street. By this humble way many well-known people came, particularly at night--the fast young man who had backed the wrong horse, the speculative sharebroker, and the spendthrift society lady, all came here in quest of money, which they always got, provided their security was good, and, of course, they paid an exorbitant percentage. Lazarus had dealings with all sorts and conditions of men and women, but he was as silent as the grave over their affairs, and no one knew what secrets that dirty old Hebrew carried in his breast. Of these nocturnal visitors Keith saw nothing, as he left at six o'clock, after which Isaiah shut up the shop, and the front of the house was left in profound darkness, while business went on in the little back room. It was now a fortnight since the robbery, and the nine days' wonder having ceased to amuse, people were beginning to forget all about it. Keith still lived in East Melbourne with Ezra, and on going home one night was surprised to find a letter from the manager of the Hibernian Bank, which informed him that the sum of five hundred pounds had been placed to his credit. Stewart went next day to find out the name of his unknown benefactor, but the manager refused to tell him, as he had been pledged to secrecy. So Keith returned to Ezra in a state of great perplexity to talk over the affair. They sat in Ezra's sitting-room, and discussed the matter late at night with great assiduity, but were unable to come to any conclusion. "You don't know any one who would do you a good turn?" asked Lazarus, when he heard this news. "No--no one," replied Keith. "I haven't a single relative in the Colonies, and no friend rich enough to give me so much money--unless it were your father," with a sudden inspiration. "He!" laughed Ezra scornfully; "he'd as soon part with his blood. Why, I asked him to give me some money so that I could marry, and he refused. What he wouldn't do for his son he certainly would not do for a stranger." "It's very queer," observed Keith meditatively. "It can't be Caprice?" "Not likely; she needs all her money herself," said Ezra. "Besides, I hear she's been rather hard up of late. I suppose Fenton will soon go broke, and then, _Le roi est mort, vive le roi_." "What a pity she goes on like that," said Keith, regretfully. "I like her so much." "Yes, and she likes you," retorted Ezra pointedly. "Don't you get entangled in the nets, or you'll forget all about the girl at Sandhurst. Does she know you're engaged?" "No." "I wouldn't tell her if I were you," said the Jew significantly, "or she'll withdraw the light of her countenance, and then it will be all up with our burlesque." "Pooh, nonsense," replied Stewart, with an uneasy laugh. "I wonder who'll be Fenton's successor?" "Yourself." "Not I. I'm not far enough gone for that. Besides, I've no money." "True, except your anonymous five hundred, which would be nothing to Caprice. So, as she wants money, I expect it will be old Meddlechip." "But he's married." "True, O Sir Galahad," retorted Ezra sarcastically; "but he's an unholy old man for all that--she'll ensnare him, and we'll see how long it will take her to break the richest man in the Colonies." "Oh, the deuce take Kitty Marchurst and her affairs," said Keith impatiently. "I want to know who sent me this money?" "Better not ask," murmured Ezra. "Curiosity is a vice. Remember Adam and Eve, Bluebeard's wife, etcetera. Take the goods the gods bestow, and don't try to find out where they come from; but now you are rich, you'll be giving up the shop." "No, I'll stay on for a time till I find that the five hundred is really and truly mine. Who knows, some day it may take to itself wings and fly." "It certainly would with some young men," said Ezra; "but I don't think you are that sort." "You are right. I want to save up all my money for Eugénie." "Ah! you are going to marry her?" "When I get rich. Yes." "You won't marry her if Caprice can help it." "Why?" disbelievingly. "Because she's fallen in love with you, and her love, like the gifts of the Danaes, is fatal. "Rubbish. I'm not a child. Caprice will never take my heart from Eugénie." "Hercules," remarked Ezra musingly, "was a strong man; yet he became the slave of a woman. Solomon was a wise man--same result. My friend, you are neither Hercules nor Solomon, therefore--" Keith departed hurriedly. CHAPTER X. NABALL MAKES A DISCOVERY. When Kilsip undertook to educate Naball in the business of a detective, he gave him an epigrammatical piece of advice: "Cultivate curiosity." This golden rule Naball constantly followed, and found it of infinite service to him in his difficult profession. He was always on the lookout for queer cases, and when he discovered one that piqued his curiosity, he never rested until he found out all about it. The Red Indian follows the trail of his enemy by noting the most trivial signs, which to others with a less highly cultivated instinct would appear worthless. And Naball was a social Red Indian, following up the trail of a mystery by a constant attention to surrounding events. A casual observation, a fleeting expression, a scrap of paper--these were the sign-posts which led him to a satisfactory conclusion, and he never neglected any opportunity of exercising his faculties. By this constant practice he sharpened his senses in a wonderful degree, and cultivated to the highest extent the unerring instinct which he possessed in discovering crimes. Consequently, when he found there was no legal authority to be given him in unravelling the mystery of the diamond robbery, he determined to investigate it on his own account, in order to satisfy his curiosity. To a casual spectator, it appeared to be a mere vulgar burglary, in which the thieves had got off with their plunder, and until his interview with Caprice the detective had supposed it to be so. But when he went over in his own mind the peculiar circumstances of that interview, he saw there was a complicated criminal case to be investigated, so he set himself to work to unravel the mystery, and gratify his inquiring mind. In the first place, he drew up a statement of the case pure and simple, and then, deducing different theories from the circumstances, he tried to get a point from whence to start. He placed his ideas in the form of questions and answers, as follows:-- _Q_. Was Villiers outside on the verandah when Caprice mentioned where her diamonds were kept? _A_. To all appearances he was. _Q_. Had he any inducement to steal the diamonds? _A_. Undoubtedly. He was poor, and wanted money, proved by his calling on Caprice and asking for some. He said he would be revenged because she did not give him more than a sovereign, and there would be no sweeter revenge than to steal her diamonds, as it would punish her, and benefit himself. _Q_. Did he know the room where the diamonds were kept? _A_. Yes. Caprice said her bedroom, and as Villiers had been several times to the house before, he knew where it was. _Q_. Did Caprice know Villiers had stolen her jewels? _A_. Extremely probably, hence her refusal to prosecute, as he was the husband of Madame Midas, whom she had treated so basely. The refusal to prosecute Villiers might be, in Caprice's opinion, an act of expiation. When he had got thus far, Naball paused. After all, this was pure theory. He had not a single well authenticated fact to go on, but all the circumstances of the case seemed to point to Villiers, so he determined to go on the trail of Villiers, and find out what he was doing. Mr. Villiers had of late been under the espionage of the police, owing to some shady transactions with which he was connected, so Naball knew exactly where to find him, and, putting on an overcoat, he sallied forth in the direction of the slums in Little Bourke Street, with the intention of calling on a Chinaman named Ah Goon, who kept an opium den in that unsavoury locality. To his drinking habits Villiers now added that of being a confirmed opium smoker, and was on terms of intimacy with Ah Goon, in whose den he was accustomed to pass his evenings. Naball therefore intended to watch for Villiers, and find out, if possible, when, owing to drink and opium combined, he was not master of himself, what he had done on the night of the robbery after leaving Caprice. He soon entered Little Bourke Street, and plunged into the labyrinth of slums, which he knew thoroughly. It was a clear, starry night, but the cool, fresh air was tainted in this locality by the foul miasma which pervaded the neighbourhood, and even the detective, accustomed as he was to the place, felt disgusted with the sickly odours that permeated the atmosphere. Ah Goon's house was in a narrow right-of-way off one of the larger alleys, and there was a faint candle burning in the window to attract customers. Pausing at the door a moment, Naball listened to hear if there was any European within. The monotonous chant of a Chinese beggar could be heard coming down the alley, and every now and then the screams of two women fighting, while occasionally a number of noisy larrikins would come tramping heavily along, forming a strong contrast to the silent, soft-footed Orientals. Pushing open the door, Naball entered the den, a small, low-ceilinged room, which was filled with a dull, smoky atmosphere. At the end was a gaudy-looking shrine, all yellow, red, and green, with tinsel flowers, and long red bills with fantastic Chinese letters on them in long rows. Candles were burning in front of this, and cast a feeble light around--on a pile of bamboo canes and baskets heaped up against the wall; on strange-looking Chinese stools of cane-work; on _bizarre_ ivory carvings set on shelves; and on a low raised platform at the end of the room, whereon the opium-smokers reclined. Above this ground-floor were two or three other broad, shallow shelves, in each of which a Chinaman was lying, sunk deep in an opium slumber; there was also a kerosene lamp on the lower floor, beside which Ah Goon was reclining, and deftly preparing a pipe of opium for a fat, stolid-looking Chinaman, who watched the process with silent apathy. Ah Goon looked up as the detective entered, and a bland smile spread over his face as he nodded to him, and went on preparing his pipe, while Naball stood watching the queer operation. There was an oil lamp with a clear flame in front of Ah Goon, who was holding a kind of darning-needle. Dipping this into a thick, brown, sticky-looking substance, contained in a small pot, he twirled the needle rapidly, spinning round the glutinous mass like treacle. Then he placed it in the flame of the lamp, and turned it slowly round and round for a short time until it was ready; then, having placed it in the small hole of the opium pipe, which he held ready in his other hand, he gave it to his countryman, who received it with a grunt of satisfaction, and, lying back, took the long stem between his lips and inhaled the smoke with long, steady breaths. When his pipe was done, which was accomplished in three or four whiffs, he devoted himself to preparing another, while Ah Goon arose to his feet to speak to Naball. He was a tall man, with a thin, yellow-skinned, emaciated face, cunning, oblong eyes, and flattish nose. His pigtail, of course--black hair craftily lengthened by thick twisted silk--was coiled on top of his head; and his dress, consisting of a dull blue blouse, wide trousers of the same colour, and thick, white-soled Chinese slippers, by no means added to his personal beauty. Standing before Naball, with an unctuous smile on his face, and his long, slender hands clasped in front of him, Ah Goon waited for the detective to speak. Naball glanced rapidly round the apartment, and not seeing Villiers, addressed himself to the stolid Celestial, who was looking slyly at him. "Ah Goon, where is the white man who comes here every night?" "Plenty he come allee muchee night--me no have seen," replied Ah Goon, blinking his black eyes. "Yes, I know that," retorted Naball quickly; "but this one is short--black hair and whiskers--smokes opium--drinks a lot--is called Villiers." Whether Ah Goon recognised the gentleman thus elegantly described was doubtful; at all events, he put on a stolid air. "Me no sabee," he answered. Naball held out a half-a crown, upon which Ah Goon fixed his eyes lovingly. "Where is he?" The money was too much for Ah Goon's cupidity, so he gave in. "Him playee fan-tan-ayah!" he answered, in a sing-song voice, "allee same." "Oh!" Mr. Naball did not waste any words, but threw the half-crown to the expectant Ah Goon, and turned towards the door. Just as he reached it there was a noise of hurried footsteps outside, and Villiers' voice, husky and savage, was heard,-- "Ah Goon, you yellow devil, where are you?" and there came a heavy kick at the door. In a moment Naball drew back into a shadowy corner, and placed his finger on his lips to ensure silence, a pantomime which the intelligent Ah Goon understood at once. Villiers opened the door and lurched noisily into the room, stopping for a minute on the threshold, dazed by the yellow, smoky glare. "Here, you, Ah Goon," he cried, catching sight of the Chinaman, "I want some money--more money." "Ah Goon no have," murmured that individual, clutching his half-crown. "I've lost all I had on that infernal fan-tan of yours," shrieked Villiers, not heeding him; "but my luck must change--give me another fiver." "Ah Goon no have," reiterated the Chinaman, edging away from the excited Villiers. "Curse your no have," he said fiercely; "why, I've only had twenty pounds from you, and those diamonds were worth fifty." Diamonds! Naball pricked up his ears at this. He was winning after all. Kitty did not steal her jewels, but this was the thief, or perhaps an accomplice. "Give me more money," cried Villiers, lurching forward, and would have laid his hand on the shoulder of the shrinking Chinaman, when Naball stepped out of his corner. "What's the matter?" he asked, in his silky voice. Villiers turned on the new-comer with a sudden start, and stared suspiciously at him; but the detective being muffled up in a heavy ulster, with his hat pulled over his eyes, he did not recognise him. "What do you want?" he said ungraciously. "Nothing," replied Naball quickly. "I'm only strolling round the Chinese quarter out of curiosity, and heard you rowing this poor devil." "Poor devil!" sneered Villiers, with a glance of fury at Ah Goon, who had complacently resumed his occupation of preparing an opium pipe; "he's rich enough." "Indeed," said the detective, carelessly--"to lend money?" "What's that to you?" growled Villiers, with a snarl. "I s'pose I can borrow money if I like." "Certainly, if you've got good security to give." Villiers glared angrily at the young man. "Don't know what you're talking about," he said sulkily. "Security," explained Naball smoothly; means "borrowing money on land, clothes, or--or diamonds." Villiers gave a sudden start, and was about to reply, when the door opened violently, and a bold, handsome woman, dressed in a bright green silk, dashed into the room and swooped down on Ah Goon. "Well, my dear," she said effusively, "'ere I am; bin to the theatre, and 'ere you are preparing that pisin of yours. Oh, I must 'ave one pipe to-night, just one, and--Who the blazes are you?" catching sight of the two strangers. "Shut up," said Villiers, and made a step towards her, for just on the bosom of her dress sparkled a small crescent of diamonds set in silver. The woman's eyes caught his covetous glance, and she put her hand over the ornament. "No, you don't," she said scowling. "Lay a finger on me and I'll--ah!" She ended with a stifled cry, for without warning, Villiers had sprung on her, and his hands were round her throat. Ah Goon and another Chinaman jumped up and threw themselves on the two, trying to separate them. The woman got Villiers' hands off her, and started to sing out freely, so Naball began to think of retreating, as the noise would bring all the undesirable bullies of the neighbourhood into the unsavoury den. While thus hesitating, the woman flung the diamond ornament away from her with an oath, and it fell at Naball's feet. In a moment the detective had picked it up and slipped in into his pocket. Villiers, seeing the ornament was gone, flung the woman from him with a howl of fury, and turned to look for it, when the door was burst violently open, and a crowd of Chinese, all chattering in their high shrill voices like magpies, surged into the room. Ah Goon, with many gesticulations, began to explain, Villiers to swear, and the woman to shriek, so in the midst of this pandemonium Naball slipped away, and was soon walking swiftly down Little Bourke Street, with the diamond ornament safe in his pocket. "I believe this is one of the stolen jewels," he muttered exultingly, "and Villiers was the thief after all. Humph! I'm not so sure of that. Well, I'll find out the truth when I see how she looks on being shown this little bit of evidence." CHAPTER XI. WHAT NABALL OVERHEARD. It is said that "Counsel comes in the silence of the night," so next morning Mr. Naball, having been thinking deeply about his curious discovery, decided upon his plan of action. It was evidently no good to go straight to Caprice and show her the diamond crescent, as, judging from her general conduct with regard to the robbery, she would deny that the jewel belonged to her. The detective therefore determined to ascertain from some independent person whether the jewel was really the property of Caprice, and after some consideration came to the conclusion that Fenton would be the most likely individual to supply the necessary information. "He's her lover," argued Naball to himself as he walked along the street, "so he ought to know what jewellery she's got. I dare say he gave her a lot himself; but, hang it," he went on disconsolately, "I don't know why I'm bothering about this affair; nothing will come of it; for some reason best known to herself, Caprice won't let me follow up the case. I can't make it out; either she stole the jewels herself, or Villiers did, and she won't prosecute him. Ah! women are rum things," concluded the detective with a regretful sigh. He had by this time arrived at The Never-say-die Insurance Office, and on entering the door found himself in a large, lofty apartment, with a long shiny counter at one end, and a long shiny clerk behind it. This individual, who looked as if he were rubbed all over with fresh butter, so glistening was his skin, received him with a stereotyped smile, and asked, in a soft oily voice, what he was pleased to want? "Take my card up to Mr. Fenton," said Naball, producing his pasteboard from an elegant card-case, "and tell him I want to see him for a few minutes." The oleaginous clerk disappeared, and several other clerks looked up from their writing at the detective with idle curiosity. Naball glanced sharply at their faces, and smiled blandly to himself as he recognised several whom he had seen in very equivocal places. Little did the clerks know that this apparently indolent young man knew a good deal about their private lives, and was anticipating coming into contact with several of them in a professional manner. Presently the oily clerk returned with a request to Mr. Naball to walk into the manager's office, which that gentleman did in a leisurely manner; and the shiny clerk, closing the door softly, returned to his position behind the shiny counter. Mr. Fenton sat at a handsome writing-table, which was piled up with disorderly papers, and looked sharply at the detective as he took a seat. "Well, Naball," he said, in his strident voice, "what is the matter? Can't give you more than five minutes--time's money here. Yes, sir." "Five minutes will do," replied the detective, tapping his varnished boots with his cane. "It's about that robbery." "Oh, indeed!" Mr. Fenton laid down his pen, and, leaning back in his chair, prepared to listen. "Yes! I've been looking after Villiers." "Quite right," said the American. "That's the man I suspect--fixed up anything, eh?" "Not yet, but I was down Little Bourke Street last night in an opium den, to which Villiers goes, and I found this." Fenton took the diamond crescent, which Naball held out to him, and looked at it closely. "Humph!--set in silver--rather toney," he said; "well, is this part of the swag?" "That's what I want to find out," said Naball quickly. "You know the peculiar way in which Caprice has treated this robbery." "I know she's a fool," retorted Fenton politely. "She ought to go right along in this matter; but for some silly reason, she won't." "No; and that's why I've come to you. I'm going down to see her when I leave here, and it's likely she'll deny that this belongs to her. Now, I want your evidence to put against her denial. Is this the property of Caprice?" Fenton examined the jewel again and nodded. "Yes, sir," he replied, with a nasal drawl, "guess I gave her this." "I thought you'd recognise it," said Naball, replacing the jewel in his pocket; "so now I'll go and see her, in order to find out how Villiers got hold of it." "Stole it, I reckon?" "I'm not so sure of that," replied the detective coolly. "I don't believe Caprice cares two straws about Villiers being the husband of Madame Midas. If he stole the diamonds, she'd lag him as sure as fate; no, as I told you before, she's got a finger in this pie herself, and Villiers is helping her." "But the diamonds were stolen on that night," objected the American. "I know that--don't you remember you told me that Caprice had an interview in the supper room with Villiers? Well, I believe she went upstairs, took the diamonds, and gave them to Villiers to dispose of." "For what reason?" "That's what I'd like to find out," retorted Naball. "She evidently wanted a sum of money for something; now, are you aware that she wanted money?" "Why, she's always wanting money." "No doubt--but this must have been a specially large sum?" Fenton glanced keenly at Naball's impassive face, drummed impatiently with his fingers on the table, then evidently made up his mind. "Tell you what," he said rapidly, "she did want a large sum of money--fact is, a friend of hers got into a fix, and his wife went howling to her, so she said she would replace the money, and I've no doubt sold her diamonds to do so." "I thought it was something like that," said Naball coolly; "but why the deuce couldn't she sell her diamonds openly without all this row?" "Guess you'd better ask her," said Fenton, rising to his feet; "she won't let me meddle with the affair, so I can't do anything--if she's fool enough to lose or sell five thousand pounds' worth of diamonds, I can't help it: and now, sir, the five minutes--" glancing at his watch. "Are up long ago," replied Naball, rising to his feet. "Well, I'm curious about this case, and I'm going to get at it somehow, so at present I'm off down to see Caprice about this," and he tapped his breast-pocket, where the jewel was placed. "You won't get anything out of her," said Fenton yawning, "if all you surmise is true." "I don't care what she says," observed Naball, going to the door. "I can discover all I want from the expression of her face when she knows what I've got, and where I got it." With this Naball disappeared, and Fenton, returning to his desk, flung himself back in his chair. "Why the devil won't she prosecute?" he muttered savagely to himself. "Guess she knows more about this robbery than she says, but even then--confound it, I'm mixed." Having come to this unsatisfactory conclusion, Mr. Fenton went on with his work, and dismissed all thoughts of the diamond robbery from his mind. Meanwhile, Naball was on his way down to Toorak, meditating over the revelation made to him by Fenton about Caprice's sudden fit of generosity. "I didn't think she was so tender-hearted," murmured Naball, full of perplexity; "she must have had some strong reason for selling her diamonds. I wonder who the man is?--and the wife called. Humph! this is quite a new game for Caprice." When he left the station, and walked to the house, instead of ringing the front-door bell, he strolled round the corner to the verandah, on which the drawing-room windows looked out. He did this because--wondering if Villiers was concerned in the robbery--he wanted to see the window by which he entered the dining-room on the night of the robbery. Soft-footed and stealthy in his motions, the detective made no noise, and was just pausing on the edge of the verandah, wondering whether he would go forward or return to the front door, when he heard Kitty's voice in the drawing-room raised in a tone of surprise. "Mrs. Malton!" "Hullo!" said Naball to himself, "that's the name of Fenton's assistant manager. Now, I wonder what his wife is calling here about? I'll wait and hear." So the detective, filled with curiosity, took up his position close to one of the windows, so that he could hear every word that was said, but, of course, was unable to see anything going on inside. He commenced to listen, out of mere curiosity, but soon the conversation took a turn which interested him greatly, and, to his mind, threw a great deal of light on the diamond robbery. "Why have you called to see me again?" asked Kitty, in a cold tone. "Because I want to thank you for saving my husband," replied Mrs. Malton. "They told me you were busy, but I have waited in the next room for half-an-hour to see you. My husband is safe." "I congratulate you--and him," answered Caprice, in an ironical tone. "It is to be hoped Mr. Evan Malton won't embezzle any more money." Naball, outside, could hardly refrain from giving a low whistle. So this was the man mentioned by Fenton--his own familiar friend--and Kitty Marchurst had helped him. In Heaven's name, why? "It is due to your kindness that he is safe," said Mrs. Malton, in a faltering tone; "you replaced the money." "Not at all," said Caprice; "I never replaced a sixpence." "But you did, you did!" said Mrs. Malton vehemently, falling on her knees before Kitty; "every penny of the money has been paid back, and only you could have done it." "I did not pay a penny, I tell you," said Caprice; "still, I have had something to do with it." "I knew it! I knew it!" cried the poor wife, kissing the hand of the actress. "May God bless you for doing this good action." "I wouldn't have done it had it not been for the sake of your child," said Kitty coldly. "Wonderful," thought the listener; "Kitty Marchurst has a heart." "Good-bye, good-bye!" said Mrs. Malton, rising to her feet. "I may never see you again." "I've no doubt of that," replied Caprice, with a cynical laugh; "you've got all you wanted, so now you leave me." "No, no!" cried the other woman vehemently. "I am not ungrateful. I will visit you if you will let me. I am sorry for you. I pity you." "Keep your pity and your visits for some one else--I want neither." "But your heart?" "My heart is stone; it was hardened long, long ago. Leave me--I have done all I can for you--now go." Mrs. Malton made a step forward, and, catching Kitty in her arms, kissed her. "God bless you!" she cried, in a low voice, and as she kissed her she felt a hot tear fall on her hand. It was Caprice who wept, but, with a stifled sigh, she pushed Mrs. Malton away. "You are a good woman," she said hoarsely. "Go! go! and if you ever think of me, let it be as one who, however bad her life, did at least one good action." She sank back into a chair, covering her face with her hands, while Mrs. Malton, with a look of pity on her face, and a low "God bless you," left the room. Meanwhile, the detective outside was smitten with a kind of remorse at having overheard this pathetic scene. "I've found out what Caprice wanted the money for," he muttered; "but I'm sorry for her--very sorry. I never knew before she was a woman--I thought she was a fiend." Kitty, drying her eyes, arose from her seat and dragged herself slowly across the room to the window near which the detective was standing. He heard her coming and tried to escape, and in another moment Kitty had opened the window, and they were face to face. "Mr. Naball," she cried, with a sudden, angry light in her eyes, "you have heard--" "Every word," said Naball, looking straight at her wrathful face. CHAPTER XII. NABALL TELLS A STORY. Kitty looked at him in silence with flashing eyes, and then laughed bitterly. "And how long is it since you added the spy business to your usual work?" she asked, with a sneer on her colourless face. "Since a few moments ago," replied Naball coolly. "I came to see you on business, and, hearing you in conversation with a lady, did not like to interrupt till you were disengaged." "I'm very much obliged to you for your courtesy," said Caprice scornfully; "but now you have satisfied your curiosity. M. le Mouchard, I'll trouble you to take yourself off." "Certainly, after I've had a few moments' conversation with you." "I decline to listen," said Kitty haughtily. "I think you had better," observed Naball significantly, "as it's about the robbery of your jewels." "I forbade you to go on any further with that matter." "You did; but I disobeyed your injunction." "So I understand," replied Kitty indignantly; "and may I ask if you have discovered anything?" "Yes--this!" and he showed the diamond crescent to Caprice. She started violently, and her pale face flushed a deep red. "Where did you get it?" she asked. "From Randolph Villiers." "Villiers!" she echoed in surprise. "How did it come into his possession?" "That is what I want to discover." "Then you may save yourself the trouble, for you will never know." "I understand that," said Naball quietly; "nothing can be done unless you permit me to go on." "I forbid you to go on," she retorted angrily. Naball bowed. "Very well," he said quietly, "then there is nothing for me but to leave." "No, I don't think there is," assented Kitty coldly, turning to re-enter the house. "But, before I go," went on the detective, playing his great card, "I will leave your jewel with you." "That," said Kitty, glancing over her shoulder at the crescent--"that is not mine." "Mr. Fenton says it is." "Mr. Fenton!" echoed Caprice jeeringly; "and how does Mr. Fenton know?" "I should think he was the best person to know," retorted Naball, nettled at her mockery. "A good many people think the same way," said Kitty disdainfully, "but in this case Mr. Fenton is wrong--I never saw those diamonds before." "Then how did it come into Mr. Villiers' possession?" "I don't know, not being in Mr. Villiers' confidence." "Oh!" said Naball significantly, "you are quite certain you are not?" "I don't understand you," replied Kitty coldly; "explain yourself." "Certainly, if you wish it," said the detective smoothly. "I will tell it in the form of a little story--have I your permission to be seated?" She nodded carelessly, whereupon Naball sat down on one of the lounging chairs, and, crossing his legs, settled himself composedly, while Kitty, standing near him with loosely-clasped hands, looked idly at the green lawn, with its brilliant border of many-coloured flowers. "There was once a woman called Folly, who lived--let us say--in Cloudland--" began Naball airily. "Rubbish!" said Kitty angrily. "Nothing of the sort," retorted Naball coolly, "it is truth in disguise. I have been to school--I have read Spenser's 'Faery Queen'--if you please, we will consider this story, though not in verse, as one of the lost cantos of the poem." Kitty shrugged her shoulders with contempt. "I think you're mad," she said coldly. "Perhaps I am," retorted Naball sharply, "but there's method in my madness, as you will soon find out--so, to go on with the lost canto of the 'Faery Queen.' This woman, Folly, was reputed to have a hard heart--no doubt she had, but there was one soft spot in it--love for her child. Many men loved this charming Folly, and paid dearly for the privilege. One man, misnamed Strength, loved her madly, and gave her many jewels. Strength had a friend, called Weakness, and though they were so dissimilar in character, they worked together. Weakness also loved Folly, though he had a wife, and, to gain Folly's love, he stole a lot of money. His wife discovered this, and going to Folly, implored her to help Weakness, but in vain, till at last she gained her point by appealing to the one soft spot in Folly's heart--love for her child. She was successful, and Folly promised to save the husband by replacing the money, which she could do through the agency of Strength, who was her lover. "Folly, however, did not know where to get the money, so, in despair, determined to part with her jewels. She dared not do so openly, lest the inhabitants of Cloudland should find out what Weakness had done, so she enlisted the services of a man called Vice. Here," said Naball gaily, "we will leave the narrative style, and finish the story dramatically." Kitty, who had grown pale, made no sign, so Naball resumed. "Scene, a supper-room, with a window open--time, night--supper ended--guests away--enter Vice through open window--helps himself to champagne. Folly, informed of presence of Vice, enters the room and orders him out--he refuses to leave till he gets money--she refuses to give it to him. Suddenly an idea strikes her, and she tells Vice she will give him money if he sells her jewels for her secretly--Vice consents. Folly goes up to her room, gets jewels, gives them to Vice, who goes away and breaks down shrubs under window, which is opened by Folly to show every one that a burglar has stolen the jewels. Rumours of the theft get about--Bloodhound goes on the track--traces Vice to his den--finds one jewel--comes to show it to Folly--overhears wife of Weakness thanking Folly for replacing money stolen by her husband--exit wife of Weakness--enter Bloodhound to Folly, who denies having ever seen jewel before. Bloodhound tells a story to Folly, which Folly--" "Denies, yes, denies!" broke in Kitty angrily; "your story is wrong." "Pardon me," said Naball, rising, "allegorical." "I can understand what you mean," said Kitty, after a pause; "but it's all wrong. I never paid this money for Malton." "Pardon me,--Weakness," said Naball politely. "Bah! why keep up this transparent deception? Your story is excellent, and I understand all about Folly, Vice, and Strength, but you are wrong--that jewel is not mine. I never paid the money, and I don't know anything about Malton's business, so you can leave me at once, and never show your face again." "But the jewel?" said the detective, holding it out. Kitty snatched it out of his hand, and flung it across the lawn. It flashed brilliantly in the sunlight, and fell just on the verge of the flower-bed. "You can follow it,--Bloodhound," she said disdainfully, and, entering the house, closed the window after her. Naball stood for a moment smiling in a gratified manner to himself, then, sauntering slowly across the lawn, picked up the jewel and replaced it in his pocket. "I knew I was right," he murmured quietly, as he strolled to the gate; "she stole the diamonds to pay Malton's debt, and Villiers got this for payment as an accomplice. I wish I could get on with the case, but she won't let me--what a pity; dear, dear, what a pity!" He had by this time reached the gate, and was passing through it, when a hansom drove up, from out which Fenton jumped. "Well?" he asked, when he saw Naball. "Well," said Naball, dusting his varnished boots with a silk handkerchief. "What does she say?" asked Fenton inquiringly "What a woman generally does say--everything but the truth. Going to see her?" "Yes," said Fenton, paying his cab fare; "can I do anything?" "Two things," observed Naball quietly: "in the first place, let me have your cab; and in the second, give this to Caprice with my compliments," and he handed the crescent of diamonds to Fenton. "Why didn't you give it to her yourself?" asked Fenton, taking it. "Because she said it wasn't hers," replied Naball, getting into the cab. "I can't do anything more in the matter; it's a beautiful case spoiled." "Why spoiled?" asked Fenton, pausing at the gate. "Because there's a woman in it," replied Naball; "good-bye!" and the cab drove off in a cloud of dust, leaving Fenton at the gate looking in a puzzled manner at the diamond crescent. "Why the deuce did she deny this being hers?" he asked himself as he opened the gate. "I know it well--I ought to, considering I paid for it--there's some game in this." He rang the bell, which was answered by Bliggings, who, in reply to his question as to whether Kitty was at home, burst out into a volley of language. "Oh, gracious an' good 'eavens, missus 'ave bin talkin' to a lady this mornin', and is that upset as never was--chalk is black to her complexing, and penny hices 'ot to the chill of her feets." "Humph!" said Fenton, entering the house and leisurely taking off his hat, "just tell your mistress I want to see her." "Oh, gracious an' good 'eavens!" cried Bliggings, "she's a-lyin' down in company with a linseed poultase an' a cup of tea, both bein' good for removin' 'eadaches." "Great Scot!" said Fenton impatiently, pushing the voluble Bliggings aside, "I'll go and see her straight off myself." He went upstairs and knocked at the sitting-room door. Hearing a faint voice telling him to come in, he entered the room, which he found in semi-darkness, with the pungent aroma of _eau de cologne_ pervading the atmosphere. "What do you want?" asked Kitty fretfully, thinking it was the servant. "To see you," replied Fenton gruffly. "Oh, it's you!" cried Caprice, sitting up on the sofa, looking pale and wan in her white dress. "I'm glad of that--I've just seen that Naball, and he's been accusing me of stealing my own jewels." "Well, did you?" asked Fenton complacently. "Of course I didn't," she retorted angrily; "why should I? Naball thinks I did it to replace the money Malton stole." "How did he find out that?" asked Fenton, who knew quite well he had told him about it himself. "He overheard Mrs. Malton thanking me," retorted Kitty impatiently; "the money has been replaced, so I suppose, you did it." "Yes, I did," said Fenton boldly, "for your sake." "You're a good fellow, Fenton," said Kitty, in a softened tone. "I'm glad you did what I asked you--now, go away, for I must get a sleep, or I'll never be able to act to-night." "But what about this jewel?" asked Fenton, taking the crescent out of his pocket. "Naball said you denied it being yours." "So I did," replied Caprice pettishly. "But why? I gave it to you." "Well, you can give it to me again," she said coolly. "Put it on the table, and go away." Fenton thought a moment, then, going over to the table, placed the jewel thereon, and turned once more to Caprice. "Look here, Kitty," he said slowly, "did you do anything with those diamonds?" "Perhaps I did, and perhaps I didn't," replied Caprice enigmatically; "at all events, I'm not going to have any more fuss made over them." "Well, good-bye at present," said Fenton carelessly. "I say, you might give me a kiss, after fixing up Malton's affair." "So I will--at the theatre to-night. Do leave me, my head is so bad." "Not so bad as you are, you little devil," murmured Fenton, closing the sitting-room door softly after him. "Well, I guess there'll be no more trouble about those diamonds, at all events." CHAPTER XIII. THE GOSSIP OF CLUBS. It was called "The Skylarks' Club," because, like those tuneful birds, the members were up very early in the morning. Not that the aforesaid members were early risers by any means--but because they never went to bed till three or four o'clock. To put it plainly, they stayed up nearly all night, and it seemed to be a point of honour with them that, as long as a quorum were on the premises, the club should be kept open. Most of the members were dissipated and led fast lives, drank a good deal, gambled away large sums, betted freely, and, to all appearances, were going to the dogs as fast as they possibly could. The code of morality was not very strict, and the "Skylarks" generally viewed each other's good or bad luck in a cynical manner. Occasionally a member disappeared from his accustomed place, and it was generally understood he had "gone under," or, in other words, was vegetating on some up-country station, doubtless cursing the "Skylarks" freely as the cause of his ruin. Other clubs in Melbourne were fast--not a doubt about that--but every one declared that the "Skylarks" overstepped all bounds of decency. Whatever devilment was to be done, they would do it, and, as they had no characters to lose, they generally amused themselves by trying to destroy other people's good name, and generally succeeded. It was a Bohemian club, and among its members were stock-brokers, musicians, journalists, and actors, so that, whatever the moral tone of the place, the conversation was generally brilliant, albeit rather malicious. One way and another, there was a good deal of money floating about, for if the members worked hard at business during the day, they also worked hard at pleasure during the night, so, systematically, burned the candle at both ends. "_Fay ce que vouldras_" was their motto, and they certainly carried it out to the very last letter. Keith Stewart was a member of this delectable fraternity, having been introduced by Ezra Lazarus, and, thanks to his mysterious five hundred pounds, was able to cut a very decent figure among the members. He was still in the pawnbroker's office, although he very much wanted to leave it, but, having passed his word to old Lazarus to stay six months, he was determined to do so. It was now about three months since the diamond robbery, and, after being a nine days' wonder, it had passed out of the minds of every one. Nothing more was heard of the theft, and, after a great number of surmises, more or less wrong, the matter was allowed to drop, as a new divorce case of a novel character now engrossed the public mind. "Prince Carnival" had been withdrawn after a very successful run, and Kitty Marchurst was now appearing in "Eblis," which, as she expected, had turned out a failure. Under these circumstances, "Prince Carnival" was revived, pending the production of "Faust Upset," a new burlesque by Messrs. Stewart and Lazarus. Both these young men had worked hard at the piece, and Mortimer, having approved of the first act, had determined to put the play on the stage: first, because he saw it was by no means a bad piece, and secondly, he had nothing else handy to bring forward. If he could have obtained a new and successful opera-bouffe from London, "Faust Upset" would have been ignominiously shelved, but, luckily for Keith and his friends, all the late opera-bouffes had been failures, so Mortimer made a virtue of necessity, and gave them a chance. It was about eleven o'clock at night, and the smoking-room of the "Skylarks" was full. Some of the members had been there for some hours, others had dropped in after the theatres were closed, and here and there could be seen a reporter scribbling his notes for publication next day. A luxurious apartment it was, with lounging chairs covered with crimson plush, plenty of mirrors, and a number of marble-topped tables, which were now covered with various beverages. Every one was talking loudly, and the waiters were flitting about actively employed in ministering to the creature comforts of the patrons of the club. What with the dusky atmosphere caused by the smoking, the babel of voices, the jingle of glasses, and the constant moving about of the restless crowd, it looked like some fantastic nightmare. Keith was seated in a corner smoking a cigarette and waiting for Ezra, who had promised to meet him there, and in the meantime was idly watching the crowd of his friends, and listening to their gossip. Malton was also lounging about the room, chatting to his friends on current topics. "Anything going on in the House?" asked Pelk, a theatrical critic, of Slingsby, who had just entered. That gentleman shrugged his shoulders. "A slanging match, as usual," he replied, taking a seat and ringing the bell. "Some members have got an idea that abuse is wit. I don't think much of the Victorian Parliament." "It's better than the New South Wales one, at all events," said Keith, smiling. "That's not saying much," retorted Slingsby, lighting a cigar. "The Sydney men are more like fractious children than anything else, though to be sure that's only proper, seeing our Parliaments are nurseries for sucking politicians." "That's severe." "But true--the truth is always disagreeable." "Perhaps that's the reason so few people speak it." "Exactly--truth is a sour old maid whom nobody wants." "Not you, at all events, Slingsby" "No--it's a matter of choice--_Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor_." "Don't be classical--it's out of place here." "Not a bit," retorted Slingsby smoothly, looking round at the circle of grinning faces, "it's out of the dictionary, you know, foreign words and affixes." Every one roared at this candid confession. "No wonder _The Penny Whistle_ flourishes when there's such men as you on the staff," said Toltby, with a sneer. "You've no cause to complain," replied Slingsby; "they've been kind enough to you." "Yes; they recognise good acting." Slingsby looked at him queerly. "Dear boy, I prefer the stage of the House to that of the theatre--the actors are much more amusing." At this moment Felix Rolleston, now looking much older since the Hansom Cab murder case, but as lively as ever, entered the room and danced up to the coterie. "Well, gentlemen," he said gaily, "what is the news?" "Good news, bad news, and such news as you've never heard of," quoted Keith lazily. "Thank you, my local Gratiano," replied Felix, quickly recognising the quotation as from the "Merchant of Venice." "By the way, there's a letter for you outside." "Oh, thanks," said Stewart rising, "I'll go and get it," and he sauntered out lazily. "Humph!" ejaculated Felix, looking after him, "our friend is the author of 'Faust Upset,' I understand?" "Yes," replied Toltby; "deuced good piece." "That means you've got an excellent part," struck in Slingsby mercilessly. "Quite right," retorted Toltby complacently; "all the parts are good--especially Caprice's." "Oh, that goes without saying," said Pelk, with a grin; "our friend is rather sweet there." "So is she," said Felix significantly; "case of reciprocity, dear boy!" "She's given Fenton the go-by." "Yes, and Meddlechip is elevated to the vacancy. Wonder how long it will be before she breaks him?" "Oh, even with her talents for squandering, Caprice can't burst up the richest man in Victoria," said Slingsby vulgarly; "when she does give him up, I suppose Stewart will succeed him." "Not enough cash." "Pooh! what is cash compared to love?" "Eh! a good deal in this case, as Fenton found out." "Speak of the devil," said Felix quickly; "here comes the gentleman in question." Fenton, looking harassed and worn, entered the room, and glanced round. Seeing Rolleston, he came over to him and began to talk. "Guess you look happy, boys," he said, in his nasal voice. "It's more than you do," replied Rolleston, scanning him keenly. "No; I've overworked myself," said Fenton coolly, "I need pulling up a bit." "Go and see a doctor--try tonics." "Ah, bah! glass of champagne will fix me straight. Here, waiter, bring in a bottle of Heidsieck. Any of you boys join?" All the boys assenting to the hospitable proposition, Fenton ordered two bottles, and lighted a huge cigar. When the waiter came back with the wine, Keith also entered, with a soft look on his face which puzzled Rolleston. He had put on his overcoat. "Ah!" said that astute gentleman, "you look pleased--your letter was pleasant?" "Yes, very," replied Keith laconically. "Then it was from a woman," said Fenton. "Humph! that's generally anything but pleasant," grunted Slingsby. "No doubt, to such a Don Juan as you," said Pelk, amid a general laugh. The waiter was opening the wine so slowly that Fenton lost patience, and snatched one bottle up from the table. "Guess we had better fix those two up at once," he said. "Any one got a knife?" Keith put his hand in his pocket, and produced therefrom Meg's present. "Great Cæsar, what a pig-sticker," said Fenton, holding it up. "What made you buy such a thing, Stewart?" asked Felix, laughing. "I didn't buy it," replied Keith; "it's a present from a lady." "A very young lady, I should say," said Slingsby drily; "not much idea of taste." "Matter of opinion," said Keith serenely; "I like the knife for the sake of the donor--her name's on the handle." Fenton by this time had opened the bottle, and laid the knife down on the table, from whence Felix picked it up and examined it. "'From Meg,'" he read, in an amused tone; "gad, Stewart, I thought it was the mother, not the daughter." Fenton shot a fiery glance at Keith, who laughed in rather an embarrassed manner. "It was just the child's whim," he said, laughing. "I saved her from the tram-car, so she gave me this as a souvenir;" and, taking up the knife, he shut it with a sharp click, and slipped it into his overcoat pocket. When they had all finished the wine, Fenton said he had to see Mortimer about some business. "Half-past ten," he said, looking at his watch; "they'll just be about through." "I've got to see Mortimer to-night," observed Keith, "and I'm waiting here for Lazarus." "About the new play, I reckon," said Fenton; "well, you'd better walk up with me." Keith shook his head. "No, thanks; I must wait for Lazarus." "Then come and have a game of billiards in the meantime," said Felix, rising; "take off your coat, you'll find it hot." "All right," assented Keith readily "Here, Alfred," and, slipping off his coat, handed it to a waiter, who was just passing, "hang this up for me." The waiter took the coat, threw it over his arm, and vanished; while Keith and Felix strolled leisurely away in the direction of the billiard-room. "How the deuce does Stewart run it?" asked Fenton, looking after them; "he can't get much salary at old Lazarus' place." "Case of God tempering the wind to the shorn lamb," said Slingsby ironically. "Hang it, I don't think he ought to be a member of the Club, a confounded pawnbroker's clerk." "It is rather a topsy-turvy business, ain't it; but you see, in the colonies Jack's as good as his master." "And in some cases a deal better," said Pelk, referring to the relative positions of Malton and Fenton. "Particularly when Jack's got a pretty wife," finished Toltby significantly. Fenton knew this was a hint at his _penchant_ for Mrs. Malton, but he did not very well see how he could take it to himself, particularly when he saw every one smiling, so he smiled back saturninely at the circle. "You're devilish witty, boys," he said coldly; "guess the wine has sharpened your brains." As he strolled away in his usual cool manner, Slingsby looked after him. "Our friend's hard hit over Mrs. Malton," he said at length. "Every one knows that," grinned Toltby, "except the husband." "Yes, the husband is generally the last to find out these things," remarked Pelk drily; and the conversation ended. Meanwhile Rolleston and Keith were playing their game of billiards, a pastime in which the former was an adept, and soon defeated Keith, who threw down his cue in half anger. "You always win," he said pettishly; "it's no use playing with you." "Oh, yes, it is," said Felix cheerfully. "I know I'm a good player, so if you play with me it will improve you very much--that remark sounds conceited, but it's true--come and have another game." "Not to-night," replied Keith; "I've got to keep my appointment with Mortimer--it's no use waiting for Lazarus." "Oh, yes, it is," cried a new voice, and Lazarus made his appearance at the door of the billiard-room. "I'm sorry for having kept you waiting, but it was unavoidable. I'll tell you all about it as we walk up." "All right," replied Keith, and turned to go, followed by Ezra, who nodded to Rolleston. "Good-night," cried that gentleman, making a cannon. "Good luck be with you." "Amen," responded Keith laughing, and disappeared with Ezra. CHAPTER XIV. A STRUGGLE FOR FAME. The two young men walked slowly up the street in the direction of the Bon-Bon Theatre, passing into Swanston Street just as the Town Hall clock struck eleven. It was a beautiful moonlight night, but no breeze was blowing, and the heat which the earth had drawn to her bosom during the day was now exhaled from the warm ground in a faint humid vapour. Crowds of people were in the streets sauntering idly along, evidently unwilling to go to bed. The great buildings stood up white and spectral-like on the one side of the street, while on the other they loomed out black against the clear sky. The garish flare of the innumerable street lamps seemed out of place under the serene splendour of the heavens, and the frequent cries of the street boys, and noisy rattling of passing cabs, jarred on the ear. At least Keith thought so, for, after walking in silence for some time, he turned with a gesture of irritation to his companion. "Isn't this noise disagreeable?" he said impatiently; "under such a perfect sky the city ought to lie dead like a fantastic dream of the Arabian Nights, but the gas lamps and incessant restlessness of Melbourne vulgarises the whole thing." "Poetical, certainly," replied Ezra, rousing himself from his abstraction; "but I should not care to inhabit an enchanted city. To me there is something grand in this restless crowd of people, all instinct with life and ambition--the gas lamps jar on your dream, but they are evidences of civilisation, and the hoarse murmur of the mob is like the mutterings of a distant storm, or white waves breaking on a lonely coast. No, my friend, leave the enchanted cities to dreamland, and live the busy life of the nineteenth century." "Your ideas and wishes are singularly at variance," said Keith smiling. "The city suggests poetical thoughts to you, but you reject them and lower yourself to the narrow things of everyday." "I am a man, and must live as one," replied the Jew, with a sigh; "it's hard enough to do so--Heaven knows!--without creating Paradises at whose doors we must ever stand like lost Peris." "What's the matter with you to-night?" asked Keith abruptly. "Nothing particular; only I've had a quarrel with my father." "Is that all? My dear Lazarus, your father lives in an atmosphere of quarrelling--it's bread and meat to him--so you needn't fret over a few words. What was the quarrel about?" "Money." "Humph!--generally a fruitful cause of dissension. Tell me all about it." "You know how I love Rachel?" said Lazarus quietly. "Well, I am anxious to marry her and have a home of my own. It's weary work living in tents like a Bedouin. I get a good salary, it's true; but I asked my father to give me a sufficient sum of ready money to buy a piece of land and a house. I might have saved myself the trouble--he refused, and we had angry words, so parted in anger." "I wouldn't bother about it, if I were you," said Keith consolingly. "Words break no bones--besides, this burlesque may bring us a lot of money, and then you can marry Rachel when you please." "I don't expect much money out of it," replied the Jew, with a frown. "It's our first piece, and Mortimer will drive a hard bargain with us--but you seem very hopeful to-night." "I have cause to. Eugénie has written me a letter, in which she says she is coming to Melbourne." "That's good news, indeed. Is she going to stay?" "I think so," said Keith gaily. "I told you she was a governess, so she has replied to an advertisement in the _Argus_, and hopes to get the situation." "I trust she will," observed Ezra, smiling at Keith's delight. "She will do you a lot of good by her presence, and guard you from the spells of Armida." "_Alias_ Caprice. Thanks for the warning, but I've not been ensnared by the fair enchantress yet, and never mean to; but here we are at the theatre. I hope we get good terms from Mortimer." "So do I, for Rachel's sake." "We are both _preux chevaliers_, anxious to gain for our lady-loves not fame, but money. Oh, base desire!" "It may be base, but it's very necessary," replied the prudent Jew, and they both entered the stage-door of the theatre. Mortimer's sanctum was a very well-furnished room, displaying considerable taste on the part of the occupant, for the manager of the "Bon-Bon" was sybaritic in his ideas. The floor was covered with a heavy velvet carpet, and the walls adorned with excellent pictures, while the furniture was all chosen for comfort as well as for ornament. Mortimer was seated at his desk with a confused mass of papers before him, and leaning back in a chair near him was Caprice, who looked rather pale and worn. There was a lamp on the table with a heavy shade, which concentrated all the light into a circle, and Kitty's pale face, with its aureole of fair hair seen in the powerful radiance, appeared strange and unreal. Dark circles under her heavy eyes, faint lines round the small mouth, and the weary look now habitual to her, all combined to give her face a wan and spiritual look which made even Mortimer shiver as he looked at her. "Hang it, Kitty," he said roughly, "don't look so dismal. You ought to see a doctor." "What for?" she asked listlessly. "I'm quite well." "Humph! I don't think so. You've been going down the hill steadily the last few months. Look how thin you are--a bag of bones." "So was Rachel," replied Caprice, with a faint smile. "Well, she didn't live very long. Besides, you ain't Rachel," growled Mortimer, "and I don't want you to get ill just now." "No, you could hardly supply my place," said Caprice, with a sneer. "Don't you bother yourself, Mortimer, I'm not going to die yet. When I do I sha'n't be sorry; life hasn't been so pleasant to me that I should wish to live." "I don't know what you want," grumbled the manager; "you've got all Melbourne at your feet." "I can't say much for Melbourne's morality, then," retorted Caprice bitterly; "circumstances have made me what I am, but I'm getting tired of the cakes and ale business. If I could only secure the future of my child, I'd turn religious." "Mary Magdalen!" "Yes, a case of history repeating itself, isn't it?" she replied, with a harsh laugh. "Strange!" said Mortimer, scrutinising her narrowly; "the worse a woman is in her youth, the more devout she becomes in her old age." "On the authority of M. de la Rochefoucauld, I suppose," answered Caprice; "old age gives good advice when it no longer can give bad example." "Who told you that?" "A man you never knew--Vandeloup." "I don't know that my not being acquainted with him was much to be regretted." "No, I don't think it was," replied Caprice coolly; "he had twice your brains--to know him was a liberal education." "In cheap cynicism, gad, you've been an apt pupil." Kitty laughed, and, rising from her seat, began to walk to and fro. "I wish those boys would come," she said restlessly; "I want to go home." "Then go," said Mortimer; "you needn't stay." "Oh, yes, I need," she replied; "I want to see that they get good terms for their play." "I'll give them a fair price," said Mortimer; "but I'm not going to be so liberal as you expect." "I've no doubt of that." "I believe you're sweet on that Stewart." "Perhaps I am!" "Meddlechip won't like that," "Pish! I don't care two straws for Meddlechip." "No; but you do for his money." "Of course; that goes without saying." "You're a hardened little devil, Caprice." "God knows I've had enough to make me hard," she replied bitterly, throwing herself down in her chair, with a frown. There was a knock at the door at this moment, and, in reply to Mortimer's invitation to "come in," Ezra and Keith appeared. "Well, you two are late," said Mortimer, glancing at his watch; "a quarter-past eleven." "I'm very sorry," said Ezra quietly; "but it was my fault. I was telling Stewart about some business." "Well, we won't take long to settle this affair," remarked Mortimer, looking over his papers. "Be seated, gentlemen." Keith took off his overcoat and threw it over the back of a chair, on which Kitty's fur-lined mantle was already resting. Caprice, who had flushed up on the advance of Stewart, leaned back in her chair, while Keith sat down near her, and Ezra took a position opposite, close to Mortimer. "Now then, gentlemen," said Mortimer, playing with a paper-cutter, "about this burlesque--what is your opinion?" "That's rather a curious question to ask an author," replied Keith gaily. "We naturally think it excellent." "I hope the public will think the same," observed Mortimer drily; "but I don't mean that. I want to know your terms." "Of course," said Ezra, smoothly; "but just tell us what you are prepared to give." "I'm buyer, gentlemen, you are sellers," replied the manager shrewdly; "I can't take up your position." Kitty leaned back in her chair and bent over close to Keith's ear. "Ask five pounds a night," she whispered. Stewart glanced at Ezra, and seeing he was in doubt as to what to say, spoke out loudly. "Speaking for myself and partner, I think we'll take five pounds a night." "Yes, I'll agree to that," observed Ezra eagerly "I've no doubt you will," rejoined Mortimer, raising his eyebrows; "that's thirty pounds a week, fifteen pounds apiece--a very nice sum, gentlemen--if you get it." "Then what do you propose to give?" asked Keith. "One pound for every performance." Stewart laughed. "Do you take us for born fools?" he asked angrily. "No, I do not," replied Mortimer, catching his chin between finger and thumb, and looking critically at the two young men; "I take you for very clever boys who are just making a start, and I'm willing to help you--at my own price--which is one pound a night." "The game's not worth the candle," said Ezra, in a disappointed tone. "Oh, yes, it is," retorted Mortimer; "it gives you a chance. Now, look here, I've no desire to take advantage of my position, which, as you see, is a very strong one." "In what way?" asked Caprice, elevating her eyebrows. Mortimer explained in his slow voice as follows,--"I can write home to London and get successful plays with big reputations already made." "Yes, and pay big prices for them." "That may be," replied the manager imperturbably; "but if I give a good price I get a good article that is sure to recoup me for my outlay. I don't say that 'Faust Upset' isn't good, but at the same time it's an experiment. Australians don't like their own raw material." "They never get the chance of seeing it," said Keith bitterly; "you of course look at it from a business point of view, as is only proper, but seeing that you draw all your money from Colonial pockets, why not give Colonial brains a chance?" "Because Colonial brains don't pay, Colonial pockets do," said Mortimer coolly; "besides, I am giving you a chance, and that at considerable risk to myself. I will put on this burlesque in good style because Caprice is dead set on it; but business is business, and I can't afford to lose money on an untried production." "Suppose it turns out a great success," said Ezra, "we, the authors, only make six pounds a week, while you take all the profits." "Certainly," retorted Mortimer; "I've taken the risk." "Then if we make a great success of this burlesque," said Keith, "you will give us better terms for the next thing we write?" "Well, yes," said the manager, in a hesitating manner; "but, of course, though your position is improved, mine is still the same." "I understand; as long as you have the run of the London market, you can treat Colonial playwrights as you choose?" "You've stated the case exactly." "It's an unfair advantage." "No doubt, but business is business. I hold the trump card." "It's a bad lookout for the literary and musical future of Australia when such men as you hold the cards," said Ezra gloomily; "but it's no use arguing the case. I've heard all this sort of thing before. The Australians are too busy making money to trouble about such a contemptible thing as literary work." "I'll tell you what, Mortimer," broke in Caprice, "give them two pounds a night for the piece." "Not I." "Yes you will, or I don't show at the Bon-Bon." "You forget your engagement, my dear," said Mortimer complacently. "No, I don't," retorted Kitty, snapping her fingers; "that for my engagement. I don't care if I broke it to-morrow. You've got your remedy, no doubt; try it, and see what you'll make of it." Mortimer looked uneasily at her. He knew he had the law on his side, but Caprice was so reckless that she cared for nothing, and would do what she pleased in spite of both him and the law. Besides, he could not afford to lose her, so he met her half way. "Tell you what," he said genially, "I've no wish to be hard on you, boys--I'll give you one pound a night for a week, and if the burlesque is a success, two pounds--there, that's fair." "I suppose it's the best terms we can get," said Keith recklessly; "anything for the chance of having a play put on the stage. What do you say, Lazarus?" "I accept," replied the Jew briefly. "In that case," said Kitty, rising, "I needn't stay any longer. Mr. Lazarus, will you take me to my carriage?" "Allow me," said Keith advancing. Kitty recoiled, and an angry light flashed in her eyes. "No, thank you," she said coldly, snatching up her cloak, "Mr. Lazarus will see me down," and without another word she swept out of the room, followed by Ezra, who was much astonished at the rebuff Keith had received. "What's that for?" asked Mortimer looking up. "I thought you were the white boy there." "I'm sure I don't know," said Keith, in a puzzled tone. "She has been rather cold to me for the last three months, but she never snubbed me till now." "Oh, she's never the same two minutes together," said Mortimer, turning once more to his desk. "Have a drink?" Keith nodded, whereupon Mortimer, who was the most hospitable of men, brought forth whisky and seltzer. As he was filling the glasses, Ezra re-entered with Keith's coat. "Caprice carried this downstairs with her by mistake," he said, giving it to Keith, "and called me back to return it." "Gad! she went off in such a whirlwind of passion I don't wonder she took it. I'm glad she left the chair," said Mortimer coolly. "Will you join us?" "No, thanks," replied Ezra, putting on his hat. "I've got to go back to the office. Good-night. See you to-morrow, Keith; you can settle with Mortimer about the agreement," and thereupon he vanished. Keith and Mortimer sat down, and the latter drafted out an agreement about the play which he promised to send to his lawyer, and then, if the young men approved of it, the whole affair could be settled right off. This took a considerable time, and it was about half-past twelve when Keith, having said good-night to Mortimer, left the theatre. He walked down Collins Street, smoking his cigarette, and thinking about his good luck and Eugénie. How delighted she would be at his success. He would make lots of money, and then he could marry her. After wandering about for some considerable time, he turned homeward. Walking up Bourke Street, he entered Russell Street, and went on towards East Melbourne. Passing along in front of Lazarus' shop, he saw a man leaning against the door. "What are you doing there?" asked Keith sharply, going up to him. The man struck out feebly with his fists, and giving an indistinct growl, lurched heavily against Keith, who promptly knocked him down, and had a tussle with him. The moon was shining brightly, and, as the light fell on his face, Keith recognised him instantly--it was Randolph Villiers. "You'd better go home, Villiers," he said quickly, raising him to his feet, "you'll be getting into trouble." "Go to devil," said Mr. Villiers, in a husky voice, lurching into the centre of the street. "I'm out on business. I know what I know, and if you knew what I knew, you'd know a lot--eh! wouldn't you?" and he leered at Stewart. "Pah, you're drunk," said Stewart in disgust, turning on his heel; "you'd better get home, or you'll get into some mischief." "No, I won't," growled Villiers, "but I know some 'un as will." "Who?" "Oh, I know--I know," retorted Villiers, and went lurching down the street, setting the words to a popular tune,-- "I know a thing or two, Yes I do--just a few." Keith looked at the drunken man rolling heavily down the street--a black, misshapen figure in the moonlight--and then, turning away with a laugh, walked thence to East Melbourne thinking of Eugénie. CHAPTER XV. THE RUSSELL STREET CRIME. The next morning a rumour crept through the city that a murder had been committed in a house in Russell Street, and many people proceeded to the spot indicated to find out if it were true. They discovered that for once rumour had not lied, and Lazarus, the pawnbroker, one of the best known characters in the city, had been found dead in his bed with his throat cut. The house being guarded by the police, who were very reticent, no distinct information could be gained, and it was not until _The Penny Whistle_ came out at four o'clock that the true facts of the crime were ascertained. A general rush was made by the public for copies of the paper, and by nightfall nothing was talked of throughout Melbourne but the Russell Street crime. The version given by _The Penny Whistle_, which was written by a highly imaginative reporter, was as follows, and headed by attractive titles:-- TERRIBLE CRIME IN RUSSELL STREET _Lazarus has passed in his Checks_. An Unknown Assassin is In Our Midst. It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and we have now an excellent illustration of this proverb. A crime has been committed before which the marvellous romances of Gaboriau sink into insignificance, and the guilty wretch who has stained his soul with murder is still at large. The bare facts of the case are as follows:-- Early this morning it was noticed by a policeman that the shop of Lazarus, a well-known pawnbroker, was not opened, and knowing the methodical habits of the old man, the policeman was much surprised. However, thinking that Lazarus might have overslept himself, he passed on, and had gone but a few yards when a boy called Isaiah Jacobs rushed into the street from an alley which led to the back of the house. The lad was much terrified, and it was with considerable difficulty that the policeman elicited from him the following story:-- He had come to his work as usual at eight o'clock, and went round to the back door in order to get into the house. This door was generally open, and Lazarus waiting for him, but on this morning it was closed, and although the boy knocked several times, no response was made. He then noticed that the window which is on the left-hand side of the door going in, was wide open, and becoming impatient, he climbed up to it, and looked in to see if the old man was asleep. To his consternation he saw Lazarus lying on the floor in a pool of blood, and, seized with a sudden terror, he dropped from the window and rushed into the street. On hearing this, the policeman sent him for Sergeant Mansard, who soon arrived on the scene, with several other members of the force. They went round to the back and found the door closed and the window open as the boy had described. Having tried the door and found it locked, the police burst it open, and entered the house to view a scene which baffles description. The murdered man was lying nearly nude in the middle of the room in a pool of blood. His throat was cut from ear to ear, and, judging from the bruises and cuts on his hands and arms, there must have been a terrible struggle before the murderer accomplished his act. The bed-clothes, all stained with blood, were lying half on the bed and half on the floor, so that it is surmised that the deceased must have been attacked while asleep, and woke suddenly to fight for his life. A large iron safe which stood near the head of the bed was wide open, the keys being in the lock, and all the drawers pulled out. A lot of papers which had evidently been in the safe were lying on the floor, but in spite of a rigid examination, no money could be found, so it is presumed that the murder was effected for the sake of robbery. On one sheet of the bed were several stains of blood, as if the assassin had wiped his hands thereon, but the weapon with which the crime was committed cannot be found. A door looking into the shop was closed and bolted, so the murderer must have made his entry through the window, and, departing the same way, forgot to close it. The body of the deceased has been removed to the Morgue, and an inquest will be held to-day. The case has been placed in the hands of Detective Naball, who is now on the spot taking such notes as he deems necessary for the elucidation of this terrible mystery. Hereunder will be found a plan of the room in which the murder was committed, and also the alley leading to the street. We wish our readers to take particular note of this, as we wish to give our theory as to the way in which the murderer went about his diabolical work. ---------------------------------------------------------------- RUSSELL STREET ---------------------------------|--------|--------------------- SHOP | ALLEY | ________________A________________| | ==| | C | | FIREPLACE |_____ B | | ==| ____| F | | G ____ |____ | |________________| E | | D | |_________________________________________| [Illustration: Diagram of Pawn Shop] A. Door leading into shop--found bolted. B. Bed with clothes in disorder. C. Safe found open, with all valuables abstracted. D. Window found open by which assassin probably entered. E. Door leading to alley--found locked. F. Alley leading to street, by which entrance was gained to back of house. G. Place where body of murdered man was discovered. In the first place, there is no doubt that the motive of the crime was robbery, as is proved by the open safe rifled of its contents. The murderer evidently knew that Lazarus slept in the back room and had the keys of the safe--as we have since ascertained--under his pillow. He must also have known the position of the safe and bed, for had he groped about for them, he would have awakened the old man, who would have instantly have given the alarm. The window D is about five feet from the ground, and was fastened with an ordinary catch, as it never seemed to have entered the old man's head that an attempt would be made to rob him. Our theory is that the murderer is a man who knew the deceased, and had been frequently in the back room, so as to assure himself of the position of things. Last night he must have entered the alley--at what hour we are not prepared to say, as the time of the murder can only be determined by medical evidence--and opened the window by slipping the blade of his knife between the upper and lower parts, and pushing back the latch. He then climbed softly into the room, and going straight to the bed, found the deceased asleep. Very likely he did not intend to kill him had he slept on, but in trying to abstract the keys from under the pillow, Lazarus must have sprung up and tried to give the alarm. Instantly the murderer's clutch was on his throat; but the old man, struggling off the bed, fought with terrible strength for his life. The struggle took them into the centre of the room, and there Lazarus, becoming exhausted, must have fallen, and the murderer, with diabolical coolness, must have cut his throat, so as to effectually silence him. Then, taking the keys from under the pillow, he must have opened the safe, taken what he wished, and made his escape through the window, and from thence into the street. Probably no one was about, and he could slink away unperceived, for, had he met any one, his clothes, spotted with the blood of his victim, would have attracted attention. We conclude he must have had a dark lantern in order to see the contents of the safe, but, as none has been found, he must have taken it with him, together with the knife with which the crime was committed. This is all we can learn at the present time, but whether any sounds of a struggle were heard, can only be discovered from the witnesses at the inquest to-morrow. Of one thing we are certain, the murderer cannot escape, as his blood-stained clothes must necessarily have been noticed by even the most casual observer. We will issue a special edition of _The Penny Whistle_ to-morrow, with a full account of the inquest and the witnesses examined thereat. CHAPTER XVI. THE INQUEST. There was naturally a great deal of excitement over the murder, as, apart from the magnitude of the crime, Lazarus was a well-known character in Melbourne. He knew more secrets than any priest, and many a person of apparently spotless character felt a sensation of relief when they heard that the old Jew was dead. Lazarus was not the sort of man to keep a diary, so to many people it was fortunate that he had died unexpectedly, and carried a number of disagreeable secrets with him to the grave. The report of the inquest was followed with great interest, for though it was generally thought that robbing was the motive for the crime, yet some hinted that, considering the character of the old man, there might be more cogent reasons for the committal of the murder. One of these sceptics was Naball, in whose hands the case had been placed for elucidation. "I don't believe it was robbery," he said to a brother detective. "Old Lazarus knew a good many dangerous secrets, and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find that the murderer was some poor devil whom he had in his power." "But the open safe?" said the detective. "Pish! that can easily be accounted for; there may have been papers implicating the murderer, or the robbery might have been a blind, or--oh, there's dozens of reasons--however, we'll find it all out at the inquest." In opening the proceedings, the Coroner mentioned all the circumstances in connection with the murder which had come to the knowledge of the police, and said that as yet no clue had been found likely to lead to the detection of the assassin, but without doubt the evidence of the witnesses about to be examined would afford some starting point. The first witness called was the policeman who had found the body, and he deposed to the circumstances which led to the discovery. He was succeeded by Dr. Chisholm, who had examined the body of the deceased, and, having been sworn in the usual manner, deposed as follows:-- "I am a duly qualified medical practitioner. I have examined the body of the deceased. It is that of an old man--I should say about seventy years of age--very badly nourished; I found hardly any food in the stomach. There were many bruises and excoriations on the body, which, I have no doubt, are due to the struggle between the murderer and his victim. I examined the neck, back, and limbs, but could find no fractures. The throat was cut evidently by some very sharp instrument, as the windpipe was completely severed. I examined the body about nine o'clock in the morning,--it was then warm, and, according to my belief, the deceased must have been dead eight or nine hours." _Coroner_.--"Are you certain of that?" _Dr. Chisholm_.--"Not absolutely. It is a very difficult thing to tell exactly, by the temperature of the body, what length of time has elapsed since death. After a sudden and violent death, the body often parts with its heat slowly, as I think it has done in this case. Besides, the night was very hot, which would be an additional reason for the body cooling slowly." _Coroner_.--"Was the body rigid when you examined it?" _Dr. Chisholm_.--"Yes; _rigor mortis_ had set in. It generally occurs within six hours of death, but it might occur earlier if there had been violent muscular exertion, as there was in this case. I think that the deceased was awakened from his sleep, and struggled with his murderer till he became exhausted; then the murderer cut his throat with a remarkably sharp knife." _Coroner_.--"And, according to your theory, death took place about midnight?" _Dr. Chisholm_.--"Yes--I think so; but, as I said, before, it is very difficult to tell." The next witness called was Isaiah Jacobs, who gave his evidence in an aggressively shrill voice, but the Coroner was unable to elicit more from him than had already been published in _The Penny Whistle_. After the echo of the young Israelite's shrill voice had died away, Keith Stewart was sworn, and deposed as follows:-- "I was clerk to the deceased, and had occupied the position for some months. On the day previous to the murder, I had received a hundred pounds, in twenty bank notes of five pounds each, which I gave to the deceased, and saw him place them in his safe. He always slept on the premises, and kept his keys under his pillow. He told me that he always had a loaded revolver on the table beside his bed. On the night, or rather morning, of the murder I was passing along Russell Street on my way home. I saw a man standing near the shop. I knew him as Randolph Villiers. I asked him what he was doing, but could get no very decided answer--he was quite intoxicated, and went off down the street." _Coroner_.--"About what time was this?" _Stewart_.--"Two o'clock." _Coroner_.--"You are certain?" _Stewart_.--"Quite--I heard it striking from the Town Hall tower." _Coroner_.--"Was Villiers' intoxication real or feigned?" _Stewart_.--"Real, as far as I could see." _Coroner_.--"It was a moonlight night, I believe?" _Stewart_.--"Yes; the moon was very bright." _Coroner_.--"Did you notice anything peculiar about Villiers? Was he confused? Were his clothes in disorder? Any marks of blood?" _Stewart_.--"No; I saw nothing extraordinary about him. He is generally more or less drunk, so I did not notice him particularly." _Coroner_.--"I believe, Mr. Stewart, you belong to the Skylarks' Club?" _Stewart_.--"I do." _Coroner_.--"And yet you are a clerk in a pawnbroker's office--aren't the two things rather incongruous?" _Stewart_.--"No doubt; but I am in a position to be a member of the Skylarks' Club, and as to being a clerk to Lazarus, it's merely a matter of honour. When he engaged me he stipulated that I should stay for six months, and though I unexpectedly came in for some money, I felt myself bound in honour to keep my agreement." _Coroner_.--"Thank you, that will do, Mr. Stewart. Call Mrs. Tibsey." That lady, large, red-faced, and energetic, was sworn and gave her evidence in a voluble manner. She had evidently been drinking, as there was a strong odour of gin in the air, and kept curtseying to the Coroner every time she answered. "My name's Tibsey, my lord--Maria Tibsey. I've bin married twice, my first being called Bliggings, and died of gunpowder--blowed up in a quarry explosion. My second, also dead, sir, 'ad no lungs, and a corf which tored him to bits. Only one child, sir, 'Tilda Bliggings, out in service, my lord." _Coroner_.--"Yes, yes, Mrs. Tibsey, we don't want to learn all these domestic affairs. Come to the point." _Mrs. Tibsey_.--"About Sating, sir?--I called 'im Sating, sir, 'cause he were a robber of the widder and orfin--me, sir, and my darter. I was a-talking to my darter on that night, your worships, she 'aving visited me. I lives near old Sating, as it was 'andy to drop in to pop anything, and about twelve I 'eard a scream--a 'orrid 'owl, as made my back h'open and shut, so I ses, ''Tilda,' ses I,' old Sating is 'avin' a time of it, e's boozin',' and that's all, sir." _Coroner_.--"You never went to see what it was?" _Mrs. Tibsey_.--"Me, my lord? no, your worship, it weren't my bisiniss. I didn't think it were murder." _Coroner_.--"You are quite sure it was twelve o'clock?" _Mrs. Tibsey_.--"I swears h'it." Miss Matilda Bliggings was then called, and deposed she also heard the scream, and that her mother had said it must be old Lazarus. It was twelve o'clock. Ezra Lazarus was then called, but could give no material evidence. He said he had quarrelled with his father on the day preceding the murder, and had not seen him since. The next witness called caused a sensation, as it was none other than Mr. Randolph Villiers, who stated:-- "My name is Villiers. I do nothing. I know old Lazarus. I was passing through Russell Street, and leaned up against the shop door--I was drunk--on my way to Little Bourke Street. I remember meeting Mr. Stewart--think it was two, but ain't sure." _Coroner_.--"Where were you before you met Mr. Stewart?" _Villiers_.--"About the town somewhere." _Coroner_.--"Alone?" _Villiers_.--"Sometimes I was, sometimes I wasn't." This ended all the evidence procurable, and the Coroner summed up. The crime had evidently been committed for the purpose of robbery, as the hundred pounds which Mr. Stewart swore had been placed in the safe by the deceased were gone; the knife with which the deed had been committed had not yet been found; in fact, all the evidence was of the barest character. According to Dr. Chisholm's evidence, the deceased had been murdered about midnight, and as Mrs. Tibsey and her daughter heard a scream also at that time, all the evidence seemed to point to that hour as having been the time of death. Mr. Stewart met Villiers at two o'clock, and Villiers stated that he had only been in Russell Street a few minutes before he met Mr. Stewart. The jury would be kind enough to bring in a verdict in accordance with the facts before them. The jury had a long argument; some wanted to bring in a charge of murder against Villiers, as he certainly had not accounted for his presence in Russell Street; but the evidence altogether was so vague that they at length came to the conclusion it would be best to leave the matter to the police, and brought in a verdict that the deceased had met his death at the hands of some person or persons unknown. Great dissatisfaction was expressed by the public at this verdict, as, in the opinion of most people, Villiers was the guilty man. A regular battle was fought in the newspapers over the whole affair; but one man said nothing. That man was Naball! CHAPTER XVII. A COUNCIL OF THREE. When the inquest was over, Naball went straight home, and carefully read all the notes he had taken of the evidence given. After doing so, he came to the conclusion that the person on whom most suspicion rested was Keith Stewart. "In the first place," said Naball, thoughtfully eyeing his papers, "Stewart was the clerk of old Lazarus, and knew what was in the safe, and where the keys were kept; he is a member of an expensive club, which he can't possibly afford to pay for out of his salary as a clerk; as to his coming in for money, that's bosh!--if he had, agreement or no agreement, he wouldn't have remained with old Lazarus. He states that he left the theatre at half-past twelve, and the doctor says the death took place at midnight; but then he wasn't sure, and it might have taken place at half-past one, which would give Stewart time to commit the crime. He could not account for his time between leaving the theatre and seeing Villiers except by saying he had been walking, which is a very weak explanation. Humph! I think I'll see Mr. Stewart and ask him a few questions." Mr. Naball glanced at himself in the mirror, arranged the set of his tie, dusted his varnished boots, and then sallied forth in search of Keith. Passing along Swanston Street, he went into a florist's, and purchased himself a smart buttonhole of white flowers, then held a short council of war with himself as to where to find Stewart. "Wonder where he lives?" muttered the detective, in perplexity; "let me see, what's the time," glancing at his watch--"nearly five; he's a great friend of Mr. Lazarus, and I know Lazarus is sub-editor of _The Penny Whistle_; I'll go along and ask him--he's sure to be in just now." He walked rapidly along to the newspaper office, and, being admitted to Ezra's room, found that young man just putting on his coat preparatory to going away, his labours for the day now being concluded. "Well, Mr. Naball," asked Ezra, in his soft voice, "what can I do for you--anything about this unfortunate affair?" "Yes," said Naball bluntly; "I want to see Mr. Stewart." "Oh, you do!" broke in a new voice, and Stewart stepped out of an adjoining room, where he had been waiting for his friend; "what is the matter?" "Nothing much," observed Naball, in a frank voice; "but as this case has been put into my hands, I want to ask you a few questions.' "Am I in the way?" asked Lazarus, taking up his hat. "By no means," replied Naball politely; "in fact, you may be of assistance." "Well, fire away," said Keith, coolly lighting a cigarette. "I'm ready to answer anything." Naball glanced keenly at both the young men before he began to talk, and noted their appearance. Keith had a rather haggard look, as though he had been leading a dissipated life; while Ezra's face looked careworn and pale. "Cut up over his father's death, I guess," said Naball to himself; "poor chap!--but as for the other, it looks like late hours and drink. I must find out all about your private life, Mr. Stewart." "I'm waiting," said Keith impatiently; "I wish you wouldn't keep me very long; I've got to meet a train from the country to-night." Naball closed both doors of the room, and, resuming his seat, looked steadily at Keith, who, seated astride a chair, leaned his elbows on the back, and smoked nonchalantly. "Are you aware," asked Naball deliberately, "if the late Mr. Lazarus had any enemies?" "I can answer that question best," said Ezra quickly, before Keith could speak. "Yes, he had plenty; my father, as you know, was a moneylender as well as a pawnbroker, and, as he took advantage of his possession of money to extort high interest, I know it made a lot of people feel bitter against him." "Considering that you are his son, sir," said Naball, in a tone of rebuke, "you do not speak very well of the dead." "I have not much cause to," rejoined Ezra bitterly; "he was father to me in name only. But you need not make any comments--my duty to my father's memory is between myself and my conscience. I have answered your question--he had many enemies." "So I believe also," said Keith slowly; "but I don't think any one was so hostile as to desire his death." "As you don't think so," observed Naball sharply, "I myself believe that the murder was committed for the sake of robbery." "That's easily seen," said Ezra calmly, "from the fact of the safe being open and the money gone." "That might have been a blind," retorted Naball quickly, "but you talk of money being stolen; I think, Mr. Stewart, in your evidence to-day you said they were bank notes?" "Yes; twenty ten-pound notes," replied Keith. "Do you know the numbers of them?" "No; I never thought of taking the numbers." "And you handed them to Mr. Lazarus?" "I did; at half-past five--he put them in his safe." "Were there any other valuables in the safe?" "I don't know," retorted Keith coldly; "I was not in the confidence of my employer." "Do you know?" said Naball, turning to Ezra. The young Jew smiled bitterly. "I also was not in my father's confidence," he said, "so know nothing." "There was some gold and silver money also in the safe," said Keith to Naball, knocking the ashes off his cigarette. "Humph! that's not much guide," replied the detective; "it's the notes I want--if I could only find the numbers of those notes--where did they come from?" "A man at Ballarat, called Forbes." "Oh! I'll write to Mr. Forbes of Ballarat," said Naball, making a note, "but if those notes are put in circulation, do you know of any means by which I can identify them?" Keith shook his head, then suddenly gave a cry. "Yes; I can tell you how to identify one of the notes." "That will be quite sufficient," said the detective eagerly. "How?" "That boy, Isaiah," said Stewart, "he's great on backing horses, and frequently tells me about racing. When I was making up my cash on that night, the notes were lying on the desk, and as the door of Mr. Lazarus' room was open, Isaiah was afraid to speak aloud about his tip, so he wrote it down." "But how can that identify the bank-note?" asked the perplexed detective. "Because the young scamp wrote his tip, 'Back Flat-Iron,' on the back of a ten-pound note." "In pencil?" asked Naball. "No; in ink!" "So one of the notes that were stolen has the inscription 'Back Flat-Iron' on the back of it?" "Exactly!" Naball scribbled a line or two in his pocket-book, and shut it with a snap. "If that note goes into circulation," he said, in a satisfied tone, "I'll soon trace it to its original holder." "And then?" asked Ezra. "And then," reiterated Naball quietly, "I'll lay my hands on the man who killed your father. And now, Mr. Stewart, I want to ask you a few questions about yourself." "Go on!" said Keith imperturbably; "I hope you don't think I killed Lazarus?" "I think--nothing," replied Naball quietly; "I only want to find out as much as I can. You were at the Bon-Bon Theatre on that night?" "Yes; talking to Mr. Mortimer." "Any one else with you?" "Yes," replied Ezra, "I was, and Caprice; we left about half-past eleven." "And you, Mr. Stewart?" "I left at half-past twelve." "Where did you go then?" "I was excited over some business I had done, and strolled about the city." "Anywhere in particular?" "No. I went along Collins Street, up William Street, round about the Law Courts, and then came down Bourke Street, on my way home." "How long were you thus wandering about?" "I think about an hour and a half, because as I turned into Russell Street the clock struck two." "Why did you turn into Russell Street?" "Why!" echoed Keith, in surprise, "because I wanted to go home. I went through Russell Street, down Flinders Street, and then walked to East Melbourne, past the Fitzroy Gardens." "Oh! and you saw Villiers standing about the shop?" "Yes; he was leaning against the door." "Drunk?" "Very!" "What did you do?" "I ordered him off." "Did he go?" "Yes; rolled down the street towards Bourke Street, singing some song." "You noticed nothing peculiar about him?" "No." "Was the door of the alley leading to the back open or shut?" "I don't know--I never noticed." "After Villiers disappeared, you went home?" "I did--straight home." Naball pondered for a few moments. Stewart certainly told all he knew with perfect frankness, but then was he telling the truth? "Do you want to ask me any more questions?" asked Keith, rising. Naball made up his mind, and spoke out roughly,-- "I want to know how you, with a small salary, can afford to belong to an expensive club like the 'Skylarks?'" Keith's face grew as black as thunder. "Who the devil gave you permission to pry into my private affairs?" "No one except myself," retorted Naball boldly, for, though inferior to Stewart in size, he by no means wanted pluck; "but I'm engaged in a serious case, and it will be best for you to speak out frankly. "You surely don't suspect Stewart of the murder?" interposed Ezra warmly. "I suspect nobody," retorted Naball. "I'm only asking him a question, and, if he's wise, he'll answer it." Keith thought for a moment. He saw that, for some extraordinary reason or another, Naball suspected him, so, in order to be on the safe side, resolved to take the detective's advice and answer the question. "It is, as you say, a serious matter," he observed quietly, "and I am the last person in the world not to give any assistance to the finding out of the criminal; ask what you please, and I will answer." This reply somewhat staggered Naball, but, as he had strong suspicions about Stewart's innocence, he put down the apparent frankness of the answer to crafty diplomacy. "I only want to know," he said mildly, "how a gentleman in your position can afford to belong to an expensive club." "Because I can afford to do so," replied Keith calmly. "When I first came to Melbourne, I had no money, and was engaged by Mr. Lazarus as his clerk, with the understanding I should stay with him six months. To this I agreed, but shortly afterwards a sum of five hundred pounds was placed to my credit, and afforded me a chance of living in good style. I wished to leave the pawnshop, but Mr. Lazarus reminded me of my position, and I had to stay. That is all." "Who placed this five hundred to your credit?" asked Naball. "I don't know." "You don't know?" echoed Naball, in surprise. "Do you mean to say that a large sum like that was placed to your credit by a person whom you don't know?" "I do." "And I can substantiate that statement," said Ezra quietly. Naball looked from one to the other in perplexity, puzzled what to ask next. Then he felt the only thing to be done was to go away and think the matter over. But he did not intend to lose sight of Keith, and this absurd statement about the five hundred only seemed to strengthen his suspicions, so he determined to have him shadowed. "Thank you, Mr. Stewart," he said quietly. "I have nothing more to ask. What time did you say you were going to meet a country train?" "I mentioned no time," replied Keith sharply. Baffled by this answer, Naball tried another way. "Will you kindly give me your address?" he asked, pulling out his pocket-book. "I may want to communicate with you." "Vance's boarding-house, Powlett Street, East Melbourne." Mr. Naball noted this in his book, and then, with a slight nod, took his leave. "Damn him," cried Keith fiercely, "he suspects me of this crime." "Pooh! that's nonsense," replied Ezra, as they went out, "you can easily prove an alibi." "No, I can't," replied Keith, in a hard tone. "From half-past twelve o'clock till two I was by myself, and no one saw me. I say I was wandering about the streets, he thinks I was in Russell Street committing a murder." "I don't think you need be a bit afraid of anyone suspecting you," said Ezra bitterly. "Why, they might as well think I killed my father." "You!" "Yes. I had a quarrel with him, and then he was murdered. Oh, I assure you they could get up an excellent case against me." "But you could prove an alibi." "That's just where it is," said Ezra coolly; "I can't." "Why not?" "Because, after leaving Kitty Marchurst, I went down the street to _The Penny Whistle_ office, and found it closed. I then walked home along Collins Street, through the Fitzroy Gardens. It was a beautiful night, and, as I was thinking over my quarrel with my father, I sat down on one of the seats for a time, so I did not get home till two o'clock in the morning. No one saw me, and I've got quite as much difficulty in proving an alibi as you have." "Do you think Naball suspects you?" "No; nor do I think he suspects you, but I've got a suspicion that he suspects some one." "And that some one--" "Is called Randolph Villiers." CHAPTER XVIII. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. When Naball left the two young men, he went straight to the Detective Office in order to get some one to look after Keith Stewart, and see that he did not leave Melbourne. Naball did not believe that he was going to meet any one that night, and wanted to find out why he was going to the station. "If he wanted to give me the slip," he thought, "he wouldn't have told me he was going to the railway station--humph! can't make out what he's up to." The gentleman who was to act as Mr. Stewart's shadow was a short, red-nosed man with a humbled appearance and a chronic sniffle. He was sparing of words, and communicated with his fellow-man by a series of nods and winks which did duty with him for conversation. "Tulch!" said Naball, when this extraordinary being appeared, "I want you to go to Vance's boarding-house, Powlett Street, East Melbourne, and keep your eye on a man called Keith Stewart." An interrogatory sniff from Tulch. "Ah, I forgot you don't know his personal appearance," said Naball thoughtfully; "he's tall, with fair hair, wears a suit of home-spun--humph;--that won't do, there are dozens of young men of that description. Here!--tell you what, I'll give you a note to deliver to him personally; muffle yourself up in an ulster when you deliver it, so that he won't know you--understand?" Mr. Tulch sniffed in the affirmative. "Follow him wherever he goes, and tell me what he's up to," said Naball, scribbling a note to Stewart and handing it to Tulch. "That's all--clear out." A farewell sniffle, and Tulch was gone. "Humph," muttered Naball to himself, "now I'd like to know the meaning of all this--I don't believe this cock-and-bull story about Stewart having money left him in this mysterious manner--people don't do that sort of thing now-a-days--I believe he's been robbing the old man for some time and was found out--so silenced him by using his knife. Knife," repeated Naball, "that's not been found yet--I must see about this--now there's Villiers--I wonder if he could help me? It was curious that he should have been about the shop at that special time--he's a bad lot--gad, I'll go and see what I can find out from him." Knowing Mr. Villiers' habits, he had no difficulty in discovering his whereabouts. Ah Goon's was where Villiers generally dwelt, so, after Naball had partaken of a nice little dinner, he went off to Little Bourke Street. It was now between seven and eight o'clock, which was the time Villiers generally dined, so, Naball not finding him at Ah Goon's, betook himself to a cook-shop in the neighbourhood, to which he was directed by a solid-looking Chinaman. It was a low-roofed place, consisting of a series of apartments all opening one into the other by squat little door-ways. The atmosphere was dull and smoky, and the acrid smell of burning wood saluted Naball's nostrils when he entered. Near the door-way a Chinaman was rolling out rice bread to the thinness of paper; then, cutting it into little squares, he wrapped each round a kind of sausage meat, and placed the rolls thus prepared on a tray for cooking. In the next apartment was a large boiler, with the lid off, filled with water, in which ten or twelve turkeys, skewered and trussed, were bobbing up and down amid the froth and scum of the boiling water. A crowd of Chinese, all chattering in their high shrill voices, were moving about half seen in the smoky atmosphere, through which candle and lamp light flamed feebly. Villiers, in a kind of little cell apartment, was having his supper when the detective entered. Before him was a large bowl filled with soup, and in this were squares of thin rice bread, and portions of turkey and duck mixed up into a savoury mess, and flavoured with the dark brown fluid which the Chinese use instead of salt. "Oh, it's you," growled Villiers, looking up with a scowl, "what do you want?" "You, my friend," said Naball cheerfully, taking a seat. "Oh, do you?" said Villiers, rubbing his bleared eyes, inflamed by the pungent smoke of the wood-fire. "I s'pose you think I killed old Lazarus?" "No, I don't," retorted the detective, looking straight at him, "but I think you know more than you tell." "He! he!" grinned the other sardonically. "Perhaps I do--perhaps I don't--it's my business." "And mine also," said Naball, somewhat nettled. "You forget the case is in my hands." "Don't care whose hands it's in," retorted Villiers, finishing his soup, "t'aint any trouble of mine." The detective bit his lip at the impenetrable way in which Villiers met his advances. Suddenly a thought flashed across his mind, and he bent forward with a meaning smile. "Got any more diamonds?" Villiers pushed back his chair from the table, and stared at Naball. "What diamonds?" he asked, in a husky voice. "Come now," said Naball, with a wink, "we know all about that--eh? Ah Goon is a good pawnbroker, isn't he?" "Ah Goon!" gasped Villiers, turning a little pale. "Yes; though he did only lend twenty pounds on those diamonds." "Look here, Mr. Jack-o'-Dandy," said Villiers, bringing his fist down on the table, "I don't want no beating about the bush, I don't. What do you mean, curse you?" "I mean that I know all about your little games," replied Naball, leaning over the table. "I know Caprice stole her own jewels for some purpose, and gave you some of the swag to shut your mouth, and I know that you're going to tell me all you know about this Russell Street business, or, by Jove, I'll have you arrested on suspicion." Villiers gave a howl like a wild beast, and, flinging himself across the table, tried to grapple with the detective, but recoiled with a shriek of wrath and alarm as he saw the shining barrel of a revolver levelled at his head. "Won't do, Villiers," said Naball smoothly; "try some other game." Whereupon Villiers, seeing that the detective was too strong for him, sat down sulkily in his chair, and after invoking a blessing on Naball's eyes, invited him to speak out. The detective replaced the revolver in his pocket, whence it could be easily seized if necessary, and smiled complacently at his sullen-faced friend. "Aha!" he said, producing a dainty cigarette, "this is much better. Have you a light?" Villiers flung down a lucifer match with a husky curse, which Naball, quite disregarding, took up the match and lighted his cigarette. Watching the blue smoke curling from his lips for a few moments, he turned languidly to Villiers, and began to talk. "You see, I know all about it," he said quietly; "you were too drunk to remember that night when you tried to take a diamond crescent off that woman, and I expect Ah Goon never told you!" "It was you who took it, then," growled Villiers fiercely. "In your own words, perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn't," replied Naball, in an irritating tone; "at all events, it's quite safe. You had better answer all my questions, because you bear too bad a character not to be suspected of the crime, particularly as you were about Russell Street on that night." "Yes, I was," said Villiers angrily; "and who saw me--Keith Stewart--a mighty fine witness he is." "Aha!" thought the astute Naball, "he does know something, then." "I could put a spoke in Stewart's wheel," grumbled the other viciously. "I don't think so," replied the detective, fingering his cigarette, "he is far above you--he's got money, is going to make a name by a successful play, and, if report speaks truly, Caprice loves him. "I don't care a farthing whether she does or not," said Villiers loudly; "she'd love any one who has money. Stewart's got some, has he; where did he get it?" "I'm sure I don't know." "I do!" "Indeed! where?" "Never you mind," said Villiers suspiciously. "I know my own knowing." "Remember what I said," observed Naball quietly, "and tell me all." "If I tell you all, what will you do?" asked Villiers. "I'll save your neck from the gallows," replied Naball smoothly. "Not good enough." "Oh, very well," said the detective rising, "I've no more to say. I'm off to the magistrate." "What for?" Naball fixed his keen eyes on the bloated face of the other. "To get a warrant for your arrest." "You can't do that." "Can't I--you'll see." "No; wait a bit," said Villiers in alarm; "I can easily prove myself innocent." "Indeed; then you'd better do so now, before a warrant is out for your arrest." "You won't give me any money?" "Not a cent--it's not a question of money with you, but life or death." Villiers deliberated for a moment, and then apparently made up his mind. "Sit down," he said sullenly. "I'll tell you all I know." Naball resumed his seat, lighted a fresh cigarette, and prepared to listen. "I was rather drunk on the night of the murder," he said, "but not so bad as Stewart thought me. He saw me at the shop-door at two o'clock, but I was there a quarter of an hour before." "Did you see anything?" "I saw the gate which led into the alley open," replied Villiers. "No one was about, so I walked in." "What for?" asked Naball, glancing at him keenly. "Oh, nothing," replied Villiers indifferently; "the fact was, I saw a policeman coming along, and though I was pretty drunk, I'd sense enough to know I might be run in, so I went into the alley and closed the gate till he passed." "And then you came out." "No, I didn't. I walked to the back of the house just to see where it led to. I saw the window wide open, and looked in and saw--" "The murdered man?" Villiers nodded. "Yes; the moonlight was streaming in at the window, and I could see quite plainly. I was in a fright, as I thought, seeing I had no business on the premises, I might be accused, so I got down from the window and went off, closing the gate of the alley after me." "It wasn't wise of you to stay about the premises," said Naball. "I know that," rejoined Villiers tartly; "but I couldn't get away, because I saw Stewart coming up the street just as I was wondering where to go; I then pretended to be drunk, so that I could get away without suspicion." "Why didn't you run?" asked Naball. "Because he was too close, and besides, he might have given chase, thinking I had been robbing the shop; then, with the open window and the murdered man, it would have been all up with me." "I don't know if it isn't all up with you now," said Naball drily. "How do I know you are innocent!" "Because I know who killed Lazarus." "The deuce you do--who?" "Stewart himself." "Humph! that's what I thought; but what proof have you?" Villiers put his hand in his pocket and brought out a large knife. "I found this just under the window," he said, handing it to Naball. "You'll see there's blood on the handle, so I'm sure it was with it the crime was committed." "But how do you know it's Stewart's knife?" asked Naball. Villiers placed his finger on one side of the handle. "Read that," he said briefly. "From Meg," read Naball. "Exactly," said Villiers. "Meg is Kitty Marchurst's child, and she gave it to Keith Stewart." "By Jove, it looks suspicious," said Naball. "He is in possession of a large sum of money, and can't tell how he got it. He can't account for his time on the night of the murder, and this knife with his name on it is found close to the window through which the murderer entered--humph!--things look black against him." "I suppose you'll arrest him at once?" said Villiers malignantly. "Then you suppose wrong," retorted Naball. "I'll have him looked after so that he won't escape; but I'll hold my tongue about this, and so will you." "Until when?" "Until I find out more about Stewart. I must discover if the knife was in his possession on the night of the murder, and also if this story about his money is true; again, I want to wait till some of these stolen bank notes are in circulation, so as to get more evidence against him." "But what am I to do?" asked Villiers sulkily. "You are to hold your tongue," said Naball, rising to his feet, "or else I may make things unpleasant for you--it's a good thing for your own sake you have told me all." "Told you all," muttered Villiers, as Naball took his departure. "I'm not so sure about that." CHAPTER XIX. A LOVERS' MEETING. It is a great blessing that the future is hidden from our anxious eyes, otherwise, to use a familiar expression, we would go out in a coach and four to meet our troubles. If Keith Stewart had only known that the detective suspected him of the murder of Lazarus, and was surely but slowly finding out strong evidence in favour of such a presumption, he, no doubt, would have been much troubled. But he thought that Naball's hints at the interview were not worth thinking about, for, strong in the belief of his own innocence, such an idea of his being accused of the crime never entered his mind. In spite of the disagreeable event which had occurred, Keith felt very happy on this night. He was young, he had a good sum of money in the bank, the gift of some beneficent fairy, he was going to make his _début_ as a dramatic author, and, above all, he was going to see Eugénie again. Therefore, as he sat at dinner, his heart was merry, and to him the future looked bright and cheerful. Things seemed so pleasant that, with the sanguine expectations of youth, he began to build castles in the air. "If this burlesque's a success," he thought, "I'll write a novel, and save every penny I make; then I'll go to London, after marrying Eugénie, and see if I can't make a name there--with perseverance I'm bound to do it." Poor youth, he did not know the difficulty of making a name in London; he was quite unaware that the literary market was overstocked, and that many criticisms depend on the state of the critic's liver. He did not know any of these things, so he went on eating his dinner and building castles in the air, all of which buildings were inhabited by Eugénie. From these pleasant dreams he was aroused by the entrance of the housemaid, a fat young person, who breathed hard, and rolled up to Keith, puffing and panting like a locomotive. "If you please," said the young lady, "the man." "What man?" asked Keith sharply. "He's waiting to see you," returned the housemaid stolidly. From experience Keith knew it was useless to expect sense from the housemaid, so he got up from the table and went out to the front-door, where a bundle, with a head at one end and a pair of boots at the other, held out a letter. "For me?" asked Keith, taking it. The bundle sniffed in an affirmative manner, so Stewart opened the letter and read it quickly. It only contained a line from Naball that if he heard of any new development of the case he would let Keith know, so that young gentleman, wondering why the detective took the trouble to write to him slipped the letter in his pocket, and nodded to the bundle. "All right," he said quickly; "no answer," and he shut the door in the bundle's face, whereupon the bundle sniffed. "I know him now," said Mr. Tulch to himself in a husky voice, as he walked away. "I'd know 'im if he was dooplicated twice h'over." Having come to this satisfactory conclusion, Mr. Tulch took up his position a short distance away, and began his dreary task of watching the house. And it was dreary work. The long hot day was over, and the long hot night had begun. It was just a quarter past seven, and the sky was a cloudless expanse of darkish blue, blazing with stars; a soft wind was whispering among the leaves of the trees, and making little whirls of white dust in the road. Every now and then a gay party of men and women on their way to some amusement would pass the spy, but he remained passively at his post, watching the sun-blistered varnished door of Vance's boarding-house. At last his patience was rewarded, for, somewhere about half-past seven, Keith came hurriedly out, and sped rapidly down the street. "What's he arter?" sniffed Mr. Tulch, stretching his cramped limbs. "I'll 'ave to ketch 'im h'up," and he rolled as quickly as he was able after the tall figure of the young man. A tram came along, and, without stopping it, Keith jumped on the dummy--the spy, breathless with running, sprang on the step of the end car and got inside, keeping his eye on Keith. The tram car went rapidly along Flinders Street, stopping every now and then to pick up or drop passengers, at which Keith seemed impatient. At last Spencer Street station was reached, and Keith sprang out; so did Tulch, keeping close to his heels. Stewart walked impatiently up and down one of the long platforms, which shortly began to fill with people expecting their friends. The shrill whistle of an approaching engine was heard, a red light suddenly appeared, advancing rapidly, and presently the long train, with its lighted carriages, drew up inside the station. Such a hurry-scurry; people jumping out of the train to meet those pressing forward on the platform, porters calling to one another, boxes, rugs, portmanteaus, bundles, all strewing the ground--a babel of voices, and at intervals the shrill whistle of a departing train. Amid all this confusion Tulch missed Keith, and was in a terrible state, for he knew what Naball would say. He dived hither and thither among the crowd with surprising activity, and at last came in sight of Stewart putting a young lady into a cab, in front of which was the luggage. He tried to hear the address given the cabman, but was unsuccessful, so he rapidly jumped into another cab and told him to follow. The cabby obeyed at once, and whipping up his horse, which was a remarkably good one, he easily kept the first cab in sight. The front cab drove up Collins Street as far as the Treasury Buildings, and then turned off to the left, going towards Fitzroy. It stopped at the Buttercup Hotel, in Gertrude Street, and, Stewart alighting, helped the young lady out; then the luggage was taken care of by the porter of the hotel, and Keith, with his charge, vanished through the swing doors of the private entrance. On seeing this, Tulch dismissed his cab, went into the bar of an hotel on the opposite side of the street, and, ordering a pint of beer, sat watching the door of the Buttercup Hotel. Meanwhile Keith and Eugénie had been shown into a private room, and the landlady, a stout, buxom woman, in a silk dress and lace cap, made her appearance. "Miss Rainsford?" she said interrogatively, advancing towards the girl. "Yes," replied Eugénie brightly. "You are Mrs. Scarth, I suppose. Did you get Mrs. Proggins' letter?" "Oh, yes, that's all right," replied the landlady, nodding. "Your room is ready, and I will do anything I can for you. Mrs. Proggins is an old friend of mine, and I'm only too happy to oblige her." "Thank you," said Eugénie, taking off her hat. "Let me introduce Mr. Stewart to you; he kindly came to the station to meet me." Mrs. Scarth nodded with a smile, for Mrs. Proggins had informed her of the relationship between the two young people, then observing she would go and order some tea for Eugénie, sailed majestically out of the room. "Why did you introduce me to that old thing?" asked Keith, in a discontented tone. "Policy, my dear," replied Eugénie mildly. "Mrs. Proggins wrote to her to look after me, and I'm very glad, otherwise a young lady with you as escort would hardly have found shelter for the night in this place. I always like to be in favour with the powers that be." Eugénie Rainsford was a tall, dark-complexioned girl, with clearly cut features and coils of black hair twisted round the top of her well-shaped head. She was dressed in a blue serge costume, with a red ribbon round her throat, and another round her waist. A handsome girl with a pleasant smile, and there was a look in her flashing dark eyes which showed that she had a will of her own. Keith stood beside her, as fair as she was dark, and a handsomer couple could not have been found in Melbourne. "Well, here I am at last. Keith," said Eugénie, slipping her arm through his. "Aren't you pleased to see me?" "Very," replied Stewart emphatically; "let me look at you--ah, you are more beautiful than ever." "What delightful stories you do tell," said Eugénie with a blush. "I wish I could believe them; now, my friend, let me return the compliment by looking at you." She took his face between her hands and looked at it keenly beneath the searching glare of the gas, then shook her head. "You are much paler than you used to be," she said critically. "There are dark circles under your eyes, deep lines down the side of your mouth, and your face looks haggard. Is it work, or--or the other thing?" "Do you mean dissipation, Eugénie?" said Keith, with a smile, taking a seat. "Well, I expect I have been rather dissipated, but now you are here I'll be a good boy." "Have you been worried?" asked Miss Rainsford. Keith sighed. "Yes; very much worried over this terrible case. I suppose you've seen all about it?" Eugénie nodded. "Yes; I've read all about it in the papers. Now I suppose you've nothing to do?" "No--not that I care much--you see I've got this burlesque coming off, and then there's that money." "The five hundred pounds," said Miss Rainsford reflectively. "Have you found out who sent you that?" "No; I can't imagine who did so, unless it was Caprice." "Caprice!" "Yes," replied Keith hurriedly, flushing a little; "the actress I told you about, who is going to play the principal part in 'Faust Upset.'" "Oh!" It was all the comment Miss Rainsford made, but there was a world of meaning in the ejaculation. "From what I've heard of the lady, I don't think it's likely," she said quietly. "Well, at all events, I suppose I'd better use the money." "Yes; I suppose so." "You're not very encouraging, Eugénie," said her lover angrily. "Well," observed the girl deliberately, "if you think this money came from Caprice, I certainly would not touch it. Why don't you ask her?" "I can't; she's been so disagreeable to me lately." "Oh!" Eugénie Rainsford was of a very jealous temperament, and she began to feel vaguely jealous of this actress whom Keith seemed to know so well. She remained silent for a few moments, during which Keith felt somewhat awkward. He was not in love with Kitty, nor, as far as he knew, was she in love with him, yet he saw that some instinct had warned Eugénie against this woman. "Come, Eugénie," said Keith, putting his arm round her slender waist; "you mustn't be angry with me the first night we meet." "I'm not angry," said the girl, turning her face towards him; "but I'd like to see this Caprice." "So you shall, dear--on the stage." "Why not in private?" Keith frowned, and pulled his moustache in a perplexed manner. "Well, she's hardly a fit person for a girl to see." "Pshaw!" replied Eugénie impatiently; "I'm not a girl, but a woman, and am not afraid of anything like that, and besides--besides," with hesitation, "I'm going to see her." "What do you mean?" asked Keith, abruptly withdrawing his arm. "Nothing; only I saw an advertisement in the paper wanting a governess for a little girl. I answered it, and found it was Miss Marchurst who wanted a governess. She engaged me, and I'm going there to-morrow." "No, no," cried Keith vehemently; "you must not--you shall not go." Eugénie raised her eyes to his. "Have you any reason for wishing me not to go?" "Yes, every reason--she's a bad lot." "I thought you knew her?" "So I do, but men may know women of that class, and women like you may not." "I don't agree with you," said Eugénie, rising; "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and if you persist in wishing me not to go, I'll begin to think you've some reason." "I have none except what I've stated," said Keith doggedly. "Then I'll go to-morrow," replied Eugénie quietly; "at all events, I've got the right to have a personal interview, whether I take the situation or not." "You must not see her." "That decides it," said Eugénie composedly; "I will." "Eugénie, don't go, or I'll begin to think you don't trust me." "Yes, I do, but--but you've been so much with this Caprice lately, that I want to see her." "I don't care two straws about her." "I know that, but I wish to see her." "You intend to go?" "I do." Keith snatched up his hat and stick. "Then I'll say good-bye," he said angrily; "if you disregard my wishes so much, you can't love me." "Yes, I can!" "You are jealous of this confounded woman." "Perhaps I am." Keith looked at her angrily for a moment--then dashed out of the room, whereon Eugénie burst out laughing. "What a dear old boy he is," she said to herself; "he thinks I'm jealous. Well," with a frown, "perhaps I am. I wonder, if he knew that I gave him the five hundred pounds, what he'd say? He doesn't know that I'm a rich woman now, so I can test his love for me. I'm sure he's as true as steel." She picked up her hat, and, going over to the mirror, leaned her elbows on the mantelpiece, looked searchingly at her beautiful face. "Are you jealous, you foolish woman?" she said, with a laugh. "Yes, my dear, you are; at all events, you'll see your rival to-morrow. I'm afraid I'll make Keith a dreadful wife," she said, with a sigh, turning away. "For I think every woman is in love with him. Poor Keith, how angry he was!" She burst out laughing, and left the room. CHAPTER XX. THE RIVALS. Eugénie Rainsford was a very clever young woman, much too clever to pass her life in the up-country wilds of Australia, and no doubt she would have left her solitude in some way even had not fortune favoured her. Luckily, however, fortune did favour her and in a rather curious way, for a rich sharebroker having seen her, fell in love with her, and wanted to marry her; she however refused, telling him that she was engaged to marry Keith Stewart, whereupon he made inquiries, and she told him the whole story. He was so delighted with her fidelity to a poor man, that he made his will in her favour, feeling sure that, as he had no relations, she would be the most deserving person to leave it to. A carriage accident killed him six months afterwards, and Eugénie found herself a very rich woman, with as many thousands as she had pence before. She took her good fortune very calmly, telling no one about it, not even her employers; but, after consultation with the lawyer, she sent five hundred pounds to Keith, with instructions to the bank that he was not to know where it came from. Then she set herself to work out a little scheme she had in her head, to find out if he were true to her. In many of the letters he had written, she had been struck with the frequent mention of one name, Caprice, and on making inquiries, found out all about the actress. She bought a photograph of her, and was struck with the pathetic face of a woman who was said to lead so vile a life. Dreading lest Keith should have fallen in love with this divinity of the stage, she determined to go down to Melbourne and see for herself. By chance, however, she found in a newspaper an advertisement that Kitty Marchurst wanted a governess for her little girl, and seeing at once an excellent opportunity of finding out if her suspicions were correct, wrote offering herself for the situation. Kitty on her side remembered the name of Eugénie Rainsford as that of the girl to whom Keith told her he was engaged, so, curious to see what she was like, engaged her for a governess at once. Eugénie was delighted when she received this letter, and, still in the character of a poor and friendless girl, she left Mr. Chine, the lawyer, to manage her property, after binding him to secrecy, and came down to take the situation. Keith's evident desire that she should not accept the situation made her all the more determined to do so, and twelve o'clock the next day found her in the drawing-room of Caprice's house, waiting for the entrance of her future mistress. When Kitty entered the room she could not help admiring the handsome woman before her, and on her part Eugénie was astonished to see the bright vivacity of the melancholy face, for Caprice's features were sad only when in repose. The two women stood opposite to one another for a moment, mentally making up their minds about each other. Kitty was the first to speak. "Miss Rainsford, I believe?" "Yes; I came to see you about--about the situation." "Governess for my little girl," said Kitty, nodding her head. "Yes, I want some one whom I can trust." "I hope you will be able to trust me." Caprice looked keenly at her, and then burst out into a torrent of words. "Yes, I think I can trust you--but the question is, will you take care of my child--I mean will you accept the trust? You have come from the country--you don't know who I am?" "Yes, I do--Miss Marchurst." "No! not Miss Marchurst--Caprice!" She waited for a moment to see what effect this notorious name would have on her visitor, but, to her surprise, Eugénie simply bowed. "Yes, I know," she replied. Caprice arose and advanced towards her. "You know," she exclaimed vehemently, "and yet can sit down in the same room with a woman of my character. Are you not afraid I'll contaminate you--do you not shrink from a pariah like me--no--you do not--great heavens!" with a bitter laugh, sitting down again; "and I thought the age of miracles was past--ah, bah! But you are only a girl, my dear, and don't understand." Eugénie arose and crossed over to her. "I do understand; I am a woman, and feel for a woman." Kitty caught her hand and gave a gasping cry. "God bless you!" she whispered, in a husky voice. Then in a moment she had dashed the tears away from her eyes, and sat up again in her bright, resolute manner. "No woman has spoken so kindly as you have for many years," she said quickly; "and I thank you. I can give you my child, and you will take care of her for me when I am far away." "What do you mean?" asked Eugénie, puzzled. "Mean--that I am not fit to live with my child, that I am going to send her to England with you, that she may forget she ever had a mother." "But why do this," said Eugénie in a pitying tone, "when you can keep her with you?" "I cannot let her grow up in the atmosphere of sin I live in." "Then why not leave this sinful life, and go to England with your child?" Kitty shook her head with a dreary smile. "Impossible--to leave off this life would kill me; besides, I saw a doctor some time ago, and he told me I had not very long to live; there is something wrong with my heart. I don't care if I do die so long as my child is safe--you will look after her?" "Yes," replied Eugénie firmly; "I will look after her." Kitty approached her timidly. "May I kiss you?" she said faintly, and seeing her answer in the girl's eyes, she bent down and kissed her forehead. "Now I must introduce you to your new pupil," she said, cheerfully overcoming her momentary weakness. "Wait a moment," said Eugénie, as Caprice went to the bell-pull. "I want to ask you about Mr. Stewart." Caprice turned round quickly. "Yes--what--about him?" "Does he love you?" Caprice came over to the fire and looked closely at her. "You are the girl he is engaged to?" "Yes." "Then, make your mind easy, my dear, he loves no one but you." Eugénie gave a sigh of relief, at which Kitty smiled a little scornfully. "Ah! you love him so much as that?" she said half pathetically; "it's a pity, my dear, he's not worth it." "What do you mean?" "Don't be angry, Miss Rainsford," said Kitty, quietly; "I don't mean that he loves any one else, but he's not the man I took him for." "I don't understand." "I wouldn't try to, if I were you," replied Kitty significantly. "I helped him when I first met him, because he saved my child's life. He came down here, and I liked him still more." "You loved him?" "No; love and I parted company long ago. I liked him, but though I do my best to help him, I don't care for him so much as I did, my dear: he's not worthy of you." "That's all very well, but I don't see the reason." "Of course not, what woman in love ever does see reason; however, make your mind easy, things are all right. I will tell you the reason some day." "But I want to know now." "Curiosity is a woman's vice," said Kitty lightly "Don't worry yourself, Miss Rainsford, whatever I know of Keith Stewart won't alter him in your eyes--now, don't say anything more about it. I'll ring for Meg." Eugénie tried to get a more explicit answer out of her, but Kitty only laughed. "It can't be anything so very bad," she said to herself, "or this woman would not laugh at it." Meg came in quietly, a demure, pensive-faced little child, and after Kitty had kissed her she presented her to Eugénie. "This is your new governess, Meg," she said, smoothing the child's hair, "and I want you to love her very much." Meg hung back for a few moments, with the awkward timidity of a child, but Eugénie's soft voice and caressing manner soon gained her confidence. "I like you very much," she said at length, nestling to Eugénie's side. "As much as mumsey, Meg?" said Kitty, with a sad smile. "Oh, never--never as much as mumsey," cried Meg, leaving her new-found friend for her mother, "There's no one so good and kind as mumsey." Kitty kissed the child vehemently, and then bit her lips to stop the tears coming to her eyes. "Mumsey," said Meg at length, "can I tell the lady a secret?" "Yes, dear," replied Kitty smiling. Thereupon Meg slipped off Kitty's lap and ran to Eugénie. "What is this great secret?" asked Eugénie, bending down with a laugh. Meg put her mouth to Eugénie's ear, and whispered,-- "When I grow up I'm going to marry Keith." "You see," said Kitty, overhearing the whisper, "my daughter is your rival." "And a very dangerous one," replied Eugénie with a sigh, touching the auburn hair. Meg was sent off after this, and then Kitty arranged all about the salary with Eugénie, after which she accompanied her to the door to say good-bye. "I'm sorry I put any distrust into your heart about Mr. Stewart," she said; "but don't trouble, my dear, get him to give up his dissipated habits, and you'll no doubt find he'll make an excellent husband." "Ah!" said Eugénie to herself as she walked to the station, "it was only dissipation she meant--as if anything like that could hurt Keith in my eyes." Then she began to think of the strange woman she had left--with her sudden changes of temperament from laughter to tears--with her extraordinary nature, half-vice half-virtue, of the love she bore for her child, and the strong will that could send that child away for ever from her lonely life. CHAPTER XXI. A FIRST NIGHT AT THE BON-BON. "Faust Upset" had been put into rehearsal at once, and three weeks after the murder of Lazarus it was to be produced. Mortimer had hurried on the production of the burlesque with the uttermost speed, as "Prince Carnival" was now playing to empty houses. The Bon-Bon company were kept hard at work, and, what with rehearsals during the day, the performance of the opera-bouffe in the evening, and rehearsals afterwards till two in the morning, they were all pretty well worn-out. In spite of Kitty's indomitable spirit, she was looking haggard and ill, for the incessant work was beginning to tell on her system. The doctor told her plainly that she was killing herself, and that absolute rest was what she required; but in spite of those warnings she never gave herself a moment's peace. "I don't care two straws if I die," she said recklessly to Dr. Chinston; "I've made arrangements for the future of my child, and there's nothing else for me to live for." She was determined to make the burlesque a success, and worked hard at rehearsals getting the author and composer to alter some things, and cut out others, making several valuable suggestions as to stage-management, and in every way doing her best. But though friendly towards Keith, yet he was conscious of a kind of reserve in her manner towards him, and thought it was due to the knowledge that he was engaged to Eugénie. He had become reconciled to his sweetheart, and she went down every day to teach Meg at Toorak. It had been arranged that in three months she was to go to England with Meg, and Kitty guaranteed to pay a certain sum annually for the salary of the governess and the maintenance of the child. Of course Eugénie never meant to take any money, as she had become strongly attached to Meg, but still kept up her semblance of poverty till such time as she judged it fit to tell Keith. Meanwhile, in spite of Keith's opposition, she lived with Caprice, and led a very quiet life, for what with the state of her health and constant rehearsals, Kitty gave no Sunday receptions. But while Stewart fumed and fretted over the fact of his sweetheart staying with a woman of bad character like Caprice, and attended to all the rehearsals of the burlesque, Naball was silently winding his net round him. The detective had made inquiries at the Skylarks' Club, and found that Keith had been there on that night, in the company of Fenton. On discovering this, he went to Fenton and discovered that Stewart had lent the American the knife with which the crime had been committed, to cut the wires of a champagne bottle, and afterwards slipped it into his coat pocket. From the club he went to the Bon-Bon Theatre, and, as the detective knew from Keith's own admission, had left there at half-past twelve. "And then," said Naball to himself, "he told me he wandered about the streets till two o'clock, and then saw Villiers--rubbish--he went straight to Russell Street and committed the crime." It had taken Naball some time to collect the necessary evidence, and it was only on the day previous to the production of "Faust Upset" that he was able to get a warrant for Keith's arrest, so he determined to let the performance take place before he arrested him. "If it's a success," said Naball to himself, as he slipped the warrant in his pocket, "he'll have had one jolly hour to himself, and if it's a failure--well, he'll be glad enough to go to gaol." So, with this philosophical conclusion, Mr. Naball settled in his own mind that he would go to the theatre. Keith wanted Eugénie to go to a box with him in order to see the play, but she said she would rather go to the stalls by herself, in order to judge of the effect the burlesque had on the audience. After a good deal of argument, Stewart gave way; so on the momentous night she took her seat in the stalls, eager to see the first bid her lover made for fame. Tulch had been recalled from his task of watching Stewart, as Naball judged that the vanity of an author seeing his work on the stage would be enough to keep the young man in Melbourne; but Tulch, true to his instincts of finishing a job properly, took his place in the gallery and kept his eye on Keith, who sat with Ezra in a private box. The Jew was calm and placid, as having succeeded to his father's fortune, he had not staked everything, like Keith, on the burlesque being a success; still, for his partner's sake as well as his own, he was anxious that it should go well. Such a crowded house as it was--everybody in Melbourne was there--for a new play by a colonial author was a rare thing, and a burlesque by a colonial author, with original music by a colonial composer, was almost unheard of. The critics who were present felt an unwonted sense of responsibility to-night, for as this was the first production of the piece on any stage, they had to give an opinion on their own responsibility. Hitherto the generality of plays produced in Melbourne had their good and bad points settled long before by London critics, so it was comparatively easy to give a verdict; but to-night it was quite a different thing, therefore the gentlemen of the press intended to be extra careful in their remarks. Although "Faust Upset" was called a burlesque, it was more of an opera-bouffe, as there was an absence of puns and rhyme about the dialogue, besides which, the lyrics were really cleverly written, and the music brisk and sparkling. Keith had taken the old mediæval legend of Faust, and reversed it entirely--all the male characters of the story he made female, and _vice versa_. There was a good deal of satire in the piece about the higher education of women, and the devotion of young men to athletics, to the exclusion of brain work. In fact, the libretto was of a decidedly Gilbertian flavour, albeit rather more frivolous, while the music was entirely of the Offenbachian school, light, tuneful and rapid. After a medley overture, containing a number of taking melodies in the piece, the curtain rose on the study of Miss Faust, a blue-stocking of the deepest dye, who, after devoting her life to acquiring knowledge, finds herself, at the age of fifty, an old maid with no one to care for her. The character was played by Toltby, who was a genuine humorist; and he succeeded in making a great deal out of the part, without ever condescending to vulgarity. His appearance as a lank, long maiden, in a dingy sage-green gown, with wan face and tousled hair, was ludicrous in the extreme. The opening chorus was sung by a number of pretty girls, in caps and gowns, and on their going out to meet their lovers, Miss Faust, overcome with loneliness, summons to her aid the powers of evil, and in response "Miss Mephistopheles" appears. Kitty looked charming as she stood in the centre of the red limelight. She was arrayed in the traditional dress of red, but as a female demon wore a petticoat, and her face was also left untouched. Miss Faust fainted in her chair, and Miss Mephistopheles, with a bright light in her eyes, and a reckless devil may-care look on her expressive face, whirled down to the footlights, and dashed into a rattling galop song, "Yes, this is I," which melody ran all through the opera. With the assistance of various cosmetics, new dress, and sundry other articles of feminine toilet, which were brought in by a number of small imps, Miss Mephistopheles succeeds in making Miss Faust young; shows her a vision of Mr. Marguerite, a young athlete; and finally changes the scene to the market-place, where there was a chorus of young men in praise of athletic sports. It would be useless to give the plot in detail, as Keith followed the lines of the legend pretty closely. Miss Faust meets Mr. Marguerite, who is beloved by Miss Siebel, a sporting young woman. There was the garden scene, with a lawn tennis ground; a vision on the Brocken, of the future of women, with grotesque ballets and fantastic dresses; the scene of the duel, which was a quarrel scene between Mrs. Valentine and Miss Faust, after the style of Madame Angot; then Miss Mephistopheles runs off with Mr. Marguerite, having fallen in love with him; the lovers are followed and thrown into a prison, which is changed by the magic power of Miss Mephistopheles to a race-course, in which scene there is a bewildering array of betting men, pugilists, pretty girls, and fortune-tellers. Miss Mephistopheles then resigns Mr. Marguerite to Miss Siebel, and wants to carry off Miss Faust to the nether regions, when a flaw is discovered in the deed, and everything is settled amicably, the whole play ending with the galop chorus of the first number. When the curtain fell on the first act, the audience were somewhat bewildered; it was such an entirely new departure from the story of Faust, that they almost resented it. But as the piece progressed, they saw the real cleverness of the satire, and when the curtain came down they called loudly for the author and composer, who came forward and bowed their acknowledgments. When Mortimer heard the eulogies lavished on the piece, he drew a long breath of relief. "Jove! I thought it was going to fail," he said, "and I believe it would have, if Caprice hadn't pulled it out of the fire." And, indeed, Caprice, with her wonderful spirits and reckless _abandon_, had carried the whole play with her, and saved it at the most critical moment, A young man sitting near Eugénie summed up his idea of the piece in a few words. "It's a deuced clever play," he said; "but Caprice makes it go--if any one else plays her part, the theatre will be empty." Eugénie turned angrily to look for the author of this remark, but could not see him. Just as she was turning away, a shrill voice near her said,-- "Ain't Caprice a stunner! I've seen 'er lots of times at old Lazarus's." The speaker was a small, white-faced Jewish youth, being none other than Isaiah. Miss Rainsford pondered over these words as she walked out of the theatre. "Goes to old Lazarus's," she said to herself; "that was the old man who was killed. I wonder why she went there." There was a crowd in the vestibule of the theatre, and she saw Keith standing in the corner, looking as pale as death, talking to a man. She went up to congratulate him on the success of the performance, but something in his face made her afraid. "What's the matter, Keith?" she asked, touching him. "Hush!" he said in a hoarse whisper, "don't say a word--I'm arrested." "Arrested! What for?" she gasped. The man standing next to Keith interposed. "For the murder of Jacob Lazarus," he said in a low voice. Eugénie closed her eyes with a sensation of horror, and caught hold of the wall for support. When she opened her eyes again, Keith and the detective had both vanished. "Arrested for the murder of Lazarus!" she muttered. "My God! it can't be true!" CHAPTER XXII. EUGÉNIE _V_ NABALL. As a rule first performances in Melbourne take place on Saturday night, consequently the criticisms on "Faust Upset" were in Monday's papers. Simultaneously with the notices of the burlesque, there appeared an announcement that the author of the piece had been arrested for the murder of Jacob Lazarus. Keith was very little known in Melbourne, so his arrest personally caused little talk; but the fact that a successful author and a murderer were one and the same person caused a great sensation. The criticisms on the burlesque were, as a rule, good, and though some of the papers picked out faults, yet it was generally agreed that the piece had been a wonderful success; but the sensation of a successful colonial production having taken place was merged in the greater sensation of the discovery of the Russell Street murderer. Keith Stewart, protesting his innocence of the charge, had immediately been taken off to gaol, and Eugénie was unable to see him until she got the permission of the proper authorities; but feeling certain that he had not committed the crime, she called on Ezra at _The Penny Whistle_ early on Monday morning. On sending up her card, she was shown into Ezra's room, and there found that Naball was present. The detective, who was fully convinced of Keith's guilt, had called in order to find out for certain from Ezra all about the prisoner's movements on the night in question. When Eugénie entered the room, Ezra, who looked pale and careworn, arose and greeted her warmly. He then introduced her to Naball, who looked keenly at the sad face of the woman who was engaged to the man he had hunted down. "Mr. Naball," said Ezra, indicating the detective, "has called upon me to find out about Stewart's movements on the night my father was murdered." "Yes; that's so," replied Naball, with a shrewd glance at the Jew. "Well," said Eugénie impatiently, "surely you can explain them, for Keith told me you were with him all the time." Ezra looked dismal. "No, I wasn't with him all the time; I only met him at the Bon-Bon, and I left before he did." "Yes," interposed the detective smoothly; "and, according to Mr. Mortimer, Stewart left there about half-past twelve o'clock." "And then, I presume," said Eugénie, with fine disdain, "you think he went and murdered Lazarus right off?" "Well," observed Naball, deliberately smoothing his gloves, "according to the doctor's evidence, the crime was committed about twelve o'clock, or a little later. Now Stewart can't say where he was between the time he left the theatre and the time he met Villiers." "He was wandering about the streets," explained Eugénie. Naball smiled cynically. "Yes; so he says." "And so every one else says who knows Keith Stewart," retorted the girl. "He is incapable of such an act." Naball shrugged his shoulders as much as to say that he had nothing to urge against such an eminently feminine argument. Eugénie looked angrily at the detective, and then turned in despair to the Jew. "You don't believe him guilty?" she asked. "No, on my soul, I do not," he replied fervently; "still appearances look black against him." Miss Rainsford thought for a few moments, and at last bluntly asked Naball the same question. "Do you believe him guilty?" "As far as my experience goes," said the detective coolly, "I do." "Why?" Naball produced a little pocket-knife, and began to trim his nails. "The evidence is circumstantial," he said, shrugging his shoulders, "but the evidence is conclusive." "Would you mind telling me what the evidence is?" The detective shut his knife with a sharp click, slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, and, leaning over the table, looked steadily at Eugénie. "Miss Rainsford," he said gravely, "I admire you very much for the way you stand up for Stewart, but, believe me, that though I would gladly see him free, yet the proofs are too strong to suppose him innocent." Eugénie bent her head coldly. "Would you mind telling me the evidence?" she reiterated. Naball, rather perplexed, looked at Ezra. "Yes, tell her all you know," said that gentleman. "I think, myself, Stewart is innocent, and perhaps Miss Rainsford may throw some light on the mystery." "I don't call it a mystery," retorted Naball impatiently; "it's as clear as day. I'm willing to tell all I know; but as to Miss Rainsford throwing any light on the subject, it's absurd." Eugénie questioned him for the third time in the same words. "Would you mind telling me the evidence?" "Certainly," said Naball sharply. "Stewart was in employment of the deceased as his clerk. He came to Melbourne with no money, and, according to his own account, given in this very room, and in the presence of this gentleman, he becomes possessed of a sum of five hundred pounds, which was mysteriously placed to his credit at the Hibernian Bank. I went to the bank, and discovered from the manager that such a sum had been placed to the prisoner's credit, but he refused to tell me by whom, so, as was only natural, I concluded that Stewart had robbed his employer of the money, and under a feigned name placed it to his credit. My reasons for such a belief are this--he had full command of all the books, and could cook the accounts as he liked. He did so, and obtained this money. Lazarus, however, who I know was a very sharp man, had suspicions, and determined to examine the books; this, of course, meant ruin to Stewart, so he made up his mind to kill his master. He was at the Skylarks' Club on the night of the murder, and gave Mr. Fenton, the manager of The Never-say-die Insurance Company, his knife to open a champagne bottle; that knife was one given to him by the child of Kitty Marchurst, and has on it an inscription, 'From Meg.' On receiving it back, he placed it in the pocket of his overcoat, and walked to the Bon-Bon. After an interview with Mr. Mortimer, he left the Bon-Bon at half-past twelve o'clock, went up to Russell Street, and entering by the back window (the position of which he knew thoroughly), killed the old man; then he took the keys from under the pillow, and robbed the safe of various things, including bank-notes to the amount of one hundred pounds, which he knew were placed therein; while leaving the place, he dropped his knife outside the window; he then wanders about the streets, perhaps goes home, but horror-struck with the dread of being found out, returns to the scene of his crime, and there sees Villiers, whom he questions, but getting no response from him, thinks Villiers is drunk. Villiers, however, was only shamming, and tells me some time afterwards that he picked up a knife under the open window, and was cognisant of the murder. I obtain the knife, and it is the one Stewart had in the club, with the inscription on it. I think, therefore, the evidence is very clear." "In what way?" asked Eugénie quietly. The detective became a little exasperated. "Good heavens!" he said in an annoyed tone of voice, "there are three strong proofs: first, he is possessed of a large sum of money he can't account for; second, he is unable to prove an _alibi_; and third, his knife, covered with blood, is found on the scene of the crime." "So far so good," said Eugénie ironically; "your reasoning is excellent, Mr. Naball, but untrue." "Untrue?" "I repeat untrue," she replied. "With regard to the five hundred pounds--I paid that into his credit." "You," said Ezra, while Naball stared at her thunder-struck, "a poor girl." "I'm not a poor girl," said Miss Rainsford coolly. "On the contrary, I'm worth fifty thousand pounds left to me by a sharebroker in Sandhurst. I did not tell Keith of my fortune as I wanted him to love me for myself. But as I knew he was poor, I placed to his credit the sum of five hundred pounds; so that settles your first proof, Mr. Naball." "Well, it's certainly very curious," said Naball, after a pause. "I hardly know what to think--what about my second proof?" "Oh! that's more difficult to prove," said Eugénie; "but I quite believe he did wander about. He's rather absent-minded, I know." "Your answer to my second proof is weak," replied Naball sardonically. "And the third--" "About the knife? Well," said Miss Rainsford, knitting her brows, "he had it at the club, you say, and slipped it into his overcoat pocket." "Exactly." "Then he went to the Bon-Bon." "He did." "And what happened to his overcoat there?' asked Eugénie. "I can tell you," replied Ezra. "He took it off, and in mistake Caprice carried it downstairs with her fur mantle." "Oh, did she take it away with her?" asked Naball quickly. "No," said Ezra quietly, "she found out she had it when she was putting on her mantle in the carriage, and called me back to return it. I took it upstairs again, and gave it to Keith, who put it on." "And the knife was still in the pocket?" said Eugénie. "I suppose so," replied Ezra, rather confused. "I didn't even know the knife was there." "What do you think?" asked Miss Rainsford, turning to Naball. That astute young man wrinkled his brows. "I see what you are driving at," he said rapidly. "You think that Caprice took the knife out of the pocket, saw the whole chance in a flash, and committed the crime." "No! no!" cried Eugénie, horror struck. "I'm sure I don't believe she could be guilty of a crime." "Humph! I don't know so much about that," said Naball disbelievingly. "What nonsense," broke in Ezra angrily; "she could not have done such a thing--she had no motive." Naball did not reply to this remark, but rising from his seat, walked hurriedly up and down the room in a state of great excitement. He had been fully convinced of the guilt of Stewart, but the conversation of Eugénie had shaken his belief, and he began to puzzle over the new aspect of the case. "I wonder if Caprice ever had any dealings with Lazarus?" he said to himself, thinking of the diamond robbery. "Yes," broke in Eugénie sharply, "she had--at least," in answer to Naball's questioning look, "when I was at the theatre on Saturday night a boy near me said he had seen her at Lazarus's place." "A boy," asked Ezra sharply, "what boy?" "I don't know," she replied; "a thin, pale-faced Jewish-looking boy, with a shrill voice." "Isaiah," said Naball and Ezra with one voice, and then looked at one another, amazed at this new discovery. "By Jove!" said the detective, "this is becoming exciting. You are sure you heard the boy say that?" "Yes, I'm sure--quite sure," answered Eugénie firmly; "but I don't think that could prove Caprice guilty. Much as I wish to serve Keith, I don't want to ruin her." Naball glanced at her keenly, then turned to Ezra. "Send for the boy," he said sharply, "and we'll find out all about Caprice's visits to your father's place." "It mightn't have anything to do with the murder," said Ezra, ringing the bell for the messenger. "True," replied Naball, "but, on the other hand, it might have a good deal to do with the diamond robbery." CHAPTER XXIII. THE CYPHER. When the messenger had been despatched, Naball drew his seat up to the table, and began to make some notes, after which he turned to Eugénie. "I was firmly convinced of Stewart's guilt," he said quietly; "but what you have told me throws a new light on the subject. I said you could not do that--I beg your pardon--you can." Eugénie bowed her head in acknowledgment of the apology, and asked him a question in a hesitating manner. "You don't think Caprice is guilty?" "I think nothing at present," he replied evasively; "not even that Stewart is innocent. When I see the boy, I'll tell you what I think." They talked on together for a few minutes, and then there came a knock at the door. In reply to Ezra's permission to enter, the door opened, and Isaiah appeared on the threshold, holding some papers in his hand. "Oh, you've come," said Ezra, as the boy shut the door after him. "Yes; did you want me?" demanded Isaiah in a jerky manner, "'cos I never knowed you did." "Didn't you meet a messenger?" asked Naball, turning his head round. Isaiah deposited the papers he carried on Ezra's desk, and shook his head. "No, I never met any one, I didn't," he answered. "Mr. Ezra asked me to bring all letters that came to the old 'un, so as these came, I did." "That's right," said Lazarus, looking through the letters. "By-the-way, Isaiah, this gentleman wants to ask you a few questions." "What, Mr. Naball?" said Isaiah in alarm. "Oh, sir, I never had nothing to do with it." Naball smiled. "No! no! that's all right," he said good-naturedly. "It would take a bigger man than a sprat like you to commit such a crime; but, tell me, do you know Caprice?" Isaiah leered significantly. "I've seen her on the stage, that's all." "Never off?" "Drivin' about the streets." "Anywhere else?" Isaiah glanced uneasily at Ezra, who laughed. "Go on, Isaiah; it's all right." "Well, I've seen her at the old 'un's place." "Oh, indeed," said Naball quickly. "Often?" "Yes--lots of times--at night--came to do business, I s'pose." "When did you see her last?" "Oh, not for a long time," replied Isaiah; "but do you remember the week them diamonds were stolen?" "Yes, yes," said Naball eagerly. Isaiah nodded. "Well, she came to see the old 'un, then." Naball suppressed his exultation with difficulty, and asked Isaiah another question. "I say--those bank-notes that were stolen--" "I never stole 'em." "No one said you did," retorted Naball tartly; "but you wrote something on the back of one of 'em." Isaiah turned scarlet, and shifted from one leg to the other. "Well, you see," he murmured apologetically, "Mr. Stewart wanted to know a good 'un to back for the Cup, so I was afraid of the old 'un hearing, and as there wasn't no paper, I wrote on the back of one of 'em, 'Back Flat-Iron.'" "In pencil?" "No, in ink. Mr. Stewart, he laughs and nods, then puts the notes in the cash box, and puts 'em in the safe." "That's all right," said Naball, dismissing him; "you can go." Isaiah put on his hat, put his hands in his pockets, and departed, whistling a tune. When the door closed on him, Naball turned to his two companions with an exulting light in his eyes. "What do you think now, Mr. Naball?" asked Eugénie. "Think. I think as I've done all along," he replied. "Caprice stole those jewels herself, and sold them to old Lazarus." "But what's that got to do with the death of my father?" asked Ezra. "Perhaps nothing--perhaps a lot," said the detective. "I don't know but that boy's evidence has given me a clue. Suppose--I'm only supposing, mind you--Caprice stole her own diamonds, with Villiers as an accomplice. Suppose she took them to old Lazarus and sold 'em. Suppose Villiers, thinking the old man has them in his safe, goes to rob him, and commits the murder to do so. Suppose all that--I should think there would be a very pretty case against Villiers." "Yes; but Keith's knife?" said Eugénie. "Ah, now you have me," answered Naball, puzzled. "I don't know, unless Villiers managed to get it while Stewart was fighting with him on that night, and covered it in blood in order to throw suspicion on him." "All your ideas are theoretical," said Ezra drily. "Perhaps Caprice never stole her own jewels, or sold them to my father." "Yes, she did, I'll swear," retorted Naball decisively. "Why wouldn't she prosecute? why did I find Villiers with one of the jewels? You bet, she stole them for some freak, and I daresay Villiers committed the murder to get them back." "I don't think my father would have kept such valuable jewels as that about the premises." "No; he'd put 'em in the bank." "No, he wouldn't," retorted Ezra; "he sent all his jewels to Amsterdam. And here," holding up a letter, "is an envelope with the Dutch postmark." "By Jove!" ejaculated Naball, under his breath, "what a queer thing if it should turn out to be those diamonds of Caprice's. Open the letter." "Suppose it does turn out to be the diamonds," said Ezra, slowly tearing the envelope. "Well"--Naball drew a long breath--"it will be the beginning of the end." "I hope it will end in Keith's being released," said Eugénie, looking at Ezra with intense anxiety. That gentleman took out the letter, and glancing at it for a moment, gave vent to an ejaculation of disgust. "What's the matter?" asked Eugénie and Naball together. "The letter is in cypher," said Lazarus, tossing it over to the detective. "I don't think we'll be able to read it." "Oh, we'll have a try," said Naball, quickly spreading oat the letter. "Let's have a look at it." The letter was as follows:-- "Dsidanmo seaf utnes teh ssteon ryiks sgenlil gto teher tdhnoaus sgennid it lses teher hduenrd bneiertns." "What the deuce does it mean?" asked Naball in a puzzled tone. "It's a cypher, evidently, of which my father alone possesses the key," said Ezra. "I'll have a look among his papers, and if I find it, it will soon make sense of this jumble of words." "It's like a Chinese puzzle," observed Naball, glancing at it. "I never could find out these things." "Let me look," said Eugénie, taking the letter. "I used to be rather good at puzzles." "We'll find this one out," said Naball significantly, "and you'll do some good for Stewart." "You think it's about Caprice's diamonds?" she asked. "I think it's about Caprice's diamonds," he replied. "I think the words have been written backwards," said Ezra, looking over her shoulder. Eugénie shook her head. "I don't think so," she replied, scanning the letter closely. "If so, the word 'it' would have been written 'ti.'" "Try a word of three letters, if there's one," suggested Naball, "and you can see how the letters are placed." "Here's one spelt 'g-t-o.' What word can be made out of that." "Got," said Ezra eagerly. "Well, if so, in the cypher it reads, the first letter 'g,' the last, letter 't,' and the middle letter at the end." "What do you think of that?" asked Naball bluntly. "That the sender of this has taken the first and last letters of a word, and written them in rotation." "I don't understand," said Naball in a puzzled tone. "I think I do," said Eugénie quickly. "Let us take another word, and instead of guessing it, try my idea, Here is a word, 'teher.' Now, Mr. Naball, take a sheet of paper and write down what I say." Naball got some paper and a pencil. "Now," said Eugénie, "this word 'teher.' The first letter is 't,' now the second letter, which, I think, is the end one of the proper word, is 'e'--place that at the end." Naball wrote "t--e." "The third letter of the cypher, and the second of the proper word, is 'h'--put that next the 't;' and the fourth letter of the cypher, and third of the proper word, is 'e'--place that at the end also." Naball added two letters as instructed, "t,h--e,e." "Now," said Eugénie, "there's only one letter left, which must naturally be in the middle." Naball finished his writing thus: t-h-r-e-e. "That is three," he said, with a cry of triumph. "By Jove! Miss Rainsford, you are clever; let's make certain, by trying another letter." "Take 's-s-t-e-o-n,'" suggested Ezra. Naball wrote the letters as follows:-- s -- s t -- e o -- n Then he wrote them in a line, down the first column and up the second, which made the word "stones." "Glad we've got it right, after all," he said delightedly, and then the whole three of them went to work on the same system, with the result that the letter read thus:-- "Diamonds safe, unset the stones, risky selling, got three thousand, sending it less three hundred, bernstein." "Ah!" said Naball when he read this, "wasn't I right?" "So I think," said Ezra sadly; "my father evidently bought the jewels from her, and sent them to Amsterdam to be sold." "Still," said Eugénie impatiently, "this does not clear up the mystery of the murder." "You don't think Caprice did it?" said Ezra. "No," replied the detective; "but Villiers might have done it in order to recover the jewels. But I tell you what, there's only one thing to be done, we'll go down and see Caprice." This was agreed to, and without losing a moment they started. "I may be wrong, as I was before," said Naball when they were in the train, "but I'll lay any money that Villiers has seen Caprice since the murder." "You don't think she's an accomplice?" cried Eugénie. "I think nothing," retorted Naball, "till I see Caprice." CHAPTER XXIV. WHAT KITTY KNEW. The trio soon arrived at Kitty's house, and Ezra was just about to ring the front-door bell, when suddenly Naball touched his arm to stop him. "Hist!" he said in a quick whisper; "listen." A woman's voice, talking in a high key, and then the deep tones of a man's voice, like the growl of an angry beast. "What did I tell you?" whispered Naball again. "Villiers and Caprice, both in the drawing-room; wait a moment, count twenty, and then ring the bell." He stepped round the corner of the porch, stepped stealthily on to the verandah, and then stole softly towards one of the French windows in order to listen. He was correct in his surmise; the two speakers were Kitty Marchurst and Randolph Villiers. "You'd better give me what I ask," growled Villiers in a threatening tone, "or I'll go straight and tell how you were at Lazarus's on the night of the murder." "Perhaps you'll tell I killed him?" said Caprice, with a sneer. "Perhaps I will," retorted Villiers; "there's no knowing." "There's this much knowing," said Kitty deliberately, "that I won't give you a single penny. If I am called on to explain my movements, I can't do so; but it will be the worse for you, it will place--" At this moment the bell rang, and Caprice started in alarm. "Hush," she cried, advancing towards Villiers; "come to me again. I must not be seen talking with you here. Go away--not by the door," she said, with an angry stamp of her foot as Villiers went towards the door; "by the window--no one will see you." Villiers moved towards the French window, opened it, and was just about to step out when Naball stepped forward. "I'm afraid some one will," he said serenely, pushing Villiers back into the room, and closing the window. "Naball!" cried Kitty and Villiers in a breath. "Exactly," replied that gentleman, taking a chair. "I've come to have a talk with you both." "How dare you force your way into my house?" cried Kitty angrily, while Villiers stood looking sullenly at the detective. "It's about the diamond robbery," went on Naball, as if he never heard her. "Leave the house," she cried, stamping her foot. "And about the murder," he finished off, looking from one to the other. Kitty glanced at Villiers, who looked at her with a scowl, and sank into a chair. Just as he did so, the drawing-room door opened, and Eugénie entered, followed by Ezra Lazarus. "I don't understand the meaning of all this," said Caprice, with a sneer; "but you seem to have a good idea of dramatic effect." "Perhaps so," replied Naball lazily. Kitty shrugged her shoulders and turned to Eugénie. "Perhaps you can explain all this, Miss Rainsford?" she said coolly. "Yes," answered Eugénie slowly; "it's about Mr. Stewart. You know he has been arrested for this murder?" "Know," repeated Kitty impatiently, "of course, I know. I'm sure I ought to--morn, noon and night I've heard nothing else. I don't know how it will affect the piece, I'm sure." "Never mind the piece," said Ezra, a trifle sternly. "I don't mind that, as long as I save my friend." "I hope you will," said Caprice heartily. "I am certain he never committed the crime. What do you say?" turning to the detective. "I'm beginning to be of your opinion," replied Naball candidly. "I did think him guilty once," fixing his eyes on Villiers, "but now I don't." "What about the knife I gave you?" asked Villiers abruptly. "Ah!" said Naball musingly, "what, indeed." "I found it on the scene of the crime," said Villiers in a defiant manner. "So you said." "Don't you believe me?" "Humph!" At this ambiguous murmur Villiers gave a savage growl, and would have replied, but Kitty stopped him by waving her hand. "It's no good talking like this," she said quickly. "There is some reason for you all coming here; what is it?" "I'll tell you," said Naball in a sharp official tone. "Do you remember the diamond robbery at this place? Well, those diamonds were sold to old Lazarus, and he sent them to Amsterdam for sale. The person who stole those diamonds thought they were still in the safe of Jacob Lazarus; and the person who stole those diamonds murdered Jacob Lazarus to recover them." He finished triumphantly, and then waited to see what effect his accusation would have on Kitty. To his astonishment, however, she never moved a muscle of her face, but asked calmly,-- "And who is the thief and the murderer?" "That's what I want to find out." "Naturally; but why come to me?" "Because, you know." "I!" she cried, rising to her feet in anger. "I know nothing." "Yes, you do, and so does Villiers there," persisted Naball. Villiers glanced strangely at Kitty, and growled sullenly. "Now, look here Miss Marchurst," said Naball rapidly, "it's no use beating about the bush--I know more than you think. You denied that you stole your own jewels, but I know you did, in order to pay the money embezzled by Malton. Lazarus's boy saw you go to his place during the week of the robbery, late at night. You did so in order to dispose of the jewels. The crescent I took from Villiers down Bourke Street was given to him by you as an accomplice; and I listened at that window to-day and heard Villiers say you were on the Russell Street premises on the night of the murder. Now, what do you say?" Kitty, still on her feet, was deadly pale, but looked rapidly at Naball. "You have made up a very clever case," she said quietly; "but entirely wrong--yes, entirely. I did not take my own jewels, as I told you before, therefore I was unable to pay the money for Mr. Malton. I did go to see Lazarus one night during the week of the robbery, in order to get some money, but was unable to do so. I never gave the crescent to Villiers, as he will tell you; and lastly, as you overheard him state, I was at Lazarus's on the night of the murder, but did not think it necessary to state so. I went there after I left the Bon-Bon, and made no secret of my doing so, as my coachman can inform you. I found the door locked, and no light inside, so thinking the old man had gone to bed, I came away, and went home; so, you see, your very clever case means nothing." "Is this true?" asked Naball, turning to Villiers. "Is what true?" asked that gentleman angrily. "What she says." "Some of it. Well, yes, most of it." "You'd better go a little further," said Kitty quietly, "and say all of it. Did I give you the diamond crescent?" "No, you didn't." "Then, who did?" asked Naball pertinaciously. "I sha'n't tell you," growled Villiers. "Oh, yes, you will," said the detective, "because if you know who stole the diamonds, you know the murderer of Lazarus." "No, I don't," retorted Villiers savagely. "I tell you I saw her round about the place on that night, and I picked up the knife I gave you; that's all I know." "Humph! we'll see about that." "You are sure that the person who stole the diamonds committed the crime?" asked Caprice, with a strange smile on her pale lips. "Well, I'm pretty sure; it looks uncommon like it." "And you think I stole the diamonds?" "Yes," retorted Naball bluntly; "I believe you did." "In that case, by your own reasoning, I'm a murderess," said Caprice. "I don't say that," said the detective; "but I believe you know who did it," looking significantly at Villiers. "I'm afraid your reasonings and your assertions are at variance," said Kitty quietly. "I don't know who committed the murder, but I do know who stole my diamonds." "Who?" asked Ezra, in an excited tone. "Keith Stewart!" "Keith Stewart!" echoed all; "impossible!" Eugénie stepped forward with a frown on her pale face, and looked at Kitty. "I don't believe it," she said, "and you are a wicked woman to say so." "Unfortunately, it's true," replied Caprice, with a sigh. "I have kept the secret as long as I could, but now it's impossible to do so any longer. Keith Stewart was at my place on the night of the robbery, and heard me say where my diamonds were. He was coming to the drawing-room, and saw my child descending the stairs, having got out of bed. He picked her up, and put her in bed again. The temptation was too strong to resist, I suppose, and he opened the drawer of the mirror, and took the jewels. He then got out of the window, and came round by the front of the house so as to enter by the front-door. Meg was awake all the time, and told it to me in her childish way, how he had gone to the window and got out of it. I told her not to speak of it, and kept silence." "Why did you keep silence?" asked Naball. "Why," cried Kitty, her face flushing with anger, "because he saved my child from death. He might have stolen anything of mine, but I would have kept silent, nor would I have betrayed him now but that you accuse me of murder." There was a dead silence in the room, as every one was touched by the way in which Kitty spoke. Then Villiers gave a coarse laugh. "Ha! ha!" he said harshly; "you said, Naball, that the person who stole the diamonds committed the murder also, so you've got the right man in gaol." Naball cast a look of commiseration at Eugénie, and said nothing. "Wait a moment," cried Ezra, stepping forward, "we've got to find the stolen bank-notes first. I don't believe Keith Stewart committed such a base crime; he is no murderer." "No," cried Eugénie, springing to her feet; "nor is he a thief. I will prove his innocence." "I'm afraid that's difficult," said Naball reflectively; "things look black against him." "Of course they do," said Villiers coarsely. "Who knows he is innocent?" Eugénie stepped in front of the ruffian, and raised her hand to the ceiling. "There is One who knows he is innocent--God." CHAPTER XXV. THE EVIDENCE OF A BANK-NOTE. All this time while his friends were trying to prove his innocence, Keith was mewed up in prison, having now been there a week. The disgrace of being arrested on such a charge had aged him considerably, and his face had changed from a healthy bronzed colour to a waxen paleness, while the circles under his eyes, and the deep lines furrowing his brow, showed how deeply he was affected by the position in which he found himself. He steadily denied that he committed the crime imputed to him, and regarding the knife found by Villiers, could only say that, after putting it in his pocket at the club, he thought no more of it till next morning, when, having occasion to use it, he found it had disappeared. Some time after the interview with Kitty, when she told how Keith had stolen the diamonds, Eugénie was admitted to the presence of her unfortunate lover. She had tried to see him before, but had always been refused; so when she did gain her object at last, and they stood face to face, both were so overcome with emotion that they could hardly speak. Keith held out his arms to her, with a smile on his wan face, and with an inarticulate cry she flung herself on his breast, weeping bitterly. "Don't cry, dear," he said soothingly, making her sit down on the bed. "There! there!" and he quieted her as if she had been a little child. "I can't help it," she said, drying her eyes; "it seems so terrible to see you here." "No doubt," replied Keith quietly; "but I know I am innocent, and that robs the disgrace of a good deal of its sting." "I know you are innocent," answered Eugénie, "but how to prove it; I thought things would have turned out all right; but when we saw Kitty Marchurst--" "She said I had stolen her diamonds," finished Stewart, with a satirical laugh. "I've no doubt she fully believes it, and I thank her for having held her tongue so long; but she was never more mistaken in her life. I did put Meg back to bed, but I came down the stairs again, and did not leave the room by the window." "But how is it the child saw you? Of course, you know--" "I know everything. Yes. Naball told me all. Meg says she saw a man she thought was me getting out of the window. I've no doubt she did see a man, but not me." "But why should she think it you?" asked Eugénie, puzzled. "Simply in this way. I put her to bed when she was half-asleep, and she knew I was in the room with her. When I left, she fell asleep, and as her slumber was fitful, as I am sure it was, seeing she came downstairs, she no doubt woke up at the sound of the window being opened, and saw a man getting out. You know how an hour's sleep passes as a moment when one wakes, so I've no doubt Meg thought she'd just closed her eyes, and opened them again to see me getting out of the window." "I understand," said Eugénie; "but who could it have been?" "I believe it was Villiers," observed Keith thoughtfully. "He was about the house on that night; he was in want of money, so no doubt when Caprice left him in the supper-room, he walked upstairs to the bedroom, stole the diamonds, and left by the window. He could easily do this, as every one was in the drawing-room. Then Naball found that diamond clasp in his possession, or, at least, in the possession of the Chinaman to whom he sold it." "But if he sold all those diamonds to old Lazarus, he must have got a good deal of money for them. Why did he not leave the country?" Keith sighed. "I'm sure I don't know. It seems all so mysterious," he said dismally. "What do you think should be done, Eugénie?" "I think I'll see Naball again, or some other detective, and sift the whole affair to the bottom." Keith looked at her with a pitying smile. "My dear child, that will cost a lot of money, and you have not--" Eugénie gave a laugh. She was not going to tell him just yet, so she gave an evasive answer. "I've got my salary," she said gaily. "Some of it was paid to me the other day. See!" And taking out her purse, she emptied it into his hand. "Oh! what a lot of money," said Keith smiling. "A five-pound note, three sovereigns, and two one-pound notes." "Which makes exactly ten pounds," remarked Eugénie, with a smile; "and I'm going to pay it all away to Naball, to get you out of this trouble." Stewart, kissed her, and smoothed out the notes one after the other. "It's no use, Eugénie," he said, offering her the notes back; "it will take more than that to help me; besides, you forget I have five hundred pounds in the bank." "Yes," she said, turning away her face; "five hundred." "And you'll have it--if--if I die." She turned to him, and threw her arms round his neck. "Oh, my darling! my darling!" she cried vehemently, "why do you say such things? You will not die. You will live to be happy and famous." "Famous!" he said bitterly, "no; I'm not famous yet, but notorious enough. There's only one chance of escape for me." "And that is?" "To trace those notes that were stolen--twenty five-pound notes like this," taking up the five-pound note. "But you haven't got the numbers." "No; but, as I told Naball, that boy wrote something on the back of one of them." Here Keith turned over the five-pound note; and then, giving a cry of surprise, sprang to his feet. "Eugénie, look, look!" She snatched the note from him, and there on the back were traced in ink the words, "Back Flat-Iron." "One of the notes," said Keith hoarsely. "One of the notes stolen on that night by the person who murdered Jacob Lazarus." Eugénie had also risen to her feet and her face wore a look of horror. She looked at her lover, and he looked back again, with the same name in their thoughts. "Kitty Marchurst!" "Good God!" said Stewart, moistening his dry lips with his tongue, "can she be guilty, after all?" "I can't believe it," said Eugénie determinedly, "though Naball says he thinks she did it. But I certainly got this note from her." "She may have received it from some one else," cried Keith eagerly. "God knows, I don't want to die myself, but to put the rope round the neck of that unhappy woman--horrible," and he covered his face with his hands. Eugénie put on her gloves, and then touched his arm. "I'm going," she said in a quiet voice. "Going?" he repeated, springing to his feet. "Yes, to see Naball, and show him the note." "But Kitty Marchurst!" "Don't trouble about her," said Eugénie, a trifle coldly. "She is all right, and I've no doubt can explain where she got this note. Wherever it was, you can depend it was not from the dead man's safe. Good-bye, Keith," kissing him. "This note gives us the clue, and before many days are over you will be free, and the murderer of Jacob Lazarus will be in this cell." CHAPTER XXVI. ON THE TRACK. When Eugénie left the prison, she went straight to Naball's office, and finding him in, told all about the wonderful discovery of the veritable five-pound note endorsed in Isaiah's writing. To say that Naball was astonished would be a mild way to state his feelings on receipt of this intelligence. "It's an uncommon piece of luck," he said, looking at the note; "we might have searched for a twelvemonth, and never come across this piece of evidence. I think we'll get to the bottom of things this time. You got it from Kitty Marchurst?" "Yes, I got it yesterday in payment of my salary" Naball whistled softly. "Things look uncommon black against that young woman," he observed thoughtfully. "I didn't half believe that story of hers about Stewart's stealing the diamonds, and now this note turning up in her possession--humph!" "But you don't think she's guilty?" said Eugénie, clasping her hands. "I don't say anything," replied Naball savagely, for the difficulties of this case were beginning to irritate him. "I only say things look black against Caprice--she's as deep as a well." "What are you going to do now?" asked Miss Rainsford in a trembling voice, as she rose to go. The detective placed his hat jauntily on one side of his head, drew on his gloves, then taking his cane, walked to the door of the office, which he he held open for Eugénie to pass through. "What are you going to do now?" she repeated when they were standing in the street. "I'm going down to Toorak," said Naball quietly, "to trace this note, beginning with Kitty Marchurst as the last holder of it; she'll tell lies, but whether she does or not, I'll get to the bottom of this affair. Good-day, Miss Rainsford," and taking off his hat with a flourish, he left her abruptly, and strolled leisurely down the street. Eugénie watched him with eager eyes until he was out of sight, and then turned round to walk home. "Oh, my dear! my dear!" she murmured, "if I can only save you from this terrible danger--but not at the cost of that poor woman's life--oh, not that!" The detective, on his way down to Toorak, went over the case in his own mind, in order to see against whom the evidence was strongest. At last, after considerable cogitation, he came to the conclusion that, after all, Villiers must be the guilty man, and that Kitty knew more about the crime than she chose to tell. "I can't get over Villiers having had that diamond crescent," he thought, looking out of the carriage windows. "She denied it was hers, and then Fenton told me he gave it to her. I wonder if he had anything to do with the affair--humph!--not likely. If she thought it was him, she'd tell at once. Perhaps she really thinks Stewart stole the diamonds. Pish! I don't believe it. She's had a finger in the pie, whoever did it, and this murder is the outcome of the robbery. Well, I'll see if she can account for her possession of this five-pound note--that's the main thing." Kitty Marchurst was at home, and sent a message to the detective that she would see him in a few minutes, so Naball walked up and down the long drawing-room with some impatience. "If she'll only tell the truth," he muttered restlessly; "but I'm getting to doubt her, so that I can't be sure. There's one thing, Keith Stewart's fate rests entirely with her now, so if he saved her child's life, as she says he did, this is the time to prove her gratitude." At this moment the door opened, and Caprice entered. She looked pale and weary, for the trials of the last few months had not been endured without leaving some mark of their passage. Naball did not know whether this haggard-looking woman was guilty or innocent, but he could not help pitying her, so worn-out did she seem. "You are not well," he said when she seated herself. Kitty sighed wearily, and pushed the loose hair off her forehead. "No," she replied listlessly. "I'm getting worn-out over this trouble. It's no good my telling you anything, because you don't believe me. What is the matter now? Have you got further proof of my guilt?" "I don't know," said Naball, coolly producing the five-pound note; "unless you call this proof." "A five-pound note," she said contemptuously. "Well?" "It is a five-pound note," explained Naball smoothly; "but not an ordinary one--in fact, it is one of the notes stolen from Lazarus's safe." "Oh, how do you know that? By a very curious thing. One of the notes placed in the safe on the night of the murder was endorsed by the office-boy with the words 'Back Flat-Iron,' and strange to say the endorsed note has turned up." "And that is it?" "Exactly. Now, do you understand?" Kitty shrugged her shoulders. "I understand that you have secured an excellent piece of evidence, nothing more. Where did you get the note?" "From Miss Rainsford." "From Miss Rainsford!" repeated Kitty in surprise; "but you surely don't suspect--" "No, I don't," interposed the detective; "because she was able to tell me where she got the note from." "Well, I presume she got it from me." "Yes," replied Naball, rather surprised at this cool admission. "She received it yesterday from you." "Oh! then, you think I'm guilty?" "Not if you can tell me where you got the note from." "Certainly I can--from Mortimer--paid to me the day before yesterday." "Your salary?" "Not exactly," answered Kitty; "if it had been, you'd never be able to trace the note further back. No; I was at the theatre in the morning, and found myself short of money, so I asked Mortimer for some. He gave me that five-pound note, and, as he took it, from his waistcoat pocket, I've no doubt he'll be able to recollect from whom he received it." "Why?" "Because Mortimer doesn't carry fivers in his waistcoat pocket generally," said Caprice impatiently, "so he must have put that note there for some special reason. You'd better go and ask him." "Certainly," said Naball, and arose to his feet. "I'm very much obliged to you." "Then you don't think me guilty?" asked Kitty, with a smile. "Upon my word, I don't know what to think," said the detective dismally. "The whole case seems mixed up. I'll tell you when I find the man who can't account for the possession of this fiver." Kitty smiled, and then Naball took his leave, going straight from Toorak to the Bon-Bon Theatre, where he found Mortimer in his sanctum, up to the ears in business, as usual. "Well, Naball," said the manager, looking up sharply, "what's up? Look sharp, I'm awfully busy." "I only want to know where you got this?" asked Naball, giving him the five-pound note. Mortimer took it up, and looked perplexed. "How the deuce should I know; I get so many. Why do you want to know?" "Oh, nothing. I just want to trace the note. Caprice said you gave it to her the day before yesterday." "Eh! did I?" "Yes. You took it from your waistcoat pocket." "Of course; to be sure, she wanted some money. Yes; I kept it apart because it was made money--won it off Malton at euchre." "Malton!" repeated Naball in amazement; "are you sure?" "Yes, quite. You know I'm generally unlucky at cards, and this is about the first fiver I've made, so I kept it just to bring me luck; but Caprice wanted money, so I handed over my luck to her. There's nothing wrong, eh?" "Oh, dear, no," replied Naball; "not the slightest--only some professional business." "Because I shouldn't like to get any poor devil into a row," said Mortimer. "Now, be off with you, I'm busy. Good-day." "Good-day, good-day." Naball departed, curiously perplexed in his feelings. He had never thought of Malton in the light of a possible criminal, and yet it was so very strange that this note should have been traced back to him. Then he remembered the conversation he had overheard between Mrs. Malton and Kitty concerning the embezzlement, when Kitty denied that she had paid the money. "By Jove!" said Naball, a sudden thought striking him, "he was present at that supper, and was in a regular hole for want of money. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he stole those diamonds to replace the money, and his wife's thanking Caprice was all a blind, and then this note--humph!--things look rather fishy, my friend." When he arrived at the Never-say-die Insurance Company Office, he sent in his card to the assistant manager, and in a few minutes was shown into Malton's room, where that individual received him with visible uneasiness. "Well, Naball, and what brings you here?" he asked, watching the detective's face stealthily. "Only a little business, in which I want your help," said Naball, taking the note out of his pocket-book. "Can you tell me where you got that?" Malton's pink-and-white complexion grew a little pale, but he laughed in a forced manner as he glanced at the note. "Got this?" he said. "I can't tell you. Was it ever in my possession?" "It was," asserted Naball. "You gave it to Mortimer the day before yesterday." "Oh, yes, I remember now," said Malton quickly. "He won it off me at cards." "Exactly. Where did you get the note?" Malton shifted uneasily in his seat, and his nether lip twitched uneasily. "I'm afraid I can hardly remember," he murmured, pushing back his chair. Naball's suspicions were now rapidly ripening to certainties. If Malton were innocent, why these signs of agitation? He wriggled and twisted about like an eel, yet never once met the keen eye of the detective. "You'd better remember," said Naball mercilessly, "or it will be the worse for you." "Why?" asked Malton, trying to appear composed. "Because," explained Naball, in a low voice, "that note is one of those stolen by the man who murdered Jacob Lazarus." Malton, with a smothered exclamation, started to his feet, and then, shaking in every limb, sat down again. "No, no," he stammered, "that's absurd. It can't be--I tell you, it can't be." "Oh, but it can be, and it is. I tell you, the note is endorsed 'Back Flat-Iron,' which was done by the office-boy a few moments before the notes were put in the safe by Stewart. They were gone after the murder, so there is no doubt they were taken by the man who committed the crime. I got this note from Miss Rainsford, who received it from Caprice; she, in her turn, got it from Mortimer, and he has referred us to you. Now, where did you get it?" Malton drummed nervously on the table. "I can't tell you," he said in a tremulous voice. "You must." "It's impossible." "I tell you what, sir," said Naball coolly, "if you don't tell, it means trouble for you and the other man." "What other man?" asked Malton shakily. "The man you got this note from." Malton thought for a moment, and then apparently made up his mind. "You saw I was taken aback?" he asked Naball curiously. The detective nodded. "It's because I'm sorry for what I have to tell you--the man I got the note from was Ezra Lazarus." Naball jumped to his feet with a cry. "The dead man's son?" he said. "Yes; the dead man's son," replied Malton slowly. Naball stood for a few minutes, then putting the note in his pocket-book, once more took up his hat, and moved to the door. "Where are you going?" asked Malton, rising. "To see Mr. Ezra Lazarus," said Naball, pausing a moment. "In the meantime, till I have certain proof of his guilt, you hold your tongue." And he walked out, leaving Malton standing at his desk as if turned into stone. Naball, on his way to the newspaper office, rapidly ran over in his own mind all the details of the case against Ezra. "His father wouldn't give him any money, and he wanted to get married to that girl; father and son had a quarrel on the day preceding the murder; he was at the Bon-Bon on that night, and took Caprice downstairs to her carriage; she gave him Stewart's coat to take back to him again; in that coat was the knife found by Villiers under the window; she left the theatre long before Stewart,--where did he go? to his office, or--good heavens! if it should turn out to be true--" Ezra received him, looking rather knocked up, but his face, though pale, was quite placid, and Naball wondered how a man guilty of such a terrible crime as parricide could be so calm. "You look tired," he said, taking a seat. "I am tired," admitted Ezra wearily. "I've been busy with my father's affairs." "Humph!" thought Naball; "counting his gains, I suppose." "Any fresh development of the case?" asked Ezra. "Yes," said Naball solemnly. "I received this note to-day, and traced it back to Malton; he says it was given to him by you." Ezra examined the note with great interest, and on turning it over saw the fatal words endorsed. He looked up quickly to Naball. "This is one of the notes that were stolen?" he asked. "Yes," replied Naball; "and Malton said it was given to him by you." "By me!" repeated Ezra in amazement. "How on earth could I come across this note?" "That's what I want to find out," said Naball. Ezra looked at him for a moment, then the whole situation seemed to burst on him, and with a stifled groan the unhappy young man fell back into his chair, burying his face in his hands. "Good God!" he cried, "you don't suspect me of killing my father?" "If you are innocent, you can explain where you got the note." "I cannot--I cannot," cried Ezra feverishly. "I had to pay some money to Malton, and did so last week. There were some five-pound notes among that money, but I cannot tell where this particular one came from." "Where did you get the money?" asked Naball. "From the Hibernian Bank." "Oh, but if you had to pay Malton money, why did you not do so by cheque?" "Because I wanted some money myself, and did not care about drawing two cheques, so I drew one, covering what I owed to him and a little over." "Humph!" Naball thought a moment. "You are sure of this?" "Yes; it's the only way I can account for having the note. Whoever killed my father, must have paid it into the bank, and it came round to me by some fatality." "Where were you on the night of the murder?" "At the Bon-Bon Theatre." "Afterwards?" "At this office." "You can prove an _alibi?_" "I'm afraid I can't. I was all alone." "Look here, Mr. Lazarus," said Naball in a kind tone, "I must say things look black against you; but I'm not satisfied yet about the real criminal. To-day is Saturday, so I'll go to the bank the first thing on Monday, and find out what I can. There's so many suspected of this business, that one more or less don't matter." Ezra groaned. "You don't think I'm guilty?" he asked imploringly. Naball looked keenly at him. "No; I believe you innocent," he replied abruptly. CHAPTER XXVII. MEG PROVES USEFUL. The next day was Sunday, and Caprice, quite worn-out with the excitement of the week and the strain of the performances of "Faust Upset," was lying in bed. The burlesque had become a great success, but the papers, with their usual kindly generosity towards authors, declared that it was due not so much to the intrinsic merit of the work, as to the wonderfully clever acting of Caprice. Last night, however, she had acted badly, going through her part with mechanical precision, but without that dash which usually characterised her performance. The worry of this murder case, anxiety for the future of her child, and pity for the unfortunate young man now in prison, had all wrought on her nerves, so that she felt overcome with extreme lassitude, and lay supinely in bed, with half-closed eyes, incapable of the slightest exertion. From this state of tranquillity she was aroused by the entrance of Eugénie, who was also looking pale and worn. She had learned all about the tracing of the five-pound note to Ezra, and had now come to tell Kitty about it. The room was in a kind of semi-darkness, as all the blinds had been pulled down to keep out the dazzling sunlight, and the atmosphere was permeated by the smell of some pungent scent which Kitty had been using to bathe her aching head. Eugénie came straight to the bed, and bent over it, on which Kitty opened her eyes and smiled faintly. "Oh, is it you, Miss Rainsford?" she said drowsily. "I did not expect you to-day." "No!" replied Eugénie. "I came to tell you all about that five-pound note; but I'm sorry to find you so ill." "I'm worn-out," said Kitty fretfully. "All the worry and trouble of my earlier years are beginning to tell on me, and the anxiety of this case is the climax. I believe I'll die soon, and I don't much care, for I have your promise about the child." "You have!--my solemn promise." "Thank you. I don't mind when I die. My life has been a very unhappy one. I've had more than my share of sorrow, and now I would like to go to sleep, and slumber on--on for ever." She finished the sentence in a sleepy tone, then suddenly recollecting why Eugénie had come down, she opened her eyes wide, and spoke briskly. "Well, what about this five-pound note? To whom did it originally belong?" "I'd better go through the whole history," said Eugénie slowly. "I received it from you." "Exactly," interrupted Caprice, raising herself on her elbow; "and I got it from Mortimer. Who gave it to him?" "Mr. Malton, for a gambling debt." "Malton," repeated Kitty vivaciously. "Why, is he--did they--" "Suspect him of the murder. No; because he says he got the note from Ezra Lazarus, and he cannot tell from whom he received it." Kitty was wide awake by this time, and sitting up in bed, pushed the fair curls off her forehead. "But, my dear," she said rapidly, "surely they don't suspect that poor young man of murdering his father?" "Not exactly suspect him," observed Eugénie; "but, you see, Mr. Lazarus cannot account for the possession of that particular note, so that makes things look bad against him." "I don't see why," said Caprice impatiently. "I'm sure I couldn't account for every individual five-pound note I receive--it's absurd;--is that all the case they have against him?" "I think so; but Mr. Naball says--" "Says!" interrupted Kitty impatiently; "Naball's a fool. I often heard what a clever detective he was, but I'm afraid I can't see it. He's mismanaged the whole of this case shamefully. Why he suspects every one all round on the slightest suspicion: first he thought it was me, because I was at Lazarus's place on that night; then he swore it was Villiers, because he found the knife Meg gave Mr. Stewart; then poor Mr. Stewart is arrested simply because he cannot prove an alibi. I daresay, when he found Malton had the note, he suspected him, and now, I'll be bound, he has firmly settled in his own mind that Ezra Lazarus killed his own father--pish! My dear, I tell you again Naball's a fool." "That may be," observed the other woman bitterly; "but he's a fool on whose folly Keith's life depends." "Not a bit of it," said Caprice cheerfully; "we'll find some way to save him yet. The only evidence against him is that knife, and I don't believe it was in his possession at the Bon-Bon Theatre." "Why not?" "Because no one could have taken it out of his overcoat pocket there. I took the coat downstairs by mistake, but I'm sure I never abstracted the knife. Ezra Lazarus took it back, and I'll swear, in spite of Mr. Naball, he didn't take it. It's not likely Mortimer would go fiddling in another man's pockets, so I believe the knife was taken from the coat pocket, without his knowledge, at the club." "But who took it, and how?" asked Eugénie, with great interest. "My dear," replied Kitty, with a shrug, "how do I know. Perhaps, after receiving back the knife from Fenton, and putting it in his pocket, he hung his coat up again; in that case, anyone who saw him put the knife away could have stolen it." "But who would do so?" "That's what our clever Naball ought to find out," said Caprice, with a disdainful smile, "only he's such an idiot. I tell you whom I suspect--mind you, it's only suspicion--and yet appearances are quite as black against him as any one else." "Who is it?" "Malton." "Malton!" repeated Eugénie, starting up. "None other," said Kitty coolly. "He was at the club, and I know was hard up for money. His wife came to me one day, and told me he had embezzled a lot of money at his office. Then, after the crime, she came to me, and thanked me for paying it. I never did so. Fenton said he did, but I doubt it, as there isn't much of the philanthropist about him, so the only one who could have replaced the money was Malton himself. How? Well, easily enough. He was at the club--saw Keith's knife, and, knowing he was Lazarus's clerk, the idea flashed across his mind of murdering the old man with the knife, and dropping it about, so as to throw suspicion on Stewart. So, by some means, I don't know how, he obtains the knife before Stewart leaves the club, commits the crime, gets the money, circulates the notes, and when taxed with the possession of a marked one, says he got it from Ezra Lazarus--very weak, my dear, very weak indeed. Ezra says he paid him some money, so naturally doesn't know each individual note; so such a thing favours Mr. Malton's little plan. So there you are, my dear. I've made up a complete case against Malton, and quite as feasible as any of Naball's theories. Upon my word," said Kitty gaily, "I ought to have been a detective." Eugénie was walking to and fro hurriedly. "If this is so, he ought to be arrested," she said quickly. "Then go and tell Naball, my dear," said Kitty in a mocking voice. "He'll arrest any one on suspicion. I wonder half the population of Melbourne aren't in jail, charged with the murder. Oh, Naball's a brilliant man! He says the man who committed the murder stole my diamonds--pish!" "And you say Keith stole them," said Eugénie reproachfully, "therefore--" "Therefore the lesser crime includes the greater," finished Kitty coolly. "No, my dear, I don't believe he is a murderer; but as to the diamonds, what am I to think after what Meg told me?" "Meg! Meg!" said that young person, dancing into the room, holding a disreputable doll in her arms, "mumsey want Meg?" "Yes," said Kitty, as Meg came to the bedside. "Come up here, dear, and tell mumsey how you are." "Meg is quite well, and so is Meg's daughter," holding out the doll for Kitty to kiss; "but, mumsey, why is the lady so sad?" Eugénie, who had remained silent since Kitty's speech, now came forward and kissed the child. "I'm not sad, dear," she said quietly, taking her seat by the bed, "only I want Meg to tell me something." Meg nodded. "A fairy tale?" she asked sedately. Kitty laughed, though she looked anxious. "No, my dear, not a fairy tale," she said, smoothing the child's hair; "mumsey wants you to tell the story of the man who got out of the window." "My Mr. Keith," said Meg at once. Kitty glanced at Eugénie, who sat with bowed head, gazing steadfastly at her hands. "You see," she observed with a sigh, "the child says it was Mr. Keith." Miss Rainsford re-echoed the sigh, then looked at Meg. "Meg, dear," she said in her soft, persuasive voice, "come here, dear, and sit on my knee." Meg, nothing loth, scrambled down off the bed, and soon established herself on Eugénie's lap, where she sat shaking her auburn curls. Kitty glanced affectionately at the serious little face, and picked up her doll, which was lying on the counterpane. "Now, Meg," she said gaily, "you tell Miss Rainsford the story of the man and the window. I'll play with this." "Meg's daughter," observed Meg reprovingly. "Yes, Meg's daughter," repeated Kitty with a smile. "Come, Meg," said Eugénie, smoothing the child's hair, "tell me all about the man." "It was my Mr. Keith, you know," began Meg, resting her cheek against Eugénie's breast, "He took me upstairs--'cause I was so sleepy--an' he put me to bed, an' then I sleeped right off." "And how long did you sleep, dear?" asked Eugénie. "Oh, a minute," said Meg, "just a minute; then I didn't feel sleepy, and opened my eyes wide--quite wide--as wide as this," lifting up her face in confirmation, "and Mr. Keith, he was getting out of the window." "How do you know it was Mr. Keith?" asked Eugénie quickly, "'Cause he put me in bed," said Meg wisely, "and he was there all the time." "He didn't speak to you when he was near the window?" "No; he got out, and tumbled. I laughed when he tumbled," finished Meg triumphantly; "then I sleeped again, right off." Eugénie put the girl down off her knee, and turned to Kitty. "I believe Keith did put the child to bed," she said quietly, "but I think she must have slept for some time, and that the man she saw getting out of the window was some one else; of course, being awakened by the noise, she would only think she had slept a minute." "A minute, a minute," repeated Meg, who had climbed back on to the bed, and was jumping the doll up and down. "But who could the second man have been?" asked Kitty, perplexed. "You know Naball's theory that the man who stole the diamonds committed the murder," said Eugénie. "You think Malton is guilty of the murder, why not of the robbery also? He was present at the supper-party, and knew where the jewels were kept." Kitty drew her brows together and was about to speak, when Meg held up her doll for inspection. "Look at the locket," she said triumphantly; "it's like Bliggings's locket--all gold." Kitty smiled, and touched the so-called locket, which was in reality part of a gold sleeve-link, and was tied round the neck of the doll with a bit of cotton. "Who gave you this?" she said. "Bliggings?" "No; Meg found it herself, here, after the man had got out of the window." Eugénie gave a cry, and started up, but Kitty in a moment had seized the doll, and wrenched off the gold link which Meg called the locket. "When did you find this, Meg?" she asked the child in a tone of suppressed excitement. "After the man went out of the window," said Meg proudly. "In the dark?" asked her mother. "No, when Meg was dressed, and the sun was shining," said Meg, trying to get back the locket. "Wait a moment, dear," said Kitty, pushing the child away. "Miss Rainsford, do you know what this link means?" "I half guess," faltered Eugénie, clasping her hands. "Then you guess right," cried Kitty, raising herself on her elbow. "It means that the man who stole the jewels dropped this link, and I know who he is, because I gave it to him myself." "Keith?" said Eugénie faintly. "Keith!" repeated Caprice in a tone of scorn. "No; not Keith, whom I have suspected wrongfully all these months, but my very good friend, Hiram J. Fenton." "Fenton!" echoed Eugénie in surprise. "Yes; he must have committed the crime," said Kitty in anger, grinding her teeth. "The coward, he knew I suspected Keith, and let another man bear the stigma of his crime. I spared Keith when I thought him guilty, because he saved my child's life; but I'll not spare Fenton now I know he is a thief." "What will you do?" asked Eugénie quickly. "What will I do!" cried Caprice, with a devilish light shining in her beautiful eyes. "I'll put him in prison--ring the bell for pen, ink, and paper--I'll write him to come down here to-night to see me; and when he comes, I'll have Naball waiting to arrest him." "But Keith?" faltered Eugénie. "As for Keith," said Caprice, throwing herself back in the bed, "I'm sure he'll soon be free, for it's my belief that Fenton stole the diamonds, but was too cowardly to commit a murder. No; he did not do it himself, but he got some one else to do it." "And that some one?" cried Eugénie. "Is Evan Malton," said Caprice solemnly. CHAPTER XXVIII. MALTON MAKES A DISCOVERY. Evan Malton had a house in Carlton, not a very fashionable locality certainly, but the residence of the assistant manager was a comfortable one. His wife and child were invariably to be found at home, but Malton himself was always away--either at his club, the theatre, or at some dance. He was one of those weak men who can deny themselves nothing, and kept his wife and child stinted for money, while he spent his income on himself. But with such tastes as he possessed, his income did not go very far, so in a moment of weakness he embezzled money in order to gratify his desires. When he told his wife what he had done, the news came like a thunder-clap on her. She knew her husband was weak, pleasure-loving and idle, but she never dreamt he could be a criminal. With the desire of a woman to find excuses for the conduct of a man she loved, Mrs. Malton thought that his crime was due to the evil influence of Kitty Marchurst; hence her visit and appeal to the actress. It seemed to have been successful, for the money had been replaced, though Kitty denied having paid it, and Mrs. Malton breathed freely. Her husband loved her in a kind of a way; he did not mind being unfaithful himself, but he would have been bitterly angered had he found her following his example. This type of husband is not uncommon; he likes to be a butterfly abroad, to lead a man-of-the-world existence, neglecting his home; yet he always expects on his return to find a hearty welcome and a loving-wife. Of course, as Mrs. Malton was a handsome woman, with a neglectful husband, the inevitable event happened, and Fenton, the bosom friend of the husband, fell in love with the solitary wife. She repelled his advances proudly, as she really loved her husband; but the effect of long months of neglect were beginning to tell on her, and she asked herself bitterly if it was worth while for her to remain faithful to a husband who neglected her. On the Sunday afternoon following the interview Malton had with Naball, she sat down in her drawing-room, idly watching the child playing at her feet. Malton had come home in a fearful temper the night before, and had been in bed all Sunday. Dinner had been early, and she had left him in the dining-room, with a scowling face, evidently drinking more than was good for him. "What is the use of trying to make his life happy?" she said to herself with a sneer. "He cares no more for me than he does for the child. If I were to allow his dearest friend to betray me, I don't believe he would care a fig about it." While she was thus talking, the door opened, and her husband came into the room, with a sullen look on his face. He was, as she saw, in a temper, and ready for a domestic battle; but, determined not to give him a chance, she sat in her chair in silent disdain. "Well," he said, throwing himself on the sofa, "haven't you got a word to say for yourself?" "What can I say?" she replied listlessly. "Anything! Don't sit there like a cursed sphynx. How do you expect a man to come home when he finds things so disagreeable?" She looked at him scornfully. "You find things disagreeable," she said slowly. "You, who have neglected me ever since our marriage; who have passed your time with actresses and betting men; you, who--" "Go to the devil," said Malton sulkily, cutting short her catalogue of his vices. "I don't want you to preach. I'll go where I like, and do what I like." "Yet you deny me the right to do the same." "What do you mean?" "Mean!" she cried, rising to her feet; "mean that I'm tired of this sordid way of living. I'm tired of seeing you at the beck and call of every woman except your wife. I have tried to do my duty by you and the child, yet you neglect me for others. You squander your honestly earned money, and then embezzle thousands of pounds. I tell you, I'm sick of this life, Evan Malton; and if you don't take care, I'll make a change." He listened in amazement to this tirade coming from his meek wife, then, with a coarse laugh, flung himself back on the sofa. "You'll make a change!" he said, with a sneer. "You--I suppose that means bolting with another man--you do, my lady, and I'll kill you and your lover as well." "My lover, as you call him, could break your neck easily," she said contemptuously. "Then you have a lover!" he cried, starting to his feet in a transport of fury. "You tell me _that_--you a wife and a mother--in the presence of our child." Without a word, she touched the bell, and a maid-servant appeared. Mrs. Malton pointed to the child. "Take her away," she said coldly, and when the door closed again, she turned once more to her husband. "Now that the child is away," she said calmly, "I do tell you I have a would-be lover. Stay," she cried, holding up her hand, "I said a would-be lover. Had I been as careless of your honour as you have been of mine, I would not now be living with you." Evan Malton listened in dogged silence, and then burst out into a torrent of words. "Ah! I knew it would be so--curse you! What woman was ever satisfied with a husband?" "Yes, and such a husband as you have been," she said sarcastically. He stepped forward, with an oath, to strike her, then restraining himself by an effort, said in a harsh voice,-- "Tell me his name." Mrs. Malton walked over to a writing-desk, unlocked it, and taking from thence a bundle of letters, flung them on the floor before him. "You'll find all about him there." Malton bent down, picked up the letters, and staggered back, with a cry, as he recognised the writing. "My God! Fenton!" he cried. "Exactly," she said coolly. "Your dear friend Fenton, who came to me with words of love on his lips, and lies in his heart, to get me to elope with him--in the last letter, you see, he asked me to go with him to Valparaiso." "Oh, did he?" muttered Malton vindictively; "and you were going, I suppose?" "If I had been going," she replied, with grave scorn, "I would not now be here, for he leaves for Valparaiso to-night." "To-night!" "Yes. I presume he's followed your example, and embezzled money. At all events, I refused his offer, and left him as I now leave you, Evan Malton, with the hope that this discovery may teach you a lesson." "Where are you going?" he cried hoarsely, as she moved towards the door. She turned with a cold smile. "I am going to our child; and you--" "And I," he said vindictively, "I'm going to Hiram Fenton's house, to give him back those letters. He'll go to Valparaiso will he? No, he won't. To-night, the police shall know all." "All what?" his wife cried in sudden terror. "All about the diamond robbery and the Russell Street murder." She shrank back from him with a cry; but he came straight to the door, and taking her by the arm, flung her brutally on the floor. "You lie there," he hissed out. "I'll deal with him first, and afterwards with you." She heard the door close, and knew that he had left the house: then, gathering herself up slowly and painfully, she went to the chamber of her child, and sank on her knees beside the cot. Meanwhile, Malton, with his brain on fire, his heart beating with jealous rage, and the bundle of letters in his breast-pocket, was rapidly walking down the hill, intending to go to Fenton's rooms and tax him with his treachery. It was partly on this account that he wished to see him; but there was also a more serious cause, for in the event of Fenton bolting, as he intended to do, things would be very awkward for his assistant manager. "Curse him!" muttered Malton as he hailed a hansom, and told the man to drive to East Melbourne. "Does he think I'm such a fool as to let him go now? No, no, my boy; we've floated together for a good time, and, by Jove! we'll sink together." Like all weak men, he was unable to restrain his temper, and was now working himself up into a state of fury which boded ill for the peace of Mr. Fenton. Fast as the cab was rolling along, it seemed hours to the impatient man, and it was with a cry of joy that he jumped out at Fenton's door, keeping the hansom waiting in case he should find the American absent. The woman who opened the door told him that Mr. Fenton had gone out about half-an-hour ago, with a black bag in his hand, and had told her he was going to see some friends. "Curse the man," groaned Malton, who saw what this meant at once, "he's off; I must follow---but where? I don't suppose he'd leave his address in his room, but I'll see if I can find anything there." "Can I give him any message, sir?" asked the woman, who was still holding the door open. "Yes; that is, I'll write him a note; show me up to his sitting-room." "Yes, sir," and in a few minutes Malton found himself alone in the room so lately occupied by his enemy. He sat down at the writing-table till the woman closed the door, then springing to his feet, began to examine the desk with feverish energy to see if Mr. Fenton had left any trace as to his whereabouts. There was a newspaper lying on a small table near, and Malton, seizing this, looked at the shipping announcements to see by what boat Fenton intended to go to South America. "He's certain to go there," he said, as he ran his finger eagerly down the column, "or he wouldn't have told my wife. Here, oh, here it is--The 'Don Pedro,' for Valparaiso, at eight, Monday morning. He's going by that boat, now," he went on, putting down the paper, and pulling out his watch; "it's about six o'clock--why did he leave to-night, eh? I suppose he means to go on board, so as to avoid suspicion by going so early in the morning. He can't have gone back to see my wife, or she would have told me, for I'll swear she's true. Confound him, where can he have gone?" He turned over the papers on the desk in feverish eagerness, as if he expected to find an address left for him, when suddenly, slipped in between the sheets of the blotting-pad, he found a note in Caprice's handwriting asking Fenton to come down to Toorak on that night. Melton struck a blow on the desk with his fist when he read this. "He's gone there, I'll swear," he cried, putting the letter in his pocket. "It was only because Caprice laughed at him that he made love to my wife. Now she's whistled him back, he'll try and get her to go off with him to Valparaiso. Ah, Hiram Fenton, you're not off yet, and never will be--sink or swim together, my boy--sink or swim together." He called the woman, gave her a short note for Fenton, in order to avert suspicion, then getting into the cab once more, told the man to drive to Toorak as quickly as possible. "If I don't find you there, my friend," he muttered angrily, "I'll go straight down to the 'Don Pedro' at Sandridge. You won't escape me--sink or swim together, sink or swim together." The evening sky was overcast with gloomy clouds, between the rifts of which could be seen the sharp, clear light of the sky, and then it began to rain, a tropical downpour which flooded the streets and turned the gutters to miniature torrents; a vivid flash of lightning flare in the sky, and the white face of the man in the hansom could be seen for a moment; then sounded a deep roll of thunder, as if warning Hiram Fenton that his friend and victim was on his track. CHAPTER XXIX. LIGHT AT LAST. It was certainly a remarkable thing that when Kitty had prepared her trap for Fenton just on the eve of his going away, by having Naball in hiding to arrest him, that Malton, the only man who could effectually accuse the American, should also have come down to Toorak in the nick of time. But, then, coincidences do happen in real life as well as in novels; and had Kitty carefully constructed the whole scene with an eye to dramatic effect, it could hardly have turned out better. Eugénie sat with the actress in the drawing-room, waiting for the arrival of Fenton, and talking to Naball, who was seated near them. The detective had listened to all with the keenest interest, but, much to Kitty's disgust, seemed doubtful of the American's guilt. "You were quick enough in accusing other people," she said angrily, "myself among the number, and now, when I show you plain proof, you disbelieve." "I don't think the proof is strong enough, that's all," replied Naball drily. "We have only the word of a child that she picked up the link in the bedroom." "Meg never tells falsehoods," interposed Eugénie quickly. "I daresay not," he replied coolly. "However, Fenton may have lost this link before." "No, he didn't," said Caprice decisively. "He had the links on when he was at supper. I saw them, and I ought to know, because I gave them to him myself." "But why should Fenton steal your diamonds? He's got lots of money," argued Naball, who was rather annoyed at Kitty finding out more than he had. "I don't know why he should," retorted the actress; "it's not my business or yours to discover motives--all I know is, he did it, and I'm going to have him arrested." "Perhaps he'll be suspicious, and won't come." "Oh yes, he will. He thinks I believe Stewart to be the thief, and as to coming, I can whistle him back at any moment. Hark!" as a ring came at the door. "There he is; get behind that screen. Miss Rainsford, you go into the next room till I call." Naball promptly did as he was told, so did Eugénie, and when Fenton entered the room, he only found Kitty, calmly seated beside a little table, reading a book. Fenton was looking wonderfully well, but with a watchful look on his face, as if he feared discovery. He had a good sum of money with him, his passage to Valparaiso, and never for a moment thought that he was on the edge of an abyss. Of course, Kitty did not know he was about to abscond, and never thought how near her prey had escaped. She received him quietly, with friendly interest, and Fenton, pulling a chair next to hers, began to talk eagerly, never dreaming that an officer of the law was listening to every word. Not only that, but outside, crouching on the verandah, was a dark figure, with a livid face, listening to what the man inside was saying. Hiram Fenton, utterly unconscious, was surrounded on all sides by his enemies, and went on telling all his plans to Kitty, never thinking how near he was to the felon's dock from which he was flying. "And what did you want to see me about!" asked Fenton, taking Caprice's hand. "Nothing in particular," she replied carelessly; "the fact is, I haven't seen you for such a long time." "Then you do care for me a little?" Caprice shrugged her shoulders. "As much as I do for any man; but I didn't ask you to come here to make love. I want to talk seriously about giving up the stage." She was leading him on so that he should betray himself to the detective, and he walked straight into the trap. "Oh, you're tired of acting," said Fenton thoughtfully. "Yes; and of Melbourne. I want to go away." Fenton started, and wondered if she knew he was going away also. He thought for a moment, and then replied,-- "Then, why not come with me?" "With you!" cried Kitty derisively. "What about Mrs. Malton?" "I tell you, I don't care two straws about Mrs. Malton," he rejoined angrily. "I was only amusing myself with her." Amusing himself! The man outside ground his teeth together in anger, and clutched the packet of letters fiercely. "And what about your dear friend--her husband?" "Oh, Malton," said Fenton carelessly. "I don't know, nor do I care; he was a very useful man to me for a time. But, now, I'm off." "Off!--where?" "To Valparaiso. Yes, I'm sick of Australia, so I sail to-morrow morning for South America. Will you come with me, Kitty?" Kitty looked doubtful. "I don't know. We have no money." "I have plenty. I've arranged all that, and if there's a row, my dear friend Malton will have to bear it. But now, Kitty, I've told you all, you must come with me. We can live a delightful life in South America. I know it well, and some of the places are Paradises. Come, say you'll come to-night." He put his arms round her, and pressed a kiss on her lips. She shuddered at the impure caress, then pushing him away, arose to her feet. "Don't touch me," she said harshly, "you--you thief!" In a moment Fenton was on his feet, with an apprehensive look on his face. "Thief! thief!" he cried fiercely; "what do you mean?" "Mean," she said, turning on him like a tiger, "that I know now who stole my diamonds, Mr. Hiram Fenton." "Do you accuse me?" he asked, with a pale face, gripping her wrist. "Yes, I do," said Kitty, wrenching her wrist away, "and I've got a proof--this broken sleeve-link, dropped by you in my room on the night of the robbery." "It's a lie!" "It's true! I accuse you of stealing my diamonds. Detective Naball, arrest that man." Fenton started as Naball stepped out from behind the screen, and then folded his arms, with an evil smile. "So!" he said coolly, "this is a trap, I see; but I'm not to be caught in it. You say I stole your diamonds?" "I do," said Kitty boldly. "And your proof is that you picked up a broken sleeve-link?" "Yes." "Then, Mr. Detective," said Fenton, holding out both his wrists to Naball, "if you examine these, you will see neither of the links are broken." Naball, with an ejaculation of surprise, examined both the links, and found what he said was correct--neither of the sleeve-links were broken. "Have you not made a mistake?" he said to Caprice. "No, I have not," she replied coolly. "When he found he had lost a sleeve-link, he got another made, in order to avert suspicion. I say Hiram Fenton stole my diamonds, and I give him in charge." Naball stepped forward, but the American, who was now uneasy at the turn affairs had taken, waved him back. "Wait a moment," he said quickly; "I deny the charge, and will prove it false to-morrow." Kitty laughed derisively. "By which time you will be on your way to Valparaiso. No, I'm not going to let you go." "Neither am I," said Naball decisively. "I arrest you on this charge of robbery now," and he laid his hand on the shoulder of the American. In a moment Fenton twisted himself away, and dexterously throwing Naball on the ground, darted towards one of the French windows. "Not so fast, my friend," he said sneeringly, while Naball, half-stunned, was picking himself up; "guess I'll beat you this time. I care nothing for you nor that she-devil there. You can prove nothing." Naball made a bound forward, but with a mocking laugh Fenton was about to step lightly through the window, when he was dashed violently back into Naball's arms, and Malton, pale as death sprang into the room. "Hold him," he cried, clutching Fenton, who was too much astonished to make any resistance. "Don't let him go. He's guilty--I can prove it." Eugénie had hurried into the room, attracted by the noise, and Kitty was standing near her, the two women clinging together for protection. Naball held Fenton firmly, while Malton, in a frenzy of rage, spoke rapidly. "He is guilty of the robbery," he shrieked, menacing Fenton with his fists. "He embezzled money with me, and had it been found out, we would both have been put in prison. He stole the diamonds on the night of the supper, by going upstairs to your room, and then leaving by the window, so as to make people think it was a burglary." "A cursed lie!" growled Fenton, making an effort to shake Naball off. "No, it isn't," cried Malton furiously. "Villiers can prove it. You met him as you were coming round the house, and gave him some diamonds to make him hold his tongue." "Oh, the crescent!" cried Naball. "Yes, yes; and then he sold the diamonds to old Lazarus, and afterwards murdered him. Yes, he killed Jacob Lazarus!" Fenton's nostrils dilated, he drew a deep breath, and gave a cry of anger; but Malton went on speaking rapidly. "I got that note not from Ezra Lazarus, but from Fenton, and lied to shield him; but now, when I find out he makes love to my wife, I'll do anything to hang him. See, these letters--your cursed letters," flinging them on the ground before Fenton. "You liar, thief, murderer, you're done for at last!" "Not yet!" yelled Fenton, and with a sudden effort he flung Naball off, and dashed for the window, but Malton sprang on him like a wild cat, and they both rolled on the floor. Naball jumped up, and went to Malton's help, when suddenly the American, with a supreme effort, wrenched himself clear of them, and ran once more for the window. Seeing this, Kitty, who had remained a passive spectator, tried to stop him, but with an oath he hurled her from him, and she, falling against a table, knocked it over, and fell senseless on the ground. Fenton, with a cry of anger, dashed through the window, and disappeared into the darkness. But, quick as he was, Malton was quicker; for seeing his enemy escape him, he also sprang through the window, and gave chase. Naball, breathless, and covered in blood, was about to go also, when a cry from Eugénie stopped him. The girl was kneeling down beside Kitty, while the frightened servants crowded in at the door. "Oh, she is dead! dead!" cried Eugénie, looking down at the still face. "No; she can't be. Brandy--bring some brandy!" A servant entered with the brandy, and Eugénie, filling a glass, forced some of the liquid between Kitty's clenched teeth. Naball also took a glass, as he was worn-out with the struggle, then, hastily putting on his hat, went out, leaving Kitty lying, to all appearances dead, in Eugénie's arms. Meanwhile, Malton was close on the heels of the American, who had cleared out by the gate, and was making for the railway station. There were few people about; but the spectacle of two men racing bare-headed soon brought a crowd around. Fenton, with deep curses, sped on through the driving rain, and at last flew on to the platform, followed by Malton, who gasped out,-- "Seize him! Murderer! murderer!" The station-master, a porter, and some passengers who were waiting, all sprang forward at this; so Fenton, seeing himself surrounded, gave one yell of rage, and, jumping on the line, ran along. "My God!" cried the station-master, "the train is coming down; he will be killed." He tried to hold Malton, who was mad with anger at seeing his prey escape him, and, foaming with anger, wrenched himself away. "You'll be killed!" cried the porter; but Malton, with a hoarse cry, sprang on to the line, and sped after Fenton through the driving rain. It was pitch dark, and the rain swept along in slanting sheets, through which gleamed the red and green of the signals. Malton, only actuated by a mad desire to seize Fenton, staggered blindly over the sleepers, stumbling at every step. Suddenly he heard the hard breathing of the man he was pursuing, and the foremost figure loomed up dark and misshapen in the thick night. They were now near the railway bridge which crosses the Yarra-Yarra at this point, and the steady sweep of the river could be heard as it flowed against the iron girders. Fenton, hearing some one close behind him, made a bound forwards, then fell on the line, with a shriek of despair. In a moment Malton was on him, and the two men rolled on the line, fighting like devils. "Curse you!" hissed Malton, putting his knee on Fenton's chest, "I'll kill you!--I'll kill you!" And he dashed Fenton's head against the iron rails. The American, in despair, flung up his hands, and caught Malton round the neck. Once more they fought, wrapped in a deadly embrace, when suddenly they felt the bridge vibrate, and, even in their struggle, saw rapidly approaching, through the darkness the light of the down train. Malton, with a cry of horror, tried to release himself from Fenton's grip, but the American held him tight, and in another moment the train, with a roar, was on the bridge, and over their bodies. One hoarse yell, and all was over. Evan Malton and Hiram Fenton were torn to pieces under the cruel wheels. CHAPTER XXX. EXIT KITTY MARCHURST. So this was the end of it all. The criminal, guilty of the two crimes which had agitated Melbourne for so many months, turned out to be the respected manager of The Never-say-die Insurance Company. After the discovery of his guilt, the affairs of the company were examined, and found to be in a terrible state of confusion. Fenton, aided by Malton, had embezzled large sums of money, and so carefully manipulated the accounts that their defalcations had never been noticed. It was true that once they were on the verge of discovery unless some of the money was paid back, and this had been accomplished by the robbery of Kitty Marchurst's diamonds. As the two guilty men were dead, the only man who knew anything about the affair was Mr. Villiers, who soon found things made so warm for him that he confessed all he knew about the crime. It appeared that, on the night of the supper, Fenton was in great straits for want of money to replace that embezzled by himself and Malton. Hearing Kitty state where she kept her diamonds, he determined to steal them if he could do so with safety. In going to the drawing-room, he saw Stewart descending the stairs, and, as the young man told him he had been in Kitty's room putting the child to bed, he thought he could steal the jewels on that night, and let Stewart bear the blame. With this idea, he went upstairs, took the diamonds from their place, and, in order to make things doubly secure, should his idea of implicating Stewart fail, he got out of the window, and clambered down, so as to show that the house had been burglariously entered. In stealing round to the front of the house, he met Villiers, who had seen all, and, in order to make him hold his tongue, had given him the small diamond crescent which Naball secured in Little Bourke Street. Of course, Kitty would not prosecute Keith, as he had saved her child's life; and it was his security in this belief that caused Fenton to urge on the detective. About the murder, Villiers, as a matter of fact, knew very little; but when Naball said that the man who stole the diamonds also committed the crime, he went to Fenton, and taxed him with it. Fenton, at first, indignantly denied the accusation, but ultimately confessed to Villiers that he had done so. After giving back Keith his knife at the club, he had seen him hang up his coat, and dexterously extracted the weapon therefrom unknown to the owner. Then he went to Russell Street and committed the crime, in reality to gain possession of the diamonds, thinking they were in the safe, as he did not know that Lazarus had sent them to Amsterdam. Therefore, the whole mystery was cleared up; and after making his confession, Villiers found public opinion so much against him, that he left the colony, and disappeared, no one knew where. The dead bodies of the American and Malton were found on the railway line, and, after an inquiry had been made, were duly buried. Mrs. Malton went back to live with her father, and shortly afterwards married again. Stewart was released from prison and became quite the hero of the hour, as every one sympathised with him for the way in which he had been treated. Eugénie told him all about her accession to fortune, and they agreed to get married and go to Europe. Ezra, also, now that he was wealthy, turned Benedict, and was united to Rachel a short time after his father's death. "Faust Upset" ran for some time, but was ultimately withdrawn, as the part of Miss Mephistopheles was taken by another woman, and she failed to draw the public. But Caprice? Ah! poor woman, she was dying. In the struggle with Fenton, she had fallen in a perilous position, and had so injured her spine, that there was no hope of recovery. It was on a Tuesday evening, and poor, wicked Kitty was lying in bed, with her weary eyes fixed on Meg, who was seated on Eugénie's lap, rather puzzled by the whole affair. Keith and Ezra were also present, in deference to Kitty's desire, as she wanted to formally give Meg over to Eugénie to bring her up. All the legal formalities had been gone through, and now they were waiting for the end--alas! it was not very far off. "Do you feel easier, dear?" asked Eugénie, gently bending over the bed. "Yes," replied Kitty in a slow, tired voice. "Better now; it will soon be over. You--you will look after my child?" "I promise you, I will," said Eugénie fervently. "Would you like to see a minister?" Kitty smiled with a touch of her old cynicism, and then her eyes filled with tears. "A minister, yes," she said in a faltering voice. "God help me! and I was a minister's daughter. Look at me now, fallen and degraded, dying, with my life before me, and glad--yes, glad to die." In obedience to a sign from Eugénie, Keith had slipped out of the room in order to bring the clergyman, and Kitty lay quiet, with the clear light of the evening shining on her pale face. "Give me my child," she said at length, and then, as she took Meg to her breast and kissed her, she wept bitterly. "God bless you, my darling," she sobbed; "think of me with pity. Eugénie, never--never let her know what I was. Let her believe me to have been a good woman. If I have sinned, see how I was tempted--see how I have suffered--let my child think her mother was a good woman." Eugénie, crying bitterly, promised this, and then tried to take Meg away. "Mumsey," said Meg, clinging to her mother, "why do you cry? Where are you going?" "I'm dying, Meg, darling." "Dying!" said Meg, to whom the word conveyed no idea, "dying!" "Yes, dear; going away." "I'll go, too." "No, dear, no. You must stay here, and be a good girl. Mumsey is going far away--to the sky," finished poor Kitty, in a faltering voice. "To the sky--then you'll see God," said Meg. At this Kitty could bear no more, but burst into tears, and Meg was taken out of the room, being pacified with difficulty. Then Keith entered with the clergyman, who was left alone with the dying woman for some time. When they all returned, they saw she was sinking rapidly, but she smiled faintly as Eugénie approached. "I've told him all," she said in a low voice, "and he says God will forgive me." "I'm sure He will, dear," said Eugénie in a faltering voice. "Strange," said the dying woman, in a dreamy voice, "I, who never cared for religion, should want it now. I'm glad to die, for there was nothing to live for; but this terrible Death--I fear it. I don't know where I'm going--where am I going?" she asked piteously. "To Heaven, dear," said Eugénie. "Heaven!" repeated Kitty, her memory going back to her childhood; "that is where there is neither sun nor moon--the glory of God is there. Oh, I'll never go there--never--never!" The room w T as now filled with floating shadows, and all present were kneeling by the bed. Meg, who had been brought back, and held by Eugénie, was beside her mother, awed by the solemnity of the scene. A pale shaft of clear light came through the window, and shone on the disordered white clothes of the bed and the still face of the dying woman. No sound save the sighing of the wind outside, the sobs of Eugénie, and the grave tones of the clergyman's voice, reading the Sermon on the Mount, which in former days had been a great favourite with Kitty. "_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God_." Poor soul, she that had not been pure was now dying, and dreaded lest her impurity should be brought up against her. "_Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy_." Ah, Kitty Marchurst, what mercy did you ever show? The inward voice came to her like an accusing spirit, and she shrank back in the bed. Then she opened her eyes. "I would have been a good woman," she said pathetically; "but I--I was so young when I met Gaston." Her voice became inarticulate, and with an effort she kissed her child, while the clergyman said the Lord's Prayer. "_Our Father which art in Heaven_." "Meg, Meg," she murmured, "Meg--God bless my little child!" And those were the last words of Kitty Marchurst, for when the prayer was ended she was lying back, with her pure, childlike face stilled in death. So she went into the outer darkness laden with sins, but surely God in His mercy pardoned this woman, whose impurity was more the result of circumstances than anything else. Let us not deny to others the mercy which we ourselves will need some day. Kitty was dead, with all her frailties and passions; and as the clergyman arose from his knees, he repeated reverently the words of his Master,-- "_He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her_." FINIS. ---------------------------------------- COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH. 
56243	----	Trobe University Library (Australia) Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: La Trobe University Library (Australia) http://arrow.latrobe.edu.au/store/3/4/6/2/6/public/B26994902.pdf [Illustration: Front Cover] _The Mikado Jewel_ By FERGUS HUME Author of "The Mystery of a Hansom Cab," "The Purple Fern," "The Mystery of a Motor Cab," etc., etc., etc. London: EVERETT & CO. 42, Essex Street, Strand, W.C. 1910 THE CHAPEL RIVER PRESS KINGSTON SURREY CONTENTS CHAP. I.--A MYSTERIOUS MISSION II.--WHAT HAPPENED III.--AFTERWARDS IV.--THE INQUEST V.--THE INQUEST CONTINUED VI.--A FAMILY LEGEND VII.--THE GARDEN OF SLEEP VIII.--THEODORE IX.--BASIL X.--THE NEW-COMER XI.--HARRY'S SWEETHEART XII.--A JAPANESE DIPLOMATIST XIII.--THE UNEXPECTED XIV.--THE JEWEL XV.--PENTREDDLE'S STORY XVI.--LOVERS XVII.--TROUBLE XVIII.--PLEASURE XIX.--THE TRUTH XX.--A FURTHER EXPLANATION THE MIKADO JEWEL CHAPTER I A MYSTERIOUS MISSION From the main thoroughfare of Bayswater, where the shops display their goods and the tides of life run strongly, Crook Street extends its long line of ugly dwellings to a considerable distance. Its shape suggests a shepherd's crook,--hence undoubtedly the name--as it finally terminates in a curved _cul de sac_, the end of which is blocked by Number One hundred and eleven. This is an imposing, if somewhat dilapidated mansion, standing in its own limited grounds, which are surrounded by a high crumbling wall of brick, more or less overgrown with grimy ivy. There is a small front garden, planted with stunted shrubs; a narrow passage on either side of the house, screened midway by green-painted trellis-work, and--at the back--a worn-out lawn, dominated by a funereal cedar. Beneath this, through rain and sunshine, is a rustic table and a rustic seat, where the boarders have afternoon tea in summertime. Everywhere there is a feeling of dampness. The mansion is of Georgian architecture, square and heavy, greatly in need of a coat of paint, which it has not received for years. With its discoloured surface, once white, its cheap stucco scaling off in leprous patches, its trails of moss and soot, never to be washed off by any rain, however violent, it looks a tumbledown, ruinous sort of dwelling. Or, as an imaginative boarder once suggested, it is like a derelict hulk, stranded in a stagnant backwater of Life's mighty River. It is certainly doleful, and infinitely dreary, only securing inhabitants by reason of the unusually cheap board and lodging to be obtained under its weather-worn roof. Mrs. Sellars, who rented this sad suburban dwelling, euphoniously called it "The Home of Art," and in a seductive advertisement invited any male or female connected with music, literature, painting, poetry, and more particularly with the drama, to enjoy the refinements of an æsthetic abode at the moderate cost of twenty shillings a week, inclusive. As the house was shabbily comfortable, and its mistress was a retired actress of cheery manners, still indirectly connected with the stage, the bedrooms of The Home of Art were generally occupied by youths and maidens, ambitious of renown. There were very few really old people, as Mrs. Sellars--although elderly herself--did not care for the aged, who had no future, but loved to gather the young and aspiring round her hospitable table. And that same table truly deserved the kindly term, for the slatternly, good-natured woman supplied far better food in far larger quantities than the rate of payment allowed. Indeed, it is questionable if Mrs. Sellars made any profit whatsoever, as nearly all the boarders were juvenile and hungry. But what they paid, together with the landlady's small private income, kept things going in a happy-go-lucky fashion, which was all that was necessary. The children--as Mrs. Sellars called her boarders--adored "Ma," as the boarders called Mrs. Sellars, and with good reason, for she gave one and all largely what money could not buy. She advised, she sympathized, she nursed, she scolded, and to her the children came with their troubles, great and small, for aid and consolation. It was no wonder that with such a blessed helper of humanity, the ruinous old suburban boarding-house was usually filled to its greatest capacity. But full as The Home of Art was last November, on one night of that foggy month it was empty from seven o'clock until midnight of all the boarders. A third-floor lodger--the lean youth with bright and bird-like eyes--had not only written a play, which Ma pronounced magnificent, but the same was to be produced on this very evening at a suburban theatre. Of course, this was a red-letter day--or, rather, night--at The Home of Art, and equally of course, Mrs. Sellars led forth her children to occupy boxes and stalls and pit and dress-circle on the great occasion. By her advice the friends of the playwright were thus fairly distributed throughout the house so that they might applaud vehemently at the right moment and stir up the public to enthusiasm. Even the cook and the parlour-maid, the housemaid and a decayed butler, who had fallen, through drink, from Mayfair to Bayswater, put on their best clothes and departed for the night's entertainment. Already the supper--and a very good supper, too--was laid out in the shabby dining-room, and would be eaten at midnight by the boarders, when they returned with Ma and the successful playwright. And assuredly he would be successful--no one had any doubt on that point, for Mrs. Sellars had long since infected all her lodgers with her constant optimism. With Ma as the head of the house, the atmosphere could scarcely fail to be cheerful. Even debts, duns, difficulties, disappointments and suspense could not, and never did, damp the hopeful spirits of the little community. And Ma, with her unfailing good humour and helpful nature, was responsible for this happy state of affairs. When the occupants of The Home of Art departed for the Curtain Theatre, two people remaining behind had the entire house to themselves. One was Mrs. Pentreddle, who had sprained her ankle on the previous day, and could not leave the sofa on which she lay in the drawing-room with any degree of comfort, and the other was Patricia Carrol, the out-of-work Irish governess, who had arranged to stop and look after the old lady. And Mrs. Pentreddle was really old, being not far short of sixty. She was the landlady's sister, who had come up from Devonshire on a visit six days before the exodus to the theatre: a tall, gaunt, grim woman, wholly unlike Mrs. Sellars in looks and disposition. No one would have believed the two women to be sisters had not the relationship been vouched for by Ma herself. "Martha never was like me," said Mrs. Sellars, when her boarders commented on the dissimilarity, "always as heavy as I was light. Comedy and Tragedy, our Pa called us in the old days. Not that Martha ever had any turn for the stage. It was only Pa's way of talking. Martha's a killjoy, poor dear, as her late husband was drowned at sea and her only child's a sailor also, who likewise may find his grave in the vast and wandering deep. She's housekeeper to Squire Colpster, of Beckleigh, in Devonshire, and knows more about managing servants than I've ever forgotten." And, as usual, she finished with her jolly laugh. Mrs. Pentreddle certainly was no favourite with the boarders, as her lean and anxious, wrinkled and pallid face, her hard black eyes and melancholy dark garments impressed them unpleasantly. She spoke very little, but constantly maintained a watchful attitude, as though she was expecting something to happen or someone to tap her on her shoulder. As a rule she kept to Mrs. Sellars' private sitting-room, which pleased everyone, as the dour woman was such a wet blanket. But on the night of the play she insisted upon being carried down to the drawing-room in spite of the sprained ankle, which should have kept her in bed. Mrs. Sellars remonstrated, but the sister from Devonshire had her own way, saying that the first floor was preferable to the second, as it was less dismal and more comfortable. "One would think that Martha expected something to happen," said cheerful Mrs. Sellars, when she set out for the theatre with her train, "and was afraid to be too far away from the nearest policeman!" This remark was afterwards remembered when something did happen, as emblematic of Ma's prophetic powers. The drawing-room was a large apartment with a fire-place at one end and a door leading from the hall at the other. One side was taken up by the windows, heavily curtained, and the other by large folding doors, usually closed, which gave admission to the dining-room. Outside, a narrow iron-railed balcony ran in front of the three windows from the entrance door to the corner of the house, and below this was the basement. Within, the room was fairly comfortable in a shabby, slatternly sort of way, although overcrowded with furniture of the Albert period, which had been picked up at various sales. Indeed, the entire house was furnished with the flotsam and jetsam of auction-room derelicts of prosperous days. In the drawing-room were rep-covered chairs, two horse-hair sofas, several round tables, each poised on its shaky leg, fender-stools, Berlin-wool screens, a glittering glass chandelier, and on either side of the handsome marble time-piece which stood on the mantel-shelf, antique green ornaments with dangling prisms of glass. The walls were covered with faded scarlet flock paper, the floor with a worn red carpet, bestrewn with bunches of poppies mingled with wheat-ears, and the three windows were draped with stained, ragged, crimson curtains of rich brocade. Mrs. Sellars was very proud of those gorgeous curtains, but they were distinctly out of date--a matter of indifference to those who occupied The Home of Art, in spite of its name. One of the horse-hair sofas had been drawn to the fire, and Mrs. Pentreddle lay thereon, with her hard black eyes fixed on the leaping flames. Outside, the night was chilly and damp, the air was thick with fog, and even in the drawing-room could be heard the dripping of water from the ivy clothing the surrounding wall. In spite of its being in London, the house was markedly isolated, and only occasionally did a policeman venture down the curved _cul de sac_. But within, all was shabbily warm and comfortable, and Mrs. Pentreddle's grim face relaxed into more pleasant lines. Nothing could be heard but the dripping of the water, the ticking of the clock and the occasional fall of a morsel of coal from the grate. But shortly the almost silence became oppressive, and Mrs. Pentreddle spoke in her harsh voice. "It's very kind of you to stay with me, Miss Carrol," she said, glancing sideways at her companion; "few young ladies would do that when a theatre-treat is offered to them." The girl addressed raised her eyes from the evening paper which she had been reading and smiled. Patricia Carrol's smile was delightful, and displayed such white teeth that her beauty was enhanced. But even when her face was in repose, she looked an extremely pretty girl, and was one of those richly-coloured Irish brunettes, who remind the observer of a peach ripening against a mellow brick wall. Her hair was bluish black, of a wavy quality which lent itself admirably to the style of coiffure which she affected, and her eyes were sea-blue, of that wonderful Irish tint which goes so well with dark tresses. Her admirable figure was clothed plainly, but tastefully, in a Prussian blue serge dress, perfectly cut, and worn with a charming natural grace. Her hands and feet were slim and aristocratic, and her whole air was one of repose and good-breeding. She was a flower of civilization, and should have bloomed amidst more fitting surroundings than the shabby drawing-room could afford. Yet she was only a poor little governess seeking for employment, and even when Mrs. Pentreddle spoke to her, she had been searching the columns of the newspaper in the hope of finding a situation. "Oh, I am very pleased to stay with you, Mrs. Pentreddle," she said, with her charming smile. "I have too many troubles to care about going to a play. I would only take them with me, and then would scarcely enjoy the performance." "That is true," replied the elder woman, examining the girl closely; "and yet you should have no troubles at your age and with your looks." Patricia coloured and shook her head. "My looks are really against me," she said, somewhat sadly; "ladies don't like to engage me on that account. If I were ugly and old I should be better able to get what I want." "What do you want, Miss Carrol?" asked Mrs. Pentreddle, abruptly. "Fifty pounds a year as a nursery governess if I can get it," replied the girl promptly, "or even thirty, so long as I can get a situation. If it were not for dear, kind Mrs. Sellars I don't think I could hold out. She's an angel, and lets me stay here for ten shillings a week until I can get something to do. Bless her!" "How did you come to this?" asked Mrs. Pentreddle, still abruptly. Miss Carrol coloured, for she did not like to whimper about her misfortunes to strangers. "It's a long story," she said evasively; "all you need know is that my father was a Colonel in the army, and that when he died his pension ceased and I was left penniless. But I have had a good education, and I hope to get a situation as a governess." "Won't your friends assist you?" "I have no friends," said the girl simply; "when I left the world I was brought up in, I left my friends for ever." "I don't think so; you will go back to them some day," said Mrs. Pentreddle encouragingly, although the expression of her iron face did not soften; "but, meanwhile, if you wish to earn a five-pound note----" she hesitated. The newspaper slipped from Patricia's lap to the ground and she looked surprised. "I don't understand!" "If you will do an errand for me I will give you five pounds." "Oh, I can do an errand for you without taking money." "I don't ask-you to: this is rather a dangerous errand. But I think you are brave, and I know that you are hard up----" Patricia interrupted. "I have enough money to go on with," she said, flushing. "At ten shillings a week!" retorted Mrs. Pentreddle, unpleasantly. "Well, please yourself!"--she turned over on the sofa--"I have given you the chance." Miss Carrol thought hard during the silence which ensued. Certainly, in her pauper condition, five pounds would be a god-send, and, as she had determined to lay aside all pride when she gave up the position to which her birth entitled her, she considered that she might as well take what she could get at this difficult stage of her fortunes. For five pounds she would do much, but---- "Is the errand an honest one?" she asked suddenly with a catch in her voice. The thought had just struck her. "Perfectly honest," said Mrs. Pentreddle coldly. "What is there about me that you should think me capable of asking you to do something wrong?" "Nothing at all," confessed Miss Carrol frankly; "but if you wish me to go on a mysterious errand, it is only natural that I should desire to hear everything about it." Mrs. Pentreddle carefully lowered her injured foot to the ground, and sitting up very straight, folded two thin hands on her lap. "You shall hear," said she quietly, "only I must request you to keep your own counsel." Patricia nodded. "That goes without the saying," was her answer, and she again wondered if the five pounds could be earned honestly. "I came up to London to go on this errand myself," explained the old lady slowly, "but this sprain has prevented my keeping an appointment which must be kept to-night. As the matter is important, I am willing to pay you the money on your return with It." "It? What is 'It'?" "A small deal box you can easily carry in your hand. A man will give it to you if you will stand at nine o'clock by the right-hand corner of that bridge which crosses the Serpentine. On this side, remember, before you cross the bridge. Nine o'clock, and you must hold this"--she fished amongst the cushions of the sofa and produced a small bull's-eye lantern, the glass of which was pasted over with red paper. "This is the signal." "The signal?" echoed Miss Carrol, rather nervously, for all this mystery did indeed hint at something criminal. "Oh, you needn't turn so white," said Mrs. Pentreddle scornfully. "What I ask you to do is perfectly straightforward. There is nothing wrong about it." Patricia still hesitated, vaguely afraid to be implicated in such unusual doings. "If you will explain further, Mrs. Pentreddle----" "There is nothing more need be explained just now," interrupted the other woman imperiously; "when you return with the box, you shall know all. What I am requesting you to do can harm no one, but can benefit someone." "Yourself?" "No! That is, in a way, perhaps. But you can judge for yourself when I am able to tell you my reason. That will be when you return. If five pounds is not sufficient, I can give you ten, although I can ill afford it." "I am satisfied with five," said Patricia quickly, and flushing again, for even in her poverty she shrank from taking money. "I don't like mysteries, and only accept your offer as I need money very badly. But for all the wealth in the world I would not go if I thought that there was anything wrong," and she looked searchingly at her companion. "How many times do you need me to assure you that there is nothing wrong," said Mrs. Pentreddle, impatiently; "you are singularly suspicious for a girl of your years. All that is necessary is for you to receive this tiny box from the man who will hand it to you." "How shall I know the man?" "There is no need for you to know him at all. The red light of the lantern will assure him that you are the person who is to receive the box. Well?" Miss Carrol rose nervously and ran her fingers through her hair, as she walked up and down the long room. Her instinct told her to refuse a mission about which she knew so little, but the prospect of earning five pounds in this easy manner was so alluring, that she could not find it in her heart to decline. After all, Mrs. Pentreddle was the sister of the woman who had been, and was, so kind to her, and in every way appeared to be an almost aggressively respectable person. It was worth risking, she thought, and at this moment, as though to clinch the matter, Mrs. Pentreddle's voice broke in on her uneasy meditations. "I can't wait much longer," said the old woman; "if you won't do what I ask, perhaps you will telephone to the nearest office, asking that a messenger-boy may be sent to get what I want. It will certainly be cheaper." This proposal banished Patricia's last scruple, as, if a messenger-boy could be employed, the errand, mysterious as it seemed, could not have anything to do with criminal matters. Miss Carrol picked up the lantern, with its faked red glass. "I shall go at once," she declared hurriedly, for now she feared lest she should lose the money, "but who will attend to your foot while I am away, Mrs. Pentreddle?" "I can stay here, as I am doing. Rest is the sole thing which can cure my sprain. You will only be away an hour, more or less. It is a quarter past eight now, and the distance to the Serpentine bridge is not far. Nine o'clock is the hour. You know exactly what you have to do," and she repeated her instructions, to which the girl listened carefully. "I am to show the red light standing on this side of the Serpentine at the right-hand corner of the bridge," she said slowly, to be sure that she knew what she had to do. "I understand. What shall I say to the man?" "Nothing. He will simply place a box in your hand and walk away. All you have to do is to bring the box to me, and then you shall know all about the matter which strikes you as being so strange. Don't lose any time, please." Indeed, there was no time to be lost, as it would take Patricia some minutes to get her out-of-door things on. She ran up the stairs, and assumed boots in place of slippers, a heavy cloak as the night was damp, a plain cloth toque, and gloves. She then took her umbrella in one hand, the lantern, unlighted, in the other, and descended to say a few last words to Mrs. Pentreddle; or, rather, to hear them, for the old lady gave her no opportunity of speaking. For such a grim, unemotional woman, Mrs. Pentreddle seemed quite excited, although she tried to keep herself calm. But a vivid spot of red was certainly showing itself on either pale cheek. "Show the red light and wait in silence," she directed; "do nothing more, and say nothing at all. Then when you receive the box come back with it at once to me. You thoroughly understand?" "I thoroughly understand." "I am glad. Finally, let me assure you once more that there is nothing dishonest or even wrong about the errand I am sending you on." There was nothing more to be said, and Patricia departed. When she closed the front door of The Home of Art, and found herself in the street, she became aware that the night was damp and dense with fog. The gas-lights, however, shone blurred and vague through the white mists, so there was no need for her to use the lantern. No one was about, not even a policeman--in the curve of the _cul de sac_ at all events; but when she passed into the straight line of Crook Street, she almost fell into the arms of a constable who was standing under a lamp. Patricia paused to ask a question. "Will the fog get worse, officer?" "I think it will, miss," said the man, touching his helmet and bending to look at her face. "I should advise you not to go far." "I am only going to the Park to see a friend," answered Miss Carrol, heedlessly; and then remembering that it was a complete stranger whom she had to see, and one to whom she was not even to speak, she regretted having been so doubtfully truthful. "What is the time?" she asked, to cover her confusion. "Half-past eight o'clock, miss," said the constable, consulting a fat silver watch. "Best go home again, miss. You might get lost in this fog, and in the Park there are some rough characters about." "Oh, I am all right, thank you," said Patricia with a bright smile, and passed along. All the same she now began to feel uncomfortable, and to realize that Hyde Park on a foggy November night was not exactly the place for a young lady. Only the desire to earn the coveted five pounds nerved her to do that which she had agreed to do. Crook Street is not far from the main entrance to the Park on the Bayswater side, and, as the fog grew thin further on, Patricia found herself speedily on the broad path which leads directly to the Serpentine bridge. She knew this portion of the Park extremely well, as, having much time on her hands, she frequently wandered about the grassy spaces on idle afternoons. There were few people about, as the night was so disagreeable, and those she saw moved swiftly past her. Occasionally she caught a glimpse of vague forms under the trees: but she never looked closely at these night-prowlers, but, keeping in the middle of the path, moved steadily to her destination. At last she came to the bridge and took up her station at the right-hand corner on this near side. Having come to the end of her journey she lighted the lantern. Across the water the broad bridge stretched weirdly, vanishing into the fog, which here grew denser, like the Bridge of Life in the Vision of Mirza. Patricia had read Addison's fantastic story in some school-book, and it was suggested to her again by the sight before her. People came out of the mist and disappeared into it again: some passed, unconscious of the quiet figure at the corner, while others peered into her face. But no one addressed her, much to her relief, and the ruddy light of her lantern shone like an angry star. Then the expected happened in one moment and quite without preparation. A man came swiftly over the bridge--so swiftly, that it might have been said that he was running. She had no time to see what he was like in looks, or how he was dressed, before he caught sight of the red light and stopped for one moment to thrust a small box into her hand. Then he darted away to the left and disappeared along the bank on the Bayswater side. That was all! CHAPTER II WHAT HAPPENED For some moments Patricia stood still, with the box in her hand, and stared into the gloomy fog, behind which the man was retreating. Another man passed her swiftly, as if in pursuit of the first, but halted for one single moment to look at her. She was an indistinct figure in the misty air, but she could feel that his eyes were piercing her through and through. A few seconds later and he disappeared also, but whither he went she could not tell. The whole oddity of the episode startled her, although much that had taken place had been anticipated and described by Mrs. Pentreddle. As the name flashed across Miss Carrol's brain, she remembered that she had yet to complete her mission by taking back the box to the old lady. Almost mechanically, and with the lantern still burning, she began to retrace her steps in the direction of Bayswater. The fog was growing denser, but by her knowledge of the path and the feel of the hard gravel under her feet, she was enabled to avoid getting lost. A sudden sense of weariness, which no doubt came from the slackening of her nervous tension, overcame her, and she was glad to sink down on the first bench she came to. This was near a gas-lamp, and in the blurred circle of light she felt safe from the attentions of any night-bird. Then a strange thing happened. It was a sensation and nothing more: one connected with the small box she held so tightly clasped in her hand. As she gripped it, she felt--with her sixth sense, no doubt--that waves of force were radiating from its interior. Patricia's body being Celtic, was strung with extraordinarily delicate nerves, and by these she was made aware of many influences which passed by less highly organized mortals. Nine human beings out of ten would not have felt the radiating influence of whatever was contained in the box, but she did. And as wave after wave extended outward, she felt as though some invisible force was driving back invisible evil. The nervous fears she had hitherto felt--and no wonder, considering the hour and the place and the mission--vanished entirely, and she smiled to think that anything could ever have frightened her. A warm light, felt rather than seen, seemed to envelop her, and within its charmed circle no evil could come. Had a robber attacked her, had an earthquake happened, had a storm of thunder and lightning devastated the air, she would not have felt the least fear. The regular waves of this strange force passed ever outward, repelling all harm, all fear; her body thrilled to the pulsations. It was as though some unseen being was draping her in his mantle of power. Naturally she connected these weird manifestations with the box, and that with Mrs. Pentreddle. How came it, she asked herself, that so commonplace a woman should be connected with so extraordinary an object? And then she recollected that she had not set eyes on the object, whatever it might be; yet to do so she had only to look into the box. Opening the shutter of the lantern in which the glass was set, so that she could see by the natural light and not by the red glare, she examined the box. It was a common deal case, very small and very roughly made, with the lid held down by a thin wire. In fact, it was only one of those boxes furnished by shopkeepers to customers, so that delicate goods--china, glass, and such-like--might be carried away without danger of breakage; it was not even swathed in paper or bound with string. It seemed strange that if what the box contained were valuable or dangerous more precautions had not been taken in rendering its contents safe. Then, again, the man who had delivered it in so odd a way had been overcome with fear. Patricia guessed that when she remembered his laboured breathing, the backward glance he had thrown over his shoulder, and the hurried way in which he had made off, after thrusting the box into her hand. Finally, there was no doubt that the other man, who had halted for the moment, was in pursuit. Patricia looked up when she arrived at this point of her meditations, but could see no one, although she heard some footsteps dying away and others approaching on the hard gravel. And all the time she was considering things, the waves of power still continued to radiate. As they had banished her fears, they had also stimulated her limbs, and she no longer felt weary. This being the case, she half rose to return to The Home of Art, since there was no longer any reason for delay. But, being a woman, she was curious, and desired to see what it was that produced these queer sensations. And, indeed, a less inquisitive person would have also acted as she now did, for it is the desire of all to learn the why and the wherefore of the unknown. Almost without thinking, and certainly without consideration, Patricia untwisted the wire and peered into the depths of the box. In the vivid light of the lamp a green radiance flashed upward and outward, and she uttered an exclamation of surprise and delight. She would scarcely have been a woman had she not done so. At the bottom of the tiny box, and as if it had been hastily thrown in, was a jewel, the like of which she had never set eyes on. With a gasp of pleasure she took it in her hand, never casting a thought to the danger of that public examination, at that dark hour, in that lonely locality. She might easily have been robbed and rendered insensible by a blow, as she sat there spell-bound, gazing at the brilliant object which just covered the palm of her gloved hand. A more lovely thing she had never seen. The luminous green poured from the heart of a large emerald, perfectly cut and polished. It formed the centre of a flower, the petals of which were cut out of some hard, dull green stone, with exquisite art. As the girl stared, entirely fascinated by the sight, she became aware that the whole lovely jewel represented a chrysanthemum blossom, of which the emerald was the central glory. From this radiated the regular petals of the blossom, layer upon layer in perfect circles, until the outward round extended in delicate points to all quarters of the compass like the corona of the sun. And as this wonderful object lay on her open hand, Patricia felt still more strongly the waves of invisible force which radiated therefrom. It was as if some glorious power was welling up from the depths of the emerald to stream off from every carved petal. It was no wonder that she stared half hypnotized by the marvel. Suddenly even a stranger thing happened. In a single moment, as it seemed, the force appeared to falter and weaken; the light which she felt was around her died away, and the darkness of the night closed in with uncomfortable swiftness. The radiance vanished from the jewel, and with a rush all her fears came back, as though some magic no longer kept them at bay. She felt no sensation at all; in the carved chrysanthemum, she saw no glory, no charm; it was simply a beautiful ornament and nothing more. Just as she realized this with a murmur of dismay, someone suddenly leaped lightly forward and snatched the jewel from her hand. Before she could rise to her feet, the robber disappeared into the mist, running as delicately and swiftly as a startled cat. The terrified girl was left alone in the fog with the empty box. For a single moment she remained stunned and motionless, and then, leaving lantern and umbrella and empty box behind, she started to run wildly after the thief, vaguely guessing the direction he had taken. In a few minutes she had completely lost herself amongst the trees, and then became aware with a shock of fear that she had left the path for the grassy spaces of the Park. There was no sign of the robber, peer as she might, here, there and everywhere into the surrounding gloom, and she sank down on the wet sward under a dripping tree, to weep with shame at the failure of her mission. She had betrayed her trust; she had lost the treasure. How could she face Mrs. Pentreddle without that which she had been sent to fetch? But for her curiosity in opening the box, the valuable jewel would not have been stolen. Some thief of the night must have seen her examining its beauty by lantern light, and forthwith had secured it for his own. Or it might be--and this was a second thought--the man who had followed the other, the man who had paused to look at her, piercing the darkness with cat-like vision, was the thief. In that case, there might be a chance of recovering the jewel, as Mrs. Pentreddle might know the name of the person who desired her property. But was it Mrs. Pentreddle's property, and if it was, why should it have been delivered in so mysterious a fashion? And why should the first man have been afraid of the second man who pursued him? Finally--presuming that the pursuer had snatched the ornament from her hand--why should he have done so? Patricia's head buzzed with these questions, and she sat on the watery grass, almost weeping at her inability to answer any one of them. The position was terrible: she had lost the jewel and the five pounds also, as Mrs. Pentreddle certainly would not pay her the money. But this was not the time for weeping, nor was Patricia Carrol a very tearful person. The only thing to be done was to return to Mrs. Pentreddle and make a clean breast of the whole occurrence. The old lady might know how to deal with the matter, seeing that there was some strange tale connected with the deal box and its contents of which Patricia was unaware. Such knowledge would probably enable Mrs. Pentreddle to take steps for the recovery of her property. The police would be called in, and--but here the girl paused. Would the police be called in, considering the mystery of the whole affair? Patricia, on swift reflection, thought not; but she thought--here her patience gave way, and she rose hastily, unable to put up further with the torment of her vexed brain. The most obvious thing to be done was to see Mrs. Pentreddle at once and explain. There was no other course open to her. But the girl's nerves quivered at the thought of the very unpleasant quarter of an hour she would probably have. However, it was no use being a coward, and she stumbled as quickly as she could towards the broad path, anxious to reach the bench upon which she had left her umbrella, the lantern and the empty box. But the night was so gloomy and the fog so dense, that she became confused amidst the multiplicity of trees. With some violence she ran against one and falling half stunned to the ground, lay there quite unable to rise. Patricia was a clever and self-reliant girl, accustomed to act immediately and firmly in all emergencies. But this adventure had robbed her of calmness and of all will-power. She felt as though the end of the world had come, and in the cold, damp, lonely darkness she could have cried for help and comfort like a frightened child. But she retained sufficient self-command not to do so, and even exerted her will sufficiently to again stagger to her feet, and strive to find her bearings. With outstretched hands she wandered, trying to gain a glimpse of some light, but all in vain. Then began a nightmare journey through the gloomy woods. Here was a girl in the heart of London, as wholly lost as a babe in some primeval forest. She stumbled here and groped there in an aimless fashion, until her senses became so confused that she did not know what to do. Several times she dropped, several times she rose, and for hours, as it seemed, she moved onward towards an ever-receding goal. Doubtless she was moving in a circle after the fashion of the lost, and in her vague wanderings she lost all count of time. In her heart she began to wish that the dawn would come to reveal her whereabouts, as in this darkness she certainly would never succeed in escaping from the enchantments of this urban wood. And so Patricia dragged on and the night dragged on, and the effort to get back to light and humanity became a journey in eternity towards--as it seemed to her now bewildered senses--a goal which had no actual existence. How long she wandered she did not know, having lost count of time, but finally her instinct moved her in the right direction, and she gained the broad path. But it was not the one she had strayed from, as she speedily ascertained when she chanced upon a policeman. "The path to Bayswater, miss," he said, turning the bull's-eye light on her face and wondering at her haggard looks and bedraggled dress. "Why, you're right on the other side of the Park, miss, near the statoo." Patricia knew that this was so, for above her in the foggy air rose the lofty pedestal of the Achilles statue. She must have wandered deviously across the vast space of the Park, and said so. The policeman readily accepted her explanation and added one of his own: "I dessay you've got lost in the fog, miss, and no wonder, for it's as thick as pea-soup hereabouts. Not the night for a young lady to be out, miss," he ended inquisitively, and with a note of interrogation in his voice. "I came out on an errand," said Miss Carrol faintly, for the adventure had left her weak, "and wandered off the Bayswater path near the Serpentine." "And it's a mercy, miss, that you didn't fall in. What will you do now, miss?" Patricia walked with him towards the gate, near the clock. "Call me a cab," she said, for although she could ill afford it, she decided to drive, as it was quite impossible to walk. The fog forbade pedestrianism, let alone that she was much too weary to trudge all the way to Crook Street. "What; a cab, miss? Certainly, miss, although it will be hard to find one in this fog," and the constable whistled shrilly. "What is the time, please?" Patricia asked the same question as she had put to the other policeman. "Half-past eleven, miss." The girl uttered a cry of astonishment, and well she might. Having left The Home of Art at half-past eight, she must have been wandering about for at least three hours. It seemed centuries, and she hastily made for the cab which drove slowly up, looking like a spectre in the fog. What would Mrs. Pentreddle think of her being absent for so long? But this question was nothing beside the one which the old lady was bound to ask with respect to the lost emerald. "Tell the man to drive to No. III, Crook Street, Bayswater," said Patricia feverishly, and bestowed herself in the hansom; "and here!"--she handed the kindly policeman one of her precious coins, which he accepted with a salute, and gave the necessary direction to the driver. In a few minutes Patricia was on her homeward way, thankful that her strange adventure had not cost her her life, as it might have done. But her thoughts were extremely unpleasant. She had lost her umbrella, which she could ill afford to do; also the lantern of Mrs. Pentreddle, and, worst of all, the extraordinary jewel she had been sent to fetch. How could she explain? The only answer she could find was the very obvious one, that it would be best to tell the truth. Then she began to think what words she would use, until her head became confused and she dropped into an uneasy sleep. Meanwhile the cab crawled slowly and cautiously through the fog, towards The Home of Art. Patricia was made aware that she had arrived at her destination by the sudden jerk of the vehicle, as it came to a standstill. Then, still sleep-bemused, she alighted in a stumbling manner to find herself in the arms of Mrs. Sellars. "Oh, my dear! where have you been? It's terrible; it's terrible!" and the good lady wrung her fat hands. "Oh, what is to be done?" "What is terrible?" asked Patricia stupidly, for her head ached. "Mrs. Pentreddle, my own sister; poor dear Martha is dead!" "Dead!" Patricia felt her weary legs give way with sheer terror. "Dead!" repeated Mrs. Sellars, weeping. "Murdered! Oh, dear! oh, dear!" "Dead! Murdered!" Patricia echoed the words faintly, then fell unconscious at the feet of the weeping, distracted old actress. "Why did you go out? Where have you been? Martha is dead--murdered!" she babbled incoherently. CHAPTER III AFTERWARDS Patricia recovered her senses to find that she was lying on her own bed, in her own room. Beside her sat fat Mrs. Sellars, with many restoratives, and with a look of anxiety on her tearful face. When Miss Carrol opened her eyes and asked vaguely where she was, Ma uttered an exclamation of pleasure and thankfulness. "Oh, what a fright you gave me, dropping down as though you were shot," she said, producing a damp handkerchief. "I thought it was another murder, and that you had taken poison, or----" "Wait!" Patricia with sudden vigour sat up in bed and grasped the woman's arm. "You used the word murder when I fainted." "And I use it now, my dear," said Mrs. Sellars, with some asperity. "What other word is to be used in connection with a cut throat?" "A cut throat!" Patricia stared at her blankly. "Oh, don't tie me down to words," wailed Mrs. Sellars, placing her fat hands on her fat knees and rocking. "Stabbed in the throat would be better, I daresay, if there can be any better in connection with the tragic death of my own and only sister. Martha and I never got on well together, but----" "Ah, yes," interrupted Patricia, passing her hand across her forehead with a bewildered air, as a full recollection of what had taken place came back to her suddenly. "Mrs. Pentreddle has been murdered. You said that, and I fainted at the door." "And very naturally," lamented Mrs. Sellars dolefully. "I'm sure I'd faint myself, if it wasn't that I am needed, with doctors and policemen in the house. And after such a happy evening, too," she continued, placing her handkerchief to her red eyes. "Sammy's play was such a success. I'm sure it will go on at a West End theatre and have quite a run." Patricia ruthlessly cut short this babble, as she was yet in the dark as to what had taken place during her absence. "Will you tell me who killed Mrs. Pentreddle?" she asked, with some sharpness. "No, I won't, my dear, because I can't, my dear. I should rather ask you that very question, seeing that you were left in charge of her with that sprained foot of hers. Why did you go out and leave Martha all alone in this big house, and where did you go, and why are you home so late, and----?" "I shall answer all those questions in the presence of the police-officer who has charge of the case," said Patricia firmly, and gathering her Irish wits together to face a very awkward situation. "I can exonerate myself." "Oh, my dear! no one ever accused you." "Someone might accuse me," said the girl dryly. "People are always prone to believe the worst of one." She scrambled off the bed. "Will you please tell me exactly what has taken place while I bathe my face and change my dress?" "What wonderful self-command you have, my dear!" said Mrs. Sellars admiringly; "it's a thing I never have had. I'm sure when Bunson met me at the door to say that Martha was lying in the drawing-room with her jugular bleeding and all the blood out of her body--not that she ever had much, poor dear!--you might have knocked me down with a feather. I was fit for nothing, and it was Sammy who sent for the police. Fancy! how good of him, my dear, seeing that he had the success of his drama on his mind. And it _is_ a very great success, I can----" "What did Bunson say?" demanded Patricia, keeping Mrs. Sellars to the point from which, confused by trouble, she constantly strayed. "He met me and the rest at the door, my dear, when we came back from the theatre at eleven," replied Mrs. Sellars, trying to calm herself. "His face was as white as a clown's, but it was fear and not chalk with Bunson. He and Matilda and Sarah and Eliza got back at a quarter to eleven, so that the supper might be seen to. And no one has eaten the supper," cried Mrs. Sellars, again going off at a tangent. "Such a lovely supper, too! We expected to have such a happy evening, and here is Martha lying on her bed a gory corpse, with all the bedrooms upset by the villain!" "What villain?" "Him who murdered poor Martha, whoever he is, the scoundrel. He first stabbed Martha in the drawing-room, and then hunted all through the bedrooms, making hay, as the boys say, in every one. Just look at your own, my dear." Miss Carrol had already done so, but she had hitherto believed that the open drawers, with their tumbled contents, the disordered wardrobe, and the displaced furniture, had been the work of Mrs. Sellars. "I thought you had done this when you were attending to me." "But why should I?" demanded Mrs. Sellars, somewhat tartly. "It wouldn't have done you any good to have pulled your room to pieces in this way. The police say he wanted something." "Who wanted something?" "The caitiff who robbed Martha of her life," retorted the ex-actress in her best theatrical manner. "He murdered the poor dear for something, and as it wasn't on her--whatever it is--he searched the house. Whether he got it or not--whatever it is--I can't say, nor can anyone else. But he went out by the front door, in spite of the drawing-room middle window being unfastened, and where he's gone no one knows." "The middle drawing-room window could not have been unfastened," said Patricia, raising her dripping face from the basin. "Bunson locked it before he went to the theatre." "Well, then, it must have been opened since, my dear, for the latch is undone, and it has been pushed up a little way from the bottom. Martha couldn't have done it, as her foot was so bad she couldn't have left the sofa. I daresay the villain did it." "He could scarcely have opened the window from the outside," said Patricia. Mrs. Sellars shook her head mournfully. "I'm not so sure of that, my dear," was her reply. "The balcony runs along the front of all three windows, and as they are old and shaky, like all the house, he could easily have slipped a knife between the upper and lower sashes and pressed back the snick." "But in that case Mrs. Pentreddle, thinking a burglar was trying to get in, would have shrieked for assistance," argued Miss Carrol. "Who would hear her?" asked Mrs. Sellars very pertinently. "There was no one in the house, and I daresay no one in the road, as scarcely anyone comes along so far as this; on a foggy night, too. Who would come here on a foggy night? No. The villain found poor Martha all alone and stuck her like a pig. You shouldn't have left her." "She asked me to." "She asked you to?" repeated Mrs. Sellars, her round eyes growing rounder with astonishment. "Asked you to what?" "To go on an errand, and"----Patricia checked herself, as it was unnecessary to repeat her story twice, and she wished to tell it in the presence of the police-officer. "It's too long to tell you now," she said hastily, and looked in the glass to see that her hair was in order. "Come downstairs, and let me see the man in charge of the case." "Oh!" wailed Mrs. Sellars, submitting to be led out of the room. "Oh, that I should have lived to hear Martha called a case! And Bunson called her 'the remains.' Such an insult!" "What did Bunson say exactly?" inquired Patricia quickly. "He said that he and Matilda and Sarah and Eliza came round by the back and entered the house by the kitchen. While Matilda made up the fire and put on the kettle, Bunson went up to the dining-room to see if the supper was all right. Nothing was disturbed, so he went to look into the drawing-room, expecting to see Martha and you. But he only found Martha lying dead and icy cold on the sofa, covered with blood from her jugular vein. She never did have much blood, poor dear!" sobbed Mrs. Sellars; "but what she had she lost, for she died from losing it, too hurriedly." "And what else did----" "There's nothing else," interrupted Mrs. Sellars, waving her arms in a dramatic manner. "Everyone's upset and can't eat and can't go to bed, and they're all sitting in the dining-room, because Inspector Harkness won't let them sit in the drawing-room." "Is Inspector Harkness the man I am to see?" "Yes. He's in the drawing-room, and told me to bring you to him as soon as you could stand. He saw the cabman who brought you, and asked him where you had entered the cab. The man said at Hyde Park Corner about half-past eleven, which may or may not be true, for I can't understand what you should be doing there at this time of night." "It's quite true," said Miss Carrol quietly. "I lost myself in the fog." "But why did you leave the house?" "I shall explain that to Inspector Harkness. Dear Ma," Patricia patted the disturbed old woman's shoulder kindly, "don't cry so. I assure you I have nothing to do with the death of poor Mrs. Pentreddle." "I never thought for one minute you had, my dear," said the poor landlady. "All the same, Martha is as dead as a door-nail. She is now with her late husband I expect, though it can't be a very pleasant place where such a rascal has gone to. Not that I want to say anything bad against them that are gone, for we may be the same to-morrow," and so poor Mrs. Sellars, quite incoherent with grief and bewilderment, maundered on aimlessly. Patricia was invited to enter the drawing-room by a jovial-looking man, whose would-be military air did not suit his looks. He was stout, red-faced, grey-haired and bluff in his manner, resembling the typical John Bull more than anything else. He tried to be stiff, but failed in his buckram civilities when he forgot that he was Inspector Harkness and remembered that he was primarily a human being. Miss Carrol was so pretty and graceful in spite of her white face and drooping air, the result of fatigue, that the officer beamed on her approvingly. But having placed a chair for her, and one for Mrs. Sellars, who was to be present at the interview, he became aware that he had his duty to perform, and looked as stern as he possibly could. "Now, young lady," he said, arranging some papers, and getting ready to take notes, "what do you know of this matter?" "Nothing," said Patricia, coolly and decisively. She was now quite her own clever, ready-witted self, as the difficulties of her position had acted upon her like a tonic. In spite of Inspector Harkness's suave demeanour, she was fully aware that he would not hesitate to arrest her, if he believed she was in any way inculpated. Her curt answer rather annoyed him. "Nothing," he repeated sharply. "That is rather a strange denial to make, in the face of the fact that you were the last person who saw this unfortunate lady alive. Do you deny that, Miss Carrol?" "No. Why should I? I was with Mrs. Pentreddle from the time Mrs. Sellars left with the others for the Curtain Theatre----" "Half-past six, as we thought the house would be full," interpolated Ma sadly. --"until nearly half-past eight o'clock," finished Patricia calmly. "And after that?" asked Harkness, noting down this fact and acknowledgment. "I was wandering about Hyde Park, lost in the fogs until half-past eleven." "What took you to Hyde Park on this night?" "Mrs. Pentreddle asked me to go on an errand for her." "What was the errand?" "What indeed?" said Mrs. Sellars curiously. "Martha, poor dear, was always of a very secretive disposition, and never told me anything. But, as I am her own sister, she ought to have told me what she wanted." Patricia took no notice of this remark, but addressed herself to Inspector Harkness. She wished to get the interview over, so that she could retire to bed, for she felt extremely tired, and only her will-power enabled her to sustain the examination. "Mrs. Pentreddle," she explained, and the officer took down her words, "had an appointment to-night with a man near the Serpentine Bridge on this side. Owing to her sprained ankle she could not go herself, so she promised me five pounds if I would go in place of her. At first I objected, since the conditions under which I was to meet this man were so strange; but when Mrs. Pentreddle declared that, failing me, she would ring up a messenger-boy on the telephone, I thought that there could be nothing wrong, and accepted the commission." "For the sake of the five pounds," hinted the inspector. Patricia threw back her head proudly. "I am not rich, and five pounds mean much to me," she said simply, but with a nervous flush. "Yes, I went for the sake of the five pounds. Though, of course," she added quietly, "I was quite willing to oblige Mrs. Pentreddle in every way. I refused the money at first, but when she insisted upon paying me, I was only too delighted to accept. Do you blame me?" "Well, no," acknowledged the officer, after a pause. "But did you not think that five pounds was a rather large sum to pay for a simple errand?" "And Martha was so close-fisted as a rule," put in Mr. Sellars. "The errand was not a simple one," said Patricia quickly. "There was a very great deal of mystery about it," and she repeated the instructions which the dead woman had given her. These both impressed the inspector and startled Mrs. Sellars. "One would think that Martha was a conspirator," she exclaimed. "Perhaps she was and perhaps she was not," replied Miss Carrol wearily. "I have been puzzling over the question ever since the box was stolen." "Stolen!" Harkness rose suddenly to his feet and looked at the girl's pale face with an imperious glance. "What do you mean?" "What I say," answered Patricia, whose nerves were giving way. "A man came and snatched the jewel from my hand while I looked at it." "The jewel!" cried Mrs. Sellars alertly. "What jewel?" "The one which was in the deal box." "The box which this unknown man thrust into your hand?" asked Harkness. "Of course. I should not have opened the box, but I did so, because----" Patricia hesitated. It seemed useless to tell these two very matter-of-fact people about the weird sensations which she had felt while holding the jewel, as they would neither understand nor believe. Swiftly changing her mind, she ended her sentence differently--"because the whole circumstances were so strange that I wished to know what was in the box." "You were afraid that Mrs. Pentreddle had sent you on a nefarious errand?" "Yes, I was, and with good reason," said Patricia, and Harkness nodded approvingly. Mrs. Sellars disagreed. "Why, Martha was a most religious woman, and so good as to be almost unpleasant. She would never have sent you on an errand which had to do with anything wrong, my dear." "You can judge for yourself," said Miss Carrol, quietly. "I am telling you all that has taken place." Harkness pondered. "You say that you left this house at half-past eight, and wandered in Hyde Park until half-past eleven. How can you prove this?" "Very easily, Mr. Inspector. I met a policeman in Crook Street when I left the house and asked him the time. He told me that it was half-past eight. At half-past eleven I spoke to another policeman near the Achilles statue, saying I had lost myself in the fog. I asked him the time also, and told him to whistle me up a cab. He said it was half-past eleven and got me the cab. Mrs. Sellars told me in my bedroom that you had questioned the cabman, sir, so he must substantiate my story." Harkness nodded. "Yes. He told me that a policeman had put you in the cab at Hyde Park Corner about the time you mentioned. I see that you can account for leaving the house and returning to it. But what were you doing in the meantime?" "I have told you," said Patricia, annoyed at having her word doubted. "Yes, you have told me; but can you prove what you say?" "Luckily I can, unless the things are stolen." "What things?" "The umbrella, the lantern and the empty box, which I left on the bench in the broad Bayswater path. I was sitting there when the man robbed me." "What was the man who robbed you like?" "I can't say. It was foggy and he only remained for a single moment." "And what was the man who gave you the box like?" "I can only make you the same answer," said Patricia. "Both incidents happened so swiftly that I had no time to observe anything. But if you will send to the Park you will perhaps find the articles I left on the bench." The inspector nodded, and rising from his chair, went out of the room. Mrs. Sellars caught the girl's hand when they were alone. "What does it all mean, my dear?" she asked helplessly. "I can't say," replied Patricia, shaking her head. "You know all that I know, and must form your own opinion." "What is yours?" "I have none. I am quite bewildered." At this moment Inspector Harkness re-entered the room and returned to his seat. "I have sent to the Broad Walk in Hyde Park," he said bluffly; "so if your story is true, the articles will be found." "My story is true," said Patricia, flushing with anger. "But while I was away someone may have sat on the bench and----" "And have taken the articles," finished the officer dryly. "Well, yes; but I hope for your sake that your tale--a very strange one--will be substantiated by these proofs." "Do you believe that I am telling you a falsehood?" asked Patricia in her most indignant manner. "I believe nothing and I say nothing until these articles are found." "And if they are not?" The inspector hesitated, looked awkward, and did not reply. Patricia stood up, trying to control her nerves, but quivering from head to foot. "Perhaps you accuse me of murdering Mrs. Pentreddle before I went out?" "No, dear, no," cried Mrs. Sellars, catching her hand kindly. "The doctor says that poor Martha was murdered about ten o'clock, and as you can prove that you were absent by means of those policemen and the cabman, no one can accuse you of the crime. And I know," said Mrs. Sellars, bursting into tears, "that you wouldn't hurt a fly, much less Martha, who liked you in her disagreeable way." "I am not accusing Miss Carrol, I beg to say," remarked the inspector, as soon as he secured a moment to speak; "but the whole tale is so strange that Miss Carrol cannot blame me if I desire proofs. Naturally a high-spirited young lady doesn't like to be questioned in this way, but----" "I don't mind being questioned," interrupted Patricia, her hot Irish blood aflame. "But it is being doubted that I object to." "Natural enough; natural enough," said Harkness soothingly; "but one cannot bring personal feelings into legal matters. I have daughters myself of your age, Miss Carrol, and I have every sympathy with your position. As a man and a father, I fully believe every word you say; but as an officer, I am obliged to disbelieve until I have proofs. If I do not demand them, the jury and the coroner will." "When? Where?" asked Patricia, startled. "At the inquest. You will be the most important witness, Miss Carrol." "But I don't know who committed the crime." "No, nor does anyone else. But you can tell the coroner and the jury what you have told me, and I hope that the articles you left on the bench will be forthcoming to prove the truth of your extraordinary story. Come, Miss Carrol, you must see that I am trying to make things as pleasant as possible for you, consistent with my official responsibility." "Yes," said Patricia, and sat down again, for, after all, she could not deny but what her story sounded very incredible. And as yet she had not told the most incredible portion, as that had to do with her own peculiar sixth sense, which she was very certain neither the inspector nor Mrs. Sellars possessed. And as they had not got it, how useless it would be, as she fully recognized, to relate the sensations caused by the stolen jewel. Her tale was improbable enough, so there was no need to make it still more so. "Can you describe what was stolen?" Harkness asked her. Patricia did so, and the explanation was received with exclamations of surprise by Mrs. Sellars and with a somewhat sceptical air by the inspector. Patricia saw his doubts and grew annoyed again. "What is the use of my telling you things when you won't believe me?" Before Harkness could answer this very natural question, a young constable entered and placed on the table the articles which had been left on the bench in the foggy Park. Miss Carrol spread out her hands triumphantly. "Yes," said the inspector, interpreting the gesture. "I believe your story now, young lady. Here are the proofs." "Ah, yes," groaned Mrs. Sellars, rocking. "But where is the jewel?" CHAPTER IV THE INQUEST Destiny works in a most mysterious way, and frequently the evil which she brings on individuals becomes the parent of good. During the three years which had passed since the death of her father, Patricia had faced much trouble for a girl of twenty-two. She had no money, and had possessed no friends until she met with Mrs. Sellars, so her career had been a painful one of toil and penury and heart-felt despair. This last misfortune which connected her with the commission of a crime seemed to be the greatest blow which had befallen her, and she truly believed that she was now entirely ruined. For who, as she argued, would engage as a governess a girl who was mixed up in so shady a business? Even if she could prove her innocence--and she had no doubt on that score--the mere fact of her errand to the Park was so fantastic in the explanation, that many people would believe she had invented it in order to shield herself from arrest. In nine cases out of ten this might have happened; but Destiny ordained that Patricia's case should be the tenth. Through the darkness of the clouds which environed her the sun of prosperity broke unexpectedly. Of course, next day the newspapers contained details of the murder at The Home of Art, and the mystery fascinated the public. Crook Street was never so full since it had been a thoroughfare. Motor-cars, hansom cabs, four-wheelers, taxicabs, carts, bicycles, and conveyances of every description, came to the curved _cul de sac_. Also, sight-seers on foot came to survey the house, and Number III appeared in the daily illustrated papers. When the reporters became more fully acquainted with what had taken place, the portrait of Patricia appeared also, together with an account of how the murdered woman had induced her to leave the house. It was generally considered, notwithstanding that the errand had been proved to be a genuine one, that Mrs. Pentreddle had sent the girl away in order that she might see the mysterious person who had murdered her. If this was not so, argued everybody, how came it that the man--people were certain that the criminal was a man--had gained admission into the house? An examination of the snicks to the windows had proved that they were too stiff to be pressed back from the outside, and, indeed, that the upper and lower sashes of the windows were so close together that the blade of a knife could not be slipped in between. Plainly the man could not have entered in this way, so the only assumption that was natural appeared to be that the dead woman had admitted him by the door. The fact that the middle window was unlatched and slightly open was accounted for by the presumption that the man had left in that way. But why he should have chosen this odd means of exit, when he could have more easily have left by the front door, the theorists did not pretend to explain. However, the general opinion was that Patricia's fantastic tale was true--the finding of the articles on the bench and the evidence of the two policemen, together with the cabman's statement, proved this--and that Mrs. Pentreddle had got rid of her, as an inconvenient witness to an unpleasant interview. How unpleasant it had proved for Mrs. Pentreddle herself, could be plainly seen from the fact that she was now dead, and that a jury and a coroner were about to sit on her remains. Harkness had gathered together what evidence he could, which was not much, and the reporters were all on the _qui vive_ for startling revelations to be made. The whole affair was so out of the ordinary that the journalists, anxious to fill up the columns of their respective papers during the dull season, made the most of the very excellent and unusual copy supplied to them. They added to this, they took away from that, and so distorted the truth that plain facts became even more sensational than they truly were. And this painting of the lily brought Miss Carrol into prominence as the heroine of the day. The girl shrank from such sordid publicity, but it was useless to try and hide, as the searchlight of journalism played fiercely upon her. That she was so pretty only added to the attractiveness of the unwholesome episode, and when her portrait was published, Patricia received at least six offers of marriage. All of these she naturally refused, and was, indeed, very indignant that they should have been made. Mrs. Sellars was rather surprised at this indignation, as, having the instincts of a successful actress, she looked on such publicity as an excellent advertisement. "My dear," she said impressively, two or three days after the murder, and when The Home of Art was the centre of attraction to all morbid people, "sorry as I am that Martha, poor darling, met with such a sad death, there is no denying that the tragedy will do the house good." "Oh," cried Patricia, her highest instincts outraged, "how can you talk so?" "I am a sensible woman, and must talk so," said Ma firmly; "tears and sorrow won't bring Martha back again, and perhaps she is better where she is, as she certainly never enjoyed life in a sensible way. Since this is the case, let us take good out of evil. I thought, my dear, that the Home would have been ruined, but instead of that, it has become famous. I could fill the place twice over, as so many people wish to come; but I intend to keep my present lodgers at the same prices. Never shall it be said that I made capital out of my dear sister's death. But you, my dear, need not be so particular, since you are not connected with her in a flesh-and-blood way as I am. Do you see?" Patricia shivered. "No, Mrs. Sellars, I really don't see. I am connected with poor Mrs. Pentreddle in a blood way certainly, for if I had not gone out she would have been alive now." "Well, my dear, you couldn't help going out, since you had to go on the errand, and no one knows better than I do how obstinate Martha was. Well, she's gone, and as soon as they've settled who killed her we must send her to Devonshire." "To Devonshire?" echoed Patricia, surprised. "Yes. Didn't I tell you that Squire Colpster, whose housekeeper she was, has come to London? Well, he is in town now, and called to see me to-day. He is very shocked at Martha's death, and intends to take the body back to lay in Beckleigh churchyard near that of her late husband--or, perhaps, I should say, its late husband, although I am not sure that an 'it' can have a husband. It's very kind of the Squire, but the Colpsters were always kind. He is coming to see you this afternoon before the inquest takes place." "What about?" asked Patricia uneasily. "He wishes to hear the story from your own lips." "It is in all the papers; and much of what the papers say is untrue." "All the better advertisement," said Mrs. Sellars cheerfully. "I'm quite sure, my dear, that your troubles are over. You can marry when you choose." "I certainly shan't marry those horrid men who have had the impertinence to write to me!" declared Patricia indignantly. "Oh, I should, if you find one of the men is nice and rich. But if you don't feel inclined to marry, you are at least sufficiently widely known to get a good situation." Patricia shuddered again and to her soul. "Who would engage a girl connected with such a horrid crime?" "Lots of people," said Mrs. Sellars promptly; "and the crime is not so horrid as mysterious. Who can have murdered Martha?--and why?" "Everyone is asking that question, Mrs. Sellars." "No one seems to obtain an answer," observed the good lady mournfully; "not even Inspector Harkness or the police. Well, my dear, I must go and see about the dinner. Remember what I said to you. You have a magnificent boom on just now, and if you take full advantage of it, you are made for life." Miss Carrol did not know whether to laugh or to scold when Ma left her, but finally took refuge in quiet merriment, notwithstanding her disgust at finding herself the centre of such a sordid sensation. Good-natured and kind as Mrs. Sellars undoubtedly was, the idea that she could urge anyone--as she phrased it--to make capital out of her sister's death, revolted Patricia's finer feelings. Certainly, since the old actress intended to retain her children even though she could have obtained more lucrative boarders, she was behaving extraordinarily well, considering her limitations. But in spite of her own self-denial, her theatrical instincts were so very strong, that she had to induce someone to make use of the advertisement, as she could not bear to see such a chance of gaining a wide publicity wasted. It quite grieved her that Patricia should so persistently refuse, especially when she considered that the girl required money. But Miss Carrol not only declined to entertain the idea, but kept as much as she could to her own room and refused interviews to several inquisitive reporters. "She has no business capabilities," mourned Ma to the playwright. "Why, if this had happened to me when I was on the stage, I should have doubled my salary in a week and trebled it in a month!" which statement was undoubtedly true, since the majority of people greatly enjoy the morbid. Squire Colpster--as Patricia learned the country gentleman was always called at Beckleigh, and also by Mrs. Sellars, who was a Beckleigh woman--appeared at The Home of Art immediately before the inquest was held, and, therefore, had scanty opportunity of talking with the girl, although he managed to exchange a few words. He turned out to be a tall, lean, and rather bent man, with a dry, ivory-hued skin and gold-rimmed spectacles, perched on an aquiline nose. The term "Squire" suited the John Bull personality of Inspector Harkness better than it did this quiet student. And Patricia, although she did not learn at the moment what Mr. Colpster's particular studies were, gathered that he passed the greater part of his days in a well-furnished library. Only the tragic death of an old and valued servant, this gentleman hinted, would have brought him up to London during the very damp month of November. He spoke with considerable emotion. "Poor Martha, how strange it is that she should have come to town to meet with this terrible doom! I was never so shocked in my life as when I read the telegram sent by Mrs. Sellars." "Do you know why she came to London?" asked Patricia bluntly. Mr. Colpster shook his head, which was covered with rather long, iron-grey hair, in true student fashion. "I only know that Martha wanted to go for a fortnight's jaunt to London--her own words. And I rather think, although she did not say so," added the Squire musingly, "that she expected to meet her son Harry, who is a sailor." "Is he in town now?" "I believe so. My nephew, Theodore Dane, told me that he had seen him over a week ago. Harry then said that he had returned from the Far East, and was going later to Amsterdam for a few days. If he has carried out his intention I expect that he is ignorant of his mother's death." "When he hears of it will he return?" "Immediately, I think, as Harry is greatly attached to, his mother. If anyone can find the assassin, Harry Pentreddle will, as he is smart, and very tenacious of anything he takes up. I wish I knew where he was in Amsterdam, Miss Carrol, as I could then send him a telegram." Patricia pondered. "I wonder if he can throw any light on the motive for the commission of the crime?" "It seems impossible, as Harry, having been on a year's voyage, has not seen his mother for twelve months. It is just possible that, as Martha was a week in town before her murder, she may have seen Harry in the interval. Of course, I understand that Martha only sprained her foot on the night previous to her death." "She slipped on the stairs," said Patricia mechanically. "Her son certainly has not been here, or Mrs. Sellars would have told me. Have you any idea what caused the crime to be committed?" Mr. Colpster pondered in his turn. "I rather think I will wait until the inquest is ended before answering that question," he said judicially. "But won't you answer it at the inquest, so that the truth of the matter may be known," urged the girl, puzzled by his tone. "I may not be asked the question at the inquest," said Mr. Colpster blandly, and declined to discuss the matter further. Indeed, there was no time, as they were summoned at this moment to the drawing-room, where the jurymen, under the control of the coroner, were waiting for the various witnesses. They had already inspected the body of the unfortunate woman, which was lying in an upstairs bedroom. As has been before stated, Inspector Harkness had very little evidence to lay before those in authority. The criminal, whether man or woman, had disappeared in what seemed to be a magical manner. All the officer could do, and did do, was to produce various witnesses to relate baldly what had taken place; and these could say very little. Nothing could be proved save that Martha Pentreddle had been murdered, but by whom, and for what reason, it was impossible to say. The inspector gave a hurried sketch of all that had happened since he had been summoned to The Home of Art, and then called his first witness. This was Mrs. Sellars, who wept a great deal, and spoke volubly, adopting her best dramatic manner, so as to create a sensation; for she was always mindful, in spite of her genuine grief, that what she said would be printed in all the great newspapers. The chance of advertising herself as a retired star of the drama was too good to be lost. But in spite of the good lady's volubility, she had really very little information to give. Her sister, Mrs. Pentreddle, had come to London six days previous to her death, from Devonshire, where she was housekeeper to Squire Colpster, ostensibly on the plea of shopping. She had gone out a great deal, but nearly always the witness was with her, and the deceased had not spoken to anyone in particular. She had certainly mentioned that her son Harry had returned from the Far East, and that she hoped to see him before she returned to Devonshire. But Harry had neither written nor had he called. "And I should have been so pleased to see Harry, who is a very charming nephew to have," ended Mrs. Sellars, with doubtful grammar. "Did the deceased mention that she was expecting anyone on the night she was murdered?" asked the coroner gravely. "Oh, dear me, no, sir. Had she done so, I should have forbidden her to receive a single person, as she was slightly feverish from a sprain caused by slipping on the stairs, and was not in a condition to see anyone. In fact, I was most unwilling to leave her, but she implored me to do so, as she knew how interested I was in the drama of Mr. Samuel Amersham. But only on the condition that someone remained to look after her did I agree to go. Miss Carrol kindly promised to remain, so I departed quite happy. Only to return," said Mrs. Sellars, with a burst of emotion, "to find that Martha had gone to that bourne whence no traveller returns." "The deceased never hinted to you that she was in danger of her life?" "Never! She was quite happy--that is, as happy as she could be with her religious views, which were extremely dull. She had no idea of dying, for she told me that she hoped Harry would return with her to Devonshire." "Did you know of anything in her life which led you to believe that she had an enemy who desired her death." "Certainly not! Martha never made an enemy in her life, although she certainly was the reverse of agreeable. She was as dull as I am bright," said Mrs. Sellars, blushing. "Comedy and Tragedy, Pa called us," and this remark ended the examination, as the witness apparently could throw no light on the darkness which environed the crime. The doctor who had been called in to examine the body stated that the deceased had been murdered by some sharp instrument being thrust into the throat. This had pierced the jugular vein, and the miserable woman, becoming unconscious almost at once, had slowly bled to death. Her hair was in disorder, and when discovered, her body was lying half on and half off the sofa. It was the doctor's opinion that the assassin, grasping the hair, had drawn back his victim's head so that he could the more easily accomplish his deadly purpose. From the nature of the wound, it was probably inflicted by a fine and narrow blade--witness thought that a stiletto might have been used. From the condition of the body, death had undoubtedly taken place at ten o'clock, but probably, since the death was caused by hæmorrhage, deceased must have been struck down some minutes earlier. This was all the medical evidence obtainable, and although it proved clearly how Mrs. Pentreddle died, could not show who had committed the crime. But the use of the word "stiletto" gave the coroner an idea. "Only a foreigner would use such a weapon," he remarked. The witness disagreed. "The word suggests an Italian, because it is the name of a weapon extensively employed by the _bravi_ of the Middle Ages. But a murderer of any other nation would use it just as naturally, if it came to hand. Besides, I only assume from the nature of the wound--the smallness of the orifice--that a stiletto was used. I am sure that I am right, however!" and the coroner rather agreed, as he also was a doctor and had seen the wound himself. "Could there have been a stiletto in the house?" he asked generally. "Yes!" cried Mrs. Sellars unexpectedly, from her seat near the door, and became prodigiously excited. "What's that?" asked the coroner, as the doctor stepped away from the place assigned to witnesses. "What do you say?" Mrs. Sellars at once occupied the vacated position. "Now I remember, that only three days before poor, dear Martha met with her death, I was showing her some of my old stage dresses. There was a page's costume I wore in The _Duke's Motto_, and with it were the jewels and a stiletto." "Pooh! Pooh! A stage weapon!" said the coroner contemptuously. "Not at all; not at all! A friend of mine, who admired my acting, gave me a real Italian stiletto to wear in the part: a very dangerous weapon it was, sharp and pointed. I daresay Martha was killed with that." "Have you missed it?" "No. I put away the dresses and never thought of looking, but Martha could easily have taken it while my back was turned. Just wait, sir, and I'll go and see," and before the coroner could give permission, Mrs. Sellars, as active as a young girl, was out of the room. There was a pause, as it was impossible to continue the examination of other witnesses until this important point was settled. Everyone looked at one another, but no one spoke, as it was felt that here, at least, was a tangible clue. In a very short space of time Mrs. Sellars returned, red-faced and out of breath, waving an empty sheath. "It's not here," she declared quickly and giving the gold-embroidered sheath to the coroner; "this is all that I found. Martha must have taken the stiletto." "But why should she?" demanded the coroner, doubtfully. "Ask me another," said Mrs. Sellars vulgarly, and with a shrug. There was only one inference to be drawn from the absence of the weapon: Mrs. Pentreddle knew that she was in danger, and had therefore armed herself against a possible attempt being made on her life. CHAPTER V THE INQUEST CONTINUED Until it came to the examination of Patricia, very little was learned from the depositions of the various witnesses summoned to give evidence. All that the boarders and the servants could say was that Mrs. Pentreddle, although not an extremely sociable person, had behaved herself quietly in every way. She had kept very much to herself, and had mentioned her business in coming to London to no one. And certainly she had never hinted in the slightest degree that she possessed an enemy who desired to take her life. All who dwelt beneath the hospitable roof of The Home of Art expressed themselves surprised at the death of the poor woman. There was nothing apparent on the surface of things, as one witness observed, to lead up to such a catastrophe. It was entirely unexpected and unforeseen. Bunson, the butler, deposed that before leaving the house with his fellow-servants for the theatre, he had locked the three drawing-room windows. When the police examined the room afterwards, the middle one of these had been found unfastened and slightly open. It assuredly would not have been difficult for the assassin to have come along the iron balcony to that window and there have tapped for admittance. But Bunson swore positively that unless the deceased had opened the window, the man could not have entered. It was this witness who had found the body, and he stated that he had not touched it until it was seen by Inspector Harkness and his underlings. It was at this point, and in answer to the question of a juryman, that the inspector admitted the absence of the weapon with which the deceased had been killed. No stiletto had been found, either in the drawing-room or in any part of the house, so it was presumed that the criminal must have taken it away with him. "I wonder that he did not place the stiletto in the hand of the dead woman, so that it might be supposed she had committed suicide," said a juryman. "Probably he did not think that it would be proved that the deceased had taken the stiletto from her sister's room when the stage costumes were being displayed," suggested another juryman. "We have not yet learned if the murder was committed with that weapon," was the coroner's remark. "Call George Colpster." Then came the turn of the Squire to be examined, but he could tell nothing likely to aid in the discovery of the criminal. Mrs. Pentreddle, he declared, had been his housekeeper for over twenty years, and had rarely gone away on a holiday. She had asked him for a fortnight's leave, so that she might pay a visit to Mrs. Sellars in London, and this he had readily granted. She had never told him the reason why she wished to go to London, but he presumed at the time that she intended to see her sailor son during her stay. When this fact, or, rather, this suggested fact, became known, the coroner recalled Mrs. Sellars, and learned again what he might have known he had learned before, had he referred to his notes, that Harry Pentreddle had never been near the house. When Mrs. Sellars stepped away again from the position allotted to the witnesses, Squire Colpster finished his evidence by swearing solemnly that his housekeeper had never hinted that she was in danger of her life. "Yet she must have thought so," observed a juryman, "else she would not have taken the stiletto." "We have not yet proved that the murder was committed with that weapon," snapped the coroner once more. Of course, the real interest of the case truly began when Patricia Carrol was sworn, since she apparently knew more about the matter than did anyone else, and, moreover, had been the last person to see Mrs. Pentreddle alive. She gave her evidence quietly and clearly, relating all that had taken place from the time Mrs. Pentreddle had asked her to go on the errand to the time she returned to learn that during her absence the wretched woman had been stabbed. But on this occasion, as on the other, when Harkness had questioned her, Patricia left out any confession of her sensations when holding the stolen jewel. She judged, and very wisely too, that any statement of this kind would be put down to hysteria. Both the coroner and the jurymen questioned and cross-questioned the witness, but in no way could they cause her to deviate from the details she originally gave. Mrs. Pentreddle had promised to explain all about the matter when the witness returned, but her unforeseen death had ended all chance of explanation in that quarter. "But was the death unforeseen by you?" asked the coroner, catching at the word used by Patricia. "Certainly," she replied readily. "I expected to find Mrs. Pentreddle ready to receive me when I returned." "And expected to receive your five pounds?" "No, sir. I had failed in the errand she had asked me to do; therefore, I did not desire to be paid." "Can you describe the appearance of the man who placed the box in your hand and the appearance of the thief?" "No. I told you so before. Both men came and went in a flash, and even if they had waited, it would have been impossible for me to have noticed their dress and looks, as the fog was so thick and the night was so dark." "Did either man speak?" "No. Each came and went in silence." The policemen both in Crook Street and at Hyde Park Corner proved that they had met Patricia and that she had severally asked them the time. Also, the cabman deposed to driving the young lady back to The Home of Art, so, without any difficulty whatsoever, it was proved that Miss Carrol had been absent from the house when the crime had been committed. The Crook Street policeman also swore that he had seen no suspicious people haunting his beat. "And the fog was so thick," ended this witness, "that it would have been difficult to see anyone, unless someone ran into my arms as the young lady did. It was a pea-soup night, sir." This concluded all the evidence which Harkness was able to get, and after a pause the coroner began his speech. But before he got very far, the door of the drawing-room was hastily flung open and Sammy Amersham the playwright dashed in, holding a dagger aloft. "It's the stiletto," he cried triumphantly, and clapped it down on the table under the coroner's nose. "When you were asking questions about it, I remembered the unfastened middle window, and wondered if the assassin had opened the same to throw the weapon into the area when he had killed poor Mrs. Pentreddle. I went down and searched, and found it. He must have thrown it out, as I guessed, and then have stepped in to close the window and leave by the front door. There's blood on it, too." "Is this your stiletto, Mrs. Sellars?" asked the coroner, passing it along. The woman shuddered as she took it. "It's mine, sure enough," she said. "And there's blood on the handle. Ugh!" she dropped it. "Martha's blood!" Sammy the playwright was sworn and stated again how he had found the weapon in the area below the iron balcony. "Amongst some rubbish," said Mr. Amersham. "Is the area ever used?" asked the coroner quickly. "No," called out Mrs. Sellars; "the tradespeople go round to the back by the side passage, and the gate in the iron railings round the area has been locked ever since I have been in this house. No one would think of looking for the stiletto there." "The last witness did," said the coroner dryly. "Shows that he's got the makings of a dramatist," said Mrs. Sellars proudly, although no one saw the connection between the coroner's assertion and her comment. One thing was clear from the discovery of the weapon in the area, namely, that Mrs. Pentreddle must have been afraid of an attack, else she would never have armed herself by stealing the dagger from her sister. Also, it was certain that Sammy's shrewd explanation was feasible, and that the assassin, after killing the unfortunate woman, had opened the window to drop the stiletto into the unused area. "The deceased must have expected a visitor on that night," said the coroner musingly, "and probably sent Miss Carrol away so that she could see him undisturbed." "She did not tell me that she expected anyone," said Patricia quickly. "No, she would not, seeing that she evidently desired to have a secret interview. As she was alone in the house, she assuredly must have admitted him." "She could not leave the sofa with her sprained foot," cried Mrs. Sellars. "Perhaps she could not have crawled to the front door," remarked the coroner; "but her will evidently enabled her to crawl to the middle window and open it." "Why should the man have come to the middle window?" "By appointment." "Impossible," said Mrs. Sellars nervously. "In the first place, Martha would have told me had she intended to see anyone, and----" "Pardon me, no, madam," interrupted the coroner sharply. "The very fact that the deceased sent away Miss Carrol showed that she desired the interview to be a secret one." "She would not have admitted a man who intended to murder her." "But she did. No one else could have admitted him, and the fact of the open middle window showed how he was admitted." "He opened that to throw out the stiletto." "Probably he did that, but undoubtedly the window was opened before. Mrs. Pentreddle could not have crawled to the front door." "Martha had so strong a will that she would have crawled to the top of the house if she had made up her mind to. And I say again she never would have let in a man--whoever he was--to murder her, poor dear!" "I don't believe she expected to be murdered." "But the dagger----" "Precisely, madam. The criminal did not bring it with him, therefore, he did not enter this house with the intention of committing a crime. The deceased was afraid of this man and thus took your stiletto so as to keep him at his distance. Probably she threatened him with it, and there was a struggle during which she was murdered. Then the assassin searched the house." "For what?" asked Mrs. Sellars, shaking her head sadly. "For this strange jewel, described by Miss Carrol." "It wasn't in Martha's possession when----" "Quite so," interrupted the coroner, dryly; "but the assassin evidently believed that Mrs. Pentreddle possessed it. He struggled with her to see if it was concealed upon her, and when she drew forth the stiletto with which she had provided herself, it was used to kill her. Then the assassin, as I said before, searched the bedrooms. One thing I would ask you, Mrs. Sellars, before we close the evidence. Did anyone know that Mrs. Pentreddle would be alone on the night of her death?" "She wasn't alone. Miss Carrol was with her." "Yes, I know. But did anyone know that the house would be empty?" "I can't say. Of course, Sammy's play was talked about a lot, and everyone said they were going. I even let the servants go, and----" "Yes, yes! But do you think anyone outside the house knew that there would be a clear field?" "I can't say," Mrs. Sellars shook her head. "I talked a lot to everyone, both outside and in, saying that we were going. But I don't know anyone who would have murdered poor Martha?" The coroner's speech was not very long, as really there was little to say. Whether Mrs. Pentreddle had really expected someone, and had, therefore, sent away Miss Carrol so that the interview might be private, it was quite impossible to prove in any way. That the deceased anticipated danger was more or less clearly shown by her theft of the stiletto from her sister. Undoubtedly the assassin--as the nature of the wound and the presence of blood-stains on the handle of the weapon suggested--had turned the dead woman's means of defence against herself. Finally, the idea that the criminal desired the jewel stolen from Patricia in the Park was equally impossible of proof. "In fact!" ended the coroner wearily, for his business had been exhausting, "beyond the undoubted truth that Mrs. Pentreddle is dead, we can prove nothing in any way." This was also the opinion of the jurymen, which was very natural, considering the scanty nature of the evidence. Without any hesitation the ordinary verdict given in doubtful cases was brought in: "Wilful murder against some person, or persons, unknown," said the jury, and all present felt that nothing more and nothing less could be said under the sad circumstances. "And I don't believe that they'll ever learn who slaughtered poor Martha," sighed Mrs. Sellars, over a cup of tea, when everyone save the boarders had departed. "We'll just bury her in Devonshire beside her husband, and try to be cheerful again. Whatever Harry will say when he learns I don't know, for he was desperately fond of his mother. I'm sorry for that murdering villain if Harry ever lays hands on him. But he never will, bless you, my dears." And most people believed that Mrs. Sellars spoke the truth. The whole affair was mysterious; and it was confidently asserted that the murder of Mrs. Pentreddle would be relegated to the list of undiscovered crimes. The immediate result of the inquest was an offer made by a prominent music-hall manager to Patricia, as the heroine of the Crook Street crime. It was suggested that she should appear on the stage in a pretty frock, and relate her experiences in Hyde Park at a salary of two hundred pounds a week. The magnificence of this chance almost took away Mrs. Sellars' breath, and she was greatly disappointed when Patricia refused to make a show of herself. The girl phrased it in this way, and indignantly declined. "Oh, my dear," cried Mrs. Sellars, almost weeping; "you need money so badly." "I would sooner need it all my life than degrade myself in this way," retorted Miss Carrol, looking prettier than ever with her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling. "How dare the man insult me!" "Insult, my dear? Two hundred pounds a week an insult?" "Take it yourself, Mrs. Sellars," replied Patricia impatiently. "After all, poor Mrs. Pentreddle was your sister, and you will be just as great an object of interest to the crowd as I would be." "I'm not young and pretty, my dear. It's those things that tell." Patricia shrugged her shoulders. "Well, I refuse, and I have written to the man saying that I cannot accept his offer." "You refuse good money; you refuse to get married. Whatever are you going to do for a livelihood?" Mrs. Sellars was in despair over this obstinacy. Patricia shrugged her shoulders once more. "Oh, I daresay I shall manage to earn my living in some decent way. Perhaps Mr. Colpster may help me." "What makes you think so?" "He is coming to see me this evening." "I know he is coming," said Mrs. Sellars; "but I thought it was to see the last of poor Martha's remains. He takes them to Beckleigh to-morrow by the afternoon train. I should have gone myself to attend the funeral, but it is impossible to leave the children." She looked at Patricia curiously. "I wonder if he wants to marry you, my dear." "I hope not," said Miss Carrol hastily. "How your thoughts do run on marriage, Mrs. Sellars!" "Well, you are too pretty to remain single, Miss Carrol," said the old actress frankly. "Sammy would marry you if you would only encourage him. And I can tell you, Sammy Amersham has a great future." "Then I shan't hamper him with a wife. But what makes you think that Mr. Colpster wishes to marry me. Isn't there a Mrs. Colpster?" "There was, but she died long, long ago. He has one daughter, called by the odd name of Mara. But she will not inherit the estates, as the Squire wants a man to manage them. He has two nephews, you know, my dear: Theodore, who is the eldest, and Basil, who is an officer in the Royal Navy. I don't know which of the two Squire Colpster favours as his heir, but whosoever gets the estates will have to change his name." "He ought to give his daughter the estates," said Patricia decidedly. "Well, I am not so sure of that, my dear. You see, from what Martha said, it seems that Mara Colpster is queer." "How do you mean 'queer'?" "She is--that is, they think her,--Really," Mrs. Sellars broke off with a puzzled look, "I hardly know what to say. She's queer, that's all about it, for Martha told me very little. I rather think the Squire wants her to marry either Basil or Theodore; then justice would be done all round. But here I am talking," cried Mrs. Sellars, rising slowly to her feet, "when there is so much to be done with getting poor Martha ready for her last journey. I have to see the undertaker and his men, my dear," and Mrs. Sellars waddled away in a great hurry. Patricia wondered what Mr. Colpster wished to see her about, and wondered also what could be the matter with the girl so oddly termed Mara. This last piece of curiosity was not gratified for some days, but she learned the first two hours later when Squire Colpster interviewed her in Mrs. Sellars' private sitting-room. What he said to her took her breath away. "I return to Beckleigh to-morrow with the corpse of my housekeeper," said the Squire in his dry way, "and it struck me that you might be willing to come with me to Devonshire." "Come with you, Mr. Colpster?" gasped Patricia, thunderstruck. "Yes," he said, simply and directly. "You see, Martha is dead, and I want someone both to look after the house and to be a companion to my daughter." "To Mara?" queried Patricia, remembering what Mrs. Sellars had said. "Ah! you know her name." The Squire looked up quickly. "Mrs. Sellars told me." Mr. Colpster nodded. "I expect poor Martha has been talking," he said in a vexed tone, "and, no doubt, has been making out Mara to be weak-minded." "Mrs. Sellars said that Miss Colpster was queer," said Patricia truthfully. "She is not queer," declared the father, with some sharpness. "Mara is a dreamy girl who wants a brisk companion to arouse her. From what I have seen of you, Miss Carrol, you are the very person to do Mara good. So if you like to come for one hundred a year, I shall be delighted to engage you." "Oh!" Patricia coloured, but on this occasion with joy. Of all the offers that had been made to her, this one pleased her the best of all. "I accept with the greatest pleasure. But the salary is too large." "Not at all. We live very quietly and you will find it somewhat dull. Also, I shall want you to look after the servants now that Martha has gone. Mara is incapable of doing so. Well?" "I accept, as I said before, Mr. Colpster," said Patricia promptly. "In that case"--he rose to take his leave--"I shall expect you to come with me to-morrow. I hope to leave Paddington Station at four fifteen." "I shall be there," said Miss Carrol, with sparkling eyes. "I have little to pack and no friends save Mrs. Sellars to take leave of." And when Squire Colpster went away, she thanked God that she was now provided with a home. Out of the evil of Mrs. Pentreddle's death good had come. CHAPTER VI A FAMILY LEGEND Patricia packed her few belongings that same evening, and next day took leave of Ma and the children. Mrs. Sellars wept copiously, for she was sorry to lose the charming girl who made the house so bright. Also, she could not help lamenting that of all the fortunes offered to her, Miss Carrol had chosen what seemed to the old actress to be the meanest. Patricia could have married money and good looks and position, for all these had been offered to her by various letters, since her portrait had appeared in the illustrated papers. She could have been engaged at several music-halls at a lordly salary, getting twice over in one week what she had elected to receive a year. But the girl, rejecting wealth and publicity, had chosen obscurity and comparative poverty. No wonder Mrs. Sellars mourned. "But I wish you well, my dear," she said, when the cab was waiting at the door and Patricia was shaking hands and kissing all round. "I hope you will be very happy, though from what I remember of Beckleigh, it is one of the dullest places in the world." "I like dullness," said Miss Carrol, who was weary of argument, "and I am very thankful to get such a situation at such a good salary. Good-bye, dear Ma, and keep up your spirits. When I come to town again I shall see you." "And write, my dear, write," screamed Mrs. Sellars, as the cab rolled away. Patricia nodded a promise and leaned back on the cushions with a sigh of relief, as the vehicle turned the corner of the curved _cul de sac_. Her last glimpse of The Home of Art showed her Ma surrounded by her children standing at the front door, waving farewells and blowing kisses. Miss Carrol sighed. They were all good and kind and simple. All the same, she was glad to have left that dreary house, which was connected in her mind with so woeful a tragedy. The excitement was now at an end, since the verdict of the jury had been given, and it was probable that in a few days the whole affair would be forgotten, for there seemed to be no chance that interest would be re-awakened by the capture of the assassin. That evil creature had stolen into the house out of the mist to kill his victim, and had then departed again into the darkness. And now Patricia herself was departing from the scene of the crime, and it seemed to her as though this horrible chapter in her life was closed for ever. "Thank God for that!" said the girl, putting her thoughts into speech. At Paddington Station she found Squire Colpster waiting for her. The body of his late housekeeper, he informed her, had already gone on to Devonshire by the early morning train. Patricia was glad of this, as if the corpse had been in the train she was to travel in, she would have felt as though she were taking a portion of the disagreeable past with her into what she hoped would prove a very bright future. She strove to banish all the unpleasant memories of the past week, and presented a very smiling face to Mr. Colpster when he placed her in a first-class compartment. With a look of approval he commented on her cheerfulness when the train started. "I am glad to see that your late troubles will not have a lasting effect on you," he said, placing a pile of magazines and illustrated papers beside her. "You look better than when I saw you last." "It is because I am leaving all this unpleasantness behind," replied Patricia, with a little shiver. "And I am so thankful that you have taken me away from The Home of Art. I could not have remained there; it would have always been haunted to my fancy by the ghost of poor Mrs. Pentreddle. Yet if you had not offered me a home, Mr. Colpster, I don't know where I should have gone. In self-defence I might have had to accept the offer of that horrid music-hall manager. Beggars can't be choosers." "You will never be a beggar again," said the Squire, with a kindly look on his clean-shaven face. "What would Colonel Carrol say if I allowed his only child to want?" Patricia bent forward with sudden vivacity. "Did you know my father?" "Yes. I knew him many years ago, and for this reason, amongst others, did I ask you to be my daughter's companion." "I wondered why you made such an offer, when you knew nothing about me," said Miss Carrol thoughtfully. "Oh, I know a great deal about you from Mrs. Sellars, who is your great admirer," said Mr. Colpster easily. "And then you have the very look of your father at times. I am asking you to Beckleigh, not so much as a companion to my daughter, as that you may become one to myself. You must look upon me as a relative, my dear girl." "How good you are!" cried Patricia, taking his lean hand and stroking it softly. The two had the compartment to themselves, so she was able to give vent to her feelings in this way. "How can I thank you?" "By rousing Mara from her dreamy state," said he quickly. "I want to see her more practical and take more interest in life. As it is, she always seems to be in the clouds." "Has she ever had a companion of her own age?" "No. All her young life she had been with older people. Certainly my nephew Theodore has been with her a great deal; but, like myself, he is inclined to study and so is much alone. Basil, who is in the Navy, is nearly always absent with his ship. Beckleigh Hall is isolated too," added Mr. Colpster thoughtfully; "so I daresay Mara's sadness and dreamy ways are due to her surroundings. All the servants are more or less old, and we live a very, very quiet life." Patricia nodded, and quite comprehended. "I don't wonder that Mara is sad," she said bluntly. "How old is she?" "Eighteen!" "And you have kept her more or less surrounded by elderly people all these years," cried Patricia reproachfully. "No wonder she is sad, as I said before. I am glad I am coming to cheer her up. Has she been to school?" "No. She has always been delicate, and I did not think it wise that she should leave home. Until last year she had a governess." "Also elderly?" "Yes. Miss Tibbets was nearly fifty," replied Colpster, with a smile. "Oh, poor Mara! But does not your nephew try to brighten her life?" The Squire's face grew dark, and his heavy grey eyebrows drew down over his keen eyes. "She does not like Theodore," he said at length, and he seemed to weigh his words. "Yet he wishes to marry her." "He loves her?" "So far as a cold-hearted being such as Theodore is can love, I believe he does love Mara. But he is much taken up with literary work, and studies for hours all alone in his own room. Basil is quite different, being gay and light-hearted." "Does Mara love Mr. Basil?" "In a sisterly way she does. The two boys and Mara have been brought up together, although Theodore and Basil are much older. I don't think Mara is earthly enough to love anyone. She always seems to live in a land of dreams, and looks more like a shadow than a flesh-and-blood girl." Patricia nodded absently. She felt a strong desire in her heart to see this strange girl with her fancies and unearthly nature. Surrounded almost constantly by elderly people and secluded in an old country-house hidden away in a lonely corner of Devonshire, it was scarcely to be wondered at that the girl with the weird name should be unlike those of her own age. "And Mara means 'bitter,' doesn't it?" asked Miss Carrol, following her idle thoughts. Mr. Colpster bowed his head. "Yes. Her mother died in child-birth when Mara was born, and so I gave her the name. As the sole child of my house in the direct line, she also deserves it, for we have fallen on evil days." "What do you mean?" asked Patricia, wondering at the strange subdued excitement of the old man, for his face was red, his eyes sparkled, and his deep voice shook with emotion. "What I mean will take some time to tell," he said, after a pause. "It is because I had to tell you something and to question you that I engaged this compartment. We are undisturbed here, and we have some hours to ourselves before we arrive at Hendle, which is the nearest station to Beckleigh." He fixed his fiery eyes on her startled face. "Are you prepared to believe a strange story, Miss Carrol?" "Yes," replied Patricia boldly. "I have experienced such strange things myself lately that I am prepared to believe anything." "Good. I shall tax your credulity to the uttermost. It is strange, as you will admit, that the daughter of my old friend should be brought into my life to help the Colpster family to regain what has been lost." Patricia echoed his words in a puzzled manner: "What has been lost?" "The emerald snatched from you in the Park is lost, is it not?" The girl started forward in her seat, almost too amazed to speak. That the Squire should refer to the incident on the night of the murder was the very last thing she expected. "What do you mean?" she asked again. He replied irrelevantly, as it seemed: "Let me tell you a story, Miss Carrol. I can trace my family back to Amyas Colpster, who lived in the reign of Henry the Seventh. Who his father was, or where he came from, there is nothing to show. He was what would be nowadays called an adventurer, and in that capacity he went to the New World." "Was the New World discovered then?" asked Patricia, wondering what all this was to lead to. "Yes. Columbus discovered America in Henry's reign, and, indeed, the King might have fitted out the expedition had not Ferdinand and Isabella done so earlier. But I do not refer so much to Columbus as to those who followed him. It was in the early part of Henry VIII.'s reign that Cortes conquered Mexico, and it was about 1532 that Pizarro took possession of Peru." "But what has all this to do with the emerald stolen from me in----" "You shall hear," interrupted Mr. Colpster, rather impatiently. "Amyas, my ancestor, went to Mexico, but had no success there. Afterwards he went to Peru and there accumulated a fortune, with which he returned to England. He bought Beckleigh and a great deal of land, and so built up our family. When in Peru he saved an Inca princess from death, and out of gratitude she gave him a large emerald." Patricia uttered an exclamation. "Yes, the same emerald that was stolen from you on the night of the murder. It formerly belonged to the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco, and passed, in the way I have related, into the possession of Amyas Colpster. Being a sacred stone, it was reported to have some strange influence, which brought luck to its possessor, and Amyas believed this, as while it remained in his possession and in the possession of the son who succeeded him, everything went well. The family increased in wealth and in favour with the reigning monarch. It remained for Bevis Colpster, towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, to throw away the luck which had been bestowed on his grandfather by the Inca princess." "Do you mean that he gave away the emerald?" "Yes. To gain a knighthood, he presented it to the Queen. From that time the fortunes of our family have decreased gradually, and now I have only about fifty acres of land, the old Hall, and one thousand a year well invested." "That doesn't seem to be absolute pauperism," said Patricia, with a smile. "It is poverty compared to what our family once possessed," said the old Squire petulantly. "Once we had wide lands and much money, and great influence in worldly affairs. All these things Bevis Colpster threw away for a knighthood which did him no good, for a title which did not even descend to his children. And our fortunes have dwindled since then, until we have only what I mention. But unless the emerald is recovered, what we now possess will also leave us, and our family will die out. Even as it is," he ended bitterly, "I have no son to succeed me." Patricia wondered at what she took to be superstition in so clever a man, but saw that he could not be argued out of his fancies. She therefore pretended to accept his beliefs as true, and asked a question. "What became of the emerald?" she inquired eagerly, for the family legend interested her. Colpster roused himself and his sunken eyes flashed keenly. "When Will Adams went to Japan, in 1597, as a pilot of Jacques Mahay's fleet, the Queen gave him the emerald to present to some potentate in the East." "To the Emperor of Japan?" "No. Because the fleet which sailed from Amsterdam did not intend to go to Japan. I was wrong in saying so. It was going to the Indies. Akbar was reigning then, and the emerald was for him. But Adams was wrecked on the coast of Japan, and when he became a favourite with the Shogun Ieyasu, he presented him with the great jewel. Ieyasu gave it to the Mikado Go Yojo, and he presented it--or one of his successors did--to the Shinto Temple of Kitzuki. There it remained for hundreds of years." "But how did it come to be in the deal box? And what had Mrs. Pentreddle to do with it? And why was it snatched from me in----" Mr. Colpster threw up his slender hand. "One question at a time, please," he said, with a faint smile. "I can't exactly say. You can form your own conclusions from what I tell you." He paused, as though collecting his thoughts, and Patricia did not interrupt him again. She also was thinking and recalling that strange jewel which was set in the centre of the regular circle of stiff petals. Knowing that the chrysanthemum was the royal badge of Japan, she felt certain that the whole jewel was meant to represent the same. It was at this point of her meditations that Mr. Colpster began to speak again. "As I told you," he continued, "I was anxious that we should recover the emerald, so that our family luck should return. I therefore read many books of travel, and spoke to many Japanese about the stone. In a strange way, which I shall tell you some day, I learned that the jewel was at the Temple of Kitzuki, in the province of Izumo. It was regarded as very sacred, and how to regain it again I could not tell." He paused once more, and then went on quietly: "As you know, I have no son of my name to carry on the line. But my only sister, whose husband was already dead, died also and left me her two sons to look after. I brought them up with my daughter. Basil went into the Navy and Theodore remained at home to look after the estate." "Then is Mr. Theodore your heir?" asked Patricia swiftly. "At one time I intended him to be, as I desired to marry him to Mara. He could then, as I decided, take the name of Colpster, and when I was gone, carry on the family in the female line. But while the emerald was lost I thought that the luck would not return to the Colpsters. I therefore told what I have told you to my nephews, and said that the one who brought back the Mikado Jewel--as I called it--should be my heir." "What did they say?" "Theodore scoffed at the idea, and said that he did not want my money. He declined to go to Japan and run any risk of getting the jewel, either by stealing or purchase." "But surely you did not wish him to steal it?" "Oh, no," said Mr. Colpster, so hurriedly that Patricia felt sure he had once intended to get the jewel fraudulently, if not honestly; "but I thought that the emerald might be brought back. Will Adams had no right to give it to the Shogun, as it was intended by Queen Elizabeth to cement her friendship with Akbar. We--the family, I mean--would be quite justified in taking it by force. But that was not to be thought of. I therefore gave Basil a sum of money, which I obtained by mortgaging all my property, and told him, when his ship touched at Nagasaki, to try and buy it. I am expecting his ship, H.M.S. _Walrus_, back in a fortnight." "But the emerald is in London." "Exactly, and it was brought to be given to Martha Pentreddle. That is what puzzles me. What do you think, Miss Carrol?" "I hardly know what to think," said the girl, in a puzzled voice; then added, after a few moments of thought: "Perhaps it isn't the Colpster emerald after all." "Yes, it is," asserted the Squire positively. "When I read your description of the jewel I was certain that it was the same stone. It was made into a sacred jewel by the Shinto priests of the Temple. They surrounded it with the petals of a chrysanthemum flower carved out of green jade." "Jade!" Patricia recollected the stiff petals. "Oh, is that the kind of stone?" "Ah!" said Colpster eagerly and with an air of triumph. "You see, you remember the Mikado Jewel. Yes, the emerald in the centre is the same which Amyas Colpster got from the Inca princess and which Bevis parted with to Elizabeth for a knighthood." "But can you be certain?" persisted Patricia, bewildered by the strangeness of what she took to be a coincidence. "The emerald and the jade chrysanthemum may be still at Kitzuki, in the province of Izumo." The Squire shook his head sadly. "No. Basil wrote me some time ago, saying that he had gone to Kitzuki to make an offer to buy back the emerald, but he learned that it had been stolen." "Stolen! Who could have stolen it?" "That is what I wish to find out. But it has been stolen, and now it appears in London, and was placed in your hands only to be taken away again by----" He paused and looked at the girl. "I don't know who gave it into my hands, or who snatched it," she said, in a regretful tone. "You know all that I know." "Didn't Martha tell you anything?" he asked eagerly. "Not a word. She said that when I came back with the deal box she would explain. You know what happened before I reached home." Colpster nodded. "She was murdered. Who could have murdered her? Unless----" "Unless what?" asked Patricia, quickly. "Have you read Wilkie Collins' story of _The Moonstone?_" "Yes, many years ago." "Well, as you know, it is about a sacred diamond taken from the eye of an idol, and is recovered after various adventures by the priests of the god." "But what has that to do with----?" "One moment, Miss Carrol. This emerald also has become a sacred stone; it also has been stolen. What is more likely but that some Shinto priest murdered Martha and another priest should snatch it from your hands?" "But why should the emerald come to Mrs. Pentreddle at all?" "That is what I wish to know," said the Squire, feverishly and clenching his hands. "And that," he added, bending forward, "is what you and I must find out. We must learn who murdered Martha and recover our family luck." "I don't see how it is to be done," sighed Patricia. "It must be done; it has to be done," and Colpster smote his knee hard. "I'll try," said the girl and extended her hand. The Squire shook it warmly. CHAPTER VII THE GARDEN OF SLEEP After the turmoil of London and the excitements of that last uncomfortable week at The Home of Art, the peace and beauty and rural influences of Beckleigh were extremely pleasant. Patricia arrived with unsteady nerves and an unhappy feeling of unrest, but after seven days in this somnolent corner of Devonshire, she regained her usual placidity of character. Although she was Irish, the girl, by reason of her magnificent health, escaped, to a great extent, those up-in-the-air and down-in-the-sea moods which characterize the Celt. As Arthur had been taken to the island valley of Avilion, there to be healed of his grievous wound, so Patricia felt that she had been guided to this Garden of Sleep that her irritated nerves might be soothed. And at the end of a week, she was more convinced than ever that she had chanced upon a veritable paradise of rest, which well deserved the name. "It is the Garden of Sleep," thought Patricia dreamily, "and here I shall rest until----" she paused at this point, as her future could not be foretold in any way. The girl found Beckleigh to be a little fairy bay on the south coast of Devonshire, shut out from the world by high moorlands, over which tourists rarely came. Where the rolling downs dipped to the sea, there was a secluded nook--a dimple on the face of natural beauty, and here a quaint, rambling old house of mellowed grey stone nestled close to a mighty cliff of red sandstone. It was a quarter of a mile from the mansion to the yellow sands of the tiny beach, and the fertile acres were covered with many trees. The wood was partly wild and partly artificial, and was threaded by dozens of paths, narrow and broad. These led unexpectedly to clearings, rainbow-hued with flowers, or to sylvan glades fit for the revels of Titania and her elves. Although it was close upon Christmas, yet myriad flowers were in bloom, and stately palms, growing here and there, gave a suggestion of tropical vegetation to the miniature forest. The climate of this particular beauty-spot was truly wonderful, with almost constant warmth and sunshine. And here again it resembled Avilion, lacking snow and hail and rain, and the voice of wild, destructive winds. The ruddy cliff gathered the heat of many suns and poured it forth when the skies were clouded, while the high moors screened this favoured paradise from the cutting north winds. "It is truly lovely," said Patricia, as she strolled with Mara through these gardens of Alcinous, day after day, and found the same bland conditions prevailing. "I would not have believed that there was such a lovely spot in this cold, grey England." "Oh, we have bad weather sometimes," said Mara, in her soft, low voice; "the skies grow cloudy and the sea grows very rough. It rains, too, heavily at times, but I don't think we have ever had snow or hail. The cliff keeps us warm." The two girls turned on the edge of the lawn, where the woods began, and looked upward at the mighty cliff, which towered majestically above them like the Tower of Babel. To Mara, who had dwelt beneath it for so long, it looked like a kindly guardian giant, who gave shelter and warmth to the favoured acres at its base; but Patricia thought it looked frowning and menacing. "It looks as though one day it would fall and crush the house," she said with a shiver, for the hostility of the great mass of rock seemed certain. Mara smiled in her slow, sad way. "It has stood there without falling since the world began, I suppose," she said wisely, "so I don't see why it should fall, now you have come." "I suppose not. Yet," Patricia shivered again, "it makes me feel uncomfortable. Do you remember in 'Childe Roland,' how the hills, like giants at hunting, lay watching the game at bay. It looks to me like that." But Mara had not read Browning, and could not grasp the allusion. She gazed at the vast, lowering mass with affection, for to her it was like a domestic hearth where she could warm herself. After a time she turned, and stared seaward towards the glistening sapphire waters, which flashed in the pale winter sunshine. Through the woods a broad path was cut from the lawns surrounding the house to the smooth beach, where the wavelets broke in gentle play. To right and left of the bay were tall cliffs, similar to that which guarded the mansion, and these ended in bold headlands some distance out. On one side and the other, rising gently and greenly, the vast spaces of the moorlands swept grandly away to the heights above. And in their cup was the solitary mansion muffled in its warm woods. In spite of the lateness of the season, the air was moist and heated, as if the red cliff was clasping the home of the Colpsters to its gigantic breast. "But how do you get food here?" asked Patricia suddenly, when she saw that Mara did not speak; "are there any villages about?" "Two on the moorlands, and one on the way to Hendle, where the railway stops." "Ah, yes," Patricia nodded. "I remember Hendle, and how I drove here with the Squire down that winding road. But it was so dark that I could see nothing on the way, and since I have been in this place I have not explored the neighbourhood." "We can do so whenever you like," said Mara quietly; "but it will be best to wait until Basil comes home next week. He loves this place, and knows every inch of the surrounding country." "Doesn't Mr. Dane know it also?" "Theodore? Oh, yes, in a way. But he is like my father, and is never so happy as when he is reading and writing. He does not go out much, and we only see him at luncheon and dinner. It is nearly luncheon now." Patricia caught the girl's slim hand. "Let us go in now," she said. "I am hungry, Mara, but I don't believe you are. A fairy like you, lives on:-- "'apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.'" "Who said that?" asked Mara, smiling in her dreamy fashion. "Titania said it, and Shakespeare put the words into her mouth. Mara, I must educate you in English literature. You knew nothing of Browning when I quoted him lately, and now I see that you have not read Shakespeare's plays. This is dreadful." Mara shrugged her thin shoulders. "I don't care for reading, Patricia. It is much nicer to walk about under the open sky. I don't wish to become like Theodore and father. They stay indoors everlastingly." "Do they never go away for a change?" "Rarely. Both Theodore and father have been in London lately. Theodore came back first, and then father came last week with you." "Are you sorry he brought me?" asked Patricia, slipping her arm impulsively round the girl's waist. "No," said Mara, in so unemotional a fashion that Patricia felt chilled. "I like you, as you don't worry me. Miss Tibbets always worried me with lessons." "But you must be educated, Mara?" "Why? I don't see the use of learning things." Patricia looked at her curiously, for although she had been studying the girl for several days, Mara was still an enigma to her. Mr. Colpster's only daughter and only child was undersized and slim, graceful in figure and movements, and clever enough, in spite of her dreamy ways, to look after herself in a very thorough fashion. Patricia did not at all agree with Mrs. Sellars' use of the word "weak" as applied to Mara, for that young lady made shrewd remarks at times which showed a capable character. But there was something decidedly elfish about the girl, both in looks and ways. Mara's pale golden locks and pale blue eyes and pale complexion presented her to the onlooker as a somewhat shadowy creature. Her silent movements and low voice and frequent lack of conversation gave the same impression. Patricia could not get near the shy soul clothed in this fragile, tintless body. She seemed to be scarcely human, but to be compounded of moonlight and grey mist, containing in herself all that was melancholy in Nature. The warmth and tropical luxuriance of Beckleigh did not suit her personality. She should have been placed in some sad, antique temple, isolated on a lonely plain, and under sombre skies. The Irish girl was warm, human, life-loving and affectionate, so it was difficult to make friends with this Undine, so chill and distant in her ways and looks. Patricia began to think that, after all, the salary she had thought so large was not too much, seeing that she had to warm this statue into life. But how to set about the task she did not know. "What do you like doing?" she asked, as they walked towards the house. "Nothing." "Don't you get bored?" "Not at all; I--" Mara hesitated, then turned her pale blue eyes on the flushed and lovely face of her companion--"I dream," she said quietly. "What do you dream about?" asked Patricia curiously. Mara passed her pale hand across her pale forehead. "I can hardly tell you," she said in her low voice, which suggested softly breathing midnight winds; "there is something wanting." "Something wanting?" "To bring back that which I dream about." "But what do you dream about?" persisted Miss Carrol, more puzzled than ever, as she looked at Mara's pale, pathetic face. "The something will tell me when it brings it back." "Brings what back?" "That which I dream about?" "And that is----?" "I don't know." The conversation was turning in a circle, and Mara was repeating her answers, as was Patricia her questions. Some invisible barrier divided the two girls, and although Patricia wished, in order to earn her salary honestly, to break it down, Mara apparently did not. Neither in look nor gesture did she make any advance, so Miss Carrol could do nothing but sigh over the difficulty of the problem which she had to solve, and renew her walk towards the house. Mara followed in silence, not sullen at being questioned and not angry. She was simply indifferent. The Colpster homestead was two-storey and rambling, confusedly composed of various styles of architecture. The oldest portion was Tudor, and had been built by Amyas, the founder of the family, when he had first set up his tent in this solitary spot. Later Colpsters had added and taken away, so that one wing was wanting, while the other was of Jacobean style. On one side also there stood a square Georgian block of many rooms, comfortable but ugly. The effect of this mass of different orders of architecture was to make the entire dwelling look picturesque, if not strictly beautiful. Time also had mellowed the whole to lovely restful hues, and Nature had clothed many eye-sores with trailing ivy and Virginian creeper. Indeed, so thickly were the walls covered with living vegetation, that it looked as though the loosely-built, untidy dwelling was fastened to the emerald sward of the lawns. Or, as Patricia thought, halting on the doorstep for a single moment, as though the building had sprang therefrom in a single night, like a mushroom. And the house dwelt in, and fondled, and loved for many generations had about it a warm, homely feeling of intimate humanity. But over it, as the girl again observed with a shiver, ever hung the angry, red-faced cliff, menacing and sinister. The interior of the mansion was as jumbled, so to speak, as its outside, for various additions and alterations and removals had destroyed the original plan of the dwelling, if, indeed, it ever had possessed any such design. Some rooms had doors leading into others, passages twisted and turned in a most bewildering manner, and a few ended in blank walls. A stranger would find himself stepping down into one room and up into another, as the flooring of the whole house was irregular. There were narrow doors and broad doors: many of the windows were diamond-paned casements, while others presented a large surface of modern glass. Grates were here, and vast open fireplaces there, and many rooms were as dark as others were light. The house both pleased and irritated, as everywhere the visitor came upon unexpected corners, or was brought up short before closed entrances. It was a nightmare house, and like none that Patricia, used to extreme modernity, had ever entered. The furniture and furnishing of the many rooms was also fantastic, and here Patricia saw more plainly the effects of Colpster's narrow income, as everything was old-fashioned and worn. The carpets and hangings, the paper covering the walls and the paintings adorning the ceiling, were shabby and faded. The drawing-room was filled with Chippendale tables, Sheraton chairs, fender-stools of the Albert period, and Empire sofas covered with worn brocade, while the dining-room had merely a horsehair mahogany suite, aggressively slippery. The whole house looked shabby and was shabby, yet the hand of Time had so co-ordinated the furniture and decorations of various epochs that the effect of the whole was beautiful. The sombre family portraits, the tarnished silver ornaments, the subdued hues of curtains and carpets, all gave the dwelling a refined air. There was nothing modern or garish or machine-made about the place. Everything looked mellow, suitable, old-world and slightly melancholy. It was a house to dream in, as it was filled with drowsy suggestions: a mansion of meditation, as the grounds without were the Gardens of Sleep. No wonder Mara was given to vague visions. A stronger person would have succumbed to the somniferous influence of the place. The luncheon-table, laid with snow-white linen, glittering with diamond-cut glass, and heavy, old-fashioned silver, looked very attractive in the soft light of the large room, which stole in through quaint casements. Patricia, anxious to take up her household duties, had arranged the decorations of the table, and was rapidly getting into the swing of her domestic duties. She found the servants dull and out-of-date, but very obedient; and although, with the privilege of old retainers, they grumbled at many of her innovations, they did what she asked them to do. Mr. Colpster congratulated her on her successful _début_ on this very occasion. "You are a born housekeeper, Miss Carrol," he said, when he took his place at the head of the table, looking leaner and more like a student than ever. "I used to look after my father's house before he died," said Patricia with a sigh, "and he was very particular." "He was, even as a boy. I remember him at Sandhurst." "Were you at Sandhurst?" remarked the girl, looking at her host, who did not in any way resemble a military man. Colpster laughed in his silent fashion. "Oh, yes. I had thoughts of winning the V.C., and so tormented my father to make me a soldier. But I soon grew tired of the Army, as I had not the necessary money to keep it up. I therefore retired when my father died and have vegetated here ever since. I hope you don't find our life here too dull, Miss Carrol," and he looked anxiously towards the bright face of the girl. "I like it," replied Patricia absently; "it is such a rest after the rush and worry of London. By the way, Mr. Colpster, I wish you would not call me Miss Carrol: it sounds so stiff." "Patricia, then," said the Squire genially, and with a bright look in his usually sad eyes which showed that he was pleased; "it is a very charming name and suits"--he made an old-world bow--"a very charming young lady." The girl laughed and coloured and bowed in return. Then, to turn the conversation, which was becoming too complimentary, she glanced at the vacant place opposite to that of Mara's. "Where is Mr. Dane?" she asked abruptly. "Talk of angels and you hear their wings," said the Squire, for at that moment the door opened to admit the eldest nephew. Theodore was tall and rather stout, with a heavy face by no means attractive. His skin was pale, and he possessed very bright blue eyes, and reddish hair, worn--as was his uncle's--rather long. His jaw was of the bull-dog order, and with this, and his bulky figure, to say nothing of the piercing look in his eyes, he appeared to be rather a formidable personage. But he was so good-natured and conversational that Patricia liked him, and thought--which was probably true--that his bark was much worse than his bite. He dressed much more carefully than did Mr. Colpster, and one noticeable point about him were his delicate white hands, which he was rather fond of using to emphasize his conversation. Patricia guessed that the man was proud of those hands, as one of his rare good points, and liked to draw attention to their perfection. "I am sorry that I am late, Miss Carrol," said Theodore, sitting down with an alacrity surprising in so heavy a man. "I was taken up with a new manuscript which I acquired when I was in London." "What is it about?" asked Patricia politely. "Occult matters. You would not understand even if I explained." Theodore stopped; then looked into her face and added: "Yet you are Irish." "What has that got to do with your remark, Mr. Dane?" "Only this: that the Celt is usually more in touch with the Unseen than is the Saxon. I come of the latter race, and have no psychic powers; but I think you have, Miss Carrol." "What do you mean exactly by psychic powers?" "You can see things and feel things, which is more than many people can do by reason of their limitations. Ah!" he looked at her sharply, as he saw her face change. "You have felt something, or you have seen something." "Well, yes," answered Patricia, and regretted the admission. At the moment, she was thinking of the Mikado Jewel and her sensations when holding it. Fearful of being ridiculed, she had not said anything even to Mr. Colpster about this, and did not wish to speak even to Theodore, although she guessed from his talk that he was less sceptical about such things than the ordinary man. "I may tell you about my experience some day," she added, quickly, seeing from his face that he was about to press his questions. "Not now." Theodore nodded. "I shall keep you to your promise," he said alertly, "and we might try some experiments. Mara won't let me experiment with her." "I don't like your experiments, Theodore," said Mara quietly, and looking up with a nervous look on her pale face, "they are dangerous." "There is always danger, my dear girl, when one is exploring a new country, and the Realms of the Unseen are new to us. Your dreams----" Mara flushed. "Never mind about my dreams," she said frowning, and with a sudden glance at Patricia. "And never mind continuing this unwholesome conversation," said Mr. Colpster, who had been opening letters, "it is not good for Mara. By the way, Basil is coming home in three days. His ship is at Falmouth." "Oh, I am so glad!" cried Mara delightedly. "I love Basil. He's a dear!" "Let us hope that Miss Carrol will love him also," said Theodore grimly. "I love everybody who is nice to me," said Patricia, laughing, although she wondered why Mr. Dane made such a remark. "Oh, Basil will be nice! He's a universal lover," scoffed the man shrugging. Patricia looked at him sharply and noticed the acrid tone. It seemed to her that Theodore was not fond of his brother. "I wonder why?" she asked herself, but naturally could obtain no reply to such an intimate question. CHAPTER VIII THEODORE Life went so softly and gently at Beckleigh that it was like dwelling in an enchanted land, in a fabled heaven of drowsy ease. Patricia compared the place to the island of the Lotus-eaters, and after the storms of her early experiences, she enjoyed to the full its calm seclusion. Never was there so solitary a place. The Colpsters were a county family of respectable antiquity, and it was to be presumed that in the ordinary course of things they knew many people of their own rank. But either their friends and acquaintances lived too far away or were not invited to the house, for no stranger ever came near the place. Not even the inevitable tourist chanced upon this charmed spot. Beckleigh might have been situated in the moon, for all connection it had with the outside world. The dwellers in this quiet haven did not seem to mind being left alone in this odd way. The servants, mostly old and staid, were contented with the house and grounds, and occasionally ventured on the quiet waters of the fairy bay in rowing-boats. Once a week the elderly butler drove to Hendle and to the adjacent villages, to bring back groceries and such things as were needful to support life. The postman came on a bicycle, once a day, with news from the outside world, and Patricia found that the library was well supplied with magazines and newspapers. There was no complaint to be made on that score, as the inhabitants of Beckleigh always knew what was going on both at home and abroad. They might be secluded, but they were not ignorant, and although not rolling stones, they gathered no moss. This warm, forgotten nook was an ideal home for a student. And both Theodore and his uncle were students, as Patricia gradually learned. Mr. Colpster was writing a history of his family, and had been engaged for many years in doing so. From Amyas downward the Squire traced the history of his forebears, showing how they had risen to wealth and rank until the middle part of Elizabeth's reign, and how, from that period, by the selfish conduct of Bevis Colpster in parting with the emerald, his sons and grandsons had lost the greater part of their possessions. Also, he related various romantic stories dealing with the attempts of Georgian Colpsters to redeem the family fortunes. And, finally, when he reached the conclusion of the book, as he told Patricia, he intended to relate how the emerald had been recovered, and how again it had worked its spell of good fortune. "But if you don't recover the emerald?" asked Miss Carrol very sensibly. "I must recover it," said the Squire vehemently. "If I do not, the family will die out. When the Mikado Jewel is again in our possession, she can inherit the estates on condition that she marries Theodore or Basil." "Are you speaking of Mara?" questioned Patricia, noting the vague way in which her companion talked. "Of course; of course," he answered testily. "She must marry one of her cousins, and her husband can take the family name. Then the emerald will draw plenty of money to us, and we will again buy back our lost lands." "How can the emerald draw back money?" asked Patricia, again thinking, as she very often did, of her sensations when holding the stone. "I don't know; I can't say. I am only using a figure of speech, as it were, my dear girl. But in some way this emerald means good fortune to us, as was amply proved by the success of Amyas, his son and grandson. They owned all the land as far as Hendle; but when the emerald was lost the acres and their villages were lost also." Mr. Colpster rose and began to walk to and fro excitedly. "I must find that emerald; I must; I must!" "How are you going to set about it?" asked the girl, doubtfully. "I cannot say." He resumed his seat at his desk with a heavy sigh. "There is no clue to follow. If we could learn who murdered Martha we might discover the assassin and regain the jewel." "But how can the assassin have it, Mr. Colpster? Assuming that he murdered poor Mrs. Pentreddle in order to steal the emerald, you know that it was not in her possession." "No. That is quite true. While the assassin was searching the house, the emerald was being stolen from you in the Park. But undoubtedly the emerald was meant to be given to Martha since you went to receive it. How did she manage to get it? I want an answer to that question." "Why not ask it of Harry Pentreddle?" suggested Patricia quietly. Colpster raised his head and stared. "Why? What could Harry possibly know about the matter?" "I am only putting two and two together," continued the girl, thoughtfully looking out of the window. "You told me that the emerald was taken to Japan, and also that Harry Pentreddle had returned from the Far East. He----" "What?" Colpster rose excitedly to his feet. "You think that Harry brought it with him; that he stole it from the Temple of Kitzuki?" "Why not?" demanded Patricia swiftly. "Japan is in the Far East, and Harry Pentreddle came from there. Also, his mother came up to London to meet him and receive the emerald. I feel sure of it." "But Harry never came near the house," expostulated the Squire. "That was clearly proved at the inquest." "Quite so. But do you remember what you told me about the emerald being a sacred stone, and how you mentioned Wilkie Collins' novel of 'The Moonstone'? Perhaps some priests were on Harry Pentreddle's track, and so he did not dare to go openly to his mother. He must have arranged the signal of the red light in the Park, so that he could give his mother the emerald secretly. She could not keep the appointment by reason of her sprained foot, and so sent me. I now believe, on these assumptions," declared Patricia firmly, "that it was Harry Pentreddle who gave me the deal box." Colpster grew very excited. "It sounds a feasible theory," he muttered. "Of course, Martha knew all about my desire to get back the emerald. But why should she get her son to steal it? I can understand the secrecy of the meeting in the Park, as undoubtedly the priests of the Kitzuki Temple would make every effort to regain the stone. Harry had to give the emerald to his mother secretly, and probably for the same reason he is now in hiding at Amsterdam. It all fits in. But"--Mr. Colpster paused and looked straightly at the girl--"why did Martha want the emerald?" "Perhaps to give it to you." "In that case, she would have told me of her plans." "I think not," said Patricia, after a pause. "She might fancy you would not approve of the jewel being stolen. However, it is all theory, and the only way in which you can get at the truth is by questioning Harry Pentreddle." "The question is how to find him," murmured the Squire musingly. "If he thinks the priests are after him, he will remain in hiding." "If he has seen the report of his mother's death and of the inquest," said Patricia coolly, "he will see that there is no longer any reason for him to dread the priests of Kitzuki." "Why not?" "Because I believe that Harry was followed by one on that night, and that the second man who stole the jewel from me was one of the priests." "If that is so, why was Martha murdered?" "I can't say. Of course, like the Moonstone guardians, there may have been three priests. One followed Harry and one went to The Home of Art." "And the third?" "The third may have directed the other two. It is all fancy, perhaps," said Patricia, hesitating; "but I think that my theory is correct." "I am positive that it is," said the Squire, with decision. "Where a man argues to reach a point, a woman jumps in the dark intuitively. Gradually I might have arrived at the same conclusion you suggest by reasoning; but I feel certain that you have given me the truth by using that subconscious mind which is more active in woman than man. Yes, yes!" Mr. Colpster opened and shut his hands excitedly; "you have given me the clue. Harry was told by his mother to steal the emerald; she did not tell me, as she knew that I would not approve. Harry secured the emerald and was followed by those who guarded it. Being in danger of death, he made the secret appointment with his mother which you kept, and passed along the jewel. The Japanese who was following saw that what he wanted had changed hands, and leaving Harry, came after you. When you looked at the jewel he snatched it. Meanwhile, in some way, these priests knew that the jewel was to go to Martha, and so one must have gone to get it from her. She refused to say anything and was killed by the man, who afterwards searched the house for the emerald. It is all clear, perfectly clear." "What will you do now?" asked Patricia, catching fire from his enthusiasm. "Do?" almost shouted the old man, straightening his bent frame. "I shall try and find Harry Pentreddle and see if he will endorse your story." "My theory," corrected the girl quickly. "Well, theory, if you like. But Harry must be found. No doubt, thinking he was in danger of his life, he went abroad and is in hiding." "How can you find him, then?" "I shall ask Isa Lee. She lives at Hendle, and is the girl to whom he is engaged. He must have written to her, and--and----" "And why not ask Mara," broke in a quiet voice. Patricia looked up with a start, so unexpected was the observation. From behind a screen which was placed in front of the door came Theodore Dane. For so huge a man--and in Patricia's eyes he looked more gigantic than ever at the moment--he moved as quietly as a cat. Mr. Colpster seemed rather annoyed by this stealthy entrance. "I wish you would make more noise," he said irritably. "I thought you did not like noise, uncle," said Theodore calmly, and allowed himself to drop into a saddle-back chair. "No more I do. All the same, I don't care about being surprised in this way. You should have knocked at the door, or have rattled the handle, or----" "I did knock, I did rattle the handle," said Dane carelessly, and thrust one white hand through his leonine masses of reddish hair; "but you were so interested in your conversation with Miss Carrol that you did not hear me." "And you listened?" continued the Squire irritably. "I ask pardon for doing so. But the conversation was about the Mikado Jewel, which always fascinates me, and I could scarcely help overhearing a few words. But if the conversation is private----" He heaved up his big frame as if to go away. "It's not private," snapped Colpster, sitting down at his desk; "only your unexpected appearance startled me. I would have reported the conversation to you later, as I know that you are as anxious as I am to recover the palladium of the family." "I should certainly like to recover it personally," said Theodore with point, "as I know the succession to the estate depends upon its being given to you. If I get it, I inherit; if Basil is the lucky finder, he obtains all the property. You know what you arranged." "Yes, and I hold to that arrangement. But as neither Basil nor you have secured the Mikado Jewel----" "Neither one of us inherits?" finished Dane quietly. "The one who marries Mara gets it," said Colpster decisively. "She is my only daughter and must benefit under my will. Marry her, Theodore, and be my heir. Mara is a nice girl; you can't object." "Mara will. She likes Basil better than she does me." "In that case, she must marry Basil, and he can become master here, when I pass over," said Mr. Colpster, with a shrug. Theodore's white face flushed and his blue eyes glittered even more brightly than usual. Patricia, who was watchful of his every movement--for the latent strength of the man impressed her--guessed that he was furiously angry, but was reining in his passion with an iron hand. "If Basil inherits he will turn me out of doors," he said heavily. "Oh, you can make your own arrangements with Basil," said the Squire. "You and he never get on well together, so----" "Because I am the ugly duckling," burst out Theodore, his eyes flaming like sapphires. "Basil is the popular one; he has all the looks and all the----" He checked himself suddenly and smiled in a wry manner. "But these family arrangements cannot interest Miss Carrol. Let us leave marriages and any arrangement that may come after your death, uncle, alone for the moment. We have to find the emerald." "In what way?" asked the Squire directly, and rather sourly. There did not seem to be much love lost between him and his burly nephew. "We must find out where Harry Pentreddle is and question him. Isa Lee may know, but in order not to lose time, I suggest that we question Mara." "No," said Colpster sharply. "Last time you put her in a trance she was ill for days. I won't have her constitution tampered with." "Mara's spirit got beyond my control," said Theodore quickly, "and remained away longer than was wise. It would not obey!" "The child might have died," growled the Squire, who did not seem surprised at this strange speech of his nephew's. "Leave her alone. Isa Lee will certainly be able to tell us where Harry is. Mara is useless." "She was not useless when she told you where the emerald was to be found," said Theodore calmly, and lounging in his deep chair. Mr. Colpster looked at Patricia, who was privately amazed at this extraordinary conversation, which dealt in a matter-of-fact way with super-physical things, and laughed at the expression on her face. "I promised to explain one day how I came to learn where the emerald was," he remarked. Patricia nodded. "Yes, you did, Mr. Colpster. In the train." "I remember. Well, then, Theodore here put Mara asleep, and told her to look for the jewel. She went unerringly to Japan and saw that it was in the Temple of Kitzuki in the province of Izumo. At the time I did not believe this, but it proved to be true, and the shrine which held it, as Basil wrote home to me, was precisely described by Mara when in her trance." "But I don't believe in these things," burst out Patricia, staring aghast at what she regarded as gross superstition. "And the Inquisition did not believe that the earth went round the sun," said Theodore coolly. "But although they forced Galileo to deny that truth, the earth continued to circle the sun and took the disbelieving Inquisitors along with it. Do not measure everything by your own brain, Miss Carrol, for there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your----" "Oh, I have heard that quotation so often," cried Patricia impetuously; "but nothing can be proved." "Not to those who only possess physical brains. But those who have eyes can see and those who have ears can hear. To those people Christ appealed." Patricia laid her delicate hands on her lap despairingly. "I don't know what you are talking about," she observed, with a shrug. "Well, never mind," Theodore hastened to say, seeing that she was rather annoyed. "Some day you will understand. Just now all you need know is that Mara told us that the emerald was to be found in the Temple of Kitzuki in Japan. That proved to be true, although it was learned in what appears to you to be a nonsensical way. I believe," he fixed her gaze with his keen blue eyes strongly, "I believe that you are psychic yourself." Mr. Colpster jumped up a trifle nervously. "I won't have it, Theodore. Leave Patricia alone. I am quite sure your experiments with Mara have done her a great deal of harm, and have made her more dreamy and unpractical than ever. I won't have Patricia caught in these evil nets." "There is no evil in searching for the Unseen," protested Theodore warmly. "In that case--if it was regarded as evil, I mean--men would cease to inquire and there would be no inventions." "If the searching you mention was regarded as evil," said the Squire grimly, "men would certainly search more willingly than if the powers were regarded as good. However, I put my foot down. I am not an unbeliever, as you know, but I don't think it is right to pry into what God wishes to be concealed. 'Thus far shalt thou go and no further!'" "That was said of the ocean," retorted Theodore. "And yet we have reclaimed lands from the sea and prevented the waves from going as far as they used to. Everything is good if rightly used, and----" "I won't hear; I won't hear;" Mr. Colpster walked abruptly to the window. "You are always arguing. Leave Patricia alone." "What does Miss Carrol say herself?" asked Dane, turning to the girl. "I agree with Mr. Colpster," she rejoined promptly. "I don't like such things, and think they are evil." "Very good. We will talk no more of the matter," said Theodore quietly. "Only one thing I will ask you, since I believe you to be a sensitive. Have you not experienced strange sensations yourself?" "In connection with the emerald I have," replied Patricia, who was anxious to have her curiosity in this respect gratified. And Dane certainly seemed a man who could do so. On hearing her reply, Mr. Colpster turned away from the window and walked back to plant himself before her. "What do you mean?" he asked abruptly. "I mean that while I held the emerald I felt the strangest sensations. It was because I felt these that I opened the box." Theodore leaned forward with his hands on the arms of his chair. "I knew you were psychic," he said triumphantly. "All Irish people are, more or less, as they come along the Chaldean-Egyptian-Carthagenian line." "What do you mean?" asked Patricia, completely puzzled. "Oh, never mind; never mind," broke in the Squire impatiently. "Theodore can explain himself later. Meanwhile tell me what sensations you felt?" Patricia stared straight before her, striving to recall what she had experienced on that terrible night. "Both when the jewel was in the box and in my hand," she said slowly, "I felt a sensation as though it held some great force which was ever pushing outward." "Pushing outward!" muttered Theodore, pinching his nether lip. "How?" "I can scarcely explain. Wave after wave of this invisible force seemed to radiate from the petals of the flower." "What flower?" asked Colpster, greatly interested. "The chrysanthemum blossom which was formed of the carved jade petals, with the emerald in its centre. The radiating force seemed to push back all darkness and all evil, so that I did not feel afraid. It seemed as though I were in the middle of a circle of light, and thus was safe from any harm." Theodore muttered again and bent forward eagerly. "Was there any sign carved on the emerald?" he demanded breathlessly. "What sign?" she asked, greatly puzzled. "A triangle; a circle; a--a--oh, any sign?" "I did not observe," replied Patricia simply. "The jewel was so lovely, and my sensations were so strange, that I kept staring at it in silence, feeling happy and safe. When it became cold and dark I then was afraid." Theodore held up his hand to prevent his uncle from speaking. "When did the jewel become cold and dark, as you phrase it?" he asked sharply. "Just before the man snatched it. The radiance seemed to die away, and the power appeared to falter. When I felt that I was holding a mere ornament, dull and dead and cold, the thief snatched it away from me." Dane rose slowly, and nodded towards his uncle. "It certainly was a priest who stole the jewel," he observed. "Probably it is now on its way back to Japan. You will never get it, uncle, as now it will be guarded more carefully." "Why do you think the thief is a priest?" questioned the Squire abruptly. "Well, you thought so yourself," said Theodore lightly. "And it seems natural to suppose that the priests of Kitzuki would be more anxious than other people to get back their sacred talisman." "Talisman!" echoed Patricia. Theodore turned heavily towards her. "Yes," he said emphatically. "The emerald in some way has been impregnated with the radiating power you mention, for some purpose which I cannot say. Perhaps, as you suggest, to keep off evil and darkness. At all events, the man who stole it had some way of neutralizing the power, which he did when he saw you staring at the jewel. It might be that he could not take it from you until he had destroyed the barrier of light which you felt. But in any case, seeing that he was able to take away the force, he must have been a priest of the Temple, who knew all about the Mikado Jewel. You understand." "No," faltered Patricia. "I don't understand at all." "Neither do I," growled the Squire; "but I intend to recover the jewel some day and in some way. It is mine, and I shall regain it." Theodore shook his head. "You will never regain it," he said firmly. "It is now on its way back to the shrine whence it was taken by Pentreddle." CHAPTER IX BASIL The odd conversation with the Squire and Theodore Dane strangely affected Patricia, and in rather an unhealthy way. She was an ordinary commonsense Irish girl, whose father had been a matter-of-fact military man, and in her conventional life there had been no place for the supernatural. And when, with Colonel Carrol's death, came his daughter's subsequent poverty, Patricia had been far too much taken up with battling for existence to think of the Unseen. To be over-inquisitive about the next world seemed to her sensible mind unnecessary, since there was so much to be done on earth. She knew very well that she was sensitive to things which other people did not perceive, but she put this down to having highly-strung nerves, and thought very little about the matter. Now, apparently, the time had come for her to consciously use organs hitherto unguessed at. Patricia could scarcely help feeling that the atmosphere of Beckleigh Hall was unusual. The isolation, the dreamy nature of Mara, the uncanny conversation of Theodore, which his uncle appeared to accept as quite ordinary--all these things had an effect on her mind. She began to be vaguely afraid of the darkness, and her sleep was greatly disturbed by vivid dreams. In vain she assured herself that all this was owing to her imagination, and that she was losing her nerve in a most ridiculous manner, for the spell of the place was laid upon her, and she felt that she was being caught in those nets of the Unseen of which Mr. Colpster had spoken. To a healthy-minded girl, such as Miss Carrol undoubtedly was, the feeling was highly unpleasant, and she resented the influence which seemed bent upon controlling her, even against her will. Yet to this influence which she vaguely felt, but could not describe, she could not even put a name. The only thing she could tell herself was that some powerful Influence was setting itself to capture her mind and will and body and soul--all that there was of herself that she knew. Later, she became aware that the Influence seemed to be centred in Theodore, for when in his presence she felt more than ever the desire to peer behind the veil. He had always been polite to her, since the night she arrived, but had looked upon her, she felt certain, as merely a pretty, commonplace girl, content with earthly things. And this was surely true, or had been, until the Influence came to draw her away from the concrete to the abstract. But since she had confessed to experiencing the weird sensation of the Jewel, Theodore had haunted her steps persistently. He talked to her during meals; he strolled with her in the gardens; he exerted himself to please her in every way, and finally asked her to visit his special set of rooms, which were at the back of the house. With a sense that some danger to the soul lurked within them, she at first refused, but finally, over-borne by his insistency, she consented to enter along with Mara. The girl was absentminded and indifferent; still she would form a convenient third, and would prevent Theodore from performing any of the experiments she hated. And, as a matter of fact, Mara mentioned that she objected to these. "You need not be afraid, my dear cousin," said Dane dryly, as he led the way along the corridor. "I only wish to show Miss Carrol my books and have a chat with her about psychic matters." "I don't think it's healthy," murmured Patricia, feeling distressed and uneasy. "I wish you would talk of something else." "There is nothing else which interests me in the world," retorted Theodore, throwing open a door. "This is my study, Miss Carrol, and through that door is my bedroom, so you see I have this part of the house all to myself." The room was large and broad, with a low ceiling, and a wide casement looking towards the east. The walls were plastered with some darkly-red material, smooth and glistening, and a frieze of vividly-coloured Egyptian hieroglyphics ran round them directly under the broad expanse of the ceiling, which was painted with zodiacal signs. The floor was of polished white wood, with a square of grimly red carpet in the centre. There was scarcely any furniture, so that the vast room looked almost empty. The casement was draped with purple hangings, and before it stood a large mahogany table, covered with papers and writing materials. There was also a sofa, two deep arm-chairs, besides the one placed before the table, and one wall half-way up was lined with books. A purple curtain also hung before the door which led into the bedroom. The apartment looked bare and somewhat bleak, and an atmosphere of incense pervaded it generally, so that when Patricia sat down in one of the arm-chairs, she involuntarily thought of a church. Yet there seemed to be something evil hanging about the place which was foreign to a place of worship. Mara felt this even more than did her companion, for she walked to the casement and threw it wide open, so as to let in the salt breath of the sea. It was growing dusk, and the room was filled with shadows which added to its eerie appearance and accentuated the eerie feeling of Miss Carrol. Yet Theodore did not offer to light the lamp which stood on a tall brass pedestal near an alcove, masked with purple curtains, which was at the end of the room opposite the casement. Patricia noted that there was no fire-place. "Don't you feel cold here at times?" she asked, more because she wished to break the silence than because she desired to know. Theodore smiled. "I am never cold," he said smoothly; "cold and heat and pain and pleasure exist only in thought, and I can control my thoughts in every way. Why did you open the window, Mara?" "I don't like your stuffy atmosphere," said the girl bluntly; then her nostrils dilated, and she sniffed the air like a wild animal. "Pah! What bad things you have in this room, Theodore!" "What kind of things?" asked Patricia, looking round uneasily. "Things that dwell in darkness and dare not face the light," chanted Mara in soft tones. "This room reeks with selfishness." "So does the whole world," retorted her cousin with a sneer. "Yes; but the effect is not so great as you make it." "What do you mean?" "You have transferred the selfish energies to a higher and more fluid plane." "Mara!" Theodore came close to the girl and peered curiously into her pale face with vivid curiosity. "Who told you that?" "It came to me." "You don't know what you are talking about," he said roughly. "Perhaps not," she replied dreamily; "but what I mean is plain to you. I can see your soul shivering with shame at being forced to obey the animal." Theodore shrugged his great shoulders and looked at Patricia. "I sometimes think that Mara is mad," he remarked impolitely; "do you understand?" "No," answered Patricia truthfully; "what does she mean?" Mara slipped off the writing-table whereon she had perched herself, and pointed one lean finger at Theodore. "I mean that he is an utterly selfish man, who strives to sweep aside all who stand in his path. By egotism he isolates himself from the Great Whole, and wishes to dwell apart in self-conscious power." She faced Dane, and in the twilight looked like a wavering shadow. "There is nothing you would not do to obtain power, and for that reason your punishment will be greater than that of others." "Why?" asked Theodore tartly, "seeing that all desire power?" "You have more Light. You know, others do not." Mara paused as though she was listening. "It is a warning," she finished solemnly, "a last chance which is given to you, who are so strong in evil might." "But, Mara----" "I have said all that I am told to say, and now I say no more," said the pale girl enigmatically, and returned to seat herself on the table and gaze into the rapidly gathering night. "What does it all mean?" asked Patricia, under her breath. "Simply that Mara doesn't like me," said Dane coolly, but Miss Carrol noticed that he wiped the perspiration from his high forehead as he spoke; "her standard is too lofty for us ever to become husband and wife. I can see plainly that Basil will marry her and inherit the property." He looked round the room with a savage expression. "To lose all this is terrible!" "But your brother will let you stay here," said Patricia consolingly. "No, he won't. Basil doesn't care for my occult studies, and he doesn't care for me. You would never think we were brothers, so different he is to me. We are Cain and Abel, Esau and Jacob, Polynices and Eteocles, and have never been friends since birth. I hate him, and he hates me." "Oh, no, no, Mr. Dane," said Patricia, quite distressed and shocked, "you must not talk in that way. It is wrong." "It is human," retorted Theodore bitterly. "All his life Basil has been the petted darling. Uncle George always loved him and ignored me. Basil is good-looking; I am not. Basil is popular; I am not. Basil will marry Mara and inherit Beckleigh, while I am forced to wander homeless and friendless. And if----" His cousin, who had been listening quietly, interrupted at this moment. "I shall not marry Basil," she said very decidedly. "We are good friends, but nothing more." "If you don't marry him, Mara, you will lose the property." "I don't care," she answered indifferently. "I can always live somewhere." "If you would marry me," said Theodore eagerly, "you could go away and live where you liked. I only want to inherit Beckleigh." "Oh!" cried Patricia, revolted by this selfish sentiment. Theodore wheeled to face her. "It is a brutal thing for a man to say to a woman, is it not?" he asked derisively; "and if Mara loved me, I would not say what I have said. But she hates me, as you can see." "I don't hate you!" put in Mara. "I am merely indifferent to you! Besides, as you said just now, you only want the property." "Yes, I do," declared Dane boldly; "and I only put into words what other people think. I wish to have this house all to myself." "Why this house particularly?" asked Patricia, after a pause. "Because it is so secluded, and so safe for my purpose." "What is your purpose?" "I wish to continue my occult studies. I wish to get others to join me so that we may form a school. If I teach what I have learned to others, we can create a power which will be able to dominate the world. Here," he grew excited and seemed to swell with arrogance, "in this hidden spot, and by the exercise of certain powers, it is possible to sway the minds of men at a distance. The Wisdom of Solomon is no fable, Miss Carrol." "And for that reason," said Mara, in her cold, unemotional voice, "you will not be permitted to acquire it." "I know much," retorted Dane, still bulking hugely in the shadows, "and as time goes on I shall know more." "The time is very short now," whispered Mara. Patricia, peering through the soft twilight, saw the big man's face suddenly grow white. He moved, soft-footed as a cat, to the girl's side. "Mara," he breathed, and his voice was sick with terror, "do you see danger?" "Great danger, and very near." "What is it? Where is it? Look and see!" He raised his hands and made a pass before her face. Mara slipped from between him and the table like an eel. "I won't submit to your experiments," she said angrily. "Father told you that you were not to worry me." "But the danger?" faltered Theodore, who seemed to be quite unnerved. "I can sense it, but I cannot see it," said Mara, wearily; "and all this talk makes me tired." She walked across to the other arm-chair and sank down into its depths gladly. "I am glad that Basil will soon be here." "When do you expect him?" asked Patricia, anxious to turn the conversation, which had taken a mystical turn of which she did not approve. "He may be here at any minute. Father said that he received a letter by the mid-day post. I like Basil; I love Basil, and I am glad he is coming." "Let us ask Mr. Colpster when he will arrive," said Patricia, rising. She moved two steps towards the door, but before she could reach it, Theodore had placed himself before her. "Don't go, Miss Carrol," he entreated, "just wait for a few minutes. Perhaps you don't like the darkness, so I shall light the lamp." He walked towards the tall brass pedestal. "You need not be in a hurry, Patricia," said the voice of Mara out of the gloom, "it will be an hour before Basil appears." Patricia sat down again, although her instinct told her to fly from this room and the evil influences with which it was impregnated. "I shall wait for a few minutes," she said, determined not to be cowardly; "but do let us talk of more healthy things, Mr. Dane." The lamp was lighted by this time, and its radiance spread gradually through the room, as the wick was turned up. Patricia felt more comfortable in the flood of cheerful light, although the shadows still lurked in the corners. Silent and pale, in her deep chair sat Mara, but her cousin moved about the room actively and brightly: with an effort, however, as it seemed from the glimpse she caught of his eyes. These were filled with a vague terror, and he frequently moistened his dry lips. Nevertheless, he began to talk lightly and discursively about this, that, and the other thing, evidently anxious to keep his guests. He described the neighbourhood to Patricia, and the people who dwelt therein. He advised her to make excursions round about with Mara, and examine old rocking-stones and the remains of British villages and Phoenician towers. He extolled the healthiness of the place, and the beauty of its landscapes, and finally promised to take the two girls out in a sailing-boat. "Oh, we can give you much pleasure here, in spite of our isolation, Miss Carrol," he declared, with laboured gaiety, "and in spite of this danger which Mara says that I stand in. Who is going to hurt me, Mara?" he asked with assumed lightness, but real eagerness. "No one," she replied quietly; "but"--she drew her hand across her face and said peevishly, "I wish you wouldn't ask me silly questions." "You have told me such silly things," retorted Theodore snappishly. "You mustn't mind what Mara says, Miss Carrol: she does nothing but dream." "We must rouse her out of such dreaming, Mr. Dane." "Of course; of course! She ought to have a season in London; that would do her endless good. There is too much lotus-eating about this place. It suits me, but it would not suit all. That is why Basil entered the Navy: he loves to travel about the world, and only comes to see us once in a blue moon. By the way, Miss Carrol, you must not take what I said about him too seriously, for Basil is really a good fellow. We have different ideas of life, that is all; and fire and water won't mix you know." In this way he rattled on, and then produced a chafing-dish of bronze on which a charcoal fire smouldered, with thin wisps of smoke curling up. "I find the atmosphere of this room too chilly, Miss Carrol. Would you mind my throwing some incense on this fire?" "Not at all," said Patricia innocently; but Mara moved with uneasiness. "Don't you try any experiments, Theodore. Remember what father said." "My dear child," said the man impatiently, and planting the smoking dish of charcoal at Patricia's elbow, "when I make a promise I always keep it. This is no experiment. By the way, Miss Carrol," he added, while he went to a cupboard and brought back a metal box, "when your eyes are closed at night, do you see colours?" "Oh, frequently." "I thought so," muttered Dane, opening the box. "And pictures?" "Sometimes." "Have you ever wished to be in any picture you saw?" "No--that is--I don't exactly follow you, Mr. Dane." "No matter. I quite understand. If you did wish to find yourself in the picture," he went on with emphasis, "you would find yourself there. I knew you were psychic, and all you tell me makes me more certain than ever." Patricia shuddered. "Don't talk about these uncanny things. I don't like them: they make me uncomfortable." Theodore laughed in a constrained manner, and with a spoon threw some powder on the charcoal. At once a thick bluish smoke arose like a column, and a strong perfume spread through the chill atmosphere of the room. "A pleasant scent, is it not, Miss Carrol?" said Dane, restoring the box to its cupboard and fixing his eyes on the girl's face. "It is made after a recipe of Moses. 'Sweet spices, stacte, and onycha and galbanum; these sweet spices with pure frankincense: of each shall there be a like weight.' You will find those words in Exodus. Result of mingling such things a sacred incense, as this is. Smell it; breathe it; the perfume is beautiful." It was assuredly a wonderful smell, but too overpoweringly sweet. Patricia drew in a deep breath through her nostrils, and the fragrance seemed to impregnate her whole being. She began to feel languid and singularly content, and unwilling to move. And all the time Dane's vividly blue eyes were fixed on her face. They seemed to be sapphire flames. But as she breathed the perfume and looked into his deep eyes, she heard a movement and removed her own eyes--with an effort, as it appeared to her now confused senses. She then saw that Mara was on her feet, moving towards the door. But not as an ordinary human being would walk. She rather appeared to be dancing in a rhythmic way, swaying from side to side, and waving her arms gracefully. With clasped hands she seemed to be shaking some invisible instrument. Theodore put out his hand to stay her, but she waved him aside and danced--if it could be called dancing--through the door. As she disappeared, Patricia tried vainly to rise. "I must go to her! she is ill!" murmured Patricia, and then fell back in the chair again, enveloped--as it seemed to her--in a dense cloud of perfumed smoke. Her eyes closed, her breath seemed to leave her, and then she appeared to go away to a league-long goal. Where she went, or how she went, she could not say. Her inward perceptions were only conscious of a vividly brilliant atmosphere through which she passed as swiftly as a swallow. And far away she heard a thin voice, like one speaking through a telephone, bidding her search for the danger. It was the voice of Theodore. But as Patricia, in her dream or trance, or whatever was her state of being, passed swiftly on, soaring to some unknown end, she became aware that her flight was being stopped. She faltered, paused, then turned, and came swiftly back with the speed of light. Her senses returned to feel water being poured on her forehead, and to feel also the cool night air. She was out of doors, and in the arms of a man, who bathed her face. "Don't move; don't move," said the man anxiously; "you have fainted." "Who are you?" asked Patricia, gazing upward at the handsome face. "I am Basil," said the man, "and my brother has been trying his devilries on you." CHAPTER X THE NEW-COMER Patricia was not a particularly imaginative girl, considering that she was of Irish descent and blood. But there was something in the clean-shaven face of the young naval officer which appealed to her. The clasp of his arms thrilled her, and although, on recovering her senses, she extricated herself from them hurriedly, yet for days she seemed to feel them round her. Basil was so strong and kind-hearted and virile, that all Patricia's femininity went out to him, and he became her ideal of what a man should be. Tall and slim, well-made and wiry, young Dane was as handsome and clean-limbed a man as anyone could meet in a day's march. His hair was brown, his skin was tanned by sea and wind and sun, and his eyes were hazel in colour. He had a firm chin and a well-cut mouth, which Patricia could well imagine could be set firmly at times. And, indeed, when she opened her eyes to find herself in his arms, the mouth was stern enough. It was evident that Basil did not at all approve of his brother's experiments. Theodore protested that he had intended no experiment. "I simply burnt the incense to dispel the chilly feeling in the atmosphere of the room," he declared, "and the scent was too much for Miss Carrol." "If that was all," questioned Basil dryly, "why did Mara come out to say that you had put Miss Carrol into a trance?" "Oh, Mara!" Theodore looked disdainful. "You know what crazy things Mara says when she wakes up to ordinary life." "Don't talk like that, Theodore." "Well, then, don't quarrel with me the moment you arrive home," retorted Theodore, and Patricia, drying her wet face with her handkerchief, saw the latent animosity between these two ill-matched brothers leap to life. To throw oil on the troubled waters of fraternal strife, she began to laugh--somewhat artificially, it is true, but still sufficiently naturally to show that she was now entirely herself and not hysterical. "It was silly of me to faint," she said in a matter-of-fact way. "Don't trouble about me, Mr. Dane"--she spoke to Basil. "I am all right. It was my fault, not Mr. Theodore's, that I lost my senses. He was trying no experiments." "There, you see," said Theodore, with a triumphant glance at his brother. "You shouldn't burn these strong perfumes," said Basil angrily, and walked away without looking at Patricia. He evidently was annoyed that the girl should champion Theodore's doings in this pronounced way. "One moment, Miss Carrol," said Theodore, when Patricia was about to depart also, for it was close upon the dinner-hour and she had to dress. "You called my brother Mr. Dane. That is wrong. I am the eldest, and _my_ name is Mr. Dane, whereas he is called simply Mr. Basil." Patricia heard the venomous tone of his voice and saw the angry look he darted at Basil, as that young gentleman stepped into the house. Her first inclination was to make an angry retort, but when she considered swiftly how wrong it would be to increase the enmity between these brethren, she curbed her temper, and replied deliberately: "You must excuse my mistake. I shall not make it again. When did Mr. Basil arrive?" "He rushed into the room just when you fainted. Mara told him and he took you up in his arms and carried you out here into the fresh air." "I did not faint," said Patricia, looking at him searchingly. "And although I defended you to smooth things over, you really did try and experiment on me. Is that not so?" "You are such a sensible girl that I can admit as much," said Theodore, with an ironical bow. "Yes, I did use the perfume to put you into a trance. I wished you to--to----" He hesitated. "To look for the danger which Mara said threatened you," she finished. "Yes. How do you know?" "Because when I was miles and miles away, bathed in a flood of light, I heard your voice very clearly, telling me to search." Theodore gazed at her eagerly. "So you can bring back consciously what you see on the other plane. Did you learn what this danger was?" "No. Some force drew me back." "Basil." Theodore clenched his hand and his face grew black. "If he had not interfered, you might have found out." "I doubt it; and, moreover, if I had found out, I should not have told you." "Why not?" he asked, astonished. "Because I don't like these experiments." "But you ought to. Many people's souls depart and see things and can explain them when in a trance. But few like yourself can bring back consciously what they see. Tell me what you----" "I shall tell you nothing, because I have nothing to tell. But I ask you to explain one thing to me?" "What is that?" "Why did Mara dance towards the door. I saw her as I became insensible." Dane looked worried. "I don't know. When she smells that perfume she always acts like that. It isn't a dance exactly, but it is certainly a measured movement. I don't understand Mara," he confessed candidly. "She has powers which are not under her own control. I could control them, but she will not allow me to." "She is quite right," said Miss Carrol emphatically, "and never again will I allow you to put me in a trance. It is dangerous," and with a nod she also went into the house. Theodore Dane, with a lowering face and a savage gleam in his blue eyes, stood where he was, with bowed head, considering what the coming of Basil had cost him. He was greatly attracted to Patricia, not by love for her beauty or sweet nature, but because she possessed certain psychic powers which he wished to control. She could, as he now knew, go and return consciously, and that capability showed an advanced state of spiritual evolution. With such a messenger to send into the Unseen, since he could not go himself and Mara refused to obey him, he could accomplish great things. Had he been left alone with the girl, for a certain period, he might have managed to sap her will power and render her his slave. But the coming of Basil changed all that. Basil was young and handsome and ardent, and with a sailor's keen sense of beauty, would be certain to admire, and perhaps love, Patricia. If this was so, Basil certainly would prevent any more experiments being made, and Theodore's evil heart was filled with black rage at the unexpected thwarting of his aims. "Curse him!" he muttered, alluding to his brother. "He always crosses my path and puts me wrong." And as he spoke he raised his head to survey the goodly heritage which assuredly Basil would gain in the end. "I shall not be driven from here," raged Theodore furiously. "I shall marry the girl and gain the property by getting Basil out of the way. But how is it to be done with safety to myself? I must think." This meant that Theodore intended to draw to him certain evil counsellors, who, being supernatural, could guide him in the selfish way which he wished to take. And these powers, being evil, would be only too glad to minister to his wicked passions, since by doing so they secured more control of him, and could use him for their own accursed ends, to sow discord on the earth-plane. But Theodore, not being possessed of psychic powers, could not come directly into contact with these beings so malignant and strong. He was obliged to find a medium, and since Mara would not act in that capacity, and since Patricia was lost to him, or would be, through the influence of Basil, the man's thoughts turned to old Brenda Lee, the grandmother of Isa, to whom Harry Pentreddle was engaged. She was accredited with being a witch, and possessed powers which Theodore knew only too well to be real. He had made use of her before, for there was an evil bond between them, and he now intended to make use of her again. Pending a near visit to her and a consultation of those creatures he intended to summon to his assistance, Theodore smoothed his face to smiles and went in to dinner. It was a very pleasant meal on this especial evening. Squire Colpster appeared to grow young in the cheery atmosphere of Basil's strong and virile youth. The sailor of twenty-five was so gay and bright, and talked in so interesting a manner of what he had seen and where he had been, that even the dreamy Mara was aroused to unexpected vivacity. And Theodore, with rage in his heart and smiles on his face, behaved so amiably and in such a truly brotherly fashion, that Basil and he were quite hand in glove before the time came to retire to rest. The younger brother, straight, honest-natured and kind-hearted, did not credit Theodore with crooked ways, although he knew that his relative was not so straight as he might be. But Basil, calling him internally a crank, set down his deviation from the normal to his secluded life and uncanny studies. "You ought to go about the world more, Theo," he said at dinner. "It would do you a lot of good." "Perhaps I may travel some day," said Mr. Dane, in a would-be genial manner. "Just now I have so much interesting work in hand that I don't want to move." "Some of your cloudy schemes?" "They are not so very cloudy, although you may think them to be so," said the elder brother significantly, and there was a look in his blue eyes which made Patricia move uneasily. The girl's instinct, let alone what she had seen when she recovered from her trance, showed her clearly how deadly was the enmity between these brothers. But it is only just to say that the dividing feeling was rather on the part of Theodore than on the part of Basil. The latter only mistrusted his brother as a slippery and unscrupulous man, who was to be avoided, but he did not seek to do him any injury. On the other hand, Theodore hated Basil with cold, calculating malignancy, and was on the watch--as Patricia by her sixth sense perceived--to hurt him in every possible way. But nothing of this was apparent to the eyes of Mr. Colpster as he sat at the head of the table, smiling at his newly-returned nephew. "Tell me," said Mr. Colpster, when Mara and Patricia had retired to the drawing-room, and the three men were smoking comfortably over their coffee, "tell me exactly what happened about the emerald?" "I can tell you nothing more than what I set forth in my letter," replied Basil, his frank face clouding over. "I went from Nagasaki to Kitzuki, when I arrived in Japan, and offered to buy the emerald. The priests laughed at me for daring to make such an offer, and then told me that the emerald had been stolen." "Whom by?" "They could not say. And yet," added Basil reflectively, "I believe they knew something, although they declined to speak. Indeed, because of my offer for the jewel, they believed that I had something to do with the theft." "What nonsense!" said Theodore lightly. "The very fact that you offered to buy the jewel openly, showed that you did not take it." "The priests thought that I did that to throw them off the scent. I was waylaid one night and searched. It might have gone hard with me, as I had a nasty knock on the head. But Akira came along and saved me." "Akira?" "I should rather say Count Akira," explained the young sailor. "He is in the Japanese Diplomatic Service, so he told me, and is of high rank. His father was a famous daimio over thirty years ago, when Japan was mediæval, and Akira would be a daimio also, if things hadn't changed. As it is, he is high in favour with the Mikado and is very clever. He certainly saved my life, for my assailants would have killed me had he not come along. However, you will hear all about it from his own lips." The Squire sat up alertly. "Is he coming down here?" "With your permission, sir. I told him I should ask if you would allow him to come. If you agree, I can write to him; he is at the Japanese Embassy in London, and can come at once." "Write to him by all means," said Mr. Colpster excitedly. "He may be able to tell me about the emerald." "I don't think he knows anything about it, save that it was one of the treasures of the Kitzuki Temple, and had been given to the then high-priest centuries ago by Mikado Go Yojo. Akira is too modern to bother about such things. But as a loyal Japanese, he certainly mourned that the emerald should have been lost. I wonder if it will ever be found?" "It has been found," said Theodore quickly, "and is now on its way to Japan." Basil let the cigarette fall from his well-cut lips. "What do you say?" "Oh, that is Theodore's idea, although I don't entirely agree with it," said the Squire impatiently. "It's a long story and has to do with the murder." "Ah, poor Martha!" said Basil regretfully. "I am so sorry to hear of her terrible death. I was so very fond of her and she of me. I read a lot about the tragedy in the newspapers, but there is still much that I should like to hear. Particularly how Miss Carrol, who was one of the witnesses at the inquest, comes to be here as Mara's companion." "I met her when I went up to the inquest," said Colpster quietly. "And as I had known her father, Colonel Carrol, at Sandhurst, I invited her to come to Beckleigh as housekeeper and Mara's companion. The poor girl had no money and no friends, so my offer was a godsend to her." "I am glad you made it, sir," said Basil, heartily. "She is one of the very prettiest and most charming girls I have ever seen." "Don't fall in love with her, Basil," said his brother, with a disagreeable laugh, "as uncle here wants you to marry Mara and inherit the property." "Oh, I don't think Mara would marry me," said Basil lightly. "And, in any case, I disbelieve in the marriages of first cousins. Besides, it would be better for you, Theo, to get the property, as I am always away." "The one who marries Mara, or who recovers the emerald, shall have the estate," said the Squire decidedly. "You both have known that for a long time. But we can talk of that later. Meantime, you ask about the emerald. Well, it was stolen from Patricia on the night Martha was murdered." "The deuce! What has Miss Carrol to do with it?" Basil sat up quickly, and his hazel eyes brightened. Theodore observed with a thrill of annoyance that any reference to Patricia seemed to stir up his brother, and augured ill from the interest displayed by the sailor. "Listen," said the Squire in slightly pompous tone, and related all that he knew from the time Patricia had left Mrs. Pentreddle in the drawing-room of The Home of Art, to the time she had returned without the jewel and found the old woman a corpse. Basil, ceasing to smoke, listened in breathless silence, and drew a long breath when the interesting story was ended. "What a perfectly ripping girl!" he ejaculated, talking of Patricia the moment Mr. Colpster ceased; "so brave and cool-headed." "Not very cool-headed, seeing she lost the emerald," said Theodore dryly. Basil nodded absently. "It was a pity she took it out of the box. Of course, that talk of a drawing-power is nonsense." "Perfect nonsense from your material point of view," said the elder brother with a sneer. "But in my opinion some priest who followed snatched the jewel--stole it, in fact, and now has taken it back to Japan." Basil shook his head. "I never heard either at Kitzuki or Kamakura that anyone was suspected. And I don't approve of the word stolen. If, indeed, a priest of the Kitzuki Temple followed the thief and recovered the emerald in the way you state, he had a perfect right to do so." "The emerald is ours," said the Squire, fuming. "Pardon me, uncle, but you know that I have never agreed with you on that point," said Basil significantly. "Amyas Colpster gave the jewel to Queen Elizabeth for a knighthood, so our family has no right to get the emerald back again. Unless, indeed," added the sailor, with an afterthought, "the jewel is freely given; and I don't think, seeing that store is set by it at Kitzuki, that such a gift will be made. But who could have stolen the emerald?" "Miss Carrol suspects Harry Pentreddle," said Theodore, lighting a cigar. "Ah! it might be so. I heard that his ship was touching at Japan. Martha wrote to Hong Kong and told me. But why should he steal it?" "And why should he wish to give it secretly to his mother?" questioned the Squire. "We wish to learn both those things, Basil, my boy." "Ask Harry, then?" "We don't know where he is. He went to Amsterdam, I fancy, when he was last heard of. He can't know that his mother has been murdered, or he would have certainly returned long ago." "He's sure to turn up sooner or later," said Basil easily, and rising to his feet. "Poor Martha! she was a good friend to me. Where is she buried?" "In the churchyard on the moors, beside her husband," said Colpster, also getting on his feet. "I am sorry myself, as Martha was such a good housekeeper. But Patricia is succeeding very well." "And, moreover, is more agreeable to look at," sneered Theodore. "What beastly things you say!" observed his brother sharply. "I haven't seen you for a year, Theodore, but your manners have not improved." "I paid Miss Carrol a compliment." "I think that she can dispense with your compliments," retorted the fiery sailor; "and, in any case, you spoke slightly of the dead. Martha was very dear to me, and should be to you also. When our mother died, Martha stood in her place. Remember that, if you please." "Boys! boys! Don't quarrel the moment you meet," said the Squire. "It's Basil's fault." "It is the fault of your bitter tongue, Theo," said the younger Dane, trying to curb the anger with which his brother always inspired him. "However, I don't wish any ill-feeling. Let us go to the drawing-room and ask Miss Carrol to give us some music." "Always Miss Carrol," murmured Theodore resentfully, and felt that he hated his brother more than ever. All the same, he threw down his half-smoked cigar and moved with the other two men towards the door. The Squire placed his hands over the shoulders of his nephews and walked between them proudly. "There are only three of us to represent the family," he said affectionately, "since Mara, being a girl, doesn't count so much as a man. We must stick together and recover the emerald, so that our good fortune may return. And heaven only knows how badly I need good luck! There's that lawsuit over the Hendle water-rights, and a bad hay-season with the continuous rain--not here, but miles away--and--and----" "If your luck depends upon the emerald," said Theodore crossly, "it will never return. It is on its way to Japan, I tell you." "Well, we have one piece of good luck," cried Basil gaily. "Miss Carrol is in the house." "Damn you!" thought the elder brother amiably. "I'd like to wring your neck, you self-satisfied beast." CHAPTER XI HARRY'S SWEETHEART With the arrival of Basil Dane, life became much brighter and more lively at Beckleigh. The young sailor was active-minded and light-hearted, so that he was always glad to provide amusement for himself and others. He took Patricia and Mara out sailing in the fairy bay, and walked with them across the windy spaces of the moors to view various centres of interest. In the evenings, having a sweet tenor voice, he sang to them, while Miss Carrol played his accompaniments, and, of course, he had much to tell them about foreign parts. No one could possibly be dull while Basil was in the house, and even the Squire left his beloved history of the Colpster family to enjoy the breezy humours of his favourite nephew. The old house awoke, as it were, from sleep, to enjoy a brief holiday of innocent amusement. But although Basil was attentive to Mara, since he greatly wished to arouse her from those dreams which set her apart from others, he gave Patricia most of his company. From the moment he had set eyes on her, he had been attracted by the beauty of her face. Now that he knew her better, and found that she had a heart of gold, he frankly fell in love with such perfections. And very wisely, for Patricia was a rare specimen of her sex. She was not, on her part, averse to his wooing, as, of all the men she had ever met, Basil appeared to be the most trustworthy and fascinating. It was the old story of love at first sight, that miracle at which material-minded people scoff, but which is a veritable truth in spite of such scepticism. Theodore, needless to say, was not pleased to see the fulfilment of his prophecy. He had known, the moment Basil arrived, that something of this silly sort--so he phrased it--would happen. Knowing nothing of love himself, for his selfishness swallowed up all other qualities in his somewhat narrow nature, he had scanty patience with this folly. He wished to get Patricia entirely to himself, because of her rare psychic qualities, and to do so was even willing to marry her. Of course, by such an act, he would cut himself off from all chance of acquiring the property, since it was very evident that the Mikado Jewel would never be found. Theodore was certain that it had gone back to Japan, and there would be no chance of its being stolen a second time. This being the case, only by marrying his cousin could he secure Beckleigh and carry out his design of forming a school of Occultism. But this ambition--as has before been stated--he was willing to surrender, provided that he could dominate Patricia and her mediumistic powers. With those at his disposal, he felt that he could do much to forward his selfish desires. Moreover--and this was a factor also in his decision--Mara disliked him so intensely that she certainly would never marry him. But none of Theodore's feelings appeared in his looks and manners. To reach his ends he had to play a comedy, and did so with the skill of a clever actor. His face was all smiles, his behaviour most deferential, and he carefully avoided any possible quarrel with his brother. Also, he did not speak of his occult studies, since a discussion of such things was not welcome to others. Theodore, in fact, appeared in quite a social _rôle_, and seconded his brother in promoting a brighter and more active state of things in the old mansion. He was clever at conjuring, and gave exhibitions in the drawing-room when the girls grew weary of music and conversation. And always he was polite and genial. So much did he impose upon Basil and Mara and the Squire that they believed Theodore had--as the saying is--turned over a new leaf. But Patricia did not credit as genuine this too suave demeanour. She knew, if no one else did, that the leopard could not change his spots, and what is more, that this particular leopard did not wish to. Beckleigh was certainly the Vale of Avilion, for in spite of the bad weather prevailing in almost every other county in England, this favoured spot preserved, more or less, a serene calm. Of course, it rained at times, but not very long and not very hard. As the Squire had said, his hay-crops at Hendle were completely ruined by the wet, and he anticipated a great loss, which he could ill afford in his straitened circumstances. But the flower gardens round his family seat bloomed in almost constant sunshine. Also, when snows fell--it was now close upon Christmas, and the hard frosts were coming--they spread a mantle of white on the moors above, but did not descend upon Beckleigh. It is true that, owing to the season, many of the trees in the demesne were leafless, but a goodly number, being foreign, were evergreen, and still clothed themselves in leaves. Throughout the winter, when severe conditions prevailed on the high lands, the climate of this little nook by the sea maintained a mildness and warmth little short of miraculous. The place might have been situated on the Riviera. Patricia thought that these extraordinary circumstances--for an English winter--were due to the great red cliff which sheltered the vale. During the day it drew in much heat into its breast, and breathed it forth at night when the airs grew chilly. It was like being warmed by a good-humoured volcano, she thought, for Patricia, after the manner of Browning, always humanized the forces of Nature. But undoubtedly she was right in her surmise, for the solar fire constantly drawn to the cliff and radiated from the cliff, created an artificial summer, which endured throughout the year. Beckleigh was like the Garden of Eden for climate and fruitfulness and beauty, and Theodore was the intruding snake. But as yet, even to herself, she did not dare to confess that she was a modern Eve to Basil's Adam. Or, if a passing thought of this nature did cross her mind, she blushed and did not dwell on it. If she had, she would never, in her maidenly confusion, have been able to meet the eye of her lover. Yes, it had come that far: he was her lover. Of course, Theodore, always on the watch, saw that the pair were falling deeper in love daily, and savagely felt that he could do nothing to prevent a happy ending to the romance. The Squire might want Basil to marry his cousin, but Mara merely loved the young man in a sisterly fashion, and did not dream of any closer tie. Colpster was not the man to force his daughter's affections even for the sake of the family. So it was probable that, if Mara refused Basil, which she assuredly would do if he offered himself, and if Patricia accepted the young sailor, Mr. Colpster would settle the Beckleigh property on his daughter, and give up his fancy of re-establishing the family. Moreover, he was now strangely fond of Patricia, and would be glad to have her for his niece by marriage. Look what way he could and would, Theodore saw that his chances of gaining either Beckleigh or Miss Carrol were very small indeed. It was then that he determined to seek out Brenda Lee and see what the future had in store for him. After Mara's warning, he had always been haunted by a sense of ever-nearing danger, although he could not tell from which quarter it would come. Granny Lee would know, however, as she was a clairvoyant and could look into the seeds of Time as did Macbeth's weird women. Of course, in this material age, most people contemptuously dismiss such things as hanky-panky, but that did not matter to Theodore. Sceptics might refuse to shape their course by such a vague chart, but he knew positively from experience that, under certain circumstances, the devil could speak truly. And if Granny Lee, with her malignant disposition and greedy venom, was not the devil, who was? Granny Lee, therefore, was the one to solve riddles, and to Granny Lee Theodore went a few days before Christmas. Yet, so as to impress upon his uncle that he was going on a harmless and friendly errand, the young man sought him out in the seclusion of his library. "I am going to see Isa Lee, and ask if she has heard anything about Harry since his return to England," said Theodore abruptly. "You are going to Hendle?" "No. Isa, so I have been told, is stopping for Christmas with her grandmother in that miserable hut on the moors. I can go and return in three hours." "I should like to come with you," said the Squire alertly. "I am most anxious to know the whereabouts of Harry Pentreddle. We must question him about the emerald. I wonder if he really knows anything?" "I am perfectly certain that he does," rejoined Theodore, positively; "if he did not, he would not have stayed away from Isa. But I do not advise you to come with me, Uncle George, as there is deep snow on the moors, and you are not so young as you were. Besides, I can ask all necessary questions." "Well, do so. If you can recover the emerald, you know what your reward will be," said the Squire, and turned again to decipher an old document, which dealt with the adventures of Amyas Colpster in Peru. Theodore shrugged his big shoulders and departed with a grimace. Much as he would have liked to secure the emerald, if only to inherit Beckleigh, which was a kind of Naboth's vineyard in his greedy eyes, he felt quite sure that Harry Pentreddle could tell him little that would be helpful. Harry undoubtedly had stolen the Jewel, and had given it to Patricia as his mother's emissary; but having departed for Amsterdam almost immediately, he would know nothing of its unexpected loss. Apparently he did not even know that his mother had been so barbarously murdered. If he did know, he assuredly would have returned to avenge her, in spite of any danger there might be to him from the guardians of the great gem. And that danger was now, as Theodore fully believed, a thing of the past. The emerald had been recovered, so it was only natural to suppose that the priests of the Kitzuki Temple would leave well alone. With these thoughts in his scheming mind, Theodore, well wrapped up in furs, mounted the winding road which led to the moors. The vast grassy spaces were covered more or less deeply with snow, but Dane, accustomed to the country since his boyhood, and possessing great strength, made light of the drifts. Far away on the dazzling expanse, brilliantly and blindingly bright in the sunshine, he saw the many dark dots, which marked the village, near the cromlech, where Mrs. Lee had her home. A glance backward over the cliff showed him the verdant acres of Beckleigh, and a flash of colour where late flowers still bloomed. There was no snow below, but only emerald swards and green woods running to the verge of the sapphire bay, where the wavelets lipped the curved streak of the yellow sands. The contrast between the summer he was leaving and the winter he was going into struck Theodore forcibly. "I wish I could get it all to myself," he groaned. "Basil is out of it if he marries Patricia Carrol, and Mara hasn't the sense to look after it. I may secure it, after all. But Patricia," he scowled; "I don't want her to become Basil's wife!" a speech which showed that Theodore both wished to have his cake and eat it, since he wanted both the girl and the property. However, it was useless to moralize over possibilities, so Dane resolutely struck across the moors, and ploughed manfully through the drifts. After a mile or so, he came to the high road up which tourists came to view the rocking stone and the cromlech. This was comparatively clear, and he had no further difficulty in gaining his goal. Swiftly walking--and in spite of his great bulk Theodore could walk swiftly when he chose--he soon arrived at the handful of houses, sheltered immediately under the brow of the gently swelling hill, or boss, which marked the highest point of the moors. It was a most unlikely place for a village, as there seemed to be no chance of its inhabitants gaining food. But they acted as guides to tourists, drove them in vehicles from and to Hendle, shepherded droves of Exmoor ponies, and flocks of hardy sheep, and, if rumour was true, employed much of their spare time in poaching. The village--Boatwain was its name--had not a good reputation in general, and amongst its inhabitants Granny Lee, in particular, had the worst name. Theodore soon found the tumbledown house in which she lived, and at the door came upon Isa Lee, just stepping--so she said--to post a letter. Dane saw his opportunity and took it immediately. "You are writing to Harry," he observed, looking at the tall, robust, deep-bosomed woman, who always reminded him of Wagnerian heroines, with her fair, flaxen hair and Brunehild aspect. Isa evidently saw no reason to deny the truth. "Yes, sir," she replied, in a deep contralto voice which boomed like a bell. "Is Harry still abroad?" "Yes, sir. He is stopping at Amsterdam, hoping to get a ship." "Does he know of his mother's death?" "Yes," answered Isa. "I told him, and sent him the papers." "What does he say?" "He intends to return here and pray by her grave." Theodore shrugged his shoulders cynically. "He had much better avenge her death," was his remark. "He wants to," said Isa stolidly; "but he says that he can't guess who killed her, and does not know how to begin. He is very sorrowful over the death, Mr. Dane, as he loved his mother." "He doesn't seem to be so very sorry," snapped Theodore sharply, "or he would return and learn who murdered her." "I am writing to him to advise him to do so," said the woman quickly. "Oh, don't think that Harry is hard, sir! He is--he is--afraid!" "Of what?" "I don't know: he refuses to tell me, sir." Dane knew very well when she said this that Patricia's suggestion was a true one. Pentreddle had evidently stolen the jewel and now feared lest he should be assassinated. But with the recovery of the jewel by one of the priests--and he believed that there was more than one on the hunt--all danger had passed. "Isa," he said, impressively, "go back and add a postscript to your letter, telling Harry that there is now no danger, and that the Squire, my uncle, wishes to see him." "What about, sir?" asked Isa suddenly, and with an anxious look. "He wants to talk to him about Mrs. Pentreddle's death. She was our housekeeper, you know." "Yes, sir, and a grand funeral the Squire gave her," said the woman, with a flush, for, like all the lower orders, she attached great weight to postmortem ceremonies. "He _has_ been kind." "Well, he wants to be kinder," said Theodore, not hesitating to tell a lie in order to gain his ends. "He has some idea of who killed Martha, and wishes to talk about it to Harry, who should avenge his mother's death. Will you go back and add that to your letter?" "Yes, sir; oh, yes, sir!" said the girl eagerly; "and very glad Harry will be to hear it, as he has been fretting dreadfully over his mother's death. But he did not return because of this danger, whatever it is. Do you know, sir?" "I can guess," answered Theodore significantly, "so you can tell Harry that he can come quite safely to England. Now go and write your letter, and say that he is to come back at once. The Squire wishes to see him at Beckleigh, as he has news for him. Meanwhile, I shall speak with your grandmother." Isa nodded, and stepped aside to allow her grand visitor to enter the house, although it was scarcely worthy of the name. It was rather a hovel, and possessed only three rooms--a large one, used for all living purposes, and two tiny bedrooms. The old hag--she was nothing else--sat beside a small fire, smoking a short-stemmed clay pipe, and only vouchsafed Dane a grunt when he greeted her. She was about eighty-six years of age, but looked even older with her wrinkled, copper-coloured face and scanty white hair streaming from under a thrum cap. Her eyes were small, black and piercing, and full of vivid life. For the rest, she was hunched up in a basket-chair, stroking a large black cat, and looked a typical witch of James's time. Perhaps she dressed for the part and lived up to it, black cat and all, for she made much money in summer by telling fortunes to tourists. But undoubtedly her appearance was so old and wicked, that she would have tasted of the tar-barrel in Stuart days, almost without the formality of a trial. Granny Lee was a witch in grain, if ever there was a witch. "Good-day," said Theodore, sitting down on a chair with no back, while Isa went into an adjoining bedroom to add the postscript to her letter. "How do you find yourself this weather, Granny?" "Mrs. Lee, if you please," snarled the old woman, glaring at him in a malignant way and removing the pipe from her almost toothless gums. "Mrs. Lee then be it; Mrs. Brenda Lee, if you like," said Dane, who had his reasons for keeping her in a good temper. "How are you?" "How should I be in this damned weather? I'm all aches and pains and they dratted rheumatics." "You shouldn't attend so many Sabbaths," chuckled Theodore, loosening his fur coat. "Riding a broom-stick with no clothes on is dangerous at your age." "Leave my age alone, drat ye!" growled the amiable old lady, beginning to cut a fresh fill of tobacco with a clasp-knife. "As to Sabbaths, I don't believe in 'em, or I'd ha' gone long ago. There ain't any now, and I don't believe as there ever was. I don't go to Them, but They come to me." Theodore cast a bold look round the miserable room. "Are They here now?" Granny Lee chuckled in her turn. "Mine don't need to show when you're here, Mr. Dane. You've brought your lot along with you, and the biggest of them is looking over your shoulder at this blessed moment." The big man turned his head, but, of course, not being gifted with mediumistic powers, could see nothing. "I wish I could have a look at him," he said regretfully. "What is he?" "Just your thought grown big." Theodore nodded quite comprehendingly. "Of course, thoughts create beings on the astral plane out of the essence. What special thoughts----?" "There's lots of 'em, and none of 'em pleasant," interrupted Mrs. Lee, pointing with her pipe-stem. "Yon's Greed of what belongs to other folk, an' he's not a small one. Then there's Selfishness,--quite a giant--and Hatred, and Lust, and Ambition, and Murder----" "Why murder? I haven't murdered any one," said Dane quickly and coolly. "It's in your mind. That brother of yours----" Theodore ground his teeth. "I'd like to strangle him," he growled, "only I might be caught. Yes, I daresay the murder thought is there." Knowing what he did about occult matters, he had not the least doubt but what Mrs. Lee saw his thoughts made visible, since she possessed the astral vision--what the Celt calls "second sight" and could behold the Unseen. Ordinary matter-of-fact people would laugh at Mrs. Lee's pretensions, but Dane knew that they were only too truthful, and that she actually saw the hideous offspring of his brain with which his evil passions had surrounded him. However, he put the delight of conversing generally with this mistress of Black Magic aside for the moment, since at any moment Isa might finish writing her postscript and come out. It was time to get to business, and he did so without delay. "I feel there is some danger near me," he said abruptly, "and I want you to see what it is." Granny laid aside her pipe and stretched forth a skinny hand. "Give me the ring you are wearing. I must get your condition to see," she said. Dane pulled off his signet ring and passed it along, as he knew that otherwise she could not come into contact with his magnetism. Mrs. Lee put it to her wrinkled forehead and closed her beady eyes. After a few moments she began to speak slowly, listening at times as if some of the viewless Things around her were speaking. "It's danger from above," she muttered. "What danger?" "I can't tell. That shell of yours which holds your wicked soul is stretched out as flat as a pancake." "How does that happen?" "I can't tell, drat ye! But it won't happen if you don't let It come into the house." "What is It?" Granny listened for a moment. "A voice says that you're not to know." "But how can I guard myself, if I'm not to know," protested Theodore in a vexed tone. "What is the use of warning me, unless the remedy's suggested?" Granny shook her weird old head. "There's innocence against you, and Them as works for you can't get over." "Get over what?" "The barrier of innocence. Don't ask me more questions for the mist is hiding all." She handed back his ring. "What I get plainly is: Don't let It come into the house." "But hang it!" raged Theodore, "what is It?" "I can't tell, drat ye!" said Granny again, and resumed her pipe. Theodore gave her a shilling and left the hut more doubtful than ever. His Oracle, as an Oracle should be, was too mystical for every-day comprehension. CHAPTER XII A JAPANESE DIPLOMATIST If Count Akira was indeed anxious to visit Beckleigh, he certainly did not betray much alacrity in accepting the Squire's cordial invitation. He did write to the effect that he would be delighted to come, but postponed his arrival until the second week in January. Official business, he stated, would keep him employed during the next few weeks, and he would be unable to leave his chief. Consequently there was only a family party present at the Christmas festivities. Mr. Colpster, being of a conservative nature, always kept these up in an old-fashioned, hospitable style. Indeed, he invited several friends to join on this occasion, as his nephew was at home, but the friends, having their own families and own festivities, declined to put in an appearance. The Squire was not sorry, as he disliked the trouble of entertaining visitors. As it was, he gave the servants a dinner, and bestowed coals and blankets and hampers of wholesome food on the inhabitants of Hendle, Boatwain, and the other hamlets, all of which had at one time belonged to dead and gone Colpsters. For this reason did the Squire act so generously, and he hoped when the emerald was recovered--for he refused to believe that it had gone back to its shrine in Japan--that the future good fortune which would come with it would enable him to buy back the lost lands. Meanwhile, by acting as the lord of a lost manor, he retained the feudal allegiance of the villagers. There was something pathetic in the way in which the old man persistently looked forward to the rehabilitation of his family. He made sure that the Mikado Jewel would come back; he felt certain that the land would be recovered, and was convinced that when he passed away, the husband of Mara would start a new dynasty of Colpsters, through the female branch, whose glories would outshine the ancient line. But who Mara was to marry did not seem quite clear. He spoke to the girl on the subject and suggested that she should become the wife of Theodore or Basil. Mara shuddered when he mentioned the first name, and her father noted the repugnance the shudder revealed. "I don't approve much of Theodore myself," he said apologetically, "as he is extremely selfish. But he has no bad qualities which would lead him to waste money, and, moreover, he loves this place. You might do worse, dear." "If Theodore was the only man on earth and offered me a kingdom, I would not marry him," said Mara, speaking decisively and in a firm way, which contrasted strongly with her usual indifference, "He is a bad man." "My dear child, he has no vices. He neither drinks, nor gambles, nor----" "If he had all the vices of which a human being is capable," interrupted Mara loudly, "I would not mind. But his bad qualities are inhuman. He is selfish and dangerous, and all his time is given to Black Magic." The Squire laughed incredulously. "I know that Theodore dabbles in such things," he said disbelievingly; "but it is all imagination, Mara. There is no such a thing as any power to be obtained in that way." "Yes there is. I know," said Mara, looking at her father significantly. "Can you prove what you say, my dear?" "No. And I don't want to talk any more about the matter. I won't marry my cousin Theodore, even if you leave the property away from me." "I don't want to do that. You are my heiress, and my idea was for you to marry your cousin. Then he could take your name, and----" "I shan't marry Theodore," cried Mara for the third time, and stamped. "Basil, then. You can have no fault to find with Basil." "I haven't, father, but"--Mara stopped, and a strange smile spread over her small, pale face--"I shall ask Basil to marry me, if you like," she said in an abrupt way. "He can but say no." "He won't say no, my dear. Basil loves me too well to thwart my wishes. But it is his part to woo and yours to listen. Let him ask." "I should have to wait a long time before he did that," said Mara dryly. "I wish to know the best or worst at once," and she left the room, still smiling strangely. Mr. Colpster could not understand why she smiled. But, then, neither he nor anyone else understood the girl, who seemed to hang between two worlds, the Seen and the Unseen, without making use of either, so indifferent was her attitude towards all things. As it happened, Patricia was busy attending to the servants, as it was her housekeeping hour. Mara was thus enabled to find Basil alone, for when Miss Carrol was available he constantly followed at her heels like a faithful and adoring dog. But Patricia would not appear for some time, so the sailor read the daily paper in the smoking-room and solaced himself for the absence of the eternal feminine with his pipe. Mara knew where to find him, and entered in her light, noiseless way, to perch on the arm of his chair like a golden butterfly. Without any preamble she plunged into the reason for her intrusion into bachelor quarters. "Basil, will you marry me?" she asked, coldly and calmly and unexpectedly. Looking on his cousin as a child, the young man thought that she was joking, and laughed when he answered: "Of course. Will we start now for the church on the moors where all the Colpsters have been married?" "I am in earnest, Basil," she said seriously. "So am I," he rejoined lightly, "only it will be the marriage of Bottom and Titania with you, my airy elf," and he slipped his arm round her waist, looking at her with a smile on his handsome face. Mara, who disliked being touched, even by Patricia, much more by this confident male thing--as she called Basil in her mind--slipped off the arm of the chair and floated like thistledown into the centre of the room. "Don't be silly, Basil. I have just come from my father. He wants me to marry you or Theodore. I hate Theodore, and would sooner die than become his wife, but I told father that I would ask you to become my husband." Basil saw that she really meant what she said, and, moreover, knew of his uncle's strong desire to unite the two branches of the dwindling Colpster family. Laying aside his pipe, he grew red to the roots of his closely-cropped hair. "I--I--don't want to," he stuttered ungallantly, and feeling very much confused. "I--I hope you don't mind." A wintry smile gleamed on the girl's white face. "I should have minded a great deal had you really wished to marry me." "Then why ask me?" demanded Basil, much relieved, but still confused. "To set my father's mind at rest," replied Mara quietly, and as self-possessed as her cousin was disturbed. "Now that you have declined, I can tell him!" and she flitted towards the door. "But, Mara!" Basil rose and ran across the room to catch her arm. "How can you be certain that I mean what I say?" She turned on him with an amazed look. "You think that I am a child, Basil, but I am not. I have eyes and ears and common-sense. You will marry Patricia, will you not?" Young Dane grew redder than ever. "I--I--have said nothing to her," he stammered nervously. "She--she doesn't know that I--that I----" Mara's scornful laughter stopped his further speech, and she became quite friendly for so bloodless a person. "You silly boy!" she cried, ruffling what hair the barber had left him. "Patricia knows." "But how can she?" "Because she is a woman," said Mara impatiently. "Women are not like men, and don't require everything to be put into words. I saw from the moment you met Patricia that you loved her. I'm glad; I'm glad," she ended, with conviction, "as I don't want to marry you or anyone else." Basil, with lover-like selfishness, did not pay attention to the end of her speech, but to the earlier part. "If you saw, then Miss Carrol must have seen." "Miss Carrol!" mocked Mara, with dancing eyes. "Why not Patricia?" "Oh!" the shy sailor blushed. "I shouldn't care to call her that." His cousin took him by the coat-lapels and shook him with frail strength. "Silly creature! If you have not the courage to take what you can get, Patricia will have nothing to do with you. Women like a bold lover." "I don't believe she will ever return my love," sighed Basil dolefully. "Oh, as to that, she returns it already." "Mara!" he flushed again, this time with sheer delight, "do you think----" "I don't think. I know, and I'm very glad, for Patricia is a darling. I hope that father, who is as fond of her as I am, will give her Beckleigh on condition that she marries you, who can't say 'Bo' to a goose." Basil looked serious and sighed again. "I'm sorry to upset Uncle George's plans, for he has always been kind to me. But not even for the estate could I give up Miss--that is, Patricia." "No one wants you to give up either," said Mara impatiently. "Father will no doubt give you Beckleigh." "No, dear. That would not be right. You are the heiress." "And what would I do with it? Keep a boarding-house, or start a convent of nuns? I would much rather have a small income and be able to move round as I please." "You will marry some day, Mara. Mr. Right will come along." "Mr. Right will never come along," cried Mara, and coloured crimson, which was unusual, "unless he comes from the other world." "What do you mean?" asked the sailor, greatly puzzled by this weird speech. "Oh, never mind," retorted Mara, pitying his lack of comprehension. "Sit down and dream of your Patricia. I am going to tell father that my heart is broken." And shooting a whimsical glance at the amazed and startled Basil she slipped out of the room. Five minutes later Miss Carrol arrived, with her household work completed for the day. In spite of what Mara had told him, Basil would not follow the path she had pointed out. He was rather more attentive than usual to Patricia, and gave her to understand that he would wreck continents for her sake. But the modesty of a man, which is greater than that of a woman, kept his tongue quiet and his eyes unintelligent. Patricia did not entirely approve of this restrained attitude, as she knew that he loved her, and wished to be told so in plain English. She could not understand why he did not speak. But Basil himself understood very well. He waited for Patricia to give him a sufficiently strong hint that she adored him, and then he could lay himself at her feet. It did not seem right, so Basil thought, to act on what he had learned from Mara, as that would be taking advantage of illicit intelligence. But for the sailor's rigorous views of honour, the situation could have been adjusted then and there. All the same, it was not, because she could not speak and he would not. As for Mara, she returned to her father and demonstrated to him very plainly that her cousin wished to marry Miss Carrol, and that when the time came he would do so. Colpster felt annoyed. Mara could not marry Basil, and would not many Theodore, so his plans for the future well-being of the family were all disarranged. "What would you say if I gave Beckleigh to Basil?" he asked pointedly. "He could marry Patricia, you know, and take my name." "I should be very glad," replied Mara quietly. "Well, then, I won't," said her father, greatly annoyed. "You are the last of the direct line and should have the property." "I wouldn't know what to do with it." "You could live here when I am gone." Mara raised her faint eyebrows. "All alone?" she questioned. "You know I would not allow Theodore to stay, and that Patricia would go with Basil, who is always moving round the world. Oh, I couldn't." "What's to be done, then?" asked the Squire helplessly. Mara threw her arms round his neck, a rare demonstration of affection from so usually a self-controlled girl. "Wait," she whispered, "wait and see what is about to happen." "What is about to happen?" "I don't know. But something is coming along to change all our lives." "How do you know?" "I can't tell you. I only feel that there is something in the air to----" "Oh!" Colpster grew angry; "more of your occult rubbish. I wish you were an ordinary girl, Mara, and not a dreaming visionary. I shall wait until the emerald comes back, and then you must make up your mind to marry Theodore, since Basil's affections are engaged." Mara reflected and thought how very certain Theodore was that the emerald had gone back to Japan never to return. The recollection gave her a chance of pacifying her father, and of securing her freedom. "Very well, then," she said quietly. "When you get the emerald, father, I shall marry him," and in this way the affair was settled for the time being. But think as she might, Mara could not guess how her father expected the Mikado Jewel to return to the Colpster family. And even if it did, she could not understand how its possession would affect things in any way. Meanwhile the days and weeks passed by and the time drew near for the visit of Count Akira. Mara, although she said nothing, was looking forward to his arrival. Why, she did not know, for, as a rule, she was quite indifferent to those who came to Beckleigh Hall. In her heart, however, she felt that he was coming into her life, either for good or ill, and it was this feeling which made her say to her father that a change was about to take place. But she could not have put her feeling into words, and did not attempt to do so. With the fatalism which was inherent in her character, she waited passively, certain that what was meant to be would certainly become when the hour struck. There was nothing more to be said. Theodore had duly told his uncle of the interview with Isa Lee, although for obvious reasons he said nothing about the _séance_ with the grandmother. The Squire was, therefore, anxiously awaiting the arrival of Harry Pentreddle, as he then hoped to learn how and why the young man had stolen the emerald. Also, he might be able to guess who had snatched it from the hand of Patricia, and, if so, could then tell in whose possession it now was. A great deal depended upon what Pentreddle had to say, and Colpster watched daily for his coming. But Count Akira was the first to arrive, and in attending to a new and fascinating guest, the Squire almost forgot his anxiety to hear the evidence of young Pentreddle. The Japanese came late in the evening, having arrived at Hendle by the express, to be driven to Beckleigh by Basil. The young man went to meet his friend, and brought him to the Hall in time to dress for dinner. It was not until the meal was in progress that Mara set eyes on him, and then she was so excited by his presence, although she did not show her feelings, that she could scarcely eat. What she had expected--vague as it was--had come true. This man from the Far East was the man who would change her life. Into what he would change it, and down what new path he would lead her, she could not say. All she knew was that with the hour had come the man. Count Akira was a small, neat person, with a bronze-coloured skin, a clean-shaven face, black hair and black eyes, and a very dignified manner. At the first sight he did not look particularly impressive, as the European evening-dress did not entirely suit his aggressively Oriental appearance. But when those gathered in the drawing-room came to notice his keen, dark eyes, so observant and piercing, to listen to his carefully-worded speech, and to look at his nobly-formed head, they became aware that he was no ordinary man. Race was apparent in his gestures and glances and dominating manner, so quiet yet imperious. He came of a noble line accustomed to rule, and his personality made itself felt more and more as something strong and dangerous, while the hours passed. He was the past, the present, the future of the island empire, the epitome of Japan, the representative of the highest type of the Yellow Race, filled with far-reaching ambitions. "Is it true that you worship the sun in Japan?" asked Theodore tactlessly. Akira turned his shrewd eyes on the speaker, and smilingly displayed a set of snowy teeth. "Some do and some don't," he replied evasively; "but I assure you, Mr. Dane, that if you ever saw the sun in England you would worship him also, and with very good reason." "Oh, we get the sun here," said the Squire patriotically. "You get a name, but not the real central planet," said Akira, with a shrug. "Clouds and mist obscure his rays. Only in the East does the true sun exist. Is that not so, Dane?" he spoke to Basil, whom he always addressed in this way, although he was more ceremonious with Theodore. "It is," assented the sailor, with a laugh. "And yet, Akira, when under your painfully blue skies and in your blazing sunshine, I have often longed for the cooling mists of England you so despise." "That is quite poetical," smiled Patricia. "Sailors are always poetical, although they don't show that side to landsmen. The solitary spaces of sea and sky, when one is driven back on one's self to think out high things, is enough to make any man poetical." "Well," said Mara shrewdly, "if sailors don't show that side to landsmen, they probably show it to landswomen. Is that not so, Basil?" and she mischievously glanced from him to Patricia and back again. "To some women," replied Basil briefly, and colouring through his tan. "What! When a sailor has a wife in every port!" sneered Theodore; then aware that he had said more than he ought to in the presence of ladies, he quickly turned to Akira. "Perhaps, Count, you will tell us about Japan." The little man blinked his keen eyes and politely assented. He made himself comfortable, and in many coloured words placed fairy-land before their eyes. With great charm of manner, he told of cool Buddhist temples, wherein weird ceremonies take place; he related the delightful legend of Jizo-Sama, that kindly god who protects dead children; he pictured the vivid life of toy cities, all colour and movement, and drew the attention of his fascinated hearers to the charm of Japanese and Chinese lettering, which lend themselves to fantastic and odd decoration. After a time he gave a description of a pilgrimage he had made to Fuji, that sacred mountain, which appears in a thousand and one pictures of Dai Nippon. "My country with Fuji-Yama left out is like _Hamlet_ without the Prince," he said, smiling. "That mountain is the guardian genius of the land." Then he told about the rice-fields, with their delicate springing green, of the cherry-orchards in blossom, of the pine forest where fox-women lurked, and sketched out many charming legends. His talk was like a page of Lafcadio Hearn, and Mara hung breathlessly on his words. As he proceeded, her breath became quick and short and her eyes grew larger. She looked at the narrator, through him, past him, as though all he described were passing before her like a panorama of byegone centuries. Suddenly she clapped her hands. "I remember; I remember," she cried, rising unsteadily to her feet. "Your land is my land. I remember at last," and stopping suddenly, she sank unconscious at the feet of the astonished Japanese. CHAPTER XIII THE UNEXPECTED Next day Mara was quite her old indifferent self. With feminine craft, she denied what she had said, even though five witnesses were ready to repeat the words. "I didn't know what I was saying," said Mara impatiently. "Of course, the heat was too much for me." "The heat?" repeated her father; "in January?" "Beckleigh isn't England. My nerves are out of order.--Count Akira had some funny Japanese scent on his handkerchief.--Theodore was looking at me, and that always upsets me." And in this way she made idle excuses, none of which would hold water. "I wish you would leave me alone," she ended, angrily. As there was nothing else for it, she was left alone, and the queer episode was passed over. Mara was polite to the Japanese and nothing more; but her eyes were constantly following him about, and she came upon him by design in unexpected places. Akira was too shrewd not to notice that he was an object of interest to this pale, golden-haired English maid, and inwardly was puzzled to think why she should pursue him in this secretive fashion. Mara everlastingly inquired about Japan, and about its people. She wished to know the manners and customs of the inhabitants, and entreated the Count to draw word-pictures of Far-Eastern landscapes. But he observed that she never asked him questions when anyone else was present. With a delicate sense of chivalry, he kept silent about this secret understanding which her odd conduct had brought about between them. For there was an understanding without doubt. Akira found himself wondering at times if she was really English, for towards him, at all events, she did not display the world-wide reserve for which the island race of the West is famous. Of course, Squire Colpster seized the first opportunity to question his guest about the emerald. But Akira professed that he knew little more than the facts that there was such a stone and that it had been stolen some months before from the temple. "I have been to Kitzuki," said the Count, "as my religion is Shinto, and in Izumo is the oldest of our shrines. A very wonderful building it is, and was built in legendary ages by order of the Sun-goddess." "But the same temple surely does not exist now?" "Oh, no. It has been rebuilt twenty-eight times, and----" The Squire interrupted him with an exclamation. "I remember! Lafcadio Hearn says that in one of his books." "He was a very clever man, and loved our people," replied Akira quietly. "Yes! yes!" Colpster nodded absently. "It is strange that he did not say anything about the Mikado Jewel." "It is not generally shown to strangers," explained the Japanese. "I have seen it myself, of course." "What is it like?" "Like a chrysanthemum blossom of green jade with an emerald in the centre, Mr. Colpster. I believe it was given to the shrine by one of our Emperors, called Go Yojo." "It was; and he received it from Shogun Ieyasu." Akira fixed his sharp black eyes on the tired face of his host. "You seem--pardon me--to know a great deal about this jewel," he observed inquiringly. "I ought to. The emerald belonged to our family centuries ago." "You astonish me." "I thought I would!" cried the Squire triumphantly. "Yes; an ancestor of mine gave the emerald to Queen Elizabeth, and she sent it, through an English pilot called Will Adams, to Akbar, the Emperor of India. Adams, however, was wrecked on your coasts, Count, and presented the jewel to Ieyasu." "How very interesting," said Akira, his usually passive Oriental face betraying his wonder. "Thank you for telling me all this, Mr. Colpster. I must relate it to the priests of the Kitzuki Temple, when I return to my own land. I do so in a month or two," he added courteously. "But the Jewel is now lost!" "So I understand. I read the report of the death of your housekeeper." Colpster gazed in astonishment at the little man. "Did that interest you?" "Naturally," rejoined Akira, unmoved, "seeing that her death was connected with the Mikado Jewel." "Are you sure that it is the same?" asked Colpster breathlessly. "Assuredly, from the description. I expect the thief, whosoever he was, brought the emerald to London." "But who stole it from Miss Carrol?" Akira shrugged his shoulders and spread out his small hands. "Alas! I do not know. But you should, Mr. Colpster, seeing that the thief proposed to transfer it to your housekeeper through Miss Carrol?" He looked very directly at his host as he spoke. The Squire reflected for a few minutes. "I will be frank with you, Count," he observed earnestly. "That emerald brought good luck to our family, and since it has left our possession, we have had misfortunes and losses. I wished to get back the jewel and gave Basil a sum of money to----" "To offer to buy it back," interrupted Akira, nodding. "Yes, I know. You sent him on a dangerous errand, Mr. Colpster. But for me he would have been murdered, as perhaps you know." "Basil told me the story," said Colpster, drawing himself up stiffly; "but I cannot really agree with you as to the danger. I merely offered to buy back what belonged to an ancestor of mine." "Your ancestor parted with it," said Akira, readily and rather dryly, "so, as the stone has become a sacred one, it was impossible for the priests to take money for it. I know Dane had nothing to do with its disappearance." "Ah!" the Squire became cautious. "I don't know who had anything to do with the theft. I wish I did." "What then?" "I would seek out the thief and regain the jewel." "By your own showing the thief parted with the emerald to Miss Carrol," was Akira's quiet remark. "That it was taken from her is strange." "Oh, I don't think so, Count. Some thief saw Miss Carrol looking at it--you remember, of course, the details given at the inquest--and snatched it." Akira was silent for a few moments. "Mr. Colpster," he said earnestly, "if you are wise, you will make no attempt to regain this stone. It brought your family good luck centuries ago, but if it comes into your possession again, it will bring bad luck." "How do you, know?" "I don't know for certain; I don't even know why it was snatched from Miss Carrol, or where it is now," said Akira coldly, "but I do know," he added with great emphasis, "that since the emerald has been adapted to certain uses in the Shinto Temple at Kitzuki, the powers it possesses must be entirely changed." "Oh, I don't believe it has such powers," said the Squire roughly. "Yet you believe that it will bring you good luck," said Akira with a dry little cough. "Isn't that rather illogical, sir?" Mr. Colpster could find no rejoinder to this very leading question, and dropped the subject. It was very plain that Akira knew very little about the matter, and also it was dangerous to speak to him on the subject. If, indeed, the jewel was in the possession of a London thief, it might be recovered sooner or later. And if Akira knew that it had again passed into the possession of the Colpster family, he might get his ambassador to claim it for Japan. The Squire rather regretted that he had spoken of the matter at all, since his explanation might arouse his guest's curiosity. But as the days passed away, and Akira did not again refer to the abruptly terminated conversation, Colpster thought that he was mistaken. The Japanese really was indifferent to the loss of the Jewel, and no doubt had never given the subject a second thought. But the Squire determined, should he learn anything from Harry Pentreddle, to keep his knowledge to himself. "Akira doesn't care," he meditated; "but one never knows. If I can get the emerald by some miracle, he may want it for Kitzuki again. I shall hold my tongue for the future. I was a fool to speak of the matter." Having decided to act in this manner, he warned Theodore and Basil and Mara not to refer in any way to the Mikado Jewel. Yet, strangely enough, he did not warn the person who knew most to hold her tongue. It therefore came about that one day, while Patricia was showing the gardens to Akira, he abruptly mentioned the subject of the inquest and incidentally touched on her adventure in Hyde Park. "Were you not afraid, Miss Carrol?" "Yes and no. I was not afraid until the emerald was taken from me," said Patricia frankly. "Why?" asked the Count politely, and with seeming indifference. She hesitated. "I fear you will think me silly." Then in reply to his wave of a hand that such an idea would never enter his head, she added hastily: "When I held the emerald I felt a power radiating out from it." "Ah!" the Japanese started in spite of his usual self-command. "Then you have occult powers and sight and feeling and hearing?" "I have not," replied Patricia, vexed with herself that she had spoken so freely. "I am a very commonplace person indeed, Count. I felt that feeling because I was worried and hungry." "Naturally!" muttered Akira to himself; "you get in touch with it when the physical body is weak." "Get in touch with what?" asked Patricia crossly, for she began to think that this beady-eyed little man was making game of her. "With what you felt; with what you saw." "I shan't say anything more about the matter." Patricia turned away with great dignity. "I'm sorry I spoke at all." "Your secret is safe with me, Miss Carrol." "It isn't a secret. Mr. Colpster and his two nephews know." "I don't suppose they understand." "Mr. Theodore Dane does!" snapped Miss Carrol fractiously, for the persistence of the man was getting on her nerves. "Yes," said Akira with a ghostly smile; "in a way; but he doesn't know enough. Pity for him that he doesn't." "What are you talking about, Count?" "Nonsense!" he replied promptly; "after all, Miss Carrol, I am here to play." "I wonder you came here at all to such a quiet place." "Oh, I don't care for orgies, Miss Carrol. But if you ask me, I wonder also why I am here." Patricia felt that he was speaking truthfully and turned on him with a look of amazement. From all she had seen of the small Japanese, she judged that he was a man who knew his own mind. As she looked, by some telepathic process he guessed what was in hers. "Sometimes I do," he answered; "but on this occasion I don't--exactly"--and he drawled the last word slowly. Patricia almost jumped. "You are a very uncomfortable man," she remarked. "The East and the West, dear lady--they never meet without misunderstandings." This cryptic remark closed the conversation, and they went in to afternoon tea. Akira said no more, nor did he explain his puzzling conversation in the least. However, he still remembered it, for every time he looked at Patricia he smiled so enigmatically that the mother which is in every woman made her wish to slap him and send him to bed without any supper. That same evening in the drawing-room a strange thing took place, which made Patricia wonder more than ever. Theodore had been performing some conjuring tricks with cards at which Akira smiled politely. Basil had sung, and she had played a sonata of Beethoven. Feeling tired, no doubt, of Shakespeare and the musical glasses, Mr. Colpster had stolen to his study to look at his beloved family tree. The young people had the drawing-room to themselves. As all save Mara--who invariably declined to contribute to the gaiety of any evening--had done his or her part, it was the turn of the Japanese. "Amuse us in some way, Count," commanded Patricia, crossing to a sofa, and throwing herself luxuriously on the silken cushions. "Alas! I am so foolish, I know not how to amuse. I have told you so much of my own country that you must be tired." "No! No! No!" cried Mara, with shining eyes and an alert manner. "I never grow weary of hearing about Japan." "Why?" asked the Count, half-closing his eyes. Mara's face became strange and cold. "I don't know," she said, in a hesitating manner. "I seem to know Japan." "But, Mara," cried Basil, staring, "you have never been there!" "All the same I know it, and especially I know the Temple of Kitzuki." "Ah! but you _were_ there!" put in Theodore, glancing at the Count, whose eyes were curiously intent upon the girl's pale face. "How? When?" he asked suddenly. "She went in her astral body in search for the Mikado Jewel, and----" "Don't talk of these things," interrupted Mara, in an angry tone. "The Count doesn't want to hear such rubbish." "Of course; it is all rubbish," said Akira promptly; but Patricia, mindful of his afternoon conversation, did not believe that he spoke as he felt. "Ah!" sneered Theodore quietly, "you are one of the scoffers. Yet I thought that the East believed in such things." "We believe in much we never talk about," replied Akira calmly. Then there was a pause, until he suddenly produced from his pocket a bamboo flute. "I can play this," he said, with his eyes on Mara, as though he addressed himself to her; "it is a simple Japanese instrument. Have you a drum?" Basil, who was addressed, laughed. "I don't think so. There's the dinner-gong." "That will do," said Akira serenely. "Would you mind getting it and beating it rhythmically like a tom-tom--softly, of course, so as not to drown the notes of my flute. And a hand-bell," he added, casting his looks round the room. "You are arranging an orchestra," laughed Basil, going out to fetch the gong. "Here is a bell!" cried Mara, taking a small silver hand-bell from a table covered with nicknacks. "Hold it, please." "But what am I to do with it?" asked the girl, bewildered. "The music I play will tell you," said Akira, somewhat grimly, and then Patricia began to see that there was some meaning in all this preparation. More, that the same was in some hidden way connected with Mara. However, she said nothing, but waited events. Presently Basil, tall and slim, returned, carrying the brazen gong and sat down to flourish the stick. "Punch and Judy," said Basil; "now for it." Akira said nothing. He looked at Patricia and Theodore, who were staring at him with astonishment, and at Basil laughing over the gong, and finally at Mara, who held the hand-bell and appeared puzzled. Suddenly the Japanese rose from his seat, and, crossing to the fire, threw something into it. Immediately a thick white smoke poured into the room, and a strong perfume came to Patricia's nostrils, which seemed to be familiar. "The incense of Moses," she heard Theodore mutter; "hang it, the fellow does know something of these things!" Mara also smelt the perfumed smoke. Her eyes grew fixed, her nostrils dilated and--as Patricia had seen in Theodore's room--she began to make a shaking motion with both hands. And, as formerly, she closed them together, holding the silver bell, mouth downward. As the fragrant smoke was wafted through the room, the shrill piping of the flute was heard, and Basil, according to his instructions, began to beat a low, muffled, monotonous accompaniment on the gong. The music sounded weird and Eastern, and was unlike anything Patricia had ever heard before. The stupefying incense and the smoke and the sobbing flute, wailing above the throbbing of the gong, made her head swim. Suddenly Mara, as if she was moving in her sleep, rose slowly and walked into the centre of the room. There she began to move with swaying motion in a circle, shaking the silver bell with closed hands. Her feet scarcely made any figures, as she only walked rapidly round and round, but the upper part of her body swung from side to side, and bent backward and forward. It was like an Indian nautch, weird and uncanny. Basil seemed to think so, for he stopped his measured beating, but the smoke still wreathed itself through the room in serpentine coils, the flute shrilled loud and piercing, and Mara danced as in a dream. All at once she reeled and the bell crashed on the floor. Basil flung down the gong and sprang forward. "She is fainting," he cried angrily, catching Mara in his arms. "Akira, what the devil does this mean? She is ill!" "No! No!" said Mara, as the flute stopped and the scent of the incense grew faint. "I am not ill, I am--I am--what have I been doing?" and she looked vacantly round the room. Akira laid aside his flute and spoke with suppressed excitement. "You have been performing the Miko dance," he said, trying to control himself. "Miko! The dance of the Miko!" cried Mara, stretching out her hand; "I know, I remember. The Dance of the Divineress! At last. At----" "Mara, you are ill!" cried Basil roughly, and catching her by the arm he hurried her, still protesting, out of the room. "What does it mean?" asked Patricia, who had risen. "Don't _you_ know?" asked Akira, looking at Theodore. "No," said Dane, puzzled and a trifle awed. "When Mara smells that scent, she always dances in that queer fashion. But I never saw her keep it up for so long as she has done to-night. Where did you get that incense!" "It is an old Japanese incense," said Akira carelessly; then he turned to Patricia. "I now know why I have been brought here," he said. "I don't understand," stammered the girl nervously. "I shall explain. I did not intend to come to Beckleigh, but I was compelled to come. You, with your sixth sense, should know what I mean, Miss Carrol. I wondered why I was brought to this out-of-the-way place. _Now_ I know. It was to meet a former Miko of the Temple of Kitzuki. Oh, yes, I am sure. I now know why Miss Colpster declared that she remembered my country and loved to hear me talk about it. She is a reincarnation of the dancing priestess who lived ages since in the province of Izumo." "Do you believe that?" asked Patricia scornfully. Akira nodded. "All Japanese believe in reincarnation," he said, in a decisive tone; "it is the foundation of their belief. You believe also?" Theodore, to whom he spoke, nodded. "Yes. And I wish--I wish----" he turned pale. Akira looked at him imperiously. "Wish nothing," he said; "she is not for you; she is not for the West; she is for Dai Nippon." CHAPTER XIV THE JEWEL It was judged best by all concerned to keep the episode of the Miko dance from Mr. Colpster, since he undoubtedly would have been very angry had he known of the strain to which Mara's nervous system had been subjected. Not that the girl suffered any ill-effects, but she was extremely tired, and remained in bed for the greater part of the next day. Patricia attended to her tenderly, but could learn little from her as to why she had acted in so strange a way under the influence of the incense and the music. But she intimated vaguely that the dance had re-awakened her recollections of a previous life, when she was not Mara Colpster, but quite another person. Miss Carrol was quite distressed by what she regarded as an hallucination, and privately consulted Basil the next morning after breakfast. "I am greatly annoyed myself," said Dane, frowning. "Akira should not have acted in the way he did without consulting me." "You would not have given your consent to the experiment," said Patricia. "Certainly not. Mara is too highly strung to be subjected to these things, and might easily lose her reason. It is just as well that we have decided not to tell my uncle. He would be furious, and then there would be trouble with Akira, who has not the best of tempers under his cool exterior. But why do you call it an experiment?" "Can't you see?" "No! I merely think that Akira wished to give us a specimen of Japanese music, and it influenced Mara, as you saw. Perhaps we have been too hard on Akira, and he did not know what she would do." "If he did not intend something to happen, why did he throw that incense on the fire?" asked Patricia meaningly. "I can't say, unless it was to heighten the dramatic effect of his silly nonsense," retorted Basil, whose temper was still hot. "It was to revive Mara's memory." "About what?" "About her past life in Japan." Basil stared at her. "Surely, Miss Carrol, you don't believe in what Akira said last night?" he observed, with some displeasure and stiffly. "Don't you?" Patricia looked at him keenly, and the young sailor grew red. "Well," he said, at length, "there is no doubt that much common-sense is to be found in the belief of reincarnation. I have been so long in the East that I don't scoff at it so much as Western people do. All the same, I do not go so far as to say that I entirely believe in it. But you--you who have never been east of Suez--you can't possibly credit the fact that Mara some hundreds of years ago was a priestess in Japan?" Patricia looked straight out of the window at the azure sea, and the bright line of the distant horizon. "I dislike these weird things," she said, after a pause. "They are uncomfortable to believe, and since I have known your brother Theodore I dislike them more than ever, as he makes bad use of what he knows. I am certain of that." "Does he really know anything?" asked Basil, sceptically. "Yes," said Patricia decidedly. "I really believe he has certain powers, although they are not so much on the surface as mine. Everyone--according to him--has these powers latent, but they require to be developed. I don't want mine to be brought to the surface, as my own idea is to live a quiet and ordinary life." Basil's eyes had a look in them which asked if she wished to live her ordinary life alone. All he said, however, was: "I quite agree with you." Patricia nodded absently, being too much taken up with her own thoughts to observe his expression. "As I therefore have a belief in such things," she continued, "and a belief which has been more or less proved to my mind, by the strange feelings I experienced while holding the Mikado Jewel, I see no reason to doubt the doctrine of reincarnation. That seems to me better than anything else to answer the riddle of life. Mara is certainly, as you must admit, a strange girl." "Very strange indeed," assented Basil readily; "unlike other girls." "She has always--so she told me," went on Patricia steadily, "been trying to remember her dreams, by which, I think, she means her previous lives. She could never grasp them until last night. Then the music and the incense brought back her memories. They opened the doors, in fact, which, to most people--you and I, for instance--are closed." "Then you really believe she lived in Japan centuries ago?" asked Basil, in rather an awed tone. "Yes, I do," replied Miss Carrol firmly; "although I know that many people would laugh if I said so. This morning Mara is staying in bed and will not speak much. But I gather that the past has all returned to her. Remember how she loved to hear Count Akira's stories, and how she followed him about. He noticed that, and so acted as he did last night." "But why did he think of the Miko dance in connection with Mara?" "Theodore confessed to me--oh"--Patricia blushed--"I should not call him by his Christian name." The young man suppressed a pang of jealousy. "I dare say you do so because you hear us all calling one another by our Christian names. I often wonder," he added cautiously, "that you do not call me Basil." Patricia blushed still deeper, and waived the question. "I have to tell you what your brother said," she remarked stiffly. "He related to Count Akira how Mara danced in that weird manner when she smelt certain incense. That gave the Count a hint, and he acted upon it, as you saw." She paused, then turned to face Basil. "What is to be done now?" The sailor had already made up his mind. "In the first place, my uncle must not be told, as he would make trouble. In the second, I shall take Akira to Hendle to-day sightseeing, so that he may not meet Mara. In the third, I shall hint that it would be as well, seeing the effect his presence has on Mara, that he should terminate his visit. Do you approve?" "Yes," said Patricia, nodding. "You are taking the most practical way out of the difficulty. There is one thing I am afraid of, however?" "What is that?" "Mara may fall in love with Count Akira, if, indeed, she is not in love with him already." "What! with that Japanese?" cried Basil furiously, and his racial hatred became pronounced at once. "That would never do. She must not see him again." "He is bound to return here, so she must see him." "Can't you keep her in her room until Akira goes?" Patricia shook her head. "Mara is difficult to manage. However, although she may love the Count, he may not care for her. Let us hope so. All we can do is to act as you suggest. Now I must go and see after the dinner." Basil would have liked to detain her, to talk on more absorbing topics. But the question of Mara and her oddities was so very prominent, that he decided against chatting about more personal matters. With a sigh he watched her disappear, and then went away to seek out Akira and take him out of the house for a few hours. The Japanese, with all his astuteness, did not fathom the reason why he was asked to drive round the country, and willingly assented. He asked a few careless questions about Mara, but did not refer to the scene of the previous night. Basil, on his side, was acute enough to let sleeping dogs lie, so the pair started off about noon for their jaunt in a friendly fashion. They talked of this thing and that, and all round the shop--as the saying is--but neither one referred to the scene of the previous night. Yet a vivid memory of that was uppermost in Basil's mind, and--as he very shrewdly suspected--was present also in the thoughts of Akira. But judging from the man's composure and conversation he had quite forgotten what had taken place. Basil was pleased with this reticence, as it saved him the unpleasantness of explaining himself too forcibly. Meanwhile, Patricia drew a long breath of relief when Basil drove away with the Japanese diplomatist, and she went at once to see if Mara was all right. The girl, feeling drowsy, was disinclined to chatter, but lay back with a smile of ecstasy on her pale face. Her lips were moving, although she did not open her eyes, and Patricia bent to hear if she required anything. But all that Mara was saying amounted to a reiteration that she had recalled the past. Doubtless, since the door was now wide open, she was in fancy dwelling again in her Oriental home. However, she was quite happy, so Miss Carrol, seeing that her presence was not necessary to the girl's comfort, stole on tip-toe out of the room. It was when she came downstairs that she chanced upon Theodore in the entrance hall. The big man looked both startled and surprised, and spoke to her in an excited tone. "Come into my uncle's library at once, Miss Carrol," he said, touching her arm. "It has come." "What has come?" naturally asked Miss Carrol, puzzled by his tone and look. "It came by post," went on Theodore breathlessly, "and was not even registered. There is not a line with it to show who sent it." "I don't know what you are talking about, Mr. Dane." "Uncle wants you to hold it again in your hand and see if you can feel the drawing-power you spoke of. Come! Come quickly!" At last Patricia knew what he meant and her face grew white. "Have you the Mikado Jewel?" she asked, leaning against the wall, faint and sick. For answer Theodore unceremoniously led her into the library, and she saw Mr. Colpster standing near the window, gloating over something which he held in his hand. As he moved to face the girl, a vivid green ray shot through the subdued light of the large room. "Look! Look!" cried the Squire, stuttering in his excitement, and he held up the jade chrysanthemum with the emerald flashing in its centre, as the sunlight caught its many facets. "The Mikado Jewel!" gasped Patricia, and her legs refused to sustain her any longer. She sank into a chair. "How--how did you get it?" "It came by post--by the mid-day post," explained the Squire, repeating what his nephew had said earlier. "Just carelessly wrapped up in brown paper and directed to me. Not even registered, and packed in a small tin box tied round with string. The postmark is London, so it must have been sent through the General Post Office. No district name is stamped on the covering. Oh, wonderful! wonderful! The luck of the Colpsters has returned." "But who sent it?" asked Patricia, looking with ill-concealed repugnance at the sinister gem, which had indirectly brought about the death of Mrs. Pentreddle. "The man who committed the crime?" "No, no!" struck in Theodore impatiently; "that's impossible. The assassin of poor Martha never had it in his possession, although, as we know, he hunted the house to find it. The thief who snatched it from you in the Park, Miss Carrol, must have repented and sent it to its rightful owner." "And I am its rightful owner," said the Squire, drawing up his spare form to its full height. "This gem belonged to my ancestor, and it is only fair that I should possess it." Patricia could not approve of this speech, as she knew from Colpster's own lips that Sir Bevis had given it to Queen Elizabeth in exchange for his knighthood. But she knew, also, that it was useless to argue with the Squire, as he appeared to be obsessed by the Jewel, to which he ascribed such fantastical powers. Nothing, she was convinced, would ever make him give it up, and she was confirmed in this opinion by his next words. "Say nothing to Basil, or Akira, about the arrival of the emerald," he said hurriedly to his companions. "I don't trust that Japanese. He thinks that the Jewel belongs to the Temple of Kitzuki." "So it does," remarked Patricia quickly. Colpster snarled, and his face became quite ugly and animal in its anger, when he turned on her sharply. "It belongs to me! to me! to me!" he cried vehemently, and pressed the Jewel close to his breast. "I shall never give it up; never, never, never. Tell Akira at your peril." "I don't intend to say a word to the Count," said Patricia, retreating a step before his malignant expression. "It is none of my business. But if you are wise you will throw it away." "Why? Why? Why?" chattered Colpster, still angry at her opposition, and perhaps pricked in his conscience by her words. "I think it will bring evil upon you. You shouldn't let it come into the house," she panted, and felt that what she said was true. Theodore started and grew pale. Granny Lee had used almost the same words when he had asked her about the possible danger. The old woman had refused to say what the danger was, or perhaps--as she stated--she could not put a name to it. But after hearing Patricia's remark, Theodore felt that perhaps the Mikado Jewel had been referred to as "It." Granny Lee had said plainly: "Don't let It come into the house!" And now this girl, who also possessed certain powers, declared that it should not be allowed to remain under the roof lest it should bring evil in its train. "You are talking rubbish," said Theodore roughly, and trying to conceal his dismay. "How can that jewel hurt anyone?" "I don't know; I can't say; but it should not be allowed to remain here." Squire Colpster laughed and laid the lovely thing down on his desk, where it flashed gloriously in a ray of sunshine. "It shall remain here always and bring good fortune to the family," he said vaingloriously. Patricia, impelled by some outside power, rose and went up to lay a warning hand on the old man's arm. "There is something wrong," she urged. "Consider, Mr. Colpster! How could the thief have sent the jewel to you unless he knew more about the matter than we think? If an ordinary tramp stole it, he would have pawned it; if a priest of the temple took it, he would have carried it, as Mr. Theodore suggested, back to Japan. Why is it sent to you?" "I don't know. That is what puzzles me," said Colpster, and his mouth grew more obstinate than ever. "But I'm going to keep it, anyhow." "What do you say?" Miss Carrol turned to Theodore. The big man winced and grew a shade whiter, for the warning of Granny Lee still haunted his mind. But the sight of the Jewel, and the knowledge that he might one day possess it, awoke all his covetous nature, and he could not make up his mind to suggest that it should be sent away. And, after all, the "It" to which Brenda Lee referred might not be this gem. "I say keep it," he remarked, drawing a deep breath. "The luck of the family is bound up in it, I am certain." "The bad luck of the family," said Patricia bitterly. "Oh, you have been listening to Akira," said the Squire crossly. "He declared that probably the power had been changed. How he could know when he never set eyes on the jewel I can't imagine. I admit that it is very strange that it should have been sent to me, and I can't conceive how the thief either obtained my address, or how he knew that I wanted his plunder." "He might read in the papers----" began Theodore, only to be stopped by his uncle, who looked at him sharply. "You talk rubbish, my boy. I said nothing at the inquest about my interest in the jewel, and no one outside our own family knew that I desired it. "I shouldn't wonder if Akira knew," said Theodore quickly. "Impossible. You have heard all he had to tell. All the same, it will be as well to say nothing about our recovery of the gem while he is in the house. I have your promise, Miss Carrol?" "Yes. I shall say nothing." "And you, Theodore? Good. Don't even tell Mara or Basil, else they may let out something to that infernal Japanese. I shall lock the jewel in my safe yonder," and he pointed to a green-painted safe, standing in an alcove of the room. "Now we shall see the luck returning! I shall win that lawsuit; I shall sell that ruined hay to advantage; I shall----" Patricia stopped him. "I believe everything will go wrong with you." "How dare you say that, girl!" exclaimed Colpster furiously. "Because I feel that I must. That jewel has been sent to you for no good purpose, I am convinced." "Your sixth sense again, I suppose," scoffed the Squire angrily. "Perhaps," said Patricia simply. Privately she believed that the Jewel was already beginning to do harm, since the old man behaved so rudely. As a rule he had always treated her with politeness, but now he revealed a side to his character which she had not seen. His eyes shone with greed, and he showed all the instincts of a miser. Looking at her and then glancing at his nephew, he continued to speak to her. "Hold this in your hand and see if you still feel the drawing-power you spoke of." In silence Patricia took the cold jade blossom, and it lay outstretched on her pink palm. She did not speak, but a bewildered expression gradually took possession of her face. The two men, who were watching her closely, both spoke together, moved by a single impulse. "What do you feel?" Patricia did not reply directly. "This is not the Mikado Jewel," she said in breathless tones. "I am sure it is not." The Squire became pale and Theodore looked amazed. "What makes you think that?" demanded the latter, who was first able to command his voice. "The drawing-power is reversed in this jewel," said Patricia. "Yes! oh, yes! I feel it quite plainly. Instead of the power radiating and keeping away evil, it is drawing danger towards itself." "Danger?" gasped the Squire, and his nephew, mindful of Granny Lee's warning, winced visibly. "Danger and darkness. Wave after wave of fear is coming towards me, while I hold the stone, and the darkness is swallowing me up. Oh!" Patricia shivered and deliberately dropped the jewel on the floor. "Take it away! I don't like it at all." Colpster picked up the gem. "Are you sure?" "I wouldn't have let the emerald fall otherwise," said Patricia, who was now trembling as if with cold. "When I last held it waves of light went out, and I felt absolutely safe. Now tides of darkness press in on me on every side, and there is a sense of danger everywhere." "What sort of danger?" asked Theodore nervously. "I can't say; I can't put my feelings into words. It looks like the Mikado Jewel, but it can't be, when it feels so different." "I am certain that it is the Mikado Jewel!" cried Colpster angrily. "Whether it is or not I can't say," retorted Patricia, backing towards the library door, "but it is dangerous. Get rid of it, or suffer." And she went quickly out of the room, leaving the two men staring at one another. CHAPTER XV PENTREDDLE'S STORY Squire Colpster locked the recovered emerald in his safe and again repeated his orders that Theodore was to say nothing about it. Notwithstanding Patricia's doubts--founded upon the different sensations felt by her when holding the stone--the master of Beckleigh Hall really believed that he possessed the Mikado Jewel. But he could not comprehend why it had been forwarded to him, or how the thief had obtained his address, or why the thief should think that he wanted it. Had the Squire been less obsessed by the ornament, he might have taken Patricia's advice with regard to getting rid of it. And in this, perhaps, he would have been supported by Theodore, who was feeling uncomfortable, since Granny Lee's statement was always in his mind. But, as it was, he said nothing to urge his uncle to take such an extreme course, and the Squire certainly never suggested that the gem should be sent away. So there it lay in the safe, with its influence, either for good or bad, ready to become apparent. Patricia, on her side, put the matter of the emerald out of her mind, as she did not like to think about occult matters, and, moreover, had to attend to her duties as housekeeper. A visit to Mara's room in the afternoon showed that the girl was up and dressed, and apparently quite her old indifferent self. She said nothing about the Miko dance in which she had figured, so Patricia did not remind her of it in any way. Once or twice she asked where Akira was, but on learning that he had gone sightseeing with Basil, she appeared to be satisfied. The two gentlemen returned in time for dinner, tired and rather damp from the moisture of mists they had encountered on the moors. Akira expressed himself as pleased with the English country, although he shivered when he mentioned the absence of the sun. Yet, as Basil reminded him, Japan did not possess a particularly tropical climate. The conversation took place when the soup arrived, and, as usual, when any mention was made of the East, Mara grew a delicate rose-pink, and fixed her eyes eagerly on the diplomatist. Akira gave her an indifferent glance and answered the sailor's speech. "In the north of Japan we have very cold weather, but it is sufficiently warm in the south. But in any case, there is nothing depressing in my country, such as a foreigner finds in England." "It is the English climate, to a great extent, which has made us what we are, Count," observed Colpster seriously. "I can say the same of Japan. Hardy climates make hardy men, sir. Do not think that I don't admire your country, for I do; but oh, these swathing mists and damp fields!" He shivered smilingly. "At least, we have no earthquakes," put in Patricia with a nod. "Ah, there you have the advantage of us," answered Akira, wiping his mouth; "but in some places we can keep earthquakes away." "What do you mean?" asked Theodore, scenting something occult. "Yes." Akira guessed what he vaguely felt. "There are laws which control earth waves." "Scientific laws?" said Basil quickly. "You might not call them so," said Akira quietly; "but in the East, you know, we are aware of natural laws which the West has not yet learned." "Well, then, tell us how to control earthquakes," said the Squire, with a sceptical look on his face. "Curious you should ask me that, sir. You should ask Miss Carrol." "Ask me?" Patricia looked amazed. "You held the Mikado Jewel in your hand," said Akira coolly. Theodore, Colpster and Patricia exchanged looks, and wondered if the Japanese was aware that the gem reposed in the library safe. It was impossible, of course, since he had been absent all day with Basil. Yet it was strange that he should refer to an object which was uppermost in their minds. "I don't understand," said Patricia doubtfully. "I can explain, Miss Carrol. Had you examined the emerald you would have seen the sign of the Earth-Spirit graven thereon. That sign shows that a power to control earth-forces lies in the stone." "Oh, I can't believe that, Count." "Yet you felt--so you told me--the radiating rays, which keep back all earth tremors--steady them, as it were." Colpster looked up suddenly. "I thought you knew nothing about the Mikado Jewel, Count," he said sarcastically. "I know very little, and told you what I did know," replied Akira quietly; "but this conversation about climates revived a memory of what one of the Kitzuki priests told me. The emerald has had certain ceremonies said over it, and has been set on the radiating petals of a jade chrysanthemum. Thus it possesses a repelling power, and was kept in the temple to repel earthquakes from shaking the ground upon which the temple stands." Theodore stole a glance at Patricia, who looked sceptical. "If," he suggested in a low voice, "if the power, instead of radiating, was drawn to the emerald you speak of, Count, what would happen?" Patricia was not quite sure, but she fancied that she saw a subtle smile on the bronzed face of her neighbour. But it might have been her fancy or the tricky light of the candles glimmering through their rosy-coloured shades. However, he replied courteously enough: "In that case, Mr. Dane--according to occult law, about which I confess I know little--the earthquake danger, instead of being repelled, would be drawn to the place where the jewel lay." "Oh, we never have earthquakes here," said Mara, with a gay laugh. "If the Mikado Jewel were here, and the power was reversed, as is suggested by Mr. Dane, you would soon feel an earthquake, or else this mighty cliff at the back of the house would fall and overwhelm the place." Theodore shivered. Granny Lee had mentioned that she had seen him crushed as flat as a pancake, and he wondered if what Akira so idly said could really be true. It seemed so, for should the jewel have the in-drawing power--and that it assuredly had, if Patricia was to be believed--there was a great chance that Mrs. Lee's prophecy might be fulfilled. For was not the fatal gem in the house at this moment? Yes, Theodore shivered again, as he became more certain of belief. The Mikado Jewel was the "It" which the sibyl had warned him should never be allowed to enter Beckleigh Hall. "Oh, it's all rubbish," said the Squire, who, not knowing anything about the occult, refused to believe what Patricia had told him, and what Akira had so strangely affirmed. "And even if such is the case--which I don't believe--the jewel is not here." Akira laughed and nodded. "Now you can understand why I warned you not to seek for your family emerald again," he said. "I'm afraid I'll never see it," said Colpster, lying with great ease. "From what Theodore thinks, it must be now on its way back to Japan." "Let us hope so," said Akira politely. "As a native of that country, and because my religion is Shinto, I regret very much that the gem should have been stolen. In the hands of ignorant persons it may well bring about deaths. You understand," he looked at Patricia. "Not at all," she confessed, and really in her heart she scouted the idea that the emerald should be endowed with such malignant powers. "Please do not talk any more about these horrid things. I hate them!" "So do I," said Basil, who was growing restless at the way in which his brother eyed Patricia. "Let us change the subject," which was accordingly done. After dinner the Squire went into the drawing-room with his family, but scarcely had he seated himself, to digest his meal, when the butler entered with the whispered information that a man wished to see him particularly. "Who is it, Sims?" asked the old man, impatiently. "Harry Pentreddle, sir," said Sims, who was an old retainer, and knew as much about members of the family as they did themselves. Colpster bounded to his feet, and Theodore, who was standing before the fire, came hastily forward. Basil and Patricia also looked startled, as they knew the suggested connection between Pentreddle and the giving of the jewel. Only Akira and Mara, who were talking quietly in a corner, appeared unmoved, and continued their conversation. "I'll go at once," said the Squire, eagerly advancing towards the door. "Let me come too, uncle," asked Theodore, following. "No; I shall hear his story--if he has any to tell--myself, and then can repeat it to you. Stay where you are, Basil, and you, Patricia. I shall see Harry alone." And he went out hastily, while those left behind, with the exception of the Japanese and Mara, looked greatly disappointed. Mr. Colpster walked quickly into the library, and found seated there before the fire a thick-set young man, blue-eyed and fair-haired, with the unmistakable look of a seaman. He rose as the Squire entered the room, and twisting his cap in his strong brown hands, looked bashful. In fact, he was a trifle nervous of his reception, and had every reason to be, for Mr. Colpster, who had known him from babyhood, fell on him tooth and nail. "So here you are at last, Harry," he said, with a frown. "You have given me a lot of trouble to hunt you out. What do you mean? Just tell me that. I didn't expect this behaviour from you, Harry. Your mother, my old servant, has been murdered in a most abominable manner, and instead of coming to assist me in hunting down the scoundrel who did it, you go away and hide. Are you not ashamed of yourself?" Colpster thundered out the words largely, but they did not seem to produce much effect on the young man. Harry Pentreddle stood where he was, still twisting his cap, and stared at the Squire with steady blue eyes. This composure seemed to be not quite natural, nor did the silence. "Can you not sit down and speak?" demanded Colpster, throwing himself into his usual arm-chair and getting ready to ask questions. Harry sat down quietly, and still continued to stare steadily. "I am not ashamed of myself, sir, because I can explain my conduct fully." "Then do so," snapped the Squire. "Your mother and father were both my servants, and you were born at Beckleigh. As your parents are dead, I have a right to look after you." "Do you think that I need looking after, sir?" asked Pentreddle, with a faint smile and a glance at his stalwart figure in the near mirror. "You know what I mean, Harry. I wish to see you married to Isa and commanding a ship of your own. I intend to help you to get one." "It is very good of you, sir." "Not at all. You were born on the estate. And now that your future is settled, suppose you tell me why you didn't come back before?" "If I tell you, sir, will you promise to keep what I say secret?" "Yes--that is, in a way. I may tell my nephew Theodore, perhaps my other nephew--I can't say." "I don't mind anyone in Beckleigh knowing," said Harry hastily, "but I do not wish the whole world to know." "I am not acquainted with the whole world," said Colpster dryly, "so there is no chance of what you say being told to the entire inhabitants of this planet. Are you satisfied?" "Quite. Well, then, sir, I went to Amsterdam to wait for a ship which I know is going to Japan. She is coming from Callao and is late." "How do you mean late?" "She is a tramp steamer, and I know her captain. She comes to Amsterdam to discharge a cargo, and then proceeds to Japan. I can get an engagement as second mate when she arrives. She is expected every day. I heard from Isa that you wished to see me, and so I came over. But I shall go back in two days, as I can't afford to lose the chance of getting to the Far East." "Why do you want to go there?" Harry looked down. "I can't exactly say," he observed in a low voice. The Squire looked at him keenly, then leaned forward. "Do you go to Japan to punish the priest who murdered your mother." The young man dropped his cap and half rose from his chair, only to fall into it again. He seemed utterly taken by surprise. "What priest?" he faltered. "You heard me," said Colpster impatiently. "The one who murdered your mother--a priest of the Temple of Kitzuki." "How did you know, sir?" Pentreddle stared open-mouthed. "By putting two and two together. Martha--your mother, that is--sent Miss Carrol to get the emerald, and she could only have got it from you, who had--as you told Theodore--just returned from Japan. By the way, do you know all about the death?" "Yes," said Pentreddle, stooping to pick up his cap and thus hide his emotion, for his lips were trembling. "I read everything in the papers, and I did not come over because I wished to return to Japan and to kill the priest who, I believe, is the assassin." "Are you sure that a priest of Kitzuki killed her?" "Yes, I feel sure." "And to obtain possession of the emerald?" "Yes. I am certain that was the motive for the crime." "You stole the emerald?" "Yes," said Pentreddle boldly. "I did." He laughed softly. "It is very clever of you to guess, unless my poor mother told you." "She told me nothing," snapped the Squire, with a glare. "All she did was to ask me for a London holiday. She got it and went to her death. It was Miss Carrol--you must have read about her in the papers--who suggested that possibly you might have passed her the emerald." "I did, although at the time in the fog and darkness I believed it was my mother. Only when reading about her death did I know that she had been kept at home with a sprained ankle. She----" "Wait a bit," said Colpster, throwing up his hand; "you are confusing me. I want to hear all from the beginning." He paused, and seeing that Pentreddle looked nervous and was beginning to twist his cap again, swiftly made up his mind to a course of action to suggest confidence. "Wait a bit," said Colpster again, and went to the safe. When he returned to the table he placed the Mikado Jewel under the lamp. Harry rose and bent over it quite speechless with astonishment. "I thought it was snatched from Miss Carrol in the Park," he gasped. "So it was. But someone--the thief, I presume--sent it to me. It arrived here without details. You are sure that it is the Jewel?" he asked quickly. "Yes, it's the Jewel right enough," answered Pentreddle, returning to his seat. "But how did the thief know you wanted it?" "I can't say, and I am not even aware if the thief sent it. All I know is that there lies the Luck of the Colpsters, and that I have shown it to you, so that you may see I repose confidence in you. And in return, Harry," the Squire leaned forward and touched the young man's knee, "I wish to hear all about the theft of the emerald from the Kitzuki Temple." Pentreddle thought for a few moments, while he looked at the winking green ornament under the lamplight. Then he glanced at his watch and nodded. "I must get away soon," he said briskly. "I am staying at Hendle and a friend of mine is waiting on the Moor Road with a trap. It won't take me long to tell you everything, sir." Colpster leaned back and placed the tips of his fingers together. "I am ready to hear you," he said quietly and bending his head. Harry began his story in a hurry. "My mother, as you know, sir, nursed your nephews. Mr. Basil was always her favourite, but she never could abide Mr. Theodore. She learned from you, sir, that you intended to leave the estates to the nephew who got back the emerald, which is the family luck." "Yes. Such was my intention. Well?" "My mother," went on the sailor, twirling his cap, "was determined that Mr. Theodore would never inherit, so, as she knew that I was going to Japan, she asked me to steal the emerald." "You had no right to steal it. I would have forbidden Martha suggesting such a thing," said the Squire angrily. Pentreddle nodded. "I know. For that reason my mother kept the affair a secret. I readily agreed to do what she wanted, as Mr. Basil has always been kind to me, whereas Mr. Theodore----" he halted. "Oh, go on," said Colpster, with a cynical smile. "I know that Mr. Theodore is not a favourite with anyone." "How can he be, sir, when he behaves so badly? He insulted me and--but that is neither here nor there, sir, and I have no time to talk of that matter. I told my mother that I would get the emerald somehow, and when I landed at Nagasaki, I set about looking for it." "But in what way?" "Well, you see, sir, my mother learned from you all about the giving of the emerald to that Shogun chap, and then she told me how Miss Mara, in some funny way, knew that it was at the Temple of Kitzuki. I went there on the chance, and a man who kept a tea-shop told me all about the jewel. He said that it had been given to the temple by a Mikado. I thought it was a Shogun." "The Shogun, who got it from Will Adams, gave it to the Mikado, and he presented it to the temple," explained Colpster. "Go on." "Oh, that's it, is it, sir? Well, then," he went on, twirling his cap, "I got a sight of the Jewel in the temple and stole it." "But how, when it was so carefully guarded?" "I don't think it was guarded over-much," said Pentreddle thoughtfully. "You see, sir, the tea-shop man told me that the emerald was under the spell of the Earth Spirit--he called him some queer name I can't remember--to keep away earthquakes. No Japanese would dare to touch the jewel, and it lay--as I saw--on a small altar near the shrine. I managed to stop inside the temple after dark, and stole it." "How did you get away?" said the Squire, wondering at this daring. "I'll tell you that another day, sir, as it is getting late. I did manage to get away and stow the Jewel on board my ship; but I was followed." "Followed? By whom?" "Japanese. I suppose they were priests. I was nearly knifed at Nagasaki and once I was drugged. But I had hidden the emerald away, and they could not find it. When I got to the Port of London I thought that I was safe; but I soon found that I was dogged there also." "By whom?" asked Colpster once more. "Japanese," said Pentreddle again. "Wherever I went I met Japanese. They swarmed all round me. I had written to my mother saying that I would give her the emerald if she came to London. She did, and wrote asking me to go to The Home of Art. But I knew better than to do that, sir. I felt certain that if I gave the jewel to my mother she would run a chance of being killed. There was one big chap with a scar across his cheek. I believe he killed my poor mother." "What makes you think that, Harry?" asked Colpster eagerly. "Because I was loafing round The Home of Art one evening trying to catch a glimpse of my mother, when I saw the beast watching me and the house." "Was the man with the scar a priest?" "He just was," said the sailor vigorously; "a Shinto priest. I saw him in the temple at Kitzuki. Then I was certain that I was being followed by the priests, and wrote and told my mother that I could only give her the emerald secretly. She replied, saying that the whole household at The Home of Art had an appointment to see some play----" "I know all that," said the Squire impatiently. "Skip that." "Well, then, sir, my mother said, that being alone she could leave the house at night without suspicion being aroused. She told me to meet her at nine o'clock at the right-hand corner of the Bayswater side of the Serpentine Bridge, and to look for a red light. But, of course, as I learned later, she was kept in by her sprained foot, and sent Miss Carrol." "Why did you not speak to Miss Carrol?" "I hadn't a chance," said Harry simply. "I guessed that I was being followed." "By the priest with the scar?" "No. By a smaller and slighter-built chap. He dodged at my heels in the fog, so I had just time to shove the box into Miss Carrol's hand--into my mother's hands, as I thought--and then run off in the hope the little beast would follow me." "He did, didn't he?" "For a time. Then I fancy his suspicions must have been aroused by the red light, and by my stopping for a moment. I lost him, or he lost me in the fog, and then, instead of returning to my lodgings in Pimlico, I made for Limehouse Docks. I heard next morning of the death." "Why didn't you then come to The Home of Art?" "What was the good, sir," remonstrated Pentreddle. "I should only have been knifed by those Japanese, and there would have been two murders instead of one. No, sir; I wasn't such a fool, as my going to The Home of Art wouldn't have brought my mother back to life. I bunked over to Amsterdam and lay low. Then I read in the papers how Miss Carrol had been robbed of the gem." Colpster nodded. "You should have returned then." "It was of no use, sir," said the sailor gloomily. "I knew that the emerald must have got back into the hands of the priests, and that they would return to Kitzuki, in Japan. I was certain, and I am now, that the big man with the scar on his cheek stabbed my mother, so I waited for the ship I told you about to go back to Japan and kill him. Then Isa wrote me and said if you saw me you could help me. But," Pentreddle looked at the emerald, "it seems to me that things are more muddled up than ever. Here is the Mikado Jewel, but where are the priests?" Colpster pinched his nether lip and looked perplexed. "I can't say. By the way, Theodore met you in London?" "Yes, sir. By chance in Pimlico." "Why didn't you give him the emerald?" "Why?" Harry looked astonished. "Because it was to prevent Mr. Theodore becoming your heir that my mother took all this trouble, and so met with her death." He rose to his feet. "I'll go now, sir." The Squire rose also, "Yes, unless you prefer to stay here for the night." "No, sir. I want to get back to Hendle. I'll come and see you again if you want to hear more." "I think it will be as well. I should like you to repeat this story in the presence of my nephews. Meanwhile, good-night," and the Squire, having shaken hands with the sailor, sent him away. He wished to be alone to think over things, and while doing so he put away the Mikado Jewel in the safe. Ten minutes later he returned to the drawing-room. "Where is Count Akira?" "Akira was tired and went early to bed," said Basil. "I'm off too, uncle." CHAPTER XVI LOVERS Next morning, it occurred to the Squire that he had dismissed Pentreddle too abruptly, or, rather--since the man wished to go--had given him leave too easily. A thousand and one questions came into his mind, which he desired to ask, and which he should have put to the sailor during their hurried interview. But a recollection that Harry was stopping at Hendle, and was holding himself at the disposal of his feudal chief--modern style--reconciled him to the oversight, and he decided that the second examination would be a longer one. "I shall drive over to Hendle to-day and cross-examine him," thought the Squire; and completing his toilette he descended to breakfast with an excellent appetite. At the meal he heard news, for Akira stated that he would have to return that day to London, as his Chief wanted him. "But I am coming down again in a few days," said the Japanese, stealing a glance at Mara, who sat opposite to him, rosy-faced and interested, "in my yacht." "I didn't know you had a yacht, Akira," said Basil, with the keen interest of a sailor in his craft. "Oh, yes," replied the Count, composedly; "a very good yacht, my friend. I have much money, you know, and have taken to your English ways so far as to buy a steam yacht. Later, I propose returning to my own country in her." Colpster was frankly relieved that Akira intended to leave. He did not for one moment connect him with those who were hunting, or who had been hunting for the Mikado Jewel; but while that curious object was in the house he preferred the Count's absence to his presence. There was no doubt that if the little man did learn how the gem had returned to its original possessors, that he would clamour for its restoration to Kitzuki. And that was not to be thought of for one moment. The Squire had not yet solved the problem as to why the jewel had been sent to him, or how the sender had known that its presence was desired at Beckleigh Hall by its master. He would have liked to question Akira, for if a priest, according to Pentreddle, had snatched the emerald from Patricia, Akira, as a Japanese, would best be able to explain that same priest's reasons for sending it to Devonshire. But it was obviously impossible to ask such a question, so Colpster contented himself with expressing regret that the Count had been compelled to cut short his stay at the Hall. "I trust when you return in your yacht you will at least complete your interrupted visit by sleeping under my roof," said Colpster. "Thank you, no, sir," replied the Japanese politely. "I shall remain on my boat for the few days I stay here. And I hope," he added, with a comprehensive bow to all present, "that you will allow me to return your great hospitality, Mr. Colpster, by giving an entertainment on board." "An entertainment!" cried Mara, and her eyes sparkled. "Yes! A Japanese entertainment, with Japanese food and drinks and amusements, Miss Colpster. It will be a change for you, and no doubt will give you a great deal of pleasure." "It will give us all pleasure," said Patricia, smiling, for the black eyes of the little man were fixed on her face. "Then I ask you all to my entertainment. Even your servants must come, Mr. Colpster. They never see anything unusual down here, so it will amuse them to see how we Japanese live. I presume," added Akira, with an attempt at humour, "that you can allow this house to be empty for one night?" "Oh, yes," said Theodore, laughing; "there are no robbers about here." "In that case, I hope my invitation will be accepted." "Certainly, Count, and thank you for the invitation," observed the Squire in a hearty manner. "On behalf of myself, my family and my household, I accept." Akira bowed. "That is good, sir, for, as I depart for my own country, after I leave this place in my yacht, I will not see you again for many a long year. I have to remain at Tokio for official business. But I have had a delightful stay here"--he looked round pleasantly--"and you will see, all of you, how I can return your kindness." "But won't you be tired travelling to London to-day?" said Theodore, quickly. The Count's piercing eyes seemed to look the questioner through and through as if inquiring why he asked this particular question. "I retired early last night, as you know, Mr. Dane," he said quietly, "and so I am not at all weary. Dane," he turned sideways to Basil, "you will drive me to Hendle?" "You must allow me to do that, Count," put in the Squire. "I have to go to Hendle on business to-day." "Thank you, sir. You show true hospitality." Basil felt uneasy as he did not know if the guest spoke ironically or not, and resolved to test the matter. "I can come also, Akira." "Ah, but no, it is not necessary." Akira held up a protesting hand. "I shall enjoy the drive with your uncle. Stay here, and we shall meet again on board the _Miko_." Mara started. "The _Miko!_" she cried eagerly, and with shining eyes. "The name of my yacht, Miss Colpster. I named her after the Divine Dancer." The girl looked as though she wished to ask further questions, but a significant glance of Patricia's directed towards the Squire, who knew nothing about the Miko Dance, made Mara more prudent. She rose abruptly from the table, and shortly the rest followed her example. Akira went to see that his servant was packing his things properly, and Basil accompanied him. As for Theodore, he followed his uncle into the library and closed the door. "What did Pentreddle say to you last night?" he asked anxiously. "It's a long story," said Colpster, sitting down to look over his correspondence; "he will tell it to you himself. I am driving over to Hendle, and will bring him back with me. Akira I can drop at the station to catch the afternoon express." "I should like to come also, uncle, as I am so anxious to hear Harry's story." "There is no room in the brougham for you," said Colpster, coldly, and showed very plainly by this unnecessary lie that he did not wish for his nephew's company. Theodore frowned. He knew that he was no favourite. "At least, uncle, give me a short account of what you heard." The Squire at first refused, but Theodore was so persistent that in the end he was obliged to yield, and hastily ran through the story. "What do you think?" he asked, when he ended. "I expect Harry is right, and that the priest with the scar murdered his mother. No doubt the man learned why Harry was hanging round the Home of Art and laid his plans accordingly." "But Martha did not possess the emerald!" insisted the Squire, doubtfully. "The priest did not know that at the time," said Dane, grimly; "his accomplice watched Harry, apparently, while the man with the scar watched the Crook Street house. He must have induced Martha to let him in--she might have thought it was her son, you know. Then, when she grew frightened, and threatened him with her stiletto, he used it against her, and having murdered the poor old thing, finally searched the house." Colpster nodded. He could see no other solution of the mystery. "Curious, though, that the priest did not get caught by the police." "Oh, according to the evidence the fog was very bad, and one policeman confessed in print that he did not patrol the _cul de sac_ carefully. Pity he did not catch the brute." "Oh!" said Colpster, with a grim look, "Harry will see that the man is punished. He is going from Amsterdam in a tramp steamer to Japan for that very purpose." "I can't understand," said Theodore, after a pause, and tapping the desk with his long fingers, "why Harry didn't give me the emerald when he met me. It would have saved all this trouble." The Squire coughed in rather an embarrassed manner. He could scarcely tell Theodore that Harry, acting under his mother's instructions, wished particularly to prevent him from gaining possession of the jewel. He therefore shrugged his shoulders and evaded the question. "There are many things we cannot understand in connection with this case." "Quite so," said Theodore, with an uneasy look at the safe; "particularly why the Mikado Jewel should have been sent to you. Uncle," he added, after a pause, "get rid of it. Sell it; pawn it; return it to Akira to take back to Japan, but send it out of the house, I beg of you." "Why?" demanded Colpster, drawing his brows together; "are you mad?" Theodore wiped the perspiration from his high, white forehead. "On the contrary, I am particularly sane. You heard what Akira said about the reverse power possibly bringing the cliff down on the house." "Oh, rubbish," said the Squire, roughly; "Akira doesn't know that the gem is in this house." "All the more reason for believing that he spoke truly," said Dane, with a desperate look. "I am sure the thing is evil. There is now an in-drawing power, as you know. Miss Carrol felt it." "I don't believe in all this rubbish. Patricia is a fanciful girl," said Colpster coldly. "The emerald is in my possession, and I intend to keep it. If you dare to tell Akira about it, Theodore, I shall send you out of the house and will never recognize you again as my nephew." "I am not so sure but what I would prefer to be out of the house, while that damned thing is in it," said Theodore between his teeth. "You are playing with fire, uncle. See that you don't get burnt," and with this warning he departed, leaving the old man looking after his back contemptuously. He was a very material man was the Squire, and considered that his nephew was an ass for believing in things which could not be proved by arithmetic. Theodore was not happy in his mind when Akira and Colpster departed, for there were many matters which worried him. Basil, as usual, was following Patricia about the house, and that was one grievance. Now that Mara would not marry him he would certainly lose the chance of inheriting, through her, the desirable acres of Beckleigh, and that was another grievance. Finally, the presence of the charmed Mikado Jewel in the house troubled him very much indeed. He felt certain that Granny Lee's prophecy concerned it, since Akira had spoken of the occult powers of the stone. And Patricia had felt the reversion of the power, so Theodore uneasily considered that it was just possible that the cliff might be shaken down in ruins on the house. He went out and looked at its mighty height, almost expecting to see signs of crumbling. But, of course, there were none. The red cliff stood up boldly and gigantically, as it had stood for centuries past. The sight of its massive grandeur rather reassured Theodore. "It's all rubbish," he muttered to himself, coming in out of the rain, for all the morning there had been a downpour. "I daresay I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill. All the same"--his eyes fell on the safe in the library. In it he knew was the jewel safely locked away. To shift the Mikado emerald he would need to shift the safe, and that was impossible. "Oh, it is all rubbish!" he declared again, and then went to his own rooms. On the way he passed the library, and saw Mara lying on the cushions of the sofa stringing beads: onyx, turquoise, malachite, pink coral and slivers of amethyst. They gleamed like a rainbow as they slid through her deft hands. Theodore wondered where she got them and entered to inquire. "Count Akira gave them to me," said Mara, gaily, and tried the effect of the glittering chain against her pale golden hair; "aren't they lovely?" "Yes, but your father won't like you taking presents from that infernal Japanese, Mara," said Theodore, crossly. His nerves were so upset that he felt it would relieve him to vent his temper on someone. Mara sprang to her feet like a small fury, and her face grew darkly red, as her pale eyes blazed with anger. "You have no right to speak in that way of Count Akira. I love him; I don't care who hears me. I love him!" She sat down again suddenly. "I wish he would take me to Japan," she ended viciously. "Mara!" Theodore was horrified; "a Japanese?" "Well. I was one ages ago," she retorted. "I don't believe it." "Yes, you do. You know too much about these occult things to disbelieve." Theodore, as a matter of fact, did believe, but he did not intend to confess as much. "You can't be sure," he snapped, furiously. "I can be sure, and I am sure," said Mara, mutinously; "since I danced the Round of the Divineress and heard the music, it all has come back to me. I remember the Temple of Kitzuki quite well, and the ceremonies. Oh, I wish I could go back there. It is my native land." Theodore looked at her stealthily, and his eyes glittered as an idea struck him hard. "Would you go if Akira took you?" "Yes." Mara wet her lips and stared at him. "Perhaps he will take me," she said softly; "he is coming back in his yacht, you know." "If you went, your father would disown you." "I don't care." "You would lose Beckleigh." "I don't care." "You would be cut off from your own race." "I don't care." "You are a fool," shouted Theodore, savagely. "I'll tell your father." Mara wreathed her many-hued beads artistically round her neck and admired herself in the mirror over the fireplace. But she also had a glimpse of her cousin's face, and spoke from what she read written thereon. "No, you won't, Theodore," she observed, coolly, and meaningly; "you would be glad to see me run off with Count Akira and give up everything." "Why should I be glad?" demanded Dane, taken aback by this shrewd reading of his most secret thoughts. "Because, as you say, my father would have nothing to do with me, and you would inherit Beckleigh. I am safe in your hands." "There is no chance for me," said Theodore tartly. "Failing you, Basil would inherit." "I don't think so if he marries Patricia." "Uncle George likes Patricia." "I know that: so do we all. But I don't think he would like Basil to marry her. In fact," Mara faced him, "I believe that father would like to make Patricia my step-mother." "What!" Theodore was now really astonished. "It's absurd!" "I don't see that. Father is still a young man for his years, and----" "Oh, rubbish; nonsense!" Theodore broke furiously into her speech, and fairly ran out of the room to think over the problem thus presented to him. He believed that what his cousin said was perfectly true, as Mara was an observant young person in spite of her dreamy ways. Then he remembered how Colpster always professed to admire Patricia, and did so loudly. He was always asking her if she liked the place and what he could do for her, and telling her that he hoped she would stay there for the rest of her life. Theodore drew a long breath. "I see what the old man is up to," he considered. "As Mara won't marry either Basil or myself, he intends to marry Patricia in the hope of having an heir to the estate. That would be an end to everything. Not that I believe the girl would have him." And yet of this Theodore could not be sure, as he judged Miss Carrol by his own greedy self. Could any girl, penniless, as he knew Patricia to be, resist the offer of so beautiful a home? Dane thought not, and set his wits to work to bar any possible chance of this very unexpected thing coming to pass. To do so, he had only to throw Patricia into Basil's arms and he believed that he knew how to do that. "I'll ask her to marry me," thought Theodore with an evil smile; "and then Basil will be so furious that he'll ask her. She hates me and loves him, so in the end they will become engaged. Then Uncle George will kick them both out of the house. Mara evidently intends to elope with Akira when he returns in his yacht. The little beast said that the boat after leaving here was going straight to Japan. That will settle her. Ha! I shall be the only person left to console Uncle George, so he must as a reasonable man leave me the property. I can see it all." Thus arranging his plans, he went away to find Patricia, and force her into Basil's arms. He was sorry to lose the girl because of her psychic powers, but as she plainly hated him--he saw that easily--there was not any chance for him. Since he could not make use of her in one way, he therefore decided to make use of her in another. Through her, Basil could be got rid of, and then Mara would ruin herself by eloping with Akira. Dane rubbed his hands with delight, at the prospect thus opened out before him. He even forgot his uneasiness over the Mikado Jewel, and ceased for the moment to remember the sinister prophecy of Mrs. Brenda Lee. Of course, it was necessary to act a comedy so as to accomplish his aims, and he suspected that he would suffer pain during his acting. If he insulted Patricia, which he intended to do, Basil would assuredly knock him down. But if the sailor did that he would be obliged to declare his love for Patricia, if only to prove his rights to be her champion. And what did a little pain matter to the prospective owner of Beckleigh Hall? The schemer found the pair in the smoking-room, a cosy and somewhat modern apartment--for the house--which was in the west wing. It possessed a large plate-glass window which looked down the vista, where the trees were cut down, to the beach and the waters of the bay. Patricia, knitting a silk tie, sat on the sofa near the window, while Basil lounged in a deep arm-chair smoking his pipe. The two were laughing when Theodore entered, but suddenly became serious when they saw who had disturbed them. It was strange that the elder Dane should always produce a dull impression on the gayest of people. Perhaps it was owing to the uncanny and disagreeable atmosphere which he always carried about with him. "What's the joke?" asked the new-comer, throwing himself into an arm-chair opposite to that in which his brother sat. "Nothing," said Basil shortly, and his brow wrinkled. "What do you want?" "To smoke a cigarette," replied Theodore, producing his case; "the room is free to all, isn't it?" "Quite free," said Patricia colouring, for she did not like his tone. When the two brothers were together she was always apprehensive of trouble. For this reason, and because she hoped to throw oil on troubled fraternal waters, did she refrain from leaving the room. Yet Theodore's look was so insolent that she half rose to do so. "I must----" "Don't go, Patricia," said the elder brother hastily. "Mr. Dane, I do not like you to call me by my Christian name," she said, and her colour grew deeper than ever. She rose to her full height now, and made ready to go. "Theodore doesn't know what he is saying," muttered Basil in a tone of suppressed rage; and his brother, looking at him mockingly, saw that his face was as crimson as that of Patricia's. "Really, I seem to be like the Goddess of Discord," went on the intruder, intent upon bringing about a catastrophe; "you seemed jolly enough when I entered, laughing and talking and----" "We'll be jolly, again, when you leave," snapped Basil savagely. "I daresay. But you shan't have Miss Carrol all to yourself. No, don't go, Miss Carrol, you see that I am addressing you with all respect." He rose and slipped between her and the door as he spoke. "I want Basil to see that you like me as much as you do him." Patricia looked nervous and her feelings were not soothed when Basil rose in his turn. "Go away, Miss Carrol," he said sternly, and the veins on his forehead stood out with rage. "I can deal with Theodore." "Theodore can deal with himself," said that gentleman, turning on his brother with a black look on his face. "You are always taking up Patricia's time, and I have a right to it also. Yes"--he faced to the startled girl--"I intend to call you Patricia because I love you. I want you to marry me." "Theodore, are you mad?" thundered Basil furiously. "Is it mad to ask a girl's hand in marriage?" sneered Theodore. Patricia stopped the further speech of Basil with an imperative gesture and looked at Theodore. "I am well able to take care of myself," she said quietly. "Mr. Dane, I thank you for your offer, but I decline it." "Oh, I am not so handsome as Basil. I am not so rich as Uncle George!" "Take care; take care!" breathed Basil savagely in his ear. But Patricia again stopped him. Her temper rose, and her eyes sparkled in an angry fashion. "What do you mean by your reference to Mr. Colpster?" "You want to marry him, and--ah! keep off!" Theodore flung out his hands with a scream, as Basil hit out. The blow caught him fairly in his left eye, and he reeled towards the window to fall on the sofa. "You bully!" he fairly sobbed. "Apologise to Miss Carrol, or, by Heaven! I'll break your neck!" raged Basil, standing over the flabby man with clenched fists. Patricia, admiring her strong lover, came forward and laid her hand on his arm imploringly. "Leave him alone, Basil. He is not worth hitting." Theodore struggled to his feet, and with his rapidly swelling eye presented a miserable spectacle. "Basil!" he screamed, and his rage was partly real; "so you call him Basil, and no doubt that that is for him you are knitting. Oh!" he burst into mocking laughter, and pointed a finger at them both; "so this is how you are carrying on! This is----" He got no further. Basil, breaking from Patricia, sprang forward, and catching Theodore's bulky body in his powerful arms, fairly flung him through the window with a mighty heave. Patricia gasped with surprise and delight as the glass smashed and Theodore swung across the grass and down the slope like a stone fired from a catapult. "You devil!" roared Basil, shaking his fist through the broken window. "I'll kill you if you come near me or Patricia!" "Oh, he's dead!" gasped the girl, clinging to the sailor. "Not he! See!" and sure enough Theodore, with his face convulsed with impotent rage, rose heavily and limped out of sight. "I've settled him, the hound! and now----" he looked at her meaningly. Patricia shrank back flushing like a sunset. "Mr. Dane!" "You called me Basil just now, and you shall call me Basil for the rest of your life. You would not marry Theodore; but," he said masterfully, "you shall marry me." "Yes," whispered Patricia, yielding to his embrace; "I always loved you." "My darling! my darling! my darling!" cried the delighted sailor, straining her to his breast. "Theodore meant to part us, but he only succeeded in bringing us together!" and he kissed her again and again. He little knew how Theodore had schemed to bring about that very kiss! CHAPTER XVII TROUBLE Misfortunes rarely come singly. Theodore was so damaged by Basil that he was compelled to keep to his rooms, and had his meals sent up to him. Apart from his physical pain, the schemer was very satisfied with the result of the comedy he had played in the smoking-room. Lurking unseen at the corner of the house, he had beheld Patricia in his brother's arms, and could believe the evidence of his own eyes that the Rubicon had been crossed. Nevertheless, he felt a pang at losing the girl, for apart from her psychic powers, which would have been extremely useful to him in his studies, she was so pretty and charming that a less susceptible man than Dane would have regretted the success of another. But Theodore had by this time decided that he could not have his cake and eat it, so it was necessary to lose either Beckleigh or Patricia. It was characteristic of his greedy nature that he had sacrificed the girl for the estate. No doubt Mara's hint that she might go with Akira to Japan had urged him to the course he had adopted, for with both his brother and his cousin out of the way, Dane did not see how he could lose Beckleigh. He was the only one save these two who had the Colpster blood in his veins, and even though his uncle disliked him, he could scarcely pass him over. With aching limbs Theodore lay snug in bed, building castles in the air. Next day he intended to arouse the old man's jealousy by telling him of the embrace, of the kisses, and of the probable engagement. Then the lovers would be turned out of the house. Later, when Akira came round in his yacht, Mara would go, and he would be lord of all he surveyed. No wonder Theodore chuckled. But then came the second misfortune, and an even more unexpected one. Mr. Colpster was brought back from Hendle with a broken leg. He had duly driven Akira and his servant to the railway station, but had failed to find Harry Pentreddle at his lodgings. Rather annoyed, the old man had left a note, saying that the sailor was to come to Beckleigh and stay the night, so that he might repeat his story to the Danes, and then had turned homeward. But on the winding road which led down to the Hall, the horse had slipped on the rain-soaked ground, and Mr. Colpster, having foolishly tried to get out, had been thrown over the high bank. The coachman was uninjured, although, with the horse and vehicle, he had rolled down the slope. But the Squire had been picked up insensible by some labourers who had seen the accident, and had been carried into his own house with a broken leg. Much concerned, Basil and Patricia had the Squire put to bed and sent for a doctor. Mara, in an indifferent way, expressed her sorrow, although she never offered to nurse her father. Instead of helping, she went up to her cousin's room to tell him of the accident. Not finding him in the sitting-room, she knocked at his bed-room door, and stood amazed to find that he--as she supposed--had gone to rest. "Are you ill, Theo?" she asked, crossing to the bed. Theodore groaned. "I had a row with Basil and he threw me out of the window." Mara clapped her hands and her eyes sparkled. "How strong he is!" she said, which was not the sympathetic speech Theodore desired to hear. "Why did he fight you, Theo?" "I asked Patricia to marry me and Basil cut up rough." "No wonder!" said Mara disdainfully. "Why, any fool could have seen that Basil is in love with Patricia. He won't let anyone come near her. Oh!" she clapped her hands again and laughed gaily. "I should have liked to see you flying through the window." "Little beast, you are," snarled Theodore. "I'm all aches and pains, and my eye is black where he struck me, damn him!" "Would you like to see the doctor?" "No. It's not worth sending to Hendle for the doctor. Besides, he'd only chatter. I know these local gossips." "But the doctor is coming here. You had better let him examine you, Theo." Theodore, from the shadow of the curtains, stared at the delicate face of his cousin. "Why is the doctor coming?" "Oh, I quite forgot what I came up to tell you about," said Mara in a matter-of-fact tone. "Father has broken his leg." "Broken his leg!" With a groan of pain Theodore hoisted himself on one elbow. "How did he do that?" "The horse slipped coming down the winding road. Jarvis could not hold him up and they all fell over the bank. Father tried to get out, and broke his leg. But Jarvis and the horse are all right," ended Mara cheerfully. "I don't believe you are sorry," said Theodore, angered at her indifference. "I don't see what is the use of crying over spilt milk," replied the girl calmly. "If I cried my eyes out and tore my hair, it would do father no good." "You might at least pretend to be sorry for him," growled Dane, sinking back. "Well, I am. It's horrid to suffer pain. I'll tell him I'm sorry." "If you tell him in that voice he'll box your ears," said Theodore grimly. "You don't display much sorrow for me, young lady." "Because I don't feel any," said Mara coolly. "You brought it on yourself, for I told you that Basil loved Patricia. Besides, I don't like you." "I'm not a Japanese. Eh?" "No. You're not anything half so nice. Would you like Basil to come and see you?" she added maliciously. "I'm afraid Patricia can't, as she's attending to father." "Oh, get out of the room and tell the cook to send up my dinner to me here as soon as she can. When I'm up again, I'll tell Uncle George everything." "What do you mean?" "I shall tell him that Basil and that infernal girl are engaged, and he'll give her notice to quit. And I shall tell him that you intend to run away with that beastly little Japanese." "Oh, I haven't made up my mind what to do," said Mara, retreating to the door. "And if I decide to go with Akira, I shall do so, in spite of father or anyone else. But you won't tell, Theo; you're only too glad for me to go. You look like a great toad lying in bed." Theodore caught up one of his slippers. "Will you clear out?" "Mum! Mum! Mum!" jeered Mara, with an elfish laugh. "You can't do anything. And even if I do go, even if Basil does marry Patricia, you won't get Beckleigh. Mum! Mum! Mum!" And she closed the door just in time to escape the slipper which Theodore threw with all his strength. The doctor duly arrived and put the Squire's leg in splints. The old man had recovered his senses, and considering his pain, behaved himself very well. The doctor approved of his patient's fine constitution and cheerfully said that he would soon be on his legs again. "You're not dead yet, sir," he remarked, when Colpster had been made comfortable for the night. "I don't intend to die," said the Squire coolly. "Quite other plans are in my mind. But while I lie here I shan't have anything disturbed in the house. Patricia remember that. Should Akira's yacht arrive, you and Mara and Basil, together with Theodore and the servants, can go to his entertainment." "Oh, we couldn't leave you like that, Mr. Colpster," said Patricia quickly. "You can and you shall. I hate a lot of fuss." And then the doctor took Patricia out of the room to explain that the patient must be kept very quiet, else he would work himself into a fever. "Humour him, Miss Carrol, humour him," said the doctor, as he took his leave. "To-morrow I shall come over and see him. Don't worry." But Patricia did worry, not so much over the Squire, who was getting along fairly well considering his age, as over the fracas with Theodore. She dreaded lest he might speak to the Squire. "And then I should have to leave," said Patricia, much distressed. "I don't see why, dearest," replied Basil, twining his brown fingers in her hair and wondering if God had ever created a more perfect woman. The two were seated, as usual, in the smoking-room, deeming that the safest place, since Theodore since the quarrel had carefully avoided entering it. It was now three days since the accident, and since Basil had been driven to disclose his feelings. They had the house to themselves almost entirely, for Mara rarely troubled them. Theodore, although he had risen from his sick-bed with a more or less discoloured eye, kept to his own rooms, and did not even present himself at meals. He cherished a deep anger against Basil, and was sullen with Patricia as the original cause of his humiliation. The elder Dane had not a forgiving nature. Nor, indeed, did his brother feel inclined to welcome any advances. He was too much disgusted with Theodore to pardon him readily. "I don't see why, dearest," said Basil again, and slipped his arm round Patricia's waist. "Uncle George can't kill us." "He could turn me out of the house, and I have nowhere to go." "There is no reason why he should turn you out. He loves you like a daughter. I'm certain of that." Patricia sighed. "You are wrong, Basil. He loves me, certainly, but not like a daughter." "What!" Basil scowled with a brow of thunder. "Does he dare to----" "He dares nothing," interposed Patricia hurriedly, and placed her pink palm over his mouth to prevent further speech. "But I am certain that he wants to marry me." "At his age. Ridiculous!" "Why ridiculous? Older men than the Squire have married." Basil's arm grew loose round her waist. "Do you admire him, then?" "Of course. I both admire him and love him. Look how good he has been to me. I hadn't a shilling when he took me from The Home of Art." "Patricia, do you mean to say----" She stopped him again, and this time his mouth was closed with a kiss. "I mean to say that you are a dear old stupid thing, darling. I can't help myself if your uncle admires me." "It shows his good taste. All the same----" "All the same, I'm going to marry you, my dear. But we'll both be turned out of the house, I'm sure of that." Basil hugged her again. "I knew you would never marry for money, dearest," he whispered. "And if we are turned out we can live on my pay. I have to join the Mediterranean Fleet when my leave is up in a couple of months from now. My ship will be always at Malta--always calling in there, you know. We'll get a tiny flat, and you shall stay there when we're married." "Oh, darling, that will be heaven!" "It will be poverty," said Basil ruefully; "not what you're used to." "My dear," she put her arm round his neck and looked into his hazel eyes, "what nonsense you talk. Since my father died I have been desperately hard up in every way, and if your uncle had not taken pity upon me, I really don't know what I should have done. I can cook and sew and look after a house splendidly. I'm just the wife for a hard-up sailor." "You are, indeed," said Basil fervently, and would have embraced her, but that a knock came at the door. "Oh, hang it! here's Sims." "I must attend to my duties," said Patricia, as Sims entered. "It's the butcher, of course. Go on, Sims. I'm coming to the kitchen." And Sims discreetly departed with a knowing smile, while Patricia remained for a last kiss. The Beckleigh Hall servants saw very plainly what was taking place, and even although they were old and jealous retainers, did not resent it. Basil was an immense favourite with one and all, while Patricia during the short time she had acted as housekeeper had captured all hearts with great ease. In the days which followed Patricia was kept closely in attendance on the Squire, since Mara would do nothing, and Colpster objected to being attended to wholly by the servants. She became rather pale and thin, which only made her the more adorable in Basil's eyes, and, unfortunately, in the eyes of her patient also. The Squire had made up his mind to ask Patricia to be his wife, notwithstanding the difference in their ages. Since Mara resolutely refused to marry either of her cousins, Colpster's pet scheme for the family to be re-established, now that the emerald had returned, fell to the ground. Failing this, he wished to make Miss Carrol his wife, and hoped that she would give him an heir in the direct line of descent. The more he thought of the scheme, the more he liked it, as he was extremely fond of Patricia, notwithstanding he had been so rude to her on the night when the Mikado Jewel had arrived so mysteriously. It never struck him that she might fall in love with a handsome young man like Basil. Patricia saw how devoted the old man was becoming to her, and at times she was quite embarrassed by the youthful fire of his eyes. Colpster was now getting well rapidly, as it was a fortnight since the accident and the leg was mending. He remained, of course, in bed, and received various visits from the various members of his household. Theodore and Mara did not pay many visits, as the former knew that his uncle disliked him, and the latter was entirely without affection. The Squire never did expect much from Mara, as he looked upon her as weak-minded. She certainly was not, but her father never took the trouble to see what qualities she possessed. It was little wonder that Mara did not give affection, seeing that she never received any. Mr. Colpster worried a great deal over the continued absence of Harry Pentreddle, and had frequently sent Jarvis to Hendle to inform him that he was wanted at the Hall. But Pentreddle had gone away from his lodgings without leaving any message behind, and no one--not even Isa Lee--knew where he was to be found. This absence and silence made the Squire quite uneasy, especially when he remembered that Harry had seen the emerald. He had stolen it before and--as the Squire, without any grounds to go upon, considered--he might steal it again. Haunted by this thought, Colpster gave Patricia the key of the safe and made her bring him the Jewel. He slept with it under his pillow and hugged it to his heart every day, talking meanwhile about the good luck it would bring. "It has not brought any good luck yet, Mr. Colpster," said Patricia one evening, after her lovemaking with Basil in the smoking-room. "How do you mean, my dear?" "Well, in the first place, you have broken your leg; in the second, you have lost that lawsuit which----" The Squire groaningly interrupted her: "Yes, I have lost it, worse luck, my dear. The land has gone, and my income will be diminished to eight hundred. Yes, I admit that bad luck. And the weather is really terrible too," he added, looking at the streaming window-pane. "It so rarely rains here, yet it has poured ever since my accident." "And before then," Patricia reminded him. "The rain, by making the road slippery, caused your accident. If I were you, Mr. Colpster, I would send back the jewel to Japan with Count Akira. He is quite right: the good luck it brought to your family centuries ago has changed to bad." "How can you believe in such rubbish!" groaned the Squire, hugging his gem. "You believe in it," said Miss Carrol, wondering at his want of logic, "or you would let the Mikado Jewel go." "The luck will change now," insisted Colpster, trying to persuade himself into a kindly belief. "Everything will come right." "I hope so," said Patricia, poking the bedroom fire, before which she was kneeling. "You must write and tell me if it does." The Squire sat up in bed and gasped. "Write and tell you?" "Yes. I am going away." "Nonsense! Why should you go away?" "Mr. Colpster," said Patricia, who had brought the conversation round to this point that she might thoroughly explain herself, "you have been very good to me, and I have been very happy here. But your nephew Theodore has been rude to me; in fact, he has insulted me; so I cannot remain under the same roof with him." "What?" the Squire's scanty hair bristled and he trembled with rage. "Has that dog of a Theodore been rude? He shall leave my house at once." "No. That would not be fair. He is your nephew. I shall go." "I shan't let you go, child. I love you too much to let you go. How did he insult you--what did he say? Tell me and I'll--I'll----" Rage choked his further utterance, and he sank back on his pillows. His nurse came forward and smoothed the bedclothes. "Don't worry over the matter, Mr. Colpster. It's not worth it." "It's worth everything when you want to leave. How did Theodore insult you?" Patricia looked down and sketched out figures with the tip of her bronze shoe. "He is angry because I am engaged to Basil." Colpster flung himself forward and caught her wrist. His sunken eyes filled with angry fire. "You are not engaged to Basil?" he said fiercely. "But I am. Leave go my wrist, Mr. Colpster, or I shall go away at once." He still held her tightly. "You shan't marry Basil. You shall marry me." Patricia was greatly indebted to the old man, as she had admitted, and was sorry for his misplaced passion. But she was also a woman, with a woman's feeling, and did not intend to allow him to dictate to her. With a dexterous twist, she freed herself from his grip and retreated to a safe distance. "If you behave like this, I shall leave the room and never enter it again," she exclaimed, angry at his want of self-control. The threat brought the Squire to his knees. "No! no! Don't go!" he cried in piteous tones. "I can't live without you. I wish to marry you. See, Patricia, dear, I shall settle Beckleigh on you, and when the emerald brings back the good luck you shall----" "The emerald will only bring bad luck," said Patricia, interrupting coldly. "And if you had millions I would not marry you. I love you as a daughter, and I thought that you loved me in the same way. Basil and I are engaged and intend to get married in a few months." "He has no money," wailed the Squire, clutching the sheets; "no money." "I don't care. He is the man I love." "He has no right to ask you to marry him." "If he had not asked me, Mr. Colpster, I believe I should have asked him," was the girl's quick answer. "Can't you understand that he is the only man in the world for me? If you don't, then the sooner I leave this house the better. You have no right to dictate to me, and I won't allow it." "I'll cut Basil out of my will. I shall leave the property to Theodore." "That is a matter for your own consideration," said Patricia coldly. "Now it's time for your beef-tea, and I must go and get it." "I shan't take it," cried the Squire childishly. "Mr. Colpster, for a man of your years you are very silly." "My years--my years; you reproach me with those!" "I reproach you with nothing," said Miss Carrol, tired of the futile argument. "Can't you see that if you go on like this I must leave?" "No, don't," he implored, with wild eyes. "I'll be good." "Very well," she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "Now I shall get your beef-tea," and for that purpose she left the room. Left alone, Mr. Colpster whimpered a little. He was old, he was sick, and he was very sorry for himself. He had sought to woo a girl who was young enough to be his daughter, and his wooing had taken the fashion of trying to bribe her with house and land and money. To this insult she had retorted by showing him the mother that is hidden in every woman, married or unmarried. He felt like a naughty boy who had been put in the corner, and at his age he did not like the new experience. He could have kicked himself for having gone on his knees to be whipped, for that was what it amounted to. In the darkness--it was evening, and there was no light in the big bed-room save that of the fire--he flushed and burned with shame. How, indeed, could she, having found her mate in a young man of her own age, beautiful and ardent as she was, be expected to accept his Philistine offer of beeves and land? The Squire, with all his oddities, was a gentleman, and as he came from a brave race he was a man. His age, his fantasy about refounding the family, his sickness, had all landed him in this slough. It behoved him, if he wished ever again to look his ancestors' portraits in the face, to get out of the quagmire and reassert his manhood as well as his good breeding. Patricia should marry Basil and become his niece-in-law. Mara could be given an income to indulge in her fantasies, and he could live at Beckleigh with Mr. and Mrs. Colpster, which was to be the married name of the young couple. In the middle of these visions, Patricia returned with the beef-tea and a lamp. The naughty boy came out of his corner to beg pardon. "My dear," he said, in an apologetic voice, "I'm an old fool." "Oh, no," said Patricia kindly; "you are just one who has cried for the moon." "I give the moon to Basil," said the Squire, holding out his hand. "And he will be my heir. Forgive me." "Willingly," said Miss Carrol, and they shook hands gravely. "But I agree with you," sighed Colpster, ending the scene; "the jewel has brought bad luck." CHAPTER XVIII PLEASURE Count Akira did not return so soon to Beckleigh as he had promised, for he wrote that official business still detained him in London. But during the third week after his departure, his yacht, _The Miko_, steamed into the fairy bay and cast anchor a quarter of a mile off shore. It was Basil who espied her first immediately after breakfast, and he ran up a flag on the pole erected on the lawn. _The Miko_ dipped her ensign in reply, and shortly a boat put off, which doubtless was bringing Akira on his return visit. Basil walked down to the beach to meet him. There was a tiny pier on the right of the beach which ran into deep water, and the boat made for this. Basil, with his hands in his pockets, stared at the yacht. She was a graceful boat of some two thousand tons, and her hull was painted white while her one funnel was darkly blue. The chrysanthemum flag of Japan streamed from one of her mast-heads, and she looked a singularly beautiful object as she rocked on the blue waters of the bay. Basil judged from her lines that she was swift. But he had little time to take in much, as the boat which approached at a furious pace was a small steam launch. She came alongside the pier in a few minutes. "And how is my good friend Dane?" asked Akira, hoisting himself up like a monkey and removing his cap. "You see, I am here as promised." They shook hands, and Basil thought that Akira looked very workmanlike in his smart blue yachting dress. A wiry brown lithe little man was the Japanese, keen-eyed and alert. The most casual observer could see that, if necessary, he could make himself very disagreeable. "I am glad to see you again, Akira," said Basil; "come up to the house." The Count gave a few directions to the officer in charge of the launch and then placed himself at his friend's disposal. "All are well in your family, I hope?" he remarked, as they strolled up through the woods. "My uncle has broken his leg, I regret to say." "Indeed!" Akira looked shocked. "I am very sorry. How did it happen?" Basil gave him a hasty description of the accident. "In fact, Akira," he added, with a puzzled look, "since you went away everything has gone wrong." "What do you mean?" asked the Japanese quietly, and his face became entirely devoid of emotion. "What I say. My uncle broke his leg and has lost a lawsuit, which he hoped to gain. Theodore and I have quarrelled, and the house is as dull as tombs." "I hope Miss Carrol is not dull?" observed Akira politely. Dane turned swiftly to observe the expression of the little man's face. He had said more than he meant to say on the impulse of the moment, and now that he had said so much, he deliberately said more. Apparently Akira, who was very sharp, had noted, during his visit, symptoms of lovemaking. It was just as well to let him know how matters stood, for, after all, the Japanese was not a bad little fellow. "Miss Carrol is engaged to marry me," said Basil, drawing a deep breath. "I congratulate you, but I am not surprised. I saw much when I was here on my visit"--he paused; then went on shrewdly, "I do not wonder that you have had a quarrel with your brother." "Never mind that, Akira," said Basil hastily; "I really did not intend to tell you that. It slipped out." Akira nodded. "You must permit me to send you and Miss Carrol a present from my own country when I reach it," he remarked, changing the subject. "It is very good of you. I am sure Miss Carrol will be delighted. When do you sail for the East?" "To-morrow. I have secured an excellent appointment at Tokio." "It is very good of you to anchor here, and delay your journey," said Basil cordially; and Akira gave a little laugh as the young man spoke. "Oh, I had a reason," he said coolly. "I never do anything without a reason, Dane. I shall tell my reason to Mr. Colpster, if he is to be seen." "Oh, yes. He is out of bed, although he has not yet left his room. The leg is mending splendidly, and he lies mostly on the sofa in his bedroom. I am sure he will be delighted to see you." "And Miss Mara? Will she be delighted?" Basil again gave a side glance, but was far from suspecting why the remark had been made. "Don't you make her dance any more," said Dane, nervously. "No, I promise you that I won't do that," answered Akira, his face again becoming so unemotional that Basil could not tell what he was thinking about; "but you have not answered my question." "Here is Mara to answer for herself," said Dane, and he spoke truly, for as they advanced towards the front door of the house, it opened suddenly and Mara flew out with sparkling eyes. "Count Akira. I am so glad to see you again. Is that your boat? What a nice boat she is. When did you arrive and what are----" "Mara, Mara, Mara!" remonstrated Basil laughing, "how can the man answer so many questions all at once?" "I would need Gargantua's mouth as your Shakespeare says," observed Akira with a quiet smile, and his eyes also sparkled at the sight of the girl. "Come inside, Akira, and I will tell Miss Carrol," said Dane hospitably. He stepped into the house, but Akira did not follow immediately. He lingered behind with Mara, and, after a glance at the many windows of the house, he gave her hand a friendly shake. But his words were warmer than his gesture, for they were meant for Mara's private ear, while the handshake was for the benefit of any onlooker. "I have come, you see. You are glad?" and his black eyes looked volumes. Mara nodded, and from being a pale lily became a dewy rose. "Of course. Did I not promise to love you for seven lives?" "Your father will not understand that," said Akira dryly. Mara started. "Will you tell him?" she asked anxiously. The Count bowed stiffly. "I am a Japanese gentleman," he said in cool and high-bred tones, "and so I can do nothing against my honour. I cannot take you with me unless your father consents." "But he will not," breathed Mara, becoming pale with emotion. "He will. Already this morning he has received a long letter from me, which I sent from London. It explains how I love you, and asks for your hand." "But you are not of my religion!" whispered Mara distressed; "he may object to that." "I think not, as your father, from what I saw, is of no particular religion himself. I have a special license in my pocket. We can be married to-day in your own church and by your own priest. When we reach Japan we can be married according to Shinto rites." "But your family?" "I have my uncle in London. On hearing all about you, he has agreed. There will be no trouble with my family." Mara, still nervous, would have asked further questions and would have put forward further objections, but that Patricia made her appearance at the door. She looked singularly beautiful, although she was not so in Akira's eyes. He preferred the small features and colourless looks of Mara. Patricia's face was too boldly cut and too highly coloured to be approved of by an Oriental. "How are you, Count?" said Miss Carrol, shaking hands. "Very well; and you? But I need not ask, Miss Carrol." Akira laughed in a very sympathetic way for him. "Dane has told me." "Oh!" Patricia blushed. "I wish you all happiness, and may you be united for seven lives." "What does that mean?" "I know! I know!" cried Mara, clapping her hands and jumping; "in Japan we all believe in reincarnation, and lovers promise each other to love during seven earth-seasons." "But you are not a Japanese, Mara," said Patricia, wondering that the girl should so boldly couple herself with Akira. "Yes, I am," Mara asserted decidedly; "my body is English, but my soul is Japanese. I know now that I was a Miko in the Temple of Kitzuki three hundred years ago, and that I loved him," she pointed to Akira, who smiled assentingly. "Oh, what nonsense!" said Miss Carrol, rather crossly; "it is your imagination, you silly child!" and then, before Mara could contradict her, she turned to the Count. "Mr. Colpster wants to see you," she remarked. "Will you follow me?" "I want to come also," said Mara; and grasping Akira's hand she went into the house. They looked at one another adoringly and smiled. At the bedroom door Patricia left them, as the Squire had intimated that he wished to see Akira privately. Miss Carrol therefore desired to take Mara downstairs with her, but the girl refused to go. "I have to speak to my father also," she declared obstinately, "and I must do so while the Count is present." "As you please," replied Miss Carrol, finding it impossible to move the girl, and knowing Mara's obstinate disposition of old, "you will find me in the library when you come down." "With Basil!" cried out Mara mischievously; and Patricia looked back to give a smiling nod. Then the two entered the bedroom. Mr. Colpster was lying on the sofa near a large fire, wrapped in his dressing-gown, and looked thin, since his illness had rather pulled him down. He also appeared to be somewhat cross, and shook at Akira several sheets of blue paper with an angry air. "I received your letter this morning," he said sharply, and without greeting his visitor in any way. "That is good," said Akira politely, "it will save me the trouble of an explanation, Mr. Colpster." "I think not," growled the Squire. "I must know more, and in any case I do not intend to consent." "Oh, father, you must!" cried Mara, indignantly. "Go down stairs, child," said her father quickly; "I wish to speak alone with this--this gentleman." But Mara stood her ground. "What the Count has to say concerns me," she declared obstinately. "I shan't go!" Colpster stormed vainly, while Akira looked on passively. But nothing would move Mara from the position which she had taken up. She simply laughed at her father, and in the end he had to yield a grudging consent to her remaining in the room. "And now, sir," he said, when this was settled and again shaking the sheets of blue paper at Akira. "I understand from this that you wish to marry my daughter Mara. Of course, it is quite impossible!" "Why?" asked Akira calmly, and holding Mara's hand. "Because you are not an Englishman," spluttered the Squire. "If I was a Frenchman, or a German, you would not object!" retorted the Count coolly. "Why not say that it is because I am not a European!" "Very good then, I say it. You are of the yellow race, and Mara is of the white. Marriage between you is ridiculous." "I don't think so, sir." Mara looked at her father disdainfully. "I don't know why you talk so," she said with a shrug. "I intend to marry Count Akira to-day, and go away with him to-morrow, to Japan in our yacht." "Our yacht, indeed!" echoed the Squire angrily, and then stared at the pale obstinate face of his daughter, framed in a nimbus of feathery golden hair. "Oh you are a minx! You never loved me!" "I can't help that," said Mara doggedly; "I never loved anyone until I met with the Count. I couldn't understand myself until I danced that night in the drawing-room. Danced the Miko-kagura." "What is that? What is she talking about?" Colpster turned to Akira. The Count explained politely. "When I came here, sir, I noticed that Miss Colpster was greatly interested in what I had to say about my own country. And often, when I told her of things, she said that she remembered them." "How could that be when she has never been out of England?" "That is what puzzled me, until I, one night--by way of an experiment and to convince myself--placed on the fire some incense used in the Temple of Kitzuki, and played on a flute the music of the Miko-kagura, which is a holy dance. Miss Colpster rose and performed it perfectly. Then all the past came back to her, as she told me later." "What past?" demanded the Squire, much bewildered. "The past of her life in Japan, three hundred years ago." "Oh, that is rubbish!" "It is true!" cried Mara in a thrilling voice, and raised her arms. "I was a Miko of the Kitzuki Temple three hundred years ago. That is why I remembered about the emerald, when Theodore sent me into a trance. And for the same reason I could describe the shrine. I loved the Count then, when we wore other bodies, and promised to love him for seven lives. This time I have been born in England, but he has come for me here, and I am going with him to my native land." "Oh, you are quite mad!" said Colpster furiously. "Mad or sane, let me marry her, Mr. Colpster!" pleaded Akira. "From my letter you can see that I am going to occupy an excellent official position at Tokio, and that I am of very high rank in Japan, besides being wealthy. I love your daughter, because, I truly believe--strange as it may seem to you--that we loved three hundred years ago. I have a special license in my pocket, and if you consent we can go to your church this day and get married according to your religion. When we reach Japan we shall be married according to mine. Do you consent?" "No! It's ridiculous! You have only known Mara a few weeks." "I have loved her for three hundred years!" insisted Akira, smiling. "I don't believe in that rubbish." Mara seized her lover's hand. "I am tired of all this," she said in her old fashion, "why can't you leave me alone. I marry the Count!" Colpster saw that, whether he gave his consent or not, she would certainly do so. And, after all, as he asked himself, what did it matter? Mara had never displayed any affection for any single person, since she had always lived in a dream-world of her own. Now that he had decided to leave the property to Basil and Patricia on condition that they assumed the name of Colpster, Mara was unnecessary. Finally, it was certain that she would be happier in Japan than in England, since there was evidently no future for her in the West. The Squire did not believe in reincarnation. All the same, he admitted that Mara's many oddities suggested that she was a soul born out of time and place. But that his daughter should marry one of the yellow race offended the old man's pride. He was just about to open his mouth and refuse permission again when Akira spoke blandly. "If you consent," said Akira, "I will send you someone who can tell you who killed your housekeeper." "How do you know?" asked Colpster, startled. "I have been making inquiries in town. Consent, and you shall know all." "And consent," said Mara, stepping up to her father and bending to whisper in his ear, "or I shall tell the Count that you have the emerald." Colpster turned white. "How do you know?" he whispered back. "I saw you slip it under your pillow one day. It is there now. If you don't let me marry the Count he shall take it from you now." The Squire breathed heavily and dark circles appeared under his sunken eyes as Mara stepped back to stand beside her lover. He knew that his daughter did not love him, or anyone else, but he had never believed she would have spoken as she had done. Undoubtedly the theory of reincarnation was a correct one. She was an Eastern soul in a Western body. "I consent to the marriage," he said in cold, dry hard tones. "You can go to the church on the moor and get the affair settled. I cannot come myself, but Basil and Patricia can go with you. Mara, you had better tell your maid to pack your clothes, since you leave to-morrow." "Everything is already packed," said Mara, turning at the door and looking cool and white and more shadowy than ever. "I shall come and say good-bye." "No, don't!" shuddered the Squire, as she went out. "You go also, Akira." The Count smiled blandly and walked to the door. "I shall keep my promise, sir, and to-night you will receive one who will be able to tell you the whole truth of what has puzzled you for so long." When Akira disappeared, the Squire tore up the blue letter and threw the pieces into the fire. He had done with Mara: she was no longer any daughter of his. And, indeed, she never had been. Always cold: always indifferent: a very shadow of what a daughter should have been. He was well rid of her, this traitress, who would have surrendered the emerald. Colpster felt under his sofa pillow and pulled out the gem. It was wrapped in paper, and he unfolded this to gaze at it. A knock at the door made him hastily smuggle it away again. Basil entered immediately and looked worried. "Is it true, uncle, that Akira and Mara are to be married?" he asked abruptly. "Quite true. Akira has brought down a special license. Go with Patricia and see that all is shipshape." "But, Uncle George, surely you don't want Mara to marry a Japanese?" "What does it matter? Whether I give my consent or not, Mara will do what she wants to do. There is some rubbish about reincarnation between them--about loving for seven lives, or for three hundred years. I don't understand these things. But what I do understand," cried Colpster with cold fury, raising himself on his elbow, "is that Mara does not love me, and that I intend to cut her out of my will. Send Jarvis to Hendle and tell Curtis the lawyer to come over at once. You will have the property, Basil, and then can marry Patricia. Theodore can go away. I won't have him in the house after the way he has insulted your future wife. As to Mara, she can go to the devil! or to Japan. I never wish to set eyes on her again!" "But what has she done?" asked Basil, bewildered. The Squire could have told him, but did not intend to, since that would mean revealing that the Mikado Jewel was under the sofa pillow. "Never mind; I am well rid of her, and so are you, and so are we all. Only see that this Japanese marries her properly." Dane argued, implored and stormed, but all to no purpose. His uncle vowed that if Mara remained, he would turn her penniless from the house, and Basil was sufficiently acquainted with his obstinate character to be certain that he would keep his word. Under the circumstances it seemed reasonable that Mara should lie on the bed she had made and the young man, making the best of a bad job, went away to get Patricia. He would act as Akira's best man, and Patricia could follow Mara as her solitary bridesmaid. Whatever might be the outcome of this sudden arrangement, Basil determined to see that the marriage was legal. And when he saw the joy and delight of Mara and the lover-like attentions of Akira, he began to think that his uncle had acted for the best. In the face of Mara's obstinacy, nothing else could be done, although Basil, being a true Englishman, did not relish the Japanese as a cousin-in-law. All the same, he approved of Akira's fine qualities, and knew that from a worldly point of view Mara was making a brilliant match. Obeying instructions, he sent Jarvis for the Hendle lawyer, when, with the prospective bride and bridegroom, he and Patricia were on their way to the quaint old church on the moor, where so many Colpsters were buried. The clergyman could not disobey a special license, so that was all right, and he hoped to return later with the pair married. Indeed, had Basil possessed a special license himself, he also would have stood before the altar with Patricia, but such things were far beyond the means of a poor lieutenant of His Majesty's Navy. Meanwhile, the Squire received Curtis and made a new will, which made no mention of Mara and Theodore, but left the entire Colpster estates to Basil, provided that he took the family name and married Patricia Carrol. When the testament had been duly signed, sealed and delivered, the Squire decided to keep it in his possession until the morrow, so that he could show it to the young couple. Curtis wished to take it with him, but Colpster refused, and finally departed without even a copy of the document. However, he promised to call the next day and take it with him for safety. Just as the lawyer departed, Theodore entered the bedroom. "What's all this about?" he asked sharply. His uncle looked at him with a frown. "What do you mean entering my room without knocking?" he demanded in his turn. "I beg your pardon," said Theodore with forced politeness, "but everything seems at sixes and sevens since that infernal yacht came in. All the servants are getting themselves ready to go to the entertainment to-night, and I can't get anyone to answer my bell." "Wait until Miss Carrol returns and she will see to things," said Colpster indifferently. "I can't be bothered." "Where is Miss Carrol? I have been in my room all day, and when I came down I couldn't find anyone." "Basil and Patricia have gone to attend the marriage of Mara and Akira." Theodore stepped back and then stepped forward. He could scarcely believe his ears. "Have you allowed that?" he asked in consternation. "Yes. Akira is a good match, and Mara loves him." "But he's a Japanese?" "What does that matter?" "I don't believe in marriages between members of different races." Colpster looked at him cynically. "What the devil does it matter what you believe! I agreed to the marriage for two, or rather, for three reasons. In the first place, Mara would have married in any case had I not consented. In the second, she threatened, if I did not agree, to tell Akira about the emerald, which he would then have taken from me. In the third place, Akira said that if I agreed, he would send someone to-night to tell me all about the murder of Martha and reveal the name of the person who did it." "It was the priest with the scar on his cheek who did it," said Theodore in vigorous tones. "Will he--Akira that is--send him?" "I don't know. Don't bother me!" said the Squire, turning over on his pillows. "I'll see him when you are all out of the house." "I'm not going to that infernal entertainment," said Theodore snappishly, "as I don't approve of Mara marrying that yellow man. I shall stay here and listen to what this emissary of Akira's has to say." "Oh, do what you like; do what you like; only don't bother me!" said Colpster again, and very sharply. "Clear out, please!" "All right!" Theodore went towards the door; "only I want to say one thing. Curtis has been here. Have you cut Mara out of your will?" "Yes; although it is no business of yours. When she marries Akira, she will have plenty of money." "Well, then, I suppose," said Theodore, shooting his arrow, "you know that Patricia and Basil are engaged?" "Yes, I am aware of that, and I wish them joy." "Aren't you angry, uncle?" Theodore was astounded. "No. Why should I be? I like Patricia." "I fancied you loved her and wished to marry her." Colpster rolled over and glared fiercely. He was annoyed that his secret should have been discovered by Theodore, of all people, since he hated him so ardently. "I never did wish to marry Patricia," he said furiously, and telling a smooth lie. "I look upon her as a daughter. I have always looked upon her as a daughter. When Basil told me that she had consented to be his wife, I was delighted. I am delighted." "Oh!" growled Theodore, wincing and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets; "so you brought Curtis over to alter your will!" "Yes! I have left everything to Basil and Patricia!" "What about me?" Theodore by this time was ghastly pale. "Oh, you can go to the devil!" said his uncle carelessly. "You insulted Miss Carrol, so I pay you out. The will cutting you off is here," he patted his pocket. Before Theodore could express the rage which consumed him, there came the sound of advancing feet and the laughter of happy people. The door was suddenly thrown open by Basil, and Patricia entered, followed by the bridegroom and the bride, arm-in-arm English fashion. "Allow me," said Patricia gaily, and in a ringing voice, "to present to you, Mr. Colpster, the Count and Countess Akira." CHAPTER XIX THE TRUTH With the early darkness of February came a spectacle to delight and astonish the home-staying folk of Beckleigh. Suddenly at eight o'clock, when the entire household were gathered on the beach for transport in the launch to the yacht, _The Miko_ became outlined in coloured fire. Radiant and weird against the gloom in red and blue and yellow and green, she flashed into being like a spectral Flying Dutchman. Never before had such a sight been seen in that quiet Devonshire bay, and loudly sounded the amazed voices of the servants, praising the gorgeous illumination. It was like magic to them, and several were heard to express a hope that the devil was not on board the ship of light. However, the Japanese officer in charge of the launch which puffed up spoke sufficient English to reassure them, and they all embarked for an evening's revelry. The bride and bridegroom, with the two who had witnessed the marriage, had long since gone on board. Mara did not intend to set foot on English soil again, and had taken a final leave of her father. Colpster had not been unkind, although his farewell had been rather cold. But then the newly-made Countess Akira was cold herself and rarely demonstrative, so she did not mind in the least. In fact, Patricia, being a warmhearted Irish girl, reproved her for the coolness with which she took leave both of her parent and of her childhood's home. "Oh, nonsense!" said Mara with her usual cry. "I wish you'd leave me alone, Patricia. I can't make a fuss when I don't feel the least sorry to go away." "But surely, Mara, you are sad. You leave your home, your father, your native land, for ever it may be." "Certainly for ever. And now that I know all about the past, now that I am the Count's wife, I don't look upon England as my native land." "Mara, you surely do not really believe that you lived at Kitzuki as a priestess centuries ago?" said Patricia, shaking her head. "I am sure that I did. I was a Miko, which means The Darling of the Gods." "Did Count Akira tell you that translation?" "No; I remembered it. I spoke Japanese ages ago. I am beginning to recollect all manner of things. And Akira gave me a book of Lafcadio Hearn's, which contains a description of a Miko-kagura. It is exactly what I danced on that evening, and is precisely what I did when I was at the Temple." Patricia asked no more questions. The problem was beyond her. She saw that Mara firmly believed in reincarnation, and on that belief based her sudden marriage with Akira. The little man had known her only for a few weeks, and in the ordinary course of things would not have fallen in love with her so rapidly, if indeed at all, seeing that he was East, while she was West. Therefore, it really seemed as if what Mara believed was true, and that she had met her husband before in the Province of Izumo. In no other way could the puzzled Patricia account for the unexpected which had happened so quickly. And she agreed with Basil that it was just as well that Mara had obtained her heart's desire in this strange way. Had she not met Akira, she would have gone on living in an unhealthy dreamland, and perhaps as she grew older would have lost her reason. But now she seemed to be a different girl as her formerly pale face was rosy with colour; she looked less shadowy, and strangest of all, she took a profound interest in the entertainments provided for the Beckleigh servants. This was particularly odd, for Mara never, when she was single, troubled about pleasures of any kind, and certainly took no interest in the likes or dislikes of other people. But over this revelry she presided like a queen, and for the first time in her strange life she appeared to be thoroughly happy. "After all," said Patricia, to her lover who stood by her, while a sailor was singing some legend to the music of the biwa, "the Count is a very charming and highly-bred man." "Oh, yes," assented Basil heartily, for having taken everything into consideration, he now quite approved of the turn affairs had taken. "He is one of the best is Akira. As good and clever a chap as ever lived. If you do want courtesy and good breeding, you can find them to perfection in a Japanese gentleman. Mara is lucky to get such a husband, considering what a strange nature she has." "It is that very nature which has brought such a husband to her," said Patricia. "I hope and trust and pray she will be happy." "I think so. Akira adores her. Strange when he is East and she is West." Patricia shook her head. "Mara would never admit that, my dear. Only her body is West according to her; her soul is Eastern." "Well," remarked Basil, looking somewhat puzzled, "I don't know much about this occult rubbish of which we have had so much lately, but I should think that the soul was of no country at all. It comes on the stage of the world dressed as a native of different countries just as it is told." "As its Karma calls it." "What the deuce is Karma?" "The accumulated result of good and evil and----" "Look here, Patricia!" interrupted the young man, slipping his arm within her own. "I have had enough of this jargon and occult rubbish. I half believe in it, and I half don't. At all events, I don't think it is healthy for either you or I to indulge in such things. Let us live as two healthy people, my darling, as we have plenty of work to do in this world before we leave it. You agree, don't you?" "Of course I do. I should agree if you proposed to cut off my head." "I prefer to leave it on your shoulders," laughed Basil, and slyly stole a kiss, for they were standing in the shadow. "Look at old Sims, how amazed he is at those Japanese dresses!" They pressed forward to look. Some of the sailors were arrayed as samurai in antique armour of the Middle Ages of Japan, and were fighting with huge swords. All round flashed the many-coloured lights, and the little group of Devonshire folk sat and stood in their homely dresses, looking delightedly at the fairyland which had been brought before their astonished eyes. The dresses, the music, the unusual food, and the brown faces of the foreign sailors, fascinated them greatly. And, indeed, the spectacle was as pleasant to Basil and Patricia as to them, in spite of the fact that they knew more of the world beyond Beckleigh. As to Mara, she was flushed with enjoyment and so deeply interested in the brilliant spectacle before her that she did not notice the absence of her husband. But he had slipped away silently, and was standing at the stern of the yacht, speaking softly to an Englishman. The light of a near lantern would have shown anyone who knew him that the man was Harry Pentreddle, and he was just getting ready to lower himself by a rope into a rowing boat, which was fastened alongside. "You can get ashore in that," whispered Akira softly; "and, later, I shall send the launch to fetch you." "I can row back again," protested Pentreddle. "You won't be able to get away quick enough," said Akira mysteriously. "Away from what?" "Never mind. Do what I told you to do, and bring me what I told you to bring me. Obey my instructions implicitly, or there may be danger." "But I don't understand, sir." "You understand enough for my purpose," broke in the Japanese smooth voice; "and you know why I ask you to go ashore to the Hall to-night." "Yes, I know," said Harry grimly, and spat on his hands as he prepared to grasp the rope. "You needn't go unless you like. I can go myself. Well?" For answer Pentreddle clambered over the taffrail and swung himself by the rope into the small craft below. As he took the oars, Akira's voice was heard again even softer than before as he leaned over the side. "The launch will be waiting for you at the pier when you come out," he said. "Lose no time." The boat shot away into the gloom, while Harry Pentreddle wondered why the little man was so insistent about his getting away quickly from the Hall, after what had to be done was accomplished. However, the sailor being aware of certain facts, was prepared to obey implicitly, and rowed hard to reach the land. There was no time to be lost, as the entertainment would not last for ever, and it was necessary that Harry should come back to _The Miko_ before those on board returned to Beckleigh Hall. It was a calm night, but cloudy and threatening. The rain of the last few weeks had stopped, and fine weather prevailed. But no stars were visible, and the moon was veiled heavily. As Pentreddle beached his boat near the pier, and dug her anchor into the damp sand, he felt a breath of wind, and looked into the semi-gloom to see that already white crests were forming on the waves. Afar off, _The Miko_ looked like a fairy ship with her coloured lights glittering against the darkness. The wind was distinctly rising, as Pentreddle felt when he passed up the path to the Hall, and on glancing overhead he noted that the clouds were beginning to move. Already a few stars were revealed, and there was an occasional glimpse of a haggard moon lying on her back. "It's going to be a nasty night," said the sailor. "Bad for those folk on board that yacht. They'll be sea-sick." He chuckled, although he felt far from merry. The errand he was on was too serious to be treated lightly, and he was even nervous as to what would be the outcome of the same. But he strode on resolutely, nevertheless, and was soon standing at the front door of the Hall. The building was in darkness save for one window on the second storey near the angle of the wall. Pentreddle, acquainted with the building ever since he could walk, knew very well that this was one of the windows of the Squire's bedroom; on the other side of the wall there were two more. For a moment Pentreddle looked up at the light and noted that the tough arms of the ancient ivy grew up to the very sill of the window, and afforded a ladder to anyone who wished to descend in that way. He smiled grimly when he recalled this fact, which might be useful, and then opened the door. It had not been locked, as there were no robbers at Beckleigh, and bolts and bars were not attended to very particularly. The hall should have had the central lamp lighted, but Pentreddle found the place entirely dark. He did not mind this, as he knew every inch of the way up to Squire Colpster's bedroom. There he would find the old gentleman, and he presumed that Mr. Dane--who had refused to come to the entertainment on _The Miko_--would be in his rooms at the back of the house. He walked softly up the stairs, as he did not wish to arouse Theodore, for reasons which he intended to impart to the old Squire. Feeling his way in the darkness along the walls, and wishing that he had brought a lantern, Pentreddle gained the second storey and walked along the corridor towards the line of light which shone from under the bedroom door. On arriving immediately outside, he paused for a moment to listen. A sound of struggling struck his ear, and he became aware with a thrill that there was a fight going on between uncle and nephew. Considering Colpster's age this was unfair, so Pentreddle dashed open the door and shot into the room intent upon taking side with the weaker party. "What's all this?" he shouted. "Help, Harry, help! He's strangling me!" gasped Colpster, recognizing the voice. "Oh! help me! Help!" Pentreddle did not waste any time in words. He darted forward, and gripping the shoulders of Theodore, who was holding his uncle down on the floor, he spun him to one side. The Squire, struggling to his feet, clawed at the sofa to rise, on seeing which Dane, who was crazy with rage, tried to slip past the sailor and tackle the old man again. "Ah! would you?" cried Harry, who hated Theodore fervently, as, indeed, everyone did. "I'll show you," and in a moment his sinewy arms were round the big man and they wrestled desperately. Theodore was ghastly white and his blue eyes blazed with unholy fire, as between closed teeth he cursed his antagonist. Huge as he was, the man had only that strength which comes with furious anger. He was flabby, and not at all muscular, since he never exercised himself in any way. Half on the floor and half on the pillows of the sofa, Colpster watched the fight with breathless interest, grasping in his hands a large envelope. The two men swayed and swung round the apartment, and Theodore fought like a tiger. But the wiry sailor was too much for him, and gradually Dane was forced to the floor where he lay struggling and kicking, with Pentreddle kneeling on his big chest. Harry hailed the half-fainting old man. "Pull down that curtain cord near you, Squire, and throw it over," he panted. Dane gurgled and tried to curse, but could not, as Pentreddle's brown hands gripped his fat throat. Colpster struggled across to the window and took with feeble hands the silken rope which draped the curtains on one side at no great height from the floor. He crawled back with it to Harry, who at once proceeded to bind Theodore's arms behind his back, and rolled him over for this purpose. Dane was so sick and breathless with the struggle and in such a bad condition for holding his own, that he had to submit. "Now the other rope, Squire," commanded Harry, but seeing that the old man's strength had given out, he darted across himself to the window and speedily brought back what he required. In a few minutes Theodore, trussed like a fowl, was lying on the floor, face uppermost, and regained his breath sufficiently to curse. "I'll have you arrested for this, Pentreddle," he said viciously. Harry deigned no reply, as he had to attend to Colpster. On a small table near the bed was a decanter of port, with some glasses and a dish of biscuits. The sailor poured out a glass of the generous vintage, and held it to the Squire's lips. He drank it eagerly and demanded more. A second glass brought the colour back into his wan cheeks, and the light of life into his sunken eyes. Shortly he was able to sit up on the sofa and Harry arranged the pillows at his back. But all the time Colpster held on to the large envelope. Also, he fished about feebly under the pillow and brought out the Mikado Jewel. "Thank heaven!" panted the old man feebly; "he has got neither." "I'll get them yet, you old beast," growled Theodore, trying to break his bonds, but vainly. "I'll have that will and burn it. I'll get the emerald and sell it. Curse you! And you too, Pentreddle! What the devil do you mean binding me in this way?" "I'll explain that to you later, sir," retorted Pentreddle, wiping his brow, and taking a glass of port himself. "With your permission, Squire," he said in a polite tone when he drank it. "You arrived just in time," said the Squire, in stronger tones. "That wicked wretch would have killed me." "Why?" asked Pentreddle quickly. "He came up here and insisted that I should destroy the will I made in favour of his brother and Miss Carrol. Here it is," and Colpster passed along the large envelope. "Take it, Harry, and give it to Basil when he returns. It is not safe here." "Shall I take the emerald?" asked Harry, putting the envelope containing the will in the breast-pocket of his pea-jacket. Colpster snatched the gem to his breast and nursed it there like a baby. "No! no! no!" he cried vehemently. "I can't part with that. I'll die before anyone shall have it but me. Give me more wine." Still clutching the jewel he drank another glass of port, and became quite strong again with the stimulant. Meanwhile Theodore lay stiffly on the carpet, cursing volubly. Harry kicked him. "Shut your mouth," said the sailor, "or I'll gag you." "I'll have you arrested for this," repeated Theodore, impotently scowling. "That's all right," said Pentreddle, and drawing a chair near the sofa he turned to the Squire. "Now, sir, we must have a talk." "What's the matter?" asked Colpster in some alarm. "Where have you been to, and where have you come from?" "I'll tell you, sir, if you'll listen. On the night I left here that Japanese Akira followed me up the road, when I was making for my friend and the trap on the moors." "Ah!" Theodore groaned. "That was why he went to bed early. I knew that he was up to some game. He pretended to go to bed and--" "And followed me. Quite right, sir. He did, and he told me all about the murder of my poor mother." "What?" Colpster gasped. "Are you the person Akira said he would send to tell me all that I wished to know?" Pentreddle nodded grimly. "I am the person. I went to London next day with Count Akira, and he introduced me to a person who knew all about the murder. I got it written down, signed and witnessed in a proper manner. Then I came here with the Count in his yacht, and arrived just in time to save that devil," he pointed to Theodore, "from committing a second crime." "A second crime," echoed the Squire, bewildered. "I don't understand." "It's a lie; a lie," howled Theodore, straining at his bonds. "If I were free I'd dash the lie down your throat." "And my teeth too, you murdering beast," said Harry, clenching his hands. "I owe you one for the murder of my mother." Colpster sprang to his feet with surprising alacrity, considering his late exhaustion. "Murder! Did--did--did," he pointed a shaking finger at the mass on the floor, "did he murder Martha?" "Yes," said Harry sadly. "It's a lie; a lie!" muttered Theodore again and again, struggling fiercely. "It's the truth. Sit down, Mr. Colpster, and I'll tell you all about it. I have the document of an eye-witness signed and witnessed here," he touched his breast-pocket. "An eye-witness?" said Colpster, resuming his seat heavily. "Yes. That priest with the scar on his cheek I told you about, who saw me watching The Home of Art." "He did it himself, you fool," roared Theodore, defending his lost cause. "So I thought, and I was going out to Japan to kill him. But I know that you were with my mother on that night, for the priest saw you enter the house by the window. You tapped there, and my mother let you in. The priest was watching the house, as he fancied the emerald might be there. He got on to the balcony and peeped through the window. He saw you struggle with my mother, you brute, and stab her. Then you left the room and hunted the house for the emerald. When you came out the priest, thinking you might have it, waited at the gate and tried to seize you. You escaped and he lost you in the fog. But he retained hold of the white silk scarf you wore round your throat. It is here." Pentreddle took a folded square of silk from his pocket and shook it out. "Your name is in the corner, your name in full, hang you! Look, Squire! look!" And Harry, his hands shaking with emotion, pointed out the name "Theodore Dane" marked on the silk, with blue thread. "You see, sir. He is guilty." "Oh!" the Squire groaned, as he saw the evidence of his nephew's wickedness, and he laid the emerald on the table so that he could the more easily cover his face with his hands "It's terrible--terrible. That one of my blood should be an assassin! That one of my blood should be hanged!" "Oh, he won't be hanged!" said Harry, refolding the silk scarf and replacing it in his pocket. "I am going to leave him to Akira." "What--what do you mean?" quavered Theodore, with sudden terror. The young sailor walked over to him and looked into his face. "Akira told me that he would attend to your punishment. What he means I don't know. But what I _do_ know is that these Japanese can make things very unpleasant for you. I have heard of their ingenuity in torturing." "Torturing!" Theodore shrieked. "Yes. Hanging's too good for you, beast that you are." "Oh, Harry, don't--don't let Akira get hold of me!" screamed Dane, all his nerve broken down. "The law won't let him; the law won't let him!" "He won't trouble about the law. He will send sailors ashore this very night and have you taken on board his yacht. When you are on the high seas he'll deal with you." "No! no!" Theodore tried to kiss the man's foot and rolled over to do so. Harry spurned him. "You worse than devil, try and be a man. You murdered a poor, weak woman and now you're frightened of your skin. Beast!" Outside the wind had risen to wild fury. The whole house was shaken by the gusts which came howling from the bay. Harry strode to the window and looked out. He saw by the swaying of the festival lights that _The Miko_ was dragging at her moorings. There was no time to be lost, if he wanted to carry out his promise to the Count. Colpster was lying limply on the sofa, while Theodore moaned and groaned on the floor. On the small table beside the sofa gleamed the emerald which had brought about all the trouble. "Let me be arrested and hanged. I don't want to be tortured," wailed the man on the floor. "Did you kill my mother?" "Give me some wine and I'll tell you." "I shan't," said Harry; then thought better of it, and poured a glass of port down his enemy's throat. "Now tell!" "I really didn't mean to kill her," said Theodore, and Colpster raised his head to listen. "I followed Martha up to London, intending when she got the Mikado Jewel to make her give it to me." "Why?" asked the Squire, looking very old and grey. "Because you said that the one who produced the jewel would be your heir, curse you!" shrieked Theodore savagely; "You are the cause of all the beastly trouble. I learned from Martha in an indirect way that Harry was coming, and then I met him." "Yes," said the sailor bitterly. "And like a fool I told you too much." "You told me nothing," said Dane, scowling. "Your mother wanted the emerald for Basil. But I got into your room at the boarding-house you lived in at Pimlico, and I read your mother's letters." "You did." "Yes. She said that she would be alone on that night and would come to get the emerald. I went to the house to see if she had left. I knocked at the door, but no one came, so I went to the window and saw her lying on the sofa near the fire. I called out to her, and asked her to let me in." "She couldn't get off the sofa, you fool!" cried the Squire. "She could and she did. I said that I had found out that Harry had been killed by the Japanese for the sake of the emerald. Then she crawled to the window and let me in." "You beast!" said Pentreddle, gritting his teeth. "You told a lie." "Martha would not have admitted me if I had not done so. She got me into the room, and then I insisted that she should give the emerald." "She hadn't got it." "She wouldn't confess that she hadn't. Perhaps she feared lest I should intercept her messenger, Miss Carrol, on the way home, and rob her of the jewel. At all events, she gave me to understand nothing, and I really believed that the emerald was in her pocket. I tried to get it; then she brought out that damned stiletto and stabbed at me. I wrested it from her and in the struggle somehow I drove it into her throat." "You intended to!" shouted the Squire, rising to shake his two clenched hands over the criminal. "I swear I did not," panted Dane; "it was really an accident. When I saw what I had done I grew afraid. I thought that I heard someone outside----" "So you did," interrupted Harry sharply; "It was the watching priest." "If I'd known," Theodore scowled, and his eyes gleamed in a most murderous manner. "But I didn't. I saw that Martha was dead or dying, and opened the window to throw the stiletto into the area. Then I searched her clothing for the emerald and afterwards the bedrooms." "Oh! And you say you did not murder her?" raged the Squire. "Not intentionally. I swear that I did not. But seeing that she was dead, it was just as well to hunt for what I wanted. I found nothing, so I came down and got out by the window. Just outside the gate someone--that infernal priest as I now know--snatched at my shoulder and grabbed my scarf. I slipped him in the fog and--and--that's all." "Quite enough too. You shall hang," cried the Squire. "No," said Pentreddle, rising and making for the window, "he shan't hang." He threw up the window and the fierce gale came howling into the room. "I shall call up Akira's sailors," shouted the young man. "Don't; don't!" screamed Dane. "They'll torture me." "Serve you right," said his uncle fiercely. "You have brought shame and disgrace upon the family." "Mr. Colpster," the Squire turned as he heard his name mentioned and saw that Harry had picked up the Mikado Jewel, "I take this back to Akira." "You shan't! you shan't! It's mine!" and the old man dashed forward with outstretched hands while the wind drove wildly into the rooms. A roar of laughter came from the bound man on the floor. "Ha! ha! ha!" he screamed. "Uncle, you're done for! you're done for! Ha! ha! ha!" "Give! give! give!" whimpered Colpster, trying to seize Pentreddle. "It is mine! it is mine!" "It belongs to the Temple of Kitzuki," said Harry, backing towards the window. "I stole it and now I am going to return it. I promised to do so, if Akira told me who murdered my mother. Keep back, sir! keep back!" Theodore roared with laughter and twisted himself round to see what would happen. Colpster, his eyes filled with mad anger, dashed at Pentreddle, who evaded him dexterously, and before the Squire knew his intention, slipped like an eel out of the window. Harry clambered down the ivy with the cleverness of a sailor and saw above him the wild despairing face of the Squire, while he heard the loud ironical laughter of the bound man. The rain was coming down in torrents dashed here and there by the wind. The sailor slipped and fell on his back, but was up again in a moment and made for the beach. He heard high above the sound of wind and wave the thin lamentations of Colpster, who saw the luck of his family being carried away for ever. Pentreddle raced for the beach through the furious weather. There he shouted as he stumbled towards the pier, and immediately two Japanese took him by the shoulders to tumble him bodily into the launch. They seemed to be in a desperate hurry, for scarcely had he got his breath when he found that the launch was plunging at full speed through the turbulent water. "What the devil is the hurry!" gasped Harry, shaking the water from his eyes. The answer did not come from the Japanese, who were driving the boat out to sea at high pressure but from the land. There was a low, moaning sound, which boomed like an organ note above the tumult of the elements. It grew louder and more insistent, and droned like a giant bee. The mere sound was terrifying, and Harry saw the bronze faces of the sailors blanch with fear. Suddenly the note grew shrill, like a cry of triumph, and then came a loud crash, which seemed to shake the earth. Far and wide he could hear, even through the tempest, the splashing of great fragments into the sea, and the crumbling of mighty masses on the land. Then came a stillness and the wind dropped gradually to low whimperings. "The cliff has fallen," said the Japanese officer; "it is the Earth Spirit." "This," said Harry, his face grey with terror, and showed the Mikado Jewel flashing in the light of the lamps. The sailors fell on their faces before its sinister glare. Only the officer, unable to desert his post, although his face was ghastly white and his limbs shook, continued to steer the launch seaward. CHAPTER XX A FURTHER EXPLANATION The morning dawned raw and bleak, to display the scene of the disaster in its most searching light. None of those who had come to the entertainment were allowed to go on shore during the hours of darkness. Basil, indeed, as soon as Akira informed him of the catastrophe--and Akira seemed to know positively what had taken place, even before the arrival of the steam-launch with the news--wished to see what had become of his uncle and brother. But the Japanese pointed out that fragments of the cliff were still falling, and that it would be dangerous to venture. As every hour or so the thunder of falling masses was heard, Dane considered that the advice was good, and possessed his soul in patience until the dawn. Frequently during the night he lamented that he had not the searchlight of his own ship to see what extent of damage was done. But, of course, such wishing was altogether vain. As _The Miko_ was large, there was plenty of accommodation, and the servants were persuaded to go below and sleep. The women were very hysterical, and the men greatly upset. Everyone was devoted to the Squire, and hoped against hope that he had been saved. But it was noticeable that no one troubled about Theodore. Until that night Basil had no idea how very unpopular his brother really was. But he had not much time to think, as the greater part of his time was spent in soothing Patricia. She felt the dreadful accident and its consequences much more than did Mara. That young lady neither wept nor expressed any great sorrow. With a rigid face she stared into the gloom which veiled the home of her childhood, and made scarcely any remark. Akira, when Harry came on board, privately asked him if he thought that either Colpster or his nephew had escaped. "I'm certain they have not," said Pentreddle emphatically. "Mr. Theodore was tied up, and the last I saw of the Squire he was at the window cursing me for taking away the Mikado Jewel." "Ah, yes! You brought that away with you!" Akira held out his hand. Harry produced the Jewel, which he had thrust carelessly into his pocket after his glimpse of it on the launch. "They all fell on their faces," he told the Japanese. Akira smiled in a peculiar manner. "No wonder, when they saw the might of the Earth-Spirit." "What do you mean exactly, sir?" asked the sailor, quite puzzled. The Count handled the Jewel reverently, and producing a sandal-wood box, carefully wrapped up the emerald and its jade setting in fine silk before placing it therein. "I mean that this jewel holds the power of the Earth-Spirit, and pulled down the cliff on those who had to be punished," was his remark, as he locked the box and put it away safely. "Is this the punishment you intended for Mr. Theodore for murdering my mother?" asked Pentreddle, with a faltering voice. "Yes. Are you not satisfied?" "I thought you would have taken him on board and tortured him." Akira drew himself to his full height, which was not very great. Still in his indignation he contrived to look quite imperial. "I am a Japanese gentleman and do not torture anyone. I knew that the cliff would fall as soon as you left the house, and that those behind would be crushed." "But how could you make the cliff fall?" persisted Harry. "The Earth-Spirit brought the fall about through its power stored in the Jewel of Go Yojo. Do you understand?" "No," said the bluff sailor, frankly bewildered. "Well, then, I can explain no more. You must take it that there was an accident owing to the late rains. The earth fell for that reason. But you are revenged on your enemy. Now tell me all that took place." Harry did not require much urging, and related everything. Akira listened in silence. "Hai!" said he, when the tale was ended. "This poor wretch was ready to commit a second murder. So much evil we have saved him. Have you the will he spoke of?" "Yes." Pentreddle produced it from his pocket, but Akira did not offer to take it. In fact, he refused to touch it. "Give it to Mr. Dane as you have been instructed. I am glad to hear that he will inherit the property. I have a great opinion of Mr. Dane and a better one of the charming young lady he is going to marry." "I'll give it to him," said Pentreddle; "and now, sir, what is to become of me, if you please?" "Well," said Akira quietly, "as you have restored the emerald, you are no longer in danger. I give you your life. Also, and because you obeyed my instructions so implicitly, you can have these," and he produced ten notes of ten pounds each. "One hundred pounds, my friend." "I couldn't touch them, sir. It would look as though I wanted to take money for avenging my poor mother's death." "That is very creditable to you, Pentreddle, but I don't think you need decline. You have been useful to me and deserve payment." Thus persuaded, Harry gladly took the notes, but as he placed them in his pocket he observed gloomily that he thought Theodore Dane had died in too easy a manner. Akira shook his head and rebuked him. "My friend, that Mr. Dane broke the Great Law, and when next he is born he will have to pay back to your mother all he owes her. By wishing to torture him, as you suggested to me, you are only preparing trouble for yourself. He has been partly punished. Leave him, as to the rest, to the Great Law." "What is the Great Law?" "As you sow, so shall you reap," said Akira quietly. "I have heard that before, sir." "It is in your sacred Book, my friend; but few of your people in the West understand its real meaning. They think that the Master who said it takes the reaping on His own shoulders, while they sit in happiness and see it done." Akira shrugged his shoulders. "A great many of these foolish ones will be undeceived when their Karma is ripe." "Karma?" The Count arose and shook his head. "We must not talk on these subjects, as I am no priest," he said with a smile; "all I tell you is, that you must obey the Great Law, or suffer according to your breaking of it. Now go and give the will to Mr. Dane." Pentreddle did so, and when questioned as to how it came into his possession, related all that he knew, and how he had brought back the will to its rightful owner. Patricia was present when he explained, and both she and her lover were horrified to hear that Theodore had murdered the poor woman. They questioned and cross-questioned him until he was weary and excused himself so that he might get a little sleep. But there was none for the young couple. "If Theodore is indeed dead, it is a mercy," said Basil thankfully. "Oh, dearest! dead in his sin?" "Oh!" said the young man rather cynically; "if one had to wait until Theodore, from what I knew of him, was fit to die, he would have become immortal. No, darling," he added quickly, catching sight of Patricia's pained face, "I don't mean to be flippant. God have mercy on his soul! I say, with all my heart. But he was a thoroughly bad man." "Well, he is dead, so let us think no more about him." So they said and so they felt, but throughout that weary night they continued to talk of the scamp. Also they referred regretfully to the death of the Squire, and Patricia wept for the old man who had been so kind to her. In the end, grief and anxiety wore her out, and she fell asleep on Basil's breast. They sat in a sheltered corner of the deck, for Miss Carrol refused to be parted from her lover. In the grey, grim light they finally saw the ruin which had been wrought by the fall of the mighty cliff. There were vast rents in its breast, and it was by no means so high as it had been. Below was a tumbled mass of red rock, beneath which, not only the Hall but the greater part of the grounds were buried. That which had been Beckleigh was now a thing of the past, for in no way could that enormous quantity of rubble and rock, and sand and stone, be lifted. The whole formed a gigantic tumulus, such as of yore had been heaped over the body of some barbarous chief. Squire Colpster and his wicked nephew certainly had a magnificent monument to mark the place where they reposed. Amidst all that fallen rock it was impossible to rebuild the Hall, or to reconstruct the grounds. "We have the income," said Basil, while he stood on deck with his arm round Patricia's waist, looking at the ruin, "but our home is gone for ever." Patricia shuddered. "I am sorry, of course, for it is such a lovely place." "_Was_ such a lovely place, my dear." "Yes! Yes! But I always felt afraid when in the Hall. I felt certain that some day the cliff would fall. It always seemed hostile to me." "It was only hostile to two people," said the quiet voice of Akira behind them: "the man who murdered for the sake of the emerald, and the man who set in motion the causes which brought the emerald to Beckleigh. Both have paid for their sins." "Whatever do you mean, Count?" "I shall tell you and Dane when we go ashore," said the Japanese calmly; "in the meantime come down and have some breakfast. You look faint, Miss Carrol, and it is time that you restored your strength. Go down and see my wife, and she will look after you." When Patricia descended the companion, Akira turned to Basil. "Excuse me, Dane," he said courteously, "but this fall of the cliff has robbed you of your home. You will want money. Allow me to be your banker." "Thank you; but there is really no need," said Basil hastily. "I have five or six pounds in my pocket: enough to take myself and Miss Carrol to London. Once we are there, I shall see my uncle's lawyers about the will, and get them to advance what I require." "But all these servants who are homeless?" "They can go to their various relatives and friends. I shall get the lawyers to send money for them. Don't be afraid, Akira, I shan't neglect my people. For they are mine now, you know. Unless----" he cast a hopeful glance at the scarred face of the cliff. "No. Both the Squire and your brother are dead. They will lie under that mighty pile of earth to the end of time, unless some high tide washes it away. Of course, I mean their sheaths will. Their souls are now reaping according to the sowing. Come to breakfast." Basil descended, and with Patricia and the bridal couple had an excellent breakfast, which was much needed. It was useless to sorrow for the dead to the extent of starving for them, for Basil had seen very little of his uncle for many years, and certainly had no cause to mourn for Theodore. As for Mara, she was as cool and composed as ever, and ate so well that no one would ever have believed that she had just lost her father. "It is no use crying over spilt milk," she said, making use of her favourite proverb; and although both her cousin and Patricia considered that she was decidedly heartless, they could not deny the good sense of the saying she invariably quoted as an excuse for her indifference. But she was not sufficiently hard-hearted to remain behind--although her feeling may have been merely one of curiosity--for she came on deck cloaked and gloved, and with her hat on, ready to join the party. Akira promptly told her that he did not wish her to go, and as his slightest wish was law to her, she obeyed. The yacht was to sail somewhere about noon, so there would be no chance for Basil and Patricia to come on board again. Nor did they want to, seeing that at present they had so much to think about. So they said good-bye to the Countess Akira and departed along with the melancholy household that had now no home. The launch took them ashore under what seemed an ironically sunny and blue sky. After the late rains and storms, it was cheerful to see the water of the bay sparkle in the sunlight. But, alas! Beckleigh was as ruined as ever was Pompeii, and in future the fairy bay would only be stretched out before a desolate scene. Patricia almost wept when she saw the ruin of the beauty spot. Not a vestige of the house was to be seen: it was crushed flat under tons of red earth, while nearly down to the water's edge great sandstone rocks and much rubble had smashed the trees and obliterated the flower-beds. And over the gigantic heaps of _débris_, the mighty cliff still soared, rent and scarred, although not to its original height. Early as the day was, many people, both men and women, were moving amongst the rubbish, seeing what they could pick up. But there was absolutely nothing to be found. The enormous fall of tons and tons of earth had pulverized Beckleigh into dust. It was like the ruins of a pre-historic world. Many people came down when they saw the approaching launch, amongst them relatives of the servants, together with friends. These took charge of the homeless wanderers, and gradually the whole household disappeared up the winding road to find shelter. Before they departed Basil informed them that within a week he would return to Hendle and attend to their needs, as he had inherited the property. Although the young man was a favourite, the dispossessed were too miserable to raise a cheer, and departed with sad faces and hanging heads. Their world was in ruins, and save what they stood up in, all were without money or home. But the promise made by their new master that he would look after them cheered them not a little. Akira, after he had walked round the desolation with Basil and Patricia, asked them to return to the pier. Here, he had seats brought up from the launch, and they sat down to hear what he had to say. His first speech rather surprised them, used as they were becoming to the happening of the unexpected. "I am sorry that all this has occurred," he said seriously, waving his hand towards the ruins; "but I had to bring it about." They looked at one another and then at the speaker, believing, and with some reason, that he was crazy. "How could you possibly bring it about?" asked Mr. Dane in a sceptical tone. "The Mikado Jewel brought it about." "Oh!" Patricia winced; "are you going to talk more of this occult nonsense?" "Can you call it nonsense in the face of this, Miss Carrol?" "That is an accident owing to the late rains." "Quite so, and that is what the world will consider it. But I can tell you differently. It happened because the Mikado Jewel was in the house." "It was not!" said Basil imperatively, and would have gone on talking, but that Patricia stopped him. "It _was_ in the house," she said quickly, "only Mr. Colpster--poor man!--asked Theodore and myself to say nothing about it." Basil cast a glance at the red heaps. "Then it is buried under this rubbish," he said disdainfully; "for all its occult power, it couldn't look after itself! "I looked after it," said Akira quietly. "It is now on board the yacht, and I am taking it back to Japan to restore it to the Temple of Kitzuki." "How did you get it, Akira?" "Pentreddle, by my desire, took it from the Squire when he went last night to accuse Theodore, your brother, of murder." "He did not tell me that," said Basil involuntarily. "I asked him not to, as I wished to tell you myself. I am sorry to bore you with occult talk, Miss Carrol, but I think you would like to understand the reason for the Jewel being at Beckleigh at all." "You sent it to Mr. Colpster?" "Yes, I did. To punish him for daring to have it stolen from Kitzuki." "But he didn't wish it stolen. He was angry that Harry should steal it." Akira waved his hand. "Mr. Colpster was the original cause of setting in motion the causes which led to Mrs. Pentreddle's death, to his own death, and to that of his nephew. He believed that the Jewel would bring back luck. Instead of that, it brought that," and he pointed to the ruins. Basil looked helplessly at the speaker. "My dear fellow, I am quite in the dark as to what you are talking about." "Listen, and I shall explain. Something of what I tell you has been told to you before, but something I now tell you is new." He drew a long breath and continued: "I don't expect you to believe all I say." "We'll try," said Basil ironically. "Go on!" "Mr. Colpster wished for the Mikado Jewel," said Akira deliberately, "and so he employed you, Dane, to offer money for it. Mrs. Pentreddle heard from her late master that he intended to give the property to the nephew who brought back the Jewel. She hated Theodore, and loved you, so, as her son was going to Japan, she asked him to get the Jewel. In a way which he told Mr. Colpster, but which I need not repeat, he stole it, and got away with it. But he was followed and watched. The priests of the temple told the Government at Tokio, and I was deputed to see if the Jewel could be recovered. I went to Kitzuki and saved your life when you came to offer money for the gem." "And thank you for doing it, Akira," said Basil heartily. "All right. I was only too pleased, since the information you gave me about the emerald having been presented to one of your queens, helped me to unravel the mystery. Several attempts were made to get the gem from Pentreddle while he was in Japan, but all failed. I therefore sent two men to watch for the arrival of his ship in London and followed myself. I knew that I had made you my friend, and intended to come to Beckleigh, if it was necessary. When I arrived in London I found that Pentreddle was trying to give the Jewel to his mother, and learned--through his hanging round the house--that the old lady was staying at The Home of Art, in Crook Street." "And you had that watched, I suppose?" "Of course," replied Akira serenely. "A man with a scar on his cheek, who was an attendant in the Temple of Kitzuki, watched that house. Then I learned where Pentreddle was boarding in Pimlico, and my second man gained access to his room. His letters, which he left about, were read, and I learned that his mother intended to meet him at the Serpentine in the way we know of. I followed him when he went to keep the appointment." "What?" cried Patricia. "Was it you, Count, who snatched the jewel from me?" "Yes. I noticed that Pentreddle passed you the box, and followed you. I fancied you would take the box home, but you sat down to examine it." "It was the strange drawing-power which made me open the box. I wanted to see what caused the power." "I fear," answered Akira, rather ironically, "that your curiosity was not gratified. However, as the power still radiated from the stone, keeping off all things that would hurt it, I reversed the power, or rather, stopped it altogether." "How did you manage that?" asked Basil doubtfully. Akira shook his head. "I cannot tell you. I dare not. It is a secret. And even if I did, you would only laugh, since you do not believe in these sort of things. I knew the necessary mantra to say and said it." He looked at Patricia with a smile. "You felt the difference." "Yes," she nodded, with a look of something like awe. "Then you snatched it." "Of course, and the jewel being recovered, I would then and there have taken it back to Japan, but for the murder of Mrs. Pentreddle." "Theodore _did_ murder her, then?" said Basil in a low, shamed voice. "Oh, yes, and in the way her son told you. My man with the scar saw the crime committed, and secured the scarf, as evidence, with the name of your brother marked in the corner." "Bad as Theodore was," said Basil, drawing a deep breath, "I am glad that you did not shame the family by denouncing him." Akira smiled at him in a friendly way. "Of course, you are my friend," he observed. "Also, I wished to find young Pentreddle. I came down to Beckleigh, as you know, and left instructions to my two men to send down the Jewel to Mr. Colpster. But before leaving London I reversed the power." "But I don't see----" "I do not expect you to see, my dear man," interrupted Akira quickly; "but the jewel arrived with the power reversed." "Yes," Patricia nodded again. "I felt it," and she shivered. "Well, then," Akira glanced at his watch, "there is little more to tell. I simply waited while the Jewel did its work of loosening the cliff. All the time it was in the house it was drawing those tons of earth down on the place. I heard in the drawing-room that night that Mr. Colpster was going to speak to Pentreddle, and pretended to go to bed. Instead of doing so, I got out of the window and intercepted him on the winding road. I then told him that I could prove who killed his mother, and sent him to wait for my arrival in London. He went the next morning. I came on later, and then I made my man with the scar tell him everything. Pentreddle left me with a full statement, signed by my man and witnessed. As your brother is dead and it is useless to make a scandal," said Akira, glancing at Basil, "I got that document from him last night and burned it." Dane leaned forward and shook the hand of the Japanese. "I am greatly obliged to you," he said with emotion. "Why," said Akira, in a friendly manner, "there is no reason that you should suffer for the sins of others. That would not be fair. Besides, I wish you to give Miss Carrol a clean name. Now, then, do you wish to know any more, as I must up anchor and steam for the East?" "How many people know that my brother committed this murder?" "I do and my two men. As we are going away for ever and will hold our tongues, you need not fear us. Harry Pentreddle will say nothing, as he respects you and Miss Carrol too much. Besides, I gave him one hundred pounds to get married on, so when he is happy himself he will not wish to make others unhappy. The Squire was the only other person who knew, and he is dead. Your name is quite safe." "Thank God for that!" said Basil reverently, and took off his hat. "One question more," said Patricia, rising. "What did you mean when you told me that you now knew why you had come to Beckleigh?" "It was because of Mara," explained Akira gravely. "She was formerly a priestess in the Temple of Kitzuki, and for some reason the Spirit of the Earth, whose spell was on the emerald, wished to bring her to my arms. We had promised to love for seven lives, you know. For this reason the theft of the Mikado Jewel was permitted. But for that, Pentreddle would have been kept back by the radiating power. Even I, with no ill-intent, had to reverse, or rather break, the power, before I could take the gem from you. But, then, I know the spell." "And what is the power contained in the stone now?" Akira hesitated. "I told you that the Jewel was left on board," he said, "but that was not true. I brought it with me." He produced the box from his pocket and took from it the Jewel. The great stone blazed with green lustre in the sunlight. "Take it in your hands, Miss Carrol." Patricia did so, while Basil looked at the gem curiously. He had never seen it before. Suddenly Patricia cried out with delight. "Oh, yes, I feel the warmth and the light, and the power streaming out from every petal." "Imagination," said Basil impatiently, and took the stone. "I can feel nothing of what you describe." The Count carefully replaced the Jewel in its box. "You are not psychic." "I never wish to hear that word again," said Basil fervently. "I don't think you will," replied Akira dryly, and slipped the box into his pocket. "Well, now I shall say good-bye, and from Japan I shall send you my wedding-present." "Be kind to Mara," said Patricia imploringly. "Be sure of that. She is a sacred thing to me. Was she not the Miko of Kitzuki, and did not the Earth-Spirit bring her to my arms?" He changed his reverent tone for a matter-of-fact one. "Good-bye, Dane!" Akira held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back. "There is one thing I should like to add, so that you may guess that I am not in favour of killing innocent people. I gave my entertainment so as to lure you, Dane, and you, Miss Carrol, together with all your servants, on board the yacht out of harm's way. Therefore Mr. Colpster and the assassin were left to their fate alone in the house." "But Pentreddle?" asked Basil, shuddering. Akira looked towards the winding road up which Harry was slowly climbing. "I had to send him to get the Jewel," he remarked, "but I warned him of the danger and he escaped. Now that is all I have to tell," he added quickly, seeing that Patricia was about to ask another question. "Good-bye, both of you, once more." They shook hands gravely all round, then Akira jumped into his launch and it steamed away in a great hurry, as usual. Basil and Patricia set their faces landward and picked their way over the loose rocks. In a short time, and walking above the grave of uncle and cousin, they gained the clear space of the winding road. Here they came face to face with Mrs. Lee, who was toiling down all alone. "Ah!" she said, with a chuckle. "So it's you, Mr. Basil." The old creature nodded. "I told him he would be crushed as flat as a pancake if he allowed It to come into the house. He did, like a silly fool, and now he is buried under all that rubbish." She pointed her staff disdainfully downwards. "Who did you tell this to, Granny?" asked Basil, who knew her well. "To your brother Theodore. Bless you, deary, he often came to consult me. I didn't like him, though, as he brought such bad Ones with him." "What is the It you meant?" questioned Patricia, wondering if Mrs. Lee had any knowledge of the fatal Jewel. It appeared that she had not. "Ah, lovey! They didn't tell me that. All I knew and all I told him was that It would crush him as flat as a pancake." She looked at the tumbled red earth and chuckled maliciously. "And it has, deary; it has. A grave for an emperor that is." "I don't believe these things, Granny," said Basil, placing Patricia's arm within his own. "Here's a shilling." "Bless you, deary; may you never want bread," croaked the old crone, biting the shilling before tying it up in a corner of her apron. Then she faced them and waved a circle thrice, which she crossed once. "The sign of power to bring you luck, my dears," she explained, wagging her head. "But, bless you both, you ain't wicked to the marrow as he was, drat him! I can see your future bright and fair." Her eyes became fixed as she spoke, and she looked into the viewless air. "You'll both be happy all your lives, for sorrow is ended and the debts of Fate are paid. Money and children and rank and lots of good, staunch friends. All that you desire will come to you and the poor will bless you evermore. So be it and let it be." After which weird speech the old creature toddled down the hill with a senile laugh. "What do you make of that, Basil?" asked Patricia, when they reached the top of the winding road and came in sight of the carriage which was to take them to Hendle railway station. "Well," said the young man reflectively, "after what has taken place I dare not disbelieve in many things." "I hope that what Granny says will come true." "My dear," Basil amidst all his trouble turned to catch her in his arms, "I am sure that with such a darling as you are for my wife everything is entirely feasible and possible. If the emerald of Amyas Colpster brought luck to no one, it certainly has done so to me. And now let us drive to Hendle and catch the evening train to London. To-morrow we must get married." "It seems heartless when your uncle is just dead," sighed Patricia, "but I have no home to go to, and no one but you." "You shall stay at The Home of Art, and when I marry you, my dear, Mrs. Sellars shall be the bridesmaid. Come, my darling!" The sound of a gun stopped them before they could take a single step towards the new life, which spread out so brightly before them. They turned to see _The Miko_ standing out to sea, with the black smoke pouring from her funnel. As they waved their handkerchiefs, the yacht dipped her ensign, and fired a second gun. Then they saw her turn her nose seaward and steam direct for Japan. And the boat was carrying the Mikado Jewel, after it had fulfilled its mission in the West, back to its shrine in the Temple of Kitzuki, in the Province of Izumo. FINIS. ------------------------------------------------------ _Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey_. 
56470	----	[Frontispiece: "He glared at the clasp as if the diamond and sapphire eye were a miniature head of Medusa"] THE GREAT PEARL SECRET BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON FRONTISPIECE BY JULIAN DE MISKEY GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1921 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN CONTENTS CHAPTER I. In Juliet's Sitting Room II. The Explanation III. "To Meet the Duchess" IV. The Letter with the Tsarina's Seal V. The Third Ringer of the Bell VI. Behind the Bookshelf VII. What Juliet Told Jack VIII. Juliet Breaks the Seals IX. The Eye That Looked to the Right X. The House in a Crosstown Street XI. In Jack's Private Sitting Room XII. "The 'Whisperer' Stuff" XIII. A Woman's Eyes XIV. Supper at Twelve XV. The Fortune Teller XVI. The Grey Room XVII. The Crystal XVIII. The Bargain XIX. Old Nick XX. The Third Degree XXI. The Middle Door XXII. The Whole of the Secret THE GREAT PEARL SECRET CHAPTER I IN JULIET'S SITTING ROOM A maid opened the door leading from a bedroom to a salon of the "royal suite" at Harridge's Hotel. Dusk had fallen, and entering, she switched on the electricity. The room, with its almost Louis Seize decorations, was suddenly flooded with light; and to her surprise the Frenchwoman saw a slim black figure nestled deep among cushions on a sofa before the fire. A small white face, with a frame of terra-cotta hair crushed under a mourning toque, turned a pair of big black eyes upon her. "Miladi West!" exclaimed the maid. (She pronounced it "Vest") "Pardon, Madame, I did not know that any one was here." She spoke in French, with an accent which told that her first language had been Italian, learned in the south of France; though in looks she was the chic Parisienne. Her English was quite good, but when she used that tongue, her accent was of New York. She preferred French, however, was proud of being French, and had Frenchified her Nicois-Italian name of Simonetta Amaranti to Simone Amaranthe. All Juliet Phayre's friends had to be polite to Simone. "Mr. Phayre's man let me in," said the red-haired lady in widow's weeds. "After I'd had a look at the wedding presents, I was so dazzled that I switched off the lights." She laughed, and then cried, "Leave the lights now! I suppose Mademoiselle won't be forever?" Simone shrugged her thin shoulders just perceptibly. "Mademoiselle sent me out on an errand, Miladi. I have not long returned, with the perfume she wanted. It was for the _coiffeur_ who is here to wash the hair of Mademoiselle. She would not have the stuff he brought, so the man was obliged to wait. I am afraid the drying, even with the hot-air machine, will take some time. Miladi knows what a quantity of the hairs there are on the pretty head of Mademoiselle, and how she is exacting of the way everything is done!" The red-haired lady guessed from the Frenchwoman's tone that Simone considered the introduction of a _coiffeur_ a slight to her own skill. "Why, yes," she agreed. "Mademoiselle is exacting. But what would you? She is a spoiled child. The least crumple in a rose-leaf--by the way, Simone" (she stopped for a little throaty chuckle), "is it true about the _carpet_ in this suite?" "The carpet, Miladi?" Simone flushed faintly through her dark skin, and "Miladi" made a second guess. Of course Juliet trusted Simone, and depended upon her blindly; but she--Emmy West--had often wondered how certain spicy little items concerning the Phayre family reached the gossip columns of "society papers." "I read such an amusing paragraph in _Modern Ways_ this morning," she explained. "It was _apropos_ of the wedding, of course. _Modern Ways_ loves a chance for a 'dig' at us Americans who marry well-known Englishmen! It said that when Miss Juliet Phayre and her Uncle Henry came over from Paris the other day, and took this royal suite which Mr. Phayre had engaged, Miss Phayre sent for the manager before she'd been in the hotel half an hour. 'There's a spot of ink on the carpet,' she complained (according to the paper). 'I must have another carpet at once.' Now do tell me, Simone (I'm very discreet!) did that really happen?" "It did, Madame," the maid admitted. "Though how it got to these sacred journalists----" "And did the manager say to Mademoiselle, 'We have had half the kings of Europe in this suite since that spot appeared, Miss Phayre, and not one of them mentioned it!'" "His words were to that effect, Miladi, so far as I remember. But----" "Oh, then you _were_ in the room? What fun! You can tell me if Juliet--if Mademoiselle replied that a spotted carpet might be good enough for a king; it wasn't good enough for a Phayre." Simone flung out her hands, palm upward. They were beautifully manicured hands, as carefully tended as her mistress's. And as she smiled her teeth showed very white. When her face was grave, she looked somewhat sullen, and might be thirty-five; but the smile was rejuvenating. It put her back to twenty-eight, and made her almost handsome as well as _chic_. "Miladi has known Mademoiselle since her schooldays, is it not?" she hedged. "Miladi will be able to judge as well as if I told her whether Mademoiselle would have made that answer." "I thought it rang true when I read it!" laughed Lady West. "But Simone, when you say I have 'known Mademoiselle since her schooldays', you make me sound awfully antique. We were at Madame de Sain's together. I came over to England the year I left, and married poor Sir Algy only three months after I was presented." She thought it best to hammer these details into Simone's head, in case the woman really _was_ in touch with those back-door, kitchen-stairs reporters. Then, to give an air of carelessness to her words, she turned the subject. "Perhaps you might let Mademoiselle know I've come. Parker told me that she was lying down--that she'd promised her uncle to rest till tea time. So I wouldn't have her disturbed. But if her hair is being washed, she might let me in." "I will ask Miladi," said Simone. "I came to the salon to see if the curtains were drawn. If Madame permits!" She tripped with her short, high-heeled step first to one window, then the other, and closed the draperies of old-rose brocade. Having done this, she pattered out of the room. Emmy West's eyes followed the thin but graceful figure in black silk. "Simone is a character!" she thought. And she wondered what the maid's secret opinion was of this marriage which would take place next day; the richest American heiress with the poorest British duke! Left alone again, Emmy wriggled up from her nest of cushions, and beguiled the time in examining the wedding gifts once more. This did not take long, as the marriage had been suddenly hurried on by special license, and friends of Juliet Phayre and the Duke of Claremanagh had had only a few days to send in their offerings. Emmy had made this uninvited visit with the object of admiring a certain one of Juliet's presents, but she had already informed herself that it was not on show with the rest. Unless the bride-elect refused to see her, she did not intend to leave Harridge's without a glimpse--or anyhow, news--of it. When she had wandered languidly round the three or four tables on which jewel cases, gold, silver, china, and tortoise-shell things were spread, she propped her own black-edged card conspicuously in front of a Sevres-framed mirror, and bent down for a hasty peep at her face in its oval. She wondered if her hair were a tiny touch too red. She liked it, herself, and thought the heart-shaped white face, with its wide-apart black eyes set in that copper halo, a siren face. In the weeds of a war-widow it seemed to her that she was almost irresistible, but she could not help realizing that there were people who did resist her. The Duke was one. And an attractive cousin of Juliet's, John Manners, was another. She was vaguely aware that her own taste was decidedly vivid. Perhaps the hair _was_ rather red! She had had it "bobbed" since Juliet came to London, because it worried her that Juliet should look years younger than she. No one would take Lady West for twenty-seven, but she had been an "old girl" and Juliet a "new girl," the year they met at school. Juliet was twenty-three now, and she, Emmy, had gone back to twenty-five. One had to be that, if one had married before the war! Quickly she dusted on a little powder from her vanity box, and accentuated the cupid's bow of her lips with a stick of red salve, for it was possible that Claremanagh might "breeze in." It would be like him! This thought was still in her mind when a door behind her opened. She turned nervously, tucking the lip-salve into her gold mesh bag, for just now the Duke was having a craze for baby complexions without make-up. But it was not the Duke. It was a girl, standing in the doorway between bedroom and salon. "Hello, Emmy!" she said. "Hello, Juliet!" said Emmy. And suddenly she felt years older than she had felt a moment ago. Juliet Phayre was such a big baby! The girl wore a pale pink chiffon thing which she probably considered a dressing gown. It was embroidered with wild roses and banded with swansdown, and no practical person would have dreamed of keeping it on for a shampoo. Juliet, however, thought herself sufficiently protected with a towel over her shoulders--a silvery damask towel under which her bare, girlish arms hung down. Over the towel streamed masses of hair in long, wet strands, which must be bright golden-brown when dry. These fell--weighted with water--nearly to her knees, and from their curly ends drops poured like unstrung pearls. She was so tall and slender, and brilliant rose-and-white, that she would have looked to a poet like Undine just out of her fountain. "You extravagant thing," Lady West scolded, "to spoil a lovely boudoir gown like that!" "Simone gets it to-morrow as a perquisite, with all my old things," Juliet dismissed the subject. "She said you'd been here an age, so I thought I'd better come in. I'll dry my hair before the fire, presently we'll have tea." So saying, she sat down tailor-fashion on a long, fat velvet cushion which lay in front of the low fender. "Evidently you're not expecting the Duke," laughed Lady West. "No-o," said the girl. "But I'm expecting a letter from him--or something." "You haven't got the pearls on show with your other presents, I see," remarked her friend. "I don't blame you! Of course, Parker is doing the watch-dog act outside; and only your _bestest_ pals come up. Still, the pearls are frightfully valuable. And you can never tell! But do, _do_ let me see them. I'm dying to!" "I haven't got them yet," Juliet confessed. "Not got them?" gasped the elder woman. "You're joking. Why"--and she laughed with great gaiety--"one _marries_ Claremanagh for his pearls!" "Does one?" Juliet took her up. "I know whole populations of females who'd give _their_ pearls to marry him, for--himself!" This told Emmy West that the bride-to-be knew she had been scratched, and was ready to scratch back. For an instant Emmy hesitated whether to be sweet or sharp, and decided to compromise. "By Jove, you _are_ in love, aren't you?" she said. "I am," Juliet admitted. "I don't care a rap about being a duchess. That sort of thing seems--somehow old-fashioned since the war. And I don't think I ever was a snob, thank goodness." Emmy wondered if this were another "dig." She had been a Chicago girl, and only a "tuppenny half-penny" heiress, compared to Juliet Phayre; but she had wanted a title, and had paid all she could afford for a mere baronet, such as her few hundred thousand dollars would buy. On the sofa once more facing her low-seated hostess, she looked Juliet full in the eyes; but Juliet's were innocent, even dreamy. "I'd have snapped at my Boy if he'd been just a Tommy when I met him Over There, instead of a perfectly gorgeous Guardsman," the girl went on. "But, of course, I _do_ want the pearls! I wouldn't be human if I didn't; everyone talks about them so much, even my Cousin Jack Manners, and says they're so marvellous. I expect they are what Pat is sending around this evening." "Sending around!" repeated the other. "You talk as if--as if they were a box of chocolates! Claremanagh is the careless-est creature on earth, I know. And he has been--er--very careless with the pearls. But I don't think even he would be as bad as that." "Why not?" asked the girl to whom most jewels meant little. "If he sent them by Old Nick, that dear, quaint man of his, they'd be safer than if he brought them himself. I never knew before that he was superstitious. But he is. It's bad luck for a Claremanagh to see his bride the day before the wedding. _Creepy_ things have happened, it seems, according to an old story! So he said he wasn't running risks. For some reason, he couldn't give me his present before to-day. So that's why the thing is to come by messenger, you see." "I see," echoed Emmy. "And you're sure the present _will_ be the pearls?" This was rather an impudent question to ask, especially for one who knew the Duke's circumstances; but, for a wonder, Juliet did not seem to mind. She answered quite easily, "Oh, I suppose so. Don't the Claremanagh men always give them to their brides?" "I believe they have dutifully handed them over _so far_--for several generations, since the pearls came into their family in that exciting way," said Lady West. "But you know, Peter--I mean Claremanagh--is very independent, and quite--er--a law unto himself." "Why do you call him 'Peter'?" the girl branched off from the subject. "He has about a dozen names, I know, but I hadn't heard that 'Peter' was one. My selection from the lot is Pat!" "Oh, 'Peter' was only a silly nickname I made up for him. 'Peter Pan', because he just isn't the sort who ever grows up!" Emmy explained elaborately. "Of course he was a lot with Algy and me the first year I married--before the war spoilt everything for everyone. And then, when I took up Red Cross work in France, after poor Algy---" "I know," Juliet ruthlessly interrupted. "That was where and when _I_ came on the scene." "It was," agreed Emmy, in a flat voice. "You came, you saw, you conquered. But we were talking of the Tsarina pearls. I do hope the Duke _is_ 'delivering the goods', as we say in our country. I don't mind confessing to you, my angel child, I dropped in hoping for a private view." "Oh, I guessed _that_ the minute Simone told me you were here, and determined to wait!" Juliet laughed like a naughty child who dares a "grown-up" to slap it. Emmy's ears tingled. The girl's tone, though intimate and friendly, told her how unimportant she was in the future Duchess's scheme of things. She had always envied Juliet, and had an old grudge against the heiress for refusing her brother, Bill Lowndes. Now she suddenly hated her. Instead of inflicting a kittenish scratch or two, she wanted to strike at Juliet Phayre's heart. "Well," she excused herself, "I never saw the pearls, except--er--at a _distance_." "You have seen them, then?" Juliet exclaimed. "How was that? Pat's mother died years before you knew him, and only the Duchess is supposed to wear the pearls, isn't she?" "Only the Duchess is _supposed_ to wear them." Juliet sat up straight on the velvet cushion. Her hair was drying beautifully now. The red background of fireglow lit it to flame, so that Lady West saw the slight figure surrounded by a nimbus. "Ever since Pat and I were engaged, you've been hinting at something queer, or _secret_, about that rope of pearls, Emmy," the girl blazed. "Now, _out_ with it, please! Tell me what you mean." The elder woman was taken aback. "Don't you _know_ what I mean?" she temporized. "No, I don't," snapped Juliet. "But I'm sure it's something unpleasant." "At least, I had no intention of telling you," Lady West snapped back. "I wouldn't distress you for worlds, dear, especially on your _wedding eve_." "Wedding eve be--'jizzled!'" inelegantly remarked the bride-elect. "You sound quite early Edwardian! If you don't tell me, I shall think the thing worse than it is." "You had better ask Claremanagh, or Jack Manners, who is a pal of his," said Emmy. "I can't, till I have an idea what to ask them about." "Ask whether Lyda Pavoya ever--no, I won't say it!" "Whether she ever wore the pearls? That's what you were going to say!" "So you _did_ know?" "I didn't. And I don't now. I only know what you have in your mind. I don't believe she was allowed to wear the pearls." "Why should you believe it? And even if she did, it was before you knew Peter--the Duke. Or anyhow, it was before you were _engaged_. It was when she was dancing for the Polish Relief Fund in Paris, that I saw----" "You saw what?" "Saw--her." "Emmy! You _didn't_ see her wearing the Tsarina pearls? It's not possible." "Why, of course you must be right, dear. Even though they are _blue_, they'd be like any other pearls, wouldn't they, _to see at a distance_." "That's just what you said about Pat's pearls five minutes ago: that you'd seen them only 'at a distance.'" Lady West did not reply. She put on a stricken, trapped expression, which went well with her widow's weeds. The two gazed into each other's eyes, each waiting for the other to speak. Neither heard a sound at the door until a respectable voice--such a voice as is never possessed save by a British butler or valet--announced "His Grace the Duke of Claremanagh." CHAPTER II THE EXPLANATION A perfectly charming young man came in--a young man so delightful to look at that it seemed almost too much that he should be a duke. With that merry brown face (the war had left a scar across cheek and temple), those Celtic grey eyes, that jet-black hair, that "figure for a fencer," and above all that engaging grin of his, the merest Nobody might hope to make his mark as Somebody. "Breezing in" (as Emmy had put it), he smiled his nice smile that brought a dimple like a cut line into each thin, tanned cheek. The smile was for Juliet, whose velvet throne was opposite the door, and for her he waved aloft a small, sealed white parcel. Then he saw Lady West, and his expression changed. As the saying is, his "face fell," but in half a second he had controlled his features. "How do you do?" he enquired. His voice was as pleasant as his grin, but there was a slight stiffness in his tone for the red-haired war-widow. "I'm going strong, thanks! Going in every sense of the word," Emmy assured him. "I should have taken myself off before now, only Juliet pretended not to be expecting you. Of course, the day before the wedding _is_ supposed by old-fashioned folk to be close time for brides, where their loving bridegrooms are concerned, and so----" "I'm not old-fashioned," said Claremanagh. "Rather not! I've every reason for knowing that. We all have. But Juliet had some story about a 'bad luck' superstition. I thought you were the last man to be superstitious, Irish as you are, but it didn't sound like a joke----" "It wasn't a joke. I'm as superstitious as the deuce about one or two things," the man confessed. "Juliet wasn't 'pretending' but"--and he turned to the girl--"I had to come. There was something I didn't want to explain in a letter, and--hang 'bad luck!' It's a cross dog that would dare bite us." As Emmy West saw the look he gave Juliet, she felt as though her heart had been sharply pinched between a thumb and a finger. She had believed till now that his "superstition" was an excuse for spending his time with someone whose society he preferred to the bride's. Yet here he was, bouncing in like a bomb, with that eager light in his eyes, and in his hand a packet which _might_ be the pearls! When Juliet explained that there "was a reason" why Claremanagh "couldn't give his present till to-day," an exciting thought had tumbled into Emmy's head: What if Lyda Pavoya had refused to return the pearls he'd been teased into lending her, and had taken them to New York, where she was now dancing? Emmy visioned the poor Duke frantically cabling, the moment he had secured the American heiress; or perhaps engaging a lawyer to frighten the Polish siren. Lyda wouldn't be easy to frighten, Emmy imagined, admiringly. (She, in fact, admired the dancer so sincerely, that her own attempts at sirenhood were copied from Pavoya.) Even if Lyda had disgorged the booty, would there have been time for it to arrive from across the Atlantic? Only the opening of that little parcel would show, and Emmy's jealous pain was complicated by curiosity. Still, she decided, it would be useless to wear out her welcome by lingering. The chances were that Claremanagh wouldn't break those thrilling seals till she had gone. Besides, Juliet was in a state of suppressed fury, and was capable in that mood of banishing her with rudeness. In some moods, the girl was capable of _anything_! So Lady West "kissed air" in the neighbourhood of Miss Phayre's burning cheeks, and accepted defeat with one sole satisfaction: If the pearls had come--or if they ever came!--she had pretty well spoiled them for the future Duchess. "_Au revoir_, dearest child," she said. "I shall be in church to-morrow, of course. _Au revoir_, Peter, and good luck in spite of the Claremanagh curse. I do hope it won't put on seven-league boots and follow you to New York." "Leather's too dear since the war for superannuated old curses to buy seven-league boots," replied the Duke, unflatteringly prompt in opening the door. The pretty lady went to it with wormlike meekness, but turned on the threshold. "If I meet the Curse, I'll tell it to mind its business," she laughed. "The Claremanaghs have had enough bad luck. You'll create a new record, working out your democratic notions in a new country, with one or two _old friends_ there to applaud them." With this exit speech she put herself in charge of Parker, who would ring up the lift for her. The Duke shut the salon door, and turned to the girl. He didn't even say "Thank goodness, the woman's gone!" He seemed to have forgotten her existence. "Heavens, what hair you have!" he exclaimed. "I knew it must be gorgeous, but I didn't dream of _this_. To-night I _shall_ dream of it! By rights, I oughtn't to have seen this show till to-morrow night, ought I? But I'm glad I have. All your beauties bursting upon me at once would be too much for my brain." "Don't make fun of me," Juliet laughed, with a wistfulness rather pathetic in so pretty and so rich a girl. "Make fun of you!" Claremanagh snatched her up from the low seat, and crushed the yielding, thinly clad young body in his arms. On the sweet-scented, damp hair he rained kisses. "Am I a wooden man? Take that--and that, to punish you! Mavourneen--if it were _to-morrow_!" Between warm joy and chilling doubt Juliet Phayre shivered. If only she could believe him--believe that he cared for her, and not for the money! She almost had believed--before Emmy West came. The girl burned to tell "Pat" what Emmy had said and hinted. If he could reassure her, it would be balm on a wound never quite healed. But--_if he couldn't_. If questioning should make bad things worse? Then she would wish in vain that she'd "let sleeping dogs lie," because she loved the man too much to give him up. She had wanted him as a child wants the moon, ever since the day she, a gilt-edged Red Cross nurse, had met him, a soldier on leave, in Paris. Now she had got him--or almost--and the future _might_ be so wonderful! He had promised her uncle, Henry Phayre, to live for at least half of each year in America, there to work as other men worked (Phayre would supply the employment), and Juliet had looked forward to being proud of her adorable husband, happy with him; a living proof--the pair of them--that an American girl can marry a duke for himself, not for his title; that a duke can make an American heiress his wife for love. But now, Emmy had raked up those old rags of gossip, nearly forgotten. And Juliet had read in the paper only a few days ago about Pavoya's first night in New York; the furore her "wild eastern dancing and strange, Slavic fascination" had created. The girl felt sick at heart as she asked herself if Pat's pleasure in the thought of "seeing New York" had any connection with Pavoya's presence there. It was all she could do not to purr out her complaints of "that _cat_, Emmy West," but native prudence prevailed over hot impulse. She enjoyed as much as Emmy permitted Pat's praise of her glorious hair (surely Pavoya's wasn't as long or thick, and probably its "rusty red" was due to dye), and then she reminded him of the parcel. "Is it my present from you?" she asked, almost shyly, nodding toward the table where Pat had thrown the neat white square. Instantly he let her go, and took the little parcel again in his hand. "Yes, sweet, it _is_ my present for you," he said. "But _not_ the present I wanted to give you. That's why I risked the 'curse' and came to explain." "Oh!" was the girl's noncommittal answer. Her heart sank. The pearls were not in the packet, she knew now, but her disappointment was not so much in missing them as in the thought that Emmy could say "I told you so!" "Before you open these silly seals, and see what I've brought," the Duke went on, "I want to make my explanation, and be sure you understand the whole business. Come and sit by me on the sofa, will you?" He drew her down beside him, and gathered her close. "Of course, you know all about our pearls, the one ewe lamb of ancient glory left to us poor Claremanaghs," he said. "I don't know _all_ about them," amended Juliet, her heart missing a beat. "Tell me just what you do know, and then I shan't bore you with repetitions." "Oh, people have told me things," she hedged. "Didn't a Tsarina of Russia sell the pearls to some old ancestor of yours?" "Good lord, no!" he chuckled. "Never was a Claremanagh so stony broke as yours truly; yet never was there one since the days of pterodactyls who could run to the price of a Tsarina's pearls; that is, in _lucre_. My great-great-grandfather bought them with kisses. But joking apart, it's rather a romantic tale. He was a soldier and offered his services to Russia because he'd seen a portrait of the Tsarina, which the Prince of Wales had, and fell in love with it. Well, she fell in love with him, too, at sight. He wasn't bad to look at, judging from his portrait----" "Was he like you?" cut in Juliet. Pat laughed. "They say so. When we can get those Pill people out of Castle Claremanagh (their lease has a year to run) you shall tell me if you find a likeness. There was an 'affair' between the two; and great-great-grandfather Pat (he was Patrick, too, like all the eldest sons) had it politely intimated to him, through his friend Wales, that he'd better come home--a marriage had been arranged for him. He'd not have stirred a foot if it hadn't been for his Love. She begged him to go. There was a plot to murder him, it seems, and as for her, she'd ceased to be very popular with the Tsar, her husband. She made her sweetheart promise to marry the English girl, and she gave him the rope of pearls which since then have been called after her--the 'Tsarina's pearls.' They were for his wife, as a gift from her, so the girl shouldn't hate the thought of their love." "_I_ should have hated it all the more!" cried Juliet. "I wouldn't have _worn_ the things if I'd been his bride." "Well, as _my_ bride I hope you will wear them often. They'll be dashed becoming to your blondness, for the things are unique in one way: they're _blue_; a hundred and eighty immense and perfectly matched blue pearls. Never has anything been seen like them, the expert johnnies say." "Was the Tsarina a blonde?" the girl wanted to know. "A copper-headed blonde. You shall see her miniature." Juliet said nothing. But she thought of Lyda Pavoya's head. She had never seen the Polish dancer, but she had heard her described: the traditional "siren-green" eyes, white face, and red hair. And she knew that Emmy West modelled herself, so far as Nature permitted, on Pavoya. "In the ordinary sense of the word, the Tsarina pearls aren't an heirloom in our family," Claremanagh continued. "But the first bride who received them passed on the gift to her eldest son's bride. So it has gone on ever since. The thing falls to the heir, or his wife; and it's tacitly understood that neither the rope as a whole, nor even one of the pearls, shall be sold. Well, I came into the inheritance (if you can call it that) seven years ago, when I was twenty-one. I'm afraid I'd have sold the bally thing more than once if I could have done it in common decency. But I couldn't. So there you _are_!" "What _did_ you do with it?" Juliet ventured, half dreading the answer. Her head was pressed close to Pat's shoulder. She could not look up at his face, but she thought a muscle jumped in the arm that held her, and that there was a sudden change in his tone. "Do with it?" he echoed. "Why, what should I do but keep it in the bank waiting for the Lady of my Dreams? I couldn't wear it round my neck, you know! But, well, I did get it out of the bank now and then, to show to beautiful beings who begged to see it. Once it was in a Loan Exhibition for the benefit of something or other, I forget what. The confession I have to make, though, is this: only two months before I met the dearest girl on earth I was so hard up I'd have had to grind a monkey-organ in the streets if I hadn't been engaged in fighting for King and Country. I'd had some beastly bad luck with a speculation an alleged pal had let me in for, and honest Injun, I didn't know which way to turn, until a chap I know offered me two hundred thousand francs on the security of the pearls." "_Francs?_" echoed Juliet. "Yes. The man's a Frenchman. And the business was done in France. He's a dashed good fellow in his way. But it's a queer way. He's a kind of gilded, super money-lender. His transactions are only with his friends, and the interest he takes is fair and square: twenty per cent. instead of sixty or so, as the sharks do--to my bitter knowledge. With what I got from Louis Mayen I paid my debts, and hung onto a bit, a few thousands. Then, two months later, I met you--and the fat was in the fire!" "How, in the fire?" "Why, I made up my mind at first sight to grab you if I could----" Juliet broke out laughing like a child, forgetful of her secret burden. "_Did_ you--really? So did I you!" "Bold hussy!" He kissed her with passion. "But it was worse for me than you. I'd just lost my chance of giving you your legitimate wedding present--if you'd have me. The day you said 'Yes', instead of walking on air I could have thrown myself in the sea, I felt such a fool." "Silly boy!" cried the girl. "Any real money-lender, or even your super, gilded one, would have let you have all you wanted if you'd said you were marrying Silas Phayre's heiress. I mayn't know much about business, but I know that!" "And I mayn't be a saint, but I'm not a cad," Claremanagh capped her. "I wouldn't go to a money-lender on the strength of being engaged to you. I don't say that if Louis Mayen had been in France then I'd not have wheedled the pearls back from him, on the mere strength of friendship, and an I.O.U., or some such arrangement. He'd have trusted me," Pat laughed; "anyhow, in the circumstances! But you and I were engaged a fortnight after the Armistice, you remember. Just a week before our own Great Day (yours and mine) Mayen went to Russia with a lot of important Frenchmen of Hebrew blood, on a diplomatic mission. He had a bad time in Petrograd. He and his lot were stuck into the prison of St. Peter and St. Paul, by the Bolchies. I didn't know where the pearls were and couldn't find out. That was two months ago. But after six weeks in a cell, Mayen was released by order of Lenine; and it was expected in Paris that he and the rest would be back in France by now. "We were there ourselves--you and your uncle in Paris, and I at G.H.Q. you know, till just ten days ago--though it seems longer. And I was hoping against hope that Mayen might turn up. I wouldn't say a word to you, for I didn't want you to be disappointed. And even as late as last night I wouldn't quite give up. Your Cousin Jack Manners, who is the best fellow on earth, has been watching things for me in Paris. He'd heard that Mayen had quietly sneaked back, and hadn't let any one know, in order to get a good rest cure. But this turns out to be a _canard_. Now you see why I had to go out and find you a 'fairing' as the Scots say. I couldn't afford anything worth while unless I borrowed; so I thought things over, and decided that you'd prefer a little remembrance of our wedding, bought with my own 'pocket-money,' and supplemented by a souvenir of my mother. Am I right?" "Absolutely! Whatever you give me, I shall love it," said Juliet. "I wouldn't care if it cost sixpence. It's from _you_; that makes the value for me. But, Pat, I can't bear to think of your being poor! You won't be after to-morrow. I haven't liked to talk of such things, but I told Uncle Henry I wanted a million dollars settled on you, to use as you pleased. Surely he did what I----" "He did, my child. But I 'wasn't taking any'. I meant to tell you this myself when we were old married people--a week after the wedding, let's say! But since you've brought up the subject, we might as well have it out. Your money is going to restore Claremanagh, and the jolly old London house in Queen Anne's gate that my great-grandfather bought. I don't so much mind that. You'll enjoy the places. And it won't be till the tenants there turn out. I'm to have a screw from your uncle for pretending to work in the S. P. Phayre Bank: a hundred dollars a week to begin with (he offered more, but I wouldn't have it), about a fiftieth part of which I'll really earn. But even that will bring me nearly a hundred pounds a month, so I shan't disgrace my wife by wearing paper collars or elastic-sided boots, or not getting my hair cut. Then, as my earning power increases, so will my pay. Besides, your noble guardian wants to buy my place at Maidenhead, when it's free, next spring. He'll give sixty thousand pounds, which will leave me fifty when the mortgage is paid off; and Mr. Phayre will advise me about investments. So you see, you're not marrying a pauper after all, my good girl! As for the pearls, it's only a delay--an annoying delay. When Mayen really does get back to Paris, he'll find a letter from me containing a post-dated cheque for the two hundred thousand francs, and interest. That will come out of the fifty thousand pounds, and still leave me a decent pile. Mayen will at once take steps to get the pearls to me." "But we'll be in New York," objected Juliet. "How can Monsieur Mayen send them without danger of their being stolen?" "Trust him to arrange that," Claremanagh soothed her. "There must be lots of ways. Besides, they'll be insured for their full value, which is supposed to be--intrinsic, not sentimental--one hundred thousand pounds. What I hope is, they'll be in time for you to make a show in your box at the opera--Metropolitan Opera House, you call it, don't you? You see, I've been reading up a guide book to New York! And now I've made all my explanations and excuses, my darling, you'd better open the poor little box." His arm still round her, the girl broke the jeweller's seals. Inside the white paper was a white velvet case, and inside the white velvet case was a string of white pearls. They were small, but good, and from them depended an old-fashioned, open-faced locket containing an ivory miniature of a beautiful boy. "The pearls are from me," Pat said. "The locket and miniature are from my mother. She used always to wear the locket. And when she died, eight years ago, one of the last things she did was to give it to me, 'for my bride'." Juliet Phayre would not have been human if she had not forgotten, in that moment, both Emmy West and Lyda Pavoya. CHAPTER III "TO MEET THE DUCHESS" Mrs. Lowndes, Emmy West's sister-in-law, was giving a luncheon for the Duchess of Claremanagh; and the Duchess was late. Nine lovely ladies (including the hostess) were waiting for her in the Futurist drawing room of an apartment overlooking the Park. It was not to all tastes a beautiful drawing room, but it was expensive for all purses. So was the apartment; too expensive, Billy Lowndes' friends said, for his. As for the ladies, each one was beautiful, or her clothes were; for Nat Lowndes had chosen her guests with the special view of impressing the Duchess, whom Billy had tried to marry when she was Miss Phayre. The invitations were for one-fifteen, and before one-thirty everyone had arrived--except the Duchess. By twenty to two the nine voices were chattering with almost abnormal gaiety, but ears and eyes were secretly on the alert. Natalie Lowndes was not precisely in the Duchess' "set", or if she was, moved on the chilled outer edge of it. These women who chatted in her startling salon would have preferred other engagements, if they had not been asked "to meet the Duchess of Claremanagh." Most of them knew that Billy had desperately wanted Juliet Phayre, and that Juliet had been at school with his sister, Lady West, now in London. Their private opinion was that the Duchess had accepted for Lady West's sake rather than Mrs. Lowndes'; and as the minutes lagged, they wondered if the chief guest were purposely proving her slight esteem of the circle. This idea ruffled their vanity, and as they talked, glancing at wrist watches, their irritation grew. Natalie who, like her husband, was from the Middle West, felt the atmosphere of her overheated room fall to zero. She began to feel sick at heart, and tears pricked her eyelids. But she kept a brave front. No one had spoken yet of the delay, nor of the lady who caused it; but at a quarter to two it seemed better to be frank. "I can't think what can have happened to Juliet!" Natalie said. (Nat was one of those women who always called her smartest acquaintances by their Christian names--behind their backs.) "We'll wait five minutes more--not a moment longer. I'm sure she wouldn't wish it." "Royalties are always so prompt," said Mrs. Sam Selby-Saunders, who knew the habits of kings and queens from the Sunday Supplements. "Evidently dukes--or anyhow duchesses--don't follow their example." "Something must be the matter," Nat defended the absent. "At first Juliet was afraid she couldn't accept to-day. You know, there's a meeting this morning at Mrs. Van Esten's, to arrange details of the wonderful roof garden show in aid of the Armenians. Juliet had to be present, as she's on the committee. But at last she decided she could get away in time. She must have been kept." Nobody spoke for a minute. If there had been only Ten First Families in New York, Mrs. Van Esten would still have been high on the list. She was the organizer of the proposed entertainment, the plans for which were thrilling the town; and if this business were keeping the Duchess, she was almost excusable. Anyhow, nobody's feelings need be hurt. Suddenly, in the midst of the pause, Miss Solomon laughed. Her father was as rich as Silas Phayre had been, and there was no reason why she shouldn't be a duchess, too, some day, when travel abroad became easier. "I did hear the _loveliest_ thing!" she chuckled. "I wonder if any of you have heard it? ... That Mrs. Van Esten meant to propose at the committee meeting to-day the name of Lyda Pavoya." "Good gracious, for _what_?" gasped Nat Lowndes. "To dance at the entertainment, of course. Mrs. Van E.'s maid and my maid are cousins. So I should say it was true. You know Mrs. Van E. is notorious for never listening to gossip. She prides herself on 'being above it'. Very silly, _I_ think. Because one can make such awful 'gaffs' if one doesn't know the seamy side of things." "No wonder the Duchess is late!" cried Mrs. Sam. "She has probably had to go home between the meeting and here to faint or have a fit." Nobody could help laughing, and nobody tried to help it. There was a weekly paper in New York--a paper called the _Inner Circle_. This publication one got one's maid to buy and hide under a pile of books until it could be read. The moment all its paragraphs had been absorbed the paper was destroyed, thus making it possible to say, "the _Inner Circle_! I wouldn't give the wretched rag houseroom!" The inside middle pages of the "rag" were headed "Let's Whisper!" And at the time of the Phayre-Claremanagh marriage, two months ago, the choicest whispering had concerned the Duke's flirtation with Lyda Pavoya. "It is easier to break off a flirtation than an engagement, because you can't be sued for breach of promise," was one _mot_ of "The Whisperer," and it was intimated that the Duke had profited by this immunity when he proposed to Miss Phayre. "But what about the pearls?" was a question which no one had forgotten, and for which everyone wanted an answer. Oh, yes, it would be a rich joke if Mrs. Van Esten proposed Pavoya for a "star turn" at the Armenian charity entertainment! "If it's true," said Nat, "Juliet couldn't very well refuse her consent to have Pavoya. That would make things worse. As it is, none of us could help noticing how she has kept the Duke away from every single opera where Pavoya has danced. Not once has he or she been in their box on a Pavoya night. But----" The company hung on the word, as Nat drew in her breath, and paused for effect. Never were they to know, however, what revelation was to follow that "but," for at this instant Mrs. Lowndes' butler announced "The Duchess of Claremanagh," and left out the preface of "Her Grace." His omission upset the hostess so much that she stammered over her greeting, and forgot what she had read in a book called "English Etiquette" about introducing a duchess. Juliet Claremanagh was so contrite for her own guilt, however, that she had no thought for others' shortcomings. "Oh, I'm _dreadfully_ sorry to be late! Do forgive me, everyone!" she cried, like a penitent schoolgirl. "I was kept so long at that meeting, and then I had to dash home for a minute. My husband had made me _promise_. You see, this is supposed to be a great day for me. The pearls--perhaps you've heard of them?--are due at last!" "Perhaps" they had heard of the pearls! The Duchess was forgiven at once. Introductions were hastily made. As the party sat down, the guest of honour pulling off her gloves, she went on with her excuses. Evidently she was willing to talk of the pearls, so Nat ventured an entering wedge. "Emmy wrote me they had to be re-strung," she said. "And that the most skilled pearl-stringer in England wasn't demobilized, or something; so you had to wait." What Emmy had really written was, "This is the story they're putting round." But it would be exciting to get Juliet's answer, and watch Juliet's face. The Duchess was somewhat paler than Juliet Phayre had been, for she and the Duke had made a huge success in New York, and were in such request that they kept appalling hours. But she was rosier than she had ever been as she replied that, yes, she had had to wait. But at last the pearls had been sent. They were on the _Britannia_, in care of a trusted person; and that person had "wirelessed" that he would be at the house by half-past twelve. Unluckily, however, the _Britannia_ had been delayed outside for a sister ship to leave the dock. She--Juliet--had gone home from Mrs. Van Esten's to receive the messenger, with her husband. But the former and Pat's trusted man, sent to meet him, had not arrived. She had waited a few minutes, and had then come on in the car to Mrs. Lowndes'. Of course, the auto had been detained for ages, at two or three crossings! It was always like that if one were late! And now she could not be at home when the pearls appeared, for there were engagements, which couldn't be broken, for the whole of the afternoon. After all, the luncheon was a great success. The Duchess atoned for her sins by being "sweet" to everyone, much sweeter than she had troubled herself to be, as a spoiled young girl, with strangers. She was as pleased as a child with the delicious dishes ordered, almost with prayer, by Nat; and when she was obliged to go, after coffee and cigarettes, she left behind her a charming impression. Mrs. Selby-Saunders and Miss Solomon and all the rest made up for their sharp speeches by praising the bride's beauty and exquisite clothes. "She's much prettier than she used to be," generously said Nat (who had never seen Juliet as Miss Phayre), "and the Duke must be a fool if he likes Lyda Pavoya better. If he neglects his wife, she won't have any trouble finding someone else who won't." "What about that cousin of hers, Jack Manners, who used to be in love with her when she was almost a child?--a nephew of her mother's," asked Mrs. Selby-Saunders. "An awfully nice fellow! She ought to have married him. They say he volunteered before America joined the Allies, because she refused him----" "He's in France still," Nat supplied the information eagerly. "My sister-in-law, Lady West, met him there----" "I saw in some newspaper that he was to sail for home on the _Britannia_" said Miss Solomon. "Perhaps _he_ is the messenger bringing the pearls!" CHAPTER IV THE LETTER WITH THE TSARINA'S SEAL John Manners was not the messenger bringing the pearls. Even if he had been asked to bring them, he would not have accepted the responsibility of escorting Claremanagh's "ewe lamb" across the Atlantic. He knew more about those pearls than he wanted to know, for he had been in love with Juliet Phayre before he began to like Claremanagh--to like him in spite of himself, in spite of natural jealousy, and in spite of prejudice. It was a mere coincidence that he should be on the same ship with Monsieur Mayen's messenger, for with the return of Mayen from Russia, Manners' friendly services for the Duke came to an end. His services for France were ended also; and he was keenly interested in his own emotions as he touched the bell on the front door of the Phayre house. How would it feel to meet Juliet married--and married to a man with whom fate had queerly forced him into friendship? The front door was a very elaborate door. It was mostly composed of old wrought iron so delicately carved as to be like iron lacework. Silas Phayre had imported it from an ancient palazzo in Florence and, characteristically, had it backed with modern plate glass. The inner side of this crystal screen was curtained with creamy silk tissue, thus forming a sort of mirror for any one waiting to enter. Manners gazed vaguely at his reflection behind the pattern of wrought iron, and his sense of humour noted that thwarted love had not made of him a haggard wreck. Fighting in France had browned and hardened him. He was lean, but far from frail. The dark tan on his face caused his yellowish hair to seem straw-coloured in contrast, and his eyes boyishly blue. This, and the khaki uniform he still wore, gave him an air of being younger than he was--twenty-eight: and the man and his image were exchanging an amused grin when a new reflection appeared in the glass. Mechanically Manners turned, and found himself face to face with a woman. She had paused at the foot of the marble steps, and hesitated, as if the sight of someone on the threshold had upset her calculations. But at this instant the door was thrown open--not by one of the imported English footmen whom Manners knew of old, but by an elderly Japanese. The yellow face gave Jack a shock, but he realized that British and American youths had been better employed than as footmen since he himself had gone to France. The Japanese looked past the officer in khaki to the lady, whom he appeared to recognize and even to be expecting. This look settled matters for her. She decided to keep to her original plan. With a slight inclination of the head to Manners, she stepped briskly into the vestibule. Behind her, she left a faint trail of alluring fragrance. Even Jack Manners, who disliked artificial perfumes, breathed it in with pleasure. He had never smelled anything quite like it before; but he thought of an eastern garden in moonlight, and the thrill of that picture mingled with another thrill. He had recognized the woman. He had seen her before, but only on the stage, and now she was veiled with one of those patterned veils almost as concealing for an ordinary woman as a mask. But this was not an ordinary woman. It was Pavoya, the Polish dancer; the "divine Pavoya," the "diabolic Pavoya," according to the point of view. Even lacking the green glint of slanted eyes, the fiery glow of close-banded hair through the veil, that figure in the plain black dress would have been unmistakable. Portrait painters, photographers, post-impressionists, and caricaturists had rendered it familiar, in all lands, to those who had not seen the dancer herself. Manners could hardly believe in the truth of his swift impression. It was almost incredible that she should come as a guest to this house. Could she have made friends with Juliet? Juliet's cousin wondered. The thing that happened next was still more strange. The slim siren in black did not wait to be ushered in by the servant. She flitted from vestibule to hall beyond, then vanished as if she knew where to go and was in haste to get there. The Japanese did not turn his head to look after her, but gave his attention to the man on the doorstep. "I'm Captain Manners," said Jack. "I've come to see my cousin, the Duchess. I suppose she is at home?" He supposed this, not only because Juliet knew that he was due on the _Britannia_, and had cabled her desire to see him at once, but also because Mademoiselle Pavoya must have gone in by appointment. Even before the servant answered, however, he read in the troubled dark face that something had gone wrong. "Please to walk in, sir," said the Japanese, in stiff, correct English. "I have a note for you from Her Grace the Duchess. She was unfortunately obliged to go out; but I think she hopes to be back early. If you will kindly walk into the Persian room, sir, I will give you the letter." Well did Jack remember the Persian room! It had been Silas Phayre's great fad and favourite, and during his life had been used as a smoking room. Jack half expected to find Lyda Pavoya there, perhaps reading another note from Juliet; but the wonderful room, with its rare tiles and priceless rugs and exquisite old tapestries, was unoccupied. The servant placed an envelope on an antique tray of Persian enamel, and presented it with a bow. Then he went out unobtrusively, leaving Manners to study with some interest the seal Juliet had used. It seemed superfluous that she should use any at all, as the scrawled address showed that the writer had been in haste; but the interesting thing was the seal itself. It was Claremanagh's own seal, which he kept for his private correspondence, and the ring with which he made it had been given by the Tsarina of the Pearls to his great-great-grandfather. Jack happened to know this, because the Duke had ordered a copy made for Louis Mayen, with which to seal the box containing the pledged pearls. Claremanagh had told Jack this story before leaving France, and had pointed out the ring, which he invariably wore. The design was an eye; and the motto underneath was, "Je te regard." "Must have given the ring to Juliet," Manners thought, as he opened the envelope. He read: DEAR OLD BOY: Don't think me a beast to be out. I really couldn't help it. I was dragged into accepting for a tiresome lunch party, given by a tiresome female, in my honour: Emmy West's sister-in-law. Some story has been started that I was jealous of Emmy (among other women!) with Pat. _Nonsense_! But I knew, if I refused, what the creatures would say. Besides, I couldn't be sure just when you'd turn up. And above all, I wanted a chance to see you quite, quite alone. I've got lots of things to tell you, that I couldn't tell any one else. If you call while I'm away, as I expect, stop and see Pat, who is to lunch at home, as he's got a bad cold. Then say you must go, as you have an engagement. That will be true, because I now invite you to make an engagement with me. But if he insists on your visiting us, before you go home to Long Island, as he's sure to, do accept. You were horrid to answer my cable with a refusal, and say you had to go at once to your own place to decide on some silly old improvements you want to make. That's only an excuse, Jack, because you didn't quite see yourself staying in the house with Pat and me. But you are much too strong a man to mind a little thing like that. I don't believe you were ever in love with me, really. You just _thought_ you were, that's all, from knowing me when I was a wee kid, and always being my _bestest pal_ whom I could count on without fail. Oh, Jack, I do count on you now, as I never did before. So you won't fail me for the first time in your life, will you? I suppose this is selfish of me, and "exactly like a woman" (as Uncle Henry used to say, whenever I wanted to do anything he didn't want me to do), but I can't help it. You'll see, when I tell you, why _nobody_ else can be of any use to me in this trouble. I _have_ to write all this, though I hope to meet you so soon; because if I didn't, you might refuse Pat's most pressing invitation. And where should I be then? Don't think for an instant that I'm tired of Pat, and want a divorce or anything. It isn't that at all. I adore him as much as ever. That's where the trouble comes in! But we've had a _row_, and every day it will get worse. Why, even the seal ring, which I'm using for this letter, has become a bone of contention--among other things. This does need a seal, if ever a letter did, for it's dreadfully indiscreet and unwifely, I suppose. Already I've eased my mind a little by pouring out my woes to you, as in old times. And now for that engagement with me, which I trust you to keep. I am supposed to go to an "At Home," which I'm not sure isn't given for me. All I am sure about is that I shan't be there. Instead, I'll be in the Palm Room of the Hotel Lorne (where no one we know ever goes for tea) at five o'clock. And I shall _wait for you_, so you'll have to come. Afterward, if you haven't done it before, you can see to sending all your things to our house for a visit of _at least_ a week. But we'll talk of that! Ever your affectionate cousin, JEWEL. P. S. You see, I haven't forgotten your old name for me. No one except you ever called me his "Jewel." When Manners had read this letter through, he sat with it for some moments in his hand. Then, suddenly, he roused himself to realize that it was not a document to flaunt in the open. He replaced it in the envelope, which he slipped into an inner pocket of his khaki coat. Had the Japanese told Claremanagh of his arrival, he wondered? Or had there been some secret understanding between the Duchess and her servant that Captain Manners should be left long enough in the Persian room to read and put out of sight her sealed letter? Claremanagh had his own confidential man, Nickson (known as "Old Nick"); why should not Juliet have hers? There was no reason. Yet Jack hated to think that the girl should be driven to a rather sordid expedient, and somehow this thought dragged into his head another. "By George!" he exploded aloud. Then he bit his lip. But the thought could not be pushed away. Since Juliet was out, to whom was the visit of Lyda Pavoya being made? The Japanese seemed to be in the confidence of more than one person in this house! CHAPTER V THE THIRD RINGER OF THE BELL Simone had been in the act of coming downstairs, dressed for a walk with her mistress's English bulldog, Admiral Beatty, when a vision flashed through the hall: a reedlike figure in black with a glint of red hair through a patterned veil. Simone stopped short, petrified, pulling so suddenly at the dog's leash that the reticent bull gave a grunt. It took a great deal to petrify Simone. She had been through an earthquake in Italy. She had escaped from a burning hotel in her first year of service in New York. There had been further sensations also, and her nerves were accustomed to shocks. But to see Lyda Pavoya, the dancer, dart unannounced through the hall, when the Duke was alone in the house, went beyond everything. She was certain, despite the veil, that the woman was Pavoya. No other creature on earth had a figure like that, or held her head so like a light flower on a stem. The Duchess was tall and slim and graceful, with a slender, long throat; but she had the slightness of a normal, charmingly formed young girl. The Polish dancer was almost a thing supernatural, a streak of living flame made woman. Simone's dark skin was thick, but her head was not. Her brain worked fast. Like a general at manoeuvres, it reviewed the situation at a glance. The Duke was at home because of a "_cold!_" He had known for days that the Duchess would be out for luncheon, and that she was safe not to return home _en surprise_. He must have invited Pavoya to come in his wife's absence. And more than this, it struck Simone that the visit of to-day could not be the first. Togo, the Japanese (of whom she was jealous because of her mistress's fancy for his services), seemed to be acquainted with the dancer. He let her pass without a word. No doubt she had been to the house before, when the Duchess and Simone were out of the way. Either the Duke or Pavoya--or both--had bribed Togo, who was playing a mean, double game between his master and mistress! The Frenchwoman resolved that she would not, after all, take Beatty for a walk. Bending down, she unfastened the leash from his expensive collar, on which was engraved: "Miss America from her British Ally. P.C. to J.P." Feeling himself free the dog instantly turned and spraddled back to the Adored One's boudoir, where he was privileged to wallow among all the prettiest cushions. Such wallowing he much preferred to a promenade with Simone or any one else save his worshipped Duchess. As Simone rose from her stooping posture, she saw that Togo had ushered a man into the house. A second glance enabled her to recognize this man, and she was more amused than surprised to see that it was Captain Manners. Juliet had not asked her maid to deliver the secret letter, because it would be simpler for the man who opened the door to do so, and as the confidential mission was given to another, the Duchess had prudently refrained for mentioning it to Simone. The latter imagined her mistress must mentally have mislaid the fact that she herself had seen in the papers: Captain Manners' return on the _Britannia_, from France. In any case, here he was, and all that was cynical in Simone laughed at the _contretemps_. He was certain to have asked for the Duke, as the Duchess was out. Would Togo, who had just let in Pavoya, venture to interrupt a _tête-à-tête_, by announcing that Her Grace's cousin had arrived? It occurred to Simone that the Japanese had not dared to turn away so important a person, but that, having let him in, he would find some way of excusing the Duke. The situation was too dramatic to waste. The Frenchwoman pictured His Grace's expression, faced by his wife's cousin and loyal friend. She had wanted her mistress to marry Claremanagh, because it was distinguished to be the maid of a Duchess, but she had liked Manners and received many a tip from him in days gone by. For that reason, and for others even more important, she must help Manners catch his cousin Juliet's husband and Lyda Pavoya together. Thinking quickly, she tripped down the broad marble staircase which led to the great hall--a staircase that she was the one servant permitted to use. She had not passed the midway landing, however, when a second Japanese--a youth under the command of Togo--went hurrying toward the front door. The electric bell was not audible to any one in the hall, but Simone guessed that a third caller had rung. In Togo's absence with Captain Manners, it was the duty of Huji to answer the door. The maid flew down the remaining steps, and was in time to hear the Japanese in embarrassed conversation with the latest arrival. This person was speaking broken English, and Huji, not as fluent in that tongue as Togo, could not understand. "A Frenchman!" decided Simone. "_Mon Dieu_, it will be the messenger with the pearls!" She stepped forward with a smile. "_Monsieur_," she said, "_Je suis Française, la femme de chambre de la Duchesse. Si je puis être utile----_" The newcomer turned at the words, and beamed at sight of a compatriot. He was youngish, between thirty and forty, Simone thought. He was good-looking, too; richly dark, as if he might be a child of the south, like herself. His eyes were handsome, and his small features well cut; so were his clothes. He had a neat, close-clipped moustache, and red lips which made his teeth look white as he gave smile for smile, though in reality they were slightly yellowed by constant cigarette smoking. Simone approved of him. He had the air of being a gentleman, and she was glad that fate had made them meet. Naturally she knew of the Tsarina pearls, and that they were expected, after tiresome delays; for Juliet was both trustful and careless where Simone was concerned. But, save for this little comedy, she would not have met the messenger. Vaguely the maid understood that he was private secretary to some French financier in whose "care" the pearls had been left; and a secretary was far above a _femme de chambre_ in the social scale. It was a pleasant accident which enabled her to earn his gratitude, and Simone had a sudden vision of being invited out to dine, or go to the theatre, as a reward. Who knew how it might end if she played just the right cards? For a moment the two tossed "politenesses" to each other in their own beautiful language, the Nicoise striving to speak like a Parisienne. But there was no time to waste before the return of Togo, and after a few flowery sentences Simone came to business. "Monsieur has arrived on the _Britannia_, is it not?" she fluted. This told, as she intended, that the "mission" was no secret from her; and the way was cleared for the messenger. He showed her a visiting-card, with which he had vainly tried to impress Huji. "Leon Defasquelle" was the name Simone read, and its owner volubly explained that he was awaited with impatience by the Duke of Claremanagh. "This Oriental," he went on, with a glance at the attentive yellow face, "informs me, if I understand aright, that I cannot see the Duke." "Monsieur may have understood Huji. But it is Huji who does not understand the situation," smiled Simone. "His Grace the Duke is confined to the house with a cold. Otherwise he would doubtless have met Monsieur at the ship. As it was, he sent his own man. Was not Monsieur received by an Irishman named Nickson?" Monsieur Defasquelle shook his head sadly. There must have been a mistake. He had hoped to find someone who would see him through the formalities of landing, but no one had appeared. Possibly this was due to the fact that his luggage had been placed under the Letter F instead of D, and so the Duke's man had missed him. Fortunately, through the influence of Mr. Henry Phayre (still engaged in the noble work of reconstructing devastated France), and that of the well-known New York banking house of Phayre, there had been no difficulty with the Customs. His--Defasquelle's--mission had for obvious reasons been kept secret on shipboard, but the object he brought had been declared, and instead of being delayed at the dock, he had been aided by the authorities. It seemed strange now to meet obstacles at the journey's end! "Be seated, Monsieur, for a moment," his countrywoman cooed. "I will go myself and tell His Grace that you have arrived. I am a privileged person in this house!" Huji had understood not a word of the conversation in French, but seeing Simone start in the direction of the Duke's "study," he put himself in the woman's way. "Togo say Duke no see any peoples," he warned her in his best English. "I will take the responsibility on myself," she said. "I knew the Duke long before Togo saw either of Their Graces." With a slight push she passed the boy, and in her haste almost skated along the polished floor to the door next that of the Persian room. There she tapped sharply, without a second's hesitation, and waiting for an answer she could hear her heart knock in her breast. For a long moment that felt longer there was no other sound. The silence behind the door seemed abnormal to her high-keyed nerves. But suddenly, as she was about to rap again, the door was flung open. The Duke stood on the threshold, his charming brown face less charming than usual, because of a slight frown. At sight of Simone he showed surprise, his scowl having been prepared for Togo. "What is it? Has your mistress come home?" he asked. The frown had faded; the voice was kind. But this change did not deceive Simone. She was sure that the Duke was in what he himself would call a "blue funk," and the fear she imagined brought back the last picture her mind had made of him. Quickly she saw the way to kill two birds with one stone. "_Monsieur le Duc_," she said in French. "The messenger has arrived from the _Britannia_, and is being detained in the hall by the Japanese. He is very vexed and surprised. I took it on myself to tell Your Grace, as I think this is a man who would go away in anger; and that would be a pity." Claremanagh flushed. Simone read his confusion. Pavoya was not to be seen, but she was in the room, hidden somewhere; there was no doubt of that; either behind the big Spanish screen, or in the window recess covered by velvet curtains. If Simone had not learned to control her features she would have laughed. She knew that the wretched young man must be thinking, "What shall I do? If I go outside this room to meet Defasquelle, someone may walk in and find Pavoya. Perhaps it may be a plot of my wife's, who has come back and seen Pavoya! Yet if I receive Defasquelle here, Pavoya will have to remain hidden, since there will be no chance for her to escape." It was a case of the frying pan and the fire, and to know which was which seemed a "toss up". However, the Duke made the best of things as they were, and decided quickly. "Of course I'll see this gentleman," he said in rather a loud tone. "Have him sent here at once." "_Bien, Monsieur le Duc!_" agreed Simone; then added instantly, "And the Capitaine Manners? Is he to be kept waiting?" "Good Lord!" exploded Claremanagh. "Is he here, too?" "He has been here some time," the maid had begun to explain when Togo appeared, his eye bright with rage. This woman had upset his careful arrangements! He knew that she had done it to make mischief. But now there was no circumventing her. He had heard the whole story from Huji, and an elaborate plan to keep Captain Manners contented in the Persian room was a burst bubble. Meekly Togo took orders from the Duke to bring both visitors to him, Captain Manners first, because he was a relative, and not more than five minutes later, Monsieur Defasquelle. "Does His Grace wish me to make his excuses to the messenger?" asked Simone, as Togo trotted off to the Persian room. "Yes, go," said the Duke, no doubt anxious for an instant with the hidden one; and the maid hurried back to Defasquelle. In order to ingratiate herself, rather than exonerate her mistress's husband, she threw all her charm into the explanation. In five minutes--no more!--His Grace would receive Monsieur. Meanwhile, was there any information, any aid, she could give--she who had known New York for years? By the time Togo appeared to conduct the messenger, Defasquelle and Simone had discovered that they were both of the south; he, no farther from Nice than Marseilles. It was when the very invitation she had wished for hovered on the Frenchman's lips that the Japanese intervened, and Simone hated Togo more violently than before. CHAPTER VI BEHIND THE BOOKSHELF "Captain Manners, this is Monsieur Defasquelle, private secretary to Monsieur Mayen, of whom you have heard me speak," Claremanagh introduced the two men, as the messenger came in. He shook Defasquelle's hand and gave him one of the delightful smiles which helped to make him popular with all types and classes. Jack tried not to hear what Juliet's husband and the Frenchman said to each other. Not that there was any special reason why he shouldn't hear, for he'd heard Pat groan over the pawned pearls till he was sick of the subject; and he had been drawn into the business of trying to get them for Juliet after Claremanagh left France. But his part in the affair was ended, and he felt that Pat would rather be alone with Defasquelle; that he had been asked to make a third on the scene entirely through politeness. Besides, he was grimly conscious that the three men were not the only persons present. He was as sure as Simone had been that Lyda Pavoya listened from behind the Spanish screen, or the half-drawn green velvet curtains. He was angry for Juliet's sake that the woman should be in the house, and disgusted that she should be hidden. Never had he come so near disliking Pat, even on the day when Juliet broke the news of her engagement. But to his own annoyance, he could not dislike him whole-heartedly. He even found himself sneakingly half-sorry for the fellow. Wondering why this should be, he was roused from his thoughts by the raised voice of Defasquelle. "But I must beg, _Monsieur le Duc_, that you open the box in my presence and verify the contents!" he exclaimed. "I see how you feel, but I can't do that, and it's not necessary," returned Pat. Jack Manners had seated himself on the club-fender that guarded the fine fireplace. He had taken an illustrated paper to occupy eyes and hands, but glanced up and saw on the table between Claremanagh and Defasquelle a box neatly packed in some waterproof-looking material, sealed with five fat crimson seals. "It would spoil all the fun if I broke those seals," Pat went on, in a more human tone. "My wife must be the first to open the thing, and see the pearls. I'm extremely sorry she's out. But it can't be helped. If you care to wait----" "When will Madame the Duchess return?" Defasquelle enquired. "That's more than I know. Not till late, I'm afraid." "I have made an engagement in a half hour from now," regretted the Frenchman, taking out his watch. "It is an appointment that cannot be put off, as the person is not free to change from one time to another. Monsieur, I urge you to open the box. It is only fair to the Purser of the _Britannia_, who kept it in his safe. It is only fair to me----" Claremanagh laughed. "Oh, don't bother about that side of it! Those seals alone are a proof that the packet hasn't been tampered with since it left Mayen's hands. You're his secretary, Monsieur Defasquelle, and he trusts you completely, or he wouldn't have chosen you, above any one else, as his messenger. But I don't suppose he would take that seal ring I gave him off his finger to lend it even to you. He volunteered the promise to me that it should never leave his hand. In fact, when I pledged the pearls to him for two hundred thousand francs, it was he who suggested fastening them up in a box sealed with my own particular, private seal." "You are right so far, _Monsieur le Duc_," admitted Defasquelle. "My employer has been true to his agreement. For one thing, the ring you had made for him with the facsimile of your seal happens to be rather small. I do not think he could remove it from his finger if he wished without having it sawed off by a jeweller." "Very well, then!" said Pat. "There you are!" "But _I_ am not there," argued the Frenchman, unfamiliar with English idioms. "Seals can be taken off and fastened on again, I have heard, without the change leaving a trace. I am certain these are intact. But, putting aside myself and the Pursuer, Monsieur would not----" "Rot, my dear fellow!" cut in the Duke. "I trust Mayen as I trust myself. Of course, I know--we all three know--the pearls are inside that box. _You_ say you can't wait for my wife to come home. _I_ say the seals shan't be broken by any hand but hers. Let's be sensible! Manners, come here, won't you, and reassure Monsier Defasquelle by examining these seals!" He snatched the box up from the table, and held it out to Jack. "You've got sharp eyes. I leave it to you. Can't you swear that those five red blobs have never been tampered with, even by the smartest expert alive?" Reluctantly Jack came forward, and accepting the box, closely examined the seals. "I think I'd be prepared to swear that," he said. "All the same, Monsieur Defasquelle is right, in my opinion. You owe it to him--to everyone concerned, including the company who've insured the pearls--to open the box before you let it go out of your sight." "You're no true friend of Juliet's, to give me such advice," Pat taunted him. "And I won't take it. That's flat. While as for the seals, look there!" As he retrieved the package, he nodded at a ring on the least finger of his right hand. Both men's eyes went to it; Defasquelle's to note, perhaps, how precisely the raised design of the wax resembled the sunken design on the gold. But there was a different thought in Jack Manners' mind. He remembered what Juliet had written him about this ring. What had happened between her and Pat? was the question that flashed through his head. A few hours ago she had sealed her "secret letter" with her husband's ring, after some dispute concerning it. And now, here it was on Pat's finger again! Claremanagh, unconscious of Jack's disparaging reflections, began to regain something like his old gaiety of manner. "Are you satisfied, Monsieur?" he asked. Then, seeing that Defasquelle screwed up his brilliant eyes in a near-sighted way, the Duke flung the box on the table, and pulled off the ring. "Have a good look at it," he said, almost forcing it into the Frenchman's hand. "There's a safe in the wall of this room, made by my dead father-in-law, to keep such things as he didn't care to send to the bank. My wife and I are the only people alive who have keys to it, or know the combination. Besides, my own man is the one servant allowed in this room. So you see, Jack, I don't need to keep the box 'in sight' after Monsieur Defasquelle goes." As he spoke, he walked toward an alcove at the left of the fireplace. It was fitted with bookshelves; and as Manners' eyes followed Claremanagh he remembered the secret of Silas Phayre's safe. Part of the top shelf had to be pulled out from the wall (after touching a spring) and then pushed up. Thus a small steel door was revealed, and could be unlocked only after a certain combination of letters had been made. Jack had not thought of the safe in years, or glanced in its direction on entering the room; but now, to his surprise, he saw that the bookshelf had already been pushed up, and the safe-door not only revealed, but opened. Claremanagh's back was turned to him, and he could not see by a change of face whether Pat was vexed at his own forgetfulness, or indifferent. But Jack remembered the hidden fourth person in the room, and instinct told him that the safe had not been opened in readiness for the pearls. There had been some other motive. Claremanagh and the Polish woman had been interrupted in their tête-à-tête, and it would be characteristic of Pat if an unexpected rap on the door had caught him unawares. Could he have been in the act of giving Pavoya a jewel from the safe when he had been forced to answer a knock? Luckily, no such suspicion could be in the Frenchman's head, for he had not seen Pavoya slip into the house. Jack glanced at him, and saw that he had laid the Duke's seal ring on the table beside the sealed packet. He was looking at the safe, but showed no surprise at finding it open. For him, it had been prepared to receive the pearls. "_There's_ a good little hidie-hole!" said Pat. "Now I'll sign the receipt, Monsieur, and you may go to your engagement with a light heart." He went back to the table, took the box, and tossed it into the aperture in the wall. Then he closed the steel door, did something to it which the eyes of neither man could follow, and pulled down the concealing bookshelf. A moment later he was scrawling "Claremanagh" on the paper which Defasquelle rather sulkily put into his hand. CHAPTER VII WHAT JULIET TOLD JACK At five minutes before five o'clock Jack Manners entered the Palm Room of the Hotel Lorne. This room adjoined the restaurant, and was crowded with small tables lit by pink-shaded electric candles. The Lorne was a good hotel, but too stodgily respectable to be amusing. As there was no band at meal times or tea time, its clients were mostly unmodern creatures with a strange preference for peace and quiet. It was well that Jack had arrived before the hour fixed, for at five precisely Juliet appeared. He had already engaged a table in a secluded corner half screened by drooping, feather-like branches; but his eyes were on the door, and he sprang up as the tall, girlish figure drifted in between two palms. At sight of his boyhood's love, his heart gave a bound. How lovely she was in her sheathlike grey dress, with dangling silvery things, like clouds of dawn filming a pale sunrise sky! Her hat was simple yet quaint, pushing forward her bright hair, and making her face look young as a child's--pathetically young. Yes, "pathetic" was the word, Jack thought as he went to meet her, and she came hastening to him as to a haven. And "pathetic" was a new word in connection with Juliet Phayre! She had been proud, fantastic, absurd, charming, obstinate, unaccountable, and a hundred other things, but never pathetic. Manners wondered if it could be the dip of her odd hat-brim which gave her that look of transparent pallor, and the blue shadows under her big eyes. There were not many people in the room, as tea at the Lorne was far from a fashionable function. Those who were there seemed absorbed, in a tired, provincial-shoppers' way, in the muffin and tea business. Still, Juliet was too tall and beautiful not to be conspicuous even if unrecognized, and a few weeks ago no Sunday Supplement had been complete without her photograph. The two could do no more than gaze deep, eyes in eyes, for an instant, as they met near the door, and squeeze instead of shaking hands; but all prudence was Jack's. He saw by Juliet's face that the tea-drinkers were of no more importance to her than the chairs they sat in, and he could have kissed the face turned up affectionately to his--if he would. But he would not, and he did not even speak until he had her seated at their palm-screened table. "Oh, Jack, it's great to see you!" Juliet said, when a too-attentive waiter had finished taking their order. Tears suddenly welled to her eyes. She dived into a gorgeous gold mesh bag for a handkerchief, which was not there. "Must be lost!" she sniffed. Hastily Jack passed his across the table, and had a heart-piercing impression that he had lived through this scene before, in happier days. But yes, of course! Often, when he was a big boy and she was a little girl, she had come to him for consolation. And she had always lost her "hanky!" It was then, when he was about sixteen, and she eleven, that he had first begun to love her, with a protecting love that had changed but never waned as the years passed. Now she belonged to another man. Yet she still called to him, across the gulf marriage had made, for help and comfort! Jack Manners wondered what had happened to his red blood, that the pain he suffered was not more acute. "I'm too sorry for the child to think of myself just now," he diagnosed his feelings, with the picture of Pavoya in his mind. "The reaction will come by and by." Juliet began at once to pour out her woes, forgetting to ask what had happened during Jack's visit to the house--what her husband had said, or whether the pearls had come. "Pat doesn't love me," she broke out. "That's why I'm miserable. I don't know how to live. And I wouldn't have believed it if any one had told me--except himself." "You don't mean that Claremanagh says----" Jack began to blunder; but Juliet cut him short. "Not in _words_, of course. But I found a letter from that devil, Pavoya. It began, 'My Best and Dearest Friend'. Isn't that the same thing as telling me? The woman wouldn't write to him like that if he didn't encourage her." Jack longed to comfort the girl; but after what he had seen, he was at a loss for consoling words. "How did you happen to find the letter?" he temporized. "Why, it had to do with the fuss about Pat's seal ring," the girl confessed. "But first, I'd better explain that when I was being married, I made firm resolutions never to mention the name of Pavoya to Pat. Emmy West almost _dared_ me to! And that alone was enough to show me it would be a silly mistake. But one night after we'd come to New York and were settling down happily, we had an exciting, intimate sort of talk about our pasts. It was a _beautiful_ talk! And I felt so sure of Pat, I just couldn't resist asking if he'd ever loved Pavoya. He swore he hadn't; he'd only admired her a lot, and flirted a little. It was nothing at all beside what he felt for _me_. He was so dear that I burst out about how nasty Emmy West and other people had been--how unhappy they'd made me, more than once. Pat said '_Damn_ Emmy West and all the cats!' I _loved_ that! And while the mood was on, I asked if he were willing to promise he'd not see Pavoya in New York. "The minute those words were spoken, I saw a change in Pat. He said he couldn't make such a promise. There might be circumstances which would force him to see her. He wouldn't call on her, though. I had to be satisfied with that, and I was--_almost_, till one day when I'd teased him to lend me his seal ring. It's supposed to bring luck, you know. So I thought I'd try it, for bridge. I had to wear it on my thumb; it's too big for my fingers. I was playing that afternoon at Nancy Van Esten's. I had a Frenchwoman for a partner. I'd never met her before. Perhaps you knew her in Paris? A Comtesse de Saintville: her husband is on some mission here. She's a very impulsive woman--neurotic, I should think. I didn't feel drawn to her, because I'd heard she was a great pal of Lyda Pavoya's: that they went about together a lot. Suddenly she noticed the ring. She squeaked, 'Why, I _know_ that eye! I saw it on a letter the other day.' Then she shut up and turned red. I could see her colour through _inches_ of powder! Of course, I guessed where she'd seen the letter. And there was only one person who could have sent it. Maybe I turned red, too. But I pretended to take no interest, and Nancy Van Esten said '_Do_ let's play bridge!' "I went home perfectly wretched. Pat thought I was ill. I didn't contradict him. I hadn't made up my mind what to do. But one thing I did--I kept the ring. Day before yesterday he asked me for it. I knew what that meant! He wanted to write to _her_ again--perhaps had a letter to answer. I showed quite plainly that I hated giving up the ring. But he didn't care. He would have it. The only sort of 'concession' he made was to say he'd give it back next day--after he'd finished a batch of correspondence. Well, the next day came, and he didn't give the ring back, though I saw he wasn't wearing it. You know how forgetful and careless he often is! I was sure he'd left the ring where he sealed his letters. He'd promised I should have it again. I suppose I had a right to _take_ it, hadn't I?" Juliet paused, her eyes dry now, challenging Jack. But he did not speak, and she hurried on to defend herself. "I _felt_ I had the right," she persisted, without conviction. "So yesterday I went into the room that used to be Dad's den. It's Pat's den now. He wasn't in----" "Did you think he would be?" "No-o. As a matter of fact, he'd gone to the bank. You know he works there. He's quite keen. He'd been late about getting off, so he'd started in a hurry. His desk wasn't locked. I don't know whether he ever locks it, because I never tried the drawers before. Anyhow, in the top drawer a lot of letters were tumbled in--letters he'd received, and letters he'd written--not in envelopes yet. All sorts of things were there in disorder--fountain pens, sealing wax, and--_the ring_! It was on an open letter that lay face up, a letter with a purple monogram of L.P. A perfume came up from the paper--a queer perfume, and the writing--in purple ink--was queer, too. I saw the beginning I told you about: 'My Best and Dearest Friend'--in French. Oh, Jack, I thought I should have died. I almost wish I had!" "Nonsense!" Jack scouted her grief. "If the letter had had anything in it Pat was ashamed to have you see, you may be sure even he wouldn't have been so careless." "It wasn't exactly carelessness made him leave it," Juliet said, sadly. "It was trust in me. He didn't dream that I--would do such a thing as read a letter of his. And I didn't read it. I didn't read another word, Jack. One side of me wanted to, horribly. The other side was disgusted at the idea--the stronger side, it turned out." "Good girl!" cried Jack. "Yes, I do think I was a saint. But virtue never has any reward except its own. I left the ring and the letter. But I felt half dead. I decided things couldn't go on as they were. I meant to speak to Pat when he came home." "And did you?" "No, because he was ill--had a bad headache--the beginning of a cold. Or else he was pretending. I can't trust him now! But he looked pale and odd, so I nobly left him alone till this morning. Then I went to the study, and asked him to keep his promise about the ring. He pulled open the drawer. There it was on the letter, as I saw it yesterday. That gave me my chance. I said, 'Pavoya has been writing to you. I see her monogram.' And I pretended to read, 'My Best and Dearest Friend', for the first time." "By George!" exclaimed Jack, as Juliet stopped for breath. "By George, indeed!" she echoed. "Pat accused me of being suspicious. I accused him of being untrue. We had a _scene_! I never thought I could say such things to Pat as I said. The way he took them made me worse. He just looked at me in silence, with his mouth shut like a steel trap. I suppose he hates me now. If he hadn't deserved every word I said, _I_ should deserve to be hated for saying them. If he'd _loved_ me, he would have boxed my ears! I half expected he would. But seeing him stand like a graven image, I turned to leave the room. He opened the door for me to go out, and _handed me the ring_." "You took it!" "I had to, or fling it in his face. I went straight off and wrote that letter to you, which I sealed with the ring. Then I sent it back to him by Old Nick. I haven't seen Pat, of course, since he shut the door on me. And I don't know how we are going to behave to each other when we meet next." "You will behave as if nothing had happened, of course," Jack said with decision. "That's your advice?" "Certainly. And nothing _has_ really happened, so far as you know. You have no proof that Claremanagh has broken his word about calling on Pavoya. And you've seen no letter from him to her----" "Someone else saw his seal!" "The most innocent words may have been under it. And you can't blame a man if a woman chooses to address him as her 'dearest friend'. At least you've no right to do so." "Don't you think I have? That's because you're a man, always ready to defend another man. And you don't understand women." "Good heavens, I don't claim to! And I do not defend Claremanagh. I merely say, give him the benefit of the doubt. Only men and women in melodrama refuse to hear any defense from the suspected one. You asked for my advice. There it is, my child, whether it pleases you or not." "Well, if you want me to be as cool and reasonable as you are, you've got to stand by me, and see me through." "I'm neither cool nor reasonable where you're concerned, Juliet. But you know I'll stand by you." "You mean, you'll not go to Long Island? You'll stay in New York, and be our guest?" "I'll not go to Long Island--at present. I'll stay in New York. But I _won't_ be your guest." "You're cruel, Jack! You're selfish!" Juliet cried, as she had often unjustly cried before. "You know better," he said. "It is the outsider who sees the game. I ought to see it--if I'm to help. And I _wouldn't_ be an outsider if I were your guest. I've taken rooms at the Hotel Tarascon, only one street away from your house and Pat's." Juliet was silent for a moment. She had a hideous fear that, in her anger, she had flung _Her_ house, _Her_ money, _Her_ everything, at Claremanagh's stone pale face. CHAPTER VIII JULIET BREAKS THE SEALS At six forty-two the Duchess of Claremanagh descended from a plebeian taxicab in front of her pretentious home. She had sent away her own car, before going to the Lorne, and though there was no wrong in her secret, she was weighed down by a sense of guilt as she went to her room. This annoyed her, because the one guilty person in the house was Pat! She had heard, toward the end of her conversation with Jack, that the pearls had come while he was with the Duke; but the girl was too wretched to care. How did she know that the story about Monsieur Mayen was not a "fake"? It was quite possible that Pavoya had had the pearls for months, and had only now given them up, under cover of Mayen's name, and his messenger on the _Britannia_. Juliet felt as Emmy West had expected her to feel: She hated the pearls! Whatever the truth was, she could take no pleasure in wearing them. All the same, she _would_ wear them, to show curiosity-mongers that they were not in Lyda Pavoya's hands. She would wear them this very night. She and Claremanagh were engaged to dine at the Van Estens', and he had insisted in the morning that he would be well enough to go. Now, for all she could tell, he might have changed his mind, and 'phoned that his cold would keep him at home. That excuse should not affect _her_, however. If he did not bring or send the pearls to her room, Simone should take him a note. In this, Juliet would say, not that Jack had told her, but that she "_supposed_ the messenger had arrived," and she would ask for the pearls to wear at Nancy's dinner party--ask for them not as a favour, but because of the right she had, as Duchess of Claremanagh. "Madame is very late!" were Simone's first words as Juliet flung open her bedroom door. "I began to be anxious." Juliet glanced at her wrist-watch and a French clock on the mantel. It was true, she _was_ late! She had a new gown which there had been no time to try, and dinner was at eight. The girl's nerves, tensely strained all day, began to get out of control. She was "jumpy" and cross as Simone unfastened the many little hidden hooks and tiny lace buttonholes of the "dawn-cloud" dress. Simone's hands were cold as ice, she complained. She hoped Simone wasn't "sickening for something!" Then, it seemed that the quaint grey hat had spoiled her hair, which usually remained in perfect order throughout the day. It had to be let down; and being immensely long and thick, would take twenty minutes to rearrange. Never, never had Simone been so awkward! Her fingers were all thumbs! For a few moments, in her need of haste and her nervous agitation, Juliet forgot the crying question of the pearls. But a knock at the door which separated Pat's room from hers set every pulse a-throb. _He had come, of his own accord_! The blood rushed to her cheeks, and as she turned to the opening door, she looked gloriously beautiful. Her eyes met Claremanagh's with the desperate appeal of a loving, tortured soul, and he was disarmed. "Could you let Simone go for a few minutes?" he asked. "I should like to speak to you alone." A few seconds ago Juliet had been fuming because every instant counted. But suddenly time ceased to be of importance. She didn't care how late she might be for Nancy's dinner. She didn't care if she were too late to go at all! Simone, who knew that things were not as they should be, expected her mistress coldly to refuse the Duke. She was intensely surprised to be sent away and told not to return for fifteen minutes. Sensitively jealous, the maid resented being sent out of the room for _ce traitre_, as she mentally called Claremanagh. What a different scene there would be between husband and wife if she had betrayed to the Duchess the secret of the afternoon! To do so would satisfy her love of drama, and her pique against the Duke; but Simone knew too well "which side her bread was buttered." For one thing, the Duchess would not hear such a tale from a servant, even her trusted maid. The Duke might be sent "packing" by the heiress, but so would Simone! And for another thing, there must be no possible suspicion when the "Whisperer" of the _Inner Circle_ whispered next, as to where the whisper had started. It would not do for Simone to know that Lyda Pavoya had called on the Duke of Claremanagh in his American wife's absence. The instant the Frenchwoman was out of the room, Pat came close to Juliet. He was dressed for dinner, all but coat and waistcoat, and Juliet adored him thus, in his glittering white expanse of evening shirt. She had often told him so. "You were not very kind to me this morning," he said, looking down at her, his face graver than she had ever seen it before this day. "I may as well tell you I was a good deal hurt, and angry, too--though I haven't deserved too well of you, perhaps. But to see you as you are now makes me forget everything, except that we've been dear lovers, and that you're the most beautiful girl on earth--_my_ girl! You look just as you looked that evening at Harridge's, a million miles away, in old London--the night before our wedding when I came in suddenly, and you'd been washing your hair. Do you still hate your poor Romeo, _Giullietta mia_, or do you feel like forgetting, too, and beginning all over again?" "I never hated you--not for a minute!" cried Juliet. "I thought you hated _me_!" "Then you were jolly well mistaken," said Pat. They gazed at each other like two fencers, for a moment; then Juliet sprang up, and held out her arms. He clasped her, and kissed her hair, her face, her bare white neck. Something he held in his hand, out of her sight behind his back, fell to the floor. She started at the sound, and he let her go, laughing like his old self. "'History repeats'!" he exclaimed. "Do you remember the little box I brought you, with its blobby seals? Well, I have another sealed box for you to-night. You're to open it as you opened that one, and you will find the same thing inside. Only, it will be the same thing with a difference." He picked up the packet from the floor, and handed it to Juliet with a flourish. "_Voilà, Madame! Les plus belles chases, pour la plus belle dame_." "The pearls!" Juliet breathed. "The pearls!" echoed Pat. The girl was thrilled. How could she have hated the things so angrily an hour ago? Her whole mood concerning them and concerning life had changed under Pat's kisses. She was going to _love_ his pearls for his sake, and the sake of their own romance! "Why, the seals haven't been broken!" she exclaimed, as she took the box. "No, I was determined you and you alone should do the breaking." "But--didn't the messenger insist?" "He did. Two can play at that game, though!" "What about the receipt? I should have thought he'd object----" "'Object' is a mild word. I convinced him in the end, however--if not that I was right, anyhow that I meant to have my own way. Darling, this is a happy moment for me--though I didn't expect to be happy to-night. Break the seals. Open the box. And I shall know by your eyes what you think of its contents." With trembling fingers Juliet obeyed. Each seal was so perfect, it seemed a shame to shatter the delicate eye in crimson wax. Laughing, she remarked that it was clear no thief had touched the box. Pat agreed, and took from her the waterproof wrapping as she peeled it off. Within was a wooden box, with a sliding lid, such as French jewellers use. Claremanagh had bought it himself, at Mayen's request, he explained to Juliet; and the seal (made also by his ring) which held the cover in place had been pressed by his hand in the presence of his friend, the "super money-lender." "By Jove, I'm proud of it!" he exclaimed. "It's a work of art. I'd forgotten how good it was. The best seal I've ever done, and I've called myself an expert--a Genie of the ring!" It needed a pair of scissors to loosen the wax from the wood. Then Juliet slipped off the lid, and took from the box something wrapped in a handkerchief of fine Irish linen. "You'll find my monogram on that rag," said Pat, apparently enjoying himself. "Mayen would make me wrap the case with the pearls in something that belonged to me--something that couldn't be copied easily by a thief. My hair wasn't quite long enough to do up a parcel in, and this was the only other thing we could think of!" While he gaily explained, Juliet slowly--tantalizing herself--unwound the linen folds. So doing, she smelt a faint fragrance of tobacco--Pat's special tobacco which left its odour on all his clothes. It had seemed exquisitely exciting to the girl when she was engaged to Claremanagh, and it was more so than ever to-night, when they were having this heavenly reconciliation--a reconciliation partly due to Jack's advice and his defence of the Duke. But it was odd that the scent should have lasted all these months! Juliet exclaimed over this to Pat, but he accounted for it by reminding her how closely the handkerchief had been shut up in the box. At last she was looking at the jewel-case which had once belonged to the love-sick Tsarina! It was of white velvet, creamy now with age, and stamped with crowns in gold, pathetically and appropriately dimmed. The catch was curious and beautiful: a big _cabochon_ ruby shaped like a heart. Juliet pushed it, and lifted the satin lid. There, on the cushion, lay the long rope of pearls curled up like a snake, with the curious diamond clasp for its head. The girl had expected to cry out in amazed admiration at sight of the wonderful thing--"Claremanagh's ewe lamb." She had expected to be literally dazzled. But instead, she suffered a shock of disappointment. With all the will in the world to be pleased and grateful, she was dumb. She could think of nothing to say; and she tingled with embarrassment under her husband's eyes. "Well, darling," he said, after a few seconds of waiting. "Don't the poor pearls come up to your hopes?" "Oh, yes!" she forced herself to answer. "Aren't they _big_? Aren't they _blue_? I never saw any so-called 'blue pearls' so really blue as these." "All the same, you are disappointed," Pat judged, his eyes on her face. "Don't you think by this time I know your tones and your expressions? Out with it, Jule! Bless you, _I_ shan't be hurt. I didn't make the pearls, you know. And you're a spoiled pet of fortune, brought up from your babyhood to play with better toys than these. You could have had pearls as big as plums, in a rope to your feet, if you'd wanted 'em. Only your taste was too good. What's the matter with these baubles?" "Why," the girl hesitated, "if I must say what I think you know I _am_ supposed to be a bit of an expert, in my little amateur way, it seems to me these pearls aren't as lustrous as they ought to be. Perhaps they're 'sick'. They may need sea-water, or something. Yet they haven't the symptoms of 'dying' pearls. They haven't lost their colour. They've got almost too much--to look _real_." "They're real enough!" "Of course they _must_ be. And the clasp is charming, isn't it? An eye made of a blue sapphire, set in white diamonds, rimmed with tiny black ones; an eye like the design of your seal, except that this one looks to the right, and----" "To the _right_!" Pat caught the words from her mouth. "Impossible!" Juliet stared. "But it does. You may see for yourself." "Good God!" There was horror in his voice. Juliet could not understand. This scene began to feel like a queer dream. "What is the matter?" she asked. "Give me the thing!" She handed him the rope. He glared at the clasp as if the diamond and sapphire eye were a miniature head of Medusa. Then he turned to her with a dazed expression, still in silence. "You frighten me," she faltered. "You--you say you're an expert in pearls," he said. "How can you tell real ones from false?" "One very simple way is to touch them to the tip of the tongue," Juliet explained, bewildered. "Real pearls are always cold. False ones can be warmish. Besides, the surface feels different. And even if the weight is right----" "Test these," Pat said. The girl took back the gleaming blue rope, and lifted the largest pearls to her lips. "They are--false," she gasped, after an instant's pause. "You are sure?" "Yes. I am sure." CHAPTER IX THE EYE THAT LOOKED TO THE RIGHT The two stared at each other in silence, and both were pale. Juliet's mind was confused. "The pearls false!" She tried to hammer the words into her brain, and understand fully what the thing would mean for her and Pat. She thought of Louis Mayen, the "super money-lender," who had kept the pearls for months, and supposed that Claremanagh also must be thinking of him. "What a treacherous, horrible man!" she broke out, at last. The Duke stared, almost stupidly--if he could be stupid. "_Who_ is treacherous--horrible?" he stammered. "Why, your friend Mayen, of course!" she explained. "My poor Pat!" Comprehension dawned in Claremanagh's eyes. "Oh, Mayen had nothing to do with this!" he assured her. "Who else, then?" Juliet persisted. "The purser on the ship, who had the box in his safe, coming over? But he didn't have the seal. Mayen had it. He--or his messenger could----" "Put that idea out of your head, my darling," urged Claremanagh. "Mayen had the seal, and of course it's on the cards that Defasquelle, his messenger, might have stolen it or had an imitation one made. But neither of them had the----" Abruptly the Duke stopped. He had been talking fast and eagerly, and he pulled himself up so short that it was as if he stumbled. Juliet had been examining the quaint clasp of the false pearls, which she still had in her hand, but that shocked pause brought her eyes to her husband's face. It had been pale and strained, but now there was a look upon it of physical suffering. "You've thought of the one who did it!" she cried. "Someone you care for!" By an intense effort Claremanagh seemed to withdraw all expression from his face. It became dull, like a handsome mask. "I wish I _had_ thought of any one," he said. "No such luck." Juliet had pitied him unselfishly at first, for after all the pearls were his, not hers, and the loss--sentimental and material--would be very great if the Tsarina's pearls were gone. But his look, his changed tone, and the cloud that seemed to rise between them like a mist roused her vague resentment. She felt as if she had tried to comfort him and he had pushed her away. "Pat!" she exclaimed, sharply. "It's no use your trying to put me off. You have thought who changed the pearls--or anyhow, of a person who _might_ have done it. You've simply got to tell me. I have a right to know." "My dear child," he protested. "You do spring to the wildest conclusions!" Juliet's anger rose. "The whole thing is wild. Only wild conclusions are of any use. If you don't want me to try and help you, I won't. But I can't prevent myself from seeing one thing that perhaps you don't see yet. If the real thief isn't soon found, and this story gets out, there will be some horrid gossip about _you_." Claremanagh flushed scarlet. "I do see," he said. "At least, I see what you're hinting at. If I purloin my own pearls, and secretly sell them, while getting credit at the same time for giving them to my wife, I bring off a very neat coup. That's what you mean, isn't it?" The thing sounded so crudely villainous when put into words that Juliet was ashamed. But there was a fierce light in the eyes which until to-day had never looked at her except in love--or seeming love. Juliet would not let her husband fancy for an instant that he had made her flinch. "Yes, that's what I mean," she answered. "One's dear friends are capable of any insinuation." "And even those dearer and nearer than friends!" Pat flung at her. "Oh, I realize that I'm the classic target. A poor Irish peer--the poorest of the lot!--who dares to marry America's richest girl. No beastly trick too vile to believe of him! Of course a blighter like that couldn't have married the girl for love." To hear the words spoken, even in bitterest sarcasm, was like the prick of a knife. Juliet had pushed them out of her own mind so often that it was sharpest anguish to have them thrust into it by Pat's adored lips. If he loved her, she could not see how it was possible for him to speak like that! In thinking this, she pitied herself desperately, and forgot her own words which had lashed him to retaliation. She forgot, too, how that very morning her lips had flung this very taunt. She had shown him sharply how much her own she considered her fortune, her house, and everything he shared as her husband. It seemed to her that now he was inadvertently confessing, rather than sneering at possible accusers. Juliet defended her own attractions pitifully, yet there was nothing pitiful in her look. She loomed tall and aggressive, and cruelly beautiful, with blazing eyes and cheeks. "A great many men have told me they loved me, and that no one could _help_ loving me for myself, but I never believed any of them till I met you; and then I was a conceited fool to think you could care for me after Lyda Pavoya." Pat started as if she had boxed his ears: and Juliet, too, was surprised. She had not meant to say that. The thing had said itself. For an instant his eyes flamed. Then their fire died out, and left them cold. He looked disgusted. "I told you once that I had never loved Mademoiselle Pavoya," he said. "One isn't used to having one's word doubted. It's rather humiliating to have it happen with one's own wife. But putting that aside, why not keep to the point? Why bring up the lady's name when we are discussing quite a different affair--the affair of these pearls?" Out of Claremanagh's coldness a demon was born, and flew straight to Juliet's heart. For an instant she lost all sense of her own love for her husband. She hated him and wished to hurt him as much as she could, because it seemed that he had gone out of his way to hurt her. She tingled all over with indignant humiliation. It was as if Pat had said, "I happen to be your husband, but you are only a commoner with no traditions of fine breeding behind you, while I am a man whose ancestors might have had yours for servants. No wonder you have no intuitive idea of decent decorum." "_Is_ it a different affair?" she cried. "Or is it one single affair--the affair of Lyda Pavoya and your pearls?" Again the words had spoken themselves, but a flare of enlightenment came with them. Surely something had _made_ her speak. Something which _knew_ what she hadn't thought of till this moment: that Lyda Pavoya had taken the pearls. How she could possibly have got them, if they had ever been in Louis Mayen's keeping, Juliet could not see. But she had them--she had them! That was clear: and the fact would account for Pat's sudden breaking off of a sentence. He had begun to defend Mayen and Defasquelle. "But neither one of them had the----" he had said, and stopped short, with an awful look on his face--the look of seeing something which no one else must be allowed to see. What thing was there that Mayen and his messenger had not, which another person might have had? A thing which would make theft possible? A person who must be protected at any price? Juliet could not guess yet what the thing might be, but the second guess was all too easy. This time the Duke showed no sign of surprise, therefore he was _not_ surprised. He merely looked more disgusted than before, which made his lack of love for his wife and his wish to defend the Polish dancer more evident to Juliet's racked mind. "When I gave you my word about not loving Mademoiselle Pavoya I gave it also about the pearls," Claremanagh said. "I told you then that she had never had them. I can only repeat the statement, since you seem to have forgotten." "I have forgotten nothing!" cried Juliet. "It's a man's code of honour, I suppose, to defend a woman, no matter how. But if that's not so--if you don't care enough for Lyda Pavoya to lie for her to your wife, I'd like to know how you'll answer this question: Do you swear that you don't suspect her of somehow stealing the real pearls, and putting imitation ones in their place?" Claremanagh's face changed. He had been frankly though coldly furious. Now he looked stricken. "I would lie for no one on earth, except for you, and then only to save your life," he said. "It's an insult from you to me to ask that I should swear such a thing. "Very well, then, your simple word is enough," said Juliet. "Give it that you don't think Pavoya has the pearls." Claremanagh was silent, his eyes upon her. And in that silence, short as it was, Juliet heard a tiny voice speak. It whispered: "The thing Pavoya had, which the other didn't have, was a _copy_. _She had a copy of the pearls_." "I could not believe such a thing," the Duke answered. "I have known Mademoiselle Pavoya for years. She is a good woman." Juliet laughed, and laughing flung the false pearls on the floor. "'A good woman!' You _have_ original ideas! I've heard a lot of things about her from a lot of people, but never that before." "Because only malicious speeches are amusing, they are the ones 'a lot of people'--the lot we know--mostly make." "Pooh!" sneered Juliet. "I see the whole thing now--except how she got the real pearls. But this imitation rope she _had_. You can't face me, and say she hadn't." "I'll say nothing more on the subject while you're in this mood," returned Claremanagh. "All right, if you think prevarication more honourable than lying straight out," panted Juliet, holding down sobs. "But you won't do her any good with me--or yourself either. You were scared _blue_ when I said the eye of the clasp looked to the right instead of to the left, like the eye on your seal ring. You'd hardly believe it till you _had_ to. Then the whole thing grew clear to you, as it's growing for me now. This copy existed. The clasp was made the wrong way, by mistake or on purpose. As soon as I spoke, you _knew_ what had happened. Your first thought--as soon as you could think--was to save that woman. But you shan't save her! I----" "Do you intend to make a scandal of this beastly business?" the Duke cut her short with violence. "If you do, you will repent it all your life." Juliet quivered. "I don't care about my life now," she said. "You've spoilt it. You couldn't punish me any more than you've punished me already--for loving and trusting you. So it doesn't matter what I----" "It matters immensely," he broke in again. "You are cruel to yourself--to me--to a woman who has _never_ injured you. When I say that you'll repent making a scandal, I don't mean because I'd try to 'punish' you. My God, no! You'll repent because you will be doing a great injustice which can't possibly be repaired. And at heart, when you're true to yourself, you are just." "It's no use your trying to appeal to my sense of justice," Juliet warned him. "That's the last thing for _you_ to bring up!" He looked at her very sadly, very strangely, it seemed to his wife, as if anger were dying out, and a great sorrow had taken its place. But that was only his cleverness--his deadly, Irish cleverness, of course! "What, then, do you intend to do?" he asked. Once more confusion fogged the girl's brain, a desolate confusion like chaos after ordered beauty; the end of all joy, all loveliness. "I don't know yet," she said, dully. "I shall have to think." As Juliet spoke, fingers tapped lightly on the door: Simone's fingers, no doubt. Her fifteen minutes of banishment had passed. "Come in!" Juliet spoke mechanically; and if she wished to withdraw the words, it was too late. The Frenchwoman opened the door. "_Madame la Duchesse_ is ready for me to finish dressing her?" she asked. Vaguely it struck Juliet that Simone's voice was not quite natural. She had probably been listening at the keyhole, and had heard everything. But, on second thoughts, what _did_ it matter? Juliet told herself miserably that nothing could be the same as it had been. She could not go on after this, living with Pat as his wife. All the world would soon know that there was trouble between them, and Simone's knowing first was of little importance. She was only a servant, and luckily a loyal and discreet servant. As Juliet paused a second before speaking, Claremanagh answered for her: "The Duchess is feeling very tired, and as you know, I'm not well. We've about decided to telephone that we can't go out," he said. "But not _quite_ decided," his wife amended. "I think that if you prefer to stay at home, I shall go and make your excuses in person." Pat showed surprise. He had taken it completely for granted that she would not dream of dining at the Van Estens'. "No," he decided, after an instant's thought. "If you are equal to it, so am I." "He's afraid to trust me alone," Juliet told herself, "for fear I shall say something." "Very well," she said aloud. "You better hurry up and get ready, then. We're late as it is." Pat did not answer. Without another word or look he went to his room and shut the door between. Evidently Nickson had not been with his master to-night. Juliet wondered where the man was, and with a bitter sense of amusement pictured "Old Nick's" emotions if she began a suit for divorce against the Duke. She had always liked the queer fellow, who had been as fine a soldier, Pat said, as he was an indifferent valet: had liked him partly because of his thrilled admiration of her. Deeply as he adored her at present, however, that love was nothing beside what he felt for the Duke. It made Juliet a shade more miserable than before to know that the worshipping Nick would soon cease to worship. So far, she had kept back her tears, but they were becoming irrepressible when Simone exclaimed: "Oh, the wonderful pearls! _Madame la Duchesse_ has let them fall on the floor." The current of Juliet's thoughts changed instantly, and the brimming tears dried at their source. "The wonderful pearls!" she repeated, with infinite bitterness, sure as she was that Simone had been at the keyhole. But the look of pained astonishment on the woman's face made her wonder if, after all, Simone _had_ heard "everything." Perhaps she had caught parts only of the conversation, and had been trying to find out "for sure" whether she had heard aright. Juliet had perfect trust in Simone, so far as discretion was concerned, but it was within her estimate of the maid's character that she should eavesdrop. People of her class did that sort of thing and thought it no harm. It made the drama of their lives! Simone would keep her knowledge or her suspicion to herself, of course, until whatever was fated to happen had happened. Then, no doubt, she would tell her friends that she'd "known all along." Still, Juliet suddenly disliked the thought of being pitied even by her maid. Simone was aware that her mistress had looked forward to getting the pearls. It was humiliating that she should have instead a mere string of wax or fish-scale beads! If Simone had heard, it couldn't be helped. If she hadn't, however, she should remain in ignorance. "They're not quite as glorious as I expected them to be," Juliet remarked. "I suppose it's like that with everything in life." "But they are very beautiful," ventured Simone with the privileged air of the old and trusted servant which she put on like a sort of chain armour at times. "Will _Madame la Duchesse_ wear them to-night?" Juliet was taken aback. She had, of course, intended to wear the Tsarina pearls. She had told herself that she would do so, if only that everyone should see that she, not Pavoya, had them. But since discovering the truth about them--why, it had not occurred to her that she could wear the things! Rather would she have thrown them into the fire. Suddenly, however, she saw the matter from another point of view. Suppose she did appear wearing the rope? To do so would give her time to think. And it would be interesting to see Pat's face when he caught sight of them. "Oh, yes, I'll wear the pearls," she said. "You know perfectly well I had this shot blue and silver tissue made on purpose to go with them. Why shouldn't I wear them, Simone?" Simone did not answer, because she understood that no answer was expected. She _had_ overheard something, and it was not her fault that she had not overheard all. Unfortunately for her the room was large, and the Duke and Duchess had stood talking at a good distance from the door. The manner of her mistress, however, filled up several aching gaps in Simone's curiosity; and putting together what she knew and what she surmised, the maid changed her mind as to her own wisest course of conduct. She had intended to sacrifice inclination to prudence, and say nothing to the Duchess about the Polish dancer's visit that afternoon. Now, she decided that it would be best to mention it. How to work up to the subject was the only doubt on that score left in her mind. "_Madame la Duchesse_ is _merveilleuse--etíncilante!_" she cried, as she held the rope of big blue beads over Juliet's head, and let it fall gently upon the swans-down whiteness of the bare neck. "Madame was perfect as a girl. Now she goes beyond perfection. Other women are charming--the beautiful Pole, Mademoiselle Pavoya for instance, but----" Juliet darted upon her a piercing, angry glance. "What makes you think or speak of Pavoya just now?" she sharply questioned. "Oh--I hardly know. Except that she _is_ of a great beauty, and--in her way--of a strange attraction. And then, also, as no doubt Togo told _Madame la Duchesse_, la Pavoya called to-day." "Called to-day!" echoed Juliet. "You don't mean _here_?" "But yes, Madame. Did not Madame know? I was about to go out with the bulldog. Being permitted to pass down by the front stairs, I saw the lady arrive. To be sure, she had on a thick embroidered veil through which, perhaps, many people would not recognize the most famous features. But my eyes are sharp. And then, her figure! There are not two such. Though, to my taste, that of _Madame la Duchesse_ is more alluring, more human. The dancer is a mere _sprite_! I said to myself, 'It must be about the charity performance for the Armenians that she is here to consult with my mistress'!" As she thus interpreted her own impressions, Simone busied herself in getting Juliet's ermine cloak, which previously she had laid ready on the bed. Sometimes, when the Claremanaghs were going out together in the evening, the Duke came in and took his wife's coat from Simone, slipping it in a leisurely and loving way over the white arms, as if he never tired of touching the adorable creature who belonged to him. But Simone did not think he would come to perform that office to-night; and besides, she wanted an excuse to escape from her mistress's great, wide-open blue eyes. The maid had taken a tactful way of explaining the dancer's (possible) motive for calling; because if she dared to accuse the Duke by a hint, the Duchess would be bound to stop her. Juliet was struck dumb for a moment. She would not have thought, after what had passed between her and Pat, that she could be surprised by anything concerning him and Pavoya, but now she knew that she could be astounded. Pavoya had called! Togo had let her in, the traitor! bribed by Claremanagh, who had sunk low enough even for _that_! Still, had Togo let the woman in? It was easy to make sure. "A pity I was out," Juliet said. "I suppose she went away when she heard that?" "No, Madame, she came in," replied Simone with the innocence of a child. "I do not know how long she stayed. _Monsieur le Duc_ will tell Madame that. It was to his study that Togo took her." "Oh, very well. I can ask him what message she left," Juliet promptly cut short this confidence. She had no wish to learn more, and her suppression of Simone was no triumph of honour over curiosity. She felt a sick, languid repulsion against the whole subject, for she knew the worst now, and any further information would be a kind of horrid anti-climax. "Oh, Pat, Pat!" her heart mourned. "How has my idol fallen! And he talked so nobly about never lying!" That night, when the Duke and Duchess of Claremanagh came into their box in time for the second act of "Rigoletto," everyone "in the know" said "Look! She's got the Tsarina pearls at _last_!" And Claremanagh wondered at her. He wondered terribly, abysmally, why, after their scene together, and her threats, she had worn the abominable things. He had wondered about that ever since, the ermine cloak removed, he had seen the blue beads on her neck at the Van Estens'. He ought, perhaps, to have rejoiced at the sight, for she could not wear a rope of imitation pearls, and accuse Lyda Pavoya of stealing the real ones. That would be to punish him less severely than herself. Yet Pat was uneasy as well as unhappy. The only thing he understood clearly in all the hideous affair was that--he understood Juliet not at all. He asked himself over and over again a question he could not, would not ask her--what, in God's name, she intended to do next? All the way home, when at length they were again alone together in their brilliantly lit limousine, she did not utter one word, nor once look at him. She sat quite still, pretending to be asleep, but Claremanagh knew that he was no wider awake than she. A dozen times he longed to speak; but there are some things a man cannot do. She seemed to have barricaded herself behind a transparent wall, through which he could see, yet not touch, her--as if she had been a lovely statuette under a glass case. At the house she sprang past him quickly, without accepting his help to alight, and ran up the two or three marble steps. Claremanagh had his key, but before he could use it Juliet pressed the electric bell, and Togo appeared. The girl did not look back at her husband, to see whether he meant to follow. And suddenly he did not mean to do so. He hadn't been sure, at first, what he would do: but he could not bear to have her shut the door of her room upon him, as she surely would. With a gesture he signed to Togo that he was not coming in. The car waited, but he said to the chauffeur in the pleasant, courteous tone which won the affection of servants, "I shan't want you--thanks." In that mood, he could not make use of Juliet's car. He preferred the poor independence of his own feet, even while he laughed at himself, bitterly, for so petty a revolt. He walked to the "Grumblers," that one of his several clubs at which he was likely to meet a man with whom he had business--business important enough to remember even now. "I won't keep the beastly money on me any longer," he thought. "The fellow shall have it to-night." CHAPTER X THE HOUSE IN A CROSSTOWN STREET If Simone had not already telephoned to the private office of the _Inner Circle's_ editor, she might have changed her mind about going there that night. She was less superstitious and of harder mental fibre than most Frenchwomen of the south and of her class; but after the quarrel between the Duke and Duchess something within her shrank from keeping the secret appointment she had made. It was not that she was suddenly conscience-stricken, or that she thought her mistress had suffered enough without having the skeleton in the cupboard dangled in front of the public. The woman was incapable of any real love save self love, but she liked Juliet, and would have inflicted upon her no great gratuitous pain. The pain to be inflicted in this instance, however (as well as other instances in the past), was not gratuitous. Simone would be magnificently paid for inflicting it, and so far as Juliet was concerned, she could earn the reward without a qualm. It was for herself that she hesitated; and she did not quite know why. That was the trouble! If she had known, she could have argued out the two sides of the matter, for and against. But it was only a vague sort of presentiment she felt, that she would somehow be sorry if she gave this story to the paper she served. And it might not be a proper presentiment at all, but only a form of indigestion. She had (she too vividly recalled) taken at luncheon three helpings of lobster salad, a dish which never agreed with her. Besides, she was naturally excited over her part in the events of the day. And then she had telephoned the office. She had camouflaged her message, lest it should be overheard, but what she had said would inform the editor that she had up her sleeve the best tit-bit he had ever got from her. To-morrow afternoon the _Inner Circle_ (a weekly publication) would be on sale, and the "Whisperer's" columns were always kept back till the latest possible moment, on account of just such morsels dropping in. But to-night the last paragraphs were to be held up expressly for Simone almost beyond the time-limit. She was bound to "make good" or she would never be trusted again, and if the editor were satisfied she was to receive exactly five times the sum she got for more or less valuable items supplied each week. With a vague, uneasy presentiment in one scale, and five hundred dollars in the other (notes, not a cheque; the _Inner Circle_ never paid cheques for "Whisperer" stuff) the presentiment was outweighed. Simone had in any case a dinner engagement which nothing short of death would have induced her to miss; and the Duchess had not been gone quite ten minutes when she flew out to keep it. She said nothing to her dinner companion, however, about the later appointment, and excused herself early on the plea that it would be "like Madame to flash in at home, clamouring for her maid, between Mrs. Van Esten's party and the opera, if only for a minute." Certainly it was little more than a minute that Simone remained at the Phayre house after being brought back after dinner in a taxi. At the end of that time she was out again, and on her way to the office of the _Inner Circle_. About this place there was always something mysterious even to Simone's practical and unimaginative mind, and the private office of the editor was the heart of the mystery--the inner circle of the _Inner Circle_. For years she had been a highly paid contributor to the scandalous little paper, ever since she had entered her first "smart" situation in New York, and had been approved by a man whose outward business was straightforward reporting for the "Society" columns of a reputable daily. When in town, Simone had been in the habit of calling in person instead of trusting to the post, and since her value had become recognized, she was invariably received by the editor himself in that very private sanctuary of his. Yet to this day she had never seen his face, and did not know his real name. "Mr. Jones will speak to you," was the message telephoned down from regions above to the amateurish little reception room, where an elderly, mild-faced lady in old-fashioned dress received visitors and tapped a typewriter. But the Frenchwoman was sure that outside the office HE was other than "Mr. Jones," as sure as that Simone Amaranthe was at home Simonetta Amaranti. The editor's private office was divided practically into two by means of a fixed screen or partition of match-boarding so high that even if an enterprising caller jumped on to a chair he (or she) could not see what lay on the other side. There was no door in this screen, therefore no danger existed that the editor could be "rushed." Against the partition was placed a table and a chair of the ordinary "office furniture" type; and other decoration there was none. On the table were writing materials, and a small house-telephone. By means of this instrument one spoke to the Presence on the other side, and he spoke in return. That it was always the same Presence, Simone knew by the voice. It was peculiar, mincing, and rather effeminate, and though she shrewdly attributed this quality to disguise, it could not well have been imitated by an understudy. This happened to be the first time Simone had ever been to the office at night. It was in a cross-town street, within possible walking distance of the Phayre house; and this was luck for her, as she would have taken a taxi with great reluctance. This errand of hers was the most ticklish she had ever carried out, and she could not afford to leave the least detail to chance, in case a hue and cry should be raised by the Claremanaghs. Twenty minutes' brisk walk brought her to the door of what had once been a private house, and was now given up to offices. The _Inner Circle_ occupied the two lower floors, and above was quite a well-known, though not very fashionable, manicurist, Madame Veno. Still higher, the fourth (and top) floor was tenanted by a wig maker who widely advertised a hair-dye "Goldenglints"; and once, when a wave of rage against the "Whisperer" swept New York, it was rumoured that both these businesses were secretly owned by the _Inner Circle_. No proof was obtainable, however, and since then several new managers had come and gone, both for Madame Veno and "Goldenglints." To-night the whole house front looked so darkly brooding to Simone's worried eyes that she could have believed anything of it, especially anything that was hideous and evil. There were no lights in the windows, and the front door, always open by day, was closed. But the voice which answered Simone's call on the 'phone that afternoon had warned her that this would be so, and had told her what to do. Following instructions, she descended the steps to a basement door, and touched an electric bell above which, on a small brass plate, was the word "Janitor." Two or three minutes passed, and brought no answer. But suddenly, as Simone was about to ring again, the door opened on a chain. "What do you want?" a woman's voice demanded through the aperture. "To see the editor of the _Inner Circle_," replied Simone. "I have an appointment with him." "Oh! What is your name?" questioned the voice. "Mademoiselle Simone Amaranthe." The chain fell, and the door opened as if the Frenchwoman, challenged, had given the countersign. Simone squeezed through the small space allowed her, and the door instantly shut. It was dark in the basement passage except for the light that came from a room at the back. The woman--the janitor's wife, perhaps--had a little knitted shawl over her head, as though she were suffering from neuralgia. Simone could not see what she was like, whether old or young, except that her silhouette loomed tall and slender against the dim light. "Can you find your way up?" asked the voice. "Yes," said Simone, "I was told it would be dark,--and that I must bring an electric torch. I have brought it." "Very well. Go up, and knock when you come to the door. Mr. Jones is expecting you." Simone switched on the flame of her torch, and went up. CHAPTER XI IN JACK'S PRIVATE SITTING ROOM Next morning Jack Manners was hideously jerked from sleep before eight by the jangle of a telephone bell close to his bed. In self-defence he reached out and grabbed the receiver, in haste to stop the din. "Hello!" his voice said: but his tone said "Damn!" And he was astounded when Juliet answered. Juliet! 'phoning at this hour! Juliet, who had been at the opera last night, as he happened to know, and who had always loved her beauty sleep, as a young bird loves its nest! "I'm sorry to disturb you, Jack," she was saying. "I suppose you were fast asleep, and you'll wish you hadn't told me you were going to stop at the Tarascon. But I can't help it! Do you mind getting up and dressing in a hurry, and letting me come round to see you?" "Shan't I call at your house instead?" Jack suggested, wide awake now. "No, I must come to you. Have you a private sitting room?" "I haven't." "Then take one at once, and be ready to receive me in it. Will half an hour be too soon for you?" "Not a bit," Jack assured her. He spoke with the warmth of affection, and felt it. But that was all he felt. The reaction he'd been expecting yesterday hadn't come yet! He 'phoned downstairs that he wanted a private sitting room, and breakfast for two, with flowers on the table, in half an hour. Then he plunged into his bath, and as he shaved and dressed with the haste that knows how not to waste a single step or gesture (this was characteristic of him) he wondered, as he had wondered yesterday, about himself and Juliet. Funny, how he had dreaded meeting her married, for fear the boiling lava should break through the cooled crust! And the lava hadn't broken through. He couldn't even feel it boil. Juliet had her old sweetness, and charm--even more. She was prettier than ever, too. He still loved her, of course, only the love didn't hurt like a wound with someone twisting a knife in it, as it had hurt when she told him she was engaged, and on the day of her wedding. There was just a gentle, rather interesting pain, like the pain of remembering a beautiful dream which had broken off in the midst; and it was no sharper this morning than when she came to tea with him yesterday. Just to test himself he had gone to the opera, and stood up (because there wasn't a seat to be had) in order to have Juliet burst upon him in all her glory, wearing the pearls, and, perhaps, beaming with recovered happiness at Claremanagh's side. Well, she had come late into her box, and made a sensation. Everyone had stared at her--_and_ the pearls--through levelled glasses. She had been just as glorious as he'd expected, though she hadn't exactly beamed. And he--Jack--had not turned a hair! He hardly knew whether to attribute this to his superhuman self-control, or the strong moral barrier set up between his thoughts and his love by her marriage. Anyhow, there it was! He was enduring no Calvary, and his heart played none of the tricks it would have played once at being awakened by Juliet's voice, with the request for a meeting alone with him. All he felt was sympathetic interest, and a fear that the girl was coming to say she'd made a hash of things, in spite of his advice. In precisely twenty-five minutes after the first call of the telephone bell in his ear, he was dressed, and criticising the arrangement of La France roses on the table in his new sitting room. Sharp on the half hour, again came the jangling call. "Lady for you, sir. Says she's your cousin, and it's not necessary to give her name. You're expecting her." "Quite right," Manners answered. "Send her up at once. I'll meet her at the lift." Which he did, and got rather a shock at seeing Juliet all in black--even a black veil. "I don't think I _ever_ saw you dressed like that before," he began, leading her to the sitting room. "I thought you always hated black clothes." "So I did. So I do. That's the reason I'm wearing them to-day," the girl almost breathlessly explained. "I suppose you'll think it's melodramatic of me, and maybe it is, though I don't feel so. I wanted to put on mourning." "Good heavens! What for?" "My happiness." If she had been less beautiful, that announcement certainly would have sounded a melodramatic note--or else it would have been funny. But she was so white, so big eyed, so like a broken lily in her black draperies, that Jack's heart yearned over her. She leaned to him wistfully, as they stood just inside the closed door, her hands in his; and the man knew suddenly that it would be perfectly safe and good for him to take her in his arms. He held them out, having dropped her hands, and the girl flung herself on his breast as she used to do when she was ten, if a finger had been cut or a knee bruised. The next moment she was crying on his shoulder as though her heart would break, her slim young body an incarnate sob as it heaved and shook in his clasp. "Oh, Jack, you're the only one I have in the world now!" she gasped. "Nonsense, nonsense, child. You've got Claremanagh. You'll always have him," he soothed her. "This is some passing trouble. It will blow over. Tell me all about it. But no, first you must have breakfast. You haven't had bite or sup, I'll bet!" History repeated itself. Again his handkerchief was out. He wiped her eyes with it. He mopped them. How long and dark her lashes were, wet and clinging together! He bent over her, and kissed her forehead. It was hot, and she smelled like a ripe, delicious peach. But his pulses hardly tingled. He was too sorry for her, however, to analyze his own feelings much, or even think of himself, although after years the Adored One--married, and belonging to another man--was in his arms! Of course she hadn't had breakfast, she said. She didn't want breakfast. The very idea of it made her sick. She had been awake all night, and had been dressed--without a maid to help her--since seven. She was just one bunch of raw, aching nerves! But somehow Jack was able to soothe her a little, as Pat, at his best, could never have done, because she loved him too wildly. Jack got her to the sofa, her back to the door, so that the waiter bustling in with breakfast should not see the tear-stained face. Soon there were cushions behind her shoulders; the blinds were pulled half down; there was a cool, dewy rose in her hand. Then, when the waiter had gone, she was sipping hot coffee with cream in it and (on one knee beside the sofa) Jack was feeding her with bits of toasted and buttered roll. In spite of herself, Juliet felt better. She didn't want to feel better, but she did! And she had drunk nearly a cupful of coffee before Jack let her begin to talk. Having begun, however, she told him everything. It all came out with a rush, and Jack listened in silence. Not once did he interrupt, and, fast as she spoke (she could not control her speech to slowness), she thought that he was judging, classifying each incident, considering how one bore upon another. He did not give away his own secret of yesterday: that he had seen Lyda Pavoya go into the house, and that he had known she must be hidden somewhere in the room while he and Defasquelle were in Claremanagh's study. There was nothing to be gained by telling the poor girl that. She might even be aggravated, by the additional proof against Pavoya, into accusing the woman as a thief! And the more he thought, the more inclined he was to advise against an open scandal. "So you see why I wanted to put on mourning for my dead happiness," Juliet finished. "You said this was a 'passing trouble.' But you can't say that now, can you?" "Yes. I can and do," Jack maintained stoutly, for her sake wholly, not for Claremanagh's. He began to believe, in his heart, that this generous, loving girl had been badly "let down," between the Duke and the Polish dancer. Nevertheless, it was still only fair to give "Pat" (as Juliet called him) the benefit of the doubt, just as he had urged yesterday. "You say yourself that, judging from his manner when the box was opened, and when you spoke about the clasp, Claremanagh was as surprised as you were at the false pearls being there." "Yes. Of course I don't accuse him of 'stealing' the real ones himself, as he so cruelly pretended I did. But he must have had this copy made for Pavoya. Probably she thought at first that she had the true pearls, and when she found out how she'd been tricked, she made up her mind to turn the tables on Pat. Or else she saw a way to humble me--his wife. Yes, _that_ must be it! I'm glad--glad I wore the horrid imitation rope last night. I hardly knew why I did it, unless it was for a kind of bluff. But I see now, it was more like inspiration. If I choose to stick to it that I have the real pearls, she can't get much fun out of wearing them, can she? People will believe _me_, instead of her, if it comes to open defiance." "It won't come to that, from Pavoya, and it oughtn't from you, I think," said Jack. "My theory is rather different from yours." "What is it, for heaven's sake?" "It's rather scrappy as yet. But so far, I should think Pavoya might have been working in a much more subtle way than you suppose. I knew that once, long ago, and again later, there was a plot to steal the pearls. Apparently both times it was got up by Russians. And you know they were royal pearls, given by the Tsarina of his day to Claremanagh's great-great-grandfather. Pavoya's a Pole, I believe, but she may be in Russian pay, or under Bolshevik influence. It certainly looks, on circumstantial evidence, as if she'd somehow got hold of the pearls, either in Paris, through Louis Mayen, unknown to his messenger; or else, yesterday by some amazing sleight of hand, while she was in Claremanagh's study. If she could have worried out of him the combination of the safe--and if by some excuse she induced him to leave her in the room alone after Defasquelle delivered up the box (we might assume she came at that time on purpose, perhaps _not_ by Pat's invitation) she might have managed the job. Well--but that's about as far as my mind has worked, so far. Except that Claremanagh can't be expected to give the woman away so long as he isn't dead sure she's guilty--or which he hopes against hope that she isn't. He wouldn't accuse her, or have her accused if he could help it, even to save himself from your suspicions, which must make him writhe!" "Are you standing up for him?" Juliet asked, quickly. "No, not especially. But you've done him an injustice in one detail, to begin with. He did not have the copy of the Tsarina pearls made for Pavoya. He didn't have it made at all. It was done before his day--done by his mother's order. He told me the story in Paris, where the everlasting subject was you--you and the pearls. It seems that the Duchess--your Pat's mother--soon after her marriage received an anonymous letter warning her of a plot to steal the Tsarina pearls. It was signed 'A Well Wisher', and the writing looked foreign, but not ill spelt or uneducated. There was a hint that the plan was Russian, and the thieves would not be 'ordinary thieves.' Immediately after the Duchess ordered a London jeweller to copy the rope, clasp and all. When it was ready she had the real thing locked up in the bank. The copy was so good that no one except an expert could tell the difference. But there had been one mistake. The eye of the design in the clasp looked the wrong way--to the right instead of the left. However, hardly any one knew which way the original eye turned, so the mistake didn't matter much, and the family didn't trouble to have it rectified. That was a long time ago. But years after there came another warning; and when it was compared with the first the handwriting appeared to be the same. This time the letter was addressed to Claremanagh, who had come of age and had lent the pearls to some charitable exhibition. 'Russia will try again to get back her own. Take care,' the letter said--or something like that. I've forgotten the precise words Pat used. And it was signed, as before: 'A Well Wisher'. Now you see what my mind's working on." "I do see," said Juliet. "Of course, in a way you make things look better for Pat. At least, he wasn't infatuated enough with that woman to have a copy of those famous pearls actually made for her to wear. Still, he must have given them to her--or lent them." "I suppose so," Jack admitted, "unless----" "Unless what?" "Well, I know nothing about the lady except what I've heard--and that she's a dream of a dancer. But right or wrong, she has the reputation of being a tigerish young person when her blood's up. And it's conceivable she may simply have annexed the imitation pearls: put them on to 'see how she looked,' and refused to disgorge! Claremanagh isn't the sort of fellow who would be brutal with a pretty woman." "He isn't, indeed! But, anyhow, he let her keep the things--and wear them, too; even if she never had the real ones. He receives her at the house when I'm out--when he pretends to be shut up with a cold. It must have been arranged that she should come then, and Togo bribed to let her in. Oh, it's all nearly as bad as it can be, if not _quite_! Pat doesn't deserve that his mind should be eased as it must have been when he saw at the last minute that I was wearing the horrid false beads last night. He'd been in such a state, for fear I'd 'make a scandal!' When he saw the rope on my neck, and heard me calmly accepting compliments on it, I suppose he thought, 'That settles _that_. She can't accuse dear Lyda now!' But he forgets. I can find proof enough to divorce him, without bringing up a question of the pearls at all." "Is that what you intend to do?" asked Jack. Juliet threw out her hands in a gesture of feverish weariness. "I don't know what I intend," she sighed, hopelessly, "I wish I could just _die_. Then maybe Pat would be sorry." "That's what you used to say about your family when you were a kid. No doubt Pat would be sorry if you died. But wouldn't _you_ be sorry--when you'd divorced him?" "I don't care whether I'm sorry or not," cried Juliet. "I'm too miserable now to care about how I may feel then." "That's the state of mind for jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire," said Jack. "Listen, my kid, did you come here to me to ask my advice?" "Yes, partly. Though I wouldn't promise to take it if it was anything I didn't like. But mostly I came for something else." "What?" "To beg you to _help_ me. Help's better than advice." "You ought to know I'll help you, in any way I jolly well can----" "In _any_ way?" she caught him up. Jack was slightly startled, knowing Juliet as he did know her: impulsive, even unscrupulous, if a thing passionately wished for were to be obtained--like all spoiled young women, to whom life has refused nothing. "Why not out with it at once, and not beat round the bush?" he asked. "You've some special thing in your mind----" "I have," she cut him short. "But, truly, Jack, I hadn't when I came. I was just going to ask for your advice and help, mixed up together. You were to advise me what to do; and then if I wanted to do it, you were to help get it done. I've no one except you to depend on, and you were my only hope--if I had any hope left--of making things somehow work out right in the end. It's you yourself who has given me the real idea--the inspiration: the thing to be done. And if you are the one person on earth who can do it, the question is--will you?" "I can't suppose a 'question,'" Manners said, "if the thing is a thing that will _really_ help you." "It will--it will, more than _anything_ else. But you might think it--_caddish_." "You wouldn't ask me to do it, I'm sure, if it were caddish." "Well--you see, I'm a girl--a woman. It doesn't seem caddish to me, as it may to a man. But, Jack, it's to _save_ me! It's the one hope to make life worth living--or to know the worst and not wear out my soul in suspense. I can't bear suspense." "Neither can I," Jack reminded her. He was sitting beside her on the sofa now, and Juliet seized his hands. "The thing is--I want you to get acquainted with Lyda Pavoya," she ventured at last. "To contrive to be her _friend_, to win her confidence even if you must make love to her. Stop at nothing, until she's told you the whole secret of the pearls. That secret means everything to me. Wrapped up in it is the secret I care so much more for, the secret of Pat's love--whether it's hers or mine. And his honour is bound up with it, too. Will you do this for me, Jack? Or is it too much?" Never had Jack Manners thought that he could pull his hands away from Juliet's clinging fingers, and push her off almost roughly, as she would have held him. But now he did both, before he had realized what he was doing. And he even felt a hot resentment against her, not unlike repulsion: Juliet, whom he had worshipped for years--Juliet, for whom his life would have been a small gift! Before he quite knew what had happened to him, he was standing at the window, staring out. He had not answered, had spoken no word. She ought to understand that no answer was the one safe answer a man could give ... "Caddish!" ... She had wondered if he would "think it caddish!" Perhaps women _were_ cads--just naturally. He had heard it said that they didn't know the difference. But _Juliet_! Standing there with his back to her, he began to gather his wits together to face her attack. She would reproach him with violence. He would try not to be harsh, because she wasn't herself, of course. He would explain that what she asked wasn't "too much"; it wasn't a question of quantity but quality. There were some things a man couldn't do.... But she wasn't reproaching him. She was crying. God! he had never heard a woman cry as that girl was crying! Such sobs would tear her soul to pieces. They mustn't go on. They would kill her--and him! He went back to her. He knelt on the floor, and drew into his arms the shaken figure, abandoned among the cushions. "Don't, don't, my dear--my sweet one!" he implored, awkwardly smoothing the ruffled gold of her hair. "Trust old Jack! I'll do something. I'll find out for you. I don't know how. Goodness knows how! But I'll worm her secret from that Pavoya girl!" CHAPTER XII "THE 'WHISPERER' STUFF" "My goodness _gracious_!" gasped Natalie Lowndes. "_Billy_--wake up! Have you seen 'the Whisperer stuff'?" Billy woke up. It was just after dinner, early yet to begin the real evening at the Grumblers (known to some outsiders as the "Plunderers") Club; and Lowndes had been killing time with a nap. "Whisperer stuff?" he repeated, in a dazed, almost startled way; and when Billy looked startled he was not at his best. Some years ago he had been considered handsome: a big, athletic fellow with wavy auburn hair brushed back from a low forehead, reddish bronze skin, and big black eyes like those of his sister, Lady West. But the auburn hair had faded and thinned, growing far back on the forehead, which had now become unnaturally high. He was less athletic that he had been, because his principal exercise was taken indoors these days, and consisted of bridge and poker, poker and bridge, varied by roulette. His splendid muscular development was slowly degenerating into fat; and his large face was all red without the bronze. His eyes, too, had changed, and though still big had a goggling prominence that was not attractive. This was why he did not, when startled, look his best. The eyes goggled--his wife said to herself--like a pollywog's. And aloud she said to him: "_Don't_ pretend not to know what I mean by 'Whisperer' stuff." "I was asleep," Lowndes excused himself, mildly. "You don't need to tell me that by word of _mouth_," Natalie shrugged. "You've been advertising the fact through another organ. Besides, you never can keep awake fifteen minutes after dinner if we're alone together. Not that it matters! ... What I asked was, _have_ you seen 'the Whisperer stuff' in this week's _Inner Circle_?" "No," returned Lowndes. "Don't you know I never read the rag? I've told you so pretty often." "Everybody tells everybody else that they never read it. Yet I suppose it sells hundreds of thousand a week. My copy's just come in. Jane brought it--and you didn't hear her because you were snoring. I thought you might have seen it at the club before you left, and not said anything so as to make me speak first." "Why, has the viper got in a dig against us?" "Vipers don't dig. No, thanks to Heaven or the other thing, there's nothing on us. But it's all about someone you're just as much interested in--_more_ interested than you are in me, anyhow. Juliet Claremanagh." "Oh!" Billy sat up straight in his chair, though he did not seem to be as intensely excited as his wife had thought he would be. "Does the pig mention her by name?" "The pig does not. He might as well, though, for everybody will know who's meant. By Jove, I wouldn't be _Juliet_ to-night!" "I believe you!" grunted Lowndes. But he did not believe her. He seldom did; and in this instance not at all, because he was sure she would give her eyes to be Juliet, just as sure as that he would give his to be Juliet's husband. "What's the racket this time?" "I'll read the stuff aloud to you," said his wife; and began: "Let's Whisper!" "_That a certain foreign gentleman of title, with one of the prettiest and richest young wives in New York, is much to be sympathized with, because he has got a bad cold._ "_But--he is to be congratulated on the marvellous medicine with which he is able to combat this ailment._ "_Let's Whisper again!_ "_This medicine is worth its weight in gold. Only millionaires can afford to take it at home, and alone, as Louis of Bavaria used to take Wagner's operas._ "_We know he was alone, because the pretty, rich young wife was out, full up with engagements for the whole afternoon. And we know he is a millionaire--oh, we know it in such a simple way! It's because his wife is a millionairess. See? The 'Whisperer' thought you would!_ "_And now for the Medicine. That needs another whisper. Sh!_ "_We spell it with a capital M, because it has been a royal Medicine since Salome, the daughter of Herodias, administered it to King Herod. Dancing is a fine art, and its greatest exponent at present in our city is fair enough to cure any King (to say nothing of the lesser nobility) even if she did not dance for him. But of course, the 'Whisperer' is sure she did dance, because with what other motive should she pay a call of consolation upon a nobleman with a cold, when his wife was not at home to nurse him? Can you think of any?_ "_Let's Whisper, that blade is very becoming to tall slender ladies with white skin and copper hair, even when they wear thick veils. Nothing suits them better, unless it's pale blue, and blue pearls. But ladies with golden hair have now taken to appearing in blue pearls--ropes of them. The 'Whisperer' supposes they are real. Why, certainly! Could they be otherwise? Yet, on the other hand, are there two such ropes in the world? We shall see. We may see any day now! And the 'Whisperer' hopes and prays that if we do see there won't be trouble. Both the ladies are so charming. Pearls are so compromising. And the gentleman is so popular._ "_Let's Whisper: What a game of Consequences!_" "There!" Mrs. Lowndes finished with a gasp. "What do you think of that?" "Can you beat it?" her husband answered with a question. "I can't," said Natalie. "But I guess the Duke will beat something or someone. He'll have to." "You mean the 'Whisperer!' H'm! Before you cook your hare, you've got to catch him. A whole lot of men have tried to catch that one. But the _Inner Circle_ still circulates." Natalie brooded for a moment. When she was a girl, in a set that was conspicuous though not first rate, the "Whisperer" had whispered several nasty things about her. He, She, or It had said that she had come from "Peoria or somewhere" to New York to buy a husband, and had kindly warned her that persons not rich enough to pick and choose their goods had better snap up what they could get the first day of the sale, at the cheap bargain-counter. Since she had taken that advice and snapped up Billy Lowndes, the "Whisperer" had for some reason been silent; but Natalie had never forgiven or forgotten the attack on her attractions, and she had always burned to have some other victim arraigned for justifiable homicide. "I bet Claremanagh will break the vicious _Circle_!" she said. "And I bet he won't. Why should he bring off a stunt none of us ever brought? They say there's nothing to break. Some husband or father goes murder-mad, bursts into the _Circle_ office, and finds no one on the premises but a little old lady. Can he bash _that_? Besides, why make a cap fit you by wearing it? Lord knows what that d--d 'Whisperer's' working up to when he hints at the Claremanagh pearls being false. But if they are, the Duke must have sold them himself, and had a copy made--two copies, perhaps. By George, I shouldn't wonder if that's just what he _did_ do!--sell--I mean, Juliet told my sister Emmy that Claremanagh refused the million or so she wanted to settle on him, and intended to join the working classes over here. He doesn't get a salary to be proud of, at the Phayre bank, I know for a fact. But I've seen him playing poker at the Grumblers and--er--another game elsewhere. Last night he waltzed into the Grumblers after the opera, and I happened to see him pass a roll of yellow-backs as big as my fist into a man's hand. The other chap dropped the lot, by accident, and the noble Duke stood still with his nose in the air while they were collected. I saw a one thousand-dollar bill with my own eyes, and I have a hunch there were a heap more of the same sort." "Who was the man?" Natalie asked, curiously. "I've forgotten his name," Billy evaded her. "There are a lot of new men in the club lately I know only by sight." "Tell that to the marines!" she scoffed. "You've got some reason for keeping his name dark. Did any one else see Claremanagh pay him the money? Because, if they did, I'll be sure to find out." "I think everyone was pretty busy just then. I wouldn't have seen, if I hadn't been cutting out of a game at the moment. It's nothing to me who the man was. You're always so damned suspicious of anything I say." Natalie shrugged her shoulders, a favourite gesture. "But not of what you do, I don't care enough," she retaliated, and picked up the _Inner Circle_ again to re-read "the Whisperer stuff", while she richly pictured Juliet's feelings. She didn't know the Duchess very well, but she thought that there would be "ructions." "Pavoya must have been at the house while Juliet was lunching with me," she told herself. "I shouldn't wonder if the Duke _had_ sold his pearls. Won't Juliet be _wild_ if she finds out the wonderful rope everyone was talking about last night was _false_?" Natalie grew so absorbed in settling just what she would write to Emmy West that she did not even speak to Billy when he went out. She was sure he was going to the "Plunderers," and she was right. Nevertheless, she had made one mistake about him. He had told the truth in saying that he did not know the name of the man to whom Claremanagh had handed a roll of notes. He did, however, wish to know, and as soon as possible. But he arrived to find everyone talking of "the 'Whisperer' stuff" in the _Inner Circle_. Most of the men were defending the Duke, who had an extraordinary way of making himself liked without trying; and this vexed Lowndes. He had a grudge against Claremanagh for marrying Juliet Phayre, the only girl who bad ever given him a heartache. Losing her and getting Natalie had made him the man he was. "What I want to find out is, _who_ is the chap Claremanagh paid about a hundred thousand dollars to last night, here in this club?" he said. "A hundred thousand dollars?" somebody echoed. "How do you know?" "I do know," Lowndes persisted, provocatively, and made up his mind to stick to the statement. "I do know. And what I'd like to know also, in the circumstances, is how did he get the money?" "Ask the winds!" laughed the other. "Easier to ask his wife." "You believe she knows?" "No, not how he got the stuff. But I guess she _thinks_ she knows, which is just as interesting." Juliet was utterly indifferent that night as to whether or not her thoughts were interesting to outsiders. Pat and herself filled the world for her. There was no one else--not even Jack Manners--who existed for her after she had read the "Whisperer": except Lyda Pavoya. But the Polish dancer was not for Juliet a fellow-being. She was a Lure-light, a Mermaid, a Siren. Simone was in the habit of buying the _Inner Circle_ for the Duchess on the day of publication. She had never been ordered to do this, but her mistress in the last place she had filled in New York had expected the "rag" to appear in her boudoir as soon as it was on sale, and Simone (with a certain cynical enjoyment) had unobtrusively supplied the paper to Juliet without being asked. It was a disgrace to New York, and utterly disgusting and unreliable, of course, and Juliet scorned it as a horrid beast. All the same, she read it every week before flinging it on the floor or pitching it into a wastepaper basket. Sometimes she was angry at its nasty digs at people she knew; sometimes she chuckled (one _had_ to!). As her car took her home from Jack Manners' hotel she suddenly remembered that it was _Inner Circle_ day. Could that fiend of a "Whisperer" have got hold of anything new about Pat and Pavoya? Juliet could not see that this was possible. But there was almost sure to be some mention of the blue pearls she had worn at the opera, unless the news had been too late for press. She was so miserable already that she wondered at herself for feeling so small a prick in the midst of a deep and all-pervading pain. Yet she was conscious of uneasiness, and it remained in the back of her mind throughout the day. She had not expected to see Pat at luncheon, and if she had seen him, she would have suffered disappointment. Whether he were merely resentful against her for the things she had said to him, or whether he were ashamed to face her because he had lied, and she knew it, Juliet could not tell. In his absence, he was as vitally present as if she saw him before her eyes. Indeed, she did see him--with Lyda Pavoya. It seemed certain that he must have gone to Lyda, if only to demand some explanation of what had happened to the pearls. And it was conceivable that, if he were convinced she had robbed him, he might have a reaction of feeling against the woman. In such a case, he would perhaps return and implore his wife to forgive him. As she thought this, Juliet hardened her heart against his charm, his magnetism which she knew to be almost irresistible. She _would_ resist it! It would be ridiculous to let herself be cajoled by Pat's Irish ways. He would laugh in his sleeve if he could persuade her that he had never loved Pavoya. But the day wore on, and he did not come home. All she knew about him was that he must have spent some late part of the night in the house, because Simone had casually mentioned an early meeting in the hall as he went out, about nine in the morning. He had handed the maid a few letters, which he said were for the Duchess to read and attend to, rather than for him. That was all. And though Juliet did not mean to pardon him, she would have given the price of the lost pearls to be begged for her forgiveness. Now and then, like a faint undertone in wild music, returned the thought of the _Inner Circle_, and at the time when it should be lying on a certain table in her boudoir, Juliet looked for it. The paper was not there! She had come in from her bedroom, a wrapper thrown over her nightgown, for she was pretending to have a headache, and had gone to bed on returning from the Tarascon, as an excuse for throwing over all engagements. "There's something horrid about Pat or me in the rag," she guessed instantly. "Simone's read, or heard about it, and means to 'forget' the paper." It would not be pleasant to ask, but after all Simone was only a servant! Juliet rang the bell communicating with her maid's room, and soon the neat figure in black presented itself. "_Madame la Duchesse has rung?_" "Where is that horrid _Inner Circle_?" the Duchess inquired. Simone looked self-conscious. She said that, Madame being _souffrante_, she had forgotten to buy the paper. It was of so little importance! But Juliet would not be put off. The Frenchwoman was sent out to get the _Inner Circle_, and when she had got it, was told that she would be needed no more for the moment. Therefore Claremanagh's wife was alone when she read the "Whisperer's" insinuations. Strangely enough--or was it strange?--her anger turned in a torrent-flood against the man who ran the rag. None was left for Pat. Juliet burned for him to come home so that they could--even if "on official terms only"--join together in scotching this scandal. She felt that she must see her husband at once. But she could not send for him without being misunderstood. If she were able to reach him by 'phoning to one of his clubs, he would think that he was being called back to a scene of reconciliation because his wife was too much in love to live without him for more than a day. No! even though her rage was too concentrated in another direction to blaze upon Pat, she didn't wish him to think that he was forgiven. Again Jack Manners seemed her best hope, and she 'phoned him at the Tarascon. He was out, the answer came, and Juliet asked that the Duchess of Claremanagh should be called up as soon as he came in. An hour later the bell of her telephone jingled. Jack had returned to his suite at the Tarascon. "I thought you'd never come!" she complained. "But," he excused himself, "you gave me a mission. I've been doing my best to pave the way." "You mean you've met Pavoya?' "Not yet. But I shall meet her to-night. She's dancing, you know. Or--why should you know? An old friend of mine--and hers, too--has arranged an introduction. That's the only news I have for you, so far." "I didn't ring you up to ask for news," said his cousin, though her quick brain caught at a welcome deduction: if Jack were to meet Pavoya at a party or something, it did not look as if Pat had pardoned her for the pearls. Otherwise they would be together. "I want you to see Pat for me," Juliet went on. "Not to make it up! When you find him, tell him _that_ to begin with, please. But he and I must meet, and talk over this horrible 'Whisperer' business. I don't want a scandal--anyhow _that_ kind!--any more than he does. Tell him it's cowardly to run away and stay away like this. It makes things worse. Tell him he must come home--or bring him." "I can't put things to Pat in that way, but I'll see him if you wish," answered Jack. "Where is he?" "I don't know." (Juliet's voice sounded disconsolate and very young, even through the 'phone.) "At some club, I suppose. Do call me when you've found him." It was seven o'clock.... After three more hours of suspense Juliet rushed to the telephone at first sound of the bell. If it were not Jack--or Pat--she should scream. But it was Jack. "I can't find Claremanagh anywhere, or hear of his movements since two o'clock," Manners said. "He was then at a club you probably never heard of. It's called 'The Joint'. All sorts of men belong--actors, writers, lawyers, sportsmen, and at least one private detective! Pat isn't a member. I shouldn't have thought of the place if a man I know (the one who will introduce me to Mademoiselle Pavoya) hadn't mentioned seeing Pat there this morning with two men. That's why I went round, after I'd tried everywhere else. Well, he was there at five, with the detective I spoke of just now, and a Frenchman named Defasquelle. That name will strike you! He had an appointment to come back and dine with Defasquelle who, it seems, came with an introduction and has been made a foreign member. In fact, he's staying at the club, and I have been talking with him. In the hope of seeing Pat at eight, I waited, because Defasquelle was so sure he would come. But at half-past nine he hadn't turned up. I've 'phoned everywhere I can think of since, and left word that I'm to be called whenever there's news, no matter what time. When I go out--as I must do if I'm to meet the _lady_--I shall leave my address with the Tarascon people." "What can have happened to Pat!" Manners heard Juliet cry. "Don't worry. He's certain to be all right," Jack assured her. But he wasn't quite comfortable upon that point himself and had quietly 'phoned all the hospitals. It looked queer that Claremanagh hadn't kept that engagement with Defasquelle. He had apparently been anxious to keep it. If there had been an accident to a man so well known, surely the news would have got into the evening papers. Yet there was no news anywhere of any kind, since the Duke had walked out of "The Joint" at five. Were such a thing not too absurdly far-fetched, Jack would have asked himself if any one existed who might wish Claremanagh to disappear? CHAPTER XIII A WOMAN'S EYES "Mademoiselle Pavoya, this is Captain John Manners, just back from France: a cousin of the Duchess of Claremanagh's," said the manager who was introducing Jack. Lyda Pavoya lifted her drooping head a little--only a little, and fixed upon Manners a pair of dark eyes. "A pair of dark eyes!" Simple words, and a simple act. There are many women in the world with dark eyes, and many had looked at John Manners. But these eyes of the Polish woman----! As they gave that upward look from under heavy lashes Manners felt himself a traitor. He had heard all sorts of stories about Lyda Pavoya. He had got an impression that she was a "tigress woman." And then, the dancing that he had seen her do was wild and barbaric. But to-night she was a swan. Her eyes were dark, but not black or even brown. They were perhaps a very deep, greenish grey, and extraordinarily luminous. Yes, that was the word: luminous! "Brilliant" would be too hard. There was a mysterious, moonlight sort of luminance between the black fringes of the white lids, and the whole face--pale, delicate, with pointed chin--was mysterious as only Polish or Russian faces are. "Why does she look at me so?" Jack thought. It was almost as if she guessed, because he was Juliet's cousin, why he had asked for this introduction. He could not believe that she, who met so many people, could recognize the man in evening dress as the officer in khaki she had seen on the Phayre doorstep. They were in a room at the theatre where Mademoiselle Pavoya received privileged persons: a plainly furnished room, mostly grey except for masses of flowers, and it suited her better than a background of fantastic colour. Perhaps it was this greyness which made her stand out so vividly, and seem of such vital, thrilling importance. She was extremely quiet in manner, and her voice was low. Yet her quietness was disturbing, like that of a summer night when lightning may leap from a clear sky. Manners was struck dumb by her. Something had flashed from her eyes to his with that first look. It did not say merely, "I am a woman. You are a man." It said--or seemed to say--"You are _the_ man. I am _the_ woman. We had to meet. And now--what?" He tried to think that this was a trick of hers which she used on every male worthy of her steel. But he could not believe it to be so. Her perfume--that perfume of an Eastern garden by moonlight--had gone to his head. No woman had ever produced such an effect upon him, though they had exchanged but a few words, and those not memorable. Yet he was not humiliated by his own surrender. In spite of all reason he was convinced that she had been stirred by him as he by her. The meeting was between Pavoya's dances, and she had not many minutes to spare. Her manager had impressed upon Manners that the few she gave were an immense concession. There was no hope of prolonging them. Her call came. She had to go. Again eyes met with that shock to the nerves. Suddenly Lyda held out her hand to Jack. Clasping it, electricity flashed up his arm and stabbed at his heart. He felt her start slightly, and his breath quickened. For Juliet's sake, and the promise he had made, it was Manners' duty to take instant advantage of his "luck" with Pavoya. But he was not thinking about Juliet--or the promise. He was neither remorseful nor triumphant. All he thought of or wanted as they talked in snatches was to hold this woman, not to let her go till he had arranged to meet her again. He must meet her again! He must know what she really was--what they were to be in each other's lives. But he could not ask permission to call. He was stupidly tongue-tied, and could not put words together as he would have wished. "Would you care to have supper with me at my house to-night?" she asked, not taking her hand from his. The invitation was so unexpected that Jack could hardly believe it had been given. Yet he heard himself answering, "Yes, I should be delighted." "I am glad," she said, in her perfect English, with the pretty accent that was part of her charm. "Perhaps you don't know where I live? I have taken a house, furnished: Mrs. Lloyd-Jackson's house on Park Avenue. You have been there? Supper will be at twelve. Till then----" She was gone. "By Jingo, you've made a hit, my boy!" chuckled Pavoya's manager. It was all Jack could do to detach himself from thoughts of Lyda, and go about Juliet's business between ten-forty and midnight. For the first time in his life the prospect of seeing Juliet was distasteful to him. He didn't want to see her, because she would ask him about Lyda Pavoya, and in his present mood there was nothing he would hate worse than discussing the Polish girl with his cousin. But he was as sorry for Juliet as ever, and just as anxious to help her. Desperately against the grain, he took a taxi and drove to the Phayre house, which he found brilliantly lighted. The huge front looked so gay that for a moment he hoped Pat had come back. But he asked for the Duke, and was told gravely by Togo that His Grace was not at home. The Duchess, however, was expecting Captain Manners. Juliet was waiting, not in her boudoir, but in the Chinese room which her father had loved. She no longer wore the dressing gown she had put on when nursing her headache in the afternoon, but was dazzling in some flame-coloured film over shot gold and purple tissue. "You've had good news!" Jack exclaimed at sight of her. "No, I've had none whatever," she said. "If possible, things are worse. I know why you thought something good had happened. All the lights, and this dress! But if you were a woman you'd understand. I've realized that there's a fight in front of me. I want it to be a silent battle. I don't wish people to know I'm fighting at all--till I see what the end's likely to be." "I do understand," Jack said. "You're a brave girl, and I believe the end will be all right." He hurried on to talk about Pat, and thus put off the bad moment when she would question him about Pavoya. As nothing had been heard of the missing one and Juliet seemed now even more anxious than angry, Jack decided to confess having telephoned to all the hospitals. It was good news, he insisted, that these enquiries had drawn blank, and he did his best as a comforter by saying that Pat had probably gone off in a huff. People who loved each other flew into rages more easily than those who didn't care. Men of Pat's temperament didn't lie down quietly to be trampled on by their wives. He'd write soon, or send word somehow when his first fury had exploded. Or, at worst, he would communicate with the bank, even if he didn't turn up for work there. Meanwhile, however, Jack admitted that they mustn't let things slide and merely "hope for the best." Would Juliet like to have a detective engaged--a private one, of course--quietly to make enquiries, in the very unlikely case that something queer had happened? "Yes, I was going to suggest that," Juliet said in a hard, bright voice which kept back tears. "What about that detective you spoke of--the one who was with Pat and Defasquelle at the club?" Jack hesitated. "Well, I think we'd better get a chap of our own. You see, possibly _he_ was Pat's man, engaged for the--the pearl business. He mightn't be able to work for us with a whole heart----" "I know what you mean," Juliet caught Manners up. "Pat's man may know where Pat really is, and lead us off the track, instead of on to it." "It's just possible," Jack had to agree. "Would you believe it," the girl veered abruptly to a new subject, "two reporters have called to interview me about the _Inner Circle_ stuff?" "Impudent beasts!" Manners lashed out. "Of course you didn't receive them?" "Jack, I _did_!" said Juliet. "I'll tell you why. Here in the house I've got more and more proof against Pat--or against _that woman_." Jack winced, but she was not looking at him: her eyes were full of tears. "Still, I'm doing what you told me to do: I'm giving him 'the benefit of the doubt.' Besides--I've my pride, just as Pat has his. There's my father's name. In its way that's as good as the name of Claremanagh, or all the dukes in Britain. I came to this room to-night because Dad loved it so, and I felt as if he were here in spirit, helping me to be strong. He was such a busy man, yet always he had time for me! I can almost hear his voice saying, 'Steady, Jule!' as he used to say when I was in one of my wild moods. I had those newspapermen brought to me here. And I said to one what I said to the other. I admitted that I'd seen the _Inner Circle_, and I supposed the horrid rag meant _us_. But I simply laughed at the whole thing! I told them Pavoya came to see _me_--something about her dance for the Armenians: you know, the roof-garden show Nancy Van Esten's getting up. I said the insinuation about the pearls was nonsense: that I'm an expert, and that they're the realest things I ever saw. I talked about Pat as if we two were the best of friends, and mentioned just casually that he was away for a few days. I was as nice as I could be to the men, though I longed to--to _kick_ them! I'm sure they both went off to their horrid old newspapers to write beautiful things about the family. Don't you think I did right?" "Perhaps," said Jack. "If you don't mind being a bit _infra dig_." "I don't mind anything," Juliet choked, "if only Pat comes back safely and--and--if we can patch up some sort of a life together. If--I don't have to break with him." "Then you've given up those ideas you had this morning?" "About divorce? No. I haven't exactly given them up. But they seem far off now--when I'm so afraid for Pat. I've thought of a thousand things that might have happened to him. Suppose he _does_ love me really, and Pavoya is jealous? She'd be capable of _anything_. She may have had him stabbed! That reminds me: you've met her?" "Yes." "Well?" "What do you want me to say?" "To tell me what she was like, of course! How you got on--what have you got out of her?" Jack felt suddenly antagonistic to Juliet. "I was with Mademoiselle Pavoya about twenty minutes at most, and her manager was there, too," he said. "I got nothing out of her. What did you expect? All the same you may take it from me, Juliet, you'll make a big mistake if you imagine she has anything to do with Pat's not showing up. I'm sure she hasn't." "Oh! She's hypnotized you, too, has she?" snapped Juliet. "Pat wanted to make me believe she was a _good woman_! Come with me into his study, and I'll show you something. Then perhaps you won't be so quick to defend her!" This was worse than Jack's fears. He couldn't refuse to follow his cousin. From everyone's point of view, that would be poor policy. But he hated to go to Pat's study. He did not wish to see anything Juliet had to show him there. "If it's a letter, I won't----" he had begun when she cut him short. "It isn't a letter! After the scolding you gave me at the Lorne, I wouldn't glance at the _wildest_ love-letter of Pavoya's even if she'd _printed_ it so large I could read every word across the room." "I didn't give you a scolding," Jack defended himself. "I only said a _man_ wouldn't do what you did--or some such thing as that." "Yes. That's just what you did say." Juliet was unlocking the door of Pat's study, of which she had the key. "I never knew you not to do what you wanted to do because I or any one else scolded you!" "How hard you are to me, Jack!" she reproached him. "This is different. And _I_ am different. I don't want to do anything a man would think mean. I want to be fair to Pat, whatever happens. But about the pearls I can't be fair to him and Pavoya both. I'm going to show you why not." As she spoke she went to Pat's desk, where things were wildly scattered, as in his notorious carelessness he had left them. Jack Manners' heart beat rather thickly as he remembered his last visit to this room: how Defasquelle had come in; how he, Jack, had sat on the club fender, very conscious during the scene which followed that Lyda Pavoya must be hidden behind the curtains or the screen; how he had advised Pat to do what Defasquelle asked; how Pat refused, and showed the safe in the wall which was already open. "Here's his seal ring," Juliet was saying. "I found it lying on the desk. This is what I brought you in to see. Now take the ring in your hand, please. Look at it closely, and tell me if you notice anything odd." As Jack took the ring, he recalled that Pat had pulled it off his finger and given it to Defasquelle, telling the Frenchman to compare it with the seals on the packet. Relieved that, for a moment, Juliet was letting Lyda's name rest in peace, he examined the ring. "I see nothing peculiar, unless a tiny bit of red stuff stuck in the corner of the eye," he said. "Ah!" cried Juliet, "I thought you'd see that! What do you think the red stuff is?" "Might be sealing-wax." "That's just what it is. I used a magnifying-glass to make sure. Which showed me something else, too. But I haven't quite come to that yet! Pat never seals his letters with red wax. He dislikes red things: you know yourself he always uses grey-blue wax. He said it reminded him of my eyes! You saw the packet Defasquelle brought from France?" "Yes." "Then you know it was sealed with five red seals. I have the box and wrappings upstairs, if you don't remember." "I do remember." "Very well. You can guess what I'm driving at?" "I suppose I can." "Good! Now for the other thing the magnifying-glass told me. But no--take it yourself. There's a scratch across the eye on the ring. You see it?" "Yes." "Do you know who was supposed to have sealed up the packet?" "Mayen, of course: with a duplicate ring Pat had made for him on purpose." "Yes, a duplicate. But _would the scratch have been copied_? It shows on all five seals of the packet. I looked through the magnifier." "Juliet! You accuse Pat----" "Or Pavoya. I said it must lie between him and her." Jack did not answer at once. He saw the sinister importance of this discovery which Juliet had made. His mind rushed back to yesterday. Lyda Pavoya had been left alone in the study, for how long he did not know. But Pat had given her a chance to get away. He had made an excuse to show both men something in the Chinese room next door. Then, when Defasquelle pleaded an engagement, Pat had rung for Togo to guide the Frenchman out. A little later Jack also had gone. What Pat had done after that, who could tell? His own man Nickson, perhaps, or one of the other servants. Jack pushed the name of Lyda Pavoya violently out of his mind. He would not ask himself what she knew about Pat's next movements and about the red seals. When these thoughts had shot through his head, bringing actual bodily pain, he drew a long breath, and forced himself to speak. Juliet was waiting! "It's very necessary to have a detective to tackle this business," he said. "I realize that fact more than ever now. It's essential for Pat's own sake, if--for no one else's. A sharp chap may be able somehow or other to pulverize this beastly theory you're forming, Juliet. He'll make tests for fingerprints on the safe in the wall. If there are others besides Pat's, of course----" "And Lyda Pavoya's!" "It's not worthy of you to spring to such conclusions!" Manners broke out before he could control himself. He expected Juliet to retort furiously, but she did not. She merely looked piteous--and young. "Jack," she said, sadly, "what am I going to do if that woman takes _you_ away from me as well as Pat?" "Nonsense," he bluffed. "I hope I shall show that she hasn't taken Pat--or anything of yours. You don't _want_ her proved guilty, I suppose?" "Not unless she is. But I'd rather it would be Pavoya than Pat. And it seems as if it must be one or the other." "It seems so to _you_--now. But wait." Juliet looked at him anxiously. "Can you think of any one else to suspect?" "I haven't had much time to think yet," said Jack. "To-morrow morning early, I'll get the best private detective in town: one who won't talk. Meanwhile, we must be patient. I suppose, of course, you've questioned Nickson about his master?" "That was one of the first things I did. Poor old Nick was almost bowled over when I said I feared that something had happened to his adored one. I didn't mention the pearls--naturally!--or that I thought Pat might have disappeared of his own accord. I watched Nick's face to see what he _knew_. I don't think he has an idea where Pat has gone. But--Jack, _he knows something_--something wild horses wouldn't drag out of him. I feel--I have a _flair_--it's about Pavoya. I've an idea Nick has taken messages. Togo has been bribed by her, too, I'm sure. And he won't speak. The woman is like Circe, with men of all sorts and classes. She has but to look at them to turn them into beasts!" "The woman" had looked at Jack. But she had not turned him into a beast. He had never felt less like a beast in his life than he felt at this moment! Yet--saint or Circe--by some magic she had won his loyalty. "Wild horses" would not have dragged her secrets from Nickson, Juliet said, and Jack believed she might be right. As for him, he would have had his tongue cut out sooner than tell his cousin that he was engaged to sup at Lyda's house. And it was almost time to go! What excuse could he make for leaving Juliet abruptly, without hurting her? He would not hurt her for a great deal. But he would hurt her if he must, rather than be late! CHAPTER XIV SUPPER AT TWELVE The house taken furnished by Lyda Pavoya belonged to a woman well known in society, who had gone abroad. Jack Manners had visited there before the war; but the drawing room was changed. There had been banal things in it. Now they were gone. Banality could not exist near Lyda. It seemed that in every form it must shrivel up, burnt away by the still fire of her strange, secret soul. Jack had pictured himself entering a room full of people, fellow guests, and finding no one, he feared that he had come too soon. If stage stars invited one for midnight, they probably meant one to turn up at half-past twelve, so that, if they sailed in at one o'clock, one would not be annoyed. When the door opened five minutes after his arrival, therefore, he expected to see some theatrical or social "swell." But it was Lyda who appeared--alone. He had never met her off the stage until yesterday, at the door of the Phayre house. Then she had been dressed in black, and thickly veiled. He had guessed her identity from the extreme grace and slimness of her tall figure, and the flame of her red hair glimpsed through embroidered net. In Paris, where she had danced, he had sat too far away to criticise her features, and at the theatre to-night he'd been dazzled by the wonder of her as a swan-woman. Now, as she drifted in with the air of a tired, overworked girl needing rest, and mutely asking for help in securing it, Jack had the thrill of a new revelation. How many sides had this Polish dancer's nature? Was he to have a different sort of thrill each time he met her, always more poignant, more soul-piercing than before? "I am glad to see you," she said. "I thought I should be here first. I hope I've not kept you waiting?" "Not five minutes," Jack assured her. "Good! Will you take off my wrap for me? When I heard you had come I wouldn't wait for my maid." She had unfastened the emerald clasps of a long, oddly shaped cloak of purple velvet lined with clouds of green chiffon over gold. As Jack lifted it from her white shoulders, to his surprise he heard himself exclaim, "I'd imagined you in sables." (What right had he to make a "personal" comment like that?) "So other people have told me," she said. "But I have one peculiarity: I never wear furs. To me it is horrible that women can cover themselves with the skins of lovely creatures murdered for their pleasure: pathetic little faces and feet and tails dangling all over them! No. When I was a child I suffered too much from the cruelty of the strong to the weak to find joy in profiting from it." "By Jove!" exclaimed Jack. "I've thought sometimes of that sort of thing. But I didn't suppose it ever occurred to women, even the tenderest ones I've known." "The women you have known haven't had childhoods like mine," said Lyda. "Yet I hoped you'd not be one to make fun of my feeling. Another thing: I do not eat meat for the same reason. You will see, at supper. But you shall have some, so don't be discouraged!" As she spoke, she smiled, and Jack realized that it was the first time he had seen her smile. That was strange! Or, it would have been strange in another woman. Now he saw that it would be more strange, altogether out of keeping with this character voluntarily opening itself to him, if she laughed or smiled often. Jack had obeyed a gesture of hers, and laid the faintly perfumed cloak on a sofa. Lyda wore a dress simple enough for the first dinner-gown of a schoolgirl: grey and short--almost "skimpy," yet somehow perfect, without a single touch of trimming or a jewel. "Shall we go into the dining room?" she asked. "Supper will be ready. It always is. I never have it announced unless I've a party. To-night it's only you and me. You'll not mind?" "Mind!" The word spoke itself with a boyish sincerity that Jack could not have pretended. "I didn't dare dream----" She led the way through open sliding doors to an adjoining room, not turning her head to listen as she let Jack push the half-drawn portières aside. What a divine back she had, and what dimples in the delicate, flat shoulder-blades! An almost overpowering desire gripped Jack to kiss the white neck just where a knot of shining red hair was kept in place by a jade pin. He would no more have ventured upon a liberty with this creature of unfathomed reserves than he would have thrown himself into the cage of a tigress. All the same, he had definitely "lost his head." He knew that he would have sacrificed Juliet and Pat for this girl, not deliberately, not through conviction, but because he couldn't help himself if it came to a choice! In the octagon-shaped room where its late mistress had given famous dinners for eight--never less, never more--a small table was laid and lit with shaded candles, but no servants were there. Violets were scattered on the lace table-cover, the only flower decorations. For the guest there were several elaborate cold dishes and champagne in ice; for the hostess, brown bread and a jug of milk! When she saw Jack look at this, Lyda laughed out aloud. "I never take anything else at night," she explained. "I suppose I'm a queer person. Probably you're thinking me odd in many ways: for one, to have you alone with me at supper. I've a companion who lives with me, Madame Lemercier, a nice woman. But I do what I wish without thinking of conventions, if I hurt no one. People say so many things about me, they can say no worse, whatever I do! That's partly why I act as I please. Yet I think I'd do the same without an excuse. I invited you because I want to talk with you alone; no Madame Lemercier; no servants. I'll wait on you myself." "Not that!" said Manners. "You must let me wait on you!" "We'll wait on each other," she smiled. A sense of exquisite intimacy with this girl, or woman (he knew not what to call her) took possession of Jack. For a few minutes they ate, and he talked of anything that flashed into his mind. When Lyda had finished her milk he jumped up, and filled the glass again. Then she said abruptly: "I recognized you, at the theatre--from _yesterday_. Did you think I would?" "No!" Jack reddened to his sun-bleached hair. "But--you must have known I was in Claremanagh's study when--you were there." "I--wasn't sure." "Yet you thought so! You're not a man who can lie well. And you are the cousin of Claremanagh's wife. You thought badly of me." "I'd no right to think badly," Jack staved her off. "It wasn't my affair!" "I asked you here to-night to _make_ it your affair." Jack had a shock of disappointment. That wonderful, heart-piercing first look of hers which he had read, "You are _the_ man: I am _the_ woman!" hadn't meant much after all. "You see," Lyda went on, "I think that perhaps you and I have known each other a long time: in another life: perhaps in more lives than one. Souls that have been friends--or more than friends--group together on earth many times, no doubt. Did you feel this when we met to-night?" "Yes!" Jack said, his breath choked. "I know it must have been that. I knew even then it was the most wonderful thing ever!" "_I_ felt it even yesterday, when I passed you at Claremanagh's door," she told him. "I thought: 'There's a man I may never see again, but we could be friends, and we _have_ been friends, though maybe he has forgotten.' When I was in the study behind the curtains--Claremanagh put me there: he didn't want me seen--I was sorry you should believe things not true." "I did not!" Jack protested. "No? Then--I am glad." The man felt ashamed, remembering suddenly what he _had_ believed yesterday--even to-day. Her words, "I am glad," cut him to the quick, and he hurried on along the way of atonement. "You say you asked me here to 'make it my affair'--about Claremanagh. Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it." "I don't know yet what is best. We will talk it over," she answered. "But first you will have to hear a story. It's a long story: how I met Claremanagh, and a great many things that came of the meeting. You won't be bored?" "Do you need an answer to that question?" Lyda gave him one of her rare smiles. "No. It was conventional of me to ask. But--it will not be conventional to tell you the story. It would be--even _dangerous_ to tell it to some men. I'm not afraid with you." "Thank you for saying that!" She held out her hand to him across the small round table. Jack seized it, and pressed it closely instead of kissing the pink palm as he was tempted to do. For a moment Lyda sat still, her eyes cast down, as if she sought for words which eluded her. Then she began in a low voice that was slightly monotonous, as though she spoke out of an old dream. She paused sometimes; but Manners remained silent, asking no questions. He felt that she would prefer this. She took him back with her to Petrograd (St. Petersburg then) when she was sixteen, ten years before. She was dancing in a second-rate café, and attracted attention, so that the place became popular. A man named Konrad Markoff was the real owner, though he posed as an amateur patron. By his advice, the manager got Lyda to sign a hard and fast contract to dance at the same salary for the next five years. Markoff pretended a fatherly kindness for her; and she was invited occasionally to visit his wife, a Frenchwoman who had lived for years in England. One night Markoff brought a good-looking English boy of nineteen or so to the café. This boy applauded Lyda's dancing, and was introduced to her at his own request: The Duke of Claremanagh. From the first he was enthusiastic about her talent: not in love ("oh, not at all in love!" Lyda insisted), but anxious to "help a budding genius." At the end of a week he had thought out a practical plan. He would pay for the dancing lessons of which she had dreamed, as of an impossible Paradise: lessons from the great Sophia Verasova. It would cost a lot, yes, but he'd just had a few unexpected thousands left to him by an aunt. If Lyda wouldn't accept, they were sure to be spent on some foolery. She did accept. Perhaps she might have accepted even if Claremanagh hadn't made it quite clear how impersonal, how disinterested were his motives! Never--the dancer confessed--had she met a "good man" in those days. She would have made an idol of this handsome boy; but he didn't want her idolatry. He was fancying himself in love with the wife of a Don at Oxford just then! To free her from slavery at the café, Claremanagh paid a big indemnity; and at the time Lyda was grateful to Markoff for arranging the business, not then aware that he was the power behind the throne. It was nearly two years later when the truth was sprung upon the girl, just as she expected to go with Verasova to make her début in Paris. Markoff had wished her to be educated and become a great dancer without expense to himself. There were several ways in which she could be valuable, and unless she promised her services to him, he would prevent her from leaving Petrograd. Claremanagh had been too carelessly trustful to have the release from her contract framed in a legal document, and Lyda could still be compelled to carry it out. Unless she agreed to use the charm she had, the fame she might win, in the secret service of Russia, she _would_ be thus compelled! Lyda was not old enough to understand the hideousness of this bargain. She wasn't yet eighteen; and not to go with Verasova would have seemed worse than death. It was only later, when she had soared to brilliant success, that she realized fully what she was expected to do. Engagements were offered to her in the capitals of different countries: after Paris, Rome, and then London. She met many men of distinction, sailors, soldiers, diplomats, financiers. She was to flirt with these men--just how seriously, was her own affair!--and get them inadvertently to tell her things useful to the Tsar's government. Well, she _had_ flirted! But she had sickened at the business behind the flirtations. Very little information reached Russia through Lyda Pavoya! Reproaches and threats came to her from Markoff; and as a warning of what he could do to bring about her ruin if he chose, Russians in England, France, Italy, America, set the ball of scandal rolling against her. According to them she was a professional siren, a mercenary blood-sucker, a "tigress woman," a devourer of men's happiness and honour! Against such a campaign a woman, placed as she was, found herself helpless. She could only shrug her shoulders, go her own way, and try not to care! But the war, like an ill wind that blows good to some, changed the world for Lyda. She worked heart and soul in Paris for the Red Cross. The Russian Revolution broke like a red sunrise and with the end of Tsardom she hoped that Markoff's power over her would end also. For some months she had no word from him. Then he appeared in Paris--at a bad moment for her. Claremanagh had been there on leave. He had come to her house, complaining that he felt ill. At luncheon he had fallen from his chair in a dead faint. The doctor had pronounced the attack a virulent case of influenza. Claremanagh couldn't be moved. Lyda, helped by Madame Lemercier, had nursed him. He thought she had saved his life--vowed that he owed her more than she had ever owed him. There was endless gossip, of course, but Lyda had been so glad to repay her debt of gratitude that she hadn't much cared. It was soon after Claremanagh had gone back to the front, and while people were still coupling their names in a scandalous way, that Konrad Markoff arrived in Paris. "At last the time has come when you can be of real use to me," he had said. Lyda had hoped that this was "bluff." But Markoff explained. He explained things of which she had never dreamed. With brutal frankness he told the girl that he had made Claremanagh's acquaintance in Petrograd for a very special purpose. He had married his French wife because she had been maid to the young Duchess of Claremanagh, and knew something about the famous pearls. Always he, and men associated with him, had kept track of the family fortunes. He had known that the boy intended to visit the scene of his ancestor's great romance. Had it not been for some treachery (he believed that his own wife had sent anonymous warnings to the Claremanaghs) the lost treasure would long ago have returned to Russia. Now, though his associates were dead or in Bolshevik prisons, and the crown was a legend, he--Markoff--wanted the pearls for himself. Lyda had more than repaid Claremanagh's generosity, all of which, Markoff argued, she owed directly to _him_. She was in a position to demand any favour she liked of the Duke. She must get him to lend her the Tsarina pearls. If she refused to do this, she should be denounced as a spy. Even though her activities had been stopped by the revolution, the war was still on! Markoff had letters which would convict her. She--the adored one, the divine dancer--would be tried and shot some morning at dawn. It would be nothing to die, Lyda had thought. But she loved France. She could not bear to die as a traitor! What to do then? Suddenly a plan came to her. She agreed to ask Claremanagh for the pearls. "You see," she explained to Manners, "Markoff had had a copy made, from an old portrait of the Tsarina. He meant me to hand him over the real pearls, and give the false to Claremanagh. But he didn't know that Claremanagh's mother had had them copied. Hardly any one did know. But Claremanagh had told me. And it was that copy I asked him to lend! He couldn't bear to refuse my very first request. Poor fellow, he hated to grant it, though! It was just after he'd fallen in love with Miss Phayre--before they were engaged. There was enough talk about him and me, without my wearing those well-known pearls. It was part of my bargain with Markoff to appear with them in public, for he wanted my name to be coupled with Claremanagh's. It would give me more power over his future. And even if the Duke told people that he was lending me a copy, they wouldn't believe it. They would have laughed at the idea of Pavoya accepting false pearls. "Claremanagh sent to London for the things. My wearing them made a sensation! Markoff was wild with rage when he saw what they were--wild against Claremanagh, not me. He believed that I'd been tricked. Of course the copy was of no use to him. He did not take it. But he would not let me give it back to the Duke. He was working up a scheme of blackmail against us both. I dared not disobey--and once the mischief was done by my wearing the rope Claremanagh didn't much mind whether I kept it or not. I pretended to forget, and he didn't mention the subject. Then I got this surprise offer to dance in New York. I was _so_ glad! I thought I might get rid of Markoff. How foolish! He sailed in the ship with the Duke and Duchess, but kept out of their way. Claremanagh never knew he was on board--and perhaps wouldn't have remembered him from those old Petrograd days if he had seen his face. "Now, we come to these last few weeks in New York," Lyda finished. "Do you begin to see Markoff's game?" "Not quite," Jack answered. It was the first time he had spoken since she began her story. "It isn't clear to me yet--at least where Pat Claremanagh's concerned." "It wasn't to me at first. But Markoff made it clear. He didn't try direct blackmail against the Duke. He was afraid, I think, that Claremanagh would fight--even though he'd hate scandal for his wife's sake. I was the catspaw. Markoff really did have letters which I had sent him in those hateful days when I had to content him with a pretense of spying. There were always those to hold over my head. And he threatened to order the wearing of those wretched false pearls again as an open insult to the Duchess. He thought that, for answer, she would wear the real ones! Then he would be sure they were in New York, and he might have the chance at last which he'd been trying for all these years: the chance to steal them." "By Jove, you are unravelling the whole mystery!" Jack broke out. But Lyda shook her head. "No! I'm afraid you'll not think that when you've heard what's to come," she said. "I'm afraid I shall make the mystery even deeper. I was faced with shame for myself and the ruin of Claremanagh's happiness--through my fault--my seeming selfishness. The alternative was money--oh, but a great sum of money--enough to console Markoff for giving up his hope of the pearls. Never till then had I told Claremanagh of Markoff's tyranny. But for his own sake and mine I had to explain something. We consulted--about what was best to be done. Claremanagh wished to do what he called 'wave the red flag.' But I made him realize what his wife's feelings would be if he were mixed up in such a case at law, with me. At last we agreed that it would be wise to pay Markoff and be free of him. I earn a great deal of money, and--spend it. It took some time to get the sum together. I sold nearly all my jewels, and what I didn't sell, I pawned. Still there wasn't enough, and Claremanagh came to the rescue. He said it was for _himself_--but of course it was far more for me! It was only when the money was every _sou_ in hand that I dared give back the imitation pearls. I went to do that when you met me at the door: to do that and to hand Claremanagh two thirds of the hush-money for Markoff. The rest he had ready in his safe. He offered--he wanted--to meet the man and exchange the money for the letters. Now, Captain Manners, you know the whole history of the 'Pavoya'-Claremanagh affair. But perhaps you don't yet understand all the reasons why I've told it, two hours after we were introduced to each other--you and I!" Her eyes challenged him. Jack saw that she wished him to understand, and so he did not mean to make a mistake. He thought before he spoke. "I wonder?" he said. "I could be more sure where I am if I knew whether you're in the secret of Pat's doings to-night." Lyda looked puzzled and pale. "His doings--to-night? No, last night he saw Markoff and got back the letters. But to-night's doings--no. I am not in the secret--if there is a secret." Jack caught at her words. He was intensely excited by what she had told him, but he kept his outward coolness. Lyda had gone through a great strain. He did not care to alarm her needlessly. "You say Pat saw Markoff, and got the letters. You're sure of that?" "Yes, he sent me the letters with a short note, just after receiving them, saying 'all was right.'" "Did the note come from home?" "No, from a club: the 'Grumblers'. It was written rather late." "Didn't Pat say anything about himself--where he was going from the club, what had happened since you met, or what he meant to do to-day?" "Nothing--except that he was writing in a hurry after 'settling up with Markoff' and seeing the last of him, for he had 'something rather important to do.' That was all, absolutely all. Captain Manners, you look strange! What have you to tell me in exchange for my story?" "Why, to begin with, that I don't understand as I thought I did, why you've told it," Jack stammered. "I imagined it was because you knew Pat and my cousin had quarrelled, that he had left her--or anyhow disappeared--and you wanted me to justify you with Juliet." Lyda stared at him across the table, her hands suddenly pressed over her heart. "_Mon Dieu!_" she whispered. "Claremanagh disappeared!" "But," went on Jack, collecting his wits, "if you didn't know, what did you mean when you said that Markoff's hand in the pearl business didn't clear up the mystery, but only made it more mysterious?" "I meant, of course, those innuendos in that horrible paper--the hints that the Duchess was wearing false pearls. It is not to Markoff's advantage to start such a rumour now. He has nothing to gain--no longer any hold over Claremanagh or me. He would do himself no good, but much harm. Oh, Captain Manners, where can the Duke be?" "I came here to-night racking my brains vainly as to that," Jack encouraged her. "Now, thanks to you, I've something to go upon, something to tell the detective whom I shall see first thing to-morrow. This Markoff is my starting point now: his scheme of years to steal the pearls. How he can have got into the house, opened the safe, taken the things out of the box, and sealed it up again with the false pearls inside, I can't see yet, but----" Lyda sprang to her feet. "You say--he has done _that_!" "Someone has done that. You--Pat didn't tell you in his letter, about what had happened to the box you must have seen?" "No--no. He didn't mention the pearls--or the box. Who discovered the theft?" "Juliet. Pat gave her the sealed packet, and--she's rather an expert!--she found the pearls were false." "Yet--she wore them." "Yes." "Then that was because she thought I----" "Don't say it!" "Can _you_ say it wasn't her thought?" "She's accused her own husband--whom she adores." "Or me! Was that not it?" Jack was silent. With a little cry Lyda covered her face with her hands, and he saw that she trembled. Hardly knowing what he did he went to her, took the two cold hands and held them to his lips. She looked up to him with eyes bright with tears, and--the next instant she was in his arms. "We'll work together," he said, "you and I. We'll drag this mystery up by the roots. We'll find Pat, wherever he is, and Juliet shall beg your pardon on her knees." CHAPTER XV THE FORTUNE TELLER Manners did not go to his hotel when he left Lyda. He walked for miles. He was happy. He was proud. He was wretched. He was ashamed. He believed in Lyda Pavoya. He doubted her. There would not have been room for the volcano of his feelings between four walls. That moment when he had held her in his arms had been the most wonderful if not the greatest in his life. But it had been only a moment. Her surrender for a few seconds had seemed to him then the most exquisite thing in the world: the childlike longing for a man's chivalrous protection, in the heart of a woman who had known little chivalry! In an instant she had drawn herself gently away, and he had not held her. He had wished Lyda to know that, if he did not understand everything, at least he understood why she had crept into his arms for that brief breathing space, and that he would take no advantage of her yielding. He had armoured himself with an almost exaggerated friendliness afterward; and for a while they had talked not at all of themselves, but of Juliet and Pat. They tried to form some theory which might account for the disappearance of the pearls from the locked safe whose combination was known to only two persons; the replacing of the parcel there, sealed with fresh seals. They had striven to implicate Markoff in the affair, but all their deductions stumbled against the same blank wall in the end. It seemed impossible that Markoff could even have entered the house, much less have got into the study or opened the safe. Lyda did not know how Pat had obtained the money to help her out with the payment to Markoff. It had not seemed strange to her that he should have it. Looking back, it seemed strange now. Yet it was incredible that he should have juggled with the packet, and risked losing his wife's respect by palming off false pearls on her, in order to get money for another woman. Incredible! And yet, Lyda said, like one in a dream, that he was the only person who could have done the thing--_except herself_! "I know _I_ didn't do it, and--yes, I know he didn't do it!" she cried to Jack. So, again and again they came through darkness to that blank wall! And at last, deadly tired in body and brain, Lyda sent Manners away. He was all exaltation at first. The glamour and perfume of her ran through his veins. She was noble, magnificent. It was great of this glowing creature to trust him so generously, to tell him her life story, putting herself in his power in a way, for the sake of Claremanagh's happiness. It was fine of her to say he might repeat all to Juliet, who--Lyda must know--detested and distrusted her with the obstinacy of a spoiled, jealous child: to say that, if necessary, a detective might be trusted with her secrets. But as the chill of the night iced his veins, Jack's mood changed. Juliet's point of view suddenly showed itself sharply to his eyes. It was as if she had come from round the corner of the last street he had passed, to walk with him. _Had_ Lyda told him the story for Claremanagh's sake and Juliet's? _Why not for her own_--in the daring wish to make a "friend at court?" Would that not be more like her--more like the woman she was supposed to be? She knew that he had seen her go into the Phayre house; that he must have guessed she was hidden in the study; that he was Juliet's cousin and would naturally be inclined to work for Juliet's interest. Would it not be a bold and clever stroke to win him to her side? If it were some other man, not himself, whose prejudices had been thus broken down in an hour by a woman's eyes and voice, wouldn't he pity the poor idiot who believed that he alone fathomed the depths of her smile? Lyda practically admitted that she had fooled many men. Some of them had doubtless known far more about women than he knew. Why, she must have been laughing at him all through! He had been a child in her hands! Lies that were half truths could be welded into a fabric hard to break down. No doubt there were true details in that life history of Pavoya. But how many true ones? And was it "fine" of her to "consent" that he should tell Juliet, and if necessary a detective? Wasn't that just what she'd worked up to, and wanted? Wasn't she purposely turning suspicion toward Pat when she said, as if dazed, that only he or she could have changed the pearls? Jack heard himself again, warmly promising that they two should work together, that they'd drag up the mystery by the roots, and that Juliet should beg her pardon. A spider's dainty web of opal-gauze, glittering with dew, must look a fairy palace to a big, blundering bluebottle! Did such a man as Markoff from Petrograd even _exist_? Dawn flowed like a pale river through the canyons of the New York streets when Manners' walk ended at his own hotel. He felt as if he had been through a battle--a battle that he hadn't won. But a cold splash, and then dead sleep for an hour, braced him physically. He woke with a start, as if somebody had knocked; yet no one was at the door. The thought of food disgusted him; hot, strong black coffee, however, was refreshing. It was early still, yet he was sure that Juliet would be awake, and called her up, learning at once that she had no news. Yes, he _had_ things to tell, he answered her eager question. "Not news exactly, but important." Before going to her, however, he intended to see the detective they'd talked about: a man named Henry Sanders--used to be in the police--sharp chap; had the nickname of "Hawkeye Harry"; retired, but got bored with doing nothing, and started as a private detective; had made a big success in the last few years; absolutely to be trusted: silent as the grave and sharp as a razor. Jack added that he knew the man personally, and as he didn't wish to wait for office hours, would ring Sanders up at his own house. He would call there and tell the man something of the case to save Juliet useless questions and answers. Then, he hoped, they could both come round to see her. As it turned out, however, Manners went alone to the Phayre house. He had not seen Sanders. The detective (to whom Jack had vainly tried to 'phone the night before) had not yet returned from the country where he had spent the last few days. He had luckily left word that he would be at his office by ten o'clock; and having sent a request for an immediate appointment there, Jack was ready for a talk with his cousin. It was hard to put Lyda Pavoya's case impersonally and impartially to Juliet. As he framed the story in his own words, he saw Lyda again as he had seen her last night, heard her sweet, vibrating voice with its delicious accent. The glamour of the woman took possession of him once more. He tried to be judicial, but he could be so only in manner. Telling the tale, he was impressed with the way detail after detail fitted itself into probability; and as Juliet's face showed how the door of her mind shut against Lyda, his own opened. He had left Lyda, and had become her judge. Juliet's silent antagonism made him again Lyda Pavoya's defender. "I don't believe one word!" Juliet flamed out, when he had finished. Manners found himself quite unreasonably angry: he, who had walked the streets raging against his own weakness for Pavoya! "You wanted me to get her story," he said. "Well, I've _got_ it, and all you have to say is that it's a pack of lies. I can do no more." Juliet felt stricken. "Do you mean you take it all as gospel truth yourself?" she challenged. "It seems to me to hang together perfectly." "It _would_! She's clever as--a serpent." Jack frowned. "You don't seem pleased to have your own husband turned into a hero instead of a villain." Colour flew to Juliet's pale cheeks. "I don't need Lyda Pavoya to do that for me!" "Then," said Manners, coolly, "you make this distinction. You believe the good part about Pat, and not the good part about her." Juliet broke into tears. "Oh, Jack," she reproached him. "I might have known! You've gone over absolutely to the enemy!" Jack was conscience-stricken, for in a way it was true. He tried to console the girl as he had consoled her yesterday, and in the old days when she was a child. There was no "enemy," he said, or at all events the enemy wasn't Mademoiselle Pavoya. It was essential that they should at least seem to work in harmony. Juliet must trust him. She must pull herself together, and be ready soon to see the detective. The Duchess was quieter when he had argued for a while, and patted her shoulder, and called her "darling child." She dried her tears, and promised to "be good"--but when Jack had gone to keep his appointment at Sanders' office, her heart was lead. "He's Pavoya's man now!" she said to herself. Having Lyda's permission to speak, and knowing Sanders to be trustworthy, Manners kept nothing back. He began with a brief outline of the history of the pearls, and Pat's business transaction with Mayen. This brought him to the arrival of the messenger with the packet, and its delivery in his own presence. There, for the first time, Sanders stopped him and asked questions: what had been Defasquelle's manner, what the Duke's? And Jack believed that his answers impressed the detective favourably toward the Frenchman. It proved the messenger's bona fides that he had insisted upon the opening of the box in his presence. Besides, after the theft, it appeared certain that the new seals had been made with the Duke's ring; and before that could have happened, Manners had seen Defasquelle leave the house. Sanders would, of course, wish to meet Defasquelle, but would prefer to talk with the Duchess first of all. Whether Mademoiselle Pavoya's version of her visit to the Phayre house and her acquaintance with the Duke were true, remained to be seen. Sanders had never heard of Markoff, but would take immediate steps through the aid of his "best boys" to find out all about the man--_if_ he existed! As for the Duke, the detective didn't mind admitting to Jack as a friend--not in an official capacity--that he didn't yet believe there had been foul play. He wasn't sure that, in Claremanagh's place (assuming his injured innocence) _he_ wouldn't have gone away to punish his wife. "These spoiled heiresses are the limit when they get going!" he said. "And this Duke chap's Irish. I'm Irish myself. We fellows can't sit still when even the prettiest woman forgets the Marquis of Queensberry's rules in a scrap! It gets our goat!" Jack was not sure whether Juliet would prefer an outside opinion that Pat had been kidnapped, or had left her of his own free will. But the girl's pale beauty bowled Sanders over at first sight. His prejudice against the "spoiled heiress" melted like ice in morning sunlight, and his Irish heart--as well as his trained discretion--kept back any word which he thought might wound her. The assumption (meant to be comforting) that with Markoff lay the clue to the mystery, was, however, salt on an unhealed scar for Juliet. She took it instantly for granted that Sanders agreed with Jack in believing Lyda Pavoya had told the truth. "They're going the wrong way to work!" she thought, bitterly, when the two men had gone, promising a report the moment there should be news of any sort. "The wrong way! ... If they find out where Pat is, it will be just blundering--by accident!" In thwarted wretchedness, the girl realized that it would be worse than useless to make such protests to Sanders. _He_ was the detective, not she--though he had complimented her upon her "smartness" in the matter of the ring and the magnifying-glass. He would only pity and despise her for jealousy and prejudice if she gave him the advice she burned to give. And Jack--Jack was _hopeless_! He was lost to her. She felt as miserably alone as if Jack had not promised to be her "knight," and as if he had not brought to her one of the best private detectives in the land. She longed to strike out on her own account, to be first in the field, and be able to say to these men: "See, while you were wandering all round Robin Hood's barn, _I've_ found the place where the secret was buried, and dug it up!" It was mostly about Pat that Juliet thought, and his disappearance. Upon the pearls she wasted little anxiety, though she hated to think that Pavoya should have them. She had cried out to Pat that she believed not one word of the dancer's story: and she had meant it at the time; but brooding alone over the history of Pavoya's years, and the link between her and Pat, Juliet found herself almost arbitrarily accepting certain details here and there. Yes, that must have been the way those two first met! Pat had told her that he had heard the call of romance in Russia--his great-great-grandfather's romance--and had left Oxford to spend the long vacation among those scenes. How like Pat at nineteen to create a romance of his own on the same spot! Her heart yearned to Pat with the thought that he had helped Pavoya because of _charity_, not love. In that case he had told the truth--or as much truth as his wife could expect of a man where women were concerned. But certainly, Juliet assured herself, Pavoya had loved Pat and moved heaven and earth to compromise him. That was really why she'd asked him to lend her the pearls. No doubt she'd begged for the real ones, and he'd lent her the copy. She'd kept the wretched beads, not because of some melodramatic blackmail "stunt," but because she wished to wear them as if they were real, and get herself talked about with Pat. Then, he'd married, and having sent to France for the true pearls for his wife, he couldn't leave the false ones knocking about for Pavoya to play with. He'd practically ordered the woman to return them; and in revenge, when an amazing chance came her way, Pavoya had somehow stolen the genuine rope, changing the contents of the packet! It all seemed clearer and clearer to Juliet, and she wondered that a man with such good brains as Jack's could be so easily deceived. In pride of her own superior talent as a detective, the girl would have had moments of triumphant joy had it not been for her wearing anxiety about Pat. Days passed. Pat did not return or write to Juliet or the bank. And no news of importance was obtained for her by Sanders or Jack. Markoff the detective was unable to trace by name, though he had got upon the track of a Russian who had lately arrived in New York with some good introductions. His description answered that given of Konrad Markoff by Mademoiselle Pavoya. Boris Halbin (who had figured at various New York clubs, and was now supposed to have sailed for France) was a person of inconspicuous appearance. So, too, was Markoff. Many Russians over forty are "darkish, stoutish, big faced, blunt featured, with beards turning grey!" Juliet bravely kept up the fiction with her friends that she and Pat were on the best of terms. He was away on business for the bank. He would soon return. That story about the pearls being false was too silly for words! The reason she'd stopped wearing them was because she had broken the string, and didn't want the responsibility of choosing the person to mend it till Pat came back. The girl would have given thousands of dollars for the privilege of "sporting her oak," and refusing to see the many people whose devotion she attributed to curiosity. But for the sake of the future, and her own pride's sake, she would not do that. She went out a good deal, kept all her engagements, and made new ones. Her nerves, however, revenged themselves upon her mercilessly. Once she had hardly realized that she possessed such things as nerves. Now they made themselves felt each moment of the day, and through hours of the long, restless nights. Against his will, Sanders had consented to an advertisement appearing in the "personal" column of several papers. Juliet had pleaded that no one would know for whom it was meant, and--she should die if she couldn't put it in! Consequently, curious eyes in many cities of the United States were reading every day this appeal:--"Play Boy: 'American Beauty' believes in you and wants you. Write or come back if you would not break her heart." Who could guess that the Duchess of Claremanagh's pet name for the Duke was "Play Boy," and that he had sent her "American Beauty" roses every day since they were engaged, because it was the name he had found sweetest, most appropriate for her? Yet, someone must have guessed: because in the _Inner Circle_ (a week after the sensational pearl "Whisper") the secret was given away. No names were mentioned: yet none who knew the Claremanaghs could have avoided reading between the lines. It was while Juliet sat with the paper in her hands, shamed, bewildered, almost stunned, that a sealed envelope was brought on a tray to her boudoir. Mechanically she opened it. Within was a visiting card, with something written upon it in pencil. For an instant the girl's bruised brain could not find the Comtesse de Saintville in the index of her memory. Then, suddenly, she saw the woman, playing opposite her at some bridge table. Yes, of course, Lyda Pavoya's friend. "Forgive my calling uninvited. I hope you can see me. I have something to say which may be important to you," the woman, whom Juliet vaguely disliked, had scribbled in French under her name. Juliet thought for a minute, with the card in her hand. It seemed "pushing" of this person to come, and probably if she--Juliet--consented to see her, she would regret the weakness. Still, the one really important thing on earth was news of Pat. Madame de Saintville _might_ know something! She might have quarrelled with Pavoya, and be ready to "give her away." "Bring the lady up here," the Duchess instructed Huji. Presently the visitor was shown in; and Juliet, rising to receive her, towered like a tall young goddess over a small, smart creature, painted to look as pretty as she thought she ought to be. "She'll begin to speak of Pavoya," Juliet thought. But she was mistaken. "I have come on a very queer errand," were the Countess's first words, spoken with much throaty rolling of "rs". "Perhaps you will be angry. I made up my mind only to-day that it was my duty to call." Her eyes darted to the _Inner Circle_ which Juliet had just thrown aside, and quickly returned to a flower with which she herself was playing. But Juliet read that side-glance to mean--"After reading that paper to-day, I decided." "When people tell one it's a duty to say or do something in particular, it's generally disagreeable," Juliet said, drily. "Ah, this is an exception! It is not disagreeable at all--I hope. It is only--unusual," replied the Comtesse de Saintville. "But I will not keep you in suspense. Have you ever heard of a palmist and fortune teller named Madame Veno?" "Possibly. I'm not sure," answered Juliet, surprised. "She is not--or rather she has not been--fashionable, I think," explained the other. "I have not lived long enough in New York to know these things. I happened to hear of her through a friend of mine (yours also, is it not?)--Mrs. Billee Lowndes. It was there I met you once. Mrs. Lowndes knew I was interested in the psychic things: crystal gazing, palmistry. She spoke of Madame Veno, who is supposed to be only a manicurist. Her real profession is a secret. It has to be! It seems that 'Madame Veno' is a name several women have used, like--one would say, a '_trade_ name,' because they have hired the same rooms, or offices, and 'Madame Veno, Manicurist' is on a doorplate. That is odd, is it not? But the first Madame Veno died--or something. The present one is--ah, Duchess, she is _merveilleuse_. She has told me things about myself--but things only _le bon Dieu ou le diable_ had in their knowledge! Naturally, I have been to her more than once. Last time she looked through her crystal. I do not know if that is forbidden by your law? _En tout cas_, she does it. The picture she saw must have been strange. It seemed to frighten her. When I asked some questions, she said the vision was not for me. It was for another. Why it came, she could not tell unless that person was in my thoughts. Then, Duchess, she spoke your name. _The picture was for you_." "Really!" exclaimed Juliet. She pretended to be amused; but the woman's tone was meant to impress, and did impress, the girl in spite of herself. "What did the picture represent?" "Madame Veno did not mention, except that it concerned the Duke. She felt it would be wrong to speak if not to you alone. She wished me to give you a message: to say, if you would come to her place, she would look again in the crystal, and tell you what she saw. I did not like to call on you. I am not long enough of your acquaintance. But to-day----" "Don't be afraid to speak out what's in your thoughts," Juliet said with a painful smile. "You have read the _Inner Circle_. You think the disgusting 'Whisperer' is right! That the advertisement which people have been talking about is _mine_. Of course that's all nonsense! Please tell everybody you meet, who's interested in my affairs! But probably you meant to be kind. Anyhow, I think fortune tellers are great fun! I shall go to this one--some day soon: when I have time. You'll give me the address?" "_Par coincidence_, Madame Veno is in the same building with that _journal des blagues_," replied the Countess. "It goes without saying that they have no connection, one with the other. It is a mere accident. Mrs. Lowndes has told me that the first woman of that trade name, 'Madame Veno,' was really a manicurist: so it was necessary to have an office, and not be in a private house in some quiet street." "I see," said Juliet. "I must thank you for coming. As Madame knows my name, she must know a good deal about me, so her 'pictures' won't be as exciting as if I went to her a stranger. But they may be amusing." Her tone, though perfectly courteous, was meant to end the interview. Madame de Saintville rose. Juliet did the same, and rang. The moment she was alone, she ran to her bedroom and commanded Simone, who was there, to give her a hat and coat. She had said she would go "some day" to Madame Veno. But she was going now--at once--at once! CHAPTER XVI THE GREY ROOM Pat Claremanagh floated in a grey sea, under a grey sky. It seemed to him that the grey sea and sky were part of some existence after death. He vaguely remembered that he had died. If it were not for the constant, heavy pain in his head, he thought that he could recall the whole incident. Yes, that was the word--"incident". It hardly mattered now, and wasn't worth while racking his brain over. That tin hat of his was too tight--much too tight. But he was too weak to lift his hands and take it off. Strange, though, that he should be wearing it when he was dead! He must have been killed in the war. Yet, how long ago the war seemed! He had thought that a great many things had happened to him after the war. No doubt they were part of this dream--this long, floating dream--after death. But they were not grey like the leaden sea and the sky that hung so low over his head. They were beautiful, colourful things. Just straining to remember brought rainbow flashes across his brain. Out of these lights a girl's face looked at him. "Juliet!" he heard himself mutter, in a thick, tongue-tied voice. Instantly another face appeared, and blotted out that of the girl. This one was solid and very real. It bent over him in the greyness: a man's face, somehow familiar, as if he had known it long ago--long ago disliked it: a fleshy bulk surrounded with hair. He loathed it for itself, and hated it for shutting out the vision of Juliet, so he closed his eyes. For a moment consciousness died down like a fading flame. Only a vast, vague greyness was left, and the tight pain of the tin hat. But when a few moments or a few years had passed, a voice spoke. It beat upon his dulled intelligence like the strokes of a clock in the dark, telling an hour. Pat was suddenly keyed up to listening, because it was a woman's voice, and far down within himself he was aware that a woman's voice--a certain woman's voice--was what he yearned to hear. Strange! He was wide awake, and knowledge came to him that he was not dead, after all, though he might be close to death. But he did not open his eyes, because he could not bear to see the living mass of flesh and hair again. He lay quite still. And he listened. "You are always hanging over him like that whenever I turn my back!" said the woman. "Why not? I do no harm," answered a man's voice, with a rather soft, monotonous foreign accent. Pat knew that the voice belonged to the face. It also had association with long past things which were somehow important. A scene began forming in his tired mind, like bits of an old picture being matched together. A room with tables, and men drinking and smoking; a cleared space; a kind of stage; a girl dancing--slim, lovely, light as a fawn; long red hair waving back and forth--Lyda!--that was her name. Lyda--something. He was at one of the tables, very young, only a boy. And the hairy man sat with him, talking, praising the girl. Markoff! He stopped, remembering, and listened again. "You'd do harm if you dared to," the woman said. "You'd like to kill him." "I tink it will be better for us all if he die," said the man. "Much better! Much safer. But no violence. Let him go--fade away. I tought it would soon be finished wiz him. Zen he open his eyes and look at me. You hear him speak--some word." "Yes, I heard him," the woman answered. "It's the first time he's made a sound--_since_, except a sort of groaning. I'm jolly glad. _We_ don't want him to drop off the hooks. Not _much_!" "You are ver' foolish, Madam. He can give your 'usband and ze ozzers away. It is only me who 'ave nozzing to fear. He do not see me zere. Yet I am witness agains' any ones who treat me wrong." "Pooh!" said the woman. "You're always harping on your power to hurt us. It's nil. The hunt's out for you, Mr. Markoff or Halbin, or whatever you like to be. If we're keeping you for our own sakes because you haven't paid up, anyhow it's your game to lie low. You daren't show your nose outside this door. But for heaven's sake, let's stop arguing. I'm for nothing in that part of the business." "You 'ave all got some plan you try to work behin' my back," growled the man. "I tell you enough times, ze money will come!" "When it comes, you'll get the pearls: if it comes in time. That's the rub!" The word "pearls" was like a key. It unlocked the door of Pat's memory, and impressions flowed in. But they were confused, without beginning or end; and he lay motionless, hoping for more clues. He was conscious that the woman leaned over him. She brought with her a heavy oriental perfume, and he felt a waft of warm breath on his face. "Are you awake?" she asked, speaking slowly. "Do you know what happened to hurt you--eh?" Pat did not show by the quiver of an eyelid that he had heard. "Wen 'e come back to himself, bineby, 'e will remember everything per'aps, an' zen w'ere will you all be?" the man wanted to know. "He never will remember, unless there's someone to give him the tip. People _don't_ remember with concussion," the woman said. So that was what he had--_concussion_ of the brain! Pat wondered how he had got it. One of the impressions filtering back was of hitting a man, and hearing him squeal. What had followed was a blank, like everything since. Maybe some other man had hit him--from behind. The woman moved away, and cautiously Pat opened his eyes. The greyness was still there, but it was more definite, more commonplace, as if belonging to earth and things of everyday life. He thought that he must be lying on his back in a bed, looking straight up at a low grey ceiling. There were grey walls, too, but he could not turn his head to see more, as his neck was stiff and painful. The light was so dim that he imagined it must be drawing toward dusk in a room with small windows partly covered with curtains. More talking went on at a distance, between the man and woman. Sometimes it sounded so far off that Pat wondered if there was an adjoining room with an open door. Presently, when all had been silent for so long that he had almost dozed off, there was a sudden explosion of voices. The listener fancied that there were two new ones, both voices of men, and one he recognized, though irritatingly he could not attach the right name label. He kept his eyes closed, because he was sure that the latecomers would look at him, and his caution was rewarded. Someone turned on a light. The two new voices mumbled in sick-bed whispers across his pillow. He caught a word here and there: again "the pearls," "Markoff," and "the Duchess." The last gave him an odd thrill. _Juliet_! She had been angry. How was she feeling now? Was she seeking for him? Or did she give him credit for running off with the pearls--or Lyda? or--both together? The thought that this might be so--probably was so--made him long to spring up and fight his way to his wife, somehow. And perhaps he could not have resisted attempting to move had not a sudden noise snapped the thread of his thought. A quarrel had broken out over something between the men. All three voices rose sharply. The woman intervened, and was rebuked. Then came a squall of rage, instantly stifled. The woman screamed, and drew in her breath with a gasp. All was still again. "Hark!" whispered someone. The light went out. In place of the greyness, blackness fell. Pat could hear the pounding of his own heart, and another sound almost hidden by the noise in his breast. He thought that stairs were squeaking under a stealthy foot. CHAPTER XVII THE CRYSTAL "Have you an appointment, Madam?" asked the elderly woman who opened the door of Madame Veno's flat for Juliet. She was a person of almost oppressively respectable appearance, with grey hair parted in the middle, gold-rimmed _pince nez_ resting on a thin nose, and a neat body clad in black silk. If Madame Veno needed a chaperon, her door opener was ideal! Juliet had run upstairs so fast that she was breathing hard. Passing the office of the _Inner Circle_ had disgusted her. She felt contaminated, almost ill; but the sight of this woman was like a dash of cool water on a hot forehead. "I have no appointment," she answered. "But--I came because of a message. I'm the Duchess of Claremanagh." "Please to walk in, Madam," said the woman, without any evidence of being impressed. "I will give you a private room to wait in." They stood in a hall, white-panelled, carpeted with red. The spruce black silk figure threw open a door, and Juliet entered a tiny room, hardly more than a closet. The only furnishing consisted of a luxurious easy chair, a table on which were magazines and a box of cigarettes, and on the wall a mirror. This mirror was opposite the chair; and behind the chair was a second door. Any one opening that door would see a reflected image of the sitter in the chair. As Juliet sank into chintz-covered depths the murmur of voices reached her. She thought, in fact, that she heard sounds from two rooms, one on each side of the tiny cubicle in which she had been put to wait. "This little hole is for special visitors," she told herself. "Probably that woman was ordered to bring me here if I came. Madame Veno's room must be on the right of this, and it's her voice I hear on that side, talking to a client. On the left, I suppose, it's the ordinary waiting room, full of people--jabbering to each other about Madame Veno and the wonderful things they've heard about her from their friends! Or else it's a room where they keep up the practice by manicuring clients' nails. But I'm sure she means to sneak me in ahead of them." Juliet was right. In less than ten minutes there was the click of a latch, and the door opposite the mirror opened. In the long glass her eyes met the smiling ones of a pale, dark woman with a clever, somewhat common face. There was nothing mystic about her appearance, but on the other hand there was nothing meretricious, no attempt at Eastern allurements. Juliet had already guessed from the ordinary furnishing of the flat that Madame Veno's _metier_ was clean, straightforward frankness, as opposed to the cult of dim rooms, purple curtains, and incense. Now this impression was confirmed. The one false note was a heavy perfume such as some women adore and are unable to resist. "I'm glad to see you, Duchess," said the woman. "I hoped you would call, and I'm going to slip you in before the others who are waiting their turn. They won't know, so no harm's done! Will you come into my room?" She spoke cheerfully, briskly, rather more like an Englishwoman than an American, and Juliet wondered if she were an English Jewess. The door led into an alcove of a fair-sized room decorated in green. It was as little as possible like the mysterious sanctum of an ordinary "fortune teller" or crystal gazer. Juliet had seen two or three of these in several countries. They had always been Egyptian, or at least reminiscent of Leon Bakst. This might have been any woman's boudoir: but when Madame Veno had drawn the thin green curtains, the place seemed to fill with an emerald dusk, like the dusk of dreams, or the green dimness under sea. "I suppose you think I'm not very 'psychic'," the mistress of the room remarked, placing a chair for her visitor at a table covered with a square of green velvet. "People _do_ think that! Then, when they've consulted me, they're surprised sometimes. They get better results than from those who go in for what I call 'scenery'. You know what I mean?" "Yes," said Juliet, "I suppose I do know." "All I want to put me in the right frame of mind is _green_," explained Madame Veno, "this kind of green twilight." She switched away the velvet covering from the table. Underneath was a cushion, and a crystal which reflected the prevailing colour. Then she sat down opposite the Duchess. "The Countess told you what happened when I was looking into the crystal for her?" she asked. "Madame de Saintville said that you saw something which concerned me. But how did you _know_ it concerned me?" "Your face came into the crystal. I'd seen your photograph, and recognized you. Besides, I felt--I _felt_ that you were in great trouble." "What else did you see in the crystal?" "Let me look again, now you are here, and see if the same thing comes." As she spoke, Madame Veno bent forward and gazed closely into the transparent ball on a black base. Some moments passed in dead silence. Juliet watched the woman's features, which became fixed and masklike. Suddenly Madame Veno started slightly and began to speak. "I see--a handsome young man--very charming. It is your husband, Duchess. He is lying ill in a poor room. It seems to be a kind of cellar. He tosses about. He is delirious. He calls for you. I know that, because at the same time I see the picture I hear his voice. The name is 'Juliet!' I think he has had an accident. But I can't see what it was, I only know that he has hurt his head. I feel the pain myself. And I feel what he is thinking about: you--and something else. Ah, a rope of pearls! Now I get a whisper! It comes to me from his thoughts. He went in search of something that was lost--a thing of great value. Yes, the pearls!" "Did he get them?" Juliet asked, mechanically. She had little if any faith in the woman, but a faint thrill ran through her. She could not help being slightly impressed by the seeress's change of manner, and the hypnotized look in her eyes. "He got them--and then they were taken away. But they are in the house where he is. It is not a good house. It is a house of thieves. Ah, I _must_ find out where it is, or I can do you no good. Or else--if I cannot find the house I must will the man who has got the pearls to communicate with me. I see him plainly." "Why shouldn't he communicate with _me_?" asked Juliet. "Will power doesn't act like that," exclaimed Madame Veno. "I could create a cord between another intelligence and my own, not between two outside intelligences. Ah, the picture has faded from the crystal! But it will come again. And for the moment we've seen enough. I have the man's face clearly before my eyes. I will concentrate upon him as I have never concentrated before! I feel sure of the power to draw him to me." "How?" Juliet enquired. "I can't tell yet. He may be impelled to consult me about his future, to have his 'luck' foretold. That's the line I will work on, in exerting influence. I shall remember his face from the crystal. I can't make a mistake! Once I get him here I shan't hesitate to use hypnotism. If that succeeds, I'll 'phone you to come round at once." "With a detective," said Juliet. Madame Veno's face changed, flushing slightly over its sallowness. "Oh, no, Duchess!" she exclaimed, emphatically. "_That_ wouldn't do at all. Women in my profession can't encourage detectives to come spying into their methods. So far I've never had any trouble. But I've had to be very careful. Detectives are the Enemy! I shall be very sorry indeed to be disobliging, but I'm afraid I must let this business drop unless you give me your word not to bring a detective into it. Indeed, I think I must ask you not to bring in any third party. If you promise this, I don't think I'm conceited in saying I can positively make you an important promise in return. By my will power I will do for you what no detective on this earth could do. I'll draw into your circle the man who has got your husband lying helpless in his house--and who has got your pearls. Do you believe I am able to do this, or do you not?" "I--can't say I quite believe," Juliet confessed. She might have been more definite, yet not have gone beyond the truth. She might have said, "What I think is, that you're a trickster. If there's anything in this at all beyond mere nonsense, you know where my husband is, and you're playing a deep game for money." But something warned the girl not to say this. She was _afraid_ to say it--afraid to make the seeress afraid! If Pat had been kidnapped, and this woman were a catspaw of those who wanted a ransom, Juliet was willing to pay. If only Pat were _true_--if only he hadn't left her of his own free will for love of Lyda, she would give every penny she had in the world to get him back, and not grudge it! She reflected hastily that, if Madame Veno took her for a fool, it would be better to let it go at that rather than risk losing a chance--possibly the only chance--of saving Pat. As for telling Jack and Sanders secretly, this course must be decided later. There was surely no more harm in deceiving such a woman than in tricking a dangerous animal, so far as moral principles were concerned. The one question was, could Madame Veno safely be deceived, or would she find a way of _forcing_ a promise to be kept? That question was answered at once. "I don't blame you," said Madame, with a good-natured smile. "These great forces of Nature are beyond belief to those who haven't tested them. But I know by experience what I can do. I know also what I can't do. I can do nothing if the people whose interests I serve work against me consciously or unconsciously. Now, I read your mind as I read the crystal. I see you're thinking whether or not to make a mental reservation about that promise! Well, I don't want to control you, Duchess, though I _could_ do so. But if you bring any one into this, the whole effort will be vain. I might get the man we want here. I might hypnotize him to the point of speaking out. I might 'phone you. And yet, if you weren't alone, or if someone were spying outside, my power over him would break like--that!" she snapped her fingers together, her black eyes holding Juliet's. "Now," she went on when she'd got her effect, "I'm going to give you a proof of good faith. My fee for a consultation--just an ordinary one, not a special like this--is twenty-five dollars. No, don't take out your purse, Duchess! I won't accept a cent unless I bring off the stunt. The rest--is up to you." "Very well," said Juliet on a sudden resolution. "Let it be so. I'll promise what you ask, and--I'll keep my promise. If you send for me, I'll come alone. And I'll tell nobody. But--I'm not a child. I must protect myself in some way. When I start for your place next time, I shall leave a letter for my cousin, Captain Manners, to be delivered by hand if I'm not back in two hours after leaving home. In the letter I shall tell him everything. But it won't be sent if all goes right. So if you play fair you've nothing to dread." "Unless the letter should be sent to your cousin by mistake." "My maid is a very intelligent woman," said Juliet. "She doesn't make mistakes." "Oh, you'll leave the letter with your maid!" echoed Madame Veno. "Yes. Do you agree to the arrangement?" "I do," returned Madame. Juliet rose to go. She was feeling intensely excited, if not really hopeful. Even if there were a plot, it seemed as if this might be the best way of setting to work, and she saw herself beating Sanders as a detective. So far he had made only trifling discoveries: fingerprints on the safe which told nothing, since they were Pat's and Lyda Pavoya's; there were no clues which might solve the mystery of Pat's disappearance, or lead to finding the lost pearls. As for Jack, he was _Lyda's_ man now! He believed the story which explained the fingerprints. She, Juliet, might soon show these two men that alone she had accomplished more than either in solving the double mystery. CHAPTER XVIII THE BARGAIN Two days passed; and small as was Juliet's faith in Madame Veno, she did not stir from the house lest the woman should telephone in her absence. The strain of constant suspense was like a screw tightening her nerves to breaking point. Her irritation grew against Jack, who persisted in warning her that she would repent her suspicions of Lyda Pavoya. To his mind apparently the dancer's story accounted for everything. Lyda had volunteered a statement that she had touched the safe after Claremanagh opened it, and she had offered to give Sanders her own fingerprints in order that they might be identified with those taken on the door of the safe, the only ones found there with the exception of the Duke's. Even this fact--that there should be no other marks visible--didn't prejudice Jack against the Siren. According to him--and (_he_ said) to Sanders--the _real_ thief or thieves had used rubber gloves. As for Sanders, he tried to calm the Duchess's impatience by assuring her that everything possible was being done. He even had a theory. But, of what comfort was that to her, as he refused to tell her what it was until--or if--he could obtain positive proof? It hardly interested Juliet that he should have cabled Monsieur Mayen and learned in reply that there was no scratch on the duplicate ring given Mayen by Pat. She hadn't for a moment supposed there would be! Of course it merely made matters worse that Mayen should be left-handed, and that a specimen seal he sent by cabled request should have an entirely different appearance from those on the covering of the packet. Also, it seemed stupid rather than intelligent that Defasquelle should be watched. The detective admitted that the Frenchman seemed above suspicion. He had begged the Duke to open the packet in his presence, which alone proved his innocence, as Sanders couldn't help seeing. Besides, the French police had replied to a wired demand for Defasquelle's _dossier_, by saying that he was a person of unblemished character. He appeared to deserve the trust reposed in him by Monsieur Mayen; had saved up a little money and was engaged to a pretty girl with a good _dot_, the daughter of a hotel keeper in Marseilles. Not only that, Defasquelle was remaining in New York for the purpose of giving what aid he could. Altogether, Juliet considered that Sanders' activities were disappointing, and Jack's no better. She refused to meet Lyda and talk with her in person as Jack advised her to do, and between her sense of being deserted and her desperate anxiety for the truth about Pat, she found more and more that her thoughts clung to the broken reed of hope held out by Madame Veno. At last, when she was making up her mind to see the woman again without waiting longer, the message came. Juliet was in the act of answering a letter from Nancy Van Esten, begging her to be at the dress rehearsal for the "great show" which was to benefit the Armenians. There was an undertone of friendly insistence which Juliet understood very well. Nancy knew what people were saying about Pat and Pavoya and the pearls. If she--Juliet--refused to attend this rehearsal to which all her most intimate "pals" were going, everyone would draw certain conclusions. She hated to go, but had written to say that she'd "drop in about five o'clock"--the rehearsal had to be in the afternoon, as the roof garden theatre was wanted in the evening for the last night of a revue--when the telephone bell rang almost in her ear. She picked up the receiver from the writing table, and her heart leaped at the sound of Madame Veno's voice. "Is that you yourself, Duchess? Yes? Well, _he's here_! Can you come around at once?" "Yes," said Juliet, and putting down the receiver had begun to get ready, when she remembered the letter which ought to be left for Jack. There was no time, after all, to write details. She ought to have had the note ready for emergencies, but it hadn't occurred to her till now. Hurriedly she jotted down the address of Madame Veno and a request to Jack to send there. Then, when she had scrawled "Captain Manners, Tarascon Hotel," and sealed the envelope, the Duchess rang for her maid. "I'm going out, Simone," she said. "It's now four-thirty. If I'm not back by six-thirty it will mean that--that I must miss an appointment with Captain Manners; so at that time take this to his hotel yourself. He tells me that he's always at home between six-thirty and seven-thirty, so he's sure to be there. But if not, you can ring up Mr. Sanders at his private address, which I'll jot down for you, and ask him to call for Captain Manners' letter which concerns his business as well. I expect to come in much sooner, however--in which case you will simply hand this envelope back to me. You quite understand?" "I quite understand, _Madame la Duchesse_," echoed Simone, pinning on her mistress's hat, and handing her a pair of gloves. So well did she understand that, the moment Juliet was out of the house (the car having been ordered), she examined the back of the said envelope. In her hurry Juliet had not sealed it firmly. The flap was still wet, and came loose with almost ridiculous ease. Simone had been somewhat surprised by the Duchess's instructions (her reason for wishing to acquaint herself with the contents of the letter) but she was still more surprised by the letter itself. The Duchess was going to Madame Veno's, evidently to keep an engagement already made, and it would seem that she considered herself in some danger. Could Madame Veno mean to give away Mademoiselle Amaranthe's connection with the _Inner Circle_? Simone told herself that this was an absurd and far-fetched suspicion, because it was not probable that Madame Veno knew anything about her activities. Besides, why should the woman--even if she knew them--betray valuable secrets of the paper and its best correspondents? It was but an idea born of an uncomfortable conscience--another name for fear. Juliet was admitted to Madame Veno's flat by the respectable creature in black silk who had impressed her so favourably two days before. Again she was taken into the cubicle of a private waiting-room, and there Madame came at once, from her own room. "He's still here!" she announced, having closed the door. "Everything is wonderful--but different from what I expected." "Who is the man?" Juliet abruptly asked. "I don't know. I haven't been able yet to make him tell me that. He seemed so obstinate that I thought I'd better extract more important details first, in case in his struggles not to obey I should lose mind-control of him--which does happen now and then in such experiments." "You mean to tell me that this man--whoever he is--actually came to you from heaven knows where because you willed him to come, and that you hypnotized him to find out about my husband?" "I mean just that," answered Madame Veno, triumphantly. "I've done this sort of thing before. It's the secret of my success over other psychics. I've found out that your husband was kidnapped, just as I thought. As for the pearls, so far as I can understand, he had them on him. Anyhow, they're in these people's possession. But you'd better come into my room and talk to the man." "Is he still hypnotized?" Juliet wanted to know, irritated by her feeling that she was being deceived, yet eager and curious. "No, not now. I've released him from the influence. He was going pale about the lips, which shows a weak heart, and I was scared. I can't take big risks of that sort! But when I explained what I'd got out of him, and when I'd even made him put on paper a short statement of his own handwriting, he saw that he might as well be frank----" "If the statement was signed, you must have got his name. And if not, what use is it?" "He _thinks_ he's signed it, for I covered up the place where the name should be as if accidentally, and snatched the paper away as though I was afraid he'd grab it from me. It was when I was willing him so hard to sign that he began to look queer. So I had to give it up." "I see," said Juliet. "Well, take me into the next room, and let me try what _I_ can get out of him!" "You can get everything out of him, Duchess, and you can get back your husband and your pearls. That is, if you're willing to pay the price this man asks. Even in his sleep he was firm about that, and he hasn't told where the Duke is." Juliet did not believe that the man knew where the Duke was. It was so much more likely that the whole business was a trick to extract money and--give nothing of value in return! Still, she was more eager to see the occupant of Madame Veno's room than she had ever been to see any one--except Pat, in the blessed old days. The green curtains were drawn, and though twilight was falling out of doors the only lamp was a small green-shaded one on the table of the crystal. The man who stood facing the two women as they entered was in shadow, all except his hands, which showed white and large, crossed on folded arms. It was an instant before Juliet realized that something more than shadow obscured the features. Then her piercing eyes made out that a layer of black crape was drawn across them as far up as the forehead, as far down as the mouth. Beneath this mask a beard protruded like a fringe, but Juliet told herself it might be false. "Oh, you have masked yourself!" exclaimed Madame Veno. "He wasn't masked when I left him, Duchess!" Juliet made no comment, though if the man and woman were in collusion it was probable that Madame lied. "There's no objection to my being masked, I suppose?" said the man. "I have a right to protect myself." "Does he speak rather like an Englishman, or do I imagine it?" Juliet wondered. "_I_ don't object," she said aloud. "I don't care who you are if you can give me news of my husband, and if--if you can bring him back to me." "I can give you news now," the man replied. "And you can have him back to-morrow night if you choose." "What are your conditions?" Juliet asked. "One million dollars for the Duke and the pearls." "Oh!" said the Duchess. "And what for the Duke without the pearls?" "We don't treat separately." "Indeed! And what if I refuse to treat at all?" "In that case, you'll never see your husband again on this side the grave." "You mean you'll murder him if I don't pay ransom!" "Not at all. This is the Duke's own affair. He's in it with us. That is"--the man spoke quickly, when anger flamed on Juliet's face and he must have feared that she would cease bargaining for a man capable of "holding up" his wife--"that is, he's in it to this extent: he's taken an oath not to give us away. He was hurt in an accident--an affair neither he nor you would like to have come out--and I and a friend of mine saved his life. When we'd done that, as we're poor men we didn't see why we shouldn't get something for ourselves. We're amateurs at these things, my mate and I, and we were at odds how to approach you, Madam, without risking trouble. Then I had a 'hunch' to consult this lady. Dreamed about her, felt I _must_ come!" Madame Veno gave Juliet a look. "Now I find she was mesmerizing me or something of the sort. But she's given me good advice, and she's brought you and me together, so maybe all's well that ends well." "Where's my husband?" asked Juliet. "Where I live. And you could have me followed all around New York without finding out where that is. I'm up to every dodge of that kind, I can tell you! But what my friend and I--the Duke standing by us because of what we've done for him--what we propose, is this: you get hold of a million dollars without telling any one what the money's for. We'll know if you play us false. We have our spies. It _must_ be all in notes. Then, if this lady--Madame Veno--is willing to see the thing through, you'll bring to her flat the whole sum, only with the _notes cut in two_. That plan is to prove my good faith. An hour after the Duke shall arrive--with the pearls, in an auto--at your own house. And the remaining halves of the notes shall be handed to the chauffeur by you in person before your husband leaves the car. Does that scheme look good to you?" Juliet paused for an instant, but not to consider the money question, for she would have given not one million but all the millions she possessed to have Pat with her, alive and safe. Nor did she now care a straw whether or not these two creatures were in a plot together. She hesitated only because it seemed too good to be true that Pat should be given back to her so easily. She had suffered so much, had realized so bitterly her need of him--guilty or innocent--that she was actually dazzled by the man's offer. And when she had calmed herself by drawing a deep breath or two, she answered: "Yes, it _seems_ good to me!" "Then it is good, all right!" "How soon--can you do this?" "How soon can you get hold of the money?" "To-morrow. Of course it's too late to-day." "To-morrow then. Come here at this same time. Can you manage that?" "I will manage it," Juliet said. She remembered that she had written to Nancy van Esten, meaning to attend the rehearsal. The letter wasn't posted yet, but she would send it, and go to the theatre for a few minutes. From there, she would come here to Madame Veno's. No one could think then that she had avoided meeting Lyda Pavoya, but if she had a pressing engagement to keep, it wouldn't be _her_ fault if there were no time for introductions! Besides, Jack Manners and Sanders were supposed to be coming to-morrow afternoon, to discuss some new detail in the Duke's study--what, Juliet didn't know. The rehearsal would give her an excuse for absence while they were there, and as it was to meet Lyda, Jack would be pleased to have her go. "Remember, Madam, if you don't keep this business strictly to yourself, the Duke won't materialize," the man in the mask went on. "I assure you--not on my honour, because that's a minus quantity to you, but on your husband's--you can take my word for this. And furthermore, if you attempt to trick us you'll never have a chance again." "If there were as little chance of your tricking me, as of my tricking you," Juliet exclaimed, "I should be happy." "_Be_ happy then!" retorted the man. "The thing's settled. I'm off. And I'll tell the Duke that you send him a good message." He was out of the room before Juliet had realized that he meant to suit his action to his word! With a wild impulse she would have sprung after him to ask other questions, but the door slammed in her face. She was too late. And besides, what would have been gained by keeping the man a moment more? "I don't think there's anything further to do or say. But let him go quietly," Madame Veno advised. Juliet turned upon her. "I believe you're in this!" she cried. The elder woman smiled indulgently, as at a petulant child. "My dear, I'm _not_!" she said. "But I can't prove that, if you don't want to take my word." "Oh, well, it doesn't matter!" Juliet sighed. "What do I owe you for--your services?" "What you think they're worth. Pay me to-morrow," Madame replied. To-morrow! It seemed that Juliet could not live till then! CHAPTER XIX OLD NICK "I wish to heaven the scent of Pat's tobacco weren't so d--d strong on that handkerchief in the packet. It's the blackest bit of evidence against him!" Manners was saying to the detective, in Claremanagh's study, when a tap came at the door. The two locked themselves in for their occasional seances in this room, and Jack himself answered the knock. He was about to scold Togo for disturbing him (a thing strictly forbidden to all except the Duchess) when the sight of Lyda's handwriting pencilled on an envelope caused him to bite back the words. "Who brought this?" he asked. "A boy, sir," replied the Japanese. "He is from some theatre. He said he went first to the Tarascon Hotel, but they told him you'd left word to have you called up here for anything important, so he came round." "Is he waiting for an answer?" "No, sir. He was in a hurry to get back. He said there was no answer." Jack retired into the study with the letter and carefully, gently opened the envelope. Even though he was eager to know what Lyda had to say, he couldn't deal roughly with anything she had touched. This was not the only letter he had had from her, but it made his heart beat as if it were the first. "My dear friend," she wrote with pencil, evidently in haste, "I have something very important to tell you. I cannot put it well in a letter. But it has to do with the Duchess, your cousin. She may be running into some danger. I should like to save her from that if I could! Come to the theatre and see me for a few minutes. I shall be free at six precisely, after rehearsing my new dance of the 'Swan and the Cygnet' with Mrs. Van Esten's little girl. Then I shall have a few minutes for you. Meanwhile, however, if you have time after getting this, try to make your cousin's maid tell if she knows where her mistress has gone. Yours ever--Lyda P." This was all. But to Jack Manners it was sweet as the perfume of an Eastern garden by moonlight--her perfume! It was all he could do to wrench his mind from entranced thoughts of Lyda, to concentrate them upon Juliet. Poor Juliet! He understood now why he hadn't suffered at seeing her after her marriage, or cared a single rap! It was because he'd never been in love with her really, except as a dear, rather trying cousin, and because what he'd called "love" had worn off even before that, like thinly spread gilt on gingerbread! He had not known what love was till the night when Lyda Pavoya's eyes said to him with their first blinding look, "You are _the_ man; I am _the_ woman." He believed in her utterly now, and if he had not, he would have wished to kill himself. To know her, a good and glorious woman, made the splendour of life. "Why, Juliet has gone to the dress rehearsal of the roof-garden show," he remembered. That was the word she had left with Togo to give him and Sanders on opening the door for them. But--Lyda was at the rehearsal! And she hadn't seen Juliet. Before sending such a message to him she would have made certain that the Duchess hadn't arrived! He would have Simone down at once! But Simone--the report came--was not in the house. She had gone out with Admiral Beatty, the Duchess's bull-dog. Neither Togo nor Huji could say when she was likely to return. But Togo made a suggestion. Nickson, the Duke's English valet, might know something of her movements. "Nickson!" echoed Jack, surprised. "This is a new development, isn't it, Nick knowing anything about Simone? I had an idea there was no love lost there." Togo ventured, on this encouragement, to smile dryly. At heart he had as little affection for Mademoiselle as Old Nick had. He would have liked to do her an ill turn in payment of many snubs, if it could be managed safely. "There is not much love, Captain," he said. "Perhaps that is why Mr. Nickson watches Mademoiselle when she takes the dog for a walk." "Is he afraid she'll do Beatty harm?" asked Jack. "I do not know, Captain. Mr. Nickson has not much talk. But perhaps he would answer some questions." "Is he in the house?" "Yes, Captain. I noticed he left soon after Mademoiselle, soon enough to see where she went--as he often does these days now His Grace is gone, and Mr. Nickson has not so much to keep him busy. But he is back." "Ask him to come here," said Manners. He spoke gravely, and as the respectful Togo retired, threw Sanders a puzzled look. "Is there anything in this?" he asked. "That's what I've been wondering myself," vouchsafed the detective. "You knew Old Nick was dogging Simone's footsteps?" "Yes, but I didn't know why. I've been trying to find out." "How?" "By having the said footsteps dogged on my own account." "You've had Simone shadowed?" "Certainly. But that doesn't necessarily imply suspicion. I'd be a poor sort of chap at my job if I didn't have every servant in the house shadowed." "Great Scott! And without a word to me or my cousin!" "I can't bother you two with every detail. Besides, she or you might have objected, and that would have made things awkward all around." "H'm! I see. Well, where does Simone go?" "She goes, quite naturally, to a French café where she can drink her native coffee and chat with compatriots in her native tongue." "Nothing much in that, then, it would seem." "No. Nothing much. Or--so it 'would seem', as you say." "All the same you're putting two and two together?" "That would be a mistake, from my point of view. The great thing is, to see whether two and two put themselves together." "Shall I come in, sir?" asked the man known to the household as "Old Nick," when his tap on the door left ajar for him had not been answered. "Yes, come in," said Jack. "Old Nick" was in reality not old. He might have been anywhere between thirty and forty, and was the typical British soldier turned valet. There was, however, a glint in his eye at times when fixed on a person detested, which made his nickname not inappropriate. "Togo thinks you may know when Simone is likely to return," Manners explained. "She generally does about this time, sir. I'm expecting her any minute." "Is it her movements or Beatty's that interest you?" Nickson swallowed discreetly. "May I speak out, sir?" "That's what we want you to do." "Well, sir, I was with 'is Grice one wye or another all through the war, and there's nobody to me like 'im--never was nor never will be. So there it _is_! And when 'e just vanished as you might say without so much as tippin' the wink to me, I was dead sure 'e 'adn't gone of 'is own accord. So I sets my wits to work the best I could, and I listens to talk and I reads all that blinkin' newspaper rot. Thinks I, looks as if them beastly pearls has somethin' to say in the business. So I asks meself: '_Oo's_ walked off with 'em, if any one, and is 'is Grice doin' a flit in the 'ope of trackin' the bloke down? If them pearls was ever _in_ this 'ouse, they must 'ave gone out again. _'Oo_ could' a' done the trick?' Well, I never trusted Mam'selle the wye 'er Grice did. She 'ad the run o' the plice. It was just on the cards she might o' laid 'er 'ands on the combination for openin' the safe. 'Well, I puts _that_ in my pipe an' smokes it. Strikes me she goes out a bit more reg'lar for 'er prominides with Beatty since that French Mounseer brought 'is packet o' pearls, than she used to do. So I 'as the curiosity to foller at a respectful distance one dye, an' sees m' lidy step into a French restorong. Not long after, comes along Mounseer of the pearls. I was sent to meet 'im at the dock, but missed 'im there, 'cause o' some mistike about 'is initials w'ere you wites for the Customs men. But I seed 'im 'ere at th' 'ouse later when I comes 'ome to report to 'is Grice. I recognized 'im alright. The question to my mind was w'ether 'e'd chose that restorong 'cause 'twas French or cause o' Mam'selle." Jack's eyes flashed to Sanders, who smiled. "You and I have been rivals in this game, Nickson," he remarked. "What conclusion did you come to about Mademoiselle?" Nickson flushed. "Didn't know I was on your pitch, sir. But if yer asks me, in my opinion 'e comes for _'er_. Or else she comes for _'im_." "A cat may look at a king!" said Sanders. "They're compatriots. Why shouldn't they meet?" "On the other 'and, w'y _should_ they?" ventured Nickson. "_I_ wouldn't if I was 'im. And see 'ere, sir, beggin' your pardon, I know you're a detective, in a privit wye. I've told you all I done. But t'ain't all I _want_ to do. I want to find 'is Grice. If you and the Captain make any frontal attack, so to speak, will you tike me along? I'd give my life for th' Dook. And I might come in 'andy, 'oo knows?" "Who knows, indeed?" echoed Sanders. "But you shall have the chance of finding out when the time comes. And it may come soon--any day, any hour, even any minute. Now, if you think Mademoiselle's due back, I suggest that you leave us, as we've sent for her here. If there's anything in your suspicions, we don't want her to smell a rat." "Right you are, sir, and thank you, sir!" said Nickson. "I'll be off and leave all clear." "So, you actually suspect Simone? _And_ Defasquelle!" Jack turned on Sanders when they were alone. "I can't go as far as that--yet. There's no evidence against them--not even circumstantial. There's no crime in a flirtation between a man and woman, both of the _Midi_, thrown together in a foreign land. I meant to spring this on you only when or if I had cause to be sure. Up to date, my indoors man at Rudin's--that's the French place in Twelfth Street where they meet--hasn't been able to overhear a word between the two, though he speaks French. He's acting as a waiter there now. He has instructions to ring me up if he gets onto anything queer. And I always leave word at home and the office where I'm going to be." This conversation, following Lyda's letter, had keyed up Manners' nerves. He started as rather a sharp knock sounded on the door. It was Simone. She was very neat and _chic_, and led Beatty, whose bored look suggested that he had been denied his proper share of exercise. "_Monsieur le Capitaine_!" she purred; and bowed discreetly to the detective. "Togo says Monsieur has asked for me the moment I am home. I come. But the dog----" "Never mind the dog!" Sanders caught the word from Jack. "We've some questions to ask you, Mademoiselle. Please stay where you are." His tone was rough, and he had put on a professional, hectoring air. There had been no time to arrange a plan of action, but Manners guessed what was in Sanders' mind. He meant to try scaring Simone; and he wanted to do it off his own bat. Jack trusted him, and was willing to keep out of the business. Though the Frenchwoman's black eyes appealed to him--as her mistress's relative--against the rude stranger, he sat still and lit a cigarette. CHAPTER XX THE THIRD DEGREE "To begin with, where's the Duchess?" "At a rehearsal, Monsieur, of an entertainment Madame van Esten has got up. Mademoiselle Pavoya will----" "We don't want to hear about her. The Duchess isn't at the rehearsal." "Then I do not know where she is. It is her affair, not mine." Simone looked the picture of injured innocence. "Perhaps you _don't_ know," agreed Sanders. "But you see, you've made so many of her affairs your affairs, it's hard to tell where you draw the line." The French maid turned pale in rather a repulsive way she had, beginning at the lips, which she bit to keep their colour. From her looks she might have been furious--or frightened. "I do not understand you, Monsieur," she almost spat. "That doesn't matter much. What does matter is, we understand _you_." Under her black-dotted veil Simone's olive sallowness greened. "Monsieur accuses me of--something?" Sanders grinned with the utmost cruelty. "Well, what do you think?" "I think a person has perhaps told lies about me, Monsieur!" "Ah!" the detective leapt in his chair as if he had caught her--as if she had given him a chance for which he'd waited. "Ah! What's the name of that person?" The Frenchwoman began to feel sick. Her fears, though acute, had been vague. Suddenly they became definite. She floundered. So much depended on saying the right thing that she was terribly afraid of saying the wrong one. She glanced at Captain Manners again, but he had taken up a paper. To her horror it was the _Inner Circle_, which Sanders had bought and brought in to discuss. Her knees turned to water. She could not help giving a faint gasp. Her eyes were fixed on the "Whisperer's" page, which was held up--as if purposely. Both men saw the stare: and into the minds of both sprang the same thought. Jack had had it before. He had even hinted it to Juliet, who laughed it to scorn, and remarked that she knew Simone better than he could possibly know her. Sanders had had the thought, and mentioned it to Manners. But there was no proof; and the Frenchwoman's "shadower" had never seen her go to the office of the _Inner Circle_. As for letters--Sanders had put Togo onto watching for them. Simone had sent out none at all from the house. Yet now that one bleak glare at the open paper, and both men were as sure as if the woman had confessed. "You think your editor has been talking, eh?" the detective said. "That's as may be. Anyhow, we _know_." The telephone bell rang. Jack took up the receiver. "Yes, Mr. Sanders is here," he replied to some question. "He'll speak with you in a second. Hold the line." Sanders bounded to the 'phone. "Yes--yes--good!" were the only words he said. But Jack knew he was speaking to his man at the café. Then he turned again to Simone. "Come here and call your friend Defasquelle," he sharply ordered. "Tell him he must turn up at his house at once or there'll be a disaster for you both." Simone grasped the back of a chair, and clung to it. "I cannot, Monsieur," she gulped. "I know Monsieur Defasquelle only by seeing him here. I----" "Don't waste words," Sanders cut her short. "It'll be the worse for you if you do. You've just been with him now, at Rudin's. Call him up at his hotel." "If--if I will not?" she stammered. "Do you want to go to prison while he's left free--to _marry his girl in Marseilles_?" That was a chance shot, but it found its billet. "He _has_ no girl in Marseilles!" Simone shrilled. "Oh, yes, he has. I have his _dossier_ from the Paris police. If you get him here and make him tell the truth, I promise you that marriage won't take place." "I will call him," said Simone, sickly pale. She flitted across the room to the telephone. Sanders rubbed his hands, and nodded to Jack. But Jack was glancing at his wrist-watch. "What am I to do?" he asked the detective in a low voice. "The time's almost here for me to keep my appointment with Mademoiselle Pavoya." "Go to it!" said Sanders. "I'm equal to Simone and Defasquelle. Now I've got proof enough to bluff on--my waiter man 'phoned that the pair were talking about the pearls and apparently blackguarding each other! I'll strip them of their secrets like a tree of ripe fruit. But look here, I have a 'hunch' that there's more in this _Inner Circle_ business than meets the eye. Simone's been a catspaw. There may be wheels within wheels. When you go to meet Mademoiselle Pavoya take my tip and accept Old Nick's offer." "What, have him with me?" "Yes, wherever Pavoya sends you." "She may not send me anywhere." "I think she will send you somewhere. Meanwhile, I'll pump Simone and Defasquelle dry. When you get back I may have the pearls in pink cotton!" Manners was torn. He wished to hear what Simone said over the telephone. He wished to stay and witness the scene through between her, Defasquelle, and Sanders. But most of all he wished not to be late for Lyda. _Nothing_ was worth that! Jack arrived at the theatre just after Lyda had finished rehearsing a dance which she herself had arranged for the charity fête with Mrs. Van Esten's spoiled little girl. Mademoiselle Pavoya was in her dressing room, he was told, and was expecting him. He went there quickly, afraid of being caught by someone he knew on the way, and forced to stop and talk nonsense, for the place was like a rabbit-warren--alive with pretty women and men who thought they were Society incarnate. Lyda wore the swan costume she had worn the first night of their meeting--or one much like it; and the thought of that wonderful night thrilled him. How had he lived before that time? Yet he had gone out of her presence to doubt her truth, her honour! Never could he forgive himself for that, never could he worship her quite enough to make up for those hours of disloyalty. She held out her hands to him, and he crushed first one then the other against his lips. "My Swan Goddess!" he exclaimed. "You're too marvellous like this. I can hardly believe you're flesh and blood--that I'm not dreaming you. I love you so much!" She drew her hands away, and pushed him back when he would have taken her in his arms, wings and all. "Perhaps you _are_ dreaming me!" she smiled, "Dreaming the woman you think I am. And--you're not to do _that_! My hands only!" "Yet you said you cared! You said you'd never felt for any man as you felt when our eyes first met." "Ah, I said that when you'd confessed doubting me, and begged forgiveness, and vowed that nothing on earth or in heaven--or the other place--could ever make you doubt again. I owed you some confession in return." "Then it _was_ true?" "Yes, it was true----" "And is still?" "But--of course! I do not change. Yet we are to be friends and nothing more until all is made clear--until even your cousin believes in me and doesn't think you'd be better dead than loving Lyda Pavoya. If that day could ever come!" "It will come--soon. Oh, Lyda, remember that first night--at your house. You let me hold you in my arms then." "But that was as a _friend_. You understood, I know! I was so stirred, so hard pressed, I wanted protection from someone sincere. And you were the sincerest man I ever saw." "Yes, I did understand. I do now. And--I won't bother you, Lyda--though it's hard work, this friendship business to a man who worships a beautiful woman as I worship you. But it's a bargain: friendship till--the day. May it be to-morrow!" "Amen!" she echoed, with one of her fleeting smiles that came so seldom. "Now let us talk not of ourselves but of your cousin. We ought to have begun with her!" "No!" "Yes. Because there may be danger. I'll tell you quickly all I know. You have met a friend--an acquaintance--of mine, the Comtesse de Saintville?" "Oh, yes--wife of a diplomat of sorts, isn't she? I've heard you were intimate." "That isn't true; but she has Polish blood, and for that or some other reason she likes to come to my house. I have been able to do her a good turn now and then. I wouldn't tell this to any one except you, _mon ami_, but she's a great bridge player, and loses more money than she ought. Lately she got into a bad--what you call scrape. She asked me to lend her a thousand dollars (you see, she dared not let her husband know!) but I couldn't. It was when I was putting aside every _sou_ for Markoff. I could do nothing except promise to help later. I do not love Sonia de Saintville, yet I am sorry for her. I was afraid that in desperation she would do some stupid thing! The other day I had a windfall. A friend in Paris who'd borrowed fifty thousand francs sent it back to me. I'd never expected to see the money again! So I 'phoned Sonia that now I could let her have the thousand dollars. She answered that a thousand would no longer be of use. But two thousand would save her. From the way she spoke, I understood that things were very grave. I said she should have the two thousand. She came to my house and I gave it to her in notes. I hadn't seen her for days, and she was looking ill--changed. I spoke kindly to the poor thing, and she broke down. It is the confession she made which will interest you, my friend. You would never guess! She had got into the power of that _Inner Circle_ band." "They were blackmailing her?" "Yes, in a queer way. Did you ever suspect that Mr. Lowndes--'Billy Lowndes' I hear him called--was for something in that paper?" "Good lord, no! _Billy Lowndes_!--Not that I ever liked him. But I didn't think he was as big a rotter as that! He was in love with my cousin Juliet, hard hit, before she married. And by a sort of coincidence Lowndes' sister Emmy--Lady West (you may have met her war-working in Paris or London)--made rather an ass of herself over Claremanagh." "Perhaps that partly explains--some things, if we can patch them together. Listen! It was at Mrs. Billy Lowndes', Sonia said, that she lost most of her money. There's a set there that plays very high. They make the Lowndes' flat a sort of private club. Sonia was dunned--and frightened of her husband. Billy Lowndes offered to lend her the whole lot. She thought, how good-natured! But soon she learned it was not goodness. He wanted something. The condition was that she should get the Duchess of Claremanagh to go and consult a palmist, crystal-gazer person, a Madame Veno. Did you ever hear of her?" "No. Yes! By Jove, her name's on the building of the _Inner Circle_! The plot thickens." "But how?" "Oh, Sanders and I have caught my cousin Juliet's maid. We're sure it's she who gave away things to the 'Whisperer.' Sanders is putting her through the 'third degree' now. I couldn't stop to hear it out. I was due here. Besides, it looks as if the woman--Simone--was mixed up in the disappearance of the pearls, with the chap who brought them from France--Defasquelle. Perhaps this Veno person is in the affair, too. And the whole business may be one--with ramifications." "That is what I've wondered--since Sonia confessed to-day what they made her do. She was to go to the Duchess, and tell her that Madame Veno had seen Claremanagh in the crystal--that she could help her find him. Sonia suspected something queer. She was sure at once that Lowndes was on that horrid paper--perhaps editor--of that vile 'Whisperer'. And she'd heard the story about his being in love with your cousin when she was Miss Phayre. So she told him she couldn't do this commission. Then Lowndes lost all his good nature. He threatened that the 'Whisperer' of the _Inner Circle_ might get some new material from him to whisper about: that there'd be paragraphs hinting of her debts and the ruin of her husband's career. That would have been the end of all things for Sonia! So she consented, after all. She called on the Duchess and told her that Madame Veno wanted to see her." "When was that?" "Three days ago." "Juliet never breathed a word to Sanders or me. She left us in the dark." "She would! Most women would. I should have let you know before, but Sonia told me only to-day. I wrote at once and asked you to come." "Thank you, my White Swan. Many women in your place would have sat still and let poor Juliet go to the devil for treating you in the cattish way she has." "I've no grudge against her! I should have done so in her place, if--if the man had been you, instead of Claremanagh." "Darling! You expect to keep me at arms' length after that?" "Yes--yes! Listen. The Duchess went to Madame Veno." "How do you know?" "The Veno woman herself was to inform Sonia if she didn't turn up. In that case Sonia was to urge the Duchess. She--Sonia, I mean--was forced to go to Veno's place as if to have her hand read, because _they_ wouldn't risk anything in writing. Luckily she had to make only one visit, because the very first time she was told the Duchess had been there. She was to come again on the third day. That was all arranged, though Sonia imagined that the Duchess didn't _know_ this. She was to think the arrangement was made later. But the third day is to-day. Sonia thought the first call the Duchess made was late in the afternoon, and something was dropped about the 'same hour next time'. I believe she must be at Veno's at this moment. And if those _Inner Circle_ people are in the thing, and it's a plot of some sort----" "I'll go there now!" "What, to the _Inner Circle_ office?" "Not first, anyhow. Maybe later. That depends! But now, to Madame Veno's." "Oh, I'm worried!" Lyda put out her hands, and laid them on his khaki-clad arms. "They say these _Inner Circle_ people may be a nest of crooks!" "I don't doubt 'they' are right for once! But I'm not going alone." "I thought your detective was busy with the maid and the pearl carrier." "He is. But you know Old Nick? You must! You couldn't have known Pat without Old Nick." "Good Old Nick! Of course I know him--since Paris, when Claremanagh was ill at my house." "Well, Nick's going 'over the top' with me, as a volunteer. I don't know whether I shall find anything for him to do, but if so, he'll be ready!" "Yes--yes! He'd do anything for Claremanagh." "And even for Claremanagh's wife. Good-bye, my darling. Wish me luck." "I do--I do." "A kiss to speed the wish?" "No. Only my hand. Wait!" "How long--in God's name?" "Till--the Duke's found--and the pearls." CHAPTER XXI THE MIDDLE DOOR "Tell her two gentlemen for a consultation," Jack Manners announced at Madame Veno's door, Nickson at his heels. "Madame can see no more clients this afternoon, sir," replied the neat woman in black silk. "She closes for business at six, and----" "It's not six yet," cut in Jack. "No, sir, but she has a lady with her now. I have orders to receive no one else." "Can't you forget those orders, and persuade her to make an exception for us?" As he spoke, Manners took from his pocket a cigarette-case and extracted from it a twenty-dollar bill. It would have been simple--physically--to push past the spinster-like person in black, but Jack could more easily have got over a high stone wall. Luckily she liked the look of the bank-note. "I might try, sir," she hesitated. "If trying's worth twenty dollars to you." "It is," he replied, promptly. The money changed hands. The woman in black silk ceased to bar the entrance with her neat person. Jack walked into the flat, Nickson after him. Again there was hesitation. Evidently their guide was not sure where she ought to put them. Jack imagined that he could read her thoughts. She feared to lead the forbidden visitors into the ordinary waiting-room. Either there was someone there, or something that ought not to be seen; or the room was next the one where Madame Veno was with her "last client"--Juliet! In that case, words might be overheard through a wall or door. As he and Nick were invited into a dining room, Manners counted three doors on the opposite side of the hall, all closed. Behind one of those he believed Juliet to be hidden at that moment, probably in process of being blackmailed. He made up his mind quickly as to a plan of action, already half-decided on between Nickson and himself. "We're in no great hurry, so long as we see Madame sooner or later," he told the woman who had let them in. "We wouldn't think of having you interrupt her." "Oh! I shouldn't dare do _that_, sir!" she broke in, pocketing the twenty dollars. As she spoke, Jack caught a glance of awed respect which she cast across the corridor. "_The middle door_," he said to himself. "Of course not," he said, aloud. "We'll wait. How'll you know when the client goes?" "I expect Madame will ring for me to open the front door, and let the lady out. That's what she usually does." "Very well, when the lady's gone speak for us." Perhaps the black-silk woman wondered why the nice young gentleman hadn't given her ten dollars to try, and a promise of ten more if she succeeded. But that was his affair. Personally, she didn't expect to succeed. She was not acquainted with Madame's private business, but there was certainly something of the first importance "on" this afternoon. No clients had been admitted since four o'clock except the beautiful blonde young lady who had announced herself the other day as the Duchess of Claremanagh or some name like that. Before she was due two gentlemen had come up and hadn't given their names. But Madame had expected them, and they were still with her when the Duchess arrived. The black-silk woman had seen those gentlemen before, though never together. She had not much curiosity about them, for she was not of a curious disposition. That, Madame said, was one reason why she had engaged her. She had been a stewardess on board ship, but had disliked the sea, especially during the war, when she had been torpedoed once. Madame had crossed with her on three occasions, and the last time had offered her this place. Some things she had seen had surprised and even shocked her a little, but she was well paid, and dry land was a good deal better than that nasty grey wet thing, the sea! She felt that she had done right in putting these two new gentlemen into the dining room. If Madame firmly refused to see them, they might possibly be smuggled away without her knowing they had actually been let into the flat. "That elderly party isn't going to stay on watch," Jack said to Nickson, when they had been shut into the commonplace little room where Madame Veno ate her meals. "There's no uneasy curiosity in that meek make-up." "That's wot I was thinkin' myself, sir," agreed Old Nick. "We're in luck so far," Jack went on. "It's time to begin reconnoitring." He went to the door. "If that decent body is in the hall, I shall ask her what time it is, and say my watch has gone slow--which is more than my heart has!" Nickson grinned. Jack peered out into the white-and-red corridor. Nobody was there. The red glass lamp suspended from the ceiling looked to him like a mass of clotted blood. He took two steps across to the middle door, and listened. Then he returned hastily to Nick. "They're in there! I heard the Duchess's voice. Sounds as if she were angry or frightened, or both. And there are two or more men. You and I have got to open the door, locked or unlocked." "That's it, sir!" said Nickson. "But it won't be locked. Why should it? They don't suspect nothin', and if there's two men, 'er Grice couldn't get past 'em. You let me make a dash and see wot 'appens, sir!" "No," Jack decided, "the dash is my job. You stand by, and if there's any dashing from the wrong side of the door, you'll know how to stop it, male or female." "Yes, sir!" Manners went again to the middle door. As he moved, Nickson closed in behind him, a substantial bulk, and in his eyes the light which made "Old Nick" his right name. He stood in such a position that if any one rushed for the front door or even some back exit, escape could be made only over his body. He saw that Captain Manners took hold of the doorknob with his left hand. The right hand was in the outer pocket of his coat, and Nickson knew what else was there. A similar thing was in a similar pocket of his own coat. It had been given to him by the Captain, whom he now liked and respected next to the Duke. Suddenly Manners turned the handle and flung the door wide open with such violence that it struck the wall. He strode into the room. Nickson blocked the doorway, but seeing with one glance that there was a door leading to another room, he took a step back to guard both. It was a very green room--green as arsenic, he thought--lighted by one lamp, like a big emerald, on a centre table. Looking in from across the threshold, however, Nick could see four figures besides Manners'. There was the Duchess, tall and strangely white in a black dress and wide hat. There was another woman without a hat, also in black; a big, common hussy she looked to Nickson, with an eye like a fierce snake's. And there were two men. About the pair an odd thing was that they had some thin black stuff tied over their faces. Captain Manners went for one man--the one who seemed to show fight, and when the other (who hadn't spied Nick yet) made for the door, Nick received him in open arms. The big woman squealed, and the Duchess shrank back against the wall, then started forward again. "Oh, Jack!" she cried, "they mustn't be killed! They know where Pat is. They say if they aren't back there soon, someone will put an end to him!" Nick saw the woman, Madame Veno, he didn't doubt, spring for the electric-light button, but dragging his man with him, he was upon her like a tiger. One hand was enough for the man, who must have been a coward for he splashed about like a jelly with Nick's fist in his collar. The other hand seized Madame's arm as it was stretched out, and twisted it sharply. She gave a shriek, and sat down on the floor. Then Nick became conscious of a stealthy intelligence in the jelly. It was feeling toward his pocket, _the_ pocket. But before the groping fingers reached their goal Nick had snatched out the Browning, and pressed the muzzle against a crape-covered forehead. There wasn't much time for looking round just then, but Nickson had done observation work in the war. The sixth of a second showed him that Captain Manners had reached this identical stage in his programme: which meant that each had a man at his mercy. "Take your mask off," ordered Jack. "Same to you, my beauty," echoed Nick. The two obeyed. "Bill Lowndes!" cried Manners. "Know this brute, sir?" enquired Nick. "I do!" Juliet gasped. "Oh! you horrid wretch! And Bill Lowndes! I shouldn't have dreamed----" "They're nightmares, both of 'em," broke in Jack. "Now, Juliet, don't be scared. That's all rot about Pat being done away with. Nick and I are going to save time by making these--these _skunks_--tell us where he is. But we've a minute or so to spare. They've kept Pat safe, I bet, for the sake of the ransom they meant to get out of you. There's a third-degree stunt going on in your house. Sanders is grilling Defasquelle and Simone. It all comes back to this building that's like the web of a black spider--the _Inner Circle_--and we'll repeat that third-degree stunt here. Who's this man you call a wretch?" "His name's Piggott," Juliet panted. "He--was editor of a hateful paper in London--_Modern Ways_--almost as vile as the _Inner Circle_. Emmy West introduced me to him. She said he wasn't bad really--if I'd meet him he'd put nice things in his paper instead of horrors--especially about Pat. I said 'Yes' for Pat's sake--Emmy insisted so. He came to Harridge's, where I was staying, but before he or I had time to speak, Pat was shown in. He gave one look, and begged me to go out--to leave this man to him. I had never seen Pat like that--and I went. I never even heard the wretch's voice or I'd have recognized it, I think. He came here and talked to me three days ago--with this mask on. Now Bill Lowndes comes with him. I don't know yet how or why he should be mixed up----" "I do," said Jack. "It's because they're both concerned with the _Inner Circle_, on the floor below. They've had Simone in their pay, selling them news, and as for the pearls----" "Oh! if you'll let my husband go, I'll tell you everything!" wailed Madame Veno; stumbling up from the floor. "That's my husband, Sam Piggott. He's got nothing to do with the _Inner Circle_, except a little interest he's bought, because the owner is my step-brother. I'm English, and Sam's Irish, and our being in this business is an accident. It was all the Duke's fault and Markoff's fault----" "Shut your mouth," grunted the big man whom Old Nick held--a man few others could have held at all. "Shut yours--that's more to the point!" said Nickson. Apparently he meant the pistol's point. And Piggott was silenced. "Will you let him go if I tell you things?" repeated the woman, shuddering at Nick's gesture. "That depends on how much you can tell," decided Jack, coolly. "I can tell _everything_," she moaned. "Begin by telling where the Duke is." Both men started, but collapsed. Madame Veno choked and went on: "He's in a room downstairs--in the basement. He's been there all the time. What happened was like this: The Duke came one night to the office--I mean of the _Inner Circle_. He'd heard the editor would be there. I may as well tell you he'd got an anonymous letter to say so. It was found in his pocket. The Duchess's maid or Mademoiselle's French pal is sure to have sent it, wanting to get the Duke out of their way. And they _did_ get him out! It was the night of the first 'Whisper' about the pearls and Pavoya calling at the Phayre house. The Duke got into the place by a trick--sent word by an office boy that he had information to give. He was let into a room divided by a partition from the one where my step-brother was--the editor. You have to say what you've got to say by telephone there. You don't see any one. But the Duke guessed who was on the other side. He put the chair on the table, and climbed up, so he could get over the partition. He'd wrenched off the receiver from the 'phone, to hit my step-brother with. When he was going for him my husband heard the row, and ran in from another room. He didn't make any noise, but came up from behind and cracked the Duke over the back of the head with a big ruler. He had a right to do that, because the Duke horsewhipped him publicly in London for what he'd published in _Modern Ways_, and spoiled England for us both. That's why we came to New York, and I took over the 'Madame Veno' business. I was 'Madame Ayesha' in Bond Street, and wore Egyptian dress. I told you it was an accident we were mixed up in this. It wasn't my husband's fault. He _had_ to defend his brother-in-law against a cowardly attack like that! "As for Mr. Lowndes, he hated the Duke for marrying Miss Phayre--just as Lady West (who used to send us lots of news about folks she didn't like in London and Paris) hated Miss Phayre for marrying the Duke. Mr. Lowndes is one of the 'Whisperer' lot. I mean he's one of several men who put together the 'Whisperer' stuff that comes out under one name. He was in the office that night, and so was Markoff the Russian! Your private detective was after Markoff----" "More about him and the others by-and-by," Manners cut her short almost gently, "Nick, would you like the job of going down to look for the Duke?" "I would that, sir!" Nickson answered. "I'll give this big chap a smash the way he did 'is Grice, and put him out o' count for while I'm way." "No need for that. See if he's armed." Nickson "went through" his prisoner's pockets. There was only a pocket-knife, for Piggott and Lowndes had expected to meet no one more formidable than the Duchess of Claremanagh. Lowndes was also unarmed. "That's all right," pronounced Jack. "I and a Browning can keep the pair and Madame, too, in order. No, on second thoughts take her down with you. She'll show you the way, won't you, Madame?" "Needs must, when the Devil drives," she snapped. "Thanks for the compliment," laughed Jack. "If any one knows the gentleman by sight, it must be you!" "I shall go with them," Juliet said. "Of course!" agreed Manners. Madame Veno turned and glared at her. "You gave us away in spite of your promise. You deserve to see what you _will_ see down there. A dead man--killed by your husband. You'll save your dear Duke only to have him sent to the chair." Juliet gave her look for look. "I didn't give you away. I did not dream my cousin was coming here! And I'd know by your face, even if I didn't know Claremanagh, that he has killed no man. If there's a dead man where my husband is, someone else committed the murder." "Hear, hear! your Grice!" shouted Nickson, before he could remember to be respectful. Suddenly Juliet heard herself laughing. Then she began to sob: "Oh, Pat--Pat! Nick, take me to him!" Nickson flung Piggott across the room, and grabbed Madame Veno by the arm. The next thing the Duchess knew, the door had shut behind them. Jack was left alone with the two men. But Juliet had forgotten Jack. CHAPTER XXII THE WHOLE OF THE SECRET Madame Veno--alias Mrs. Sam Piggott--had a key to the door of the janitor's flat. She, her husband, and their associates could come and go as they chose when the janitor was away or upstairs. "You won't get anything out of your husband," she said to Juliet as the three went down, she leading with mingled defiance and reluctance. "He hasn't come back to his senses yet. It wasn't so much the blow--mind you, my husband was within his rights, defending his brother-in-law from assault!--it wasn't the blow so much as the fall. The Duke fell on the back of his head. It was concussion. We had a doctor in--a friend of ours we could trust. And we weren't going to let you know till we were sure he was out of danger--ready to be moved. If he has to stand his trial for killing Markoff, why----" "How does a man with concussion of the brain commit murder?" Juliet's question stabbed like a stiletto. By this time they were at the door of the basement flat, and Madame Veno was fumbling with a bunch of keys, Nickson's eyes upon her hands. "Naturally the killing was done before the concussion," Madame sneered. "The Duke hated Markoff because of Pavoya. Perhaps he had reason. But that won't help him with a jury!" Juliet could have struck the woman and trampled her under foot. She turned upon her in the dimly lit passage so fiercely that the nervous fingers jumped and let fall the key. "You fool!" the Duchess said. "You told me I should see a dead man here. Yet according to your own story my husband was struck down the night after I saw him last. One doesn't keep a dead man in a flat for weeks!" Madame Veno drew in a sharp breath, and mumbled something which Juliet could not hear. It was easy to deduce that the story of Markoff's death by Claremanagh's hand was an impromptu effort--an inspiration which didn't quite "come off!" The woman had suddenly caught at a desperate chance. The Duke, having lost all memory of events, could be made to believe what they chose about himself. And if the Duchess and her friends could be got to credit the tale, the Markoff affair would be simplified. He had been known to Madame's husband and stepbrother for years, even before the war, when he had fed _Modern Ways_ in London and the _Inner Circle_ in New York with rich titbits of scandal concerning the Russian Court. He had told Piggott that Russia had a grievance against the Claremanagh family in connection with the Tsarina pearls; that this treasure ought to be returned to the Crown; and Piggott had suspected that Markoff was "out" to get it if he could. This visit of his to New York was for some reason _sub rosa_. His passport was made out for a merchant of skins named Halbin; but he had called upon his two old acquaintances and offered for sale the most intimate personal secrets of Trotsky and Lenin. The brothers-in-law had guessed that he wanted the Tsarina pearls for himself, if they could be got, as he had once pretended to want them for the Russian Crown. So, when by amazing luck they found themselves in possession of the famous rope, their first thought was to bargain with Markoff-Halbin. He had risen to the bait, and had made an offer. It sounded satisfactory, but the money was not forthcoming. A "friend" was to produce it. Meanwhile, when it was learned through the "leak" at the Duchess's that Sanders sought Markoff, shelter was given him; also the "benefit of the doubt." But little doubt remained when he tried to steal the pearls! As for the consequences of this attempt, they were upon the man's own head! And at worst, the doctor would certify that death had not been the direct result of a blow, but of heart failure. The end had come the day before the Duchess was invited to Madame Veno's; and had it not come, Madame de Saintville might have been left in peace till her help was wanted in some other direction. With Markoff dead, and his problematic "offer" wiped from the slate, the best remaining hope was the Duchess. Claremanagh would not be able to testify against the man who had struck him down--would not even know that Sam Pigott had revenged himself at last for the caning episode in London. He and the pearls could be handed over to the Duchess; price, a million dollars; and no one would ever know where and how he had spent those weeks missing from his calendar. The scheme had been in fine working order up to the moment when that middle door had suddenly opened! Madame Veno thought bitterly of the mistake they had all made in sending for the Duchess. The thing might surely have been managed in another way! But it was useless to cry over spilt milk--a million dollars' worth of spilt milk! They must be grateful if the Enemy held his tongue, and they kept out of jail. She laughed when the Duchess called aloud, "Pat! Where are you? It's Juliet, who loves you." She was so sure that the cry would be answered by silence, for there was a dead man in one room, an unconscious man in another. But there was no laugh left in her when Claremanagh's voice rang out, clear and sane, "Hullo, my darling! Here I am!" He had been shamming, then! How much had he heard? How much could he tell? _How much did he remember_? Juliet flew in the direction of the beloved voice. It was heaven to hear it after the hell she had suffered! There were two doors opposite each other. She tried the first. Locked! But the key was there. It turned, and she threw the door open only to slam it shut with a stifled gasp--for on the bed was a long shape covered with a sheet. It was the body of Markoff, of whom she had heard so much of late from Jack and Sanders, though till now--when he had ceased to live--she'd hardly believed in his existence. Again Pat called. She realized that he was in the room opposite, and in less than a minute she was with him--in a grey room where a pale Pat lay in a squalid bed. He sat up, a strange, unkempt figure: the immaculate Claremanagh unshaven, his smooth hair rumpled; a torn shirt open at the throat, instead of those smart silk pyjamas in "Futurist" colours which she'd often smiled at and admired! She rushed into his arms. He was strong enough to clasp her tight. "Oh, my Pat, my dearest one!" she sobbed. "I have you again! Say you're not going to die. Say you still love me!" "I adore you. And I'm not going to die. Perhaps I came near it. I don't know. But this is new life. And, Juliet--_I've got back the pearls far you_!" "Oh--the pearls! I'd forgotten them." "I hadn't. You see, it meant a lot to me to prove to you that it wasn't I who walked off with them. Darling, I suppose you wouldn't be here now if you didn't know how I got to this place?" "I know partly. I know you went at night to the _Inner Circle_ office to punish that Beast. And the horrible London man, Piggott--his brother-in-law--struck you from behind----" "Was it like that? I wasn't sure what happened, and I don't know yet where I am. But since I woke up to things, I've lain still, and listened when they thought I was nothing but a log. I wasn't strong enough to do much. I had to lie low! But there was a row about the pearls. Markoff was here--hiding, I think. How these people got the pearls I haven't made out. They had them, though--and Markoff tried to steal them instead of buying as he'd promised. He fell in a fit or something, and died. I heard a doctor talking--a pal of the people here. The night Markoff died they were squabbling over the pearls, a woman and two men in the next room. I heard them say where they were kept--in the room where they'd put Markoff's body till they could get rid of it. They'd no idea I'd come alive. At last, to-day when they were all out, and the coast clear--it can't have been two hours ago--I struggled up and got the pearls--beneath a loose board in the floor under the carpet. They're inside this mattress now. I was planning how to make my 'getaway' when I heard your voice. Jove! This has been a bad dream. But thank God it's over for us both. You'll have to believe in me when I give you the pearls." "Give me your love--your forgiveness," begged Juliet. "I want nothing else." "You'll have to take the lot!" Pat almost laughed. "But as to forgiveness--why, darling one, there's nothing to forgive!" Leon Defasquelle's look, when he saw Sanders instead of the Frenchwoman alone, was in itself a confession. He knew he was trapped. His dark, southern face faded to the yellow green of seasickness. Speechless, anxious-eyed as a kicked dog, he would have backed to the door, but Sanders was ready for that. He stepped between him and the hope of escape. "It's all up, my friend," the detective said, in his quiet voice. Then, remembering that Defasquelle had little English, he went on in half-forgotten school French, a little slang thrown in from novels he'd read. "Your _chère amie_ has split on you. No good getting out the pistol from your pocket. Nothing doing in that line!" (He showed his Browning.) "We can settle this business without blood if you've got common sense." "That woman--that devil has told her side of the story!" Defasquelle raged, with a look that longed to kill. "Now you shall have mine. She was the temptress. She has ruined me." "Liar!" shrilled Simone. "Coward and deceiver! You have a _fiancée_ in Marseilles. You let me think you'd marry me!" "You threatened to betray! I had to defend myself. You made me a thief!" "Ah, accuse _me_!" "Because you are guilty!" It was thus that Sanders heard the story, bit by bit. And patching together these torn rags of recrimination he got the pattern of the whole cloth. Simone had scraped acquaintance with her countryman. He had complained of the Duke's carelessness and lack of consideration in refusing to break the seals of the packet. Then a dazzling idea had come to Simone. The packet, Defasquelle said, had been flung into a wall-safe. Simone knew all about that safe! She knew also where the Duchess (as careless in some ways as the Duke) kept the combination jotted down on a bit of paper. Defasquelle could not be suspected (she pointed out), as he had earnestly implored the Duke to open the package in his presence. Nor was there the least danger for herself. She was completely trusted. It would be tempting Providence not to seize such an opportunity of fortune! As for "stealing," that was not the word. These pearls didn't properly belong to the Claremanaghs. They should have been returned to the Russian Crown. Now, there was no Russian crown. The pearls belonged to no one--unless to those with pluck enough to take them. According to Defasquelle, those were Simone's arguments. And he saw too late that she'd drawn him into the intrigue instead of managing it alone, drawn him in so as to hold him in her power--and get a husband at the sword's point! He, in his heart, had thought of the girl at Marseilles. The one objection to him there was his lack of money. The girl's father accused him of presenting his prospects in too rosy colours. If the pearls could be disposed of as Mademoiselle vowed they could even known as they were, over the world, the future would be ideal. Simone had opened the safe with the aid of her mistress's memorandum, Defasquelle having gone away and come back again. To their surprise they had found, on the same shelf with the packet, a rope of great blue pearls. At first Defasquelle had taken them for the genuine ones, though the seals on the packet appeared intact. But Simone was an expert in pearls, like the Duchess. A simple test had shown that the rope was a copy. As for the clasp, neither thought of the difference in the watching eye; and it seemed to both that the "find" was almost a miracle in their favour. The Duchess--argued Simone--was unlikely to suspect a substitution. She would not test the pearls, and might wear them for months or years without guessing that they weren't genuine. Meanwhile, Simone would leave her service, and never need to take a place again. She would go home to France and live on her share from the sale of the pearls. The Duke being absent, and the Duchess, too, she and Defasquelle could work safely in the study. Simone had some red sealing wax; and the Duke's famous ring lay on the desk where he'd left it after displaying the design to Mayen's messenger. Simone had thought of everything--even to a pair of rubber gloves which she used when cleaning her mistress's gold toilet things. These gloves she had put on before touching the safe, the packet, or the seal ring. And having opened the packet she had made Defasquelle smoke one of the Duke's special brand of cigarettes to scent the handkerchief wrapped round the jewel case. If worst came to worst, and suspicion were excited, let it fall upon the Duke himself, and Lyda Pavoya. Then, that very night, suspicion _had_ fallen! The Duchess had discovered that the pearls were false. Simone had overheard snatches of talk between her and the Duke, and it had seemed well to mention Pavoya's visit in order that Lyda might be suspected from the beginning. Also, Simone had felt it safe to give the whole story to the _Inner Circle_. The Duke and Duchess had quarrelled, so why not? She would get extra pay. And soon she would be leaving the Claremanaghs forever. One of her first thoughts in connection with the pearls was to hint in the office at having secured a great treasure, to sell for a comparatively low price. If the invisible editor rose to the bait, as Simone hoped he might, she would be saved much trouble and danger: also she would have protection in case of trouble. She had been right about the bait; but once she was in his power the man put on the screw, and too late Simone regretted applying to him. Defasquelle reproached her bitterly, and they quarrelled, yet he could not break free. Simone held him in chains, as both were held by the _Inner Circle_. The fortune she had visioned dwindled to a few thousand dollars which were all the _Inner Circle_ men would pay for "stolen property." This was maddening, because the fortune would go to _them_. There was nothing to do, however, save consent. It was by Defasquelle's suggestion, Simone vowed, that she'd sent an anonymous letter to the Duke, mentioning an hour when the illusive editor could be found, and at the same time warning the editor himself that violence might be expected. If the Duke were "smashed up" there would be just half the danger to face in future; and Defasquelle owed him a grudge for laughing at his first request which, if granted, would have saved him from temptation. So there, in its patched design, the great pearl secret lay exposed! Fitted in with the forced confessions from the side of the _Inner Circle_, and from what Claremanagh had overheard, it was complete. What to do with the guilty ones was the next question. Sanders being a private detective, not a member of the police, considered that his obligation was to his employers, not to the public. He was going to leave the decision to Captain Manners and the Duchess--who were paying for his services. If they and the Duke wanted to pack the lot to prison, at the price of a big scandal, well and good. If, on the contrary, the culprits were to be let off and silence kept, it was the same to him. Later, when he learned by telephone from Manners what had happened in the _Inner Circle_ building, he did not change his mind. He obeyed instructions and ordered the Duchess's car to go there at once. Fortunately night had fallen and the Duke, in any sort of toilet, could easily be smuggled home. "Claremanagh has the pearls," 'phoned Jack. "And he'll soon be fit again--the two principal things. These blighters have got a dead man here--Markoff--but they've a doctor's certificate testifying that he died of heart failure. Arrangements have been made to bury him to-morrow. We think, on the whole, that the dead past had best bury _its_ dead, too! No great crime has actually been done, as it turns out. But the scandal would be great, for a number of innocent ones who don't deserve it. What?" Sanders grinned quietly. He guessed _which_ innocent one was most in Manners' thoughts! "Right!" he said. "Though it seems a pity that d--d _Inner Circle_ should get off scot free." "Oh, I forgot to tell you. It won't. Pat not only found the pearls, but overheard such a lot he's in a position to turn blackmailer. He's held up the rotters. They've had to sign a paper swearing to mend their ways. Lowndes is one of them; there's an Irishman--compatriot of Pat's--from a London rag, who slugged him. And the _editor_--Gee! you'd _never_ guess who _he's_ turned out to be." "But I know!" said the detective. "Well, anyhow, he's going to transform the _Inner Circle_ into a sort of _Inner Shrine_, if he keeps his promise. Lord! Won't the next number be a sensation?" "Yes--make up to the public a bit for losing the truth about the great pearl secret." Jack laughed joyfully--his first happy laugh for weeks. And then, even from that unblest place, the flat of Madame Veno, he could not omit calling up Lyda, at her house. She was at home, and answered: "Oh, I'm thankful to hear your voice. Is all well with the Duchess?" "Yes, also with the Duke." "He's found?" "Yes. _And_ the pearls. So all's well with everyone except me." "Why not with you?" "How can it be till you give me that promise?" "But--since these things have happened, it's yours already. And--so am I. You are _the_ man. I am _the_ woman!" "My goddess!" cried Jack through the uncongenial telephone. "I'm coming to you the instant I'm free. Juliet and Pat send you their love. You've got all mine already." THE END * * * * * BOOKS BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON A Soldier of the Legion Everyman's Land It Happened in Egypt Lady Betty Across the Water Lord Loveland Discovers America My Friend the Chauffeur Princess Virginia Rosemary in Search of a Father Secret History Set in Silver The Car of Destiny The Chaperon The Golden Silence The Great Pearl Secret The Guests of Hercules The Heather Moon The Lightning Conductor The Lightning Conductor Discovers America The Lion's Mouse The Motor Maid The Port of Adventure The Princess Passes The Second Latchkey 
56230	----	Trobe University, Australia Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: http:// arrow.latrobe.edu.au/store/3/4/6/3/1/public/B14644101.pdf (La Trobe University, Australia) [Illustration: Front cover] THE AMETHYST CROSS ------------------------------------- _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ ------------------------------------- THE MYSTERY OF A SHADOW ------------------------------------- CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD. LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE ------------------------------------- [Frontispiece: "'Father!' she shrieked!" (_see page 194_.)] THE AMETHYST CROSS BY FERGUS HUME AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB," "FLIES IN THE WEB," "THE PURPLE FERN," "THE MYSTERY OF A SHADOW," ETC. WITH COLOURED FRONTISPIECE BY C. DUDLEY TENNANT CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 1908 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY II. THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS III. ANOTHER MYSTERY IV. A FAMILY HISTORY V. MRS. WALKER'S OPINION VI. PURPLE AND FINE LINEN VII. AFTER MIDNIGHT VIII. UNDER A CLOUD IX. TWO GIRLS X. THE _DEUS EX MACHINA_ XI. THE SEAMY SIDE XII. A COUNTERPLOT XIII. MRS. WALKER'S VISIT XIV. THE FAMILY LAWYER XV. A STARTLING LETTER XVI. RECOGNITION XVII. DISGRACE XVIII. LADY CHARVINGTON'S ACCUSATIONS XIX. MR. HALE EXPLAINS XX. JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS' MEETING XXI. TWO INTERVIEWS XXII. THE PLOT XXIII. ONE PART OF THE TRUTH XXIV. ANOTHER PART OF THE TRUTH XXV. REVENGE XXVI. THE END OF IT ALL THE AMETHYST CROSS CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY THE blackbird knew. He had paired for the fifth time in as many years, and esteemed himself wise in the matters, of love. Therefore, from the budding chestnut wherein his nest was built, did he sympathetically watch the bachelor and maid who sat below. They were lovers as he knew very well, for only lovers could have gazed so persistently into one another's eyes, and therein did they behold each other as each wished to be. Which sentence is cryptic to those who are not lovers as these were. They might have looked at the smoothly-flowing river, singing quietly to itself not a stone-cast away, or round a tangled garden, delicately beautiful with the young greenery of May, or up into the azure depths of a sky, flecked with silvery clouds. But they preferred--wisely it may be--to look into each other's eyes, to clasp hands and to remain silent with that eloquent muteness, which is the speech of true love. Oh! the blackbird knew the meaning of these things very thoroughly, and chuckled with such glee that he finally broke into glorious song concerning the new love, the true love, the old love, the bold love, which comes evermore with the blossoms of spring. But these inhabitants of Paradise did not require the bird to reveal the obvious. Their hearts were also singing the song of the early year. "It can't last for ever," murmured the maid dreamily, "it is too beautiful to last, since we are but mortal." "It shall last for ever; it must," corrected the bachelor, wise in that wisdom of the gods, which comes to wooers, "for we love with our souls, dearest, and these cannot die." She knew that he was right, for her heart told her so. Therefore did they again look into one another's eyes and again become silent, while the fluting blackbird explained more than mere human speech could render. And he, perched on a swaying bough, was only too willing to interpret. He knew: he was wise. And listening Nature heard complacently. To such ends had she shaped her children; for such a reason had she provided their Arcadia. As Arcadia, like Marlowe's hell, is not circumscribed, it chanced that this especial one was by Thames-side, and those who dwelt therein were up-to-date in looks and dress and manners. Only their feelings were those of classic times, and as he told her the old, old story, which is ever new, she listened with the instinctive knowledge that the tale was wonderfully familiar. She had read it in his eyes, after the manner of maids, long before he dared to speak. And this river Paradise was not wholly unworthy at so comely an Adam and Eve, although limited in extent and untrimmed in looks. Lord Beaconsfield declared that the most perfect garden is that cultivated to excess by man and then handed over to the caprice of Nature. The owner of this demesne apparently subscribed to this dictum, for the garden, well-filled with expensive flowers and shrubs, had long since relapsed into wildness. On either side of the narrow strip of land, sloping gradually to the stream, extended low walls of mellow red brick overgrown with dark-green ivy. The flowerbeds were luxuriant with docks and nettles and charlock and divers weeds: the pathways were untidy with lush grass, and the tiny lawn at the water's edge was shaggy and untrimmed. A wooden landing-stage floated near shore at the garden's foot, and to this was attached the young man's boat. At the far end of this neglected domain could be seen a thatched cottage with whitewashed walls and oblong lattices quaintly diamond-paned. So rustic and pretty and old-world did it look that it might well have been the fairy-dwelling of a nursery tale. And the lovers themselves were young and handsome enough to deserve the care of the fairies. He was tall, slim, well-formed, and Saxon in his fairness. His curly hair--so much of it as the barber's shears had spared--was golden in the sunlight, as was his small moustache, and his eyes were bravely blue, as a hero's should be. The white boating-flannels accentuated the bronze of his skin, and revealed the easy strength of an athlete. He looked what the girl took him to be--a splendid young lover of romance. Yet he was but a City clerk of prosaic environment, and his youth alone improved him into Don Juan o' Dreams. The girl resembled Hebe, maidenly, dainty, and infinitely charming; or it might be Titania, since her appearance was almost too fragile for the work-a-day world. With a milky skin; brown-haired and brown-eyed; with a tempting mouth and a well-rounded chin, she looked worthy of any man's wooing. She was sweet and twenty; he but five years older, so both were ripe for love. And then the spring, joyous and fresh, had much to do with the proposal just made. Her answer to his question had been tunefully commented upon by the irrepressible blackbird, who expressed no surprise when the echo of a kiss interrupted his song. "But my father will never agree, George," sighed the girl, after this outward and visible sound of acceptance. "Dearest Lesbia"--he folded her manfully in his arms--"I don't see why your father should object. I am not rich certainly, as a stockbroker's clerk doesn't earn large wages. But for your dear sake I shall work and work and work until I become a millionaire." Lesbia smiled at this large promise. "We may have to wait for years." "What does it matter so long as our hearts are true?" "They may grow sick with waiting," said Lesbia, sighing. Then she proceeded to look on the practical side of their idyll, as the most romantic of women will do at the most romantic of moments. "You earn only two hundred a year, darling, and my father--so far as I know--can give me nothing. He has his pension from Lord Charvington, and makes a small income by his work in the City, but"--here came a depressing pause. "What does Mr. Hale do in the City?" asked George abruptly. Lesbia opened her brown eyes. "I don't know, dear. He goes there two or three times a week, and always seems to be busy. I have asked him what his occupation is, but he only laughs, and declares that dry business details would not interest me. I am sure no girl ever knew so little of her father as I do. It's not fair." "Strange!" murmured the young man meditatively. "I never see Mr. Hale in the City, and although I have asked several people, no one appears to know the name. Of course, darling, the City is a big place, and your father may do business in a quiet way. Still it is odd that no one should know. I wish I did. I might help him." "In what way?" "Well, Lesbia, the wages I receive at Tait's office are small, and--and--and"--here George flushed for no apparent reason--"and there are other things to be considered. If I could only get something else to do I should leave Tait's. Your father might be willing to let me enter his office, you know, and then I could work up his business, whatever it might be." The girl nodded. She was a matter-of-fact young woman. Since Hale's income was limited she was compelled, as housekeeper, very often to consider ways and means. "You might speak to my father." "And may I mention our engagement?" he supplemented. "No-o!" Lesbia looked doubtful. "I had better announce that. Father has a temper, and if he grew angry, you might grow angry also." "Oh no." George was entirely in earnest when he said this. "I should always remember that he was your father and that you love him." Lesbia again looked doubtful. "Do I love him?" she mused. "One is supposed to love one's father," suggested George. She stared at the river. "Yes! I suppose so. Honour your parents, and so forth. I don't honour my father, though--his temper is too bad. I am not quite sure if I love him." "Oh, my dear." George looked nervous. "Don't make any mistake, dear boy. I like my father, since we are good friends, and usually he is kind--that is, when he is not in a rage. But then, you see, sweetest," she sighed, "he is nearly always in a rage about some trifle. Look at the garden," she waved her hand vaguely, "I wanted to hire a gardener to make it look more respectable, and father was furious. He declared that he did not want people to come spying round the cottage. Spying! Such an odd word to use." "Your father is an odd man," said George ruefully, "and he certainly has not been over-hospitable to me. Perhaps he guesses that I have come to steal his jewel, and one can't be hospitable to a robber." Lesbia pinched his chin. "You silly boy, my father doesn't think so much of me as you do. I sometimes wonder," she went on sadly, "if he loves me at all. I am very much alone." "He doesn't treat you badly?" demanded George with sudden heat. "No, dear, no. I shouldn't allow anyone to treat me badly, not even my father. But I fancy he regards me as a necessary trouble, for sometimes he looks at me in a disagreeable way as though he fancied I was spying." "Why do you use so disagreeable a word?" asked the straightforward clerk. "My father used it himself in the first instance," she rejoined promptly; "perhaps because he doesn't want anyone else to meet the queer people who come to see him,--generally after dark. Men who smell of drink, who use slang and dress like grooms,--certainly not gentlemen. Of course I never talk to them, for when they appear, my father always sends me to my room. I'm sure," sighed the girl dolefully, "that if it wasn't for old Tim, the servant, I should be quite alone." George hugged her. "You shall never be alone again!" he whispered, and Lesbia threw her arms round his neck with great contentment. "Oh, darling, you don't know how good that sounds to me. If it were only true. You see, my father may object." "He can object until he is tired," cried the ardent lover. "If he does not make you happy I must. And when he sees this----" "Oh!" Lesbia clasped her hand in delight at the sight of a cheap turquoise ring, "how lovely!" George frowned at the mean gift. "It was all I could afford," said he. "It is all I want," she said, as he slipped it on her engagement finger, "it's not the cost, or even the thing. It's what it means. Love and joy to you and me, dearest boy." But George, having a generous heart, still lamented. "If I hadn't to keep my mother," he said ruefully. "I would save up and give you diamonds. But two hundred a year goes a very little way with my mother, even when her own small income is added. You see, dear, she never forgets that my father was the Honourable Aylmer Walker, and she will insist upon having everything of the best. This is a beastly cheap ring, but--but----" "But you denied yourself all manner of nice things to buy it for ME," finished Lesbia, pressing a kiss on his willing cheek. "No, dear, no," he said valiantly, "only a few pipes of tobacco." "You dearest donkey," cooed the girl, more touched than she chose to confess, "doesn't that show me how you love me. As to the ring," she surveyed the cheap trinket critically, "it is exactly what I wanted. The stones are the colour of your dear eyes." George, man-like, was delighted. "You know the colour of my eyes?" Lesbia boxed his ears delicately. "I knew the colour exactly one minute after our very first meeting." "Did you love me then?" "No. Certainly not: how conceited you are." "Then why did you notice my----" "Oh, a woman always notices these things, when a man is nice." "And you thought me nice?" Lesbia fenced. "Good-looking, at all events. You wore a dark flannel suit striped with pale green." "So I did," cried George, delighted, "it was at Mrs. Riordan's picnic near Bisham Abbey a year ago. And you were there." Lesbia laughed and nursed her knees. "I must have been, since I can describe you so exactly. What did I wear, dear?" "I don't know," said George promptly. "Oh!" she was quite disappointed, "and you call yourself a lover?" "I do," he rejoined stoutly, "for, as I fell in love with you the moment we met, I saw only your eyes and your angel face. How could you expect me to remember a mere dress when----" "Oh, what nonsense--very nice nonsense; still nonsense." "I like talking nonsense to you." "And I like to hear it from you. But it isn't bread and butter." "You're thinking of afternoon tea," said George Walker audaciously. "No. I'm thinking of how we are to live when we marry." The mere mention of that delicious word made George forget the warning conveyed by the sentence. "Marry! Marry you! Oh, heaven!" "A pauper heaven, I fear," said Lesbia; then fished in her pocket, "see, the only valuable thing I possess, besides your love. It is for you." "Oh, my dear, it's not a man's ornament." "As if that matters, since I give it to you," she said, laughing. "I must give you something, and this is all I have to give." She held out her hand, on the palm of which rested an amethyst cross formed of four deeply purple stones, set lightly in gold filigree, with a loop at the top for the necessary chain to pass through. Not a very uncommon ornament at the first glance, George decided, although very beautiful. But on looking more closely he became aware that there was something bizarre about the thing. In the centre where the four stones met was a tiny cube of malachite, graven with a golden crown and inscribed with minute letters. The pansy-blossom hue of the stones contrasting with the vivid green of the cube gave the ornament rather an uncanny look. "What a queer thing," said George, transferring the cross to his broad palm. "Yes! isn't it?" said Lesbia eagerly, and then brought out a magnifying glass. "And the inscription is still queerer." George poised the powerful glass over the slab of malachite, and with some difficulty deciphered the golden Gothic letters. "'Refuse and Lose,'" he read slowly. "Now what does that mean?" "You stupid darling," cried Lesbia, pinching his ear, "can't you see? If you refuse the cross--which is married life; you lose the crown--which is me." Walker thrust the cross into his pocket, handed back the magnifying glass and solemnly embraced the girl, "I'll take the cross and the crown and you, and everything I can get," he whispered in her ear. "I don't exactly see the meaning, of course, but----" "Was there ever such a dense man?" Lesbia demanded of the blackbird in despair. "It's a religious symbol, of course. If you refuse to bear life's cross in the way you should, you lose the crown which ought to be yours in heaven." George took out the ornament again and looked at it seriously. He had a considerable strain of the Puritan in his nature, to which the idea appealed strongly. "I shall certainly not refuse life's cross," he declared soberly, "and may we both some day wear a crown in a better world." "My darling, my dearest, my best," she murmured, embracing him fondly. The touch of seriousness in George's gay disposition enhanced his value in her eyes. She approved of so sterling a character. "Where did you get the cross?" asked Walker, while the jewels winked in the sunshine. "From your father?" "No!" she replied unexpectedly. "He doesn't know that I possess such a thing. But my nurse, old Bridget Burke--Tim's mother, you know--who died last summer, gave it to me on her death-bed and warned me not to tell my father about it. She said that it came from my dead mother, and was to be given by me to the man I loved. So you see, my darling, that even though it is a woman's ornament, you must take it." "I'll wear it round my neck," declared George. "It will bring me good luck, I am sure." "So Bridget said," observed the girl promptly. "She had the 'sight,' you know, George, and declared that the cross would bring me luck and money and love and position. I don't know how, unless it is by marrying you." "Ah, my love," said George somewhat sadly. "I can only give you my heart. Money and position must come later. But if we both obey the inscription and bear the cross we shall win the crown of success in the end. Look how the gems flash, Lesbia--an earnest of the future." While they were both admiring the cross, a tall, lean man, perfectly dressed in a Bond Street kit, came softly down the grassy path. He looked like a gentleman, and also like a hawk, and his pale eyes wandered from one bent head to the other until they dropped to the flash of the jewelled cross, which glittered on Walker's palm. Then the newcomer started nervously, and took a step nearer to observe. Lesbia and her lover looked up as the shadow of the man fell across them, and in the movement they made, the cross fell on the grass. "Oh, father, how you startled us," cried the girl, springing to her feet. Mr. Walter Hale did not reply. His eyes were still on the purple stones of the cross, and when his daughter stooped to pick it up, he twitched his fingers as though anxious to take it from her. "Where did you get that?" he demanded abruptly and harshly. "Bridget gave it to me, and I have given it to George," she said, handing the ornament to her lover. "It belonged to my mother." "It did," said Hale sharply, "and therefore must not pass out of the family." "It won't," said Lesbia cheerfully; "George is to be my husband." Mr. Hale frowned. "You have yet to gain my permission," he said in dry tones. "Meanwhile, Mr. Walker, give me back the cross." "No!" said George, who did not like the tone of his future father-in-law and could be obstinate when necessary. "Lesbia gave it to me, and I intend to keep it." "Lesbia had no right to give it to you," cried Hale, his voice rising, and he extended his hand to take his desire. But Walker was too quick for him and dexterously swerving, shot the cross into his pocket. "It is Lesbia's first present to me," said he, excusing his obstinacy. "She has no right to make you presents," foamed the other, who had now entirely lost his temper. "She has the right of a lover," retorted George coolly. "There can be no question of love between you and my daughter." The girl moved to her lover's side, very pale and very defiant. "That is for me to decide," she said coldly, but with determination. "You go against your father, Lesbia?" "For the first time in my life. And why not, when the matter is so important?" Hale bit his lips and tried to stare her down: but as her eyes did not drop before his own he was the first to give way, and did so with inward rage. With an impatient shrug he wheeled to face young Walker. The two presented the striking contrast of untainted youth and artificial age too much versed in the evils of life. And youth had the advantage, for--as in the case of Lesbia--the older man tried to dominate without success. He was forced to take refuge in idle threats. "If you do not give me back that cross, it will be the worse for you," remarked Hale, very distinctly and with menace. George clenched his fists, then, with a glance towards Lesbia, ended the argument by stepping into his boat. As he rowed off, Hale, who had not attempted to stop him, turned bitterly to his daughter. "You have ruined me," he said between his teeth, and returned hastily to the cottage. CHAPTER II THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS To say that Lesbia was amazed conveys imperfectly her state of mind. The sudden arrival of her father, the hasty departure of her lover, the mysterious incident connected with the amethyst cross, and the still more mysterious remark which Mr. Hale had made--these things perplexed and, very naturally, alarmed her. At once, with the swiftness of an imaginative brain, she conjured up visions of disgrace and shame and criminal publicity, going too far in her surmises, after the fashion of such a brain. For after all, as a calmer reflection suggested, there was nothing in what had taken place that should induce such happenings, although there were several disquieting hints. For a few moments the girl remained where she was, too agitated to move; but when Hale disappeared into the cottage, and George's boat vanished round a bend of the shining river, she woke to the fact that for her own peace of mind it was necessary to ask questions. At once she ran up the grass-grown path, and speedily found herself in the narrow passage, which led right through the house from back to front. But she only entered to hear the street door bang, and flew to open it again in the hope of catching Mr. Hale before he could go far away. But the man must have made good use of his legs, for when she peered out into the quiet side street she noticed that it was empty. This vanishing of her father without an explanation dismayed her more than ever, and in the hope of gaining some sort of information she sought Tim in the tiny kitchen, calling on him loudly. A soft voice like a well-tuned lute answered her from the scullery. "Ah, Miss Lesbia, and what wud ye be after spoilin' yer pretty voice for now? Don't ye, me darlin', don't ye!" "Why has my father gone out, Tim?" asked Lesbia sharply. An odd little man emerged from the scullery and stood coolly rubbing his nose-tip with the toe of the boot he was polishing. "An' how should I know, miss? Didn't he come tearing through the passage, as if the divil wor after him, an' lape like a trout int' the street? Sure ye must have seen the masther rampagin' yersilf." "I know that father came and found me with George and----" "Ah, thin, 'tis Garge, is it?" muttered Tim, beginning to brush mechanically. "And rushed away in a temper because George would not give him my amethyst cross." Crash went the boot on the floor, and the blacking-brush followed, while Tim stared out of his melancholy grey eyes as though he saw a ghost. Decidedly the ornament was causing a considerable sensation, although Lesbia could not understand why her father should rage, any more than why Tim should stare. "Like a stuck pig," as she said, inelegantly. And the annoying thing was that he did more than stare. "Oh, blissid saints in glory!" groaned the Irishman, crossing himself. "What on earth do you mean?" asked the girl, tartly, for she was beginning to weary of these mysteries. "Oh, blissid saints in glory!" Tim moaned again, and, picking up the boot and the brush with the expression of a martyr, went into the scullery to peel potatoes. Lesbia, who was a determined young woman, followed, quite bent upon getting at the root of the disturbance. "Come and talk, Tim." "Sure an' I must git the dinner ready anyhow, Miss." "Come out, or I'll come in," cried Lesbia, standing at the door. "Sure ye wudn't dirthy th' clothes av ye," coaxed Tim, and very unwillingly scrambled back into the cleaner, drier kitchen with the tin basin of potatoes in his huge fist. He was certainly an ugly, under-sized man, and looked like the wicked dwarf of a fairy tale. But the similarity was all on the surface, for Tim Burke was as good and devoted a little Paddy as ever dipped his fingers into holy water. But his appearance was not prepossessing, for he was broader than he was long, and on a pair of hunched shoulders was set askew a gigantic head much too large for his squat body. His short legs were crooked, and he usually walked in a crab-like fashion in unexpected directions--that is, whither his brain did not direct his legs to go. He was barely five feet high, and his shaggy beard was as red as the untidy hair covering his poll. He was quite a monstrosity. Nevertheless, Tim had his good points, for Nature had given him beautiful grey eyes, pathetic as those of a dog, and a sweet sympathetic voice, which sounded like a mellow bell. To hear Tim sing Irish ditties of the heart-breaking sort was a treat not to be met with every day, but he rarely sang them, save to Lesbia, whom he adored. And small wonder, for she alone was kind to the odd, uncouth, little man. Mr. Hale, whose selfishness was phenomenal, treated Tim like a white slave and, indeed, he might be called one, seeing that he worked like a horse and received no wages. Yet he was an admirable housekeeper and a magnificent cook. With such qualifications he could have procured a well-paid situation. Yet, for Lesbia's sake, he remained at Rose Cottage, watching her like a cat a mouse, but with more amiable intentions. She was the legacy which his mother Bridget, the girl's nurse, had left him on her death-bed, when she died some twelve months before. Lesbia, looking like a fairy princess attended by her dwarf, perched herself on the kitchen table with a severe face. To lose no time while being questioned, Tim set to work peeling the potatoes, for Mr. Hale growled like a bear when his meals were not placed punctually on the table. As he peeled each potato, he dropped it with a splash into a bucket of clean water and rarely raised his sad eyes to the face of his young mistress during the conversation which ensued. Also--and this Lesbia noticed--he conversed very reluctantly, and every admission was wrung from unwilling lips. "Tim," said his mistress severely, and beginning at the beginning, "you are the only son of my nurse, Bridget Burke." "I am that, Miss, her only boy, Miss, and a good mother she was to me." "A good nurse also, Tim. She loved me." "An' who wudn't, ye pretty creature? Ain't I devoted to ye likewise, me darlin'? Answer me that now?" "I shall do so," said Miss Hale significantly, "when our conversation comes to an end." Tim groaned and winced. "Bad luck to the crass," he breathed, "an' may the Vargin forgive me for sayin that same." "Why, bad luck to the cross?" demanded Lesbia, coming to the point. "An' how shud I know, me dear?" "But you do know," she insisted. "Tim, your mother gave me that cross." "Did she now?--the owd fool." "How dare you, Tim, and Bridget dead? She was your mother." "Deed an' well she might be, Miss, for an uglier owd woman nivir could be found in County Clare, forby she left it for this blissid country whin I wor a gossoon." "Did my father bring her over from Ireland, Tim?" "Not he," Tim shook his Judas-coloured head. "Divil an eye did the pair av us clap on the gintleman for many a long day. Wasn't I a bare-futted brat runnin' wild about Whitechapel till my father--rest his sowl--wos tuck by the police for shop-liftin'--bad luck to thim? An' he died in gaol, poor man--ah, that he did, laving me mother an' me widout bread in the mouths av us." "What did Bridget do then, Tim?" "Sure she come to Wimbleton or a place hard by," admitted Tim reluctantly, "sellin' apples an' nuts, an' a mighty bad thing she made by the sale." "I want to know exactly how she came to be my nurse?" said Lesbia. Tim bent over the potatoes deeply interested in the peeling. "Why, Miss, your father--" here he swallowed something--"the masther, Miss, and a kind, good gintleman, tuck pity on her and give her the situation as your nurse, me dear." "But my mother?" "Oh, howly saints, an' how cud she say anything whin she wos dyin' an' you but a year old? But my mother nursed you like her own choild, Miss, till ye went to that school at Hampstead. But ye came back here just whin she was dyin', poor sowl." "I did, a year ago," said Lesbia significantly, "and in time to receive the cross, Tim." "May the father av lies fly away wid it!" groaned the dwarf. "An' may the saints forgive me for the wicked wish." "Whatever do you mean, Tim?" "Mane, ah, nivir ask me what I mane. But the crass isn't with ye now, an' ye'll be the betther widout it." "Oh!" Lesbia slipped off the table with a heightened colour, "does that mean it is unlucky? I gave it to George, you see, and----" "Ah, divil doubt but what you'd give the head av ye to Garge," grumbled Tim, taking up the tin of peeled potatoes. "Ah, well, 'tis betther he shud have it nor you, me dear." "But why, but why?" asked Lesbia, frantic with curiosity. "Ah, nivir ask me, Miss," replied Tim enigmatically, and departed to continue his culinary work; also--as she could see--to avoid further questioning. Failing Tim, the girl resolved to learn what her father would say, when at dinner. This was a meal which Mr. Hale never missed, as he was devoted to the pleasures of the table and appreciated Tim's excellent cooking. He always arrayed himself in purple and fine linen to do justice to the viands set before him, and it was the rule of the cottage that Lesbia should also dress appropriately. Her father prided himself upon being ultra-civilised, and would have eaten a red herring with sartorial ceremony. The table was admirably laid with crystal and silver and valuable china, and--decorated with flowers in graceful vases--looked extremely pretty. Tim, in a livery of his master's devising, acted as butler, and the wines were as good as the food, which is saying a lot. Mr. Hale might live in a humble cottage and might mix with queer people, but he was a sybarite, who enjoyed the good things of this life artistically prepared. The room was beautifully furnished, and Lesbia was more beautiful than the room. Therefore, on this especial night, Mr. Walter Hale had both his palate and his eye gratified. His ear was not ministered to quite so pleasantly, as, after dinner, and when Tim had left the room to prepare the coffee, he renewed the subject of the cross with his daughter. "Lesbia," said he, fixing his eyes on her somewhat flushed face, and looking extremely high-bred, "why did you give away that cross?" "Bridget, who presented it to me on her death-bed, said that I was to bestow it on the man I meant to marry. I have done so." This was a very defiant speech, and Hale frowned. "I shall not allow you to marry young Walker," he said distinctly. Lesbia shrugged her shoulders with indifference. This was not the way to manage her. "I am sorry, father, as I have decided to become his wife." "He has no money, you silly girl. I know for a fact that he is paid only a small salary by Michael Tait, who is a screw and a skinflint where his own pleasures are not concerned. Moreover, Walker has to support his widowed mother, and she is not likely to welcome a daughter-in-law who will curtail her comforts, such as they are. A hard woman, Lesbia, a very hard woman, my dear. I ought to know, as we have been acquainted for years." The prospect did not seem alluring, but love sustained the girl. "George might get a better situation," she ventured to remark, a trifle anxiously. "Why," she added, this as though the thought had just struck her, "he might help you, father." Hale spilt the port wine he was pouring into his glass. "What's that?" "You need not speak crossly, father," replied Lesbia, puzzled by the sharpness of his tone. "I merely suggested that George might enter your office, and then he----" The man rose suddenly and began to pace the room with the glass of wine in his hand. But the look he cast upon his daring child was so grim that the unfinished sentence died on her lips. "'George--might--enter--your--office!'" he repeated slowly, and ended with a cynical laugh. "Humph! I wonder now----" he laughed again and checked his speech. Then he finished his glass of wine and returned to the table. "When does Walker come to see you again?" he asked abruptly. "To-morrow night at six o'clock," said Lesbia, promptly. "He rows down the river from Medmenham, or walks along the towing-path, every evening." "A devoted lover truly," said Hale drily, "and how long has this pretty wooing been going on?" "For a few months," said Lesbia, rather alarmed by the stern expression of her father's face. "Don't be angry. After all, it was you who introduced me to George." "The more fool I, seeing his age and looks and poverty. Lesbia!" he placed his knuckles on the table and leaned across it. "You must marry my friend, Captain Sargent." "Ex-Captain Sargent," cried Lesbia scornfully, and rising unexpectedly. "I shall do nothing of the sort. I don't even like him." "Pooh! Pooh! Pooh! He is a gentleman----" "So is George." Hale rapped the table sharply. "Do not interrupt, you minx. Sargent has retired from the army, it is true. But he has a good income and a pretty bungalow at Cookham. We were in the same regiment until I left the service some fifteen years ago; so I know him well. He will make an excellent husband--a very excellent husband indeed." "But, father, he is nearly as old as you are." "What of that? Sargent is a handsome man and looks young." Lesbia bit her lip, and tapped her foot on the ground. "I shan't marry him." Hale scowled. "You shall. I am your father and you shall do as you are told, my dear. And if you don't marry Sargent you shall certainly not marry Walker, unless----" he stopped suddenly. "Unless what?" "Unless you get that cross back from him," stormed Hale angrily. Lesbia was nothing if not direct, and the mystery of the cross piqued her exceedingly. She ventured on a leading question. "Why do you want that cross so much, father?" "It belonged to your poor mother," said Mr. Hale sentimentally, "and means more to me than you can ever guess. I missed it from your mother's jewel-case when she died; but I never expected that Bridget Burke, who was supposed to be the soul of honesty, had stolen it." "No! no. I don't believe Bridget would have stolen anything." "Bridget would have done anything that suited her," retorted Hale grimly, "and if she came by the cross honestly--say by your mother giving it to her--why did she not let you show it to me?" "I can't guess: perhaps she thought you would take it from me." "I might and I might not," replied Hale hesitatingly, "but at all events I should not have allowed you to give it to young Walker. You must ask him to return it at once." "I shall not," said Lesbia determinedly. "You shall," cried Hale, and their eyes met like those of two duelists crossing swords. But the father's eyes fell first. "You dare to defy me." "Not exactly, but----" "I want no explanations, thank you; but I'll make a bargain with you. If Walker returns that cross he can have you as his wife. If not, I shall refuse to allow him to haunt the cottage or pay attentions to you. And remember, Lesbia, that I hold the purse-strings." "George can keep me," panted Lesbia, her colour rising. "George has to keep his mother. Marry him without a dowry and see what the Honourable Mrs. Aylmer Walker will say." "You cannot give me a fortune, father." "I can give you two thousand a year if you are obedient," said her father coolly, and walked towards the door. "Think it over, Lesbia," and he left her to meditate on the astounding news. Lesbia was naturally astonished, since she never dreamed that her father was so wealthy. Everything in the cottage was good of its kind, and even luxurious, and the living was excellent. But at times Hale appeared to lack ready money, and frequently impressed upon Tim that it was necessary to be economical. Why then should he act in this way when he appeared to be rich, and why should he offer so large an income on condition that the cross was returned? So far as Lesbia understood her father's hard nature, he was not a man to pay generously for a merely sentimental idea. However, the fact remained that if she could get the amethyst cross returned, she could marry George and bring him a substantial dowry. After much reflection, she determined to ask George for the ornament. After all, she could easily give him something else, and it was worth satisfying her father when so much was at stake. For half a moment Lesbia thought that she would put on her cloak and hat, and walk along the towing-path to Medmenham in the hope of meeting her lover. It was now half-past eight, as dinner had taken place at seven. Mr. Hale had gone out, and Tim, as was his custom on fine evenings, was paddling about in a boat on the river, sometimes rowing and sometimes fishing. She was alone and the solitude was becoming irksome. A great wave of desire for love and sympathy came over the girl, and she longed to see George Walker immediately, not only to tell him of her father's offer, but to be petted and kissed and comforted. But a few minutes' reflection showed her that it was not advisable that she should walk alone to Medmenham, especially as the chances were that she might not meet her lover. It was true that he would certainly be at home, but Lesbia did not know Mrs. Walker and, from the description given by her father, hesitated to meet that formidable lady. On the whole, then, she decided, it was better to wait until George came as usual on the ensuing evening. Being alone, it was difficult to find entertainment. Lesbia played the piano for a few minutes: then she read and afterwards enjoyed a game or two of Patience. Finally, feeling bored in the lonely house, she retired to bed about ten o'clock. There she speedily fell asleep, and dreamed that all obstacles were removed, and she was George Walker's wife. When she put out her light, neither Mr. Hale nor Tim had returned. Lesbia's sleep lasted for some considerable time. Then she suddenly sat up with her senses keenly alive to every sensation. It seemed to her that George had called her, and that she had awakened in answer to his cry. And it was a cry for help, too! With a sensation of alarm, she sprang from her bed, and opened the lattice to look down the garden and across the river. There it flowed silvery in the calm moonlight: but she heard no cry and saw nothing. Yet the call for help had been very distinct. Lesbia was not superstitious, and had it been broad daylight she would have laughed, at such midnight fancies. But in the mysterious moonlight--alone in the house so far as she knew--and at the hour of twelve o'clock, her heart beat rapidly, and a cold perspiration broke out on her forehead. George was in danger: she was sure of that. And George had called to her in a dream. What was she to do? In which direction was she to look? The first idea that came into her head was to see Tim, and explain. He would not laugh at her fancies, as he had many of his own. Lesbia threw on her dressing-gown, slipped her feet into shoes, and went down the narrow staircase, taking a lighted candle with her. In the hall all was quiet, and she paused here for a single moment, wondering if it was worth while to awaken Tim with such a fantastical story of midnight terrors. Just as she was deciding that it would be wiser to return to bed, she heard a groan, and in her fright nearly dropped the candle. But being a brave girl, she plucked up courage and listened. There came a second groan--from the parlour. Lesbia immediately opened the door and entered. There on the floor she saw a man bound and gagged and stiff, with nothing alive about him but his eyes. And those were the eyes of George Walker. CHAPTER III ANOTHER MYSTERY Lesbia Hale was small, fragile and, in a degree, romantic; but in sufficiently strange contrast, her frame was strong and her nature practical. An ordinary girl would have screamed and fainted, or perhaps would have run away. Lesbia did none of these things. She turned pale, it is true, and she trembled violently as she stared with dilated eyes at the bound form of her lover. Then it came upon her with a rush that immediate aid was required, and without even calling for Tim, she set down her candlestick on a convenient chair, and knelt beside the unfortunate young man. He was certainly in a very bad way; but how he came to be in such a plight, Lesbia, with characteristic commonsense, did not wait to inquire. The first thing was to loosen him, and revive him with wine: then she could ask questions. The answers promised to be interesting. First she dexterously removed the handkerchief from across his mouth, with which George had been gagged in a clumsy manner. This she threw aside with a passing thought that later she would learn to whom it belonged, and then proceeded to unloosen the knot of the rope with which her lover was bound. There was only one rope and only one knot, and when she had disentangled the somewhat complicated fastening, she unwound the cord which curled round him from his broad shoulders to his ankles. With his arms glued to his sides and his feet pressed closely together, George Walker had been tied up with yards of brand-new manila rope, so that he could not move, and was trussed as stiffly as any fowl prepared for the market. And the person or persons who had bound him thus, to make assurance doubly sure, had struck him a heavy blow on the back of his head. Lesbia discovered this by the half-dry blood which clotted his curly hair. "What does it all mean?" asked Lesbia, when George was free from his bonds, and lying almost as stiffly without them as he had when bound. But the young man did not reply, for the very good reason that he had fainted. At once Lesbia kissed him, and then went to the parlour door to summon Tim. She called loudly, quite heedless of the fact that she might waken her father, who did not approve of young Walker. And even if he did not, it was necessary that he should come to aid the unfortunate man. So while the French clock on the mantelpiece struck a silvery twelve, Lesbia shouted at the full pitch of her healthy young lungs. In a few minutes the alarmed voice of Tim was heard, and by the time she was again kneeling beside George, the dwarf shuffled hurriedly into the dimly-lighted room, half-dressed, a candle in one hand and the kitchen poker in the other. "The saints be betwixt us and harm, Miss Lesbia," cried Tim, who looked scared out of his senses, "what's come to you?" "What's come to George, you mean," said Lesbia, looking up. "See, Tim, I heard him call me and came downstairs a few minutes ago to find him bound and wounded. Don't stand there shaking, and don't chatter. Get the brandy and heat some water. He has fainted, and we must bring him to his senses." "But how the divil did Masther Garge come here?" demanded Tim, aghast. "How should I know?" retorted Lesbia impatiently. "We can ask him when he is able to speak. Go and do what I tell you while I waken my father." "Sure the masther isn't in, Miss," expostulated Tim, backing towards the door. "He wint out afther dinner to spind the night wid Captain Sargent at Cookham. An' that we shud have the bad luck av this, while he's away. Oh, Miss Lesbia, wasn't it burglars I was thinking av? But nivir murder, save the mark, an' sudden death at that." "It will be sudden death if you don't get that brandy. Stop!" Lesbia started to her feet. "I'll get it myself. Go and heat the water to bathe his wound." She ran into the dining-room and procured the spirit, while Tim went to stoke up the kitchen fire. Lesbia forced George's teeth apart and poured the brandy wholesale down his throat. The ardent liquor revived him, and he opened his eyes with a faint sigh. "Don't speak, darling," she whispered, with a second kiss, and then set to work chafing his limbs. By the time Tim appeared with a jug of boiling water, the young man had quite recovered his senses, and attempted to explain. "No," said Lesbia sharply, "you are too weak as yet. Bring a basin, Tim, and a sponge. We must bathe his head." Considering she had no practice Lesbia performed her Good Samaritan task very dexterously and, having sponged the wound--a nasty, jagged blow from some blunt instrument,--bound up her lover's head with that cleverness and tenderness which come from love. When he had quite recovered--save for a trifling weakness--she made him lie down on the sofa, and fed him with weak brandy and water. Tim meanwhile lighted the lamp, and exhausted himself in guessing the reason for the condition of young Walker. "It's that blissed crass," moaned Tim, moving round like an unquiet ghost, "bad luck to the same! Didn't I say it wud bring throuble?" "You did, Tim, you did," assented Lesbia, who was seated by the now recovered man, and looking somewhat weary after her exertions, "but as George is comparatively well, he can explain." "The cross is quite safe," said Walker faintly. "I left it at home. Oh, my head, how it aches. No wonder, when such a heavy blow was struck." "Who struck it, dear?" inquired Lesbia. "I don't know," George's voice was weary. "It's a long story." "Drink some more of this," said Lesbia, holding the glass to his pale lips, "and wait until you feel stronger." "Oh, I'm much better now," he replied, pushing the brandy and water away, "but I shan't be able to go to the office to-morrow morning." "Beg-ad, it's to-morrow morning already!" said Tim, glancing at the clock. "Half-past twilve as I'm a sinner, an' here's Miss Lesbia an' mesilf sittin' up like the quality. Oh, the sowl av me, what will the masther say?" "What can he say?" demanded Miss Hale tartly. "Father can't hold you and me accountable for the unexpected." "Unexpected, indeed," breathed George. "Who would have thought that I would have been struck down on the towing-path. I can't guess the reason, Lesbia, it's beyond me." "The crass! the crass!" muttered Tim, shaking his shaggy head. "What do you know about it?" demanded Lesbia. "Divil a thing, but that it brings bad luck," answered Tim sturdily. "It is not altogether bad luck that George has been brought here for me to attend to him," she retorted. "No, dear," Walker patted her hand, "this accident shows me what an angel you are. But how did I come here?" "Don't you know who brought you?" "I know nothing from the time I was struck down on the towing-path near Medmenham, until the moment I saw you standing in yonder doorway with a candle in your hand." Lesbia knitted her pretty brows. "I can't understand. Some enemy----" "I have no enemies," murmured George positively. "Then it's a mystery," declared the girl, still more perplexed. "Tell me exactly what took place." Walker passed his hand wearily across his forehead, for his head ached considerably. "After leaving you with your father, darling, I rowed back to Medmenham, and went home to the cottage. My mother was not within, as she had gone up to town early in the day and did not intend to return until to-morrow----" "That's to-day, begob!" interpolated Tim, again looking at the clock. "Then it is to-day she returns," said Walker, in a stronger voice, "about three in the afternoon. But to continue, Lesbia, I had my dinner and smoked a pipe. Then I grew restless, wondering if you were having a bad time with your father on my account. I thought he would make things unpleasant for you, and determined to come down and see what had happened. That was about ten o'clock." Lesbia patted his hand. "You need not have troubled, dear. My father and I got on very well together." "I did not know that, and so was anxious. I ferried over the river to the towing-path, and walked down towards Marlow, intending to cross the bridge and come here." "I was in bed at ten." "So soon. I thought you might be sitting up." "Well, I did not expect you, dear," explained the girl. "As Tim was out on the river, and my father had gone away, I found it dull. I went to bed because I could think of nothing else to do. Then I fancied I heard you calling for help, and came down to find you gagged and bound." "I did not call for help because I was gagged," said George, "and almost insensible. I expect you were dreaming." "A very serviceable dream," said Lesbia drily. "Go on, George, darling." "About half way between Medmenham and Marlow, while I was walking along in the moonlight, I heard a soft step behind me, and turned to see a man almost on top of me. I had not even time to see what he was like, so quickly did he attack me. Aiming a blow at my head with a bludgeon, he struck me hard, and I fell insensible on the path." "And then?" "Then I woke to find you looking at me in this room. That's all." Lesbia examined her lover searchingly. He wore white flannel trousers, a silk shirt, a white flannel coat, and brown shoes. His panama hat was missing. Then Lesbia uttered an exclamation, and pointed to his pockets. All these, both in coat and trousers, were turned inside out, and the buttons of his shirt were undone, as though he had been searched to the skin. "It's robbery," said Lesbia firmly. "Robbery! Impossible! Why should anyone rob a pauper like me? I have nothing." "You have the crass!" murmured Tim, who was squatting on the floor, and who looked like a goblin. "Tim." It was Lesbia who spoke. "Do you think that Mr. Walker was attacked to get the amethyst cross?" "Faith, an' I can't say, Miss. But me mother--rest her sowl--towld me that the crass brought bad luck, and it's come to Masther Garge here. Maybe it's only talk, but there you are," and he pointed to the young man. Walker reflected for a moment or so, while Lesbia turned over Tim's explanation in her mind. "I daresay he is right," said George pensively, "and you also, Lesbia. I was rendered insensible so that I might be robbed, as is proved by my pockets being turned inside out. As the only article of value I possessed was the cross, and I only acquired that yesterday evening, I expect it was the cross this man was after. If so, he must be very much disappointed, for I left your gift in the drawer of my dressing-table, before I came to see you at ten o'clock." "What was the man like?" "I told you that I only caught a glimpse of him," said Walker fretfully, for the conversation wearied him. "He seemed to be a tall man, and was roughly dressed. His soft hat was pulled over his eyes, and--and I know, nothing more about him." Seeing that he was still weak, Lesbia stood up. "You can lie here on the sofa and go to sleep," she said softly. "To-morrow morning we can talk." "But I have to get to London by the eight o'clock train--the office!" "Bother the office!" said Lesbia inelegantly. "You are not fit to go to the office. Try to sleep. Tim, give me that rug you brought. There, dear," she tucked him in. "I have left a glass of water beside you. Tim can come in every now and then to see how you are." "Augh," groaned Tim, yawning, "it's just as well, Miss. I cudn't slape forty winks, wid blue murther about. But the masther will come back after breakfast, an' what will we say at all, at all?" "Say," snapped Lesbia, who was at the door, looking extremely weary. "Tell the truth, of course. My father will quite approve of what we have done. George, don't talk to Tim, who is a chatterbox, but go to sleep. You need all you can get, poor boy." George, already nearly asleep, murmured an incoherent reply and, leaving Tim to watch over him, Lesbia returned to her room, but not to sleep for at least an hour. Lying on her bed, she tried to fathom the mystery of this assault upon her unoffending lover. Apparently the cross had to do with the matter, as George had never been attacked before. And then in a flash the girl remembered that her father was desirous of regaining the ornament, and apparently, from the way in which he had talked, was prepared to go to great lengths to get it. Could it be that he had struck down her lover? He had been absent all the evening, and would be absent all the night, at Sargent's Cookham cottage, according to the message he had left with Tim. He did not like Walker, and moreover was tall, as the assailant had been. It really seemed as though Mr. Walter Hale had taken the law into his own hands and, to get back his property, as he averred the cross to be, had committed something uncommonly like highway robbery. Lesbia worried over the problem half the night, as she could not believe that her father would act so basely. Finally, towards dawn she fell into an uneasy sleep. It was ten o'clock when she woke, and at once her thoughts reverted to the late exciting event. No such sensational happening had ever before disturbed the quietness of the riverside cottage, and the mystery which environed it was an added fascination. As Lesbia slowly dressed--and in her prettiest frock for the sake of George,--she again wondered if her father was connected with the assault and the attempted robbery. George could only have been attacked for the sake of the amethyst cross, and her father alone--so far as she knew--desired that cross. Yet if Mr. Hale was guilty, why had he brought his victim into his own house? No one else could have brought George, for no one else could have entered. Lesbia had no great love for her father, since he invariably repelled all her proffers of affection; but she now felt that she could actively hate him for his wickedness in so dealing with the man she loved. And yet, as she reflected when she descended the stairs, she could not be sure that her father was guilty, even in the face of such evidence. When Lesbia entered the dining-room she found George quite his old self. The night's rest had done him good, and a cold bath had refreshed him greatly. With Tim's willing assistance he had made himself presentable and, save for a linen bandage round his head, looked much the same as he had done on the previous day. He came forward swiftly with sparkling eyes, and took Lesbia in his arms, murmuring soft and foolish words, after the way of lovers, even less romantic. "Darling! Darling! Darling! How good you have been to me." "I could have done no less for anyone," replied Lesbia, leading him to a chair. "Sit down, dearest, you are still weak." "On the contrary I am quite strong, although my head still aches a trifle from that cowardly blow. Besides, I am hungry, and there is Tim bringing in a magnificent breakfast. Sweetest and best," he went on, leading her to the well-spread table, "this is just as if we were married. You at the top of the table and I at the bottom. Give me a cup of coffee, Lesbia, and I'll serve out the eggs and ham. Tim, you needn't wait." Tim grumbled a trifle, as he loved to wait on Lesbia, But he was an Irishman and appreciated a love affair. It did not need much cleverness to see that young Walker wished to be alone with his beloved, if only to enjoy the unique situation. Tim therefore departed and the couple had their breakfast in heavenly solitude. Lesbia wished to talk about the adventure on the towing-path, and to ask questions, but George positively refused to speak of anything save the most frivolous matters. "Your father will return soon," he explained, passing his cup for more coffee, "and then I shall have to tell my story all over again. Let us talk about ourselves and of our future." Lesbia, after a faint resistance, was only too pleased to obey, so they had an extremely pleasant meal. The room was cheerful with the summer sun, which poured in floods of light and warmth through the windows, and the feeling of spring was still in the air. Most prosaically they enjoyed their food and unromantically ate a large breakfast, but all the time they kept looking at one another and relishing the novel situation. It was brought to an end only too speedily by the sudden entrance of Mr. Hale. Tall, lean, cold and stern, he appeared on the threshold, and stared in surprise at the way in which young Walker was taking possession, not only of his house but of his daughter. "What the devil does this mean?" asked Hale, politely indignant. "Look at George's head," cried Lesbia with a shiver, for her doubts returned fortyfold at the sight of her aristocratic father. "That explains nothing," said Hale drily, "perhaps, Mr. Walker, you will undertake to tell me how it comes that I find you making yourself at home in my poor abode?" George, who was perfectly cool and collected, told his story. Hale listened, much more discomposed than he chose to appear, and at the conclusion of the narrative asked one question, which showed where his thoughts were. "The cross," he said eagerly, "have you been robbed of the cross?" "No," answered Walker positively, "although I believe that I was attacked for the sake of it. But luckily I left it in the drawer of my dressing-table. Can you guess who attacked me?" "No," said Hale coolly, "I cannot." "Still, if you know about the cross----" "I only know that it belonged to my wife and that I want to get it back as soon as possible. Lesbia should never have given it to you. As to your being attacked so that you might be robbed of it, I can't believe that story. The cross, as a jewel, is not so very valuable. Besides, no one but myself and Lesbia and Tim knew that you had it. I presume," ended Hale, in his most sarcastic manner, "that you do not suspect any one of us three." "Oh no," rejoined Walker promptly, and spoke as he believed in spite of the troubled look which Lesbia cast on him. "Still----" Hale threw up his hand to interrupt. "We can talk of your adventure later, Mr. Walker. After all, the cross may have something to do with the way in which you were assaulted, although--as I said--it appears unlikely. I want to recover it immediately, and am the more eager, now that I have heard of your adventure. Give me a note to your mother saying that the cross is to be given to me, and I shall consent to your marriage with Lesbia." George looked at the girl, who nodded. "Let my father have back the cross, since he so greatly desires it," she said. "I can give you something else, dear. I am willing to pay that price for my father's consent." George shrugged his shoulders. "It is immaterial to me," he said calmly, "so long as you are pleased, dear. I only wished to keep the ornament as your first love-gift to me. Have you a pencil, Mr. Hale. Thank you." He scribbled a note. "To Jenny, our maid-servant," he explained, when handing it to the tall, silent man, "she will admit you into my bedroom and you will find the cross in the right-hand drawer of my dressing-table." "But your mother----" "My mother went to London yesterday and will not be back until three o'clock to-day. If you like to wait I can go over with you later." "No," said Hale brusquely, "your mother might make objections. I know how difficult she is to deal with. I'll go myself: you stay here with Lesbia." George was nothing loth, and when Mr. Hale departed he walked with his beloved in the garden. They should have talked of the adventure, and Lesbia should have told George the thought that was uppermost in her mind--namely, that her father was cognisant of the assault. But she did not care to make such an accusation upon insufficient grounds, and moreover hesitated to accuse her father of such a crime. She therefore willingly agreed to postpone all talk of the adventure until Mr. Hale's return, and surrendered herself to the pleasure of the moment. The lovers spent a long morning in the garden of love, gathering the rosebuds which Herrick recommends should be culled in youth. Time flew by on golden wings, and Hale was no sooner gone all the way to Medmenham, than he seemed to come back. He could not have been away for more than five minutes, as it appeared to these two enthralled by Love. For them time had no existence. But their dream of love fled, when Hale came swiftly down the path looking both angry and alarmed, and, indeed, perplexed. "The cross has gone," he said. "Impossible," cried George, starting to his feet, astonished. "I left it----" "The cross has gone," repeated Hale decisively, "your cottage has been robbed, burgled. I repeat, the cross has gone." CHAPTER IV A FAMILY HISTORY After delivering his message of woe, Mr. Hale sat down on the garden seat under the chestnut tree, and mechanically flicked the dust from his neat brown shoes with a silk handkerchief. He was perfectly arrayed as usual, and on account of the heat of the day wore a suit of spotless drill, cool and clean-looking. But if his clothes were cool he certainly was not, for his usually colourless face was flushed a deep red and his eyes sparkled with anger. Lesbia, who had risen with George, looked at him with compunction in her heart. After all--so her thoughts ran--she had suspected her father wrongly. If he had attacked George to regain this unlucky cross, he assuredly would not now be lamenting its loss. And yet if he were innocent, who was guilty, considering the few people who knew that the ornament was in existence? Tim might--but it was impossible to suspect Tim Burke, who was the soul of honesty. "Well," said Hale crossly, "what is to be done?" He looked directly at George, who faced him standing, with a look of perplexity on his handsome face. "Are you sure that the house has been robbed?" he asked doubtfully. Mr. Hale shrugged his shoulders. "I usually say what I mean," he remarked acridly. "I took your note to Medmenham, and found the local policeman conversing with your mother's servant. From her I learned what had taken place, and, indeed, she was telling the constable when I came up." "Well?" "It seems," pursued Hale, producing a cigar, "that Jenny--as she is called----" "Yes, yes!" broke in Walker impatiently, "go on." "Well, then, Jenny rose this morning to find the window of the drawing-room wide open. Nothing was touched in that room. But your bedroom was ransacked thoroughly. Your clothes were strewn about, and apparently every pocket had been examined. The drawers were opened, and even the bed had been overhauled. There was no sign of the burglar, and Jenny swears that--sleeping at the back of the house--she heard nothing." "And what has been stolen?" asked Lesbia, hesitatingly. "Only the cross." "Are you sure?" "Absolutely! I gave Jenny the note and together with the policeman who, by the way, is a bucolic idiot, she took me to the bedroom. I examined the right-hand drawer which was open, as were all the other drawers, and found that the cross was missing. Jenny declared that nothing else had been taken. Of course the girl was in a great state of alarm, as she was the sole person in the house, and she feared lest she should be accused. Also, and very naturally, she was surprised at your being away, Walker." George nodded. "I daresay. It is rarely that I sleep away from home, and when I do I give notice. Humph!" he sat down on the grass opposite Mr. Hale and gripped his ankles. "What do you think, sir?" Hale made a vague motion of despair. "What can I think? I know as much as you do, and nothing more. Would you mind my putting you in the witness-box, Walker?" "By no means. Ask what questions you desire." "And I shall be counsel for the defence," said Lesbia, sitting down beside her lover with rather a wry smile. It appeared to her that Mr. Hale wished to recall his offer to let the marriage take place: also that he wished to get George into trouble if he could. But how he proposed to do so the girl could not tell. However she was anxious and listened with all her ears. Mr. Hale raised his eyebrows at her odd speech, but took no further notice of it. He was too much interested in his examination. "Lesbia," said Mr. Hale quietly, "gave you the cross yesterday evening in my presence, so to speak. What did you do with it?" "I slipped it into my breast-pocket," said Walker promptly, "and rowed back to Medmenham, as you saw. On arriving, I placed it for safety in the drawer of my dressing-table. Then, later, as I explained at breakfast, I came down to see Lesbia and was assaulted by an unknown man." "Did you show the cross to anyone, say to Jenny?" "No. And if I had shown it to Jenny, it would not have mattered. You do not suspect an honest girl like her, I presume." "Honest girls may yield to the temptation of stealing such a fine ornament as the cross," said Hale drily. "However, it may set your mind at rest if I say that I don't suspect Jenny. Had she stolen the cross, she would not have had the imagination to upset the room and leave the window open, so as to suggest burglary. But think again, Walker; did you show the cross to anyone after leaving this garden?" "No," said George positively, "I certainly did not, that is, not voluntarily." "Ah! then some one else did see it," said Hale, with satisfaction and with marked eagerness. "Come, man, speak up." "I had almost forgotten," said Walker slowly. "Perhaps the blow on my head made me forget; but I remember now." "Remember what?" asked Lesbia, as eager as her father. "That those gipsies saw the cross." "Gipsies?" Hale and his daughter glanced at one another. "Yes. I was walking up the lane to my home when I passed a gipsy encampment. While doing so I pulled out my handkerchief, and the cross--which I had placed in my breast-pocket--fell out. The handkerchief twitched it, I suppose. It flashed down on the grass, and the glitter caught the eye of a man lounging near the caravan. He came forward and pointed out where it had fallen, as I had not noticed its whereabouts for the moment. By the time I picked it up two or three of the gipsies had gathered round, and saw me restore it to my pocket. Then I thanked the man and went home." Lesbia clapped her hands. "Why it is perfectly plain," she cried, delighted. "That man must have assaulted you on the towing-path to steal the cross. Not finding it on you, he robbed the house. What do you think, father?" Hale nodded. "I think as you do. So the best thing to be done will be to come and see the constable, or the inspector here in Marlow. We must have those gipsies searched before they go away. The encampment was still there this morning; but I saw signs of removal." George leaped to his feet. "Yes, it must be so" he cried eagerly. "I daresay the man robbed me--the cross being flamboyant is just the thing which would attract him." "Then we must see the inspector. I must get the cross back. It is a pity I remained at Cookham last night with Sargent. Had I been here, I should have gone at once to Medmenham." "But it was midnight, father." "I don't care. The mere fact that Walker here was assaulted would have proved to me that the cross was wanted. Since he left it at home the thief would probably have burgled the house. I might have caught him red-handed. Oh, why didn't I come home last night?" Mr. Hale was genuinely moved over the loss of the ornament. And yet Lesbia could not think that it was mere sentimental attachment thereto, as having belonged to his dead wife, that made him so downcast. Also in itself the cross was of comparatively little value. Lesbia's suspicions returned, and again she dismissed them as unworthy. Moreover, if Hale had assaulted George and had committed a burglary he would not be so eager to set the police on the track. Whosoever was guilty he at least must be innocent. Cold as her father was to her, and little affection as she bore him, it was agreeable to find that he was honest--though, to be sure, every child expects to find its parents above reproach. Perhaps a sixth sense told Lesbia that her father was not all he should be. In no other way could she guess how she came to be so ready to think ill of him. But up to the present, she had suspected him wrongly, and so was pleased. Hale and young Walker went to the Marlow police-office and explained in concert what had occurred. The officer in charge of the station heard their tale unmoved, as it was nothing more exciting than a robbery by a vagabond. He went with them personally to Medmenham, and there met the village constable, who presented his report. This did not include any reference to gipsies. His superior--whose name was Parson--questioned him, and learned that the thief or thieves had left no trace behind, and--on the evidence of Jenny the maid--had stolen nothing save the cross. Parson then went to Mrs. Walker's house and questioned the girl. Jenny was naturally much agitated, but was reassured by George, who declared that no one suspected her. "I should think not, sir," she cried, firing up and growing red. "I didn't even know that the cross you speak of was in the house. You never showed it to me, sir." "No," acknowledged Walker truthfully, "I certainly did not." "Did you see any of those gipsies lurking about the house?" asked Parson. "No," said Jenny positively, "I did not. Mr. George went out for a walk at ten o'clock, and I lay down at half-past. I never knew anything, or heard anything, or guessed anything. When I got up at seven, as usual, and went to dust the drawing-room, I found the window open. And that didn't scare me, as I thought Mr. George might have opened it when he got up." "But you knew that he was not in the house?" said Hale alertly. "I never did, sir. I went to wake him after I found the drawing-room window open, and found that he hadn't been to bed. The room was upset too, just as you saw it. If I'd known that I was alone in the cottage I should have been scared out of my life; but I thought Mr. George came in late, and had gone to bed as usual. I nearly fainted, I can tell you," cried Jenny tearfully. "Fancy a weak girl like me being left alone with them horrid gipsies down the lane! But I slept through it all, and I never saw no gipsies about. When I saw the bedroom upset and that Mr. George wasn't there, I called in Quain the policeman. That's all I know, and if missus does give me notice when she comes back I'd have her know that I'm a respectable girl as doesn't rob anyone." Jenny had much more to say on the subject, but all to no purpose; so the three men went to the camp. They found the vagrants making preparations to leave, and shortly were in the middle of what promised to be a free fight. The gipsies were most indignant at being accused, and but for a certain awe of the police would certainly have come to blows with those who doubted their honesty. The man who had seen the cross accounted for his movements on the previous night. He was in the village public-house until eleven, so could not have assaulted Walker on the towing-path, and afterwards was in bed in one of the caravans, as was deposed to by his wife. In fact, every member of this particular tribe--they were mostly Lovels from the New Forest--proved that he or she had nothing to do with either the assault or burglary. Finally, Parson, entirely beaten, departed with the other two men, and the gipsies proceeded to move away in a high state of indignation. "Do you really think that they are innocent?" asked Hale, who surveyed the procession of outgoing caravans with a frown. "Yes, I do," said Parson, who was not going to be taught his business by any civilian. "So do I," struck in Walker. "All the men who saw the cross have accounted for their whereabouts last night. They were not near my mother's house, nor across the river on the towing-path." Hale smiled drily. He had no opinion of Walker's intelligence, or of that which Mr. Parson possessed. "Rogues and vagabonds--as these people are--stand by one another, and will swear to anything to keep one of their number out of gaol. I don't put much faith in the various alibis. You should have searched the caravans, officer." "And the men and women also, I suppose, sir," said Parson quietly. "I had no warrant to do so, let me remind you. Even gipsies have their privileges under the English law. Also, if anyone of these men were guilty, he could easily have passed the cross to one of the women, or buried it. I might have searched and found nothing, only to lay myself open to a lecture from my superiors." "Still," began Hale, unwilling to surrender his point of view, "let me remind you, Mr. Parson, that----" "And let me remind you, sir," broke in the officer stiffly, "that only this ornament you speak of was stolen. If a gipsy had broken into the house he would certainly have taken other things. And again, no gipsy could have carried Mr. Walker into your parlour, seeing that not one member of the tribe is aware of your existence, much less where your cottage is situated. I am ignorant on that score myself." Having thus delivered himself with some anger, for the supercilious demeanour of Hale irritated him, Parson strode away. He intimated curtly to the two men, as he turned on his heel, that if he heard of anything likely to elucidate the mystery he would communicate with them: also he advised them if they found a clue to see him. Hale laughed at this last request. "I fancy I see myself placing the case in the hands of such a numskull." George shook his head. "If you do not employ the police, who is to look into the matter?" he asked gravely. The answer was unexpected. "You are," said Hale, coldly and decisively. George stopped--they were walking back to Marlow when this conversation took place--and stared in amazement at his companion. "Why, I am the very worst person in the world to help you," he said, aghast. "To help yourself, you mean. Remember I promised to consent to your marriage to Lesbia only on condition that I got back the cross." "It is not my fault that the cross is lost." "I never said that it was," retorted Hale, tartly. "All the same you will have to find it and return it to me before I will agree to your marriage with my daughter. It would have been much better had you handed it over to me last night." "I daresay," said George, somewhat sulkily, "but I'm not the man to give up anything when the demand is made in such a tone as you used. Besides, I don't see how I can find the cross." "Please yourself, my boy. But unless you do, Lesbia marries Sargent." "Sargent!" The blood rushed to Walker's cheeks and his voice shook with indignation. "Do you mean to say that you would give your daughter to that broken rake, to that worn-out---- "Ta! Ta! Ta!" said Hale, in an airy French fashion, and glad to see the young man lose his temper. "Sargent is my very good friend and was my brother officer when I was in the army. He would make Lesbia an excellent husband, as he is handsome and well-off and amiable, and----" "And an idiot, a gambler, and a----" "You'd better not let him hear you talk like that." Walker laughed. "I fear no one, let me tell you, Mr. Hale. Mr. Sargent or Captain Sargent as he calls himself----" "He has every right to call himself so. He was a captain." "It is not usually thought good manners to continue the title after a man has left the army," said George drily, and recovering his temper, which he saw he should never have lost with a hardened man like Hale. "You, for instance, do not call yourself----" "There! There! that's enough, Walker," cried the elder man impatiently. "You know my terms. That cross and my consent: otherwise Lesbia marries Sargent." "She loves me: she will never obey you," cried the lover desperately. "I shall find means to compel her consent," said Hale coldly. "Surely, Mr. Walker, you have common sense at your age. Sargent has money and a certain position you have neither." "I can make a position." "Then go and do so. When you are rich and highly-placed we can talk." Hale was as hard as iron and as cold. There seemed to be no chance of getting what was wanted by appealing to his tender feelings, since he had none whatsoever. But after swift reflection Walker thought of something which might make the man change his mind. "Listen, Mr. Hale," he said, when Lesbia's father was on the point of moving away from a conversation which he found unprofitable and disagreeable. "I did not intend to tell you, but as my engagement with Lesbia is at stake I will make a clean breast of it." Hale wheeled round with a cold light in his eyes. "Are you going to confess that you stole the cross and got up a comedy to hide the theft?" George laughed. "I am not clever enough for that. But it is about a possible fortune that I wish to speak--one that may come to me through my mother." "A fortune." Hale flushed, for only the mention of money could touch his hard nature. "I never knew that your mother had money." "She has not now, but she may have." "Go on," said Hale, seeing that the young man hesitated, and watching him with glittering eyes. "I have known your mother for years, but she never told me either that she had money or expected any." "I should not tell you either," said Walker bluntly, "and so I hesitated. I have no business to interfere with my mother's affairs. However, I must speak since I want to marry Lesbia." "I am all attention." "My grandfather left his large fortune equally divided between his two daughters. One was my mother; and her husband, my father, ran through the lot, leaving her only a trifle to live on. I help to keep her." "This," said Hale coldly, "I already know." "But what you don't know is that my aunt--my mother's sister, that is, ran away with some unknown person during her father's lifetime. He was angry, but forgave her on his death-bed and left her a fair share of the money--that is half. As my mother inherited fifty thousand, there is an equal amount in the hands of Mr. Simon Jabez, a lawyer in Lincoln's Inn Fields, waiting for my aunt should she ever come back." "And if she does not?" asked Hale anxiously. "Then, if her death can be proved, the money comes to my mother." "Humph! But you say your aunt ran away with someone--to marry the man, I suppose. What if there is a child?" Walker's face fell. "The child inherits," he said softly. Hale laughed harshly. "You have found a mare's nest," he said coolly, "and I see no reason to change my decision with regard to your possible marriage with Lesbia. Your aunt may be alive and may appear to claim the money. If she is dead, her child or children may come forward. On the other hand, if your mother does come in for the fifty thousand pounds you speak of she is, as I know, a hard woman." "I agree with you," said the young man, moodily and sadly. "She is as hard as you are, Mr. Hale. But if she inherits my grandfather's money--that is, my aunt's share--she has no one to leave it to but me. I am an only child." "Your mother," said Hale deliberately, "is hard as you say; that is, she is as sensible as I am. If you marry against her will, she will not leave you one farthing of this money, which, after all, may never come into her possession." "But why should she object to Lesbia?" asked George, "when she meets her and sees how lovely she is----" "Bah!" Hale looked scornful, "you talk like a fool. As if any woman was ever moved by the beauty of another woman. Besides, your mother hates me; we are old enemies, and rather than see you marry my daughter she would go to your funeral with joy. If you married against her will--as you assuredly would in making Lesbia your wife--she would leave you nothing. And I also dislike the match on account of your mother." "But why are you her enemy, and she yours?" asked George, bewildered. "That is a long story and one which I do not intend to relate unless driven to speak. If Lesbia marries you she will lose two thousand a year which I can give her when I die. If you want to drag the girl you love down to poverty, Mr. Walker, then marry her secretly. I tell you that if you make Lesbia your wife neither I nor your mother will help you." "And yet you said----" "That you could make Lesbia your wife, if you found the cross. Yes, I did say that, and I still say it. If you get me the cross, you shall marry her and have the two thousand a year when I die. But it would be wiser for you to leave Lesbia alone and marry----" "Marry whom?" asked George, his cheeks flaming. "Maud Ellis," retorted Hale with a sneering laugh, and turned away. CHAPTER V MRS. WALKER'S OPINION After that one extraordinary adventure which broke so remarkably the monotony of George Walker's life, things went very smoothly for a time. That is, they progressed in their usual humdrum way, which was trying to the young man's ambitious spirits. He wanted to marry Lesbia, to make a home for her, to attain a position, which her beauty would adorn; and he saw no means of doing so. He went regularly to the office, earned his small salary, and dreamed dreams which could never be realised, at least, there appeared to be no chance of realisation. What could a man of moderate attainments, with no money and no friends, hope to do in the way of cutting a figure in the world? Mrs. Walker duly returned home, and Jenny gave her a highly-coloured account of the burglary, which she heard in stern silence. She was a tall, grim woman with a hard face and a stiff manner, and was invariably arrayed in plain black gowns devoid of any trimming whatever. Her hair, still dark in spite of her age, was smoothed over her temples in the plain early Victorian manner, and her pale countenance was as smooth as that of a young girl. That she was a gentlewoman could easily be seen, but her manner was repellent and suspicious. Also, her thin lips and hard grey eyes did not invite sympathy. How such a Puritanical person ever came to have a handsome, gracious son such as George, perplexed more than one person. The general opinion was that he inherited his looks and his charm of manner from his late father. Report credited the Honourable Aylmer Walker with more fascination than principle. And truth to tell, his posthumous reputation was better than that which he had enjoyed when living. Having ascertained the facts of the burglary and the loss of the amethyst cross, Mrs. Walker held her peace, and did not discuss the subject with her son. George, indeed, ventured upon a lame explanation, which she received in dead silence. After the hint given by Mr. Hale, the young man was not desirous of disclosing his engagement to Lesbia, and a discussion about the stolen cross would inevitably lead to the truth becoming known to Mrs. Walker. Sooner or later he knew that he would have to speak, but he postponed doing so until he could see his future more clearly. If he could only procure a better post in the City, he could then afford to keep Lesbia in comparative comfort, and pass a love-in-a-cottage existence. But until he was in a position to do so, he avoided confiding in his mother. Also, Mrs. Walker was not a sympathetic mother, and would certainly not have encouraged the young man's love-dream. But one evening Mrs. Walker unexpectedly broached the subject at dinner. This was seven days after the adventure of the cross, and during that time George had never set eyes on Lesbia. Several times he had rowed as usual to the garden's foot, but had waited in vain for the girl's appearance. An inquiry at the house provoked no response, as neither Tim nor Lesbia came to the fast-closed door. George in despair had written, but to his anxious letter had received no reply. Lesbia remained silent and the cottage barred and bolted, so George began to believe that Hale had smuggled away his daughter, lest she should elope with the lover of whom he so strongly disapproved. This state of uncertainty wore Walker's nerves thin, and he lost his appetite and his night's rest. Mechanically he went to Tait's office, did his daily work, and returned home again, fretting all the time after the girl who was beyond his reach. He even tried to see Mr. Hale, but that gentleman was conspicuous by his absence. Never was a lover in so dismal a situation. On this especial evening George, in evening dress, faced his silent mother at the dinner-table. Mrs. Walker wore a plain black silk gown, perfectly cut, but wholly unadorned. Like Mr. Hale, she always insisted upon a certain style being observed and dined, so to speak, in state. The tiny room was well furnished with the remnants of her former prosperity, and looked like the abode of a gentlewoman. Nothing could have been more perfect than the table appointments and, if the food was plain, the way in which it was served left nothing to be desired. Jenny, neatly dressed, waited deftly and, at the conclusion of the dinner, placed a decanter of port before George, along with a silver box of cigarettes and a dainty silver spirit lamp. As a rule, Mrs. Walker withdrew at this moment to enjoy her coffee in the drawing-room, while George sipped his wine and trifled with a cigarette, but on this occasion she remained. "You can bring my coffee here," she said to Jenny, in her unemotional voice. George wondered at this departure from the usual routine, for his mother had never broken the domestic rule she had instituted as far back as he could remember. However, he did not feel called upon to say anything but poured out a glass of port, and lighted a cigarette. When Mrs. Walker obtained her coffee, and Jenny had departed, she spoke to her son through the gathering twilight. "I have received a letter from Mr. Hale," said Mrs. Walker in her coldest voice, and sat bolt upright with her eyes on the comely blonde face of her son. "What!" George flushed and started, and laughed nervously. "That is very strange," he said after a pause, "Mr. Hale has never written to you before." "There are reasons why he should not have written to me before, as there are reasons why he writes to me now." "May I know those reasons?" asked George quietly, but inwardly anxious. "Certainly!" Mrs. Walker was disagreeable but excessively polite, as she never forgot her manners, whatever the provocation. "In fact, I have waited to explain them. But I think you had better tell me your story first." "What story?" "That of your engagement to Lesbia Hale, and of the cross which was stolen from this cottage." "What!" George rose restlessly and grew redder than ever. "You know----" "I know everything," said his mother imperiously. "Mr. Hale is annoyed by the way in which you are haunting his Marlow cottage, and has asked me to use my influence with you to stop the annoyance." "That is quite likely," rejoined George, fuming, "but I decline to give up Lesbia. Mr. Hale knows that." "He knows, apparently, that you are obstinate and foolish," said Mrs. Walker in a chilly manner. "And as your infatuation--for it is nothing else--can lead to nothing, I must ask you to stop these hopeless visits." "Mother, if you knew Lesbia----" "I know that Lesbia is the daughter of a man whom I despise and hate," said Mrs. Walker, moved to cold anger, "and my son shall never marry her." "You have not the power to stop the marriage," said George quietly. "That is quite true. I have no money to threaten disinheritance, and no legal power over a man who is of age. I might indeed appeal to your affection, but I fear that it would be useless." George flung his cigarette out of the window, and thrust his hands moodily into his pockets. "Affection is a strange word to use between us, mother," he remarked bitterly. "You have always been strict and straightforward, and painfully polite. You have given me a good education, and you have instructed me in good manners. My home," he looked round, "or rather your home, you permit me to share." "Pardon me, George, you forget that you contribute to the domestic economy of this home, such as it is. Go on." "I mean," cried George desperately, for her manner chilled him, "that you have never been a mother to me in the accepted sense of the word." "I have done my duty," said Mrs. Walker without flinching. "Duty! duty! what is duty when I wanted love? I have lived in a freezing atmosphere which has nearly changed me into a statue. Can you wonder that I sought out someone to love?" "Perhaps not, since you are young and foolish, but I regret that the someone should be a girl that I cannot possibly receive as my daughter-in-law." "What do you mean by that?" demanded George sharply. "Nothing detrimental to the girl," replied Mrs. Walker calmly. "She may have all the beauty in the world, and all the virtues, and probably has, in your eyes, but she is Walter Hale's daughter and so cannot be mine." "Why do you hate Mr. Hale, mother?" "That," said Mrs. Walker, sitting very upright, "is my private business." "But when it interferes with my happiness----" "I cannot help that," she said rigorously. "What is past is past, and what is dead is dead." "I don't understand you." "I do not mean that you should. But I would point out that your association with this girl, has already led you into danger. You have been assaulted and robbed, and have come into contact with the police, which is always undesirable. Renounce Lesbia, George, lest worse befall." "The robbery and the assault are mysteries." "None the less they are dangerous. I can explain no more than you can; but Mr. Hale is a dangerous person, to my knowledge, and----" "Tell me what you know," interpolated her son. "No," said Mrs. Walker, with iron determination. "It would do no good to break the silence of years. All I can say is that you shall never marry the girl with my consent." "And if I do without it," chafed George, irritably. "Then you will never set eyes on me again," returned Mrs. Walker quietly. "Mother!" The woman calmly finished her coffee and rose noiselessly. "The time may come when I can explain," she said in her precise voice. "Meanwhile I can only command you, or implore you--whichever you please--to leave this girl alone and go no more to the Marlow cottage." "I don't see why I should obey you blindly," cried George angrily. "At least give me a reason for your objection to Lesbia." "I have given it: she is the daughter of Walter Hale." "And are the sins of the father--whatever they may be--to be visited upon the child, mother?" "Quoting the Bible will not alter my determination," said Mrs. Walker, absolutely cold and impassive. "You must do as I request or be prepared to see me no more." "Mother, can you not explain about this mysterious cross----" "No." "You refuse to." "I mean that I cannot. I know nothing about the cross, or about the assault made on you, or indeed about the burglary. All I do know is that Mr. Hale is a dangerous man, and is connected with dangerous people--what has occurred proves it." "But surely you don't think that Mr. Hale is connected with these mysteries?" "I think nothing because I know nothing!" She moved swiftly forward and placed a slim hand on her son's broad shoulder. "Be wise and give up this girl. The wife who is waiting for you will suit you better." George grew crimson. "The wife!" he stammered. "Maud Ellis! Mr. Tait's niece. She loves you, and she has told me so. If you marry her she will bring you money, and her uncle will forward your interests. To-morrow you are stopping for the week-end at Mr. Tait's house. Before you return here on Monday ask Maud to be your wife." "I shall do nothing of the sort," said George fiercely. "How can I propose to one girl, when I love another?" "Maud Ellis adores you, George." "I know she does: it seems conceited to say so, but I am quite aware of her adoration. And I don't like it. She is rich and handsome and all the rest of it, and a marriage with her, means my getting on in the office. All the same, I--I--I--" he hesitated, then finished his sentence with a rush, "I love Lesbia, so there is no more to be said." Mrs. Walker removed her hand and glided to the door again, her cold self. "I quite agree with you," she said, exasperatingly cool. "However, you know my determination. Act as you please." "And affection?" called out George as she opened the door. "Must give way to commonsense." When alone, the young man dropped into a chair and looked moodily at the disordered dinner-table. He was very much to be pitied for having such a mother. Of a warm affectionate nature, George hungered for some object upon which to expend his love. Mrs. Walker had always been a granite image, unapproachable and chill. No doubt she was fond of her handsome son in her own cold way, but she had never given him the maternal love he craved for. It was small wonder that the boy had gone afield to find some satisfaction for his craving. Lesbia supplied the want, and on her side found the same joy as her lover in their mutual affection. Mr. Hale in his way was as cold and repellent to her as Mrs. Walker was to her son. Yet these two people, not giving the longed-for love themselves to their children, were trying to rob hungry hearts of spiritual sustenance--a dog-in-a-manger attitude which did not commend itself to George. He felt that he and Lesbia were severely alone, conscious only of each other and environed by mysteries, which neither could understand. Mr. Hale could explain, and so could Mrs. Walker, but no explanation was volunteered, and George did not know where to look for an elucidation of their several attitudes. Mrs. Walker certainly professed herself ignorant of the amethyst cross mystery, and apparently spoke truly, as her dislike to the match with Lesbia appeared to be wholly based upon her hatred of Walter Hale. And that hatred had to do with Hale's past, of which George knew as little as he did of the past of his mother. But Hale knew something about the cross, which accounted for his extraordinary behaviour, although he declared that he did not know who had stolen it. George was also greatly perplexed to know who had taken him to the Marlow cottage while he was insensible. Sitting in the chair with his eyes on the ground, he frowningly perplexed himself with these problems. It was all of no use, so he brushed aside the troubles and, after changing his evening dress for boating flannels, went to the river. He hoped by exercise to rid himself of these phantoms, so indistinct and yet so real. Having launched his boat and settled to work, George spun down the stream, the current and his own efforts carrying him along with what appeared to be lightning speed. The attention required in looking after the slight craft prevented his thinking of his mysterious troubles, and his spirits began to rise. At Henley lock his course was stayed, for as he swung into the gates he became aware that another boat was in the lock, and that Tim occupied that same strange shallop. The two men recognised one another at once, and a very natural question leaped to Walker's lips. "Lesbia?" he gasped. "Thrue for ye," grumbled Tim, who looked more misshapen that ever in the dim light. "It's from the young mistress I come. Whist now, sor, an' let me clear out av this divil of a place." George backed his boat out of the lock and Tim muttering under his breath, followed closely. Then the little man paddled his clumsy craft into the near bank, and beckoned George to come also. In a few minutes the two boats were amongst the rustling sedges side by side, and Walker waited breathlessly for Tim to speak. The sky was filling with shadows, but there was sufficient light for George to see that Tim looked both sorrowful and worried. The sight of the dwarfs sad face revived his terrors. "Lesbia," cried George again, and gripped Tim's arm fiercely. "She is well?" "Well in body but sick of heart," said Tim dismally. "Augh, the poor mistress, and how can she be well wid the divil's divarsions bein' played round her?" "I have tried to see her----" "Divil a doubt of it, sor. And ye've sint letthers likewise." "She never answered," breathed George sadly. "An' how cud she whin she nivir recaved thim same. Answer me that now, sor." George sat bolt upright in his boat. "Never got my letters! Then how----" "Ah, be aisy now, me dear young masther," pleaded Tim, and took a tiny note from his pocket. "This was all the mistress cud write, being watched like a mouse, an' by a cat too, divil take the slut." George scarcely heard what Tim was saying. He was devouring two or three lines of Lesbia's dear writing, which stated that she would always be true to him, and that Tim would reveal all. "Reveal what," cried the young man, kissing the letter before transferring it to his pocket. "The divil's divarsions," grumbled Tim. "Write an answer, sor." "I have no pencil, no paper," said George in dismay. "But tell me exactly what has occurred, Tim, and then I'll see what can be done." Tim nodded. "Sure, it's dying for you she is, me dear sor. The masther wants her to marry the Captain, bad luck to his sowl!" "I know that, but----" "Howld yer whist, sor," growled the little man, flinging up his long arm. "I have mighty little time to spake. The masther doesn't trust me, forby he knows I wish to see me dear mistress happy wid you, sor, so he's got a she-divil in the house, Mrs. Petty by name, who kapes a watch inside. Thin there's Captain Sargent's man. The Shadow they call him for his thin looks, though Canning is his name, bad luck to it. He watches outside, an' whin your boat comes in sight he passes the worrd to Mrs. Petty an' she--may the father av lies fly away wid her--shuts Miss Lesbia in her room." "But this is tyranny!" cried George, exasperated. "Do you mean to say that Mr. Hale has his daughter watched in this manner?" "Ay an' I do, and he'll have her watched till she goes to church wid Captain Sargent, or until ye git back that crass. But nivir fear, sor, Miss Lesbia has a fine spirit of her own, and she'll stick to ye through thick an' thin, like the brave young lady she is." "What's to be done?" asked George, in dismay. Tim leaned forward. "Write a bit av a letther and sind it to me, Mister Timothy Burke, Rose Cottage, Marlow. Thim two divils, Mrs. Petty an' The Shadow, to say nothin' av the masther, won't stop that. Thin I'll find means to pass it to the mistress." "Yes! Yes, Tim. I'll do that. But the tyranny----" "Whist now, for time passes, me dear sor. I heard the masther sayin' that Captain Sargent was goin' to stay wid Mr. Tait at Hinley. Spake to him, sor, to that same Captain." "But what can I say?" demanded George, more and more perplexed. "Sor," cried Tim gruffly, "as ye're a man ye can break the head of the divil." And with this advice Tim pushed his boat again into midstream. CHAPTER VI PURPLE AND FINE LINEN Mr. Michael Tait dealt principally in stocks and shares, but was not above any scheme, however wild or however shady, which promised to result in large profits. His motto was: "Make money honestly if you can, but make money!" and he consistently acted up to this advice throughout a long career of speculation. He was not so much a spider sitting in a web to lure unwary flies, as an octopus who stretched out tentacles in every direction to draw victims into his maw. He indulged in dozens of enterprises, both openly and secretly, but all with the aim of making as much cash as possible. That many of these schemes led to much misery, that is, the misery of other people, he never stopped to inquire. And even if he had done so he would have taken no note of the answer. The race was to the swift and the battle to the strong, in Mr. Tait's humble opinion, and those who failed either in fighting or running had to make the best of their plight. In appearance Michael Tait was a squat, burly, sturdy man, with sandy hair and whiskers, and a pair of cold blue eyes devoid of all sympathy. He dressed expensively, wore a profusion of jewellery, and was rarely without an excellent cigar sticking out of his mouth. For the sake of luring his victims he cultivated a jolly, free and easy manner, and exhibited an external good nature which deceived many. To quote Tennyson's cutting line, he "snake-like slimed his victim e'er he gorged," and acted the Pharisee by largely advertising his charities. He was looked upon generally as a good fellow, rough, but really kind-hearted, and possessed of a true Christian spirit. As a matter of fact, Mr. Tait knew very little of Christ and His teaching, and would not have subscribed to it, save by word of mouth, had he been aware of its spirit. But he passed as a good man, because he went to church and talked largely of helping the poor. This prop of British commerce, as he was wrongly described by a too ardent reporter, possessed a regal country house at Henley, where he entertained largely. Also he had chambers in town, but these he only used on rare occasions when business or pleasure prevented him seeking his true home. Mrs. Tait had mercifully passed away many years previously, under the delusion that Michael was a good man, and the Henley mansion was managed by Maud Ellis, who was the stockbroker's niece. Miss Ellis was a young lady of five-and-twenty, certainly not bad-looking, although she could not be described as beautiful. Like her respectable uncle, she was of the sandy type, but, unlike him, she possessed a tall, full figure, finely-shaped. As she always dressed in exquisite taste, and had a personality of the semi-hypnotic kind, she was regarded as a desirable woman. The fact that she was her uncle's heiress also may have had something to do with this opinion. Maud was extremely cunning, and as selfish in her way as Michael was in his. He sought money, she admiration, and they did very well in their efforts to attract both. And it was this clever young woman who had chosen to fall in love with George Walker. Of course she knew that he was a bad match, that he did not love her, and that as his wife she would hold no very exalted position. But the fact was that the girl, after playing with various suitors, like the princess of a fairy tale, with no serious intentions, had been snared herself. Whether it was Walker's good looks, or his kind heart, or his charm of manner, it is impossible to say; perhaps one of the three, perhaps the three together: but Miss Ellis assuredly was violently in love with the young man. Having arrived at the conclusion that life would be miserable without him, she set to work to make him propose, thinking that she would have small difficulty. To her surprise, however, George proved to be quite impervious to her sparkling conversation and clever display of her somewhat limited charms. He was polite to her and nothing more, although she made her uncle ask him again and again to the palace at Henley. This conduct piqued Miss Ellis, but did not altogether displease her, as it gave her an opportunity of exercising her talent for intrigue. From a mere fancy, her passion deepened to ardent love, and she swore mentally that by hook or by crook she would force the young fellow to make her Mrs. Walker. Rarely a week passed without George being asked to Henley, and Maud did her best to subjugate him. But George being in love with Lesbia had a very strong shield to oppose to her love darts, and managed to avoid the amorous pitfalls she spread for him. For six months the chase of this unwilling victim had been going on, and as the quarry always dodged just as the huntress was on the verge of capture, this middle-class Diana concluded that there was another woman in the case. With a view to learning the truth, she watched and made stealthy inquiries, so that she speedily learned of George's infatuation--so she called it--for Lesbia Hale. To detach him from Lesbia became the object of her life, and it was she who suggested to Mr. Hale that Lesbia might profitably marry Captain Alfred Sargent. As Hale approved of Maud's cleverness, and was frequently indebted to her for getting what he wanted from Tait, he did his best to fall in with her plans, the more so, as he did not care whom his daughter married, provided it was to his interest. Maud promised, if the marriage was brought about, to interest her uncle in a wild-cat scheme of Hale's contrivance. So the loving father did his best--as has been seen--to force his child into the arms of a man she loathed. George knew nothing of all this intrigue, and kept away from the Henley mansion as much as he could without openly offending his employer. But when he heard from Tim that Captain Sargent was to be a member of the Saturday to Monday house-party, he determined to accept this latest invitation. An interview with Sargent might clear the air of all these mysteries, and George--hating the ex-captain--was not averse from breaking his head as Tim had advised, if there was no other way of releasing Lesbia. Also George fancied that Mr. Hale--a frequent visitor--might be enjoying Mr. Tait's hospitality, in which case he could speak to him and remonstrate about this tyranny to which Lesbia was subjected. When George arrived in time for afternoon tea on Saturday, he found that his own hopes and those of Tim were realised--that is, both Walter Hale and Captain Sargent were present. Hale looked as lean and grim and smart as ever, while greeting the flushed young man with the air of a perfect stranger. Maud, who presided at a dainty tea-table, saw that flush, and from the juxtaposition of Hale guessed its reason. She was therefore none too pleased, but veiling her annoyance with a sweet smile, she called the new arrival over to her side, and poured him out a cup of tea. "You are quite a stranger, Mr. Walker," she said graciously, devouring him with her cold, grey eyes, which only lighted up when they rested on his face. "I was here three weeks ago," said George politely, and accepting cake. "It would rather bore Mr. Tait if I came here oftener." "It would never bore me," breathed Miss Ellis, "and my uncle is always very glad to see you. He looks upon you almost as his son." George flushed again and looked awkward. "It is very kind of Mr. Tait," he remarked coldly, "seeing that I am only a clerk in his office." "Uncle was only a clerk once," said Maud, smiling. "And look what he is now, Mr. Walker. Some day you will be like him." "I don't think so," said George, looking across to the stout, ungraceful form of the successful stockbroker, who was being waited upon hand and foot by two society ladies of the smart set, anxious to secure tips. Maud took his remark in its wrong sense. "Oh, you must hope," she declared playfully. "With influence," she spoke meaningly, "you will do much." "I have no influence," returned the young man coldly. "That is your own fault," retorted Miss Ellis. "The tide of fortune is flowing past your door, and you will not launch your boat." "I am waiting for a passenger," said Walker, thinking of Lesbia. Jealous and cunning as she was, Maud was quite taken in for the moment, and smiled graciously. She fancied that he referred to her. "You need not wait long," she hinted. George found the situation intolerable, and on the spur of the moment, although it was neither the time nor the place to be confidential, he spoke out. There should be no further misunderstandings if he could help it. "My waiting depends upon Mr. Hale," he said bluntly. Maud bit her thin lip, and leaned back, with an artificial laugh. Inwardly she was furious, as she now knew that his remark had referred to "that girl," as she contemptuously called Lesbia. But she was too much the woman of the world to reveal her feelings and, moreover, utilised his observation to learn as much of the truth as possible. "Ah," she said archly, "a little bird told me that Mr. Hale has a beautiful daughter. But I understood that she was engaged to Captain Sargent." "She is engaged to me," flashed out George, quite forgetting that he was speaking to a jealous woman. "Ah!" said Miss Ellis again, controlling her countenance with difficulty; "the course of true love is not running smoothly. Poor Mr. Walker, I must help you to gain your wife." "You!" blurted out George like a fool. Maud sat up and erected her crest like a snake. "Yes, I," she said haughtily, anxious only for the moment to save her womanly pride. "Why should I not help a friend? I look on you almost as a brother." Still like a fool, George believed her, and indeed her indignant manner would have deceived a much cleverer man. He was very young and very green, and in Maud's designing hands could be moulded like wax. She could have struck him in the face for the insult he had offered her, but hiding her rage under a friendly smile, she laid her plans to entrap him beyond hope of escape. "I shall get Mr. Hale to bring his daughter here," she said quietly, "and then you can talk to her at your leisure." "Oh, how good you are," cried George delightedly. "I am sure you will love Lesbia: she is so beautiful and charming--as you are," he added with an afterthought. Again the impulse came to Maud to strike him, and again her worldly training came to her aid. "Hush!" she said softly, "you will make Captain Sargent jealous. I believe he overheard." "I don't care if he did," said Walker defiantly. "Then I do," retorted Miss Ellis, who could not resist paying him out a trifle, much as she loved him. "I don't want you to quarrel here. Now go and talk to Captain Sargent while I receive these new people." Several ladies and two gentlemen entered at the moment, and she went forward to greet them, followed by her uncle. George left the chair he had occupied near the tea-table, and strolled across the room--not to Sargent, but to interview Mr. Hale. That gentleman saw him coming, and moved away from the person to whom he was speaking, in order to find a secluded corner. He saw that his would-be son-in-law was coming to converse with him, and guessing the subject of his conversation, wished to settle the matter without scandal. George, as he surmised, was too frank to be diplomatic, and if within the hearing of others, might say too much. But he need not have been afraid. George, having been schooled in social usages, by his mother, was perfectly capable of acting as a well-bred man. "I have called twice or thrice to see Lesbia," said George, sinking his voice to a judicious whisper, "but I have not been successful." "That is as it should be," rejoined Mr. Hale coldly. "I do not wish her to see you, and I have taken steps to prevent her from seeing you." It was on the point of George's tongue to say that he knew what precautions had been taken, but to speak openly would lead to the betrayal of Tim, which was not to be thought of. However, he was as blunt as he dared to be. "It is tyranny to keep a young girl shut up," he snapped angrily. "You are the cause of her seclusion," retorted the elder man, "and as her father I have a right to act as I please." "There are law and order in this country," said Walker heatedly, and would have continued to speak with vehemence, but that Hale prevented him. "You are right, and I take advantage of such law and order to prevent my daughter from marrying a man I disapprove of." "Why do you object to me?" "We discussed that before and I gave you my answer. Also, if you will remember, I gave you a chance of having things your own way. It is my desire that Lesbia should marry my friend Sargent, but if you will recover that lost cross for me, I will permit her marriage with you." "I can't find the cross," growled George sullenly. "Then you can't marry Lesbia," replied Hale, very distinctly, "and as you are forcing me to curtail Lesbia's liberty by haunting the house, I must ask you, in her interests if not in mine, to discontinue your persecution." George looked at the cold grim face before him, very straightly. "I love Lesbia, and I intend to marry Lesbia," he said quietly. "Therefore I shall do all in my power to see Lesbia. As to Captain Sargent----" "Hullo!" remarked that gentleman, who was strolling--perhaps purposely--within ear-shot. "What about Captain Sargent?" He was a slim, thin, delicate-looking man of the mutton-dressed-as-lamb type, that is, he did not look his age, and affected a pronouncedly juvenile fashion, a trifle over-done. His collars were too high, his ties were too brilliant, and his clothes were aggressively new. To look at his array he might have just left an army-crammer's, and had apparently stopped short at "the young lieutenant" epoch, which is the era of the male peacock. As to his looks, these were of the colourless faded type; his face was pale, his eyes were pale, and his hair--what there was of it--was also pale. In fact, Sargent looked like a sheet of paper prepared for sketching, and could have painted upon the background of himself any character he wished to represent, provided it was not a strong one. The contrast between his washed out personality and young Walker's vivid virility was most marked. "What about Captain Sargent?" repeated this product of civilisation, a trifle more aggressively since George hesitated to speak. "Finish what you have to say, Mr. Walker." "Certainly," replied the younger man coolly. "I am the more willing, as Mr. Hale is present. In a word, Captain Sargent, I love Miss Lesbia Hale, and I intend to marry her. You wish to make her your wife, and I do not intend to let you have your way." "All that in a word," sneered the captain, with a disagreeable look in his pale grey eyes. "Yes. In a word to the wise." "And suppose I am not wise?" "It matters very little to me if you are wise or not," retorted George, who was not to be put down by sneers. "Lesbia is to marry me, so that is all about it." Sargent glanced at Mr. Hale, who was quite unruffled. "I presume her father's wish counts for something?" "Not when it conflicts with her happiness." "What do you say, Hale?" "I have said all that I intend to say. Walker knows my views." "He does," broke in George, "and he does not subscribe to them. I give you warning that I intend to marry Lesbia. As to you, sir," he turned so fiercely on Sargent that the man gave back a step. "If you make Lesbia unhappy, or bother her in any way, I shall make myself very unpleasant." "Dear me!" sneered the captain in feigned alarm. "What a terrible Turk!" George stared coldly at his rival, and deliberately turned on his heel without speaking further. He had declared open war, and he was pleased that he had done so. Now--with a clear conscience--he could haunt the Marlow cottage and see Lesbia and woo Lesbia and carry off Lesbia, without feeling that he was acting otherwise than as a gentleman and an ardent lover. "Damn the fellow!" breathed Sargent, who had reddened under Walker's contemptuous gaze. "What's to be done, Hale?" "Nothing," rejoined that gentleman sternly. "If you find that cross, you can marry Lesbia; if Walker finds it, he can make her his wife." It was a pity that George did not overhear this speech. He would have been interested to hear that Sargent also was seeking for the mysterious ornament to which Hale appeared to attach such value. The captain looked at his friend curiously. "Why do you want this cross so much?" he asked. "That's my business. What you have to do is to find it;" and in his turn Mr. Hale went away, leaving Sargent caressing his moustache in some perplexity. Presently, everyone went to dinner, which was a banquet delicately cooked and splendidly served. Tait was quite devoted to the pleasures of the table, and paid his chef a large salary. The food was perfect and the wines flowed freely, so that by the time the guests repaired to the drawing-room, everyone was in the best of spirits. The house-party was a large one, as there were about twenty people present, and not one of these would have been acceptable in a Sunday school. There were ladies belonging to the smart set, perfectly respectable from a worldly point of view, but who cared for nothing save bridge and dress, flirtation and pleasure. There were also men, some with titles, and many with brains of the speculative money-making order. Tait was not entirely in society, but by reason of his wealth and public position as a philanthropist hovered on the fringe of it. He helped social butterflies to make money on the Stock Exchange, lent sums large and small to ladies who could advance him in Mayfair and Belgravian circles, and was always open to consider any scheme which promised to bring in cash. Thus his house-parties were composed of a heterogeneous mass of people, good or bad, titled and untitled, gay and grave. But a general air of restlessness prevailed, and in that splendid mansion one and all appeared to dance along a golden road, which doubtless led to the Pit, and were personally conducted by the cunning, self-indulgent, worldly old stockbroker, who might have passed as Mammon in the flesh. After dinner, the party split up into sections. Some ardent gamblers sat down to bridge; a few restless spirits went to dance, and a group gathered round a young man at the piano who sang the latest comic songs. There was plenty of champagne, together with cigars and cigarettes of the best, so the fun waxed fast and furious, and as the hours drew on to midnight everyone grew more or less excited. Within bounds, of course, as Maud Ellis was too clever to permit the Henley palace to earn a name for Neronian extravagance. The entertainment just paused on the verge of an orgy; but under Maud's skilful management did not over-step the mark. That young lady had been watching George all the night although she did not speak to him again. Towards twelve o'clock, she found herself near him, and rallied him on his pensive air. "Don Quixote in love," she said in an airy manner. Then she lowered her voice impressively. "Meet me in the picture-gallery at three o'clock," she said, "for Lesbia's sake." CHAPTER VII AFTER MIDNIGHT Had George been more of a man of the world he would have wholly mistrusted Maud, and would have declined her invitation to meet him in the picture-gallery in the small hours of Sunday morning. It would not have been credited by a judge of human nature that one woman would make such an appointment with the man she loved to plead the cause of her rival, or to give a helping hand to bring about a marriage which was dead against the feelings of her heart. But George, in spite of his years and virile looks, was an unsophisticated man, who could not guess what was below the surface. He was a kind of society tender-foot, and perhaps this in some measure constituted his charm in the eyes of Miss Ellis, who had experience enough to fit out a dozen men and at least two women. At all events, although he wondered that her liking for him--as he termed it--had lapsed so suddenly, yet he determined to keep the appointment and to listen to any scheme which she might propose, likely to accomplish the marriage with Lesbia. In this way are strong men twisted to feminine purposes by women, and from Samson downwards no man has been sufficiently cunning to get the better of his Delilah. There was therefore some excuse for George. His attention was drawn from his own thoughts by a lively discussion going on between Mr. Tait and three or four ladies, with a sprinkling of men. As it was now long after midnight some people had retired to bed, and others were preparing to follow. But Tait was a night bird who liked to stay up as long as possible--probably because, as a robber of widows and orphans, his pillow must have had its thorns. To entertain those guests who remained wakeful, and especially the feminine portion thereof, he mentioned that he had lately come into possession of some wonderful jewels which a famous, or rather infamous, _demi-mondaine_ of Paris had sold. Of course, the ladies were more than anxious to see these gems, both on account of their beauty and value and because of the celebrity of their former owner. They one and all clamoured for a sight of them, and as Mr. Tait had purposely stimulated their curiosity to keep them from retiring, he was not unwilling to gratify their wish. He therefore led the way to the picture-gallery, and pointed out a small narrow door at the end of it. "There is my safe," he said proudly, "or rather my strong-room." "Queer place for a safe," drawled Sargent, with a shrug. "And for that reason the safer. We are all friends here," Tait glanced round graciously, and looked more like a Silenus than ever, "so I do not mind revealing the whereabouts of twenty thousand pounds' worth of jewels. But no thief would dream that my safe was here. And even if he did," added the stockbroker, drawing out his watch-chain, "the safe cannot be opened save by this key." "But it might be broken open," George ventured to remark. Tait laughed in a jolly manner. "It would take the cleverest thief in London to break into my safe, and there are only two keys to open it. I have one on my watch-chain, and Maud, my niece, has the other." The guests looked at one another. Had not Tait been flushed with wine and excitement he would not have been thus free in his speech, and he was not a man who talked at large as a rule. But the lateness of the hour, the presence of many people, the lights, the music, the gambling, the wine, and the chatter had unloosened his usually cautious tongue. Maud frowned when her uncle spoke so rashly, as she thought that he was a fool to do so. Certainly there was no one present who would have broken open the safe, since everyone was respectable, even if--as the word goes--rackety! All the same the revelation of the whereabouts of the safe and the information so guilelessly supplied was risky, to say the least of it. Miss Ellis shook her head at her venturesome uncle. "Don't say too much," she remarked in a low voice, "even this safe may not be strong enough to withstand a burglar of the new school." "Well, I don't care," cried the stockbroker recklessly, inserting his key into the lock, "my jewels are insured. Come, ladies, you can all feast your eyes, and--as I have bought the gems to sell them again--I am open to an offer." He said this jokingly, yet meant to sell if he could. Some of the guests drew back rather annoyed, as they thought that Mr. Tait was going too far in importing City manners into his house-party. Maud, ever watchful, again whispered to her uncle, but he shook her off, and entered the strong-room--now open--to bring out the jewels. When the box which contained them was placed on a near table, and the contents were displayed, all thought of Tait's bad manners disappeared in amazement and delight at the sight of the precious stones. These were truly beautiful. Many were set in tiaras, bracelets, rings, chains, lockets and in various ornaments for the hair and corsage. But other stones lay loose and glittering, to be arranged and used as required. There were diamonds, sapphires, rubies, emeralds and many inferior gems, the whole forming a dazzling heap, which made every mouth water with avarice. But for Tait's estimate, those present--and some were good judges of jewels--would have deemed the radiant pile worth twice the amount mentioned. "Try them on, ladies," said the genial stockbroker. "Try them on. We are all friends here!" and he placed a tiara on the head of his niece, who stood near with a frown on her face. She began to think that her uncle was crazy to display his wealth in this reckless manner. In a few moments some of the female guests were glittering with jewels, and surveying themselves delightedly in hand-mirrors which had been brought by Tait's order. The stockbroker himself, with a cynical smile, looked at their avaricious faces, and listened with sneering pleasure to the delighted little screams which they gave at intervals. Jewels have a much greater effect on women than on men, and there was not a woman present but would have gone great lengths for the sake of possessing even one of the ornaments. Gretchen was not the only woman who could be lured by the glitter of gems, which is so much superior to the mere gleam of gold. And Tait, amidst this splendour, looked more like Mammon than ever. But this early-hours-of-the-morning pleasure came to an end in fifteen minutes, and the ladies, taking off the jewels, restored them to their owner. Tait was really glad to get them back, and counted them carefully, for the look in the eyes of some of the ladies actually frightened him, and he half thought that they would run away with the treasures. However, he made sure that every one of the ornaments had been given back, and replaced them in the box, which he deposited in the safe. After that, the guests went to bed, and the gallery, with the strong-room carefully locked, was left in silence and darkness. But the sleep of many was disturbed by the thought of that Nibelung's treasure, so near at hand, and yet so impossible to obtain. George was indifferent to the gems, as he thought that Lesbia's eyes were brighter and much more beautiful. He left the gallery while Tait was displaying his hoard, and retired to the very comfortable bedroom which Maud's care had provided. As a mere clerk he should not have had such luxurious surroundings, or, indeed, have been in the splendid house at all; but she loved him, and could not do enough for him. Therefore, George was housed like a king, and, after the manner of youth, took his comforts easily. It never occurred to him that in his humble position he had no right to be pampered and petted. By right of good looks and delightful manners, he had hitherto gone through the world very much spoiled by the fair sex. He therefore took everything as his right. While waiting for three to strike from the stable clock--it was now two--he seated himself before the fire and, lighting a pipe, gave himself up to dreams of Lesbia. In one way or another he was determined to make her his wife, but it was difficult to see how he proposed to keep her on his small salary, particularly when much of that same salary was required to support his mother. But that George indulged in the rosy dreams of youth and had such a profound belief in the kindness of fortune, he would have dismissed his proposed marriage as an impossibility. Hale was against it, and so was Sargent: his mother did not approve of the marriage, and there was Maud Ellis to be considered. A more hopeful man may well have been despondent: but not George. He felt sure that everything would come right, and that life was a fairy-tale in which the fated prince--who was himself--carried off the lovely princess--who, of course, was Lesbia. And she was in an enchanted castle--so he glorified Rose Cottage--watched by two dragons, Canning and Mrs. Petty--but helped also by a faithful dwarf, by name Tim Burke. Finally, there was Mr. Hale as the wicked magician to be reckoned with, and perhaps Maud might act as the malignant fairy; but somehow the marriage would be brought about, and in some way sufficient money would be provided, so that the prince and princess could live happily ever afterwards. Lesbia would not have thought in this comfortable fashion in the face of such obstacles as barred the way to the altar: but then she was much more practical than her lover, in spite of the fact that she dwelt in seclusion, while he battled in the work-a-day world. And then, as George fondly imagined he had discovered a few hours previously, Maud Ellis was not the wicked fairy after all. Rather was she about to play the agreeable part of the fairy-godmother, and bring together two lovers parted by adverse circumstances. When Maud afterwards thought of the trust George placed in her she wondered at his folly, and had a contempt for his upright character that could estimate human nature so highly. But George never doubted for one moment but that the appointment was made in all good faith and for the express purpose of helping his suit with Lesbia. He therefore waited impatiently for the striking of the clock. Only once did it cross his mind as odd that Maud should choose that hour and that meeting-place to forward his interests, since she could easily have spoken to him in a convenient place and at a becoming hour in the morning. But he brushed this thought aside as unworthy of her kind heart, and when the hour of three chimed out, he opened his door softly and slipped out to keep his appointment. George had stayed so frequently at the Henley mansion that he knew his way to the picture-gallery exceedingly well. Also, it was Mr. Tait's hobby to have the corridors and many of the rooms lighted in a subdued manner all night. It prevented burglary, he declared, and certainly the sight of an illuminated house would daunt those who prefer to work in darkness or only by the light of a bull's-eye. George, therefore, found himself in a soft glow when he emerged from the bedroom and stole on tip-toe towards the head of the stairs. Here he descended and took his way towards the back of the house to the picture-gallery. This portion of the great mansion was not lighted, which seemed odd, remembering what Mr. Tait said about light scaring burglars, and seeing also that the safe was placed here. But whatever was the stockbroker's whim, George found the long gallery in darkness, and as he had entered by a door placed directly in the middle of it, he halted there doubtfully. He could see no light, save what filtered through the sky-lights, and did not know where Maud waited for him. At the far end of the gallery were double glass doors, leading down steps into the gardens. These were usually shuttered at night, but George noted with some surprise by the gleam of starlight which came through them that on this special night the shutters had not been put up. This was strange, considering the valuables which were concealed in the safe; but then, as the young man reflected, it was also strange that Tait should place his treasure-house at the other end of the gimcrack gallery, which could be so easily broken into. But, after all, on the authority of Poe's tale of the Purloined Letter, the more unlikely a place in which valuables are hidden the safer they are. Not one of the London fraternity of thieves would believe that the wary stockbroker would be so foolish as to place his safe or strong-room, or treasure-house, or whatever he liked to call it, in such a locality. Therefore, no creature of the night would come to rob. There was considerable method in Tait's apparent madness after all. But George had scanty time for such reflections, as the hours were swiftly moving towards dawn, and he yet had to converse with Maud. His eyes grew more accustomed to the semi-darkness of the gallery, and he glanced up and down to see if he could espy the darker form of the girl. At this moment he heard the clink of metal upon metal. The sound came from the direction of the strong-room, and, as he turned his gaze thereto, he suddenly saw a vivid stream of light, proceeding apparently from a bull's-eye. In a flash it struck him that the strong-room was being burgled, and almost without thinking he uttered a loud cry and sprang forward to lay hands on the thieves. The light disappeared as he raced up, and when within measurable distance of the safe he stumbled over a body, motionless on the floor. It was that of a woman, as Walker could tell by the draperies he mechanically clutched in his fall. Before he could pick himself up, two dark forms dashed past him towards the glass doors. George, anxious only to lay hands on the thieves, ran down the gallery at their heels and left the woman where she was. The intruders easily opened the double doors, which evidently had been left ajar. George followed, and saw two men race across the lawn and into the belt of trees which girdled Mr. Tait's mansion. As he increased his speed he shouted loudly for assistance. By and by, lights were seen moving in the upper windows of the great house, and into the corridors poured many guests and servants, all in various stages of undress, and all scared by the midnight alarm. Tait, with a dressing-gown thrown hastily over his burly form, pushed his way through the throng down the stairs, and the guests streamed after him. Everyone knew what was the matter, for a wakeful servant had heard the shout of "Thieves!" and the ominous word had hastily passed from lip to lip. "I expect my jewels are gone!" panted Tait, waddling towards the gallery at the head of a picturesque mob. In a second the electric lights were turned on and the gallery blazed with light. Tait uttered a cry of alarm, which was echoed by those behind him, and there was cause for surprise. The door of the strong-room stood wide open, and some distance away lay the insensible body of Maud Ellis, dressed in the attire she had worn during the previous evening. While some of the ladies attended to the girl, Tait with surprising agility plunged into the strong-room, and then they heard him bellow bull-like in mingled rage and astonishment. A moment later he emerged. "The jewels are gone! the jewels are gone!" he shouted, purple with wrath. "Here, some of you, go to Henley for the police; search the grounds, examine the house, and----" "The doors are open, sir," cried a footman. "The thieves must have escaped. After them! after them!" bellowed Tait, in a frenzy of rage. "Your niece, man, your niece," said a gentleman who was supporting the unconscious Miss Ellis; but Tait only swore the more. "Confound my niece. I have lost twenty thousand pounds' worth of jewels." Several people looked disgusted at this callousness. A young doctor, who was stopping in the house, and who was feeling Maud's pulse, looked up. "Miss Ellis has been chloroformed," he remarked quietly. Tait bent down and lightly touched the gold chain which was round the girl's neck. "The key of the strong-room is gone," he cried furiously. "No doubt," explained the medical man. "Miss Ellis has been rendered insensible and then was robbed of the key. But who----" "How did Maud come to be here at this hour?" demanded Tait savagely. "Go for the police, some of you," he shouted, stamping furiously. "I'm not going to lose a fortune in this way." "It's useless; the thieves have escaped," cried a voice at the end of the gallery, and George bounded in at the open door. "Walker," cried the stockbroker, recoiling. "What are you doing here? What do you know about this?" "I came downstairs and heard the thieves at work," explained George quickly. "I tried to lay hands on them, but tumbled over the body of a woman on the floor, and----" "It is Miss Ellis," said the young doctor, looking up. "Do you know how she came to be here?" George hesitated. He could not--for the sake of Maud's reputation--say that she had appointed a meeting with him, and did not know how to explain. Tait noted his momentary hesitation, and turned on him furiously. "How do you come to be here?" he demanded. "What makes you wander about my house when everyone is in bed?" "Ah," said Mr. Hale, pushing his way through the frightened crowd, "that is very suspicious. Speak out, Walker!" "I heard a noise and came down," cried George, making the first excuse which entered his head. "No one else heard a noise," remarked Sargent, who was at Tait's elbow. "I was wakeful," retorted Walker sharply; but on every hand he saw incredulous looks, and realised with a chill that he was suspected. Tait grunted, and looked at the young man with a lowering brow. "Who are the thieves?" he demanded. "How many of them are there?" "I saw two men, but could not catch a glimpse of their faces. I think they were masked," said George readily, and again saw disbelief written on the faces around him. "But may I suggest, Mr. Tait, that you send for the police at once. The thieves made for the wood round the house and may escape." "I daresay they have escaped," grunted Tait, savagely. "The servants are searching the gardens. Meanwhile let us revive Maud, and hear what she has to say." "She is coming round now," said the doctor, and even as he spoke, Maud opened her eyes in a vague, unseeing way. "Carry her up to bed," said Tait harshly. "I'll have an inquiry made into this as soon as dawn comes and the police arrive. Meanwhile you can all retire. Mr. Walker, remain here and explain." "I have explained," said George proudly. "I have nothing more to add." Tait shook his head doubtfully, and whispers went round, which indicated suspicion of the truth of Walker's explanation. By this time Maud, more or less sensible, was on her feet. Her eyes wandered here and there until they alighted on the young man. "You!" cried Miss Ellis, with a loud wail. "Oh, George, you!" CHAPTER VIII UNDER A CLOUD There was very little sleep for anyone during the remaining hours of darkness, and after breakfast--an unusually dismal meal--the guests one and all showed a desire to get away from their host. Mr. Tait certainly was not amiable, since he had suffered so great a loss, and growled like a bear with a sore head. Not being a gentleman, he could not control his temper, and made himself so openly disagreeable, that everyone wanted to leave forthwith. But until the police had made inquiries, it was impossible for either man or woman to depart without becoming suspected. Throughout that wretched Sunday, the men were miserable and the ladies hysterical. Tait, no longer the jolly Silenus, or even the gracious Mammon, moved amongst his friends with looks of suspicion for all. The police duly arrived, and searched the gardens and the house, but in no way could they trace the thieves. George stuck persistently to his story, which, of course, was true, save for the excuse which he gave for coming down the stairs. And it was this false portion--this weak subterfuge--which made Mr. Tait suspicious. He knew that George was hard up, and said as much to him in a quiet corner. "What has my being a pauper to do with your loss?" demanded Walker, firing up on the instant. Tait shook his bullet head and scowled with his little pig eyes. "My jewels are worth twenty thousand pounds," he retorted. "I don't care if they are worth twenty millions," said George, turning pale, for he realised his employer's meaning. "I know nothing about them." "You were in the gallery when----" "I came down to the gallery because I heard a noise," interrupted Walker furiously. "I told the police the story I told you. I did my best to catch the thieves, and now you have the audacity to accuse me." "I don't exactly accuse you----" "It looks very like it." "You must admit that your conduct is suspicious," protested the stockbroker. "I admit nothing of the sort." "People don't wander about a house after everyone is in bed, without a reason," snapped Tait, with a searching glance. George bore the scrutiny without flinching. "I have explained how I came to be wandering about," he declared proudly. "I was sitting by my fire, and on hearing a suspicious noise I came down, with what result you know. How dare you accuse me?" "I tell you again that I don't accuse you," vociferated Tait crossly. "But you have acted foolishly to say the least of it." "How else could I have acted?" "On hearing the noise you should have aroused me." "Had I done so I should not have been in time to see the thieves." "What good did you do by seeing them, since they have escaped? That is," added Tait slowly, "if there were two men. Stop!" he threw up his fat hand as the young man was about to speak angrily; "it is no use going round the bush. You may be innocent or you may not be. Your story may be true or it may be the reverse." "Mr. Tait"--George held his temper under by mere force of will--"why should I rob you?" The stockbroker opened his pig's eyes. "Why!" he demanded in amazement, "do I not know that you are desperately poor? Didn't Hale tell me only the other day that you wanted to marry his daughter, and could not do so for want of money? Oh, there are plenty of reasons why you should take twenty thousand pounds' worth of jewels. They can be unset and sold, in which case they will be difficult to trace. Had they been bank-notes, I don't believe that this burglary--so-called--would have taken place." George curled his lip. "You put things very clearly, sir," he said quietly, "and on the face of it, I admit that my conduct looks a trifle suspicious." "A trifle!" cried Tait scornfully. "Very good indeed. A trifle! Why not admit that you came down to steal the jewels, and went out to bury them in some safe place, returning, when the alarm was given, to tell us this cock-and-bull story of two thieves?" George winced and grew white at this very plain speaking. But he kept his temper, for to have lost it at the moment would have been dangerous. He saw very well that he was in a tight place. "I ask you only one question, Mr. Tait," he said calmly. "Who gave the alarm?" "I do not know," said the stockbroker sullenly. "I heard a cry of thieves, and help, and blue murder, and came down to find everyone else aroused." "Then I may tell you that I gave the alarm, sir." "_You_ say so," sneered the other. "I say so because it is true," rejoined Walker, throwing back his head indignantly. "I shouted in the gallery when I saw the light, and I cried out again when I followed the thieves. I lost them when they bolted into the wood girdling this place. Now, I ask you, sir, would I have given the alarm had I been guilty?" "No--_if_ you gave the alarm, that is. But I don't believe you did." "In other words you think that I am guilty?" "Upon my word, Walker, it looks very much like it." "Then why not hand me over to the police?" The stockbroker moved uneasily and wiped his damp, red face. "Your mother is an old friend of mine," he said hesitatingly; "I think of her." "That is very good of you," said the ungrateful George; "but I would rather you believed in my innocence. I have no wish to hide myself behind any woman's petticoats." "Not even behind Maud's?" "I don't know what you are talking about," said George stolidly, determined to hold his peace about the lady even to her uncle. "Miss Ellis and I are very good friends, nothing more." "You know that she loves you. I should never have asked a mere clerk from my office here, but that she loved you. I disapproved of her infatuation, but I gave in to her since I am your mother's friend." "You are slightly incoherent, sir, and entirely wrong. Miss Ellis and I are friends; nothing more. And to return to the subject of the burglary, may I remind you that the police have discovered that the safe was not broken into, but that the door was opened with a key? The key, I notice, is still on your watch-chain. How then could I have opened the safe?" "Perhaps you think that I stole the jewels myself?" sneered Tait coolly. "I may remind you, in my turn, that Maud also has a key." George sprang to his feet and clenched his hand. "You dare to insinuate that I got it from Miss Ellis, and----" The door opened as he spoke, and Tait, who was facing it, glanced over the young man's shoulder. "Here is Maud for herself. Perhaps she will explain." It was indeed Miss Ellis, looking very white and pinched. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her mouth was drooping, and she confessed to a headache, which was not to be wondered at, seeing what she had gone through. "That chloroform is horrible stuff," complained Maud, sinking into a chair. "Have you seen the inspector?" said Tait, giving his niece very little sympathy for her wan looks. "Yes; I have told him all I know." "Perhaps you will repeat what you have told him to your uncle, Miss Ellis," remarked Walker, still standing very stiff and very proudly. "He has accused me of getting the key from you to rob the strong-room, and swears that I have buried the jewels somewhere in the garden." "That is absurd," said Maud, looking at her uncle, while a red spot of colour burned on either pale cheek. "I don't believe that you have anything to do with the matter." "Then what did you mean by addressing Walker as you did, when you revived in the gallery?" demanded Mr. Tait sharply. "I simply said, 'Oh, George, you!'" said the girl quietly; "and that because I felt glad he was there to help me." "He didn't help you in the least," remarked Tait grimly. "He would have had I asked him," she retorted. "Would you not, Mr. Walker?" "Certainly." "It's not George this time, then," muttered the stockbroker. "Well, Maud, perhaps you will tell me what you were doing in the gallery." Maud's eyes sought those of the man she loved, but she replied without hesitation. "I'll tell you what I did not tell the police, uncle. The inspector believes that I came down because I heard a noise." "Like Walker here." "He did not come down for that reason." Tait looked at George with triumph in his eye. "I thought not," he said. "If he said that he did, he said so to shield me," pursued Miss Ellis, and looked gratefully at the confused young man. "What do you mean by that, Maud?" asked Tait tartly. "I made an appointment with George in the picture-gallery at three in the morning, as I wished to help him to marry Lesbia Hale." "Why, I thought you loved Walker yourself!" cried the astonished stockbroker. "So I did--so I do," breathed Miss Ellis, drooping her sandy head. "But, to my mind, love means sacrifice. George--for I have the right to call him so now--George would not have been happy with me, as he loved Lesbia Hale, so I arranged to give him up to her, and to make things right with her father. For that reason I waited for him in the gallery. There I was suddenly pounced upon, and a handkerchief soaked in chloroform was clapped over my mouth. I daresay the person who did it, stole the key from the chain round my neck, and opened the strong-room to steal the jewels. But I knew nothing from the moment I became insensible until I revived to find you all standing round me. That is the story I have told the inspector, save that I kept quiet my appointment with George." "Then you believe him to be innocent," said the stockbroker, confounded by the frankness of this story. Maud arose indignantly. "The man I love can never be guilty," she cried. George blushed a rosy red. He saw that he had not behaved over well to this brave girl, who had so cleverly exonerated him, although he really had no reason to accuse himself of duplicity towards her. But in a confused way he felt that she was heaping coals of fire on his head, and was more drawn to her than he had ever been before. Here, indeed, was a friend worth having. With Lesbia as his wife and Maud as his friend, life would indeed be joyous. In his innocence it never struck the young man that no male can drive, either in double harness or in tandem fashion, two women who both love him. He thought that Maud, having discovered that the true meaning of love was sacrifice, behaved thus because of her newly-acquired knowledge. "Thank you, Miss Ellis," he said simply, but his looks implied volumes more. Tait was displeased. He had no grudge against George, whom he liked well enough; but he did not like his solution of the mystery to be thus upset. "You mean well, Maud," he said at length, "and you have shielded Walker very cleverly. All the same, I cannot accept your explanation." Miss Ellis rose in alarm. "Uncle, do you mean that you will have Mr. Walker arrested when you know that he is innocent?" "For his mother's sake I shall not do that," said the elder man; "but if Mr. Walker will give back the jewels I will not dismiss him from my office." "I have no jewels to give," cried George recklessly, and his face flushed a deep red. "As to remaining in your office, do you think that I would continue to serve a man who suspects me of such a wicked crime? I shall never return to your office, Mr. Tait, nor shall I re-enter your house until my innocence is made clear. If the police arrest me----" "They will not do that," interrupted Maud quickly; "I promise you. There is no evidence against you. I don't know who chloroformed me, but you are innocent, I swear. My uncle will take no steps." "For Mrs. Walker's sake," interpolated the stockbroker unctuously. "So you can leave this house when you will," continued Maud, "knowing--" she seized his hand--"that I at least, believe you guiltless." "Thank you!" said George, and kissed her hand. "Mr. Tait, if you and the police want me you know where to find me." And he stalked out of the room with his head in the air. Maud Ellis looked after him with hungry looks, and heaved a deep sigh when the door closed. Within the hour George had asked permission of the inspector to leave the house, and obtained it. Whatever the guests believed, the police apparently--thanks to Maud's report--accepted him as a wholly guiltless person. He gave his address to the officer, so that he might be called as a witness in the event of the thieves being brought to book, and then shook the dust of that splendid Henley mansion from his feet. He was glad to get away, for several people looked at him askance, and evidently there was an uneasy feeling that he knew more than he would confess. But no one hinted openly that he was concerned in the robbery. It was merely thought that his presence in the gallery required a more reasonable explanation than the weak one of having heard a noise. Still, George could not help feeling that he was suspected by the guests and servants, and it was gall and wormwood to the proud young man that this should be the case. Walker carried his portmanteau down to the river, as he had rowed up to Henley from Medmenham. It was now late in the afternoon, and with a heavy heart he prepared to launch his boat and return. The news that he had to take to his mother was unwelcome, and he wondered how she would receive the information that he had left Tait's office. Mrs. Walker's circumstances were very desperate, as her income was so small, and she greatly depended upon her son's earnings. The present phase of things would be worse than ever, and George winced as he contemplated the coming interview. Just as he was about to step into the boat, Mr. Hale, cigar in mouth, sauntered up and addressed him. Walker was in no mood for conversation, and would have pushed off with a curt nod, but that the elder man uttered a sentence which made him pause indignantly. "So Tait didn't have you arrested, Walker," said Mr. Hale cruelly. George turned pale, and looked straight at the speaker. "If you were not Lesbia's father," he said quietly, "I should fling you into the river for those words." "I quite believe you would and could," rejoined Hale, looking admiringly at the splendid figure of the young man; "but that will not make you any the more innocent." "If I were guilty--if Mr. Tait believed me to be guilty, I should have been arrested long since," said Walker with an effort, "the mere fact that I am permitted to leave the house shows that I am considered guiltless." "Tait was always absurdly good-natured," said Hale coolly, again risking a plunge into the river. George looked at him again. "You believe that I stole those jewels?" he asked. "Of course I do. You made a lame excuse for being in the gallery at night, and evidently went out after two pretended thieves so as to hide your plunder. I didn't believe you had it in you. See what love will do." "Love?" "Yes. You are poor; you want to marry Lesbia, and so tried the short cut to wealth. Presently, when things have blown over, you will dig up the jewels and sell them to some fence. Then you will come to me with a cock-and-bull story about a legacy being left to you--perhaps you will inherit that fifty thousand pounds which is waiting for your mother's sister. Of course, knowing the source of your legacy I shall say no." "You have said no already," replied Walker quietly, although he longed to knock this sneering man of the world into the water. "Don't say any more, sir, else I may forget that you are Lesbia's father." And George took up his oars and pushed off into midstream. Hale lingered on the bank, still scoffing. "I shall tell Lesbia everything, Walker," called out Mr. Hale, clearly and slowly. "She will never marry you now, my dear burglar." The unhappy lover pulled swiftly down stream with those last words ringing in his ears. Could he indeed trust Lesbia to continue her engagement in the face of his being accused of a sordid crime? He knew that she loved him as dearly as he loved her, and would go through fire and water to prove that love. All the same, there was something so mean and contemptible about stealing from a friend's house, that even her great love might not be proof against her father's story. George clenched his teeth and pulled for dear life in order to control his emotion. He could do nothing in the face of all that had taken place, save wait patiently. Trusting in Tait's friendship for his mother and in Maud's loyalty, he knew that he would not be disgraced openly: but the idea that Lesbia might believe him guilty was desperately hard to bear. Still, she loved him, and he trusted in her love. That was all he could do, for a glance around showed him that he was helpless amidst the black circumstances which had so suddenly environed him. Mrs. Walker heard a bald, blunt tale from George and said very little in reply. Not even when he declared that he had thrown up his situation did she rebuke him. On the contrary she rather applauded. "As my son," said the stern, cold woman, "you could do nothing else." "Then you do not believe that I am guilty?" Mrs. Walker looked at him scornfully. "Our relations as mother and son have never been sentimental," she said quietly, "but you should know me better than to ask me that." "Thank you, mother," said George simply, for such a speech meant much from the Spartan woman, who was usually so reticent. "I want no thanks for being just," she remarked coldly. "What you have to do is to clear your name by searching for these thieves." "How am I to do that?" "I leave it to your own cleverness. Meanwhile I shall see Mr. Jabez, and get him to advance us sufficient to live on until your name is cleared and you have got another situation. As to this girl, Lesbia, give her up." "Never! Never! Never!" said George. His mother looked at him coldly and disapprovingly, and left him in silence. But matters turned out as she wished. Within three days a tearful note came from a distraught girl to her anxious lover--a note of a few words--"I believe you to be innocent but we can never marry, and we must never meet again," said the note, and it was signed stiffly "Lesbia Hale." CHAPTER IX TWO GIRLS If the course of true love did not run smoothly with George, the girl he loved found it speeding roughly also. Lesbia was as anxious to see her lover as he was to meet her; but parental displeasure and parental authority stood like a wall between this new Pyramus and Thisbe--a wall which could by no means be overleaped. As Tim had informed George, his master had engaged Mrs. Petty as a housekeeper, and so the domestic arrangements of Rose Cottage were temporarily removed from the hands of Lesbia. Also, in conjunction with The Shadow, Mrs. Petty acted both as a spy and a gaoler. It was infamous, as Lesbia felt, that she should be watched in this fashion; but as she had no money and no friends and no place whither she could go, there was nothing left for it but to wait, until such time as Mr. Hale became more reasonable. Mrs. Petty was a stout, plethoric woman, with an aggressive manner and a loud, common voice, who probably had been a Margate lodging-house keeper of the worst description. She was a born bully, and within ten minutes of her entry into the house Tim learned to loathe her with all the fervour of an Irishman, impatient of restraint in any form. Mrs. Petty tried similar tactics and treatment on Lesbia, but was met so firmly, and put in her place so quietly, that--being a coward at heart, as all bullies are--she left the girl as severely alone as was possible, while executing Mr. Hale's instructions. These were to keep a strict eye on his daughter, and to prevent the intrusion of George Walker. Mrs. Petty, after several rebuffs, contented herself by watching from afar, and managed by always being on the spot when Lesbia least expected her, to fulfil her contemptible duty. For the rest of the time she worried Tim and looked after the domestic economy of the cottage. The Shadow, as became his nickname, was a less aggressive personage. He was really called John Canning, and formerly had acted as valet to Captain Sargent. But that gentleman, being anxious to marry Lesbia whom he greatly admired, and hating George as a too-handsome and over-young rival, had suggested to his friend Hale that Canning should act as an inoffensive dragon to keep away the young man. Hale quite approved of this, as Canning could guard the garden, while Mrs. Petty kept watch on the girl in the house itself. Canning, therefore, glided unostentatiously into his position and, although Lesbia disliked the creature because he carefully kept George away, she had not the same hatred for him that she cherished for Mrs. Petty. At his worst Canning was a harmless individual, condemned to do the dirty work of others, because he had not sufficient brains to earn an honest wage in an honest manner. His nickname had been given him because of his marvellously thin looks, and these were certainly remarkably noticeable. At one time, as he confessed to Lesbia, he had exhibited himself in a travelling caravan as The Living Skeleton, but having slightly increased in weight he had been discharged. What his leanness must have been originally it is hard to say, as even now, he was but skin and bone and, being tall, looked like a line--that is, he was length without breadth. His hands resembled a bird's claws, his legs were like sticks, and his skull would have served for a death's head, so devoid was it of flesh. With his lean, clean-shaven face, with his straight, jet-black hair, which he wore rather long, and with his skinny, lengthy, narrow figure encased in shabby broad-cloth, he looked positively uncanny, and rude boys made remarks about him when he walked abroad. He glided about like a shadow, haunted shady corners like a shadow, and spoke in a whisper as a shadow should. The name fitted him exactly, and he looked a creature of the night, quite out of place in the cheerful sunshine. Lesbia did not approve of him at first, for obvious reasons, and even disliked him actively when she found how he dogged her footsteps. But it so happened that the gods chose to turn her heart to a friendless man, and the consequences of the change were more far-reaching than she guessed at the moment. The days went by very heavily, since her heart was with George and she could not see him. Certainly she contrived through the ever-faithful Tim to get a note transmitted to him--the same that George read on the river. And under cover of Tim's name he sent an answer which assured her that he was still faithful and still loving and ever hopeful of better days. Lesbia carried about that letter in her bosom day and night and read it when she felt particularly down-hearted, which happened not infrequently. She also waited and she also hoped. Then an event occurred, which in after-time showed how mysteriously things work out to their hidden ends. The Shadow fell ill in spite of the warm summer weather. Being of a sickly constitution, he unexpectedly caught influenza, and was forced to go to bed in the little room near Tim's sanctum. Hale, who had a horror of sickness, at once decided to turn him out; but Sargent, also afraid, refused to permit the valet to return to his Cookham house. There appeared to be no refuge for the miserable man but the hospital or the workhouse, until Lesbia suddenly asserted herself and insisted upon nursing him back to health. Mr. Hale objected, but his daughter, for the first time in her life remained firm and, having already sufficient troubles on his hand without creating more, he yielded in the end. Moreover, he thought that acting as a sick-nurse would give Lesbia something to do and take her thoughts away from George. So she was permitted to nurse Canning, while Mr. Hale betook himself to Tait's sumptuous mansion at Henley. Mrs. Petty declined to look after the sick man, so Lesbia took full charge of the case, and was assisted by Tim. Not that Tim approved of The Shadow: but, being tender-hearted, he considered him a poor creature, and so acted the part of the Good Samaritan. Canning grew delirious and seemed in danger of passing away: but Lesbia set herself to struggle with death, and in the end she conquered. When the man was sane again and rapidly regaining his strength, Tim told him all that the young mistress had done. It was then that the Irishman saw two big tears roll down the thin cheeks of the spy. When Lesbia entered to see how he was, he spoke weakly but to the point. "I have been kicked about all my life," said The Shadow brokenly, "and no one has ever said a kind word to me. Mr. Hale and Captain Sargent have treated me worse than a dog, and but for you, Miss Lesbia, I should have been thrown out to die in the street. You hate me because I was set to watch you----" "I don't hate you now, Canning," she interposed, hastily. "After all, you only performed the duty you were set to do by my father." "And by Captain Sargent," whispered The Shadow. "Don't forget Captain Sargent. I never shall," and his weak hand clenched under the coverlet. "But you have acted like an angel, Miss Lesbia, and some day I may be able to repay you for what you have done." "I only did my duty," said the girl, tucking him in. "You are the first woman or man who has ever done duty by me in this world," said Canning, the tears rolling down his face. "I know what I know, and some day you may want my help. You shall have it. Yes! you shall have it at whatever cost." "What do you know?" she asked wonderingly. "Never mind." He turned his face to the wall. "When the time comes, call upon me, and I will help you." Nothing more was said at the moment, as the man was not sufficiently recovered to talk much. Lesbia thought occasionally of what he had said, but could not entirely understand his meaning, unless it was that he would shut his eyes to the coming of George, should that young man choose to risk a visit. But the days went by and George did not come, for, as Canning was sick, Mrs. Petty kept a very strict watch on the girl. Gradually the words of the sick man were forgotten by Lesbia and, when he went away entirely recovered, she forgot him, having more important matters to think about. It was shortly after Canning's departure that Hale returned from Henley with a story which made Lesbia write--and write willingly--the letter of dismissal, which had broken Walker's heart. After she sent it away her father patted her shoulder, and spoke kindly to her. "You are now acting as a sensible girl," he said, with chill politeness; "and there is no longer any need for Mrs. Petty to remain. I know that you do not like her, so I shall send her away this evening. Canning has also gone and will not return. Things can revert to their original course, and you can manage the house along with Tim. But remember, Lesbia, that if your heart softens towards this scamp, I shall recall both The Shadow and Mrs. Petty to watch over you." Lesbia, with a white face and set lips, looked straight at her father. "I will neither write to George again, nor will I see him," she said, with a stifled sob. "But whatever you say about his guilt, remember that I do not believe it. He is innocent." "Then why not stick by him?" asked her father cruelly. "You know well enough why I do not: why I cannot. George and I are now entire strangers, and must remain so until the mystery of this burglary is cleared up." "It will never be cleared up, because there is nothing to clear up," said her father calmly. "George stole those jewels of Tait's for your sake, and it is only Tait's friendship for his mother and Maud's kind heart that prevented Walker being arrested and condemned as a thief." Lesbia's lip curled. "I mistrust Miss Ellis's kind heart," said she. Hale shrugged his thin shoulders. "You can do what you like about that," he remarked carelessly, "but remember that she holds George in the hollow of her hand. All you have to do is to forget him and marry Sargent." "No!" said Lesbia positively. "I shall never see George again, since circumstances are too strong for him and for me. But I will never marry Captain Sargent. Be sure of that." "He loves you, and----" "I don't love him. Say no more, father. What I say, I stand by." "You said much before which you have not held by," retorted Hale, his temper rising; "and circumstances may prove too much for you. However, Sargent can wait, and so can I. Meanwhile, since you have dismissed this young fool, you are free to come and go as you desire." "One moment," said Lesbia, as her father turned on his heel, "what about that amethyst cross?" Hale wheeled round with a colour in his parchment cheeks, and a suspicious look in his cold, grey eyes. "What do you mean?" "You declared that if George recovered the cross, he could marry me." "I hold to that, since I am not a man to go back on my word." "But how can I marry George when you say that you can prove he is guilty of this burglary?" "Maud Ellis can prove it, not I," returned Mr. Hale. He paused and bit his lip hard. "I believe in the face of Walker's new escapade that he knows who took that cross. His former behaviour may have been a sham, as was his acting in the gallery. Let him bring me the cross, and perhaps after all he may be able to marry you," "I shall never marry him until his character is cleared," said Lesbia firmly. Hale shrugged his shoulders again. "You will find it difficult to clear him, my dear," he sneered, and went away. Mr. Hale would have spoken rightly in connection with a less determined girl. But Lesbia, for all her fragile looks, was very determined and also very much in love with George Walker. Appearances were against him, and, judging by circumstantial evidence, he certainly was guilty. But Lesbia could not bring herself to believe that the man she loved had sunk to being a common thief. Now that she was free to leave the cottage and wander whither she would, it was an easy matter to seek out George at Medmenham, and ask direct questions. But this Lesbia did not do, because her father had detailed fully all that Walker had said and all that he had done, so there was no more to learn in that quarter. Moreover, Hale had stated with a sneer that Maud Ellis was desperately in love with the young man, and Lesbia recalled George's hesitation about speaking of his desire to leave Tait's office. "There are other things to be considered," Walker had said, and then had blushed. Now the girl knew intuitively that he referred to Maud Ellis. Lesbia's face grew flushed and angry as she thought of her rival. She trusted George, who was her very own, but instinctively she knew the wiles of women, and dreaded lest her letter of dismissal should throw the young man into the arms of the stockbroker's niece. Thus it came about that Lesbia's meditations led her, not to Mrs. Walker's cottage at Medmenham, but to the splendid mansion at Henley, where Maud Ellis was waiting for George to come to her. Maud had learned from Mr. Hale that George had received his letter of dismissal from Lesbia, and so waited to catch him on the recoil. He would certainly come back to her who had so boldly stood by him when he had been accused. But as the days went by George did not come, and Maud's heart grew sick, for she was honestly in love. Her uncle was absent in the City, still seeking for the lost jewels, and the local police together with a couple of detectives from Scotland Yard were doing their best to solve the mystery. But all efforts were in vain. No trace had been found of the thieves, and the jewels could not be recovered. Tait invited no more people to his Henley mansion, and remained a great deal in London grumbling over his loss. Maud would have gone up also, but that she waited vainly at home in the hope that George would come to her for consolation. One afternoon while she was thus waiting, and had arrayed herself in her prettiest frock on the chance of a visit, the footman intimated that a young lady wished to see her. She had no card, said the footman, and had simply stated that her name was Miss Lesbia Hale. Maud's eyes flashed when she heard the name of her rival, and she ordered the man to lead the guest at once to the long drawing-room. Miss Ellis was desperately anxious to see the face that had captured the heart of George Walker. Before repairing to the drawing-room, she altered a few things about her dress, for, being very much the woman, she knew that she was about to meet a dangerous foe. A man would not notice a dress overmuch, but a woman would, at the very first glance, and Maud was determined that there should be no flaw in her armour, so far as frocks and frills went. Lesbia, very pale, but quite calm, waited impatiently for the appearance of Miss Ellis. When that young lady sailed into the room with outstretched hands and a beaming smile, Lesbia rose with a stony face and a cold, distant manner. Maud's hands fell, when she saw that she was being kept at a distance, and she became formal also. In her heart she grew angry, when she saw Lesbia's beauty, for being very sensible, she knew that her own looks were much inferior. A shade passed over her face, but soon was replaced by a malicious smile. Maud knew that, beauty or no beauty, she held the trump card and could win the game at her leisure. Lesbia saw that smile. "I know why you look like that," she said abruptly. Maud straightened her neat figure, and raised her sandy eyebrows. "What a very strange speech to make at our first meeting, Miss Hale!" she said, coldly and superciliously. "Ah," retorted Lesbia. "You see that I am not used to society." "Is there any occasion to tell me that?" asked Maud, sweetly. But Lesbia was too desperately in earnest to be daunted by such feline talk. "There is no occasion to tell you many things," she said, "nor is there need for beating about the bush. My father has told me everything." "About what may I ask?" "About this burglary and about George." "George?" Miss Ellis raised her eyebrows again. "George?" she repeated. "I have the right to call him so," rejoined Lesbia hotly. "I am engaged to him, Miss Ellis." "Was engaged, I understand." "Yes." Lesbia suddenly looked fatigued and would have dearly liked to sit down, but pride prevented her. Maud saw this and scratched again. "Won't you sit down?" "No, thank you!" replied Lesbia, stiffening. "I am only here for a few minutes, and can say all that I have to say in that time." Miss Ellis flicked a scented handkerchief across her lips to hide a smile, and looked searchingly at her visitor's white face. "I really don't know why you talk to me like this." "Oh, yes you do. In the same way I knew why you smiled when you entered. You think that you can win the game. But you shan't!" "What game?" "The game we play for George. My father has told me all. I love George and you love him also." "Your father seems to be very well-informed," sneered Maud, flushing. "He usually is," Lesbia assured her, with great coolness. "It was only when my father told me about this burglary, that I learned you loved George." "I do love him!" cried Maud defiantly, "but I don't see that it matters to you--now." "It matters a great deal," said Lesbia coldly. "I am only an unsophisticated girl, Miss Ellis, but I don't intend to give up the man I love, without a struggle." "I understand that you have given him up." "For the time being, until I can force you to prove his innocence." "Force me!" Miss Ellis raised her eyebrows for the third time, but her face grew angry, for she did not like this very straight speaking. "What have I to do with the matter? I believe that George is innocent myself, and told my uncle so. Indeed, had I not stood up for George, he would now be in gaol." Lesbia smiled contemptuously. "It's all part of the game," she retorted. "I am a woman, not a man, Miss Hale, and I can see very plainly how George walked into the trap you set for him." "I set no trap. And if George says----" "George says nothing. I have not seen him for a long time. But my father told me how George was in the gallery and you also." "Did he tell you that George came to meet me?" asked Maud maliciously. "No, nor do I believe you." "Then he did." "It is a lie," said Lesbia, impolitely but very firmly. "I don't believe it." "Ask George himself," cried Maud. "He will tell you that we had a meeting at three in the morning and----" Lesbia, who was looking at her, gave an ironical laugh. "Oh, I believe you now," she said slowly, "I can see the truth in your eyes. Yes, George did meet you by appointment. Why, I don't know----" "Because he loved me." "He never loved you!" cried Lesbia furiously, and looked so angry that Maud hastily stepped back a pace, thinking she would be struck. "He loves me and me only. But you inveigled him into the gallery, into a trap, and made use of this burglary to force him to be your husband." "I told my uncle that George was innocent." "Yes, because it suited your book to do so. But you told my father, and he passed the message on to me, that if I did not dismiss George, you would prove his guilt." Maud tore her handkerchief to ribbons. "And I can too," she said, between her teeth. "You are quite right. To the world I should say nothing; but to you I can say what I please. We love the same man. I want him, and I am going to get him. I _did_ trap George into a meeting, but the burglary was unforeseen. I can make use of it, which, let me remind you, Miss Hale, I have not done yet. Remember I was chloroformed, and the key was taken from my neck to open the safe. What would be easier than for me to declare that George Walker asked me to meet him in the gallery and rendered me insensible and stole the jewels, after taking the key, and buried them in the garden, coming back to tell falsehoods? If I speak----" "You won't speak." "I shall speak, rather than let George marry you," flashed out Maud. Lesbia sneered. "You remind me of the motto of the French Revolution," she said. "'Be my brother or I'll kill you,' so George is to marry you----" "Or go to gaol. Exactly!" "Thank you!" Lesbia moved swiftly to the door. "Now that I know your intentions I can go." "What will you do?" Maud followed, aghast at this abrupt departure. "Prove George's innocence, and marry him." "Try!" said Maud, between her teeth, "try and fail." CHAPTER X THE _DEUS EX MACHINA_ If Lesbia had been a trifle more versed in the ways of the wicked world, she would have remained longer in conversation with Maud, if only to learn about that lady's plans. Maud declared that unless George became her husband she would have him put into gaol for the burglary. But it was difficult to know how she intended to proceed. Of course, she could declare that Walker had chloroformed her and had stolen the key of the strong-room to steal the jewels, but she had no one to prove the truth of her story, plausible as it was, in the face of Walker's known presence in the picture-gallery. It was George's word against Maud's and, therefore, the law would have no easy matter to prove the young man's supposed guilt. But Lesbia was so hot with indignation at the discovery of Maud's mean plot that she ended the interview abruptly, and walked quickly away trying to stifle her rage. For George's sake it was necessary that she should keep a clear head, and it was necessary also that she should learn the truth of this conspiracy--as she verily believed it to be. Come what might, Lesbia decided in her own mind that George should marry her. But to bring this about she had not only to clear his character, but to find the amethyst cross and restore it to her father. But where the cross might be she could not guess. The mystery of the robbery and of George's presence in the cottage on that fatal night had never been cleared up. Walking swiftly down to the river Lesbia thought over these things, and thought still more when she entered Tim's boat. The little man had rowed her up to Henley at her request, and took her back the same way. She had detailed her reasons for visiting Miss Ellis, but had received scanty comfort from Tim. He was disposed to take a gloomy view of the matter. "It's the crass, bad luck to it!" groaned Tim, when she told him how badly she had fared. "Sure there's nivir bin a moment's pace sinse it was lost." "That is very true," rejoined Lesbia, steering the boat towards the lock, and reviewing in her own mind the untoward circumstances which had disturbed her life since the proposal of George in the garden. From the time when the cross had been given to him, there had been nothing but incessant trouble. Her father had raged, her lover had been assaulted, her liberty had been curtailed, and George had lost his situation through being accused of a sordid crime. And to crown all, another woman, of whose existence she had scarcely heard, had stepped in to claim Walker as her future husband. "It's very true," sighed Lesbia dolefully, "the cross has brought nothing but trouble. If we could get it back again things might mend. But the question is, how to recover it?" Tim bent to his oars, and shook his head with another groan. "Let it bide, Miss, let it bide. Sure we don't want more kick-ups. Me mother, rist her sowl, towld me that the crass wud bring lashins av worry whin ye guv it off av yer hand. An' it's truth she spoke, me dear." "Do you know where she got the cross, Tim?" "Sure, Miss, an' didn't she tell ye whin she died? 'Twas yer mother's. I know no more nor that, me dear, 'twas your mother's. As for Masther Garge, cudn't ye forgit him, Miss?" "No!" cried Lesbia, indignantly. "I shall love George as long as I live. I can no more forget him than he can forget me. Would you have me marry Captain Sargent?" "Sure, an' I wudn't. He's a proud baste, an' if ye married him, me dear, he'd be afther bringing me to the gallows, for his treatmint av ye, Miss Lesbia." "Then don't let us talk any more about the matter," cried Lesbia, impetuously. "I shall keep my faith with George." "Wud ye like to see him, Miss?" "No," said the girl promptly. "I told him in my letter that we must never meet again. Nor will we until this mystery of the burglary is cleared up. I intend to clear it up." "But how, Miss? Ye've no wan to help ye." Lesbia reflected. "There's The Shadow," she said quietly. "An' what wud that poor cratur be afther doing, Miss?" "I don't know. But he offered to help me, so I shall put his professions of gratitude to the test. Tim, to-night you must go down to Cookham and bring him back with you." "Augh!" groaned Tim, annoyed that anyone but himself should do anything for his darling. "Sure he's out av the house, so let him bide, me dear." "If you don't go to Cookham, I will," said Lesbia firmly. "An' have trouble wid that baste av a Captain? Me dear, I'll go." And Tim was as good as his word. Lesbia reached the cottage to find that her father had left a note saying he had gone to London for a few days. Hale was always stealing off on mysterious errands, possibly connected with his equally mysterious business. Of late no odd characters had been coming to the cottage, but Hale was absent much more frequently. On this occasion his absence was welcome, as it gave Lesbia a chance of arranging her plans with Canning. What these might be she had, as yet, no very clear idea. All she intended to do was to explain the situation and ask The Shadow what was best to be done. When she received his opinion, she could then take a step forward into the veiling mists which surrounded her. While Tim rowed down to Cookham, which he did after landing Lesbia at the bottom of the garden, the girl ran into the cottage. She found that she had it all to herself as, true to his promise, Mr. Hale had dismissed Mrs. Petty. That good lady, liking the easy place, had retired in high dudgeon, and would have shown fight but that Hale quelled her with a glance of his cold, grey eye. Hale, indeed, possessed a great power--perhaps a hypnotic power--over those who came to the cottage. Had not Canning fallen sick, and thus had been removed from his influence, it is very questionable if he would have offered his services to Lesbia. However, he had done so, and the girl was about to accept them gratefully. Lesbia passed the time in dressing herself for dinner, and in partaking of it. It was a homely meal, consisting of cold meat and salad, bread and cheese and a glass of prime claret. Afterwards Lesbia made herself a cup of black coffee, and sat down in the tiny drawing-room with a book, pending the arrival of The Shadow. But her thoughts wandered from the printed page to George, and more than ever she longed for his coming. It had cost her much to write the letter of dismissal, but in the face of Maud's threat, as conveyed to her by Hale, she could do nothing else. And the worst of it was that she had not been permitted to assign a cause for what George must regard as her heartless behaviour. However, and very luckily, she had scanty time for sad reflections, for shortly she heard the hearty voice of Tim, as he entered the house by the back door, and later the sibilant whisper of The Shadow. In a few minutes Canning presented himself, looking more lean and more dismal than ever in his customary suit of black. But his haggard face was lighted up with an eager smile. The mere fact that Lesbia had decided to avail herself of his services made him as gay as such a sad personage well could be. Canning was desperately anxious to repay the kindness he had received. "I am glad to see you," said Lesbia cordially. "You lost no time." "No, Miss," whispered the grim man, who stood with long, hanging arms at the door. "Captain Sargent went to London to-day with your father, and I came back with Tim at once. I am so glad you want me to help you, Miss." "I need your help very badly," sighed Lesbia, passing her hand across her brow. "Will you not sit down, Canning." "In your presence, Miss? Please excuse me." "But you are yet weak after your illness. Sit down. I want you to." Thus urged, The Shadow sank softly on to the extreme edge of a convenient chair placed near the door. Here he fixed his sad eyes on the beautiful vision at the window, and adored in silence. Lesbia turned matters over in her mind. She knew that she would have to speak very plainly, and had a natural reluctance to doing so, since Canning was a servant and a stranger. Still, he was the sole person who could help her, as now that George was out of her life, temporarily, at all events, she felt very lonely. Her father neither gave her affection, nor desired any, and certainly would not put out a hand to save George, much less clear his character. Why should he, when he wanted Walker out of the way so that his daughter could marry Sargent? Lesbia thought of these things with her eyes on the floor, and finally determined to confess everything, as her plight and that of George was too desperate to permit of over-nice feelings. With some colour, therefore, she related the whole story from the time that Walker had proposed to the result of her visit to Maud. "I was forced to dismiss Mr. Walker," she said in addition, "because my father came back to tell me that Miss Ellis had threatened to have Mr. Walker arrested. I saw Miss Ellis also, as I have told you, and she declares that she can prove Mr. Walker's guilt, and will do so unless he marries her." Canning, with his sad eyes fixed upon her, heard the whole tale without comment. At the end he nodded. "What do you wish me to do, Miss?" "I want you to learn who committed this burglary at Mr. Tait's house, so that Mr. Walker can be cleared." "But how can I do that, Miss, when I am servant to Captain Sargent? I have my duties to consider." "I know that," Lesbia faltered, and became downcast, "and then you have no experience in looking into these things. I am sorry you cannot help me." "I did not say that, Miss." "Then you will?" The Shadow reflected, but did not take his eyes from her eager face. "Yes!" he said at length. "I will help you." "Oh, Canning, thank you so much. But how?" "I can't say yet, Miss. In the first place I must leave Captain Sargent." Lesbia rose impulsively. "I don't want you to lose your situation." "I had intended to give the Captain notice long ago," explained Canning, rising in his turn. "What you say decides me. I shall go to London, and in one way or another I may be able to learn who stole those jewels." "But why in London? They were stolen at Henley." "Quite so, but the two thieves--if Mr. Walker is to be believed, there were two--must have taken the jewels to dispose of them in London. Leave everything to me, Miss. I was in an inquiry office once, and know how to go about these matters. But," he hesitated, "it will require money." "Oh!" Lesbia uttered an ejaculation of dismay. "I have none." "Can't your father give you some, Miss?" Lesbia shook her head. "He wants me to marry Captain Sargent, and so will not allow me to help Mr. Walker. No, my father will give me nothing. What is to be done?" "I don't know, Miss. But I have no money and I must have at least fifty pounds to work on. I shall learn about the burglary first and then will discover who knocked down Mr. Walker and stole the cross." He paused. "Has Tim saved any money?" "No, poor soul," sighed Lesbia, "my father never pays him any wages. I am sure he would lend me the money if he had it. There is no one from whom I can borrow, and----" here a sudden idea came to the girl, and she flushed crimson with mingled hope and nervous fear. "Oh!" she cried, "he might, he might." "Who might, Miss?" asked the man sharply. Lesbia took no notice. "Fifty pounds," she murmured. "It's a large sum of money. Still he might. He----" she stopped again as she saw The Shadow looking at her curiously. "Go away, Canning, and return to-morrow evening. I hope to have the fifty pounds by then." "Miss," Canning spoke slowly and impressively, "you have honoured me with your confidence, and you will never regret doing so, as I am entirely devoted to you. Add to that confidence by telling me from whom you design to borrow this fifty pounds." "There is no reason why you should not know," said Lesbia quickly, "I am thinking of Lord Charvington." "Mr. Hale's cousin." "Oh, you know that," she cried, surprised. "Yes," The Shadow laughed in his whispering, silent way, rather oddly. "I know more than you give me credit for. You see," he added, slowly, and with a downcast face, "I was at school with your father and Charvington." "You," Lesbia gasped in astonishment, and stared at the lean, dusky, untidy figure before her. Then she remembered the scrupulous refinement of the man, noted anew his excellent diction, and suddenly saw in the weird face and figure evidences of good breeding. "Mr. Canning," she said suddenly, and gave him a new position at once, "you are a gentleman!" "I _was_ a gentleman," he replied bitterly, and dropping his use of the word "Miss." "Now I am Captain Sargent's valet and a wastrel. But I am also your very devoted servant, Miss Hale," he bowed. "Let it remain at that." "But how did you come to----" "Don't ask me--don't ask me," said Canning hurriedly. "Some day you will learn how I came to occupy this position. Meanwhile, get the fifty pounds from Charvington"--Lesbia noted that he spoke quite as an equal of the nobleman--"and give it to me. I shall save your lover and make your path straight for you." "Can you do this, Mr. Canning?" "Yes," he answered simply. "Good-night, Miss Hale. Please do not tell Tim what I have mentioned, and say nothing to Charvington. To-morrow night I shall come for the fifty, and the----" he paused, opened and closed his hand several times, and then vanished with a sigh. He might indeed have been a veritable shadow from the noiseless way in which he disappeared. Lesbia remained spell-bound. In a flash it occurred to her that she should long ago have guessed that The Shadow was other than he appeared to be. Many things which had puzzled her became plain, and she wondered how a gentleman had sunk so low as to be a spy, and to occupy the position of Sargent's valet. But she had too much delicacy to question Canning, until such time as he chose of his own free will to speak out. Besides, she had much to think about in connection with her proposed borrowing of fifty pounds from Lord Charvington. And unless she could procure that sum, there would be no chance of George being saved from the clutches of Maud Ellis. The nobleman in question was a cousin of Mr. Hale's and had once or twice been to the cottage. Indeed, Lesbia had reason to believe that Lord Charvington allowed her father a certain sum every quarter, although this seemed strange in the face of Hale's assertion that he could give her two thousand a year if she married to his liking. There was also the business in the City about which Lesbia knew nothing. Why should a man in business accept an annuity? It was all very strange, but then everything connected with Mr. Walter Hale was strange, and now that Lesbia began to think, she began to mistrust her father. Why did he keep his business secret? Why did he accept an annuity, and then declare that he could give her a large income? Why did he have such shady people at the cottage whom he scarcely permitted her to see? Altogether Lesbia became aware that there was something sinister about her father's position. She felt like a watcher of a black cloud waiting for it to discharge lightning. More than ever did she determine at least to have the mysteries of the burglary and of the cross cleared up. The old time of peace had passed away for the girl, and now she felt that she would have to go forth and do battle. With regard to Charvington, she knew him moderately well. He had always been kind to her, and she had heard her father state that the nobleman was her godfather. It seemed rather cool to apply to him for a loan of fifty pounds, but Lesbia was not only desperate but also very unsophisticated in worldly ways. Almost without considering what she was about, she wrote a hurried letter asking him to lend her fifty pounds for six months, and promised to explain later why she desired the loan. She proposed in her own mind to repay the money by selling the amethyst cross when Canning should get it back for her, as she believed he would. Of course the whole business was very naïve and very childish, and a girl more versed in worldly things would never have ventured to take such a step. But Lesbia, just like a trusting child, asked for the money, and posted her letter with a prayer that God would grant her request. Like a newly-fledged gambler, who wins every game through sheer ignorance, Lesbia's desperately-played card turned up trumps in four and twenty hours. Lord Charvington sent her a cheque by return of post and invited her to come and explain matters to him personally. Lesbia danced with joy. "Now!" she said to herself. "George is safe. Thank God!" CHAPTER XI THE SEAMY SIDE When Mr. Hale returned in three days from London, he was surprised to find Lesbia extremely cheerful. She had every right to be, since she had given the fifty-pound cheque to Canning, and he was now in town looking into the matter of the Henley burglary. How Canning managed to get away from his master so expeditiously, Lesbia could not tell, nor did she inquire. It was quite enough for her to know that The Shadow was searching into the case. To Lord Charvington she had sent a letter thanking him for the money, and promising to come over and tell him everything as soon as she could. These things made her hopeful and bright in spite of her enforced severance from George, and she managed, by looking towards a bright future, to possess her soul in patience. But Hale was ignorant of what she was doing, and her behaviour puzzled him. "I thought you loved Walker," he said abruptly, and with suspicion. "Of course I do," rejoined the girl cheerfully. "It does not seem like it." Lesbia shrugged her shoulders. "What is the use of crying over spilt milk?" she asked. "My going about with a long face will not make George's position any the more endurable. Some day when his character has been cleared things will change." "They will never change," said Mr. Hale coldly and severely. "Walker has committed a sordid crime, and can never marry you." "I don't believe that he is guilty," retorted Lesbia deliberately. "And even if I grant for the sake of argument that he is, Miss Ellis does not seem to think that his guilt is a bar to his marriage with her." "She's a love-sick fool." "So am I." "With this difference, that she can marry him and you can't. And talking of Miss Ellis," went on Hale, becoming more stern than ever; "I saw her in London and she told me that you had actually been to see her." "Why not?" asked Lesbia defiantly. "That is no crime." "It is an impertinence to see her and to talk to her as you did. Why did you go, Lesbia?" "I wished to find out how she proposed to force George to become her husband. I have learned that much. She intends to force him by telling a lie." "How do you know that what she says is a lie?" demanded Hale angrily. "Because I read it in her eyes. A man would not have done so, but I am a woman, and you can trust one woman to learn everything another woman leaves unsaid, especially when a man is the stake between them." "You should have more modesty," snapped her father uncomfortably. Lesbia coloured. "I have behaved properly in every way," she said, in a wounded voice; "and, as I love George, I had every right to learn how this woman proposed to take him from me." "Well, you know now that she can." "She _thinks_ she can," said Lesbia, with emphasis; "that is different." "Nonsense! She can prove that he took the key from her neck and stole the jewels," insisted Mr. Hale. "It is her word against his," rejoined Lesbia drily; "and until Miss Ellis proves the truth of her statement I believe in George's innocence." "Lesbia," cried her father, rising, "what has come to you? Formerly you used to be quiet and well-behaved and did as you were told; now----" "Now," said the girl, getting on her feet and looking very straight at her father; "now I am a woman, fighting for her happiness, and so will do my best to hold my own against your tyranny." Hale did not like the word, and said so. "I am your father and no tyrant." "You are both, and much more the latter than the former. I don't know how it is," said Lesbia, pondering, "but I have an idea that you are using me as a pawn in some game you are playing. Miss Ellis is in the game also, and so is Captain Sargent. What the game may be I don't know, and I decline to be pushed about a chess-board without knowing why I move." "You shall do as you are told," said Hale, livid with secret rage, but not daring to show it openly, lest he should lose more of his already waning influence. "I shall do as I think fit," retorted the girl, her spirit up in arms. "I don't care if you are fifty times my father, you shall not treat me in this way any longer. If I can clear George's character, I shall see him and marry him, and if you dare to bring in Mrs. Petty to spy on me, I shall appeal to my godfather." "Your godfather. And who may he be?" "You told me once and I have never forgotten. Lord Charvington is my----" "I spoke at random," broke in Hale hastily. "He is not your godfather. He is nothing more than my cousin and my friend." "And your benefactor," said Lesbia, unable to resist the shaft. "And being so, what will he say if he learns how unkindly you are behaving?" "Lesbia, you are mad!" "No! For years I have been your puppet. Lately I have discovered that I am a human being with a will of my own. So long as you leave me alone I am content to behave as your daughter. But I decline to endure tyranny, and I decline to be made use of in this mysterious game you are playing. I am very glad you spoke to me this morning, father, as it was time that we came to an understanding;" and Lesbia, with her head up, marched out of the room. But she would have been scared had she looked back and seen the expression on her father's face. It was little less than devilish with rage and baffled cunning. The worm had been obedient for so long that Hale had never expected the turning and it came upon him with a shock. He could not afford to let Lesbia appeal for protection to his noble relative, as he knew that Lord Charvington was the kindest of men and would, undoubtedly, interfere. Of course in an ordinary case, Hale could have prevented such interference between a father and daughter. But with Charvington, who allowed him an annuity, it was different. If Hale did not behave well to Lesbia, he felt very certain that Charvington would punish him by taking away the quarterly sum. And in spite of his business in the City, and his boast that he could give Lesbia two thousand a year, Hale could not afford to lose so certain an income. He therefore said no more to Lesbia on the subjects of George and Miss Ellis and the burglary. Nor did he bring back The Shadow and Mrs. Petty. Indeed, he could not bring back the former, as he had heard from Sargent that the man had thrown up his situation, and had gone to London. This being the case, if Lesbia chose to see George it was impossible to prevent her from having her own way. But Hale trusted that after the letter of dismissal George would refuse to have anything to do with the girl who had apparently thrown him over. Meanwhile he asked Sargent to the cottage frequently, and advised him to prosecute his wooing with all zeal. "If you don't secure the girl soon, you will lose her," said Hale emphatically. "I shall do so as soon as I can get a chance of seeing her alone," said Sargent, and strove to look the handsome, gallant lover. It was after dinner that he spoke thus; and in the light which came through the rosy shades of the candles he seemed wonderfully young, and not at all bad-looking. As usual, he was perfectly dressed in evening array, and yet had that ultra-fashionable air, which is such a mark of inferior breeding. Captain Alfred Sargent looked like a gentleman, and yet there was something lacking in manner to complete the dress and pretensions. The rosy lights made him look less colourless for the moment; but when in pursuance of his object he strolled into the garden to meet Lesbia, he became quite wan, white and worn-looking in the warm summer moonlight. Miss Hale, in a simple white dress, looking sweet and girlish and remarkably pretty, sat on the bench under the chestnut--in the very place where George had made his memorable proposal. Disliking Sargent as she did, and the more so since her father wished her to marry him, she had early left the dinner-table to take refuge in this love-haunted spot, and dream of George. With the inconsequence of a woman, she rather resented the fact that her lover had not replied to his letter of dismissal. She had not thought that he would accept her decision so readily, and in her heart she desired that he should come along to take her by storm. At times she fancied, indeed, that he would suddenly appear to carry her off to the nearest church, and so frequently sought the garden to afford him an opportunity to play "Young Lochinvar." There was also another reason. In the garden she hoped to meet The Shadow. Lately, he had sent her a line--through Tim--stating that he had discovered a clue to the robbery, and that he would come down to tell her about it. Lesbia appointed the bottom of the garden as the best place of meeting as her father rarely came there, and Canning could easily row up to the landing-stage in the twilight. Every evening she expected him, but as yet he had not appeared. Thus, she was much annoyed when she beheld the slender form of the ex-captain in the distance. With a cigarette in his mouth, which he was languidly smoking, Sargent strolled pensively down the path, and finally came to a halt before the pretty figure on the garden-seat. Lesbia looked at him blankly, and gave him no encouragement. "A penny for your thoughts, Miss Hale," said the gallant captain, forced by her silence to utter the first word. "They are worth the Bank of England," replied Lesbia, resolving to make the best of this bore, since to get rid of him by plain speaking only meant unnecessary trouble with her father. "In that case," said Sargent softly, and advancing nearer, "may I hope they were of me?" "If you are so very egotistic," said the girl bitingly, "you can think so." "You are cruel," muttered Sargent, somewhat disconcerted. He had not expected so cutting a speech from so apparently timid a girl. "Why are you so cruel to me, Lesbia--I may call you Lesbia, may I not?" "No," said Lesbia coldly, "I see no reason why you should. As to being cruel, Captain Sargent, I am not aware that I am." "Surely," fenced the captain, "you are aware that I love you." Lesbia laughed, and he was more disconcerted than ever. "I am aware that my father wishes me to marry you; but he said nothing of love." "He left it for me to say." "Well, then, say it," remarked Miss Hale cruelly. Sargent had met plenty of women and, with his good looks and reputation for wealth, had usually scored an easy victory. But this girl was so straightforward and so absolutely calm that he did not know how to proceed. With an uneasy laugh he strove to fall into her humour. "I love you," he stammered. "Why?" asked Lesbia, still calm and exasperating. "Look in the glass, and ask me why," he said ardently. "Can I behold such loveliness and----" "Captain Sargent," she broke in, smiling broadly, "you speak just like a lover of the mid-Victorian epoch. I have read such speeches in books, and I have always thought them exceedingly silly. Be more original!" Don Giovanni himself would have turned restive when advised to alter his style of love-making, and Captain Sargent's waxen face grew red with wrath. He was a bloodless person, so his anger was more like that of a fretful child than that of a man. Lesbia looked at him with a contempt which he found hard to bear. She wanted a man to master her as all women do, and she saw that this wooer could never dominate. "You are very unkind, Lesbia," was all that Sargent could find to say. "In that case, why not leave me and go back to my father?" "Because I came from your father. He wants you to marry me. I want it also. Come," he went on coaxingly, "be my wife, Lesbia, and you shall have everything that the world can give you." "I daresay. Everything but a husband." "I shall be your husband." "You!" she looked him up and down until he reddened to the roots of his straw-coloured hair. "I would rather be excused." "You won't marry me." "Certainly not." Sargent grew childish with rage. "If you do not there will be trouble. I can ruin that man you love--that bounder Walker!" "He is not a bounder; he is a man, and it will take a stronger man than you, Captain Sargent, to harm him." "But I _can_ harm him, and I shall do so," cried the captain, and his delicate face took on an expression of cunning. Weak as he was, Lesbia could see that wounded vanity might make him dangerous. "This burglary----" "What do you know about it?" demanded Lesbia imperiously. "Walker is guilty. Miss Ellis says so." "For her own ends she says so, and you act in the same way. She wants to marry George, and you want to marry me. It won't do, Captain Sargent. Things are not to be settled in that fashion. You had better," she laughed, "marry Miss Ellis yourself." "I love you; I want to marry you." "I am sorry," said Lesbia sedately, "but I decline." "For your father's sake," urged Sargent weakly, angry, and looking more dangerously cunning than ever. "I can harm him also. I can----" He saw from the startled expression on the girl's face that he was saying too much, and abruptly turned on his heel. "I shall come for my answer to-morrow, Lesbia," he called out, as he walked swiftly towards the house. The girl remained where she was, wondering what this new threat meant. She could understand how he could support her father and Maud in harming George, but it was difficult to understand how he could harm Mr. Hale. In a flash the old unrest came over Lesbia, and she again pondered her father's unaccountable secrecy, and recalled his shady acquaintances. Then again, there was Canning, who was a gentleman and had been to school with Mr. Hale, only to degenerate into Sargent's valet. It was all very singular and somewhat startling, and Lesbia puzzled over it hopelessly, until she was aroused from a somewhat painful brown study by a low whistle. She looked up and around, to see a boat by the landing-stage, and in the boat Mr. Canning, apparently more frail than ever. Sargent was also shadowy, and it dawned upon Lesbia that the two might be related. "Captain Sargent has just left me," she said, running down to the landing-stage. "He wanted to marry me and I refused." "You were quite right, Miss Hale. If you married Sargent, you would be ruined for ever." "He threatened to harm my father if I did not, and George also." Mr. Canning threw back his head and laughed silently. "He can do his best to harm Walker by supporting Miss Ellis in her lie, but it will take a much stronger man than Alfred to----" here he became aware that he had appeared unduly familiar with his late master's name. "I thought so," said Lesbia, recalling how like the two men were in looks and fragility; "you are related to Captain Sargent; you are his brother." "Yes," said Mr. Canning, looking very pale. "Since you have guessed so cleverly I may as well admit it. But I shall not tell you my story now. Later will be time enough. Meanwhile, say nothing to your father about having guessed that Alfred is my brother. How did you----" "Oh," said Lesbia smiling, "you are exactly alike. Both pale and both slender, with the same cast of face and the same colour of hair, and--oh, it's wonderful!--I believe you are twins." Mr. Canning shirked this question. He came ashore and passed with Lesbia under the chestnut tree, behind the trunk, in fact, so that they might not be seen from the cottage windows. "I have discovered the truth," he said, in his usual whisper, "but at present you must not ask me how I came to learn it. But George Walker is innocent. Mr. Tait had the jewels stolen so as to get the insurance money." Lesbia gasped with amazement. "Are you certain?" she demanded, and when he nodded, asked another question. "How did you learn so quickly?" "That is a secret just now," said Canning equably. "Remember that I warned you before, that you must not ask that question. It is sufficient to say that I found out how Mr. Tait insured these jewels for a large sum of money, and then employed two clever London thieves to steal them. Tait will get the insurance money, and he will also unset the jewels and sell them in India and America. Of course, the thieves will have to be paid for the risk they took, though it was not a great one, as Tait left the gallery doors open, and gave them the key which he had on his watch-chain to open the safe. If Miss Ellis had not come down; if Walker had not followed, there would have been no scandal." "Mr. Canning," said Lesbia, after a moment's thought, "did Miss Ellis know that this robbery was about to take place? From all that I have heard of her she is deep in her uncle's confidence." "I cannot be sure if she is an accessory before the fact," replied Canning, speaking in legal phraseology. "But I can," cried the girl, leaping to a conclusion with the intuitive certainty of a woman. "I see the whole scheme. Miss Ellis knew that the jewels would be stolen somewhere about three o'clock in the morning, and so appointed that hour to meet George, and implicate him in the crime. It was a carefully arranged trap into which he walked wholly unconsciously." "But her reason?" asked Canning, somewhat perplexed. Lesbia laughed. "You are a mere man, Mr. Canning, and cannot understand. It takes a woman to fathom the duplicity of another woman. Miss Ellis loved George, and as he would not marry her willingly, she lured him into this trap, so as to--oh!" Lesbia broke off, clenching her little fists and stamping with anger. "But she shall not! she shall not! I shall see her and defy her. And you, Mr. Canning--you?" "I am returning to London, to hide," said the man quietly; "but I can come down here when it is necessary. I shall send you my address as soon as I arrange where to conceal myself." "But why should you conceal yourself?" "That is too long a story to tell you at present. It is enough for you to know that what I have discovered about Tait--what I have told you--is dangerous to me. No, Miss Hale, do not ask me further questions, for I dare not answer. I have jeopardised my liberty, and perhaps my life, by what I have done for you." "I do not understand," said Lesbia, somewhat scared. "It is as well that you do not," said Canning, sombrely. "Bluebeard's chamber is a dangerous room to look into. When it is necessary--if it ever is--you shall know what I am concealing now. Meanwhile, I shall go into hiding in London." "What am I to do?" "See Miss Ellis," rejoined The Shadow promptly. "Tell her what I have discovered, and give my name as your authority--that is, say how Captain Sargent's servant looked into the matter. You can suppress the fact of my being a gentleman and Sargent's brother. Tell Miss Ellis also that when the time comes I can prove that her uncle had the jewels stolen so as to get the insurance money, in addition to the money from the sale of the jewels in order to tide over a financial crisis. Twenty thousand from the jewels and a like amount from Lloyd's," ended Canning cynically, "will give Mr. Tait ample funds with which to retrieve his position. He was in danger of bankruptcy, but this crime, engineered by himself, has saved his credit." "What wickedness!" murmured Lesbia, as Canning moved towards his boat. "Oh, such doings are classed under the head of business by people like Tait. But I must get away before my brother or your father sees me;" and Canning loosened the painter, slipped into the boat, and took the oars, not without an anxious glance at the cottage. "Thank you for what you have done," cried Lesbia softly, remaining, for obvious reasons, behind the tree-trunk. "Not at all. I have only repaid my debt--that is, if such a debt can ever be paid. Au revoir, Miss Hale!" and raising his shabby cap with all the good breeding of a gentleman, Canning pulled away with an easy, clean stroke, which could only have been learned at a public school. CHAPTER XII A COUNTERPLOT Captain Sargent was somewhat disheartened by Lesbia's steady opposition to his wooing. He was not virile enough to take her heart by storm, and his usual tactics did not seem to succeed with this cool, quiet, observant girl, who looked at him so straight. Also his threats of harming George Walker and Mr. Hale proved to be but blunt weapons and could not penetrate the shield of Lesbia's composure. Sargent retreated from the field of battle thoroughly beaten, and he must have confessed as much to Hale, for that gentleman took his daughter to task when she returned to the cottage after her secret interview with Canning. The unsuccessful lover had already departed, and Lesbia listened for ten minutes to her father's denunciations of what he was pleased to style her wickedness. "You ought to be flattered that so rich and handsome a man loves you," raged Mr. Hale, who for once in his life lost his self-control. "You seem to forget that if I died to-morrow--and I might as my heart is affected--you would be left penniless." Lesbia raised her eyebrows. "I understood you to say that you could leave me two thousand a year," she observed quietly. "If you marry as I wish," cried her father furiously, "not otherwise. Failing your becoming the wife of my dear friend, Sargent, I shall leave the money to Lord Charvington." "Well," said the girl cheerfully, "that would only be fair, since he has paid you a pension for so long." "What do you know about that?" snapped Hale, changing colour. "Very little. But you certainly told me in an expansive moment that Lord Charvington, as your cousin, allowed you a small income." "Precious small," muttered Hale, not contradicting. "But why does he allow you anything?" asked Lesbia, very directly, "with two thousand a year you cannot wish for his help." Hale took a turn up and down the room, then stopped opposite to his daughter and spoke in quieter tones, but none the less emphatic. "I am not enjoying two thousand a year at present," he declared slowly, "and so accept an annuity from Charvington, who, being my cousin, has every right to assist me." "I don't see that," murmured the girl, shrugging. "It doesn't matter what you see, or what you don't see," cried Hale, his temper again getting beyond control. "Do as you are told, or chance the consequences." "Be a pawn in fact," she rejoined ironically. "A pawn on your chess-board." Hale shrugged in his turn. "Put it how you like," he retorted, "but obey." "Certainly not. I am a human being and have the right to----" "You have the right to do nothing," broke in her father desperately. "See here, my girl, you are making a great mistake by not letting me guide you. Had you been open about that amethyst cross, I should never have allowed you to give it to George Walker. Its possession means more than you think. The two thousand a year depends upon its production." "Oh!" Lesbia opened her eyes widely. "I see. Then you are willing that I should marry George if you get this two thousand." "Yes," said Hale bluntly, "but for circumstances which do not concern you--I prefer that you should marry Sargent." "Marriage with anyone concerns me a great deal," said Lesbia coolly, "and I decline to marry a man I do not love. As to the cross: it was my own property left to me by my mother, and if its production will bring me two thousand a year I am very sorry it is lost." "I did not say that it meant two thousand a year to _you_," said Hale uneasily, and with a scowl. "Pardon me, father. I assume that, since I am the owner of the cross. However, it is lost and neither I nor you know where to find it. That being the case I refuse to marry Captain Sargent and shall marry George." "You have sent him away: you forget that." "I can bring him again to my feet." "Lesbia Lesbia! you are playing with fire." "Probably, but I shall continue to play until you tell me the meaning of all these things." "I have told you about the cross----" "Quite so," interrupted the girl drily, "and I now know why George was assaulted and his mother's cottage robbed." "You dare to say that I am the guilty person," demanded her father suspiciously. "Oh no. If you were, you would have the cross; and thus being able to get the two thousand a year, you would not oppose my marriage with George. You are innocent!" "Thank you for nothing," sneered Hale coolly, "but you can reckon on this, Lesbia, that if I could have knocked down George and have robbed him of the cross I should have done so." "That is candid, father." "You asked me to be candid. But, hold your tongue, or else talk sense. You must marry Sargent. I shall not allow you to throw yourself away on that thief, and----" "Stop!" cried Lesbia, rising indignantly, "you shall not call George names in my hearing. He is no thief." "Can you prove that?" It was on the tip of the girl's tongue to speak out and accuse Tait. But she first desired to see Maud Ellis in order to cut her claws, and therefore, with a self-restraint far beyond her years, she shook her head. Hale sneered again, "You are a silly romantic fool," he scoffed, "and sooner or later I shall force you to do my will." "Never! Never! Never!" "Oh, very well," replied Hale, baffled by her obstinacy, "then I shall go to London and leave you here. I shall not speak to you, or eat with you, or have anything to do with you, until you obey me as a daughter should," and turning on his heel, he departed in cold anger. Hale duly kept his promise and went away leaving the girl to her own devices. But so clever a man should have known that the punishment--as he deemed it--was no punishment at all. He had never been a father to Lesbia in the accepted sense of the word, and she had but small affection for him. Alone with Tim, she was much happier than when in Mr. Hale's chilling presence, and preferred his room to his company. Also, he was really playing into her hands, as she wished to be alone in order to see Maud and bring her to reason. It was not Lesbia's wish to call again at Henley, as she thought that she could deal better with Miss Ellis when she was on her native heath. Therefore, now that Hale was out of the way, and she was free to do what she desired, she set to work to concoct a plot, whereby to bring Maud Ellis to the cottage at Marlow. To this end she wrote a letter stating that she and George were to be married shortly, and that Miss Ellis's scheme had failed. This artful epistle she posted to Henley, hoping that if Miss Ellis was in London it would be forwarded to her there. She felt certain--since, being a woman, she knew woman's nature better than a man could know it--that Maud would seek an interview and come to Rose Cottage. Of course there was the chance that Maud might first interview Walker, and then learn the falsity of the statement. But in that case, George would come to learn the truth, and then she could tell him what Canning had discovered. In fact, owing to the skilful way in which Lesbia played her one trump card, she was certain to bring to the cottage either Maud Ellis or George Walker: and whichever came, she was prepared to deal with the situation. All the same, she hoped that Maud would be the one to put in an appearance, as if she could silence her, she could then call at the Medmenham cottage and explain to her lover the reason why she had dismissed him. Accordingly, when the letter setting the trap was posted, Lesbia sat down to think over the behaviour of Walker. It puzzled her that he should so tamely accept his dismissal. On the face of it she had treated him cruelly, and had given no reason for abruptly breaking off the engagement. All the same, she considered, woman-like, that he should not have acquiesced too readily to her proposal that they should never meet again. But she forgot that George was a proud man, and that the sole reason he could assign for her dismissing him, was the fact that he was suspected of robbery. If she believed him guilty--George, as she might have thought, would have argued in this way--and had not sufficient love to stand up for him, then she was not worthy of the worship he bestowed on her. But Lesbia did not think thus. She only knew that she had sent George to the right-about and that he had gone away without looking back for a single moment. This was not as it should be, said the woman within her, and therefore she secretly felt annoyed with Walker for his too ready obedience. It can therefore be seen that Lesbia Hale was intensely feminine. Perhaps on that account George loved her the more, since the unexpected in woman is always what lures the man. However, think what she would, and argue as she might, the fact remained that Walker kept away from Rose Cottage and that she had not sufficient courage to face her lover, when under the wing of his mother. Lesbia missed the golden days of wooing dreadfully, and in their absence was anxious to carry on her counterplot, if only to fill in the time. Besides, there would be a considerable amount of pleasure in beating Miss Ellis with her own weapons. It was therefore a happy day to Lesbia that brought the stockbroker's niece into the trap, as this time the biter was about to be bitten. And Lesbia, being a woman and dealing with a woman, determined to show no mercy since Maud had shown none. Besides, the two were fighting over a man, and so reverted to the ethics of cave life and pre-historic struggle. Within four days of the posting of the letter, Miss Ellis arrived and was shown by Tim into the tiny drawing-room. It was empty, as Lesbia had seen her rival coming, and therefore had departed to change her frock. Also she hoped to make Maud lose her temper by enforced waiting, knowing that if she did, there would be less difficulty in dealing with her. Unsophisticated as Lesbia was, she instinctively knew how to fight. Her tactics were correct, for when she entered spick and span and smiling into the drawing-room, she found Maud fuming restlessly, and quite ready to pick a quarrel on the score of uncivil treatment. "I have been kept waiting," said Miss Ellis in a Louis XIV tone, and putting up a lorgnette to glare at her much too beautiful rival. "I am so sorry," responded Lesbia politely. "But I was not dressed to receive anyone, and your visit is unexpected." Maud laughed contemptuously. "You knew that I would come," she declared with conviction. "You have been looking out for me every day." "_You_ say so," said Lesbia, still graciously, for since the last interview at Henley, she had changed her tactics with Miss Ellis. "Will you not be seated? This chair is most comfortable, it has its back to the light." "I don't need to sit with my back to the light," flashed Maud indignantly. "Oh, I beg pardon, but from that lorgnette I thought that your eyes might be weak. Sit here then, in the full warmth of the sunshine." But Miss Ellis knew better than to let the searching light reveal her age too clearly to her hostess. "I'll sit here," she declared abruptly, and came to rest on the sofa. "That's right," said Lesbia caressingly, "It's a nice shady corner." Maud bit her lip, knowing perfectly well that Lesbia was casting a reflection on her age. But having taken the seat she could scarcely leave it without laying herself open to further pointed remarks, so she remained where she was and came to the object of her visit at once. "What do you mean by writing me this letter?" she demanded, producing the epistle of her hostess. "I mean to show you that your plot to part George and myself has failed." Miss Ellis crushed up the letter savagely. "Has it," she inquired, "seeing that you have broken your engagement?" "How do you know that?" "Mrs. Walker told me. And very glad she is I can tell you. Mrs. Walker is an old friend of my uncle's and has known me for years. She wants George to marry me. She told me so only a few days ago." "As if it mattered what she said," retorted Lesbia contemptuously. "She is George's mother." "No one denies that." "And as he is her son, he should obey her." "Even when she wants him to marry a woman he cares nothing for." "George does care for me," cried Maud, a deep flush overspreading her face even to the roots of her sandy hair. "I admit that when he was engaged to you, he would not look at me. But now that you have thrown him over so cruelly, he has turned to me for consolation." "I don't believe it," said Lesbia quickly. "You must, you shall," snapped Miss Ellis very much in earnest. "Look here, this sort of thing won't do." "What sort of thing?" "This enmity you have towards me. I don't know why you are behaving so exasperatingly," wailed Maud plaintively. "When you came to Henley, it was the first time we met, and for your father's sake I was anxious to make a friend of you. But you were so rude and so silly that I could not. But I am willing to make every allowance for your want of training, and so I have come here to ask you to be friends." "Oh, I don't mind, provided you will leave George alone." "I shan't, so there. I love him." "So do I. And as he loves me I have the prior claim." "But you have broken your engagement and so have left the field open to me. Don't be a dog in the manger." "I am not. I love George and I have always loved him. I sent the letter I did because of what my father told me. You lured George into a trap, and--as you said yourself at Henley--you can get him arrested. Because of your attitude I was compelled to dismiss him, or see him ruined." Miss Ellis put up her lorgnette with an air of triumph. "You have stated the case accurately, save for one remark," she declared. "I _can_ ruin George Walker, and I shall do so unless he marries me. But I did not lure him into a trap. I merely took advantage of circumstances." "Which you knew existed." "What do you mean by that?" "What I say," retorted Lesbia, keeping her eyes on Maud's face. "You appointed that place and that hour of meeting in order to implicate George in a robbery which you knew was about to take place." Miss Ellis sprang to her feet with a white face and trembling hands. "You go too far," she said, in a suffocating voice. "Why should I?--Why should I?--Oh," she stamped, "your remarks are infamous." "They are true." "It's a lie! they are not true. I had no idea that my uncle's strong-room was to be robbed of those jewels on that night and at that hour. If I had known I should have prevented the robbery." "Mr. Tait would not have thanked you for doing so," replied Lesbia meaningly. "Are you mad?" gasped Maud, and her face became a dull brick-red. "No," answered Lesbia drily, "I am merely well-informed." "Informed of what?" Miss Ellis moistened her dry lips. "That Mr. Tait wanted money to tide over a financial crisis, and arranged to have the jewels stolen, so that he could sell them secretly." "It's a lie--a lie," cried Maud again, and the perspiration broke out on her quivering face; "my uncle is a wealthy man: everyone knows that. If he wanted money he could have sold the jewels openly--they were his own." "You forget the insurance at Lloyd's." Maud dropped on to the sofa as though she had been shot. "The insurance?" "Yes. Mr. Tait insured those jewels for something like twenty thousand pounds, and so had them stolen. Certainly he could have sold them openly, as you say, but then he would have got only half the money he requires." "Half the money?" Maud gasped again, and suddenly looked double her age. "Of course, twenty thousand pounds. By insuring the jewels and by having them stolen, he will gain the proceeds of the sale he has arranged with the thieves, besides the twenty thousand from the insurance." "You dare--to--accuse--my--oh," Maud jumped up fiercely and stamped angrily, "it is ridiculous; what proof have you of this absurd tale?" "I have absolute proof," said Lesbia quietly and rising in her turn. "Mr. Canning--The Shadow--who watched me here at my father's request, found out what I say and, if necessary, he can prove the truth of what he found out. And he will, at my request, if you do not promise to leave George alone and swear that you will not accuse him of a crime of which--as you knew all the time--he is innocent." But Maud heard only half this speech. "Canning, The Shadow," she muttered, "do you mean Captain Sargent's valet?" "Yes. I nursed him through an illness, and he has shown his gratitude to me by discovering your uncle's plot, and proving your knowledge of it. I can prove what I say with Canning's assistance, and I shall do so, unless you promise to do as I have asked you." Maud buttoned her jacket with trembling hands and moved towards the door hastily. "You are talking rubbish," she muttered in a thick voice. "I refuse to talk of the matter. It is too silly. But," she faced round, "I shall tell my uncle, and he shall have you put in gaol." "He will be in gaol himself," retorted Lesbia "As soon as you leave this house, I shall arrange with Mr. Canning to go to the police and state what he told me." "You would not dare." "Yes, I would, unless you swear not to accuse George and promise to leave him to me. I said that before: I say so again, and for the last time." "It's a----" Maud was about to say that it was a lie for the third time, but the word died away on her lips. Whether Maud was cognizant of the plot to steal the jewels Lesbia could not say, as she made no remark on this point: but her very silence showed that she was in the business. Lesbia's attitude left her no alternative but to make terms, since if she left the house, there was every danger that her uncle might be arrested. "If I do what you ask, will you hold your tongue?" Maud demanded faintly. "Then you admit that what I say is true?" countered Miss Hale. "No," almost shouted Miss Ellis, "I do not. Still, mud sticks however wrongly thrown, and I do not want my uncle to suffer through me. As to Canning, oh, my uncle will deal with him I promise you. Not a word. I agree to all you ask. I must. I shall not accuse George: I shall leave him to you and," she leaned forward with a snarl, "I shall bring misery on you at the eleventh hour." "I defy you," retorted Lesbia with scorn. "Very good." Maud smiled in an evil way. "We shall see who wins the dangerous game you are playing. I----" she broke off abruptly and left in haste. CHAPTER XIII MRS. WALKER'S VISIT The meeting of the two girls who loved George seemed destined to end abruptly. On the first occasion Lesbia had broken short the interview at Henley, and on the second Maud had hastened away from Rose Cottage. Lesbia wondered that she had not remained to talk further, and was rather anxious when she remembered that Maud had left with a threat on her lips. Miss Ellis was clever and cunning and reckless, and in one way or another might work mischief. Not that Lesbia saw any chance of her doing any, since she knew too much for Maud's peace of mind. Without doubt what Canning had discovered was true, else Maud would not have surrendered so easily. Lesbia thought until she was weary about the matter, and especially how Canning could have discovered the truth so speedily. She would have asked him point-blank in spite of his prohibition, but that he was in London. And as yet he had not written to tell where he was hiding. However, as things stood, there was no doubt that Maud would keep her promise, and that George was safe. On the day after the stockbroker's niece had paid her visit, Lesbia wrote a long letter to Walker, and detailed all that Canning had discovered and also narrated its effect on Maud Ellis. Further, she gave George to understand how she had been compelled to write the letter of dismissal, and ended up with a fond wish that her lover should come and see her at once. When this letter was posted Lesbia began to dream of Walker's speedy return, and haunted the garden in order to see his boat coming swiftly down the river. But the boat never came, nor did any letter from George. Day after day Lesbia watched the stream: watched also the postman, but in every case she was disappointed. Walker must have received the letter, else it would have been returned through the Dead Letter Office, so it was strange, seeing how she had explained matters, that he did not appear. Or at least he might have written. The girl wearying for love grew peaked and wan, much to the distress of Tim, who could not understand. Finally, Lesbia told him the whole story, and sent him over to the cottage at Medmenham to see if Walker had received the letter. Tim returned somewhat downcast. "Masther Garge has been in London these six days," said Tim, "and the misthress--his blissid mother, towld me she'd sint the letter to him. He's got it, me dear, but the divil knows why he doesn't write ye the scratch av a pen. Augh, me dear, nivir trouble him again. Sure there's more fish in the say nor ivir come out av that same." "George is the only man in the world for me," said Lesbia firmly, although the tears were in her eyes, "and I'll never give him up, until I hear him say that he loves another. This is Miss Ellis's work." "Och murder, me dear, it's a baste she is entoirely. But from what ye towld me, Miss, ye drew the teeth av her." "She went away with a threat," sighed Lesbia dismally. "She can't force my George to marry her now; but evidently she can prevent his returning to me as I want him to. Oh Tim, what am I to do now?" "See Masther Garge and ask him plain, Miss." "But I have not the money to go to London, and besides, I do not know where George is stopping," protested Lesbia, wringing her hands. "See his ould mother, the saints be good to her! for an iceberg she is," suggested Tim after a pause. "Sure she'll tell ye where he is, me dear." "No, Tim, no. Mrs. Walker hates my father, and would rather die than see her son become my husband." "Hates the masther, is ut?" muttered the crooked little man frowning. "And if so, me darlin' heart, why shud she come to see him?" "Come to see him," echoed Lesbia staring, "why Mrs. Walker has never been here to see my father in her life. I understood from George that she hated my father. In that case she will never come here. If she did come," sighed Lesbia, "I might soften her heart so that she might be on my side. I am sure I could win her over." "Well, Miss Lesbia, ye can but try, for the ould woman is coming here to-morrow afternoon to see the masther." "But he's away, Tim." "Sure, Miss, he sint me the scratch av a pin sayin' he was coming back this very day. I towld the ould woman, whin she axed me, so she's coming to have a talk wid him. An' the divil will make a third wid them two," muttered Tim crossing himself, "saints kape us from harm!" Lesbia was much astonished at this news, as Mrs. Walker had never been to Rose Cottage before, and moreover--on the word of her son--she both despised and hated Mr. Hale. The girl wondered if the visit had anything to do with the letter she had lately written to George. Perhaps Maud's threat had meant that she would enlist Mrs. Walker on her side to stop the marriage, since Maud herself, for obvious reasons, was powerless to do so. But then, in any case, Mrs. Walker disapproved of the marriage, so there was no need for Maud to interfere. Also, if the letter had been forwarded to George in London--and Lesbia saw no reason why it should not have been forwarded--he must have received the same. If so, why did he not reply, seeing that she had completely exonerated herself, and was anxious to renew the engagement which for George's own sake she had been forced to break? Poor Lesbia thought over these questions until she was weary and her head ached, but she could find no reply. The only thing to be done, was to wait until the formidable Mrs. Walker arrived: then a few minutes' conversation with her might reveal the reason of George's strange behaviour. Mr. Hale duly returned, and seemed even angrier and more sullen than he had been before he went away. He scarcely spoke to his daughter, and several times he looked at her with positive dread in his usually cold eyes. It appeared as though he considered Lesbia as a careless child with a box of matches, who might at any moment set the house on fire. Lesbia had a feeling that he was terribly angry with her, and yet that this anger was mixed with a certain amount of dread. However, he contented himself with looking daggers, and to avoid further disturbances, she did not ask him any questions. But the house was very uncomfortable. Then at breakfast next morning, on the day when Mrs. Walker was expected, Hale surprised the girl by announcing an invitation. "I saw Lord Charvington when I was in town," said Hale, keeping his pale eyes on his plate. "For some reason he chose to remember your existence." Lesbia gasped, and wondered if Charvington had told her father of the money she had borrowed. In that case Hale would question her as to the use she had made of it, and then her counterplot with Canning would come to light with disastrous results. But Hale's further conversation made it plain that Charvington had said nothing about the loan. "He asked how you were," pursued Hale softly, and still keeping his eyes on his plate, "and if you had grown up a pretty girl. He hasn't seen you for a long time, remember. Considering how badly you have behaved, Lesbia, I spoke better of you than you deserved, so Charvington--prepare yourself for a surprise--has asked you to stop at his country-house. He told me that his wife would send you the invitation." "It is very good of him," said Lesbia faintly. "But I really do not want to go, father." Hale looked up with a scowl. "Always opposition," he grumbled, "you _shall_ go, child. If you won't marry Sargent, there will be a chance of your making a good match when under Lady Charvington's wing. She has daughters of her own, too, so you will have a very good time." "Why should Lord Charvington ask me?" "I can't say. . . . He suddenly seems to have remembered your existence. Of course, as my daughter you are related to him. However, the chance of a visit at such a country house is a very good one for you, so get ready to start when the invitation comes. Do you want any frocks, or----" "No. I have everything," said Lesbia, rising; "after all perhaps the change will do me good, and I should like to see a little of the world." "You will see plenty of it with Charvington and his wife. They are a gay couple, and entertain largely. They are at their country seat near Maidenhead for a week; but if you play your cards well Lady Charvington may take you to London for the rest of the season." Lesbia nodded and went into the garden. Here she sat on the bench under the chestnut, and thought over the glittering prospect which was now open to her. She loved George and was contented with the quiet life, provided he shared it with her. But as he was absent and was behaving so very strangely, she thought that it would be best to plunge into society if only to forget her aching heart. And if George would not marry her, it might be that she would meet with some other man, who would take her away from the uncomfortable life with her father. In her own heart Lesbia knew that she could love no one but George Walker. Still she could not force him to marry her, and he appeared to have accepted her letter of dismissal as final in spite of the second epistle stating why she wrote the first. The poor girl felt very sad and very lonely, and her tears rained down, salt and bitter, as she sat a solitary figure under the glorious tree. The blackbird was piping again, as he had done when George proposed; but it seemed to her ears that the song was now sad. But that probably was mere fancy. At one o'clock Lesbia returned to the cottage, wondering why all these troubles had come upon her. It really seemed as though Tim's idea about the bad luck of the cross was true, for ever since she had bestowed it on her lover there had been nothing but sorrow and mystery. Even George had not escaped misfortune, since he had been assaulted and robbed, and had lost his situation through being accused unjustly of a crime he had never committed. But Lesbia was a reader of fairy tales, and remembered that the prince and princess always have much grief before peace and joy arrive, so she hoped that in some way--she could not see how--the bad luck which was upon her and George would pass away leaving them married and rich and happy. But, at present, it must be confessed that there did not appear to be much chance of such good fortune. "The ould woman has come this very minit," whispered Tim, meeting the girl at the back door. "I've put her in the parlour, but the masther is out." "My father is certain to come into luncheon," said Lesbia hurriedly. "Av coorse he is," muttered Tim, "a mighty dainty man he is fur the inside av him. But she's axing for you, Miss, and----" "I'll go to her," interrupted Lesbia, "meanwhile, Tim, lay another place at the table. I daresay Mrs. Walker is hungry." With these instructions Lesbia sought the small parlour, and entered to find it occupied by a modern Lady Macbeth. Mrs. Walker clothed in rich but funereal-looking garments of the deepest black was seated majestically on the sofa. Without rising she raised a pair of piercing eyes to look at the girl, and a brief expression of surprise flitted across her impassive face. She had scarcely expected to find the girl so beautiful, as she had always taken her son's enthusiastic descriptions with a grain of salt. However, she privately admitted that George was right for once and she greeted the girl with stiff kindness. And indeed it was hard even for a lady of Mrs. Walker's hard nature to be angry with Lesbia, who looked such a child, and who behaved so sweetly. "I am very glad to see you," said Mrs. Walker, looking anxiously into the girl's delicate face. "You remind me of someone who--no, I can't recall of whom you remind me. Still--" she searched anxiously--"you are very like someone I knew." "Perhaps my mother," Lesbia ventured to remark. "My late nurse, Bridget Burke, told me I closely resembled my mother." "I never met your mother," said Mrs. Walker, dropping Lesbia's hand quickly and becoming stiffer than ever. "Your father and I were never friends, my dear. I should not be here to-day, save that I have come to ask him about some business connected with money I expect to inherit. Also," added Mrs. Walker unexpectedly, "I wanted to see you. George had talked much of you, my child, and seems to have loved you greatly. I can't blame him, and the wonder is that he should give you up." Lesbia clasped her small hands and sank into a chair, her face white and her eyes widely open. "George has never given me up," she said faintly. "I wrote and told him why I was forced to send him the first letter, and----" "Yes, yes!" Mrs. Walker waved a beautifully-gloved hand. "I was in London the other day--in fact I took your letter to George. He showed it to me and told me everything." "And what did you say?" Mrs. Walker's deep, black brows drew together. "Of course the whole thing is rubbish," she said harshly, "and only a love-sick girl like Maud Ellis would act in that way. I suppose much must be forgiven her, as she really loves my son. But after her behaviour, I shall never consent to her marrying him. No! no! That would never do. Especially, now that we know her uncle is such a rogue. I wanted George to tell the police, but he refused." Lesbia cared very little for the fate of Tait. What she much desired to know was her own. "You said that George has ceased to care for me," she remarked with a pale smile. "I don't understand." Mrs. Walker gave her a pitying look. "Nor do I, now that I have seen you, my dear. I don't like your father--I never did, and I would rather have died than have seen George marrying his daughter. Your looks and nature have made me change my mind. There is nothing of your father about you. Had I seen you before----" Mrs. Walker broke off and shook her stately head, "but it is too late. George will not renew the engagement." "Oh, I can't believe that," cried the girl weeping and trembling. "Strange," muttered the elder woman, "you have been quite a heroine in clearing George's character, for which I am greatly obliged to you. Yet here you are crying like a schoolgirl." "I love him so much: I love him so deeply." "My poor child, it is the fate of women to have their hearts broken. I do not know why George still refuses to renew the engagement in the face of your letter, but he does. Here," Mrs. Walker took an envelope out of her bag and handed it to the shaking girl, "you can read his decision in his own handwriting. He asked me to give you this." With great delicacy she turned away her head, while Lesbia tore open the envelope with shaking hands. There were only a few lines, but these intimated plainly that George had accepted his dismissal, and would not seek to renew the engagement. "I love you still, my dearest," wrote Walker in conclusion, "but Fate wills that we must part for ever." Then there were a few tender words, and the epistle ended abruptly, as though the writer could not trust his emotions. Lesbia read the lines, folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope which she put into her pocket. Her eyes were dry now, and her white face was flushed with colour. With a deep sigh she touched the elder woman on the shoulder, "I understand," she said calmly. Mrs. Walker, whose sympathies--remarkably in so cold a woman--were now entirely with Lesbia, grew snappy to conceal her emotion. "I don't," she said acidly, "and when George returns to Medmenham I shall have an explanation with him. He's a fool." "No," said Lesbia, her face growing even a deeper red. "Can't you see that George is only acting in this way to save me?" "To save you from what?" asked Mrs. Walker shortly. "I don't know. I can't say," Lesbia spoke more to herself than to her visitor. "But I feel sure that George wrote this letter as I wrote my first one to him. I wrote to save him, and now he refuses to renew our engagement to save me. I don't understand, still--oh I am sure that everything will come right. I trust in God." "You do well to do so," said Mrs. Walker gravely, "for only He can help you, my child. I am thoroughly puzzled, and know not what to say." "Say nothing: do nothing," cried Lesbia eagerly. "Things will work out to a happy end in their due time." "You are sure of that?" "I am certain." "Then," said Mrs. Walker grimly, "you must have a sixth sense which I do not possess. However, I am glad that you have not given way to hysteria. You are a brave girl, and I would rather have you for my daughter-in-law than I would any one else, in spite of your father. There," Mrs. Walker bent forward and actually kissed the girl's lips. "That shows I mean what I say." "Oh!" Lesbia returned the kiss, blushing divinely, "George said that you hated me, and----" "How could I hate a girl I had never seen?" snapped Mrs. Walker, ashamed of her momentary humanity. "I hate your father, and--well there, say no more about the matter. I hope with all my heart that things will turn out well for you and George, as you appear to think they will. Meanwhile while we are waiting for your father, tell me about the amethyst cross." Lesbia started to her feet in astonishment. "The cross," she echoed. "I have lost it. You know that I gave it to----" "Yes! Yes!" Mrs. Walker waved her hand impatiently. "I know about the robbery and how no one can find the cross. It must be found, nevertheless. But I wish to learn exactly how it came into your possession. George told me something about the matter, but like a man he told it very badly. For this reason I have come to see you, as well as Mr. Hale, whom I detest," added Mrs. Walker severely. "Where did you get the cross?" "From my mother. That is, the cross belonged to her. She left it to my nurse Bridget Burke----" "Where is she?" "Dead. She died some time ago." "Unlucky," muttered Mrs. Walker with a dark look. "Well?" "My mother told Bridget to give it to me, and to tell me that I was never to part with it save to the man I loved. Then you know"--Lesbia blushed again--"I gave it to George." "Yes. I know of that and of the loss. I said so before. But how did the cross come into your mother's possession?" Lesbia shook her head. "I really cannot tell you." Mrs. Walker frowned again, and turned her steely eyes towards the door. Her quick ears had caught a soft foot-fall, and her quick eyes had seen the half-open door move. "Come in, Mr. Hale," she said loudly, "we are saying nothing which you cannot hear." Hale, who apparently had been listening, entered, looking perfectly cool and composed. "The cross did not belong to Lesbia's mother," he said quietly, but the look in his eyes as they rested on Mrs. Walker was not pleasant. CHAPTER XIV THE FAMILY LAWYER Lesbia uttered an exclamation when she heard the astonishing remark of her father, and started to her feet. But Mrs. Walker, grimly silent, kept her seat and glared, like Medusa, on the newcomer. If she could have turned him into stone she would willingly have done so, as could be seen from the expression of her hard eyes. Hale, perfectly cool, in spite of the insulting speech which she made, took a chair and looked at her with deliberate insolence. Also deliberately he reverted to her insult. "I was just passing along to the dining-room," he explained slowly, "when I heard voices and your last question. I entered at once and was not eavesdropping, as you are pleased to say." "There is no need to excuse yourself," said Mrs. Walker tartly, "for----" Hale crossed his legs and leaned back. "In my own house I think not." "For I don't believe a word you say," she finished harshly. "Naturally you would not," rejoined Mr. Hale smoothly; "you were always a hard and suspicious woman." Mrs. Walker moved her hands restlessly, and her eyes gleamed fiercer than ever. "You know better than that," she muttered. "Take your mind back thirty years." "Willingly," said Hale, with great promptness. "Do you wish us to speak of the past in Lesbia's presence?" This time he scored, for Mrs. Walker winced. "There is no need for the child to hear old stories," she remarked, with suppressed passion. "Let us discuss what I have come to see you about." "The cross?" "Oh," she flashed scornfully, "I thought you were not eavesdropping?" "I admitted that I heard your last question," said Hale, with a shrug, "but you never would listen." "I am listening now. Say what you have to say." "I have said all that I intend to say, Mrs. Walker. The amethyst cross did not belong to Lesbia's mother." The girl uttered another exclamation; she was lost in astonishment. "But, father," she remonstrated, "Bridget told me on her death-bed----" "What she told you was what I instructed her to say," interrupted Hale imperiously. "But your mother--my wife--never possessed such an ornament." Lesbia looked at him doubtfully. Of late, she had suspected that her father was not above telling a falsehood to serve his own private ends, and in the face of what she knew, it appeared as though he was telling one now--why, she could not conjecture. While she was trying to puzzle out the reason, Mrs. Walker rose and swept across to the window of the drawing-room which looked out into the road. "I don't see him yet," she muttered to herself, and consulted a bracelet-watch attached to her left wrist. "Are you expecting anyone?" asked Hale politely. "Mr. Jabez, my family lawyer," she replied curtly, and returned to her seat. Hale raised his eyebrows and looked more gentlemanly than ever; also a trifle dangerous. "You asked him to my house?" "Yes, because I want to hear all about the cross. Oh, I know well that you do not wish to see Mr. Jabez, Walter, but----" "You call me Walter," said Hale, and suddenly flushed. "A slip of the tongue," retorted Mrs. Walker, also growing red. "The time is long past when I could call you so. You are Mr. Hale to me." "Then why not call me so?" demanded the man coolly. "I will do so in future," said Mrs. Walker, and bit her lip in silent rage at having given him an opportunity of scoring. "But I know that Mr. Jabez is too well acquainted with the seamy side of your life for you to care about meeting him." Hale shrugged his shoulders. "He was my family lawyer as he is yours," he answered in icy tones, "and one confesses much to one's lawyer, which one would hesitate to say to others. I can depend upon the secrecy of Jabez as to my misfortunes." "Oh!" Mrs. Walker laughed scornfully, "you call them by that name." "It suits them best. As to Jabez, I have no hesitation in meeting him. But I prefer to choose my own visitors." "You certainly would not choose Mr. Jabez," said the elder woman insultingly. "However, I have taken advantage of your easy-going nature"--she was very sarcastic--"to invite Mr. Jabez to meet me here, so that we may discuss the whereabouts of the cross." "How can we discuss what we cannot and do not know?" asked Hale, with a contemptuous look. "You are still the same woman, Judith, headstrong and----" "Don't call me that name!" she said sharply. "A slip of the tongue merely, such as you made just now," sneered Hale; "but all this is very unpleasant for Lesbia. Don't you think that while we quarrel she had better leave the room?" Mrs. Walker drew Lesbia down on to the sofa beside her, and retained the girl's hand within her own. "No," she said sternly, "I am not going to quarrel with you, Mr. Hale. Besides, I wish Lesbia to be here, so that she may hear somewhat of the past." "Why should she?" asked Hale hastily. "I want her to marry George." "You--want--her--to--marry--George," repeated Hale astonished, "my daughter!" Mrs. Walker looked at him straight. "You may well be surprised," she said quietly, "especially as you know through my son that I was set against this marriage, and with good reason let me remind you, Mr. Hale. But now that I have seen Lesbia"--she drew the girl closer--"I see no reason why the sins of the father should be visited upon the child. Lesbia shall be my dear daughter, and I welcome her with joy." "I have something to say to that. She shall never be your daughter-in-law, since it is better to be explicit as to relationship." "We'll see about that." "Quite so. You are a clever woman, Judith, but I am also a clever man." "Oh!" Mrs. Walker winced again at his using her Christian name. "We had better not begin about your qualities. Lesbia would certainly have to leave the room then." "Don't shame me in the presence of my child, madam," said Hale thickly, and the veins on his forehead began to swell with anger. "I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Walker with a careless laugh, "I forgot how you have deceived her into thinking you an angel." Hale suddenly rose, and walked to the window. He was in a furious rage and was trying to keep himself cool, since he knew that any loss of temper would give Mrs. Walker an advantage which he did not intend her to gain. She sat quietly smoothing Lesbia's hand, with glittering eyes quite ready to continue hostilities as soon as her enemy recovered his breath. Lesbia herself remained passive, wondering what all the trouble was about. Neither the one nor the other of the disputants hinted sufficient to enlighten her as to the reasons why they were at enmity. Hale certainly might have said something more to the point, as he was rapidly losing control of his temper, but as he turned from the window, there came a ring at the front door of the cottage. "Here is Jabez," said Hale, coming back to his seat. "I am glad he has arrived, if only to stop your tongue." "Oh, Jabez knows all that I can say," remarked Mrs. Walker grimly, and became silent. With wide-open eyes, Lesbia sat waiting quietly to see what would happen next. This duel of three--as it appeared to be, was as fantastic as that in which Mr. Midshipman Easy fought. Moreover, the girl was so bewildered by the hints dropped of a disagreement between Mrs. Walker and her father, of which she knew nothing, that she was trying hard to collect her scattered senses in order to take in future events more clearly. Mr. Jabez announced his presence in the passage by a dry, hard cough before he was introduced to the company by Tim Burke. He was a meagre man of medium height with a bald head, a hatchet face, a pair of eyes the colour of which could not be seen because of blue spectacles, and a loose figure invested in well-fitting dark clothes. He looked somewhat like a certain type of American, but when he opened his mouth, he spoke very precise English. For the rest, he seemed unemotional and very much addicted to dry business details. No one could have called Mr. Jabez an interesting person, but he appeared to know his business and the value of his time, upon which he placed a high price. "Good-day! Good-day! Good-day!" he said severally to the three people in the room with a little nod to each. "Mr. Hale, I apologise for calling uninvited at your cottage, but Mrs. Walker, who wished for the meeting here, must make my excuses. This is your daughter: a very handsome young lady. I shall take this chair, with my back to the light, as my eyes are somewhat weak. For that reason I wear blue spectacles. Now," Mr. Jabez had gained possession of a comfortable chair by this time, "let us come to business, as I have to return to London within the hour, Mrs. Walker!" Thus addressed Mrs. Walker, as grim as Jabez himself, and as impatient of wasting time, spoke to the point. "I asked you here, Mr. Jabez, to meet Mr. Hale with whom," she added venomously, "we are both exceedingly well acquainted." "Quite so--quite so," interrupted the lawyer with his dry cough, "but it would be as well to avoid personal remarks. They do no good and take up valuable time. Go on, Mrs. Walker." "I want to hear what Mr. Hale has to say about the amethyst cross," said the widow with a dark look at her enemy. "I have nothing to say about it," retorted Hale, nursing his chin with his hand and leaning back with crossed legs, apparently indifferent. "Pardon me, but you have much to say," remarked Jabez precisely. "So far I merely know on the authority of Mrs. Walker--that the cross was given to this young lady," he nodded very curtly towards Lesbia, "and that in her turn she passed it to Mr. George Walker." "That is true," admitted Lesbia, seeing that she was called upon to speak. "I was told by Bridget----" "Who is Bridget?" interrupted Jabez keenly. "My late nurse. She is dead." Jabez shook his bald head. "T'cht! T'cht! T'cht! That is a pity. Go on." "Bridget told me that I was to give the cross only to the man I loved. I therefore gave it to George. He was assaulted for it on the towing-path and as it could not be found upon him, his room at Medmenham was robbed." Jabez nodded. "Mrs. Walker told me all this," he said quietly, "and the cross has never been found." "No," said Mrs. Walker. "No," said Mr. Hale. "No!" said Lesbia. "All are agreed," smiled the lawyer drily, "a most unanimous opinion. I understand," he addressed Lesbia again, "that your mother originally owned this cross and gave it to your nurse. Mrs. Walker, on the authority of her son, told me as much." "I understood that the cross had belonged to my mother," replied Lesbia, nervously glancing at her father. "Bridget told me so, when she gave it to me on her death-bed." "Then she told you wrongly," said Mr. Hale, "and at my request." "Why?" demanded Jabez, turning towards his unwilling host. "Because the cross belonged to another woman, and I did not want that known in case someone should claim it." "Ha!" said Mrs. Walker darkly. "And why did you wish to keep it?" "I--I--liked the ornament," confessed Hale hesitating, and quite forgetting the sentimental reason he had given to his daughter as to the desire to keep the cross because it had been the property of his late wife. Mrs. Walker laughed scornfully. "I believe you know the reason why the cross is so valuable," she snapped. "Yes, he does," chimed in Lesbia, who was determined to learn the reason of all this mystery. "He says that if produced it will bring him two thousand a year." "Lesbia!" Hale jumped to his feet and looked furious. "How dare you?" "How dare I?" she cried, rising in her turn. "Because you will not trust me, father, and I am in the dark. The cross is mine, and I have a right to know all that concerns it. Does the production of the cross mean gain to my father of two thousand a year?" she asked the lawyer. "It means that if a certain person produces the cross to me," explained Mr. Jabez, "fifty thousand pounds will----" "Let me explain," interrupted Mrs. Walker sharply. "Lesbia, the cross is needed to prove the identity of my sister Kate. My father left her the sum of fifty thousand pounds. She eloped with a man of whom he disapproved, and has not appeared to claim the money. We don't know if she is living or dead, and----" "Ah!" broke in Hale, "this is what George told me." "Yes," flashed out Mrs. Walker, turning towards him, "and for that reason you know the value of the cross." "Oh," Hale shrugged his shoulders, "I knew that long ago." "Then why did you not produce it?" "Because I thought it was lost. If the cross belonged to your sister Kate, Mrs. Walker, I knew her." "She was not your wife," cried Mrs. Walker savagely, "You were not the man she ran away with." "I never said that I was," rejoined Hale coolly. "No. Hear what I have to say. When I was living at Wimbledon with my wife--Lesbia's mother--we one day found a woman unconscious in the snow. My wife, who was a Good Samaritan, revived her and took her in. She died, but before drawing her last breath, she told me that she was Katherine Morse----" "That was my sister's maiden name. But she married the man she ran away with." "She never told me so," said Hale coolly. "She died in my wife's arms and is buried in Wimbledon cemetery. The cross--as I heard from my wife on her death-bed--she gave to my wife saying that if produced to Mr. Simon Jabez it would be worth fifty thousand pounds. My wife gave the cross to Bridget and did not tell me so. When she died I hunted for the cross and could not find it. But that old hag of an Irishwoman possessed it and held her peace. On her death-bed she gave it to Lesbia and told her not to tell me about it. I only became aware of its whereabouts when I saw it in your son's hand after he had proposed to Lesbia. Then it was lost again and I don't know who has it." "What a strange story!" said Lesbia, "why did you not tell me before, father?" Hale turned on her viciously. "You were secret with me about the cross, so what occasion was there to tell you? Had you been open I would have had that fifty thousand pounds long ago." "No," said Jabez, who had been listening attentively, "you were not married to Miss Katherine Morse, and so had no claim to the money." "I claim it," cried Mrs. Walker triumphantly, "all I wanted to know was whether my sister Kate was dead. Now you have sworn to that, and now that we know she is buried in Wimbledon cemetery, I get the money." "No," said Jabez again and very drily. Mrs. Walker rose and turned on him angrily. "You know my father's will," she cried angrily. "One hundred thousand pounds was left equally between myself and my sister. I had my share and my husband spent it. Kate never came to claim her half, so by the will it reverts to the survivor of Samuel Morse's daughters. I am the survivor so----" "You go too fast, my dear lady," said the lawyer, "and do not know the will so thoroughly as I do. Fifty thousand pounds, which I hold, was left to Katherine and her heirs. There may be a child or children." "Kate Morse had no child when she died in my house," said Hale sharply. "I can prove it." He went to the door and called out, "Tim." In a few minutes, and amidst a dead silence, the crooked little man appeared rubbing his red head. "What's your will, sor?" he asked softly. "You remember the woman who was taken in at Wimbledon years ago?" questioned Hale impatiently. "The woman with the amethyst cross." "Ay, sor, I mind that. I wor a bare-futted gossoon thin. Me mother--rist her sowl!--laid out the shroud av her." "Had this woman a child with her?" asked Jabez promptly. "No, sor," said Tim unhesitatingly, "she had not. The only child in the house wor Miss Lesbia here." "That will do," said Hale impatiently, waving his hand, and drawing a long breath, "you can go," and Tim took his departure. "Are you satisfied?" he asked turning to the lawyer. "No," said that gentleman quietly, "I must have a better proof that there was no child. From certain rumours, which I remember hearing years ago, I am inclined to believe that there is a child." "I believe there was a child," said Mrs. Walker, who had been sitting grim and silent. "Kate wrote to me two years after she eloped with that man, that she had a baby and that it was very ill. She did not expect it to live." "Did she mention the sex of the child?" "No. She did not, nor did I ever hear from her again. I daresay that man cast her off, or deserted her, and she crawled to Wimbledon to die. But the child must be dead also, so I inherit the money." "No! no! no. There is not sufficient proof of the child's death," said Jabez, "although it appears we can prove the death of your sister. Then again, I must have the amethyst cross placed in my hands before I can part with the money. It is well invested," added Jabez with a chuckle, "and brings in a trifle over two thousand a year. You are correct in your estimate, Mr. Hale, but I doubt if you can claim the money." "I could if I had the cross," muttered Hale savagely. "Not even then. If the child, whether male or female, appears with the cross and I can prove that it is the child of Mrs. Walker's sister then I'll hand over the money. If we can prove the death of the child, Mrs. Walker will get the money." "And I'll have it," cried Mrs. Walker rising indignantly. "I am certain that the child is dead. Kate wrote that it was dangerously ill." "But not dead," chuckled Jabez, glancing at his watch. "Well, there is nothing more to be said, so I shall take my leave. Good-day! good-day! good-day!" he nodded again to each in turn and vanished as unexpectedly as he had entered. Mrs. Walker looked remarkably angry. "The money is mine and I'll have it," she said determinedly. "You must first find the amethyst cross," sneered Hale. CHAPTER XV A STARTLING LETTER After Mrs. Walker's portentous visit to Rose Cottage with her lawyer, things went on quietly for some days. Mr. Hale at first positively refused to speak on the subject of the cross and the fortune attached thereto, as he maintained that it was useless to talk about impossibilities. Then he changed his mind and spoke with extraordinary freedom. "Nothing can be done until we find the amethyst cross," he said gloomily to his daughter, "when that is produced, the money will be forthcoming." "But you forget, father, that the cross has to be produced by Mrs. Walker's nephew or niece," said Lesbia doubtfully. "She hasn't got one," snapped Hale. "If there was a child, it is dead. I know that no child was brought to my house at Wimbledon by Kate Morse." "Mrs. Walker said that was her sister's maiden name. Do you know the name of the man she married?" "Yes." Hale cast a jealous side-glance at his daughter. "It's an old story and a long one." "Which has to do with Mrs. Walker's enmity against you?" persisted Lesbia. "Yes," said Hale again. "She thought that I had something to do with her sister's elopement. Such rubbish, as though I could have helped it." "Why did Miss Morse run away, then?" "Because of her father. He was a wealthy, old, psalm-singing idiot, who made the two girls wretched. Kate fell in love with a certain friend of mine--I am not going to mention his name--and old Morse told him that he was not to come near the house. Then Kate took the bit between her teeth and ran away with the man. She had a miserable life, I believe, but I saw nothing of her until she stumbled foot-sore and weary into my house at Wimbledon. The rest you know." "And the money?" asked Lesbia anxiously. "You heard all that is to be said on that subject when Mrs. Walker was here," growled Hale, who was more communicative than usual. "But I'll repeat the story, because I wish to make a suggestion." "What is the suggestion?" asked the girl, who mistrusted the uneasy looks of her father. "First the story and then the suggestion," he remarked grimly. "Well, it can scarcely be called a story. Samuel Morse, the psalm-singing old ass I told you of, had a hundred thousand pounds, two daughters, and no son. He made a will leaving the money equally divided between them, and after death the money if not used up was to go to their heirs. Judith--Mrs. Walker that is--married a scampish man-about-town, who soon got through all she had and then broke his neck in a steeplechase, leaving Judith with next to nothing upon which to bring up George. Kate, having eloped with the man whose name I don't wish to mention, did not claim her share of the cash." "If Mr. Morse was so angry I wonder he did not alter his will." "He would have done so. Of that I am absolutely certain," said Hale emphatically, "but he had no time to do so. Shortly after he made his will Kate eloped, and the old man died in a fit of rage, before he could give instructions to Jabez who was his lawyer. Jabez gave fifty thousand pounds to Judith, who by and by married Walker and lost it all through his spendthrift habits. The remaining fifty thousand he invested, and what with the principal and interest it must be a tidy sum by now. At all events it brings in over two thousand a year. Since Kate is dead the money passes to her child if she left any, which I do not believe. Failing a child, it reverts by the will to Mrs. Walker." "But why need she produce the amethyst cross?" asked Lesbia. "She need not, as her identity is fully established in Jabez's eyes. The cross--as I learned from him years ago--was an ornament which old Morse had made for Kate, a kind of religious symbol." "Who bears the cross will win the crown," said Lesbia, remembering the ornament; "or rather, as the motto goes, lose the crown by refusing the cross." Hale nodded with a smile of contempt. "Yes! That was old Morse's idea. He gave the cross to Kate, and then she ran away with it and the man who became her husband. Jabez, knowing that the ornament is peculiar, swears that he will need the cross to prove the identity of Kate or of her child, as no one else could possess so odd a trinket. As if it could not be imitated exactly," ended Hale with contempt. "The cross might be imitated," said Lesbia, doubtfully. "But as the poor woman is dead, it will not be so easy to produce a child as hers." Hale, with his head on one side, looked at her oddly. "I don't know so much about that," he said slowly. "What do you mean?" questioned Lesbia, seeing that her father had something on his mind. "Well," said Hale, pinching his chin and still looking at her as though to hypnotise her mind; "there was no child, as I said. But you were only a baby twenty years ago, born, in fact, only a week before Kate Morse came to my house. Could we not say that you are the child?" "What?" Lesbia looked indignantly at her father. "Don't be foolish," said Hale testily. "It is not a crime seeing that the money is there for the asking, Bridget Burke told you that the cross was given to you by your mother. Let it be so, and I can swear and, for your sake, I can get Tim to swear, that you are the long-lost child. The train has already been laid by Bridget's story--which by the way I told her to tell you--so old Jabez will be easy to convince." Lesbia drew a long breath. "I should not think of deceiving and robbing Mrs. Walker." "Oh, nonsense," said Hale earnestly. "When she dies the money goes to her son, so if you marry him you can hand over twenty-five thousand to him, or say one thousand a year. Thus you will be acting honestly towards the Walkers, my dear, and----" "And dishonestly towards myself," cried Lesbia indignantly. "And what of the remaining one thousand a year, father?" Hale drooped his eyes suavely. "I take that for arranging that you get the money. Come, Lesbia, what do you say?" "I decline," she retorted, quivering with indignation. "How dare you, who are my father, make such a proposal? Even if I were the true child, I should not give you one penny." "Ha!" said Hale bitterly. "I thought so, and thus suggested a wild scheme to try you. I might have known." "I believe that if I had fallen in with your scheme," cried Lesbia boldly, "that you would have arranged to carry it through. You have not the cross, however, and even if I consented----" "I remember the look of the cross, and so do you. It could have been duplicated, my dear." Lesbia looked at her father in pained astonishment, and then burst into bitter tears. "Oh, how I wish that I could respect you," she wailed. Hale lifted his eyebrows. "Don't you?" "No! How can I, when I find that you are so wicked?" "I was only trying you," he said hastily. "Though it is true that had you shown a disposition to give me my fair share I might have endeavoured to get you this fortune. But, as it is, I see well that all my pains would be thrown away. You would see me--your own father--starve rather than let me have one penny." Lesbia dried her tears. "I would have nothing to do with such a wicked scheme, and I only wish I could get away from you. You have never been a father to me, and every day we drift farther and farther apart. When I see Lord Charvington I shall ask him to help me to get a situation, as a companion or a nursery governess, and then----" "Lesbia, you surely would not disgrace me by talking to Charvington in that way," said Hale, his face growing dark. "Perhaps I have never been affectionate, but then I feel more than I say. And you have always had comfort and all that I could give." "I have had everything, save a father's love." "My nature is a reticent one," said her father sullenly. "So it is useless to ask for impossibilities. If you really are unhappy with me, marry George Walker and have done with it." "And what about Captain Sargent?" asked Lesbia sharply. Hale shrugged his shoulders. "I can't force you to marry a man against your will, bad father as you say that I am. I have done my best for you and you persistently regard me with suspicion." "What you proposed to do just now----" "Was merely an experiment. Think no more about it, and don't make yourself ridiculous with Charvington. Play your cards well with him and his wife, and you may make a good match." "I shall marry no one but George," said Lesbia obstinately. "He won't have anything to do with you," sneered Hale, and turned away. Things being strained in this way Lesbia was sufficiently unhappy, especially as George was absent and silent. She could not understand why, after her explanation, he refused to come back to her. But in the depths of her mind, she felt certain that he was acting against his heart's desire, and much in the same way as she had acted when she dismissed him. It was impossible to see him, as he was in London and she did not know his address, and it was equally impossible to write to him. Certainly, as Mrs. Walker was ready to receive her, she could have gone to Medmenham to converse with that formidable lady, but she hesitated to pour out her woes in that quarter. In spite of her sudden friendliness, Mrs. Walker was unsympathetic, and the poor girl longed for some kind breast whereon she could lie and weep and be comforted. Thus it can easily be guessed that Lesbia hailed with joy the arrival of a brisk little woman, who introduced herself as Lady Charvington. She came in a gorgeous motor car, with much noise and pomp, and was dressed like Solomon, in all his glory, so wonderful was her frock. Mr. Hale was within and received her with much deference, which was natural considering that Lord Charvington was his patron. Lesbia was sent for, and duly came down to the tiny drawing-room to be introduced. "So this is Lesbia," said Lady Charvington, putting up a tortoise-shell lorgnette, "quite a beauty I declare." She frowned a trifle when she said this, for her own daughters, in their 'teens at present, were not beautiful. She herself had no great pretension to good looks, although she made the best of herself in every way. She was as small as Lesbia, but did not possess such a complexion or such a figure, and there was an ill-tempered droop to her mouth which made the girl mistrust her. For Lord Charvington's sake, since he had been so kind to her, Lesbia was anxious to love his wife, and perhaps had she been a plain girl Lady Charvington might have given her an opportunity of exercising such affection. But the looks of Lesbia took her aback, as she saw in this delicately beautiful girl a formidable rival, not only to her plain daughters but to herself. For Lady Charvington, in spite of her age and of the fact that she was married, flirted a great deal. However, swiftly as these things passed through her mind, she did not permit them to be revealed by her face and welcomed Lesbia with well-affected enthusiasm. "You dear," she said, hopping up like a bird to peck the velvet cheek of her proposed guest; "why have you hidden yourself for so long?" "I have been stopping here with my father since I came from school," said Lesbia, trying to overcome a sudden dislike for this smiling vision of small talk and chiffon. Lady Charvington shook a dainty finger at Mr. Hale, who was looking on well-pleased at the scene. "You naughty, naughty man," she cried effusively and girlishly, "how dare you keep Beauty shut up in a castle no one ever heard of? But that Charvington spoke about this sweet thing the other day and proposed to have her over at the Court for a few days, I should never never have seen her." "I didn't wish to trouble you with my girl, Lady Charvington." "Oh," Lady Charvington uttered a little scream of delight, while taking in every detail of Lesbia's looks and costume, "there will be no trouble. We have always plenty of nice boys at the Court and they will lose their heads over this Sleeping Beauty. For you are that, you know," she added to Lesbia, "whatever the poor dear creature's name may have been. But I have come at my husband's express desire to wake you up, and to find a prince who will kiss you." "I have already got one," said Lesbia abruptly. "I am engaged!" Hale frowned, as he thought that she was too candid, but Lady Charvington felt more satisfied than she had been. An engaged girl would not be so dangerous. "Then we must ask your prince over to the Court also," she declared effusively and kissed Lesbia again. "I have brought over the car to take you back to dinner. Get your frocks and frills, dear, and we shall start while the afternoon is yet warm." "Are you ready to go, Lesbia?" asked Hale, smiling artificially, for, from the look on his daughter's face, he was not quite sure if she approved of the invitation. But he need not have troubled. Lesbia did not like Lady Charvington but, being anxious to see my lady's husband and tell him of her troubles--since the sending of the cheque proved him to be a kindly man,--made up her mind to overcome her mistrust and travel in the motor car. "Everything is ready," she said quietly. "I have only one box." "Oh, but, my dear, I wish you to stay for a week," protested the lady. "So I understood, and thank you very much," replied the girl with enforced cordiality. "And the one box of clothes will be sufficient." "Dear me!" said Lady Charvington with a gasp, "what a careful girl you must be. Why I take five boxes for a week's visit." "I am not rich enough to do that. Besides," added Lesbia smiling, "I should only cumber up your motor car." "Oh, that is all right. It's a big thing and holds heaps. Have you ever been in one, my dear girl?" "Lesbia has lived a very quiet life," interposed Hale quickly, "and knows nothing of modern luxury." "Poor thing," said Lady Charvington, with a pitying glance. "I hope your prince is wealthy," she added, turning to Lesbia. The girl smiled. "On the contrary, he is very poor." "Dear me! I seem to have found a paragon of virtue. But are you not rather foolish, my dear girl? With such a face and such a figure and with my influence you should make a better match." "So I tell her," cried Hale quickly; he was always on the watch to put in a word, "and she is not really engaged, Lady Charvington. There is some disagreement between Lesbia and Mr. Walker." "What a horrid name! So plebeian!" cried Lady Charvington. "George is not plebeian," said Lesbia, colouring hotly, "his father was the Honourable Aylmer Walker." "Lord Casterton's third son," said the visitor, nodding. "Yes, I have heard of him from my brothers. He was rather wild, was he not?" "Really I don't know." "There is no chance of his coming in for the title--your George, I mean," prattled on Lady Charvington, "as Aylmer Walker's two elder brothers have both heaps and heaps of children. I rather think that Aylmer was the black ba-ba of the family. Well, there, I'm talking scandal, a thing of which I highly disapprove. Go and get your things on, dear, and tell your man to put your box on the motor. Wilkins will help him. He's the chauffeur--not at all a bad driver, but oh, so dreadfully reckless. Be prepared to go like the wind, my dear." Lady Charvington babbled on in this fashion with bird-like glances here and there, taking in every detail of the room. She knew that Hale was a poor relation of her husband's, and indeed had received him twice or thrice at The Court near Maidenhead. But this was the first time she had seen his daughter and, but for the express command of Lord Charvington, she would not have asked her over. There was some comfort in the fact that the girl's affections were engaged, but all the same, such beauty, whether free or bound, would prove dangerous. "I trust she won't interfere with my men," thought Lady Charvington as she smiled sweetly on Lesbia leaving the tiny drawing-room. The girl summoned Tim to take her box to the motorcar which was panting violently at the door, and went to her room to put on her hat. She made a desperate attempt while doing so to overcome her dislike to Lady Charvington, as she felt sure that for some reason the little woman was hostile. Lesbia was too unsophisticated to put down the hostility to the fact that Lady Charvington found her exasperatingly beautiful, and was puzzled to think why any hostility should exist. But it certainly was there, and Lesbia detected it immediately. However, as she could see no reason for any such feeling existing between her and a woman who--on the face of it--was doing her a kindness, she fought desperately with her intuition. Still it seemed to her that she was but leaving one abode of trouble to go to another, wherein even more annoying things might happen. And the root of all the worry was the missing cross. Tim took down the box and then returned to Lesbia's bedroom as she was issuing therefrom. He drew her back mysteriously and produced a letter cautiously from his inner pocket. "This is for you, Miss," he declared in a whisper, "it came under cover to me by the mid-day post, with a scratch av a pin saying Mr. Canning sint it, and 'twas to be given ye at onct." "Mr. Canning!" Lesbia's face grew eager, and she hastily opened the thin envelope to skim five or six lines written on foreign notepaper. What she read surprised her, and she noted that the address given was in a quiet street in Whitechapel. "I have heard indirectly," wrote The Shadow, "that you are going some time to The Court, Lord Charvington's place near Maidenhead. If you do, keep a good watch, as two London thieves--the same who robbed Tait's strong-room by Tait's direction--are about to try to steal Lady Charvington's jewels when everyone is at dinner. The attempt will be made on Thursday evening. I advise you to warn Lord Charvington, but tell him not to bring in the police, as he will deeply regret doing so. Yours always, C." This mysterious letter, signed with Canning's initial, startled Lesbia, For the moment she felt inclined to go down and tell her father: but on second thoughts and with a discretion far beyond her years, she decided to say nothing until she met her host. It was now Tuesday, and the burglary was not arranged for until Thursday. There was ample time. "It's nothing, Tim," she said mendaciously, putting the letter away. "Good-bye for one whole week, you dear old thing," and she kissed him fondly. CHAPTER XVI RECOGNITION The Court, near Maidenhead, was Lord Charvington's chief country residence on account of its proximity to London. It was a modern mansion built in early Victorian days and, in accordance with the taste of that period, had no great pretensions to architectural beauty. In fact it might be called ugly, and was a huge, staring barrack of a place, quite out of keeping with the beauty of the surrounding grounds. These were of large extent, and so admirably laid out that they made up for the deficiencies of the building, which, after all, was comfortable enough within doors, if its external aspect was uninviting. Modern luxury had made the many rooms very habitable, and the barn--it looked like a barn--was furnished with the magnificence of Aladdin's palace. Lesbia arrived with her hostess in time for afternoon tea and was speedily introduced to Lord Charvington. There were at least ten guests of fashionable London stopping for a few days and, while Lady Charvington chatted with these, her husband made himself agreeable to Miss Hale. She was very glad to find Charvington so agreeable and sympathetic, for naturally her first plunge into society made her somewhat shy. And her host was particularly attentive, quite in a different way from Lady Charvington's careless hospitality. After a few minutes' conversation Lesbia felt as though she had known him for years, and was soon quite at her ease. In fact, Lady Charvington, at the other end of the room, cast a displeased look in Lesbia's direction, when she heard her laughing so gaily, and saw how her pretty face was wreathed in smiles. Charvington was making a fool of the girl, she thought, and indeed privately deemed it foolish that he had lifted the girl into a circle so alien to her ordinary life, since she had neither the money nor the experience to sustain her new position. However, Charvington had made a point of his cousin's daughter being asked, so Lady Charvington gave way, as she always did to her husband in small things. Charvington was a tall and somewhat stout man, with a fresh-coloured face and leonine masses of white hair worn somewhat long. He was clean-shaven, with merry blue eyes filled with vigorous life, and possessed a strong, calm voice, sympathetic and sweet. His manner was brisk and lively, and more suited to youth than to age. Not that he was so very old, for he certainly appeared as lively as the youngest man in the room. Everyone in the West End knew Lord Charvington, as he was rich and kind-hearted, two things which beget a very agreeable reputation. Many a young man had to thank Charvington for help and advice, and in an unostentatious way he did a great deal of good. When Lesbia talked with him and became acquainted with his personality, she no longer wondered that he had acceded so readily to her request for a loan. The purse of such a genial man was always open to the needy, and very often to the undeserving. "I am glad you have come over, Lesbia," he said admiringly, as they sat in a quiet corner of the room far from the chattering guests. "Hale did not tell me that you were so pretty. By the way, you must not mind my calling you by your Christian name. I knew you when you were but a baby, and it is my privilege, as your elderly cousin, to be familiar." "I am very glad you _are_ familiar," said the girl, lifting her eyes to the strong, kind face, "and I cannot forget that you sent me that fifty pounds so kindly, without asking what I wished to do with it." "Pooh! pooh! That is nothing, child. Who should help you but I? Whenever you are in want of money write to me, and you will receive a cheque by return of post. I am your cousin, you know. And a very bad cousin at that," added Charvington, with sudden energy. "I should have had you here long ago. You must have led a dull life in Marlow." "No," answered Lesbia quietly, "there was always George." "Who is George?" "The man I love." "Oh!" Charvington's eyes twinkled more than ever; "you are engaged." "Yes and no." The man looked puzzled. "What do you mean? I don't like riddles." Lesbia sighed. "It is a riddle, and a very painful one. For that reason I accepted your kind invitation and came over. I want to tell you what I did with the fifty pounds, and also I wish to ask your advice." "I shall be delighted to give it, but surely your father--" "My father"--Lesbia checked a scornful remark which was on the tip of her tongue--"my father would take no interest in what I wish to tell you." Charvington bent his brow and looked at her thoughtfully. "You shall come to the library in the morning, and there we can have a chat," he said. "Only one thing I ask you now: your father does not treat you badly?" "No," faltered the girl, looking down; she could not betray her father, although he had behaved so ill. "My father is--well enough," she ended lamely. "Humph!" muttered Charvington, with his eyes still on her face. "Well, well, we shall see! Meantime have some more tea," and he walked across the room to have her cup filled. No more was said for the time being, but Charvington's kind manner made Lesbia more determined than ever to confide in him. She believed that she had at length found a friend who would aid her to withstand the tyranny of her father, and who would assist to put things right with her lover. They were crooked enough now in all conscience. Moreover, in any case, she was forced to show him Canning's letter, so that he might provide against the projected burglary. If she told this much she would have to tell all, for only by making a clean breast of it could she be extricated from the mire into which she had sunk, through no fault of her own. All that evening she longed for the morning, so that she might tell her new friend the many difficulties which were making her miserable. Not that the evening was dull. On the contrary, as the mansion was filled with lively, well-bred people, it was quite a revelation to Lesbia in the way of enjoyment. Everyone seemed to be happy and untroubled by care, which contrasted strongly with the incessant worry which went on within the four walls of Rose Cottage. These society people--outwardly at all events--seemed as careless gods, happy, merry, and gloriously irresponsible. Later in life Lesbia learned what sadness lurked under this frivolous, laughing exterior, but at this time she was quite deceived, and thought to herself, "How happy are the rich and well-born!" Lady Charvington's two daughters--not yet old enough to be presented--were very nice girls, although they were decidedly plain-looking. But they appeared to have none of their mother's jealousy regarding Lesbia's beauty, and made much of her. She found herself laughing and talking and entering into their girlish lives, quite as if she had known them for many years. Lord Charvington seemed particularly pleased that this should be so, and presided over the trio like a benevolent wizard. For the most part Lesbia was with the two girls during her visit, in spite of the attentions paid to her by sundry youths smitten by her beauty. Seeing this, Lady Charvington became much more gracious, and inwardly decided that Lesbia Hale knew her place. All the same she was a trifle uneasy at the way in which Charvington hovered round the pretty visitor. Not that she cared over much for her husband, who was older than she was; nevertheless, she did not like to see him paying marked attentions to anyone else. On the first evening, there was a small dance after a very splendid dinner. Lesbia, in her simple white dress, attracted much notice, but she preferred to talk to Agatha and Lena, Lord Charvington's daughters, and to laugh at their father's mild witticisms. During a lull in the dance there was some singing, and towards the end of the evening an excellent supper. Lesbia retired at midnight, while yet the festivities were in full swing. This was at Lord Charvington's express wish, as he did not approve of youth losing any necessary beauty-sleep. When she laid her head on the pillow and was falling asleep, Lesbia confessed that she had enjoyed herself greatly. If George had only been present the evening would have been perfect. Next morning, Agatha and Lena woke her early and took her round the grounds. The girls exchanged confidences--chiefly about school life,--ran races on the dewy sward, and entered filled with the joy of life to eat a surprisingly good breakfast. Lady Charvington was rather astounded at Lesbia's appetite. So pretty a girl, she decided, should eat less and talk less. But Lesbia, although a fairy in looks, could not live on fairy food, and enjoyed to the full the excellent meal provided by the very capable chef of her host. "Horrid, greedy, pert girl," thought Lady Charvington, who was all smiles and attention. "I am sure I shan't like her!"--quite a needless thought, as she already heartily disliked her visitor for other reasons than because she was pretty. But these reasons Lesbia did not learn for some months. Then they did not matter, as life had changed by that time for the better. After breakfast, Lord Charvington carried off his pretty little guest to a noble room lined with books, and placing her in a most comfortable arm-chair, took his own seat at his desk. "Now, my child, what is it?" he asked. "It is rather difficult to begin," faltered Lesbia, feeling if she had the fatal letter in her pocket. "Not with me, my dear. You know that you can trust me implicitly." "Yes," said Lesbia, raising her clear eyes to the kind face. "Well then I shall begin from the time I gave George the amethyst cross." "What?" Charvington's ruddy face grew pale, and he pushed back his chair with considerable violence; "the amethyst cross!" "Do you know anything about it?" asked Lesbia, astonished by his change of colour and evident emotion. "It is lost you know--stolen." "Who stole it?" demanded the man mastering himself with an apparent effort. "Listen," said Lesbia, and related everything from the time George Walker had proposed to the moment of Lady Charvington's arrival at Rose Cottage. But for the moment she said nothing of the letter from Canning. That could keep until she heard what Charvington had to say to the first part of her story. And it may be mentioned that Lesbia spared her father as much as possible, while explaining her difficulties. After his first violent movement, Lord Charvington listened in dead silence, and his colour slowly returned. With his eyes averted, he heard the whole extraordinary tale, without interruption, and only when it was concluded did he speak. Then he gave but small comfort. "I cannot understand what it all means," he said slowly. "I shall see Hale, and doubtless he will be able to explain matters. But have no fear, child, if you love George Walker, you shall marry him. I know Mrs. Walker, and I knew her husband. A wild fellow was Aylmer Walker, but not without his good points." "And you won't let my father have me watched again," said Lesbia anxiously. "Certainly not," cried Charvington fiercely. "If I had known that, I would have--but that's neither here nor there. Your father owes me too much to disregard my wishes. I shall see that he leaves you your full liberty and that he consents to your marriage with George. I hope he is worthy of you, my dear--George I mean," he added wistfully. "Oh yes. He's the dearest, sweetest, best----" "There! There!" Charvington smiled a trifle drily. "I can see that your heart is set upon being Mrs. Walker. Very good. I shall see that George has an opportunity of earning money, so that you can marry him." "And the cross?" "Never mind the cross just now," said Charvington hastily. "I shall have to see your father about that. Later we can talk on the subject. But this Tait," he drummed anxiously with his fingers on the table; "I knew Tait many years ago. He always was a scoundrel, although I did not think he would go so far as to join himself with professional thieves----" "Oh," Lesbia drew the letter of Canning from her pocket, "I forgot. Read this, Lord Charvington. It's a warning--only don't tell the police." Her host mounted his pince-nez and read the missive in surprise. His face grew a dark red, and he muttered a word which Lesbia luckily did not overhear. Then he folded the letter and placed it in his pocket without remark. "You won't tell the police," said Lesbia again and still anxiously. "No," said Charvington, rising, "from what Canning found out before, I believe Tait is in this business also. I don't want for several reasons to make a scandal connected with the man, although he deserves to be gaoled for life. Still, I shall take precautions by having the house watched. Also I must get my wife to put away her jewel-casket in the safe. She is very careless about her jewels, and leaves the casket in her bedroom, sometimes in a drawer or wardrobe, but more often open on the dressing-table. The maid should put it away, of course, but she's a half-blind old creature who was my wife's nurse, and neglects things. But to-day is Wednesday and the burglary is arranged for to-morrow evening when we dine. I shall see that my wife puts away her jewels to-morrow evening. I shall go to her room and see that they are safe before I go to dinner." "But why not to-day also?" asked Lesbia anxiously. "The burglary is not until to-morrow evening, child," said Charvington kindly. "They are safe until then, as they have been safe for years in spite of my wife's gross carelessness and trust in her neglectful old nurse. No, my dear, you have given me a needed warning, so it is no use bothering your head further. To-morrow, I shall make all safe. When these two thieves find that the house is guarded, they will not attempt the robbery." "Will you warn Lady Charvington?" "What! and have her fall into hysterics? No. I shall merely see that the jewels are locked up nightly after to-morrow, and have the house watched for a week or so. My wife need know nothing, my dear." "I shall keep my own counsel," said Lesbia, rising to leave the room, "but I do wish you would have the jewels put away to-night, Lord Charvington." "Well," he smiled kindly, "perhaps, as you are so anxious I shall. But, as we know the time and date of the projected burglary, there is no need." Lesbia went away, comforted to think that Charvington now knew all her troubles, and would help her when it was necessary. Doubtless he would procure George a good situation, and then she could marry her lover. But the emotion of Charvington, when the amethyst cross was mentioned, puzzled Lesbia greatly, as there appeared to be no reason for it. However, she comforted herself with the reflection, that--as he had promised--he would explain everything when the appointed time arrived, and went to enjoy her holiday with the two girls. The enjoyment took the form of a picnic and a run down the river on Lord Charvington's fine steam launch. When the girls were out of the way, Charvington sought his wife and pointed out to her the folly of leaving a case full of rich jewels on her dressing-table. "They might be stolen," he remonstrated. Lady Charvington was not at all grateful. "You are always making a fuss over the jewels," she said impatiently. "I have left the case in my bedroom for years and I have never lost a single thing." "That doesn't say you might not lose the lot," snapped Charvington, who found his wife trying even to his kindly nature. "There's time enough to talk when I do lose them." "Then it will be too late. I ask you to put them away every night in the strong-room. Bertha can take the case there, when she has dressed you for dinner." "Very well," said Lady Charvington, who was impatient to return to a very interesting book she was reading. "I'll tell Bertha, though I'm sure if the case is in my bedroom she can look after it well enough." "Pooh. She's half blind. Why don't you get a better maid?" "Bertha's been with me all my life, and I shall keep her until she is past work. You have no heart, Charvington," she ended virtuously. "She's past work now," said her husband, as he stalked from the boudoir. Nothing more was said, but had Charvington been in the house on that Wednesday evening he would either have asked his wife if the jewels had been put away, or have attended to the matter himself. But during the day he suddenly decided to go up to London in order to see a private detective whom he had employed before on various delicate matters. It would be just as well, thought Charvington, to have this man in the house on Thursday evening. Then, if the two thieves alluded to by Canning did arrive, the man could lay hands on them. Not that Charvington wished to make a public case of the matter, since, as he had hinted to Lesbia, he was anxious to avoid scandal in connection with Tait, whom he shrewdly suspected of having a hand in this new piece of rascality. For this reason he went up to London to engage the private detective, and remained in town for the night. Next day he purposed coming back with his assistant and then the matter could be settled quietly. Lady Charvington would not lose her jewels, and there would be no trouble--publicly at all events--in connection with Mr. Michael Tait. All that Wednesday Lesbia enjoyed herself on the river with her host's daughters, in spite of the launch's breaking down temporarily on the way back, in consequence of some accident to the engines. Consequently it was not until seven o'clock at night that the three girls arrived in Maidenhead, and it was thirty minutes past when they came to The Court. Lady Charvington, who had been anxious about their non-arrival, expressed herself as annoyed at their failure to be in to dinner, which was at seven o'clock. She sent a message saying that Agatha and Lena were to dine in their school-room with the governess. Lesbia feeling herself a culprit--although on the face of it not one of the three was to blame--decided to dine with the girls and to make her apologies afterwards to Lady Charvington. And a very merry dinner they had, for the governess was a charming, middle-aged lady, who made everything very pleasant. And then the love of Agatha and Lena for their newly-found cousin grew with every hour. On the whole, Lesbia enjoyed that school-room meal more than the splendid dinner of the previous night. She was the more pleased that she had remained absent, as she was told by the governess that Lord Charvington was away in London. After that merry meal, Lesbia went to change her dress in order to go down to the drawing-room. Agatha and Lena followed to chatter and help, as they did not like to be separated from their visitor. Lesbia's room was on the first floor, near that of the girls, and on the way the three had to pass the door of Lady Charvington's bedroom. It was closed, but as they passed they heard a shriek of alarm, and opening it at once saw one man escaping by the window, and another struggling with Bertha, the ancient maid. Agatha and Lena ran away screaming for help, but Lesbia dashed forward to help the old woman. At that moment the man--who wore a mask--threw Bertha on the ground and ran towards the window. Lesbia caught him before he could fling his leg over the sill, and tore off the mask. Then she uttered a cry of dismay and terror. "Father!" she shrieked, and dropped down in a dead faint. CHAPTER XVII DISGRACE Next morning, Lesbia was sitting in her bedroom, thinking over the terrible event of the previous night. She had remained in a faint for a considerable time, and had recovered consciousness to find herself lying on her bed. At once she had desired to see Lady Charvington, but her hostess sent up a message asking that Lesbia should wait until the arrival of Lord Charvington, who had been wired for. From the somewhat pert behaviour of the maid who brought the message, the unfortunate girl felt that she was in disgrace, and did not dare to resent it. Having recognised her father in the man whose mask she had torn off, she fancied that the whole household knew of the matter. But in this she was wrong, as she learned, when Agatha, the elder of the girls, came by stealth to her room about eleven o'clock at night. "I don't know what is the matter with mother," said Agatha speaking in a whisper and keeping a watchful eye on the door, "she told Lena and I that we were not to see you, or speak to you." "Why?" stammered Lesbia, feeling sick with shame. "I don't know. I suppose mother is angry at the loss of her jewels. But my father always told her that she would lose them." "Have they caught the thieves?" "No. Lena and I screamed, and everyone came rushing, up. They found Bertha lying half stunned on the floor, and you in a faint. The two men had a motorcar at the gate and got away." Lesbia turned even whiter than she was. "Do they know who the men are?" "Of course they don't. They wore masks, you know," said Agatha, "but one mask was found on the floor. Bertha said that you pulled it off the man who was struggling with her. Did you know his face?" "No," muttered Lesbia. The lie choked her, but she could not denounce her own father, evil as he was. "I expect when I fainted he jumped from the window after his companion, and managed to reach the motorcar. Has your father returned, Agatha dear?" "No," answered the girl softly, "he is coming back in the morning. Mother has brought in the police from Maidenhead, but I heard her tell the chief man that you were too ill to be questioned until the morning. Mother seems to be very angry with you, Lesbia. I wonder why?" "I don't know, dear," said the girl, and indeed she did not. If the names of the thieves were unknown, Lady Charvington could have nothing against her. "But if your mother doesn't want you to speak to me, Agatha, you must go back to bed. When the morning comes I shall see your mother and ask what is the matter." "See father," said Agatha, pattering across the room with bare feet, "he is fond of you: he told me so. Mother is always jealous of anyone father likes and she will only be disagreeable. I waited till Lena was asleep, then came here. But I'll go now," she returned to kiss Lesbia, "good-night, dear, and don't worry. Everything will be right when father comes back." Lesbia thought so also. She had implicit faith in Lord Charvington as his daughter had, and knew that he would understand when he heard the truth. But could she tell him the truth? Could she say that the man to whom he allowed an annuity had crept into the house to steal the jewels? And then Canning had said particularly that the two thieves were the same that had robbed Tait's strong-room by Tait's direction. In that case, her father was doubly a villain, as he was not only a thief, but had tried to throw the blame of the first burglary on George Walker in order to bring about a separation between them. Now he had added a second crime to the first, and had robbed his benefactor and cousin at the very time that his own daughter was a guest in the house. Canning must have known of her father's guilt and so, in his letter--for Lesbia's sake no doubt--had advised that the police should not be brought in. But would Charvington keep the affair quiet when his wife had lost her jewels? And in any case would he not send from the house in anger the daughter of such a villain? It was all terrible, shameful, disgraceful, and poor Lesbia sobbed herself to sleep at the horror of it all. Next morning she could eat no breakfast, but after a cold bath to freshen her up, dressed and sat by the window waiting for Lord Charvington's arrival. At first she was inclined to see her hostess and ask why she behaved so oddly. But the fancy was strong within her, that Lady Charvington in some way must have learned the identity of at least one of the thieves, and so was visiting the shame of the father on the head of the innocent daughter. But then Lesbia could not conjecture if this was true. As Lady Charvington had not entered her bedroom until Hale escaped, she could not have recognised him, and as Hale had escaped the truth would never become known unless Lesbia spoke. This she did not intend to do, unless to Lord Charvington, whom she could trust. She therefore waited patiently. At all events, as she gathered from Agatha's report, whatever Lady Charvington suspected she certainly had not informed the household, in spite of the demeanour of the pert servant. Nevertheless, the very forbidding of the two girls to see Lesbia pointed to doubts and hatred and knowledge of the worst on Lady Charvington's part. As Lesbia sat there looking out on to the beautiful garden with tear-filled eyes, she recalled many circumstances in her father's life which brought home to her forcibly his wicked vocation. The sordid persons who came by stealth to Rose Cottage must have been thieves and fences who received stolen goods. Her father's mysterious actions and frequent absences were accounted for by the fact, for when away he probably had been robbing with his shameful associates. No wonder he had laughed when George had proposed to leave Tait's office and join him in business. And Tait also was a rogue and a scoundrel, belonging to the gang of which Walter Hale was a member. Sargent might be a thief also--but of this Lesbia could not be certain. Nevertheless, she began to suspect that Canning _alias_ The Shadow had something to do with the robberies. That would explain why a gentleman would descend to being a spy. Canning was under Hale's thumb and would have to do what he was told to do. Then she recollected how he had stated that for telling her about Tait's scheme he would have to go into hiding. There could be no doubt about it. Canning belonged to the gang and out of gratitude had betrayed his sordid associates. Thinking thus Lesbia grew sick and faint. The thought of the wickedness that surrounded her made her shiver. How could she expect George to marry her when she was the daughter of a thief? And she would be forced to tell him, since she could not marry him and keep silent upon such an important point. To marry George without telling him the truth would be to place herself in the power of her father. And now knowing what her father was, Lesbia felt certain that to put money into his pocket he would not stop short of blackmail. No, she would have to tell what she had discovered to George and to Lord Charvington, and thus in one moment she would lose the only two friends she possessed. Tim remained and Lesbia knew that, come what might, she could always depend upon the fidelity of the Irishman; she felt sure that Tim was as innocent as herself of this dreadful knowledge which had come to ruin her life. In all wide England there was no more miserable girl than the unfortunate Lesbia, as she sat weeping by the window and bidding farewell to happiness and respectability. Towards noon a message was brought that Lord Charvington wished to see her in the library, and Lesbia after washing away all traces of the bitter tears she had shed descended the stairs. She was pale and worn, but held herself proudly, for whatever might be known, she was determined to face the worst. Several people were in the hall, and she saw a policeman near the door. But no one looked at her in any way suggesting that the terrible truth was known, so Lesbia entered the noble library with a hope that her father had escaped recognition by all save herself. Only two people were in the library, Lord Charvington and his wife. The former was walking to and fro with a worried expression on his kind face, but the latter seated in an arm-chair near the window looked red with anger and apparently had been engaged in a furious argument: "If you don't tell, I shall," she was saying when Lesbia entered. "You shall say nothing," said Lord Charvington sternly. "Hold your tongue as you have done. Hitherto you have displayed sense in keeping silence and in silencing Bertha. Continue to behave and----" "Here's the girl," snapped Lady Charvington, interrupting as Lesbia came silently into the room and closed the door. "Why do you speak of me in that way?" asked Lesbia, up in arms at once. Knowing herself innocent, she did not intend to stand insult. "You will soon learn," retorted the other, curling her lip. "I wonder you are not ashamed of yourself. And after all my kindness too, and my----" "Silence, Helen," said Lord Charvington imperiously. "How dare you talk to Miss Hale so insolently?" "Miss Hale," sneered his wife. "Why not call her Lesbia, as you have done?" "I have every right to; she is my cousin." Lord Charvington made an angry gesture to impose silence on his indignant wife, and turned to the girl who stood pale and motionless. "My poor Lesbia, don't look so woe-begone. I will stand by you whatever my wife may say." "What does she say?" asked Lesbia quietly. "You had better hear her when she is more composed," said Lord Charvington with a glance at his wife, thereby arousing her to fresh fury. "She will probably say something in the heat of the moment for which she will be sorry. Helen, had you not better go and lie down?" Lady Charvington arose with a red spot burning on either cheek, and her eyes glittered like those of an angry cat. "How dare you speak to me like this in my own house, Charvington?" she cried in a shrill voice. "I don't leave this room until you turn that shameless girl out of doors." "What do you mean?" demanded Lesbia indignantly; but with a sinking heart. "Mean," screamed the infuriated woman; "I mean that Bertha heard you calling the masked man who attacked you, 'Father!' And you cannot deny it. See, Charvington," she pointed tauntingly to the agonised girl, "she dare not deny it. Oh you--you daughter of a thief; you accomplice of a thief." "Helen, Helen; be silent." "I shall not be silent. When Bertha told me the truth I ordered her to hold her tongue until you returned, Charvington. I have held my peace myself and neither the police nor the servants nor our friends know that this horrid girl is the daughter of a thief. Why you take such an interest in the minx I don't know, but surely after what we have discovered you will pack her off to gaol." "To gaol; to gaol," Lesbia drew herself up, pale, but fearless. As Lady Charvington hurled her accusations, the girl's spirit rose to defend herself. After all, guilty as her father might be, she at least was innocent. "How dare you speak to me in this way?" she said again. "And how dare you face me, you cat?" snarled Lady Charvington, looking much more like a cat herself. "You arrange with your abominable father to rob me of my jewels, you enter my house to----" Before Lord Charvington could put out his hand to stop her--for he was afraid to think what these two angry women might do--Lesbia glided past him, and stood face to face with her enemy. "You lie," she breathed in such a low, fierce voice that the other woman fell back into her chair with a gasp of fear. "I knew nothing of this. I had no wish to rob you of your jewels." "Yes, you had, and I know why!" "Explain then. I dare you to explain." Lady Charvington cast a swift glance at her husband. "I know what I know." "You know that I am innocent," said Lesbia, clenching her hands; "I dare you to say that I am not." "You are your father's accomplice." "That is untrue," broke in Lord Charvington smoothly, "Lesbia warned me that the jewels would be stolen." "Of course," scoffed his wife triumphantly, "she knew!" "If I had been in league with my father would I have given the warning?" "Yes," said Lady Charvington, rising to confront Lesbia, who had asked the question. "My husband showed me the letter purporting to come from some man in London. It said that the burglary was arranged for Thursday, and by telling my husband that, he thought he might safely leave the house and go to London to engage a detective, while your father robbed the house on Wednesday. It's a well-arranged business." "I don't know why the burglary took place on Wednesday," said Lesbia steadily; "the letter I gave Lord Charvington is perfectly true. I can't explain further than I have done." "Because you can't; because you can't," taunted Lady Charvington, "but you shall leave my house in disgrace." Lord Charvington caught his wife's wrist. "Lesbia shall return to her home this day," he said imperiously, "because I won't have her stopping here to be insulted by you. Bertha will say nothing of what she overheard, as I have forbidden her to speak on the pain of instant dismissal. You also, Helen, shall hold your tongue." "I will do nothing of the sort," breathed Lady Charvington vindictively. "You shall. I will not permit you to ruin an innocent girl. Knowing that Hale has stolen your jewels, I can get them back, and have already communicated with him." "The police----" "The police can do nothing. Hale and his accomplice got away cleverly in their motorcar and cannot be traced. If the jewels are returned intact--which they will be, as I can force Hale to return them--the police will not move further in the matter, as I can stop them. Then this painful episode will be a thing of the past." "I want that girl disgraced as an accomplice," said the elder woman, grinding her teeth and pointing towards Lesbia. Charvington put his arm round Lesbia's waist or she would have fallen. "I shall not allow it, Helen," he said quietly. "Lesbia is innocent. Woman, have you no pity for the poor thing; surely she is suffering enough already, in finding out that her father is a thief." "Her father," jeered Lady Charvington insultingly. "Oh, yes, her father," she moved swiftly towards the library door. "If you get back my jewels I shall hold my tongue, for reasons which you may guess, Charvington. But don't let that creature come near me, or I shall--I shall--oh." Lady Charvington could scarcely contain herself. "How I hate you; hate you. I wish you were dead with all my heart and soul, you--you----" What she was about to say in her furious anger Lesbia could not guess. But whatever it was she never uttered the epithet. Charvington suddenly moved towards his wife and towering above her glared into her eyes. "If you say another word I'll kill you." Lady Charvington quailed. "You are quite capable of doing so," she breathed undauntedly; "I'm not afraid of you. But clear my house of that," and with a jeering laugh, she pointed at the trembling girl and left the room. "What--what does she mean?" gasped Lesbia, sinking into a chair, her courage all gone. "What have I done? How can I help my father--my father--oh Lord Charvington!" and she broke down weeping bitterly. "Hush! hush!" He stood over her, patting her heaving shoulder. "She doesn't know what she is saying. I'll see that she holds her tongue and Bertha also. Nothing will ever be known of your father's complicity in this crime." "But what does it mean?" asked Lesbia, lifting a tear-stained face. "God knows," muttered Charvington moodily, "I have been mistaken in your father, my dear." "But--but you don't blame me?" "No," he declared emphatically, "a thousand times no. My dear, I love you as if you were my own child, and I shall never, never believe any harm of you in any way. I can keep my wife's tongue silent, but I can do no more. You must return to Marlow, until such time as I can arrange further about your marriage with George Walker." "Oh," Lesbia wailed and stretched her arms, "I cannot marry him now. Who would marry the daughter of a thief? Father was one of the thieves who robbed Mr. Tait's strong-room." "At Tait's request remember," interpolated Charvington quickly. Lesbia brushed away the speech. "Oh, what does it matter even if they are all thieves. But George must have known the dreadful truth and so he will not renew our engagement. I did not understand him before; I do now." "There! there!" Charvington patted her shoulder again, "don't worry. All will come right, I am sure, and in a way which you do not expect." Lesbia looked up with sudden hope. "You know of something." "Yes," said the man gloomily. "I know of something. Don't ask me any further questions just now, but go back to Marlow. The motorcar is already at the door with your box on it. As all our other guests have left the house, your departure will cause no surprise." "But the police. Will they not want to question me?" "I'll attend to that. I told the inspector that if necessary he could question you at Rose Cottage. But as I hope to make your father give back the jewels, the prosecution will be dropped. Remember, the police do not know that your father is guilty. Being thus ignorant, they can do nothing. Go away in peace, my dear, and leave everything to me." Lesbia rose shuddering. "How can I go back to my father, knowing what I now know?" she murmured, shivering. "You go back to the cottage," explained Charvington distinctly. "It is my cottage, as I pay the rent; the furniture also is mine. I have supported your father for years and this is the way he repays me. However, the cottage is yours. I promise you that your father will not come near you." "I trust not! I trust not. I could not face him. And you?" "I shall come over and see you shortly. But go away, contented to know that all is well. There will be no scandal, and not a word will be said about this burglary. Your father is safe and you are safe. Later, I shall see about getting your father to go to Australia, and then you can marry Walker." "If he will have me," sighed the unfortunate girl. "Lesbia," Charvington took her face between his two hands and looked into her eyes; "I swear that you shall marry him. There! Let the dead past alone and dream of future happiness," and he kissed her solemnly. CHAPTER XVIII LADY CHARVINGTON'S ACCUSATIONS While Lesbia was thus having so miserable a time, George Walker was living very quietly, sometimes in London, but more often in Medmenham. He carefully avoided all mention of Lesbia's name, and when his mother questioned him regarding his reason for refusing to renew the engagement he declined to explain. Mrs. Walker was much annoyed by what she termed his mule-headedness as, after her visit to Rose Cottage, she was quite willing that Lesbia should become her daughter-in-law. "I cannot understand you, George," said Mrs. Walker to her son during one of their frequent wrangles. "When I objected to this girl, nothing would do but that you must marry her. Now that I have taken a fancy to her, you refuse to have anything to do with her. I never thought a son of mine would blow hot and cold in this silly fashion." "I am not blowing hot or cold," returned George gloomily; he was very, very gloomy in those days and had lost all his light-heartedness. "Lesbia is the only girl in the world that I care to marry. But how can I make her my wife, when I haven't a penny to keep her with?" "That is mere evasion. Things are very little changed from the time you would have married her in the teeth of poverty." "There is this much change, that I have lost my situation with Tait and am now living on my mother, which is the meanest thing a man can do. How then can I renew my engagement with Lesbia?" "Because I wish you to," said Mrs. Walker promptly, and bent her black brows. "I understood you hated her." "Indeed, I never did," she rejoined sharply. "How could I hate anyone whom I had never seen? Don't be a fool, George. I certainly hated her father and I hate him still, for a very good reason, which it does not concern you to know. But after I saw the girl I repented that I had not been to see her before, since you loved her. She is an innocent darling, and I should like no one better for my daughter. It would be unfair to visit the sins of the father on so sweet a child." "Yet if the child wasn't sweet," said George drily, "you would not mind doing so. You are somewhat inconsistent." "I am not so inconsistent as you are," said his mother, skilfully avoiding a reply by carrying the war into hic camp. "What I wish to know is--why do you decline to renew your engagement?" "I have no money and no situation." "That isn't the true reason. "It is the sole reason which I choose to give." "There is no necessity to be rude, George," said Mrs. Walker with great dignity. "Cannot you get another situation?" "Not easily. Tait will give me no references, nor do I care to ask him for any. Situations are hard to get without references." Mrs. Walker clasped her strong, white hands together and frowned. "It is quite absurd that my son and the son of your father should be a mere clerk in the City," she burst out. "Can't you do something better?" "No," replied George gloomily. "I am not clever, and I have not been brought up to any trade." "Trade! Trade! My son in trade." George was sad enough at heart, yet could not forbear smiling at the horror expressed on her countenance. "There is nothing disgraceful in trade," he remarked quietly. "My grandfather Morse was a merchant." "And your grandfather Casterton was an earl," snapped Mrs. Walker. "There's your uncle, the present owner of the title. Why not go to him, and see if he cannot assist you?" "And when I ask him, what excuse can I make?" "He is your uncle: he has every right to assist you." "I fear he might not see things in the same light, mother. Besides I have no qualifications." George paused, then added gloomily: "An out-of-door colonial life would suit me. Give me enough to get to Canada or Australia, mother, and there I can carve my way." "What about me?" asked Mrs. Walker reproachfully. "I would make a home for you beyond the seas and you can come out later." Mrs. Walker shook her head. "I am too old to travel so far," she said grimly, "moreover, I intend to wait until I get the fortune of my sister. She is dead: I am sure from what Walter Hale says that there is no child, so in the end Jabez must give me the fifty thousand pounds. That money would put all things right: your marriage included." "Not with Lesbia," said the young man colouring. "There is no chance of our coming together. Besides, to get the money you must find that cross." "Nothing of the sort," said his mother quickly, "Jabez only requires its production by a possible child, as a means of identification, a very silly idea I call it. But he knows that I am Judith Morse, and so by my father's will inherit, now that my sister is dead." George shook his head doggedly. "I believe that you will never get the fortune until that cross is found." "Then find it." "I can't. I have tried my best to learn who assaulted me and robbed this cottage, but I am still in the dark." This ended the conversation for the time being. But as the days went by Mrs. Walker still continued to express her disgust at George's obstinacy regarding Lesbia. She knew that he still loved the girl, and could not think why he should refuse to renew the engagement in the face of Lesbia's letter. Of course the excuse of having no situation was rubbish, so Mrs. Walker decided, as Lesbia was willing to marry him without one penny. If he truly loved her, as she did him, poverty would be no bar. When was poverty ever a bar to the union of two young hearts? Even admitting that George wanted to provide a home before renewing the engagement, he surely could have seen Lesbia and explained his reasons for behaving as he was doing. But he never went near Marlow, and refused to mention her name. As Mrs. Walker, being as obstinate as her son, insisted on discussing his unfortunate love affair, and wrangling over the same, George took to remaining for days in London on the plea that he was looking for work. Time thus passed very miserably for the grim widow. One day George came down with the news that he had received a note from Lord Charvington, asking him to call at The Court, Maidenhead. Why he should wish to see him George could not guess, as he had never met him. But in the letter Charvington said that he had been a friend of Aylmer Walker, and so desired the interview. Mrs. Walker was also puzzled. She was well acquainted with Lord Charvington, but after her scampish husband's death she had kept away from the former society she frequented, on account of her poverty. All the same, she advised George to keep the appointment, which was made for the next day, if only to hear what Charvington had to talk about. It was strange, a coincidence in fact, that Lady Charvington's motor should stop on the afternoon of that very day at the gate of the Medmenham cottage. Never before to George's knowledge had his mother mentioned Lord Charvington's name, yet on the very day when it was on her lips, because of the letter, the wife of the nobleman arrived to pay a visit. Why she should do so was not quite clear, and Mrs. Walker entered the drawing-room with a frown. She and her sister Kate had been school-girls together, and she had never approved of the lady. Her greeting was very cold. "How are you, Helen?" she said, extending the tips of her fingers. "It is a surprise to see you in my humble abode." "I would have called before, only I knew that you did not wish to see me, Judith," said Lady Charvington, sinking gracefully into the nearest arm-chair; "but I have come on business." Mrs. Walker sat also, and folded her hands on the lap of her black dress with her usual grim smile. "Of course, I knew that you would not waste your valuable time in coming for nothing. But what business you can have with me I fail to see. We were never good friends, and you positively hated Kate because she was prettier than you." "She never was," said Lady Charvington hotly, and glanced in the silver-framed hand-mirror, which stood on the table at her elbow. "Kate had not my complexion, nor my hair." "Nor your nasty temper," snapped Mrs. Walker, who felt extremely nasty herself; "but I don't know why we should talk of good looks at our age." "I am not old, Judith: you are older than I am." "Quite so, and I wear ever so much better. You look twice your age." Lady Charvington made a face. "You were always a disagreeable girl," she pouted, "I daresay I am growing no younger, but you need not tell me so. As to my looks, if you were as worried as I am, you would not look your best either. So I--who is that?" she inquired as George, ignorant that his mother had a visitor, tapped at the French window of the drawing-room. "My son George," said Mrs. Walker, rising to admit him. "Oh!" cried Lady Charvington vivaciously. "Lesbia's George." "My son, Lady Charvington," said Mrs. Walker, introducing the pair. "George, this is an old friend of mine." Lady Charvington looked at the splendidly handsome young man and secretly envied her hostess. Neither of her children was so good-looking, and moreover, what she always regretted, she had provided no heir to the title. "So you are Lesbia's George," she said again, not offering her hand, but putting up her lorgnette. "Well, the girl has taste." George coloured under her impertinent gaze and at the sudden mention of Lesbia. He no more expected Lady Charvington to mention the girl than he had expected she would arrive on the very day when her name had first been mentioned in the cottage--that is, her husband's name. "What do you know of Lesbia, Lady Charvington?" he asked, taking a chair. She gave an artificial laugh. "Nothing very creditable." The young man started and grew an angry red. Mrs. Walker frowned, and making a sign that her son should be silent, spoke for him. "What do you mean by running down the girl, Helen? Let me tell you that Lesbia's name must be mentioned in this house only with respect." "Oh, I know that she loves your son, and that he loves her--unfortunately." "Why so?" asked George very directly, and still red with anger. He was beginning to dislike this pretty, perfumed, dainty woman, who looked as frivolous as his mother was stately. "Because she is, I shrewdly suspect, a--a----" Lady Charvington hesitated, for the young man looked so angry, and Mrs. Walker so grim, that she feared to bring out the hateful word. "Well, the fact is," she rattled on, "I have lost an amethyst cross, and I believe this Lesbia Hale has taken it." "An amethyst cross," repeated George, astonished, too much so in fact to repel the accusation against Lesbia with the promptitude he wished. "A cross consisting of four amethyst stones with a green cube of malachite in the centre bearing a crown, and inscribed 'Refuse and Lose'?" "Yes." Lady Charvington was astonished. "Do you know it?" "Of course I do. It belongs to me." "To you. Impossible. It is, as I believe the property of Lord Charvington, and was stolen with other jewels from The Court a few days ago." "But how did it get to The Court--how did it come into your possession?" "It came into my possession a few weeks ago. I entered the library during my husband's absence and found this cross on his table. Wondering why he had such a jewel, and thinking that he had bought it for me, I took it to my room. Charvington went away before I could speak to him about it and never made any inquiries--strange to say--as to its being taken away, I placed it in my jewel case, and forgot all about it. Then my case was stolen by two London thieves a few days ago, and the cross also." "You declared that Lesbia stole it," said Mrs. Walker grimly, "and now you say that two thieves----" "Lesbia was in league with them." George sprang to his feet. "That's wholly false, Lady Charvington. That is----" he became aware of his rudeness and stammered, "you--you must be mistaken." "I am never mistaken," said the visitor in icy tones. "Your son has not very good manners, Judith." "They are my manners," said Mrs. Walker fiercely, "and don't you find fault with them. He has only said what I intended to say, only more politely." Before Lady Charvington could snap out a reply, George, now very pale, intervened. "Perhaps, madam, you will explain upon what grounds you base this charge against Miss Hale." "Oh, certainly," rejoined Lady Charvington sharply, "the whole world might know what I have to say, and the whole world would," she added spitefully, "only my husband, who seems to have taken a fancy to this girl, has hushed up the matter." "He has more sense than you have," muttered Mrs. Walker, "badly as he treated----" she checked herself with a side glance at George, "but that is neither here nor there. Go on, Helen, and explain." Lady Charvington, in order to make George writhe--for she saw that he loved Lesbia deeply, and resented the fact--was only too ready to give details of the robbery at The Court with all the venom of which her very bitter tongue was capable. She related everything that had happened from the hour of Lesbia's arrival, to the moment of her departure. "And in disgrace," ended the lady exultingly, "certainly private disgrace, since for some silly reason Charvington made me hold my tongue, but disgrace nevertheless. Now what do you think?" "Think"--George, standing with a white face and clenched hands, took the words out of his mother's mouth--"I think that you are a very wicked woman, Lady Charvington. Lesbia is as innocent as a dove." "I know nothing of the morals of doves," retorted Lady Charvington coolly, "but you seem to forget that I stated how this girl's father was one of the thieves. Who the other one was I can't say, but Lesbia certainly recognised her father. Bertha, my maid, heard her exclamation, while she was lying half stunned on the floor." "I am not astonished," said Mrs. Walker bitterly. "Walter Hale is capable of all things, although I did not know that he would descend quite so low. I never liked him as you did, Helen." "Leave the past alone," said Lady Charvington with an angry gesture; "but you can see that this Lesbia creature was her father's accomplice." "Speak more respectfully of Lesbia if you please," said George in a cold white fury. "She is perfectly innocent, and knew no more of her father's wickedness than----" "Than you did, I suppose." "You are wrong. I knew some weeks ago, that Walter Hale had to do with a gang of thieves." "George," cried his mother aghast; "you never told me." "There was no need to," he said quickly, "I know that Hale, acting by Tait's orders, stole the jewels from----" "Was this why you broke your engagement with Lesbia, or rather why you would not renew it?" "That was the reason," said George awkwardly. Mrs. Walker stood up sternly. "Then you believe that Lesbia is an accomplice." "No, I don't. My reason is different." "You refuse to marry the daughter of a thief perhaps," said Lady Charvington mockingly. "I do not. My reason--never mind. I can explain my reason to Lesbia when I see her," said George, standing very straight and looking very determined. "You intend to see her, then?" asked his mother. "This very evening." "I shall come also," said Mrs. Walker quickly. "If that is so," drawled Lady Charvington, "perhaps you will ask her what she has done with the cross." "She has not got it," cried George. "How can she have it when you declared that her father stole it and----" "Oh," Lady Charvington laughed cruelly, "I daresay her father gave her the amethyst cross, as her share of the plunder." "Helen, hold your bitter tongue," cried Mrs. Walker wrathfully. "If you speak of Lesbia in that way, or dare to smirch her fair fame," said George very deliberately, "I shall make it my business to make things unpleasant all round." "As how?" asked Lady Charvington, putting up her lorgnette. "To-morrow I am to see Lord Charvington by appointment----" "I was not aware that you knew my husband." "I do not, but he wrote to me, and I am to see him." "Ah!" drawled Lady Charvington coolly, "perhaps knowing that you love this wretched girl my husband intends to arrange that you shall marry her and take her out of the country." The young man restrained his anger by a violent effort. "Perhaps you are correct, madam," he said in a thick voice and breathing hard. "But I shall also ask Lord Charvington how the cross came to be in his possession." "No!" Lady Charvington shrieked and seemed much perturbed. "You must not do that." "Madam," said George in a stately manner and following up his advantage, "I am the owner of that cross, which was given to me by Miss Hale. I was assaulted on the towing-path so that I might be robbed of it. As the thief did not find it on my person he burgled this cottage and took it from my room. I have every right to ask Lord Charvington how he became possessed of it." The visitor rose with rather a pale face but quite composed, and shook perfume from her costly draperies as she gathered up her belongings to depart. "Things are bad for Lesbia Hale as it is," she said composedly. "I advise you to ask no questions of my husband, or he may withdraw his protection from her. If he does, she is disgraced, publicly." "I don't believe it," said Mrs. Walker, crossing to the window and opening it. "You can leave my cottage by this way, Helen, and the sooner the better." Lady Charvington swept towards the French window with a careless laugh, obviously forced. "I am only too willing to go," she declared. "I only came over to ask you to question Lesbia Hale as to what she has done with my amethyst cross." "Mine, pardon me," said George firmly, as he held the window open, "and you may be sure that I shall marry Lesbia and protect Lesbia even against you who seem to hate her, Heaven only knows why." "Your mother knows," sneered Lady Charvington. "Well, do what you like, only remember that I have warned you!" and with these ominous words she took her welcome departure. "What is next to be done?" asked Mrs. Walker, when the motor hummed away. "We must see Lesbia," said George firmly. "What has been said brings us together at last." CHAPTER XIX MR. HALE EXPLAINS When Lesbia returned to Rose Cottage, after her unlucky visit to The Court, she found that her father had never been near the place. Tim, who was alone in the house when she arrived, explained that Hale had gone to London within an hour of Lesbia's departure with Lady Charvington in the motor car. There was nothing in this to surprise the little Irishman, as Hale's comings and goings were always more or less abrupt. But he was amazed and startled when he heard what Lesbia had to tell; the revelation being occasioned by Tim's distressed remark on the girl's pallor. "Ah now, Miss, an' what hey ye bin doin' wid yer purty silf at all, at all? Sure the face av ye's as white as a carpse." Lesbia burst into tears. "Oh Tim, I sometimes wish that I was one, for I feel so very miserable. George will have nothing to do with me; Lady Charvington hates me, and my father, my father----" "Phwat av him?" asked Tim anxiously. "Can't you guess?" asked Lesbia, drying her eyes, and wondering how much or how little the man knew of Hale's rascalities. Tim's face remained passive, but he could not keep a certain amount of anxiety out of his eyes. "Sure, the masther isn't a good man," he said in a hesitating manner, "he trates ye like a brute baste, Miss." "It's worse than that," sobbed Lesbia, breaking down again. The servant changed colour and raised his hands in mute despair. When he did find his voice, it was to ask a leading question. "An' how much do ye know, me dear?" "I know that my father is a thief." "Augh! the shame av it," muttered Tim, but did not contradict. Lesbia noticed that he was less surprised than he should have been. "You knew that." "Mary be good to us all!" said Tim sadly. "But I know a mighty lot I'd rather not know, me dear. But are ye sure, Miss?" Lesbia sat up, dried her eyes, and detailed all that had happened. Tim listened in dismayed silence with his sad eyes on her pale face, and she heard him grind his teeth when it came to an account of Lady Charvington's accusation. When she ended he still kept silence. "What do you think of it all, Tim?" asked his mistress, anxious to hear what he had to say. "It's black lies that woman spakes," cried Tim vehemently. "Ye nivir knew av the masther's wrongdoin'." "Did you, Tim?" "I knew a trifle, an' guessed a mighty lot. Nivir ask me, miss, phwat I know till his lardship--an' sure he's a good man--spakes the wurrd. But I know wan thing, me dear heart, that the blackest clouds have the blissid sun behint thim." "There is no sun behind these clouds," said Lesbia, sighing. "An' there yer wrong, Miss," said Tim briskly. "Sure, whin them clouds do let the blissid sun sind out th' light av him, ye'll foind pace an' happiness an' joy galore. Lave things to his lardship. The crass began the throuble, an' the crass will end that same." "Tim! Tim, what do you know about the cross?" "Ah, nivir ask me phwat I know," croaked Tim again. "There's whales within whales, me dear, an' me mouth's bin saled fur many a year. But whin his lardship spakes I spake, and thin ye'll be as happy as thim who dwell in Tirnanoge." "What's that, Tim?" "The land av youth where ye and Masther Garge shud be, an' will be, whin the blissid saints in glory let ye come into ye'r own." And after delivering himself of this agreeable prophecy, Tim shuffled away to prepare dinner. Lesbia was much astonished at the hints thus given, and also much perplexed. Tim seemed to know of the significance of the amethyst cross, of the rascality of her father, and also he appeared to know about Lord Charvington as a possible _deus ex machina_, who would make the crooked quite straight. Later in the evening she questioned the little man persistently, but Tim, as wily as an otter, evaded a direct reply, only insisting that everything would come right in a most unexpected way. With this Lesbia would scarcely have been content, but that her attention was taken away from the future to deal with the present. Urged by Tim, and now feeling more hopeful as she recalled Charvington's promise to stand by her, Lesbia made a moderately good dinner. While Tim was washing up in the kitchen, she sat near the window of the tiny parlour reading the first book that came to hand. But the pages did not interest her and, moreover, it soon grew too dark to read without lights. Lesbia did not call for these, as she liked the pensive twilight, and so dreamed of George and future happiness in the gloaming. There was just light enough to see across the room, so she started with surprise and indignation when she saw her father suddenly appear in the doorway. He looked much the same as usual, but then the light was not strong enough to permit her to see the shame which must certainly have appeared on his face. "Why have you come here?" asked Lesbia, rising indignantly. "I have assuredly a right to enter my own house," retorted her father. "It is not your house," she replied boldly. "Lord Charvington told me that it belonged to him, and declared that you would come here no more." "Ah!" Hale lounged into the room, and dropped with a sigh of fatigue into a chair. "Charvington proposed more than he could perform; he always did." "How did you come in?" "By the back door, which was open. I rowed up from Cookham." "You can't stop here," said Lesbia firmly. "You can't prevent me," said her father, with a sneer. "I can leave the house, and I will." "Where will you go?" "To Mrs. Walker; she will protect me. I will throw myself on her mercy. But I refuse to remain under the same roof as you." Hale winced at the scorn in her tones. "You seem to forget that you are speaking to your father," he said in an icy manner. "God help me!" cried the girl, with a gesture of despair; "I wish I could forget. You have brought shame upon me." "Oh, rubbish," said Hale crossly. "I received a letter from Charvington in London just before I came down to Cookham which stated that if I restored the jewels everything would be hushed up." "And you will do so?" "I have to," said Hale grudgingly. "It's an infernal nuisance after all my trouble, but Charvington says that he will set the police on my track if I don't act square. I shall return the jewels to-morrow, and then everything will be put right. There is no disgrace to you." "Isn't there?" said Lesbia, with a bitter laugh. "You appear to have forgotten that Bertha, the maid, heard my recognition of you, and told her mistress. Lady Charvington accused me of being your accomplice, and but that our cousin made her hold her tongue and silenced the maid, I should have been arrested as knowing your rogueries and sharing in them." Hale muttered an oath between his teeth. "Upon my word that's too bad," he said half apologetically. "The woman had no right to speak of you in that way, as you are as innocent as a babe. However, if Charvington has hushed that up also, there is no harm done." "Father," cried Lesbia, moving forward to confront him, "can you think that I will consent to live with you, now that I know of your wickedness?" "What do you know, other than that I took Lady Charvington's jewels?" asked her father, defiantly. "I know that you stole Mr. Tait's jewels by his direction." "Who dares to say that?" demanded Hale, starting fiercely to his feet. "Mr. Canning----" "Mister," sneered Hale, savagely, "since when has he earned such respect." "Mr. Canning is a gentleman and Captain Sargent's brother," said Lesbia in calm, easy tones. Now that she had come to close grips with her father she felt singularly cool. Hale muttered a second oath. "I knew that The Shadow had betrayed us," he said ominously; "well, he shall pay for his treachery. His silly gratitude to you for nursing him has made him dishonourable to us." "Dishonourable!" cried Lesbia, scornfully. "Why not?" scoffed her father, "There is honour amongst thieves." "And _you_ are a thief." "I am," said Hale, shamelessly. "I was driven to such courses because I wanted money. You may as well know the worst, for I----" "Oh!" Lesbia threw up her hand, feeling sick at heart. "Don't tell me any more. Leave this house and never see me again." Hale settled himself firmly in his chair. "I will do nothing of the sort," he declared; "this is my house, whatever Charvington may say. Here I am and here I rest. There's a French soldier's saying for you," he sneered. "Oh," Lesbia sighed as she looked up, "will nothing make this man ashamed?" "Nothing!" Hale put his legs up on another chair, "absolutely nothing." At this moment there came a sharp ring of the front door bell. Hale started to his feet with an ejaculation, and Lesbia could guess that his shameless face had turned white in the shadowy twilight. Apparently he expected the police, as she gathered from his broken mutterings. "But it is impossible," he breathed, clenching his hands; "Charvington said that he would say nothing if the jewels were sent back. I shall send them to-morrow, and if there is a--ah!" The two listening in the half-dark room heard Tim shuffle along the narrow passage and open the door. A moment later and Mrs. Walker's voice, cold and haughty, struck on their ears. Hale wiped his face and heaved a sigh of relief. "Don't betray me to that woman," he whispered. "I shall not," said Lesbia, quietly, "after all, bad as you are, I cannot forget that you are my father." Even as the last word dropped from her mouth, the door opened and Mrs. Walker was ushered into the room. Behind her came Tim bearing high a lamp to light her way. The radiance revealed Lesbia white and shrinking and the defiant face of Walter Hale. "The masther, howly saints!" muttered Tim, setting down the lamp; then he addressed Lesbia, quietly: "Will I bring more lights, Miss, av ye plase?" "No thank you, Tim, this lamp will be enough. Shut the door." Without a single glance at his master, Tim departed and left the trio together. Mrs. Walker, standing just within the room, had said nothing. Only when the door was closed did she speak. "I did not expect to find you here, Mr. Hale," she said with contempt and scarcely concealed surprise. "And where should I be, save in my own house?" he asked, lightly. "In gaol," she snapped, "and there you would be, had I my way." Hale raised his eyebrows. "I do not understand," he remarked, coolly. "Yes, you do, and you will understand completely when I tell you that Lady Charvington came to see me to-day." Hale uttered an exclamation of rage and vexation. "Yes, you may well swear, for she told both George and myself about the robbery at The Court. What do you say to that, you detected scoundrel?" she asked, sternly. "Hush!" he muttered, gruffly, "my daughter is present." "I am glad she is, I want her to know what you are." "I do know," faltered Lesbia, weakly, "and oh!"--she covered her face to sink in a passion of tears on the sofa--"it is shameful: shameful." Mrs. Walker looked at Hale, still defiant and hard-faced. "I would have spared you this for the girl's sake," she breathed, "but she caught you red-handed, so there is nothing to conceal." With a stern look at him, she glided to the sofa and took the shrinking, fragile form of the unhappy girl in her strong arms: "Lesbia, my love," she said tenderly, and the change in her voice was extraordinary, "I have come to stand by you. That man is not fit to have charge of you. Come with me, to-night, to Medmenham." "Oh no--no--George----" "George knows all that you know, that I know. He was present when Lady Charvington came to tell us of what had taken place." "And George despises me," wept Lesbia, burying her face in Mrs. Walker's bosom. "Don't be ridiculous, child, don't be foolish. How can he despise you when you are innocent and he loves you?" "Loves me--loves me," Lesbia looked up startled; "but he refused to renew our engagement although I abased myself to the dust to regain him." "I think George will be able to explain why he acted in that way," she whispered. "In a few minutes you will meet George under the chestnut tree where he proposed to you. It's an idea of his that he should explain himself there and there renew the engagement. We both arranged to come here to-night and were to drive over. But at the last moment George took to his boat and is now rowing down the river to meet you under the trysting-tree. I drove over." "Oh!" Lesbia sat up, smiles breaking through her tears. This was a gleam of sunshine indeed. "George is coming back." "He will hold you in his arms very shortly," said Mrs. Walker, her hard face becoming strangely tender. "You poor dear child, how cruelly you have been treated. But the worst is over: you shall marry my George and be happy." "Indeed," said Hale in an acrid, thin voice. "I am not to be consulted then?" Mrs. Walker placed Lesbia tenderly back on the sofa and arranged the cushion. Then she turned, hard and harsh once more to the delinquent. "You are not to be consulted about Lesbia," she said calmly, "as you are unfit to have anything to do with her. But I have come to consult you about the amethyst cross." "I know nothing about it," said Hale, starting and biting his nether lip. "That's a lie," said Mrs. Walker fiercely. "Lady Charvington found the cross in her husband's library, where he had left it, and thinking that he had bought it for her, placed it in her jewel-case. As you stole the case you must have the cross. Give it to me at once. I want it." "I know nothing about it," said Hale doggedly and raising his heavy eyes, "you are wrong--the cross was not with the jewels. I shall send them back to Lord Charvington to-morrow, as only by my restoring them will he agree not to prosecute. Charvington will show you the case, and you will see that there is no cross amongst them." "I quite believe that," said Mrs. Walker, scornfully, "because you intend to keep it back. What use it is to you I can't say, as in no way can you obtain my sister's money." Hale scowled and, stretching out his legs, slipped his hands into his pockets. He was perfectly dressed as usual in a cool tweed suit, and looked in the half light a very handsome and presentable man. No one would have taken him for a sordid thief. "I have not the cross," was all he could say, "it was not with the jewels. I don't know where it is." "Lord Charvington----" "If he had it in his library he must have robbed your cottage to get it, and also must have assaulted your son. I wonder you can stand that," said Hale with a sneer, "especially since you have a score against the man as it is. But then you are so forgiving." "You will not find me so," said Mrs. Walker caustically. "As to Charvington, I believe he was more sinned against than sinning. I shall speak of that when we meet. As it is, my feelings towards him have relented so far as to permit my son to see him to-morrow." "What!" asked Lesbia, who had sat quietly during this passage of arms, "is George going over to The Court?" "Yes. Lord Charvington sent him a message asking him to call. What he wishes to see him about I cannot guess." "I know: I know," cried the girl joyfully. "I told him about George and how George had lost his situation through a false accusation. Lord Charvington said that he would see George and get him something to do, so that we might marry." "Oh that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Walker, smiling and smoothing the girl's hair. "Will you let your son accept favours from Charvington?" asked Hale sneeringly, "from the man who----" "That is quite enough," said Mrs. Walker, imperiously. "I will have an explanation with Lord Charvington. I believe from the bottom of my heart that you were the cause of all the trouble between us. But it strikes me," Mrs. Walker gathered her mantle round her and sat with folded arms like a grim and pitiless Fate, "that you are nearing the end, Mr. Walter Hale. Destiny has been kind to you so far: she will be kind no longer. I see," Mrs. Walker stared at Hale's twitching face; "I see imprisonment: I see death: I see----" "Oh damn your Witch of Endor rubbish," shouted Hale, jumping to his feet with the perspiration beading his brow, for he was impressed by the absolute conviction with which she spoke. "You talk nonsense, infernal nonsense. And see here, you shall not interfere between my daughter and----" "I will do as I please and so shall Lesbia," said Mrs. Walker, interrupting the vehement speech. "You forget that you are only at large because of Lord Charvington's refusal to prosecute. If you meddle with this marriage as you have done, he will lay you by the heels. Yes, you and your gang." "My gang?" Hale swallowed something and laughed uneasily, "my gang?" "You and Tait and Maud Ellis and Sargent and that miserable opium-smoking brother of his. You are all rogues and thieves and----" "You can prove nothing of all this," interrupted Hale, now quite livid. "George can," said Mrs. Walker nodding significantly. "He has seen the man Canning, whom you call The Shadow, although his real name is Arthur Sargent." "Oh!" Lesbia rose quickly, "Has Mr. Canning seen George?" "Yes, and he has told much which your precious father would like to be hidden," said Mrs. Walker quietly. Hale laughed and wiped his brow. "All the same," he said, wetting his dry lips, "I am Lesbia's father after all. If you disgrace me, you disgrace her, so I am quite safe." "That is right, hide behind a woman's petticoats," said Mrs. Walker bitterly, "it was always your custom. Now you come with me," she rose. "I have something to say to you and it must be said out of doors. Lesbia, go into the garden and see George." "I'll come," said Hale promptly enough, "I am not afraid of arrest; I know too much. After you, madam," and he held the door open mockingly. CHAPTER XX JOURNEYS END IN LOVERS MEETING Ordinarily speaking Lesbia would have anxiously awaited the conclusion of Mrs. Walker's out-of-door interview with her father. But when she saw them stroll away in the moonlight, she suddenly remembered that George was waiting in the garden to explain. Probably the interview asked by Mrs. Walker had merely been an excuse to get Hale out of the way so that he might not interrupt the lovers' meeting, as he assuredly would do if left to his own marplot devices. Lesbia, therefore, saw that it was foolish to waste the golden hour, when it had been so propitiously brought about. Closing the front door, she ran rapidly along the passage into the garden and sped lightly down the grass-grown path. In another minute she was under the tree and in George's arms. The night was lovely with moonlight and radiant with stars. In the neglected garden roses red and white and yellow breathed fragrance into the still, warm air of summer. There was not a breath of wind and the ripples on the broad river were only formed by the smoothly-flowing current. It murmured softly between the green banks and was an accompaniment to the occasional song of the nightingales, which spoke one to the other in the garden and across the river. At the dawn of love, the blackbird had fluted his song of joy, when the sky was blue and the sunshine was glorious. Now the sleeping world was bathed mysteriously in silver under a starry dome, and the nightingale sang a diviner song. Through much sorrow had they come to a better understanding of love, and the liquid notes of the immortal bird alone could interpret the nobler feelings which trouble had begotten. In George's arms lay Lesbia, safe at last in the haven of love, and the night sent upon them a benediction in the song of the bird. "But you have been very, very cruel," said Lesbia softly. Woman-like she was the first to find her tongue. "I might say the same of you, dear," whispered George, sitting down and gathering her closer in his arms, "but neither of us was cruel. Circumstances are to blame." Lesbia, knowing that there was no period to the golden hour now that her father was out of the way, settled herself comfortably for a long talk. She had much to tell and much to ask, and before the rapture of love's silence could be renewed there was much to explain. "I know that I behaved very badly," she whispered penitently, "but I could not help it. Unless I had broken our engagement, my father told me that Maud Ellis would denounce you as a thief." "I understand, dearest; but you did not believe that I was guilty?" "No," Lesbia pressed her cheek against his, "of course I didn't: but if I had not been cruel I should not have been kind. I could not risk Maud's accusing you publicly. But perhaps," added the girl, hopefully, "she would not have done so, and I was weak to be so cajoled by her and by my father." "I think you acted wisely," said George, after a pause. "Maud led me into a trap and certainly would not have let me out again until I agreed to marry her, or at least until you gave me up. You did so and she was content for the time being. She could part us, my sweet, but she could not make me false to you." "I knew it, in spite of your cruel letter." "It was as cruel as yours, Lesbia, so we can cry quits on that score. I know that you learned the truth through Canning. He explained to me, and spoke very gratefully of your kindness to him in his illness." "How did you meet him, George?" "He met me. That is, he wrote to me at Medmenham asking me to see him in the City as he had something important to tell me. We met in a Mecca." "A Mecca?" "One of those underground coffee-rooms in London City, dear. There Canning, or rather Sargent as he really is, explained." "He told you who he was?" "Yes! And he told me also that Tait was connected with a gang of thieves, two members of which had robbed Tait's strong-room with his connivance. Tait thus got the insurance money in addition to the jewels which he sold on the Continent. He made about forty thousand pounds over the deal and, after paying his accomplices, had enough left to avert a financial crisis, which was the reason for the robbery." "Did you know then that my father was a thief?" asked Lesbia, shuddering. "Of course not." "I thought you did know, and for that reason had thrown me over." "Lesbia," George said vehemently, and pressed her so strongly to his breast that she almost cried out with the delicious pain; "how can you think so meanly of me? Were you the daughter of a murderer I should marry you. It is you whom I love, my dearest, and not all the fathers and crimes in the world will ever separate us." "Yet something parted us for a time." "Your letter." "That at first," acknowledged Lesbia, sighing at the memory of what she had been forced to write, "then yours. Oh, George, when I made it plain that Maud--the horrid girl--could do nothing, why didn't you come back to me?" "Because Maud was too clever. Finding out that she could not accuse me, since Canning could prove my innocence, Maud played a bold game and told me that your father had robbed Tait's strong-room. She swore that if I did not write to you, as you had written to me, she would denounce Mr. Hale and have him put in prison. Lesbia," George suddenly slipped from the seat and knelt at the girl's feet holding her hands tightly, "what could I do in the circumstances but write as Maud dictated? I did not dare to let her bring this shame on you." "But you could have explained your reason?" "No, dear, no. Maud was too smart for that. She insisted that I should give no explanation, hoping that out of pique you would throw me over and marry Sargent as your father desired. He was in the plot also. I had to let things stand, as I was helpless; but I trusted that your heart would guess the truth. I was always true to you; I have always been. But you no doubt thought me false from that letter, as I thought you heartless from the way in which you wrote. Now I can see, you can see, that neither one of us is to blame. We were the sport of circumstances." Lesbia bent and kissed his yellow hair. "I understand now," she said softly, "but, oh George, how could Maud Ellis or my father think that I would marry Captain Sargent, a mere apology for a man, and hardly that even?" "They hoped to work on your feelings; to wear you out, my dear. But had you become engaged to that dandy scoundrel I should have stopped any possible marriage by denouncing Sargent as a member of Tait's gang." "Is he, George?" asked Lesbia quickly, and she remembered what Mrs. Walker had said in the drawing-room. "Yes! Canning--his brother, you know--did not tell me everything, but he revealed a great deal. Sargent is in society and poses as a man of good family living on his fortune. He is well-born, but he has no money save what he obtains by theft." Lesbia shuddered, "How horrible; how sordid. And my father?" her voice sank. "He is in the swim also, so are Maud Ellis and Tait. Indeed, I believe that Tait is the head of the whole infernal business. But that I knew your father was in with the lot and that I wished to spare you, I would have gone to the police at once." "Oh!" Lesbia's tears dropped on her lover's hand, "how dreadful it all is." George knelt before her and drew her head down on his shoulder. "There, there, dear!" he said, gently drying her eyes, "don't worry; we'll be married soon, and then you will be taken away from this terrible life." "Tim also," murmured Lesbia tearfully, "I can't leave Tim behind." "Of course he'll come too," said George cheerily, "I don't believe that he knew anything of the rascality that was going on." "I think he did," said Lesbia doubtfully, "not that he is wicked himself. But he knew and, I believe, held his dear tongue for my sake." "Tim would do anything for you, darling, in the same way as Canning would." "Poor Mr. Canning--I mean Mr. Sargent." "No, don't call him by his real name; he wishes to be known simply as Canning--The Shadow. He belongs to the gang and so does that Mrs. Petty who was set to watch you." "A dreadful woman," said Lesbia, nestling, "how I disliked her. But I am sorry that Mr. Canning is wicked, George. He has been so kind." "Kindness begets kindness," said Walker sententiously, "and I don't think Canning is so very wicked. He has been unlucky all his life and drifted from bad to worse until he took to smoking opium. That finished him, and he was on the streets when his brother--who always kept his head, in spite of his silly looks--took him up, and made him his servant. Canning does a lot of the dirty work of the gang, and did not denounce them as he would only be thrown again on the world. Also the gang would certainly do him harm if the fact of his betraying them became known." "And it is known, George. I am sure of it; because Mr. Canning told me to mention his name to Maud Ellis. If she is a member of the gang, she must have told the rest about the betrayal." "I daresay that is why Canning went into hiding," said George thoughtfully; "however, all we can do is to leave him to deal with the matter. For your sake I can say nothing since your father----" "George," Lesbia sat up and placed her hands on his shoulders, as he knelt at her feet, "your mother told me that you were going to see Lord Charvington to-morrow." Walker nodded. "It is true, though I don't know what he wishes to see me about. I don't know him; I never met him." "I have met him, and I know him," said Lesbia eagerly, "and he is the kindest and best man in the world. He wants to help us, George, and to get you something to do so that we may marry. Now you must ask him to advance you money to go to Australia or Canada, and we can marry before we go. Then we can start a new life." "I suggested something of that sort to my mother, but she was averse from leaving England. Still, she may change her mind." "She must, and she can come also," said Lesbia vehemently. "Oh, George, don't you see that I cannot remain in England? Even if my father escapes this time, as he will, because Lord Charvington is so kind, he is sure to be found out some day. Then think of the disgrace. I should always be unhappy thinking of what might happen. No, George, if you love me, let us marry and place the ocean between this miserable old life and the happy new one which we are sure to have together. Say yes, dear George, say yes." "I do, I do. I think your idea is excellent, and you must persuade my mother to act in this way. To-morrow I shall suggest our plan to Lord Charvington. I daresay he will give us enough to go away with and then I shall soon earn enough to pay him back. Yes, dear," George rose, looking tall and stalwart in the moonlight, "we shall begin a new life together and leave all this wickedness behind us." Lesbia rose also and clung to her tall lover like an ivy to an oak. "I believe that everything will come right at last," she declared joyfully, "as Tim says it will. Only he added that the cross began it and the cross must end it, whatever that may mean." George shook his head. "I can't explain the cross," he said doubtfully, "it is all very mysterious. Lord Charvington had it in his possession according to his wife. And yet I cannot think that Charvington would commit a burglary. He," George smiled broadly, "cannot possibly belong to the gang. However, it was stolen with the jewels, so your father----" "He has not got it, George. He told your mother that he had not got it." "Then either your father or Lady Charvington is telling a lie. However, I shall learn the truth when I see him to-morrow. And now, dear, you must go in, as it grows late." "No," said Lesbia, petulantly. "I have to wait here until your mother comes to us. She went out to talk with my father. George," she added, after a pause, "I wonder what your mother knows about my father." "Nothing very good, you may be certain," said Walker grimly. "She must know him as a very clever rogue. By the way, Lesbia, do you know how your father and Sargent escaped discovery when they robbed Tait's strong-room." "Was Captain Sargent the other--thief?" said Lesbia, shivering at the horrible sound of the word. "Yes. He and your father arranged with Tait. Maud knew of the arrangement and used it to inveigle me into a trap. Her chloroform business was all a fake, if you will forgive the slang. Tait gave the key and the two simply opened the strong-room and cleared with the jewels. When I pursued them they dodged into the wood round the house, and then entered the house again by a door which they had left open. Then, after putting away the jewels in Tait's own private room, they came down and joined the other guests in the search. Very clever of them, wasn't it, dear?" "Oh, don't, don't!" cried Lesbia, catching his hand and looking white and wan. "It's so terrible to think that my own father should do this. Why have I such a father?" she asked, raising her eyes in despair to the moon. "What have I done to have such a father?" "Hush, hush, dear," George pressed her to him. "Think no more of him. He is not worthy of you." "He was never affectionate to me," sobbed Lesbia, whose nerves were quite unstrung, as might have been expected after what she had undergone. "We never understood each other. I was never drawn to him. Why, oh, why?" George caught the hands she was wringing, firmly in his warm, kind clasp. "My dearest, listen to me," he said softly. "You have been unhappy in the past, but you shall be happy in the future. Let your father fade out of your life, and come with me to the land of love. It is said that a woman shall forsake her parents and cling to her husband. So," said George, drawing himself up, "you are mine for ever, and when we are married it will be my delight to make you perfectly happy." "Ah, yes, but the shadow of the past will ever remain. After all, he is my father. I can't do away with that," and she continued to sob. The young man could only press her to his distressed heart and smooth her hair. After all, what could he say in the face of facts? Wicked and cold and hard and cruel as the man was, Hale undoubtedly was the girl's father, and nothing could do away with the painful fact. But for that relationship, George would have throttled Hale, or would have thrown him into the river; but as it was, he could do nothing. He could not even comfort his dear love who lay sobbing in his arms. The nightingale still sang on, the stars still twinkled like jewels and the moon still poured floods of white light down on the sleeping earth. But the magical glory of the scene was darkened to the lovers because of the evil of those around them. Yet--and Lesbia learned the lesson afterwards--out of sorrow comes joy and the way of love is the way of the cross. Something like this came into the young man's mind. "Remember the motto of the amethyst cross," he whispered. "'Refuse and lose'; we cannot understand why we are so afflicted, but we must bear the cross if we are to win the crown. And after all, dear, you should be sorry as I am for your father. He is reaping much grief and pain for his sowing." Lesbia sighed and placed her arms round George's neck. "Yes," she said in a weary manner, "the cross is heavy, but we must bear it. I am sure that in the end all will come right. Tim said so and so did Lord Charvington." Down the pathway came Mrs. Walker, looking tall and stately and stern in her dark robes. Her face was set and white, and--strange in so hard a woman--she looked as though she had been weeping. "Lesbia," she said softly, "come back to the cottage and go to bed." "But my father is there," sobbed the girl, "and you promised to take me to Medmenham." "Your father has left the cottage for a time at least," said Mrs. Walker, gently disengaging the girl from her son's arms. "You will be alone with Tim and he will look after you, until we see how things turn out." "How did you induce Mr. Hale to go, mother?" asked George, looking troubled. "That is not for you to know at present," she said sternly. "I had an interview with him--a private interview," she added with emphasis, "and he saw that it was best to leave for a time. Rest in peace, my child," she said, kissing Lesbia's brow. "You are safe now, and can come to no harm. Be brave as you have been, for a little time longer, and all will end well." "George," said Lesbia, stretching her arms like a a weary child. "Dearest!" the young man kissed her and gave her into his mother's charge. So the two women passed into the cottage, while he watched them sadly. Sorrow had not yet done her work. CHAPTER XXI TWO INTERVIEWS At the present moment, George Walker had plenty of time on his hands, and being naturally industrious, he did not enjoy the enforced idleness. Hitherto he had spent the bulk of his leisure hours in looking for a situation and in thinking of Lesbia. Now he made up his mind to act in order to bring about some sort of settlement of his very disorderly affairs. Lesbia could no longer remain with her father, as his character was so extremely bad. Hale had left the cottage, but would be certain to return again, therefore George wished to see if he could not marry Lesbia--say within a month--so as to rescue her from the troubles by which she was environed. To do this he required assistance and believed that he would receive it from Lord Charvington, who appeared to be particularly well-disposed towards the girl. The idea of emigrating to the Colonies--if Mrs. Walker could be persuaded to lend her approval to the suggestion--was by no means a bad one, as then the whole unhappy past could be set aside for ever. In another country with better prospects, and unaffected by the sordid life compulsorily spent with sordid people, George foresaw that he would be able to make a calm, bright and happy future for himself and his wife. He therefore crossed the river and walked to Maidenhead with the idea of explaining his scheme to Charvington, and asking him to advance the necessary funds. But before starting a new life George wished to round off the old. He saw very plainly that for some reason the amethyst cross had been the cause of the late troubles. Since its loss everything had gone wrong: and it was necessary that it should be found if things were to be put right. Jabez, the lawyer, insisted that it should be produced before he would part with the fifty thousand pounds trust money. If, then, the ornament could be found and given into Jabez's hands, Mrs. Walker would benefit. Certainly, there was a chance that her late sister had left a child, but in the absence of proof this difficulty might be overcome. At all events, the production of the cross appeared to be necessary to force Jabez into dealing with the trust money and its accumulations. Then again, George wished to do something for Canning. The man was a wastrel and a ne'er-do-weel and had no one to take an interest in him: but he had done Lesbia a service at considerable risk, and it was only fair that he should be rewarded. Undoubtedly he belonged to the gang of clever thieves, but he had repented sufficiently of his wickedness to help the lovers, whom the gang--or at least three members of it--had desired to destroy. This service should be recompensed, especially as Canning could not remain in England without being exposed to the vengeance of his former associates. George determined to lay the case before Lord Charvington, and ask him to help. Failing any aid being forthcoming in this quarter, George intended to take Canning to Australia or Canada with him, and there start the man on a new career. Canning was not an old man and there was ample time for him to redeem the shortcomings of his youth. He was not inherently wicked as were his brother and Hale, but merely weak. On arriving at The Court, George was at once shown into the library wherein Lord Charvington was waiting for him. The old man arose courteously and came forward with outstretched hand. He appeared to be pleased that George had kept his appointment so punctually, and expressed himself with great cordiality. "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Walker," he said, when the two were again seated. "I knew your father." "My mother also, I believe, sir," said George. Charvington's face changed. "I have not seen Mrs. Walker for many a long day," he remarked in a low voice, "perhaps we may meet again, but----" he paused to ask an abrupt and extraordinary question. "Does your mother ever speak ill of me?" he demanded, his eyes eagerly searching the young man's face. "No," answered George, much astonished. "She has scarcely mentioned your name. Why should she speak ill of you?" "I thought that Hale might have--but that is neither here nor there. It is enough for you to know, Mr. Walker, that I knew your mother and her sister over thirty years ago. We all three knew Hale also, and he caused trouble. He would cause trouble still if he could, but I think this last escapade of his will keep him quiet." "Did you know my aunt Miss Katherine Morse?" asked George, astonished. "Yes," Charvington rested his head on his hand and drew figures on the blotting-paper, "but why do you speak of her by her maiden name? She was married, you know." "I don't know her married name. My mother never mentions it. Perhaps," George hesitated, "perhaps she doesn't know it." "Yes, she does," answered Charvington, still drawing, "so does Hale. Your aunt died in his house at Wimbledon remember. I understood from Jabez that Hale had admitted as much." "I believe he did. You know Mr. Jabez?" "Yes." Charvington heaved heavy sigh. "But I have not seen him for years. We correspond occasionally--that is all," he paused, then dropping the pencil with which he was drawing, wheeled his chair and looked at his guest briskly. "But we have no time to talk of these old stories. Let us come to the point. Have you heard about Lesbia's stay here?" "Yes," said George very distinctly, "Lady Charvington told both my mother and myself about the matter." Lord Charvington's face grew a dull brick red. "When did you see my wife?" "Yesterday: she called on my mother at Medmenham." "What did she say?" asked the elder man, abruptly and anxiously. George gave details in a blunt cool way, exaggerating nothing and suppressing nothing. The effect on Lord Charvington was very marked. He jumped up from his chair and paced the room, holding his head in both his hands. "Good heavens: oh! good heavens," he muttered, "these women, these women. How dare Helen speak so? What does she guess? What does she know?" "About what?" asked George with keen curiosity, and his question recalled Lord Charvington to the fact, which he seemed to have forgotten in his agitation, that he was not alone. "Never mind," he said sharply, and returned to his seat more composed. "Do you mean to say that Lady Charvington stated that she had found the cross in this library?" "Yes, sir. And I thought that you might know----" "I know nothing," interrupted Charvington violently, and nervously shifting various articles on his writing-table. "I know that there is such a cross. I remember that Mr. Samuel Morse gave it to his daughter, and remarked on its oddity. But how did it get into this library?" "Did you not bring it here?" "No, sir, no." Charvington again rose and began to walk off his uncontrollable agitation. "I have not seen that cross for years. The last time I set eyes on it Miss Morse--I may as well call her Miss Morse, since your mother has not revealed her married name--wore it round her neck. My wife says that she found it here. I tell you, Mr. Walker, that I do not know how it came into this room. I never saw it." "How strange!" said George, believing this speech, but wondering nevertheless. "But how comes it," asked Charvington wheeling, "that _you_ know about the amethyst cross, Mr. Walker?" "I received it from Lesbia as a love-gift," explained George, and went on to relate the circumstances of the assault and robbery. Charvington walked up and down nodding, and muttering at intervals. When George ended he came to a halt before the young man. "Lesbia told me much of what you tell me," he said quietly, "but of course I was ignorant that my wife had taken the cross from this room. She did not tell me that. I cannot understand." "And I," said George in his turn, "cannot understand why Lady Charvington is so bitter against Lesbia." "Ah! Woman! Woman!" said Charvington, with a gesture of despair, "who can understand the nature of Woman! Let us leave that question for the time being, Mr. Walker. What we have to do is to get at the root of this matter. If the cross was in my wife's jewel-case, as she asserts, undoubtedly the burglary was committed to gain possession of it. Hale was the thief, as you know. He has sent me back the case intact. I received it this morning, as only on condition of its being restored, would I consent to hush the matter up. And I hushed it up for his daughter's sake, Mr. Walker. But," Charvington wrinkled his brow and threw back his white mass of hair, "the amethyst cross is not amongst the jewels." "Hale probably kept it back. He wants it, you know, as he has some idea of getting this money by producing it." "Yes! Yes! I heard something about that," muttered Charvington, "but of course that is impossible, unless--unless----" he paused, opening and shutting his hands feverishly. "Damn him," he burst out with a stamp of his foot, "I would like to throttle him as he nearly throttled you." George looked up in surprise. "Throttled me?" "Yes," said Charvington impatiently "can't you see? It must have been Hale who assaulted you on the towing-path to get back that cross, and he, as an expert thief, took the ornament from your cottage." "On the face of it, that appears probable," said George slowly, "all the same I don't think it was the case." "Why not? He wanted the amethyst cross." "Quite so. But if he had obtained it from my cottage so long ago, he would have taken it to Mr. Jabez to procure the money if possible. The mere fact, too, that he was willing I should marry Lesbia, if I found the missing ornament, shows that Hale did not commit the assault and robbery." "Then who could have done so?" George shrugged his shoulders. "I can't say. Probably the person who placed it in this room." "If it ever was in this room," muttered Charvington, darkly. "Your wife declares----" "Oh yes--oh yes. I know what she declares. Well, these things are not to be threshed out in five minutes. Mr. Walker," he stopped short before George, "do you wish to marry Lesbia?" "With all my heart and soul. We have come together again and last night we renewed our love-vows." "They should never have been broken," said Charvington impatiently. "They never were, save by circumstances," said George solemnly, "our hearts were always true," and he related the plotting of Maud and Walter Hale. "Devils! Devils!" muttered Charvington, with another stamp, "and it's all my fault--all my fault." "What!" George scarcely knew if he had heard aright. "All my fault I say." Charvington clutched his head with an expression of pain. "You do not know, you can't guess--you--you--never mind. I'll put an end to all this. You shall marry Lesbia and make her happy. I shall settle Hale once and for all. Come, what is your idea?" "My idea," said George deliberately, "was, when I entered this room, to ask you to give me enough, as a loan, to marry Lesbia, so that I could take her to Australia or Canada and begin a new life. But now I have changed my mind, as I can guess that in some way you can arrange matters without my having to adopt such an extreme course." "Yes," said Charvington quietly; "I believe that I can arrange matters and in a very surprising way. They should have been arranged long ago, only for the fact that I had not the courage. It is very hard to do right sometimes. But the time has come. Mr. Walker, in three days certain people must be brought together into this room." "What people, sir?" "Walter Hale and Lesbia; yourself and your mother; Mr. Jabez and my wife. When we are all assembled I shall be able to straighten things, crooked as they are at present. I ask you to see that these people--saving my wife, who will be invited by me to be present--are here on the third day from now at three o'clock in the afternoon." "And then?" "Then you shall marry Lesbia and be happy ever afterwards. Now go." George went without another word, wondering very much at the turn which events had taken. He had hoped that Charvington would arrange his destiny and that of Lesbia, but the old nobleman seemed able and ready to arrange the destiny of many other people. George could not entirely understand the meaning of Charvington's behaviour, and after a brief reflection did not attempt to. He decided to write a note telling Hale and Lesbia to be at The Court at the appointed time, and also to go personally to London to see Mr. Jabez and arrange for his presence. Having thus made up his mind what to do, George strode towards home whistling with a load off his mind. In one way or another things would surely be put right. Then came a surprise. While passing through Nightingale Thicket the young man saw Canning, looking more shadowy than ever, flitting down the road to meet him. But as the man drew nearer George saw that his usually pale face was flushed, that he was dressed spick and span as a gentleman, and that there was a general look of opulence about him. He glided up to Walker swiftly--for he appeared too unsubstantial to do anything save glide--and broke into a voluble explanation. "Walker," he cried, and in loud tones which contrasted markedly with his usual whispering speech, "I came down this morning especially to see you. They told me you had gone to Charvington's place, so I crossed the river and walked in this direction on the chance of meeting you." "What's your hurry?" asked George, surprised by this change of clothes and looks and manner. "I am leaving England, and have come to say good-bye. Let us sit down on the grass by the roadside, no one will come along. After I have explained, I shall push on to Maidenhead and take the train to London. From London I go to Italy. Yes, an old aunt of mine has remembered me in her will at the eleventh hour, and I have inherited two hundred a year, an annuity, the principal of which I cannot touch." "Luckily for you," said George, taking out his pipe; "you would waste it." "I daresay, I was always a wrong 'un. However, I go to Italy because there I can live like a fighting-cock on an income which means penury in England. I go also because Tait and Hale and the rest of them are making things too hot for me. But before departing I wanted to see you to confess." George lighted his pipe and looked sideways in surprise. "Confess what?" "That I assaulted you," said Canning, nervously. "You," George glanced in amazement at the frail figure. "Yes. Of course I took you by surprise, or you could have knocked me into a cocked-hat. You can punch me now, Walker." "I don't want to punch you as you put it," said George bluntly. "Of course you acted like a skunk in sneaking behind me and knocking me on the head, to say nothing of tying me up; all the same----" "I tied you up," said Canning, who had lain down and was smoking a cigarette, "because I did not wish you to recover and get back to your cottage at Medmenham until I had secured the cross." George turned indignantly. "Then you were the thief?" he declared. "Yes," admitted Canning, coughing. "Kick me. I'll take it lying down." "No," said George, after a pause; "you have done me a service through Lesbia, by preventing the success of Maud Ellis's plot. The evil you have done is counterbalanced by the good. But how did you get me into Rose Cottage?" Canning sat up and looked puzzled. "I didn't do that," he said earnestly. "I left you trussed on the towing-path like a fowl, and how the deuce you got into the cottage I know no more than you do. Have you never found out?" "No," said George promptly, "but I am beginning to find out many things, and it is just possible that I may solve that riddle also. By the way, why did you sneak the amethyst cross?" "My brother wanted it." "Sargent?" "Yes. Hale came to Cookham on the evening when you proposed to Miss Lesbia, and told Alfred that she had given you the cross. Alfred insisted that I should rob you, and primed me with champagne to do what he wanted. I started for the cottage with a sandbag and a rope to stun you and bind you, hoping to take you by surprise. I saw you coming along the towing-path in the twilight and then----" "Yes," George cut him short, "I know the rest. You crept up behind me and stunned me and bound me, and then sneaked back to rob the cottage. You are a pretty bad lot, I must say." "I am," said Canning languidly, "but now that I have enough to keep the wolf from the door I'll reform. Besides, you can kick me as I said." "I don't want to, you poor devil, since you have confessed and have done me a service. Why did you?" "Because Miss Hale was the only human being who was ever kind to me," said Canning, throwing away his cigarette. "Oh, Walker, you don't know the terrible life I have had. I never was wicked, really I wasn't: only weak, only easily led. I hated myself all the time I was working for Alfred and those accursed wretches he associated with. I hated all mankind because I was treated so badly: but Miss Hale changed my nature by her kindness, and I did what I could to repair my wrong towards her and towards you. Because she loved you I have confessed because I want her to know the truth. Then I pass out of her life and yours for ever. Take this address in London," Canning handed him a pencilled card, "it will find me for the next week. After that I go to Italy. Tell Miss Hale everything I have told you, and then ask her to write and say that she forgives me. I don't want her to think badly of me." George nodded and slipped the card into his pocket, feeling very sorry for the miserable man. "Only one question I should like to ask," he said, rising from the grass; "why did your brother want this cross?" "Lady Charvington--as I found out from overhearing a conversation between them--asked him to get it." George thought of the lie told by the lady as to the cross having been found by her in the library. "And why did she want it?" "I can't say," replied Canning, moving away; "ask her. Good-bye. And Walker, my dear fellow," he added, "one last word. Maud Ellis and Hale are plotting to get that money which should come to your mother. Good-bye," and he disappeared down the road--withdrawing swiftly like a receding mist. That was the last George saw of Arthur Sargent, _alias_ Canning, _alias_ The Shadow. CHAPTER XXII THE PLOT But that Canning fairly ran away, George would have stopped him to ask further questions. He had told much which was new and strange and explained a great deal: but his last remark hinted at further difficulties. Apparently, Hale had not yet given up all idea of procuring the money, although how he hoped to do so in the absence of the child, George could not understand. Of course, Walker felt very certain that Hale had kept back the amethyst cross when sending the jewels to Lord Charvington, but its production by Hale would have no effect on Mr. Jabez. The lawyer wanted the cross to be produced by the child of Katherine Morse--whatever her married name might be and, according to Hale himself, the dying woman had no child. Mrs. Walker, indeed, had stated that her sister had written about a sick child, but this had probably died. If not, surely during all these twenty years the child would have come forward to recover its inheritance. George was naturally puzzled with this new development, and decided that to learn the truth it would be best to go to the fountain head. That is, if Hale intended to use the cross to procure the money he would have to produce it to Mr. Jabez in his office in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It was thus best to go at once to Mr. Jabez and inform him of what Canning had said about this new plot. What Maud Ellis had to do with the matter it was impossible to say; George could no more understand her connection with the matter than he could understand why Lady Charvington had employed Captain Sargent to get her the cross. What possible interest could she have in the amethyst cross? And why had she told a deliberate lie about its being in the library? George was quite bewildered with the complicated state of affairs. And Jabez, as he believed, alone could solve the mystery. George duly gave his mother Lord Charvington's message. She received it in silence, but with a change of colour, which did not escape his notice. "Mother," he asked abruptly, "what do you know about Lord Charvington?" "He was not Lord Charvington when I knew him," confessed Mrs. Walker, after a pause, "but Philip Hale. Hale, you know, is the family name and Lesbia's father bears it as a cousin. Charvington had not come into the title some twenty and more years ago. I knew him very well and liked him," she sighed, "but he was always weak." George looked incredulous. "Weak," he echoed, "he seems to me to be a very strong man and one who knows his own mind." "He has no doubt learned by experience," replied Mrs. Walker, "and heaven only knows how badly he needed to learn. So he is going to speak at last. He should have done so long ago." "About what, mother?" Mrs. Walker pursed up her mouth. "Never mind, George, I prefer that Lord Charvington should tell his own story. If he does, Walter Hale will find himself in trouble, and I shall be glad of that. I have waited long to see him punished: soon I shall be satisfied." "Why do you hate Hale so, mother?" "I have every cause to hate him," cried Mrs. Walker vindictively, and her eyes glittered. "Years ago I loved Walter Hale." "You--loved--that--man?" said her son slowly. "What is there strange in that?" snapped his mother, trying to keep her restless hands still. "He was handsome and clever and rich. I loved him and I thought that he loved me. I gave him my heart and found out only too late that he was playing with me. He was always cruel and wicked and hard, selfish to the core and thinking only of himself. We were engaged," added Mrs. Walker, drooping her head, and in a lower tone, "and he confessed then that he had very little money. He believed that I was an heiress, and so I was to the extent of fifty thousand pounds. My father did not like him and declared that if I married Walter he would cut me off with a shilling. I did not care, for I loved the man for himself: but he loved me for my money, and when he learned my father's decision he threw me over, and went after some other woman who was rich." "Lesbia's mother?" "I suppose so," said Mrs. Walker, pretending indifference; "but he vanished out of my life, and I heard that he was courting this heiress, in the hope of making a good marriage for his pocket. I was left alone, and I married your father Aylmer Walker, not because I loved him, but because he was kind and sympathetic. Aylmer was a spendthrift and wasted all my money; all the same he was kind-hearted and not a scoundrel like Walter Hale. Then you were born and shortly afterwards misfortunes came. I was only married four years when your father broke his neck leaving me penniless. Then Kate eloped with"--Mrs. Walker paused--"she eloped, that is all I can say. I saw Walter Hale again and learned, and learned--oh!" he rose and wrung out her hands, "what a villain the man is. But he shall be punished now. I swear if Charvington will not punish him, I shall punish him myself." "But mother----" "Not a word," cried Mrs. Walker passionately, "I can't bear to discuss the matter. When we meet at Charvington's place, the long-hidden truth will come to light. Until then----" she stopped, closed her mouth, shook her head, and left the room hastily. George wondered what could be the hidden truth she referred to, but could come to no conclusion. He wrote a letter to Lesbia saying that she was to come to Lord Charvington's place, and stating that he would call to take her over. Then he smoked a pipe and retired to bed, intending the next day to go to London and see Mr. Jabez in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Mrs. Walker did not put in an appearance again on that evening. Of course George, as a lover, lay awake and thought of Lesbia. He was sorely inclined to postpone his visit to Mr. Jabez, and go over to Marlow on the morrow, but it was necessary to execute business before indulging in pleasure, since, when everything was settled, he would have Lesbia beside him always as his dear wife. He therefore restrained his longing for a sight of her face, and gradually dropped off to sleep. Next morning Mrs. Walker had her breakfast in bed and did not see her son. George left a message that he would return in the evening, and went to Henley in his boat to catch the mid-day train. He soon arrived in London, and without wasting time went to see Mr. Jabez. The old lawyer had a large and expensive office in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and from the number of clerks was apparently much sought after as a solicitor. He received Walker as soon as the young man sent in his card, as it seemed that George had luckily arrived during the slack season. "A week ago," said Mr. Jabez, in his precise way, "I should have had to keep you waiting for some hours." The room in which Jabez received his client--as George was--was a large apartment with a painted ceiling and three long windows looking out on to the gardens of the square. Probably in Georgian days it had held brilliant company, but now, since the tide of fashion had rolled farther to the west, it was given over to the dry-as-dust details of the law. Jabez looked as hatchet-faced as ever, and still wore his large blue spectacles to aid his weak eyes. He welcomed George politely in his dry way, and waited to hear what the young man had to say. "Lord Charvington wants you to come down to The Court the day after to-morrow at three o'clock," said George abruptly. "Why?" demanded Jabez quietly, and more puzzled than he chose to admit. "I can only answer you by telling you all that has taken place," answered the young man, and forthwith related what he knew. Nursing his chin in the hollow of his hand, Jabez crossed his lean legs and listened quietly enough, nodding at intervals. "I thought it would come to this," he observed, when the young man ended. "Come to what?" "An explanation." "Of what?" "Of many things which will astonish you," said Jabez drily. "Of course I was acquainted with Lord Charvington when he was merely the Honourable Philip Hale. Then----" Jabez suspended further confidences. "It is best to allow Lord Charvington to speak for himself." "Do you know what he intends to say?" "Partly. And yet," mused the solicitor, looking at his neat shoes, "there may be something interesting which I do not know. However, the main point is that I shall arrange to be there at the stated time. The gathering promises to be interesting. The cross," Jabez stopped, "h'm! yes, the cross. I see now how Hale got it." "He stole it from Lady Charvington, who procured it from Sargent, who employed Canning to thieve it from me," explained George. "So you said before, and I am not so stupid as to require a double explanation," said Jabez crustily, "but I am wondering how Hale hopes to get the money by means of this cross. Certainly he declares that he has found the child, and----" "What!" cried George, starting to his feet in amazement. Jabez looked up and raised a hand. "Don't speak so loud, your voice goes through my head," he said in his testy manner. "Yes," he searched amongst some papers, "here is a letter from Walter Hale saying that he will call to-morrow at noon with the child of Katherine Morse----" "Doesn't he mention my aunt's married name?" "No," answered Jabez, sucking in his cheeks, "and that is what makes me suspicious of the affair. However, what you have told me to-day about Lady Charvington's share in the business, and her husband's attitude gives me an idea. Send a wire to Lord Charvington asking him to meet you here to-morrow. Then you can both see Mr. Hale and this child." "I should like to, but what use----" "There! There. I have no time to waste. Go and do what you are told," said Jabez, rising with an angry gesture. "I may be wrong and I may be right. But putting two and two together----" he stopped and walked to the window, musingly, "yes, I believe it may be so." "What may be so?" questioned George, picking up his hat. Jabez wheeled crossly. "Oh, you are there still. Go away and send that wire. At noon to-morrow, bring Lord Charvington here. Good-day," he rang the bell, "get out, young Walker, you are taking up my time." Wondering at the behaviour of the lawyer, George departed and forthwith sent a prepaid wire to Charvington, asking him to come to the Lincoln's Inn Fields office. He had half a mind to go down and explain personally, but as he could not explain very much he relied on the wire, hoping that Charvington's curiosity would be sufficiently aroused to make him obey the summons. Late in the afternoon an answer came intimating that Charvington would be at Jabez's office at the appointed time. George was greatly pleased, as he foresaw that Hale's little plot would in some way be frustrated, Charvington apparently knew of much to Hale's disadvantage; hence the wily old lawyer had induced him to be present. Having come to this conclusion Walker wired to his mother saying that he would remain in London, and employed his evening in going to a music hall. He positively had to do so, for if he had remained alone in his hotel brooding over riddles which he could by no means solve, he felt that his brain would not bear the strain. Still, in a vague way, he felt that all things were being shaped to a happy end and that light was coming out of the darkness which had enshrouded things for so long. At a quarter to twelve in the morning George met Charvington in the semi-courtyard in front of the mansion, wherein Jabez had his office. The elder man jumped out of the hansom, in which he had driven from the railway station, and walked towards the young one with an elastic step, after he had paid his fare. "What's all this, Walker?" he demanded abruptly. "Why did you wire for me to come up on this day, and at this hour, and to this place?" "Come upstairs to Mr. Jabez and he'll explain," said George, leading the way up the steps, "we cannot linger here. Hale may see us." "Hale," Charvington followed hurriedly and caught the young man's arm, "and why is Hale coming here?" "He has found--so he says--my cousin." "Your--cousin?" "My aunt's child--the heir to the property which Mr. Jabez has held for so long." Charvington stopped on the landing. "So Hale is going to anticipate me," he muttered, and without waiting to be announced he opened the door of Jabez's private room and strode in. The lawyer looked up irritably. "I'm engaged. You, Lord Charvington? Well, I might have guessed as much from your abrupt entry. You haven't changed much in your impulsive ways." Lord Charvington threw down his hat and stick and gloves and flung himself into a chair. "I have changed very much in looks," he retorted; "however there is no time for these personalities. Walker," he indicated the young man who had followed him closely, "tells me that Hale intends to produce the heiress to his aunt's property." Jabez looked inquisitively at Charvington through his blue spectacles. "I believe so," he said quietly and cautiously, with a glance at his watch. "Hale will bring the girl here in a few minutes." "It's a girl then," sneered Charvington. "You mentioned the word 'heiress' yourself," remarked Jabez, with emphasis. "A mere guess. And what of the cross?" "Hale says that the girl will produce it." "Humph! I don't believe that the girl will produce stolen property. You know that the cross was stolen from my house?" "So I believe," said Jabez politely. "Yes, Walker here told me, though how it got into my library----" "I can tell you that now, Lord Charvington," interposed George, "as I heard the truth from Canning the other day. Sargent employed Canning to steal the cross in order to pass it over to your wife." Charvington bounded from his chair. "What did she want with it?" "I can't say--I don't----" "Hush," said Jabez, who, at the sound of wheels in the courtyard, had gone to one of the tall windows; "here come Hale and his heiress. Go into the next room with Walker, Lord Charvington. When I require you I shall summon you." "But why do you bring me here at all?" demanded Charvington brusquely. Jabez looked straight at him and his long fingers played a tune on the table. "I have an idea," he said gravely; "you may be able to tell me if that idea is correct." "What is the idea?" "I cannot tell it to you, until I see this heiress." "Very good." Charvington sat down again. "Introduce her and Hale." "No! No!" said Jabez anxiously, "that would never do. Wait until I hear Hale's story and then----" "Hale will only tell you a pack of lies," interrupted Charvington violently. "And besides he stole the cross and----" Jabez put his hand against the breast of the angry speaker and pushed him gently towards a side door. "Go in there and wait," he said insistently. "You also, Walker." "No," cried Charvington, "I shan't." "If you don't," said the solicitor very quietly, "I shall wash my hands of this matter. Already Hale and his heiress are waiting in the ante-chamber, and if your voice is recognised, they will not come in." "Why not?" "Because I believe that this is another of Hale's wicked schemes. Let me hear the whole invention he has made up, and then I can call upon you to substantiate the story." "But I can't wait. I want to know who this girl is." "Can't you guess?" demanded Jabez, leading him deftly to the door of the inner room where he wished him to wait. "I can do more than guess, I know." "Humph," muttered Jabez, "I thought so." "You thought what?" "Never mind. If you know rightly, you will be able to help me." Charvington stamped. "I believe it's all lies. I want to see this girl." "Well," said Jabez resignedly. "I shall do a thing I have never done before since you will not be quiet otherwise. In the panel of this door there is a small knot-hole. Look in and see if----" Charvington rushed into the room, dragging Walker after him, and closed the door. Shortly afterwards they heard the entrance of two people. The old man applied an eye to the knot-hole. Then he laughed silently and made George apply his eye. "Look at the heiress," he said sneeringly. Walker looked eagerly and saw--Maud Ellis. CHAPTER XXIII ONE PART OF THE TRUTH It was indeed Maud Ellis who entered on the arm of Mr. Hale. She was carefully dressed and, as usual, had made the best of her looks, such as they were. But she appeared to be anxious--to be strung up to fighting-pitch--after the manner of a woman who anticipated that she was not going to get her own way without a battle. On her entrance, she measured the lean lawyer with the eye of an antagonist, and then sat down in the chair which he politely pushed forward. As to Walter Hale, he looked much the same as he always did, cool, polished, and composed. Of course, he was perfectly arrayed in Bond Street taste, and his manners were as irreproachable as was his costume. If Miss Ellis was nervous, Hale assuredly was not. To Jabez, he suggested a bowie-knife--an odd comparison, but one which came unexpectedly into the lawyer's unimaginative brain. "You know, of course, Mr. Jabez," said Hale when seated, "what I have come to see you about." The solicitor, who had taken his usual chair before the table, nodded and pointed to Hale's letter which lay on the blotting-paper before him. "To produce the amethyst cross," said he gravely. "And something more important than the cross. Allow me," Hale stood up to give his words due effect, "to present to you, Miss Katherine Morse----" "Oh," interrupted Jabez drily, "I understood from you that she died in your Wimbledon house years ago." "You are thinking of my mother," put in Maud boldly. "She, indeed, is dead; but I am her child and am called after her." "Even to the name of Morse?" "Later," said Hale, with dignity, "I can give you the married name of this young lady's mother. Meanwhile, the cross is----" "Is here," said Maud, and opening a little bag which was swinging on her wrist, she extracted therefrom a red morocco case and handed it to Jabez. He opened it gravely and beheld the long-lost ornament. "It was my dear mother's," added Miss Ellis with feigned pathos, as though the sight was too much for her tender heart. "My grandfather gave it to her, and----" "And your mother gave it to you," ended Jabez, seeing with his usual keen gaze that her eyes were dry behind the handkerchief she was holding to them. "No," she replied, unexpectedly and sadly. "I never set eyes upon it until Mr. Hale saw me a few days ago." "Permit me to explain," said Hale, as watchful as a cat. "As I told you, Miss Morse----" "Still no married name," muttered the solicitor ironically. "That will be told later," remarked Hale, provokingly self-possessed. "I have first to tell my story." "Go on," Jabez stretched his legs and put his hands in his pockets, "it is sure to be interesting." "I hope so," rejoined Hale, making a sign to Maud that she should not talk, "and already you know much of it." "Let me see. Yes, I remember. You told me at Rose Cottage, in the presence of Mrs. Walker, that Miss Morse died at your Wimbledon house in the arms of your wife. She gave the cross to your wife, who afterwards gave it to the nurse, Bridget Burke. She in her turn gave it to your daughter Lesbia, who presented it to young Walker from whom it was stolen. Am I right?" "Perfectly," said Hale gravely. "So you can see how Miss Morse here, never set eyes on it until I brought it to her." "And how did you become possessed of it?" "I shall explain that, when you have heard Miss Morse's story." Maud put up her veil and wiped her lips. "I am only too anxious to tell it," she declared eagerly, "and----" Jabez cut her short. "I am sure you are, but before hearing it I should like to remind Mr. Hale that he declared in my presence and in the presence of Mrs. Walker that there was no child." "Quite so," said Hale promptly. "I am not bound to tell you anything I desire to keep silent." "I think you will have to do so, if you wish this young lady to get fifty thousand pounds," said Jabez coolly. "Of course: that is why I am here. But I refer to the interview at my Marlow cottage. Then, I was not bound to speak. I speak now. There was not any child with Miss Morse when she died at my Wimbledon house. But with her last breath she told me where she had left the child--in a poor neighbourhood and with a poor woman." "Who was very good to me," said Maud, with tenderness very well acted. "Dear Mrs. Tait, shall I ever forget her kindness?" "Tait. Humph. So that's the name, is it?" "The name of my foster-mother who brought me up. For years I have been called Maud Ellis, but only when Mr. Hale came to see me bringing the cross did I learn my true name and parentage." "Why did your foster-mother call you Ellis?" asked Jabez. "She passed me off to the world as her sister's child," said Maud glibly. "Why? I cannot see the need." "Nor I," said Miss Ellis, with a swift glance at Hale. "But who knows the human heart, Mr. Jabez?" "No one so far as I know. But you were saying----" "If you will permit me to tell my story I can make everything clear." "I am quite certain that you can," said the lawyer, politely ironical. "Go on." "Mrs. Tait kept a lodging-house in Bloomsbury. My mother lived there after leaving her husband--my father, who treated her very badly. I am right," she added turning to Hale, "in saying this?" "He behaved like a brute," said Hale emphatically, "but then he always was a brute I am sorry to say." "Dear me," murmured Jabez, "proceed, please." "My mother left me with Mrs. Tait, as she had very little money and went to seek out my father at Wimbledon one bitterly cold, snowy day. He turned her from his door, and she nearly perished in the snow. Fortunately this good man," Maud glanced pathetically at Hale, who tried not to look too conscious, "took in the starving and chilled woman. My mother died, and I was left to Mrs. Tait's kind care." "What about the cross?" asked Jabez abruptly, stifling a yawn. "I can explain that," interposed Hale quickly, "indeed I have already done so. It was given to my wife and----" "Of course: of course, I remember now. Well," Jabez turned to Maud, "so you remained with Mrs. Tait." "Until she died. Then her husband adopted me as his niece and with him I lived, retaining my name of Maud Ellis." "There was a husband then?" "Yes," said Hale anxiously, "you may know of him, Mr. Michael Tait, the stockbroking philanthropist." "Oh," drawled the solicitor quietly, "the same man who lost his jewels the other day." "Yes," admitted Hale, quite ignorant of how much Jabez knew, "the same. He was poor when Miss Morse--or Miss Ellis if you like--came to his wife, and Mrs. Tait kept a boarding-house to help him. Then Tait made a lucky speculation--he was a clerk in the City--and began to grow rich. But before he could make a fortune Mrs. Tait died, and thus never benefited." "No, poor dear, and she was so very kind," said Maud sweetly, "however, when my uncle grew rich----" "Your uncle?" queried Jabez. Maud coloured to the roots of her sandy hair. "I have fallen into the habit of calling my friend Mr. Tait my uncle. And, indeed, until the other day I almost thought that he was my uncle until I knew the truth. But as I was saying, Mr. Jabez, my uncle--for I still call Mr. Tait so--placed a magnificent tombstone over her remains when he grew rich. That is my story." "A very interesting one," said Jabez politely. "Then I take it that you are the young lady entitled to fifty thousand pounds." "I am. I understood that when I came and presented that cross," Maud pointed to the ornament on the table, "that the money would be given to me." "You certainly said as much to me, Jabez," chimed in Hale anxiously. "Quite right. The cross," Jabez waved his hand, "was only a little attempt of mine to introduce romance into the dry details of the law. Of course it is a means of identification, but it will be necessary for Miss Ellis to produce her certificate of birth, her baptismal certificate and----" Hale bit his finger with vexation. "I anticipated that objection," he interrupted in hard tones, "and I knew you would make it." "In the interest of Mrs. Walker I must make it." "Yes! yes. But the fact is, that only Mrs. Tait, besides the mother, knew where the certificate of birth and that of baptism were to be found. They are both dead, as you have heard, so----" "So," ended Jabez rising to stand before the fireplace, "so there will be no chance of this young lady getting the money." "Don't you believe my story?" demanded Maud angrily. "Oh yes. One has only to look into your face, my dear madam, to be certain that you speak as you believe. But the law is not so tender-hearted as I am. The law requires proofs." "The amethyst cross----" "Is one proof, but others are required. Then, you see, the cross was stolen and has not been in your possession all these years. It is not a very strong proof of your identity." "I can make an affidavit," said Hale sharply, "swearing that the mother me told where the child was to be found." "Quite so, and doubtless Mr. Tait--then in the Bloomsbury lodging-house kept by his wife--can make another affidavit showing how the mother left the child in his wife's charge." "Of course," assented Hale readily. "Tait will do anything I ask him." "And my uncle," said Maud, "for I must call him uncle, will only be too glad to see me come into my kingdom." "Oh, I am certain of that," said Jabez, trimming his nails rapidly with a little knife, "and to show your gratitude, you will doubtless divide the money with him." "Oh no. My uncle is too rich to need help," said Maud virtuously. Jabez shut the knife and restored it to his pocket. "So he made enough by the double deal of the jewels and the insurance fraud to tide over the financial crisis which threatened him," he said deliberately. Maud turned pale and uttered an exclamation. "I don't understand." "Do you, Mr. Hale?" asked Jabez. "No," said the man coldly, "I know nothing of Tait's business." "Rubbish! rubbish! See here, Hale, and you, young woman, before you came here to try your games on me, you should have made certain that I knew nothing of your doings. As it is, from Mrs. Walker, from her son, and from various other people, I know all that has taken place in connection with that cross from the time Miss Lesbia Hale gave it to her lover, and----" "You insult Miss Morse," interrupted Hale furiously. "Miss Maud Ellis you mean," sneered the lawyer, "and--no you don't," he stretched out his long arm, and snatched the cross away, before Hale could lay a finger on it. "That belongs to Mrs. Walker's niece." "I am Mrs. Walker's niece," panted Maud, standing up with a red and furious face. Since Jabez appeared to know so much, she saw very well that the plotting of herself and Hale had come to an untimely end. Nevertheless, like a woman, she persisted in fighting, even when the game had been irretrievably lost. "She will acknowledge me." The lawyer slipped the case containing the cross into the pocket of his coat and faced round. "If Mrs. Walker will acknowledge you as her niece," he declared, "I will give you the money." "What's the use of talking in this way?" cried Hale angrily. "You know well enough that Mrs. Walker wants the money for herself. She will certainly not help this poor girl to gain her rights." "Girl," echoed Jabez cruelly, and with his eyes on Maud's plain face, which showed elderly lines. "I am no judge of a lady's age, but----" "Brute! brute," cried Miss Ellis, making for the door. "Hale, come away, I am not going to stand here and be insulted." "I am coming," said Hale sullenly: then turning to the lawyer: "as to these veiled accusations you bring against me----" "Oh, you want me to speak clearer. Very well, then. You, Mr. Hale, and you, Miss Maud Ellis, belong to a gang of clever thieves. The police have been trying to break up the gang for years: but hitherto have not succeeded. Now they will lay hands on one and all." "Oh!" gasped Maud, trembling. "What nonsense you talk." "The police do not think so. You and Hale had better make yourselves scarce, for one of your gang has given the rest away." "Canning, blast him!" shouted Hale fiercely. "Ah!" Jabez turned on him, "you admit then that I speak the truth." "I admit nothing," muttered Hale, wiping his face. "As you please," Jabez moved towards the door leading into the inner room where Lord Charvington and George were concealed, "but Canning is now in communication with the police. I learned yesterday that he knew all. I got his address from young Walker, and have seen him. To save his own skin he will turn king's evidence and you and Miss Ellis there, and her dear uncle and Sargent, and a few others, including Mrs. Petty, will be----" "Damn you," cried Hale, while Maud stood trembling at the outer door, which she had not strength enough to open, "I'll kill you." With outstretched hand he lunged forward to grip the lawyer. Jabez on the watch dexterously slipped aside and flung open the door. Hale unable to restrain his impetus plunged right through the entrance into the strong arms of George Walker. That young gentleman picked him up like a feather and carrying him into the outer room, flung him into Jabez's chair. Maud uttered a cry of alarm. She did not know Lord Charvington: but she knew George, and guessed that he had overheard the whole wicked plot. Overcome with shame she tore blindly at the door, opened it hurriedly and fled away, pulling down her veil to hide her shameful face. She could not meet the eye of the man, whom she had wronged so deeply, because she loved him too well. None of the three men followed her, as their attention was taken up with Hale. Over him stood George, righteously indignant. "You confounded blackguard," cried George between his teeth, "if you were not Lesbia's father I would murder you." "Set your mind at rest on that point, George," said Lord Charvington, who was strangely white, "I am Lesbia's father." "You!" George recoiled, dazed and startled. "Katherine Morse was my first wife and I am Lesbia's father." "Now," said George to Hale, "I can choke the wicked life out of you." But Charvington stopped him. "Leave him to God." CHAPTER XXIV ANOTHER PART OF THE TRUTH A day or so after the scene in the Lincoln's Inn Fields office, a party of those interested in the circumstances connected with the amethyst cross assembled in the library of The Court. George was present with Lesbia by his side--Lesbia, still ignorant of her true parentage. Mrs. Walker, looking less grim than usual, had a seat near Mr. Jabez, who had come down to hear Lord Charvington's story and to witness the righting of the wrong which had been done to Lesbia. But two people who should have been on the spot were absent--Walter Hale and Lady Charvington. On returning from London, where he had admitted the truth, Charvington had interviewed his wife. What took place between them was never known, for out of shame for the lady's behaviour Charvington said as little as he could, when explaining fully. But his wife must have been dissatisfied with the conversation, for she left The Court and returned to London. In spite of what her husband said, she absolutely refused to be present at the rehabilitation of Lesbia, and it must be confessed that Charvington felt relieved. He knew his wife's fiery temper and vindictive nature well, and therefore dreaded lest she should make a scene. Besides he was manifestly in the wrong, and when given an inch Lady Charvington immediately took an ell with all the zest of an ungenerous woman. Mrs. Walker having been the lady's schoolfellow had something to say on the subject: but she reserved her remarks until she heard Charvington's story. She, for one, was not astonished at Lady Charvington's failure to put in an appearance at the conference. She had never credited her with a kindly heart willing to forgive and forget. And time proved that her estimate was right. As to Hale, the interview in Jabez's office had more or less done away with the necessity for his presence. He admitted the truth of Charvington's statement to Jabez, and after confessing the whole of his wicked plots to gain possession of Mrs. Walker's money--or rather the money which now belonged to Lesbia as her mother's heiress,--he had been permitted to depart. This he did, knowing that the police were on his track, and that unless he could get out of the country he would be in danger of arrest. And if he were arrested he knew well enough that he would suffer a long term of imprisonment. Destiny, as Mrs. Walker had remarked, had been very kind to him, but the hour had arrived when she demanded the return of all the good fortune which she had lent. And Hale lurked in byways, trembling for the payment of the bill which the police--as Destiny's agents--were trying to present. He did his best to give the police no chance of presenting it, and longed--like David--for the wings of a dove that he might fly away and be at rest. But enough people were present to give Charvington an opportunity of confessing his weakness and folly and, to be plain, cowardice, or, to be generous, want of courage. Only George and Jabez knew what he was about to say, as they already had heard the confession in the office. But Mrs. Walker and Lesbia were ignorant, and although they guessed that they had been brought there to hear how things could be righted, they little suspected the way in which this would be accomplished. Lord Charvington glanced round at the attentive faces, and then abruptly plunged into the middle of his his story. It was not an easy one for him to tell, and only sincere repentance made him bold enough to open his mouth. "I have to right a great wrong," he said with considerable emotion, "a wrong done to you, Lesbia." "To me!" The girl looked surprised and clutched George's hand tighter. "Yes! Listen. For you to understand I must go back over twenty years. You remember that time, Judith?" "Yes," said Mrs. Walker quietly, "but you should go back nearly thirty years, Philip. George is now five-and-twenty and I married his father some seven years previous to the time you speak of." "I begin some twenty-three years ago," said Charvington, after a pause, "as it was then that I married your sister Katherine. Lesbia," he turned to the girl, "you are now twenty I believe?" "Yes, but what have I to do with----" "You have everything to do with it," interrupted Charvington, "for I am your father, Lesbia--your guilty, cowardly, cruel father." "What!" Mrs. Walker rose slowly with a pale face and indignant eyes, "do you mean to say that this girl is my sister's child?" "Yes, and as such inherits the money." "I don't want it," said Lesbia, who was as pale as a wintry moon, for she could scarcely grasp the significance of her father's statement. Mrs. Walker waved the objection aside. "I don't mind about the money," she said harshly, "and if George marries Lesbia the money is well bestowed. But to think that you, Philip, should know the truth and conceal it. I always thought that you were more sinned against than sinning, Philip, as Hale was your evil genius. But if you knew that Lesbia was your daughter why did you permit her to call that wretch father?' "I am about to explain," said Charvington, trying to speak quietly, "and I remember the time, Judith, when you would not have called Hale a wretch." "I remember it also," said Mrs. Walker, sitting down, "a time when I loved the man. But you know, Philip, how he deceived me and left me and threw me into the arms of George's father. I can neither forgive nor forget the cruelty with which he treated me. And you allowed your own child--my poor Kate's daughter--to call him father. How could you? how could you?" "I was wrong, Judith----" "Wrong," she repeated strongly, "you were wicked and cruel. What induced you to arrange matters so? Why was not Lesbia given into my charge? I was her aunt; I had the right to look after her. But I expect you and Mr. Jabez made up the matter between you and----" "Pardon me," said the lawyer politely, "but I knew nothing for ever so long, and if I had known, I should have given the money which I held in trust to Miss Lesbia Hale." "Is my name Lesbia Hale?" asked the girl, who looked pale and scared. "Yes," said her father, "Hale is my family name. You are Lesbia Hale, as your half-sisters are Agatha and Lena Hale." "My half-sisters?" muttered Lesbia bewildered. "Of course. Your mother was my first wife, and you are her child; Helen Harrowby is my second wife, the mother of Agatha and Lena." "Helen Harrowby," said Mrs. Walker with scorn. "Oh, I know her well, better than you know her, Charvington, or you would never have married her." "Heaven knows that I have learned to know her," said the man bitterly, "but allow me to explain myself, and----" "One moment," put in Jabez, "I wish to explain on my part to Mrs. Walker, that I knew nothing of the truth for years. It was only when you, madam," he addressed himself directly to Mrs. Walker, "told me of the theft of the amethyst cross, and how your son had obtained it from Miss Hale, that I got an idea. I fancied--on account of the cross--that Miss Hale might be your sister's child, but Hale swore, if you remember, that there was no child." "Yes," said George caustically, "and then tried to pass off Maud Ellis as the child so as to get the money." "That plot was doomed to fail from the first," said Jabez waving his hand, "as by then, I knew too much. I did not like to declare my belief that Miss Hale was the missing child, until I had further proof. In one way and another the proofs came to hand. When Lord Charvington appeared in my office at my request, immediately before Hale called with Miss Ellis, I was then pretty well convinced that he was Miss Hale's father. I was right." "But you knew for years that he had been my sister's husband," said Mrs. Walker, "and knowing that, you should have asked him about the child." "You knew also. Why did not _you_ ask?" "Because from Kate's letter to me saying that the child was dangerously ill, I believed that it had died." "You told me that," said Jabez, "and I thought so also. Perhaps I have been blind and have not done justice to my legal training. However, the case is a very peculiar one. Let us hear what Lord Charvington has to say, and then, if necessary, I can exonerate myself further." Mrs. Walker moved her chair and caught Lesbia's disengaged hand. "I am quite ready," she said calmly, "and before Charvington speaks, I must thank him for giving me back Kate's child." Lesbia was too overcome to speak coherently, but muttering something unintelligible, she sat between mother and son, her aunt and her cousin, allowing them to hold her hands, and feeling, poor child, that at last she had someone to love her, and cherish her, and take care of her. Lord Charvington cast a longing glance at the trio. He would have liked to take Lesbia in his arms, but it was part of his punishment to see her cling to others, while he detailed the folly that had led to his isolation. "When I was young," he said in a steady voice, and speaking slowly, "there were two people between myself and the title I hold. I was then merely Philip Hale." "The Honourable Philip Hale," said Mrs. Walker promptly. "No," he contradicted, "no, Judith, my father was only a younger son. I had no title whatsoever until the death of my cousins by drowning placed me here as head of the family. And I had no expectation then of becoming rich and titled. I was simply a briefless barrister." "And Walter's closest companion," muttered Mrs. Walker. "Yes. But Walter was not so wicked in those days as he has since proved to be." "He was always wicked," snapped the woman, "he was your evil genius." Charvington passed his hand through his white hair. "I fear he was. However, we can talk of that later. Walter and I were the best of friends, and it was Walter who introduced me to Mr. Samuel Morse, a City merchant. He had two daughters. Judith----" "That was me," murmured Mrs. Walker, "and the other daughter was my sister Kate. You loved Kate, and I thought that Walter loved me." "Walter behaved very badly," said Charvington promptly. "He was poor while pretending to be rich, and so, when your father, not approving of his scampish ways, learned that you loved him, Judith, he threatened to disinherit you." "Quite so, and learning that, Walter threw me over. Later, I married George's father, who was quite as scampish, but kind-hearted and honourable." "Yes!" Charvington nodded, "I always wondered why Mr. Morse permitted that marriage as he knew that Walker was quite as wild as Hale." "But he knew also that Aylmer was honourable, which Walter never was. Let that pass, I was jilted by Walter and married Aylmer. I lost my money and my husband, and was left with George to live on nothing. That's my story, I want to hear yours." "You know most of it," said Lord Charvington, now speaking rapidly as though anxious to end a disagreeable task. "I loved Kate; she was the only woman I ever loved, but your father, thinking me as dissipated as Walter, refused to permit the match. Kate eloped with me, and your father would have altered his will but that he died before he could send for his lawyer." "And that was me," said Jabez, "however, the will was very fair. You, Mrs. Walker, got your fifty thousand when you married your husband, and he soon got rid of it. The other fifty thousand pounds belonged to Kate, but she never appeared to get it. Why not?" he asked Charvington. "Walter Hale again," said that gentleman quickly. "Kate and I were married and went on the Continent. I was poor and we lived quietly, hoping that some day Mr. Morse would relent. Then we heard that he had died. Walter undertook to find out about the will, and told us that Kate inherited nothing, that all had been left to you, Judith." "And you believed him," said Jabez. "Why didn't you communicate with me?" "I had no reason then to doubt Walter," said Charvington stiffly. "Augh," groaned Mrs. Walker softly, "you were always an honourable fool." "I was, in believing Walter," said Charvington, "and not until lately have I learned how I was deceived. Walter was always plausible and clever. Besides, I kept the fact of my marriage secret from my father lest he should disinherit me. Walter made capital out of that also. Then there was Helen----" "Helen," cried Mrs. Walker, rising, much agitated. "She always hated me and hated Kate because Kate was pretty and you loved her. Helen and Walter caused all the trouble." "I know that now; I did not know it then," said Charvington sadly. "I was always foolish as you remarked just now. I was living in Paris with my wife. Lesbia was a baby then. We met Helen, who pretended to be our friend." "A friend such as Walter was," muttered Mrs. Walker. "I fear so, but let us say nothing since Helen is now my wife." "You let her off too easily." "She is now my wife," said Charvington determinedly, "so that puts an end to all discussion. Besides, Walter was to blame, as my wife informed me in a conversation we had when she refused to be present at this meeting. He worked on Kate's feelings and made her believe that I was in love with Helen. I was wrong also, for then I went about much with Helen, while my wife was ill, so that in the end Kate grew jealous." "You treated her worse than I thought," said Mrs. Walker darkly. Charvington threw out his hands. "I never was a hero," he said entreatingly, "but surely I have suffered for my weakness--the weakness of a pleasure-loving man. I was wrong; I here admit publicly that I was wrong. Surely you will believe that my repentance is sincere." Mrs. Walker looked at his drawn face and admitted that it was. After all, few men would have had the courage to stand up and speak as Charvington was now speaking--to lay bare the secrets of their weakness and strive, even at the eleventh hour, to make amends. Charvington had sinned through weakness; he confessed through strength gained from the lessons of a hard life, hard in spite of his outward show of prosperity. "I forgive you," said Mrs. Walker in softer tones, "go on." "I come to the cruellest part," said Charvington in a thick voice. "Kate was so jealous that she fled with the child. I searched for her but could not find her. It was in winter. Then Walter sent for me. I came to England and he told me that Kate had come to him weak and ill and almost starving. She had sold what jewels she possessed to feed herself and her child, and only retained the amethyst cross which her father had given her. Then she went to Walter at Wimbledon, and there died in the arms of Bridget Burke." "Was Mr. Hale married then?" asked George anxiously. "No. He never married in his life. But when I arrived my wife was buried and had left the child to the care of Bridget, and also had given her the cross saying it was to be handed to Lesbia when she grew up." "Bridget gave it to me on her death-bed," sighed Lesbia, who wept bitterly. "Yes, I learned that," said Charvington with a heavy sigh. "But to go back to my story. I repented deeply of the way in which I had behaved. I meant no harm, and would have explained to my wife had she not left me secretly. I never had an opportunity of explaining. Kate simply disappeared and died. Owing to my conduct I did not dare to go near you, Judith, or I might have placed the child in your care. As it was Hale proposed that Lesbia should be nursed by Bridget and that I should allow him money. I agreed to this, as at the time it seemed the best way out of the difficulty. Then my cousins were lost at sea in their yacht. I came in for a large income and for the title. My relatives urged me to marry again. Chance threw me once more into Helen's company----" "Chance!" snorted Mrs. Walker. "Chance! I know the minx." Charvington passed over this remark. "I married Helen and took up the station I now hold. I arranged to allow Walter an annuity if he looked after Lesbia. He did so, and gradually she began to look on him as her father." "And you permitted that--you permitted that," cried Mrs. Walker furiously. "Yes," said Charvington with an effort. "Weakness again. My wife knew the truth and I did not dare to bring my child into the house. I provided that Lesbia should have a good education, and saw that she had everything she desired. Walter was kind to her in his own way. Gradually I came to accept the situation. Then the cross passed into Walker's possession, and--" he threw out his hand--"you know the rest." George nodded. "But how did Lady Charvington learn the truth, and why did she want the cross?" Charvington sighed again and hung his head. "I do not wish to speak ill of my wife," he said in a low voice; "but in justice to Lesbia I must be frank. Hale learned about the money waiting for Lesbia, and knew that it could be obtained if the cross was shown to you, Jabez, But Hale could not find the cross." "I know why," said Lesbia quickly, "Bridget kept it secretly beside her, as my mother thought that Mr. Hale."--she did not say father--"might take it away. My mother told Bridget that the cross would prove that I was her child should any money be waiting for her. Bridget gave the cross to me and made me promise to say nothing to Mr. Hale, but to give it to the man I loved. While I was giving it to George, Mr. Hale came and then----" "Then," said Lord Charvington, "he went to Cookham and told Sargent that you, Walker, had the cross. My wife had already learned through Sargent, who obtained the information from Hale, that if Lesbia produced the cross she would inherit a fortune. Then--she--" he hesitated. Mrs. Walker took up the explanation. "I can see it all," she said scornfully, "Helen hated Kate so that she was determined that Lesbia should not get the money and hired Sargent to get the cross. He did through his brother. We know all about that. But did Helen know that Sargent was a thief?" "No," said Charvington sharply. "Helen is not altogether bad. She did not know of that, nor did she ever suspect that Walter was such a rascal. I was amazed myself when I heard the truth. I only learned it during the last few weeks. But you can see how the cross came into my wife's possession." "Yes," said George, "but why did she tell the lie about its being in the library?" "To conceal the fact of how she came to get it, as she knew perfectly well that Sargent had obtained it in some underhand way. She guessed that if she swore I had given her the cross, that no inquiry would be made and, of course," he added apologetically, "as my wife, I should have been obliged to support her." "Philip," cried Mrs. Walker, rising, "you are as weak as ever." "No," denied the man, "I am strong. Things being as they are, I must make the best of them. Helen is my wife, and to save the honour of my name all that I have told you must be kept silent." Mrs. Walker shrugged her stately shoulders. "I shall say nothing," she observed, "neither will anyone else. As to Walter, he can be left to the punishment of the law. But I am certain," she added, with emphasis, "that as he knows everything, he will speak if only out of revenge." Charvington winced. "As I have sown, so must I reap," he murmured. "Let us hope that out of shame Walter will be silent and not add to my burden, which is already sufficiently heavy. If I have sinned through weakness, I have repented and I have been punished." Mrs. Walker offered her hand. "You shall not be punished further by me," she said generously, "you were always good and kind, Philip, but very weak. I held my tongue about you, and I shall hold it still. As to Walter----" "Oh," said Jabez, rising, "I daresay I shall find some means to square him. In the interests of all parties, it will be best to give him a sum of money and assist him to escape. Once abroad he will say nothing, besides which he will not dare to venture back to England. You forget, Lord Charvington, that although he has a hold on you by knowing so much, you have a hold on him by what you know. Now if I----" "Do what you think best," said Charvington, whose hungry, bloodshot eyes were fixed on Lesbia, "I give you full permission. But my child--" he held out his arms to Lesbia, who rose pale and trembling--"will you not forgive me?" said the man in a thick voice. "I have done you wrong, but I have suffered and I will make amends and I--I----" Lesbia ran forward and threw her arms round his neck. "I forgive you," she whispered, "and I will learn to love you, and--and--father!" Her voice rose in a scream. Unable to bear the joy of this forgiveness, a long-threatened attack of apoplexy seized on the man's weakened frame. He tried to speak, choked, grew purple in the face and fell full length on the floor from the arms of the daughter he had not acknowledged for so many years. CHAPTER XXV REVENGE A week later and George was seated beside Lesbia on the well-known bench under the famous chestnut tree. Lord Charvington had recovered from his apoplectic fit, and was now progressing favourably. For two or three days Lesbia and Mrs. Walker had nursed him; but when Lady Charvington heard of her husband's illness she came down to The Court at once. A furious passage of arms took place between her and Mrs. Walker, which resulted in the defeat of the latter lady. Her enemy, being Charvington's wife and mistress of the house, had the power to send away those whom she regarded as interlopers, and she exercised this power forthwith. Lesbia departed under the wing of Mrs. Walker, and Charvington was too ill to prevent his wife from behaving in this despotic manner. Mrs. Walker desired the girl to come to Medmenham, there to remain until such time as she could be married. But Lesbia, thinking of Tim, insisted on returning to Rose Cottage. Jabez allowed her sufficient money to live on, pending his handing over to her the invested fifty thousand pounds, so there was no difficulty on the score of money. Then it was unlikely that Hale would come back to see Lesbia, now that she knew the truth; and under the charge of the devoted Tim, she could remain quietly until George found occasion to make her his wife. But there was another reason why Hale could not come. He was in hiding, for the information given to the police by Canning--forced, in order to save himself, to turn king's evidence--had resulted in the arrest of Tait and Mrs. Petty and several members of the infamous gang, whose names Canning had supplied. But Hale had managed to escape, likewise Captain Sargent, who had been warned by Maud. That clever young lady, having seen at Jabez's office that the game was up, did what she could to put the rest of the gang on the alert and then vanished like a bubble. Things were in this position when George sat hand in hand with Lesbia under the chestnut tree, discussing the future. "I saw Lord Charvington yesterday," explained the young man, "and he is now rapidly getting better. He proposes that we shall get married next month and accompany him to the south of France. He has a villa there which he will place at our disposal." "And Lady Charvington?" asked Lesbia timidly. "Your stepmother," said Walker, smiling. "No," said Lesbia shuddering, "don't call her that." "Why not? She has behaved exactly as a stepmother does--in fiction." Lesbia shook her head. "I think of her merely as Lady Charvington--a stranger, and when we are married I shall never set eyes on her again." "I don't think she wants to see you," said George drily. "She is still vindictive. It seems that she always loved your father and can never forgive your dead mother for having married him. Thus she visits her anger upon you, my dear. However, what she does or what she says matters little. And for her own sake she will say as little as possible." "She is a strange woman," sighed Lesbia, "and very unhappy." "Don't make any mistake, my dear. Lady Charvington is too hard-hearted to be unhappy. So long as she has her rank and her title and her crowds of adorers, she cares for no one. Whatever love she may have had for your father she has long since given entirely to herself." "Do Agatha and Lena know that I am their half-sister?" "No. I was talking about that yesterday to Lord Charvington. As you know he has not been able to do anything because of his illness, but he is only waiting to get on his feet again to put matters straight." "In what way?" asked the girl anxiously. "Well, you are his daughter, my dear, and he desires to acknowledge you as such in the most public manner." "No," said Lesbia firmly and sadly, "that would be useless and would do no good. Such an acknowledgment would only lead to a lot of questions being asked by my father's friends, and then the whole unhappy business would be raked up. I don't want my miserable story to be published in the papers, especially as Mr. Hale's name is so notorious. Let me marry you quietly, my dear, and then we can go away to France with my father for a few months. I have you, I have the money left to me by my mother, and I have found my real father--the rest matters very little." George kissed her. "You wise little darling," he said admiringly, "I think your decision is exactly what I should expect from your commonsense way of looking at things. I agree with you, that it is best to let sleeping dogs lie, and not to stir up muddy water, and not to--to--what other proverb shall I use, Lesbia?" "'Let the dead past bury its dead,'" she replied, seriously. "We have had much trouble, and we have been parted. Now the troubles appear to have come to an end and we are together. Let us marry and enjoy our good fortune and be happy in our own small way." "Amen! amen! amen!" said George, laughing, "and indeed I think we deserve the good fortune for we did not refuse to bear the cross." "And so have gained the crown of perfect love," said Lesbia contentedly as she nestled in her lover's arms. The garden was still brilliant with many-hued roses, and the river murmured a joyous song as it flowed tranquilly under the deeply blue summer sky. But the blackbird and his mate had gone away with their brood and the nest was deserted. Still other birds remained and other birds were singing lustily of summer joys. Basking in the warm sunshine, contented with each other's company, George and Lesbia passed into that hour of silence, which speaks of love so deep that no speech is needed. They listened to the birds, to the river, to the whispering of the breeze, and dreamed of a future that would always be happy. They were together, they understood each other, so nothing else mattered. But their golden hour was disturbed by Tim, who hobbled down the pathway with a distressed look on his ugly, kind face. The two expected him, so the arrival was not an intrusion. For several days Lesbia had insisted that Tim should explain how much he had known of the many disgraceful things lately found out. Hitherto Tim had evaded an explanation, but on that morning he had gravely promised to tell what he knew. Therefore, when he halted before the dreaming couple, George roused himself. "Here is Tim, my darling," he said with a laugh, "put him in the witness-box." "Ye might say the confessional, Masther Garge," replied Tim, squatting on the dry grass and looking like a good-tempered gnome. "What is it ye want to know, me darlin' heart?" "About my father--that is about Mr. Hale," said Lesbia, who had been addressed. "The bands av death on him," muttered Tim, using an ancient Irish oath. "Sure I knew he wasn't any kith or kin av yours, Miss, though by the same token I niver rightly knew as his lardship was yer father." "Tim," said his young mistress severely, "you told Mrs. Walker in my presence that there was no child with the poor lady who died at Wimbledon." "Is ut yer mother ye talk av, Miss?" asked Tim innocently. "Sure ut was lyin' I wor, an' if I hadn't lied, that divil--ut's the masther I mane--wud have brought throuble on ye." "In what way, Tim?" asked George, looking puzzled. "Augh, nivir ask me, sor. But wasn't I always listenin' and pokin' an' pryin' when that divil--ut's the masther I mane--had thim dirthy tatterdemalions here? Thaves they wor, an' spies, an' racavers av stolen goods, bad luck to thim! The masther caught me wan night an' larned as I knew av the divilments he wor indulgin' in. An' ses he, 'Tim,' ses he, if ye breathe wan wurrd I go to gaol, an' by the same token I'll see that Miss Lesbia goes wid me. Well ye know,' ses he, 'as she lies whin callin' me her father, but if ye tell her I am not,' ses he, 'it manes gaol fur us both.' Augh!" Tim rocked in much distress, "an' what cud I do, Miss dear, me not knowin' the true father av ye." "And if you had known, Tim?" asked Lesbia anxiously. "If I'd known as his lardship wor yer father," said Tim emphatically, "I wud have gone on me bare shinbones to ask him to take ye out av this divil's house. But me masther--bad luck to him!--lied like the father av lies, as he'll some day go to, an' being in the dark as it wor, I didn't dare to let a mouse's squeak av what I knew come to yer purty ears, Miss." "But you hinted that the cross would bring trouble, Tim." "I did that, Miss. Sure, whin the mother that bore ye died in the arrums av me own mother she guv the crass, 'an',' ses she, wid her last gasp, 'let me choild have it, whin she grows up to prove as she's me lawful choild. An' if there's money comin',' ses she, 'though be the same token, me sister has got it all, the crass may git it fur the choild. But nivir let her see her father,' ses she, 'for a bad man he's bin to me.'" "Not altogether bad, Tim," said Lesbia gently, "my mother was deceived. Did she tell Bridget my father's name?" "No, Miss," said Tim promptly, "had she towld, I'd have larned it whin me own mother died, and thin I'd have asked his lardship to take ye from this divil--ut's the masther I mane. But me mother sid nothin' for she knew nothin', save what she towld ye about the crass. 'And,' ses me mother to me whin she guv ye the crass, there'll be throuble over yon crass,' ses she, 'fur th' Sight's on me being near me latter end,' ses she. 'Throuble there'll be over the crass, an' sorrow an' tears an' sudden death. But thim who love will win clear and thim as is bad will come to the black grave.'" "There has been trouble certainly, Tim," said Lesbia sighing, "and the cross both began it and ended it, as your mother declared it would. But now, thank God," she turned to place her arms round George's neck, "it's all over and we shall have no more. Your mother prophesied rightly, Tim, save that there has been no sudden death or black grave, and there isn't likely to be." Tim rocked and shook his huge head. "Thim as is goin' to their long rest sees things as thim aloive can't get a squint at. Me mother foresaw th' sorrow an' tears av th' crass an' the joy which ye an' Masther Garge there have now, good luck to both ay ye! So the sudden death an' the black grave will come I doubt not. But here, me dears," said Tim, after a pause, "there's wan thing ye don't know as I'll tell ye." "And what is that?" asked George, smiling. "'Twas me, Masther Garge, as carried ye from the river bank to the room in yonder," Tim nodded towards the cottage. "I wor out fishin' an' I saw ye in the moonlight lying on the path, though be me sowl I nivir dreamed 'twas you. I rowed ashore an' found ye stunned an' bound, bad luck to the divil who did ut! I tuke ye into the cottage and called softly to the young misthress there. She thought 'twas a drame an' come down to see to you. An' now ye know, both av ye." Lesbia and George looked at one another in astonishment. "Why didn't you tell us this before?" asked Walker sharply. "And why did you bring me to the cottage?" "Sure now," said Tim in injured tones, "didn't I think as 'twas the masther had been up to some divilment, and didn't dare spake in case he'd get Miss Lesbia clapped into gaol 'longside him? But I knew as the masther wud nivir dare to harrum ye in his own house wid Miss Lesbia by the side av ye, an' so I brought ye here into his very jaws as it wor. An' wasn't I right, me dear sor?" "Yes," assented Walker promptly, "I think you were. It was very clever of you to have protected me in that way, even though it was Canning and not Hale who assaulted me. Well, Lesbia," he turned to the girl, "here is another thing made clear. Quite a surprise." "I hope it is the last surprise," said the girl, wearily, "I am very tired of being surprised." "In that case," said a smooth voice at her elbow, "you will be tired at seeing me." Lesbia started to her feet with a cry, and George with an exclamation of astonishment. As to Tim, he scrambled to his feet with an oath. "Augh, murther! murther!" cried the Irishman, "it's the black divil his own silf." "That's complimentary," said Hale, who was standing calm and composed near the lovers. "You were so busily engaged talking, Lesbia, that you did not hear me come down the path." "How dare you come here?" said the girl indignantly. "It's my own house. I had the key," retorted Hale coolly. "I opened the front door and entered. Finding no one within I came here and find that Tim is giving me away. But I am not so black as I am painted." "You are much worse, I daresay," said George bluntly. "Oh, you're there, you lucky young man," said Hale, raising his eyebrows. "I congratulate you on marrying Lesbia and on getting the money." "In spite of all your plotting," said Walker sharply. Hale sat down on the bench with a sudden look of fatigue. He was cool and smiling and bore himself both shamelessly and dauntlessly. But it was apparent that he behaved thus out of bravado. In spite of his boldness, and of the fact that he was dressed as carefully as ever, he was thoroughly ill and had his back to the wall. "You had better leave this place," said Lesbia, to her lover, "the police are hunting for you." "Someone else is hunting for me," said Hale gloomily, "Maud Ellis is on my track swearing vengeance." "Why should she?" "Because to get the money and induce her to play her part, I promised to marry her. I have no intention of doing so. Then again, for my own safety, I have sent a communication to the police offering to tell all I know about Tait and his gang on condition that I am let off. Maud, confound her, has found this out, and swears to have my life." "She would scarcely go so far as that," said George scornfully. "Oh, I think so," said Hale quietly, "she can't show herself, as she is in danger from the police also, and so will revenge herself as she best can. I don't think there's much she would stick at. I caught sight of her on the London platform as I came down this morning, so I expect she will follow me to this house. There will be trouble unless you can aid me to get away." "How can we compound a felony?" asked George, frowning. "It is better than to see a tragedy," retorted Hale. "I am not afraid of Maud unless she takes me by surprise; but that is just what she will do. I am not your father, Lesbia, as you know now, and perhaps I have not been kind in my treatment. All the same I ask you to exercise that kind nature which you always declared you possessed, and give me fifty pounds to get abroad with. Once across the Channel I can shift for myself." "I have not got fifty pounds," said Lesbia hesitating. Badly as Hale had treated her she yet wished to assist him, and truly he was in great need of the coals of fire which she could heap upon his head. "You can soon get it," said Hale eagerly. "Charvington will give you anything. Send Walker to ask him for the money and I can remain concealed in the cottage until he returns." The lovers looked at one another. Both were inclined to assist the miserable man, little as he deserved kindness at their hands. Tim, with a grim face, stood neutral, but being of a less forgiving nature, would gladly have pitched his old master into the river had Lesbia but lifted a finger. But she gave no sign, so Tim waited. It was hard to say what would have happened had not Fate decided the matter. The four people in the garden were so deeply engaged in conversation that they did not observe a boat crossing the river from the opposite shore, some distance above the garden. Tim, indeed, did catch a glimpse of a craft holding two people, but did not take much notice. The boat reached the near shore and then dropped down alongside the bank until it was directly abreast of the chestnut tree. Then for the first time, George and Lesbia looked round at the sound of dipping oars. Hale raised his head and looked also. The next moment there was the sharp report of a revolver and he rolled off the bench shot through the breast. Twice again the revolver spoke and twice Hale was wounded. Maud Ellis was a sure shot. "There," cried she, flinging the weapon ashore to Lesbia, "you can finish him off. He betrayed my uncle, he betrayed me, he betrayed us all. Only Sargent, who is rowing me, and I have escaped. Good-bye, Lesbia, you have your lover--my lover--the man I adore. I hope you'll be happy. I have done justice on that blackguard, so I am going to clear. You'll never see me again, and you can thank your stars that I did not kill you as well as that scoundrel there. George--good-bye--good-bye." She sat down quickly in the boat, which was already receding rapidly from the garden. Sargent apparently had not expected that Maud would have been so thorough in her vengeance and could be seen talking angrily to her. He rowed with all his might across the river, let the boat drift down-stream and leaped ashore. Maud followed alertly and the two set off running rapidly. Where they went, or how they escaped George never knew; but that was the last seen of them in England. Meanwhile Lesbia was on her knees beside the wretched man who had done her so much harm, striving to staunch his wounds with her handkerchief. Tim already had run up the path shouting for the police, and George was about to follow, as he wanted Maud to be arrested for her dastardly crime, when Hale opened his eyes. "Are you there, Lesbia?" he asked faintly. "It's no use my asking for your forgiveness, as I hate being a sneak at the last moment. I have lived bad and I have died bad. But I can say this, that you are the sole human being I regret having injured. You are a fool, as you have always been, like your father--but you are a sweet fool. And I--I----" he choked. "Hush! hush!" said Lesbia distractedly. "George, take him into the house, and fetch the doctor. We must save him----" "No," gasped Hale with a flash of energy, "don't save me to let me rot in gaol. Maud has done me a good turn after all. I die and--and--I cheat--I cheat the law," he opened his eyes again and stared at the two pale faces, then smiled. "God bless you," he gasped, "oh, to think that I should bless----" he laughed, but the effort was too great and he fell back dead. At the same moment Tim came running down with a policeman at his heels. "It's too late, Tim, he is dead," said Lesbia faintly. "Dead is ut?" muttered Tim, staring and crossing himself. "Then me mother wor right in all she said. Sudden death and the black grave. Augh! Sure 'twas the truth me mother spake afther all." CHAPTER XXVI THE END OF IT ALL THE villa owned by Lord Charvington at Nice was beautifully situated, beautifully furnished, and beautifully built. Endless money had been spent upon it to make it as perfect as any human habitation could be. Lady Charvington was particularly fond of it, and her extravagance was evident both in the house and in the lovely gardens. Great was her rage when she heard that her husband had invited George and his young wife and her arch-enemy Mrs. Walker to stay there with him. But she was even more angry when she learned that Charvington had made a free gift of the villa to his daughter. "His conduct has always been atrocious," said Lady Charvington to Jabez, who was the sole person to whom she could speak of such things, since for her own sake she was forced to hold her tongue to the world at large, "but this is the worst thing he has ever done. How dare he give my villa to that horrid girl?" "He has every right to," said Jabez drily, "as the villa is Lord Charvington's own property. And I beg leave to state that I do not consider young Mrs. Walker a horrid girl. She is very sweet, and is bearing her good fortune as modestly as she bore her bad luck bravely." "I hate her," said Lady Charvington fervently. "Why, may I ask?" "Because I hated her mother. I always loved Charvington, and she took him from me." "But you got him in the end," Jabez reminded her. "Got him. Yes, I got the rags and tatters of the passion he had for that detestable Kate Morse. I never forgave her while she lived, and I certainly shall not forgive her now she is dead." "Very good; but you needn't hate her daughter," expostulated Jabez earnestly; "consider how unhappy the poor girl has been, and through no fault of her own. Even now--in deference to her own wish, I admit--she is not acknowledged by her father, publicly at least." "I don't care," cried Lady Charvington, with all the venom of an angry woman. "I hate the girl, and I shall always hate her. But I didn't come here to listen to your views, Mr. Jabez. What I wish to know is if I can insist that my villa shall be given back to me." "No," said Jabez, and very glad he was to be able to reply in the negative, "the villa was never settled on you, and Lord Charvington has a perfect right to deal as he pleases with his own property." "It is my property, and Charvington's a brute. I wonder that I ever loved him--indeed I do," cried the lady vehemently, "and to think of that horrid girl getting the husband she wanted and the fifty thousand pounds, and my villa, and--oh!" she stamped, "it makes one doubt if there is a Providence." "I fear," said Jabez gravely, as she rose to depart, "that some day, if you bear such ill-will towards one who has never injured you, that you will find there _is_ a Providence." "Pooh! pooh! That's all goody-goody talk," said Lady Charvington contemptuously, "but that I have to think of Agatha and Lena I should get a separation from my husband. As it is, I shall spend as much money as I can, and enjoy myself in my own way. I don't want to see him." "I fancy you'll see very little of him," said Jabez drily, as he accompanied her to the door. "Lord Charvington is fond of a quiet life. All you have to do is to enjoy your position and the ample income which he allows you, and hold your tongue about these family troubles." "Oh, of course you are on his side," cried Lady Charvington in a rage. "I really believe that you suggested he should give that nasty girl my villa." "Pardon me," said the solicitor, skilfully dodging the question, "it never was your villa." "It was, and she has stolen it. I only hope she'll be as thoroughly unhappy as she well can be, with the fool she's married and her disagreeable mother-in-law. Judith was always horrid." "I fear you will be disappointed. Young Mrs. Walker adores her mother-in-law, and is adored in turn. They are, as you know, all at the villa with Lord Charvington and, as I gather, perfectly happy." "How disgusting," cried Lady Charvington vindictively, "but I shall wait for the interference of an overruling Providence. Some day the sins of the lot of them will come home to them, and they will be thoroughly miserable." "And your ladyship's sins?" inquired Jabez very gravely. "Sins," she stared, "I have none." After which speech, which completely silenced the lawyer, so taken aback was he by its amazing impudence, she took her departure. All the same she also took his advice and said nothing of what had happened in connection with the affairs of the amethyst cross. And in time--as she could not keep up a hostile attitude for ever--she found it politic to smooth over things with her worried husband. But she never forgave Lesbia to her dying day. Not that Lesbia cared. She was absolutely happy with her husband and mother-in-law and father at the villa. The income derived from her mother yielded over two thousand a year, and this had been supplemented by Lord Charvington, anxious to make amends. What with a large income and a lovely villa, and a handsome, affectionate husband, Lesbia was very fortunate indeed, and felt quite glad that she had gone through so much trouble, to get to such a goal. Something of this sort she said to her father one evening after dinner. The party were seated on the terrace which overlooked the deeply blue waters of the Mediterranean. At the moment, these were dyed with rosy hues from the setting sun. Mrs. Walker, looking much less stern and much more composed, was seated in a deep arm-chair near Lesbia, whom she could scarcely bear out of her sight. Lord Charvington, now looking wonderfully hale and hearty--for it was six months since his attack of apoplexy--sat near a small round table upon which stood coffee and liqueurs. George lounged about with a cigar, casting looks of affection on Lesbia. The quartette, arrayed in evening dress amidst beautiful surroundings, looked thoroughly happy and well-to-do. After the storm had come the calm, and when recalling the storm, as sometimes she could not help doing, Lesbia always spoke cheerfully. "The trouble was worth going through, to come to this," she said, smiling in a happy manner. "I think so too, dear," observed George, who was always hovering in her vicinity. "And I think we have learned the lesson which those very troubles were sent to teach." "What lesson?" asked Lord Charvington lazily. "To trust in God." "Yes," said Mrs. Walker, who was knitting, "you and Lesbia have learned that, and I have learned a lesson also. I have learned to be more sympathetic and more liberal-minded. We are all mortal, and no one has any right to judge another person not knowing that person's temptations." "Do you allude to Walter?" asked Charvington. "Yes. He behaved badly, I allow; but then his will was not strong enough to struggle against the evil that was in him. And after all," Mrs. Walker laid down her knitting, "he was terribly punished. He was snatched out of life unprepared. I hope he has found mercy. But the evil that he did lived after him. Alas! Alas!" "I think Tait and his gang found that was so," said George grimly. "From what was said at the trial, it seemed that Hale was the soul of the gang, even though Tait posed as the head. Canning, of course, escaped because he turned king's evidence and is now in Italy; but Tait got a long sentence." "Mrs. Petty and the rest of the gang also," observed Charvington, "but Maud Ellis and Alfred Sargent escaped." "They were very lucky," said George reflectively. "The police, advised by Tim, were on their track almost at once, but they never caught them. As they were not disguised I wonder that they ever escaped." "Hale was not disguised either, I heard you say," remarked Charvington. "It seems to me that audacity favoured the lot of them. Hale would have escaped also, I doubt not, had he not been shot by that wretched woman." "Why do you shudder, George?" asked Mrs. Walker, at this point. "I am thinking how easily she could have shot Lesbia," said George reluctantly. "She had two or three shots left after she polished off Hale. But she flung the revolver ashore and made a sentimental speech wishing myself and Lesbia good luck. I should have thought--but there," George sighed, "no man can understand a woman." "No woman can understand a man," said Lesbia, laughing. "But I am glad Maud did not shoot me. Where is she now?" Charvington removed his cigar. "I have reason to believe, from some facts which came to Jabez's ears, that she has married Alfred Sargent and is engaged in making trouble in a South American Republic." "Sargent is not strong enough to do much," objected George. Mrs. Walker shook her head. "I believe Alfred Sargent was a much cleverer man than his appearance warranted," she said sharply. "He looked like a fool, but he acted like a wise man. Not only did he escape, but he managed to carry off his thievish earnings. Then look how cleverly he behaved in society in never being suspected. Yet he stole--as we learned at the trial of Tait and the rest--at balls, at weddings, from private houses, and blackmailed any number of people. A dangerously clever man, I call him." "Well, don't let us talk any more about him," said Charvington impatiently, "Maud is clever if you like, and probably will end in imposing him on some second-rate republic, as its President, even though he is a foreigner. I believe that there is no end to that woman's ambition. But he and she are both out of our lives. Also Hale is dead, and as Lesbia has now changed her name, she will not be connected with the sordid past in any way. Let us talk of something more agreeable." "The amethyst cross for instance," said Lesbia pointedly. Charvington wriggled. "Why? That belongs to the disagreeable past." "It taught George and me a lesson," said Lesbia seriously, "and I am sorry that it has been lost sight of." "It has not been lost sight of," said Charvington, after a pause. "Jabez got it from Hale and restored it to me. But I did not show it to you, Lesbia child, because I thought that the sight of it would be painful." "Not now, that I have learned its lesson. Where is it, father?" "Call Tim." Lesbia rang a silver bell which was on the table and shortly Tim, looking more grotesque and more like a gnome than ever, appeared. He was with the young couple as the majordomo of their small household, and enjoyed himself hugely. "Tim," ordered Lord Charvington, giving him a key, "go to my study and open my dispatch box. Bring me the morocco case you will find in it. A red morocco case." "Yes, yer lardship," said the majordomo gravely, as he departed. "Are you sure you want the cross, Lesbia?" asked Mrs. Walker seriously. "Yes. Whenever I forget to be kind and thoughtful, whenever I am inclined to judge others harshly, the cross will remind me of my own shortcomings." "You have none, dear," said George fondly. "George," Mrs. Walker smiled, "you are spoiling her." "I know someone else who spoils me more," whispered Lesbia roguishly, and Mrs. Walker smoothed the girl's hair. At this moment Tim returned with the case. Lord Charvington opened it and took out the ornament which glittered in the rosy hues of sunset. "Presarve us!" whispered Tim crossing himself. "The unlucky crass!" "Lucky now, Tim," said Charvington, slipping a slender watch-chain he wore from his waistcoat. "It found me my daughter. Here, Lesbia," he threaded the loop at the top of the cross, "you can wear it now." Lesbia bent her head and her father threw the chain on her neck. The amethyst cross gleamed with purple fire on her white bosom, a symbol of all that had passed and a symbol also of a brighter future. "I shall always wear it," said Lesbia with serious lovely eyes. "'Refuse and lose,'" said George meditatively, "well we have not refused the cross although I daresay had it been in our powers to do so we should have shirked the burden." "Thank Heaven you were not allowed to, for the bearing of the burden has taught you much," said Mrs. Walker devoutly. "It has earned me the crown of perfect love," said George, drawing Lesbia to his breast. "And that is worth everything," Lesbia replied, kissing him. THE END COLSTON AND CO. LTD. PRINTERS, EDINBURGH, 
56432	----	Google Books (University of California Library--Los Angeles) Transcriber's Notes: 1.Page scan source: https://books.google.com/books?id=Rm9LAQAAMAAJ (University of California Library--Los Angeles) 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe]. THE PEACOCK OF JEWELS BY FERGUS HUME AUTHOR OF "THE MYSTERY OF A HANSOM CAB," "THE RED WINDOW," "THE YELLOW HOLLY," "THE SEALED MESSAGE," "THE DISAPPEARING EYE," ETC., ETC. G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK _Copyright_, 1910, _By_ G W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY THE PEACOCK OF JEWELS CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE ROTHERHITHE CRIME. II. AT THE VICARAGE. III. A STORY OF THE PAST. IV. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. V. THE LETTER. VI. THE BOARDING-HOUSE. VII. YULETIDE. VIII. AN EXPLANATION. IX. ANOTHER TRAIL. X. MR. SORLEY'S JEWELS. XI. JOTTY. XII. AN INDIAN CLIENT. XIII. AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR. XIV. FACE TO FACE. XV. THE BLACK BAG. XVI. MISS INDERWICK'S EXCURSION. XVII. THE SECRET. XVIII. THE TREASURE HUNT. XIX. AT DAWN. XX. WHO IS GUILTY? XXI. THE TRUTH. XXII. CALM AFTER STORM. THE PEACOCK OF JEWELS CHAPTER I THE ROTHERHITHE CRIME To find Barkers Inn was much the same to an ordinary person as looking for a needle in the proverbial haystack. Dick Latimer, however, knew its exact whereabouts, because he lived there, and on this foggy November night he was making for it unerringly with the homing instinct of a bee. Leaving Fleet Street behind him, somewhere about eleven-thirty, he turned into Chancery Lane, and then struck off to the right down a by-road which narrowed to an alley, and finally ended in a cul-de-sac. Here the young man hurried through the rusty iron gates of a granite archway, and found himself in an oblong courtyard paved with cobble-stones and surrounded by tumble-down houses with steep roofs of discolored tiles. A few steps took him across this to a crooked little door, which he entered to mount a crooked little staircase, and in one minute he was on the first-floor landing, where a tiny gas-jet pricked the gloom with a bluish spot of light. Hastily using his latchkey, he admitted himself through a door on the left into a stuffy dark passage, technically called the entrance hall. Eventually entering the sitting-room, he hurled himself into a creaking basket-chair, and gave thanks to the gods of home that he had arrived. The friend with whom Latimer shared these Barkers Inn chambers was seated by the fire clothed comfortably in a suit of shabby old flannels, reading a letter and smoking a briar-root, complacently at ease. He nodded when Dick stormed into the room, and spoke with his pipe between his teeth. "Beastly night, isn't it?" remarked Mr. Fuller, who had been spending the evening at home very pleasantly. "You'd say much more than that, Alan, my boy, if you'd been out in the fog," retorted Latimer. "Bur-r-r I'm glad to be indoors and to find you still out of bed at the eleventh hour. I've had adventures: official adventures." "Connected with your employment as a journalist, I suppose," said Fuller in a lazy manner, and tucking the letter into his breast pocket, "but seriously speaking, Dicky, are adventures to be found in this over-civilized city?" "Romance stalks the London streets, more or less disguised as the commonplace, my son. I can a tale unfold, but sha'n't do so until I change my kit and have a Scotch hot on the way to my mouth. Is the water boiling?" he demanded, directing his gaze towards the old-fashioned grate where a small black kettle fumed and hissed on the hob. "It's been boiling for me," said Fuller, indicating an empty tumbler at his elbow, "but I've enough water for your needs." "I only hope you've left enough whisky, which is far more precious. Poke up the fire and warm my slippers and make a fuss over me. I want to be fussed," said Dick plaintively, as he retreated to his bedroom, "for I'm a poor orphan boy alone in this foggy world." "Ass!" observed Alan politely, and exposed the soles of his friend's slippers to the fire, "what about supper?" "I've had that," sang out Latimer, "at someone else's cost." "You must have ruined him then with your appetite," answered Fuller, laughing; while he tilted back his chair to place his feet against the mantelpiece and his hands behind his head. In this position he smoked quietly and admired the photograph of an extremely pretty girl, which stood beside the clock, while the small black kettle sang the song of home. The room was both long and broad with a low whitewash ceiling, crossed with black oak beams, a somewhat slanting floor--owing to the great age of the building--and three squat windows which overlooked the dingy courtyard. These were draped with faded curtains of green rep, drawn at this late hour to exclude the cold, and before one stood the writing-table of Latimer, while the escritoire of Fuller bulked largely against the other. Between the two, and blocking the approach to the middle window, stretched a slippery horse-hair sofa, covered with a rugged Eastern shawl to hide its many deficiencies. A shabby Kidderminster carpet concealed the worn floor, but its sad hues were brightened by three or four gayly colored mats, purchased at a cheap price. The round table, the unmatched chairs, the heavy sideboard, the sofa aforesaid, and the chipped bookcase, were all the flotsam and jetsam of auction rooms, belonging, more or less, to the comfortably ugly style of the Albert period. On the plain green-papered walls were various photographs of men and women, with sundry college groups; pictures of football teams, cricketers and boating-crews; odd bits of china and miniature statues on brackets; likewise foils, fencing masks, boxing gloves and such-like paraphernalia of sport. It was a real man's room, suggestive of exuberant virility, and remarkably untidy. All the same there was order in its disorder, as both Latimer and Fuller knew exactly where to lay their hands on any article they wanted. The room was chaotic enough to drive a woman to distraction, but comfortable and home-like for all that. The journalist returned in a well-worn smoking suit, and proceeded to light his pipe. Fuller brewed him a glass of grog, and handed it across as he sat down in the saddleback chair on the verge of the hearthrug. The two men were fine specimens of humanity in their different ways. Latimer was large and fair and heavily built, with big limbs, and a suggestion of great strength. He had untidy yellow hair and a yellow mustache which he tugged at hard when perplexed. His blue eyes were keen, but on the whole he did not reveal much brain power in his face, which undoubtedly told the truth, since he was more of an athlete than a scholar. Fuller, on the contrary, was brilliantly clever, and as a solicitor was doing very well for himself in a dingy Chancery Lane office. He was tall and slim, with a wiry frame, and a lean, clean-shaven face, clearly cut and bronzed. Indeed with his steady dark eyes and closely clipped black hair, and remarkably upright figure, he suggested the soldier. This was probably due to heredity, since he came of a fighting line for generations, although his father was a country vicar. Also, in spite of his sedentary occupation, the young man lived as much as possible in the open, and when not running down to his native village for weekends, haunted the parks on every possible occasion, or walked four miles on Hampstead Heath and into the country beyond. It was no wonder that he looked tanned, alert, bright-eyed, and active, more like a squire of the Midlands than a votary of Themis. Since Fuller senior was poor, the boy had to earn his bread and butter somehow, and after he left Cambridge had elected to become a lawyer. Shortly after he blossomed out into a full-blown solicitor, he chanced upon his old school friend, Dick Latimer, who had taken to journalism, and the two had set up house together in the ancient Inn. On the whole they were fairly comfortable, if not blessed with an excess of the world's goods. Finally, being young, both were healthy and happy and hopeful and extremely enterprising. "Well now, Dicky, what have you been doing?" asked Alan, when his friend, clothed and in his right mind, sipped his grog and puffed smoke-clouds. "Attending an inquest at Rotherhithe." "Oh, that murder case!" Latimer nodded and stared into the fire. "It's a queer affair." "So far as I have read the newspaper reports, it seems to be a very commonplace one." "I told you that Romance was often disguised as the Commonplace, Alan." "As how, in this instance?" His friend did not reply directly. "What do you know of the matter?" he asked so abruptly that Fuller looked up in surprise. "Why, what can I know save what I have read in the papers?" "Nothing, of course. I never suggested that you do know anything. But it's no use my going over old ground, so I wish to hear what you have learned from the reports." "Very little, if you will be so precise," said Alan after a pause. "In a fourth-class Rotherhithe boarding-house frequented chiefly by seamen, a man called Baldwin Grison was found dead in his bedroom and on his bed, a few days ago. The Dagoes and Lascars and such British seamen as live under the same roof are not accused of committing the crime, and as Grison was desperately poor and degraded, there was no reason why he should be murdered, since he wasn't worth powder and shot. Old Mother Slaig, who keeps the house, declared that Grison retired to his room at ten o'clock, and it was only next morning, when he did not come down, that she learned of his death." Latimer nodded again. "All true and plainly stated. You certainly think in a methodical manner, Alan. The man was found lying on his bed in the usual shabby suit of clothes he wore. But his breast was bare, and he had been pierced to the heart by some fine instrument which cannot be found. Death must have been instantaneous according to the report of the doctor who was called in. But you are wrong in thinking that the crime was motiveless. I believe that robbery was the motive." "The papers didn't report any belief of the police that such was the case." "The police don't know everything--at least the inspector didn't, although he knows a great deal more now," said Latimer, removing his pipe, "but the single room occupied by the deceased was tumbled upside down, so it is evident that the assassin was looking for the fruits of his crime. Whether he found what he wanted is questionable." "What was it?" asked Fuller, interested in the mystery. "I'll tell you that later, although I really can't say for certain if I am right. Let us proceed gradually and thresh out the matter thoroughly." "Fire ahead. I am all attention." "The police," continued Dick meditatively, "hunted out evidence as to the identity and the status of the dead man, between the time of death and the holding of the inquest. Inspector Moon--he's the Rotherhithe chap in charge of the case--advertised, or made inquiries, or got hold of the sister somehow. At all events she turned up yesterday and appeared at the inquest this very day." "Who is the sister?" "An elderly shrimp of a woman with light hair and a shrill voice, and a pair of very hard blue eyes. She heard that her brother was murdered, or Moon hunted her up in some way, and willingly came forward with her story." "What is her story?" "I'm just coming to it. What an impatient chap you are, Alan. Miss Grison--Louisa is her Christian name--keeps a shabby boarding-house in Bloomsbury, and is one of those people who have seen better days. It seems that her brother Baldwin was secretary to a person, whose name I shall tell you later, and was kicked out of his billet twenty years ago, because he couldn't run straight." "What had he done?" "I can't say. Miss Grison wouldn't confess, and as the story wasn't pertinent to the murder she wasn't pressed to confess. All she said was that her brother was an opium-smoker and after losing his billet drifted to Rotherhithe, where he could indulge in his vice. She tried to keep him respectable, and allowed him ten shillings a week to live on. But he sank lower and lower, so she saw very little of him. All she knew was that she sent the ten shilling postal order regularly every Friday so that Baldwin might get it on Saturday. He never visited her and he never wrote to her, but lived more or less like a hermit in Mother Slaig's boarding-house, and went out every night to smoke opium in some den kept by a Chinaman called Chin-Chow. Miss Grison sobbed bitterly when she gave her evidence and insisted that her brother owed his degradation to the enmity of people." "What sort of people?" "She didn't particularize. He was weak rather than bad, she insisted, and when he lost his situation, he lost heart also. At all events he devoted himself to the black smoke, and lived in the Rotherhithe slum, until he was found dead by the old hag who keeps the house." "Did Miss Grison's evidence throw any light on the crime?" "No. She declared that she did not know of anyone who would have killed the poor devil." "Was there any evidence on the part of the doctor, or Mother Slaig, or those seamen in the house to show who murdered the man?" asked Fuller. "Not the slightest. The house was open morn, noon and night, and those who lived there came and went at their will without being watched. It's a rowdy locality and a rowdy house, but Mother Slaig keeps fairly good order as she's a formidable old hag resembling Vautrin's aunt in Balzac's story." "Madame Nourrisau; I remember," said Fuller, nodding. "Then I take it that no one in the house heard any struggle, or cry for help?" "No. Besides, as I have told you, death must have been instantaneous. No one, so far as Mother Slaig or others in the house knew, visited Grison on that night, or indeed on any other occasion--so they say--since the man was more or less of a hermit. He went to bed at ten and at the same hour next morning he was found dead with his room all upside down." "Was anything missed?" "There was nothing to miss," said Latimer quickly. "I saw the room, which only contained a small bed, a small table and two chairs. The man had but one, suit of ragged clothes, which he concealed under a fairly good overcoat his sister declared she sent to him last Christmas. He was desperately poor and never seemed to do anything but smoke opium." "What kind of a man was he to look at?" "Something like the sister. Small and fair-haired, with blue eyes. Of course, owing to the black smoke, he was a wreck morally and physically and mentally, according to Mother Slaig, and the boys used to throw stones at him in the streets. However, to make a long story short, nothing could be found to show how the poor wretch had come by his death, so an open verdict was brought in--the sole thing which could be done. To-morrow his sister, who seems to have loved him in spite of his degradation, is taking away the corpse for burial." "Where is it to be buried?" Latimer looked up slowly. "In the churchyard of Belstone, Sussex," he said. Alan sat up very straight and his manner expressed his unbounded astonishment. "That's my father's parish," he gasped. "Yes. And the churchyard is attached to the building your father preaches in, my son," said Latimer dryly, "odd coincidence, isn't it?" "But--but--what has this murdered man to do with Belstone?" asked Fuller in a bewildered manner. "That's what I want to find out, Alan. Can't you remember the name?" "Never heard of it. And yet the name Baldwin Grison is not a common one. I should certainly have remembered it had it been mentioned to me. It is odd certainly, as Belstone isn't exactly the hub of the universe. Grison! Baldwin Grison." Fuller shook his head. "No, I can't recall it. To be sure he may have been in the village twenty years ago, since you say that he has lived since that time in Rotherhithe. I was only seven years of age then, so I can remember nothing. But my father may know. I'll ask him when I go down this week-end." "There's another thing I wish you to ask him." "What is that?" "The romantic thing which lifts this case out of the commonplace. Only Inspector Moon knows what I am about to tell you and he informed me with a recommendation not to make it public." "Then why do you tell me?" said Fuller quickly. "Is it wise?" "Quite wise," responded his friend imperturbably, "because I asked Moon's permission to take you into our confidence." Fuller looked puzzled. "Why?" Again Dicky replied indirectly. "It seems that Grison, unlucky beggar, had one friend, a street-arab brat called Jotty." "Jotty what--or is Jotty a surname?" "It's the only name the boy has. He's a clever little Cockney of fourteen, and wise beyond his years, picking up a living as best he can. Grison used to give him food occasionally, and sometimes money. Jotty ran errands for the man, and was the sole person admitted to his room." "Well! well! well!" said Alan impatiently. "I'm coming to it, if you don't hurry me," said Latimer coolly. "Jotty on one occasion entered the room, and found Grison nursing between his hands--what do you think?" "How the deuce should I know?" "A peacock of jewels!" Alan stared, and cast a swift glance at the photograph of the pretty girl on the mantelpiece. "A peacock of jewels!" he repeated under his breath. "Or a jewelled peacock, if you like. Grison put it away when he saw the boy: but that he had such an article is quite certain, as Jotty hasn't the imagination to describe the thing. Now in spite of all search, Inspector Moon can't find that peacock, and you may be sure that after Jotty told his tale the inspector searched very thoroughly. "Well?" Alan cast a second look at the photograph. "Well," echoed Dick, rather annoyed, "can't you draw an inference. I think, and Moon thinks, that the assassin murdered Grison in order to gain possession of the peacock, which was of great value. If he wants to make money out of it he will have to sell it, and in this way the inspector hopes to trap the beast. For that reason, and so that the assassin may not be placed on his guard, Moon doesn't want anyone but you and me and himself to know the truth. You can't guess why I have told you this." "Yes." Alan nodded and rubbed his knees, while a puzzled look came over his dark clean-cut face. "I remember telling you about the fetish of the Inderwicks ages ago." "Tell me again as soon as you can withdraw your gaze from that photo." Fuller colored, and laughed consciously. "When a man is in love, much may be forgiven him. And you must admit, Dicky, that she's the beauty of the world. Now isn't she?" Latimer eyed the photograph in his turn. "She's pretty," he said judicially. "Pretty," echoed Fuller with great indignation, "she's an angel, and the loveliest girl ever created, besides being the most fascinating of women." "Oh, spare me your raptures," broke in Dick impatiently. "Your taste in looks isn't mine, and I've met Miss Marie Inderwick, which you seem to forget. She is very nice and very pretty and----" "Oh, hang your lukewarm phraseology," interrupted the other. "She's the most adorable girl in the universe." "I admit that, for the sake of getting on with the business in hand. Now what about the peacock of jewels?" "I told you all I know, which isn't much," said Alan, reluctantly changing the subject. "Marie lives at the big house in Belstone which is called 'The Monastery' because it was given by Henry VIII., to the Inderwick of----" "Oh, confound Henry VIII. What about the peacock?" "It's the family fetish, and for one hundred years has been in the possession of the Inderwicks. It was stolen some twenty years ago, and no one ever knew what became of it. Now----" "Now it turns up in the possession of Baldwin Grison, who has evidently been murdered on its account. And yet you deny latter-day romance." "Well," observed Alan rubbing his knees again, "I admit that your truth is stranger than your professional journalistic fiction. But how did this man become possessed of the ornament?" Latimer shrugged his mighty shoulders. "How dense you are! Didn't I tell you how Louisa Grison declared that her brother had been secretary to a certain person, whose name I said I would tell you later on. I shall tell you now, if you aren't clever enough to guess it." "Rats," said Fuller inelegantly. "How can you expect me to guess it?" "By using what common-sense Nature has given you. Hang it, man, here is an excessively unique ornament belonging to the Inderwick family which has been missing for over twenty years. Grison's sister says that she intends to bury her brother's body in Belstone churchyard, and declared at the inquest that at one time he was the secretary to a certain person. Now if you put two and two together, you will find that the person is----" "Mr. Sorley. Randolph Sorley," cried Fuller suddenly enlightened. "In other words, the uncle and guardian of Miss Marie Inderwick. Well now, you can see that two and two do make four." "Humph!" Fuller nursed his chin and looked thoughtfully at the fire. "So this murdered man was Mr. Sorley's secretary. According to his sister he lost the situation--perhaps, Dick, because he stole the peacock." "We can't be positive of that, Alan. Grison, in his secretarial capacity, certainly lived at The Monastery and assisted Mr. Sorley in preparing for the press that dreary book about precious stones which seems to be his life work. He had every chance to steal, but if Mr. Sorley had suspected him he assuredly would have had him arrested." "Perhaps Grison bolted and could not be traced." "I think not. He was, so far as I can gather from what Miss Grison says, dismissed in due form. He lived with her for a time at the Bloomsbury boarding-house and later on drifted to Rotherhithe to indulge in his love for the black smoke. No! no! no! my son. Mr. Sorley could never have believed that Grison was in possession of the peacock of jewels." "Then why did he discharge him?" "We must find out, and that won't be easy after twenty years. Mr. Sorley is growing old and may not remember clearly. But Grison on the evidence of Jotty undoubtedly had this peacock, and since it cannot be found, he must have been murdered by someone who desired the ornament. The disorder of that sordid room shows that a strict search was made by the assassin, and it could be for nothing save the golden peacock. Now, if the assassin did find it, Alan, and if you and I and Moon and Jotty keep silent, the man will think that he is safe and will sell his plunder." "Wait a bit, Dick. He may unset the jewels and sell them separately. Then it will be difficult to trace him by the sale of the article." "True enough of Solomon. However we must take our chance of that. If he is certain that the loss is not suspected he may sell the whole without splitting it into parts. If he does, Moon--who has his eye on all pawnshops and jewellers and on various receivers of stolen goods--can spot the beast and arrest him. But, as a second string to our bow, it is just as well to know all about this family fetish, since its history may throw some light on the mystery of its disappearance. Now what you have to do, my son, is to go down to Belstone and learn all you can about Grison when he was secretary to old Sorley. Ask Miss Inderwick and her uncle about him." "Marie won't know anything save by hearsay," said Alan, shaking his head. "Remember she's only twenty years of age, and was an infant in arms when the family fetish disappeared. Besides if I make inquiries I shall have to account for my curiosity by revealing what you have told me to keep secret." "H'm! h'm! h'm!" murmured the other, frowning, "there is that objection certainly. We must put out our sprat to catch the mackerel. However, it wants three days till Saturday, so I shall see Moon and hear what he suggests about the matter. The Inderwicks are poor, aren't they, Alan?" "There is only one Inderwick left," answered the young solicitor, rising to stretch his limbs, "and that is Marie. Of course she is desperately poor, as I told you ages ago. She has The Monastery, the few acres of the park, and two hundred a year to live on. Sorley is her mother's brother, her uncle and guardian, with another two hundred income. By pooling the cash, the two manage to keep things going." "H'm! It's a dull life for the girl. Do you like Mr. Sorley?" "No," replied Fuller serenely. "He's a selfish old animal, who only regards Marie as a necessary piece of furniture. She was at school for many years and only returned home some twelve months ago. Now she acts as her uncle's housekeeper, and leads an infernally dull life. Mr. Sorley never seems to think that Marie is young and requires enjoyment. He's a beast." "Ho," chuckled Dick shrewdly, "you seem to dislike him excessively. I can easily see that he doesn't favour your suit." "No, hang him, he doesn't. If Marie married me, the old man would be left with his two hundred a year to get on as best he could, and you may be jolly well sure, Dicky, that he doesn't want to leave the big house." "Natural enough," yawned Latimer. "Well, my son, you help Moon to hunt down Grison's assassin and recover the fetish of the Inderwicks and perhaps the old man, out of gratitude, may accept you as a nephew-in-law." "It's worth trying for at all events," said Alan thoughtfully. "Marie's an angel, and I'm bound to marry her sooner or later. I'll go down on Saturday and start operations." CHAPTER II AT THE VICARAGE Alan Fuller thoughtfully tucked the rug round his knees in the third-class compartment of the train which was taking him to Belstone. There was no station at the village, but the Brighton express stopped at Lewes, and thence he could walk or drive to his destination. The young man was in tip-top spirits, as the suggestion of Latimer that he should join in the search for Grison's assassin, and secure the return of the peacock fetish to Marie Inderwick, 'rendered him hopeful that success in this direction would lead to his marriage with the girl. Of course that could not take place for some time since he was not yet making a sufficient income to justify his becoming the husband of the most adorable girl in the universe. Still, if Mr. Sorley would withdraw his absurd opposition--and he probably would do so, were the peacock recovered--Alan concluded that he might become officially engaged to Marie, and so she would not be snapped up by other suitors. Legally speaking he would have a lien on her. Not that this was really needed, since Marie loved him as much as he loved her, but the position would be more satisfactory to both if matters were arranged on this basis, and in a practical way. After all, Marie was young and impressionable, and if Mr. Sorley found a rich man anxious to become the husband of his lovely niece he might, and probably would, worry her into accepting the suitor. Marie would fight--Alan was quite positive on this point--but she might be worn out by her uncle's persistence, and Fuller knew well enough that the old man was as obstinate as a mule, when once he set his mind on achieving a certain end. On the whole then, Alan was pleased that chance had thrown in his way an opportunity of doing Mr. Sorley a service, as a benefit conferred would undoubtedly soften him. Certainly the peacock belonged to Marie, but--looking upon it, as she would, as a mere ornament--she probably would not mind its remaining in her uncle's possession when it was found. And Sorley was a fanatic about jewels: their glitter and rainbow hues seemed to send him crazy with delight. To recover the radiant splendor of the peacock, he would assuredly concede much and Alan felt quite sure that consent to his marriage with the girl would not be withheld. But everything depended upon the tracing of the miserable Grison's assassin and that was not an easy task. Before leaving London, Fuller had visited Inspector Moon at his Rotherhithe office, along with Latimer, and the policeman had been greatly interested in the fact that the solicitor knew the original possessors of the article for which Grison had apparently been murdered. He had also been astonished, and with good reason, at the coincidence that Latimer, to whom he had spoken about Jotty's evidence, should have a friend who was--so to speak--mixed up in the matter of the peacock. Since Fate appeared to point out Fuller as an active agent in bringing this unknown murderer to justice, through the instrumentality of the stolen ornament, Moon had readily given the young man permission to speak of the matter to Mr. Sorley and to Marie. Meanwhile the inspector still continued to hunt for the trail, but without success. The assassin had come and gone in the crowd which inhabited Mother Slaig's boarding-house entirely unnoticed, and now that Grison was buried in the Belstone churchyard as arranged by his sister, it appeared as if the Rotherhithe murder would have to be relegated to the list of undiscovered crimes. Further revelations depended either on the chance that the criminal would pawn or sell what he had risked his neck to obtain, or on some evidence procured from Marie and Sorley, relative to the peacock. Where had it originally come from? who had manufactured it? why did the Inderwick family regard it as a fetish? and finally, why had Grison stolen it? These were the questions which Fuller came down to Belstone to ask. Meanwhile the inspector still continued to hunt for the trail, but without success. The assassin had come and gone in the crowd which inhabited Mother Slaig's boarding-house entirely unnoticed, and now that Grison was buried in the Belstone churchyard as arranged by his sister, it appeared as if the Rotherhithe murder would have to be relegated to the list of undiscovered crimes. Further revelations depended either on the chance that the criminal would pawn or sell what he had risked his neck to obtain, or on some evidence procured from Marie and Sorley, relative to the peacock. Where had it originally come from? who had manufactured it? why did the Inderwick family regard it as a fetish? and finally, why had Grison stolen it? These were the questions which Fuller came down to Belstone to ask. It was therefore no wonder that, since Alan's future happiness depended upon his success in solving so deep a mystery, he should be thoughtful on the journey, to Belstone. Dick and he had talked a great deal about the matter but, for want of further evidence could arrive at no conclusion. Until Mr. Sorley explained about the peacock, and stated what he knew concerning Grison, there was nothing more to be done. Alan thought that the uncle would probably know more than the niece, since she had been an infant in arms when the fetish had been stolen. All the same he resolved to question Marie first, on the chance that she might know something, and upon what she stated would depend his future plans. The young man did not like Mr. Sorley, not only because that gentleman thwarted his marriage with Marie, but also for the very simple reason that he mistrusted Sorley's character. His eyes were too shifty; his manners were too suave; and although he always wished to know the private affairs of everyone else, he never by any chance confessed anything that had to do with himself. It was necessary on these grounds, as Fuller considered, to deal with Marie's uncle in a wary manner. In due course the train stopped at Lewes, and Alan got out with the intention of walking the five miles to Belstone. He had only a gladstone bag containing a few necessary articles for a Saturday-to-Monday's stay in the country, since he invariably kept a supply of clothes at his home. With a nod to the station-master, to whom he was well-known, Fuller left the station, and ignoring the application of several cabmen, struck at an angle to reach the high road. He was soon on the hard metal and walked along swiftly and easily swinging his bag, glad of the exercise to grow warm again, as the day was cold and he was chilled from sitting in the train. As it was now the end of November there was a slight grey fog spreading its veil over the surrounding country, and the sun was conspicuous by its absence. But that Alan thought of Marie's bright face, which he would be certain to see smiling before him on this day or the next, he would have been depressed by the want of sunshine. But what lover who hopes to look into the eyes of the girl he adores within a specified number of hours can feel down-hearted, however gloomy the skies or moist the earth? Not Alan Fuller, who moved on to his much-desired goal with love songs humming in his active brain. And the burden of these was "Marie Marie Marie!" with the delicious name joined to the most eulogistic adjectives in the English tongue. It was when he was almost within sight of Belstone village that the motor bicycle came along. Alan heard the buzz of the machine round the corner and stood aside to let it pass, indifferent to its coming and going. But when he saw a slim old man with an ascetic, clean-shaven face, smartly dressed in a grey suit with brown gaiters, seated thereon, he both started and called out in his surprise. "Mr. Sorley. This is unexpected. You on a bicycle?" The rider shut off the motive power and brought his machine to a standstill a few yards past the young man. "You are astonished," he said, coming back wheeling the bicycle. "Well, Alan, I don't wonder at it. At the age of sixty, it is not many people who would risk their brittle bones in this way." "No, indeed," replied Fuller, staring at Mr. Sorley's fresh complexion and closely-cropped white hair surmounted by a very juvenile tweed cap. "And I thought you were such an indoor man." "Pooh! pooh! pooh!" said Sorley good-humoredly. "You know how particular I am about exercise, Alan. I walk every day a certain distance in order to keep myself in health. For years I have slipped out to range the park; but with increasing age should come increasing activity, so, I have bought this," he shook the machine, "and already--in three weeks that is--I have learned to ride it without fear. I can explore the country now, and intend to do so, my dear lad. The park is too small for me, and I must take all the exercise possible if I wish to keep my looks and vitality. Increasing age: increasing activity," said Mr. Sorley again, "there you are." "Increasing age generally means sitting by the fire and going to bed early, sir," replied Alan dryly, "don't overdo it." "My boy, there is nothing so objectionable as advice." "I beg your pardon. I only thought----" "Then don't think on my behalf at all events," snapped Mr. Sorley, who appeared rather ruffled by Fuller's reflection on his age. "When you come to my years, Alan, I doubt if you will look so healthy as I do." The young man mentally admitted that it was possible he might not wear so well. Sorley was a marvel of preservation, and although he had turned sixty certainly did not look more than forty-five at the most, save for his white hair. His face was almost without wrinkles; his form, spare and lean, was unbowed, and the up-to-date clothes he always affected gave him quite a youthful air at a distance. In fact he was a very handsome man in an elderly way, and but for his shifty eyes and slack mouth--these marred his appearance considerably--he would have impressed people even more than he already did. But with all his juvenile aspect and ingratiating ways, there was something untrustworthy about the man. At least Alan thought so, and had always thought so, but perhaps he might have been more observant than the usual run of humanity, for Marie's uncle was extremely popular, although his usual life was somewhat after the style of a hermit. But this Mr. Sorley ascribed less to inclination than to the want of money, since he humorously said that he and Marie, unable to make both ends meet, ha ci to make one end vegetables. "You are wonderful, Mr. Sorley," said Alan, hastening to soothe the old man's easily hurt vanity. "I never saw you look better. How do you manage to knock all these years off your age?" "Abstention from over-drinking and overeating," said Mr. Sorley briskly, giving his recipe for everlasting youth. "An hour's sleep in the afternoon and plenty of it at night. Cold tubs, dumbbell exercises in the altogether as Trilby says with the window open, judicious walks and an optimistic way of looking at things. There you are," he ended with his favourite catch-phrase as usual. "Now you must add trips on a motor bicycle," laughed Alan, smiling. "By the way, how is Marie?" "Blooming as a rose, fresh as a daisy, cheerful as a lark," prattled Mr. Sorley, with a swift and not altogether approving glance at the speaker's face. "She'll be getting married soon. I can't expect to keep such beauty and grace hidden from the world. And she must make a good match, my lad"--this was for Alan's particular benefit as the young man knew very well----"a title and money, good looks and a landed estate, with brains added. That is the suitor I have chosen for Marie." "You are looking for a bird of paradise," said Fuller, coloring at the hint conveyed, "does such perfection exist in a mere human being?" "I hope so; I hope so," said Sorley, still cheery and still shifty in his glance, "we must look for the rarity, my lad. But I'm in no hurry to lose Marie. She is a great comfort to her old uncle. I was annoyed the other day, greatly annoyed, and she talked me into quite a good humor." "What annoyed you, sir?" asked Fuller, not because he cared, but merely from a desire to chat about Miss Inderwick. "A funeral which took place in the village." "Oh, Baldwin Grison's funeral?" Sorley brought his shifty green eyes to the young man's face. "What do you know about Baldwin Grison?" he asked sharply, and, as it seemed to Alan's suspicious nature, rather uneasily. "All that the newspapers could tell me, Mr. Sorley. He was murdered at Rotherhithe by some unknown person, and his sister brought the body down here for burial in the village churchyard." "That last wasn't in the newspapers," retorted the other quickly and looking everywhere but at Alan's face. "No, it wasn't. But my friend Latimer--you may remember meeting him at the vicarage, Mr. Sorley--was at the inquest and afterwards spoke to Miss Grison, who told him of her intention." "Did she tell him also that her brother was my secretary twenty years ago, Alan?" demanded Sorley, his face growing red and his eyes glittering. "Did she say how he was turned out of the house as a drunken swine?" "Miss Grison hinted something of those things at the inquest, but did not go into details, and, as they were unnecessary, she was not pressed. But she told Latimer that her brother had been discharged by you for some reason." "He was a hard drinker, and also smoked opium," said Sorley angrily. "I did what I could for him, but had to discharge him in the long run. That woman had no right to bring the body here and bury it under my nose, as it might be. Decency should have prevented her bringing back the man to a place whence he was kicked out twenty years ago." "She didn't bring back the man, but his remains, sir." "It would have been better had she thrown those into a London ditch," replied Sorley tartly. "Grison was a bad servant to me and a bad brother to her and a profligate animal. I don't wonder he was murdered." "Can you suggest any motive for the commission of the crime?" asked Fuller, looking straightly at the elder man. "Grison was a drunkard, an opium-smoker, a liar and a loafer. A man like that must have made many enemies, and in the low slum he lived in he certainly risked what has, in the end, happened. The wonder is that he was not murdered before, Alan." "Well, he had one good point," said Fuller meaningly and to force confidence if possible on the part of Sorley. "He wasn't a thief." "Can you prove that he was not?" "Can you prove that he was?" demanded Alan in his turn. "At all events you omitted that particular crime from your category." "The poor devil's dead and I don't wish to say more about him than I have already stated," said Sorley moodily, and beginning to start his machine, "but I trust that his silly sister will not come and worry me." "Why should she?" asked Fuller, noticing that the man before him evaded the question of Grison being a thief. "There's no reason in the world why she should, except that she was infatuated with her brother and believed that I had discharged him unjustly. I shouldn't be surprised if she came to tell me that again, by word of mouth as she has told me dozens of times by letter. She ascribed Grison's downfall to me, and was always asking me to assist him when he was at Rotherhithe during the last twenty years. Of course I didn't, both because I am poor as you know, Alan, and for the simple reason that Grison was not worth helping. I was his best friend, and far from bringing about his downfall I did my best to keep him straight. But all in vain: all in vain. He became quite a scandal in the place and Mrs. Inderwick, my sister, insisted that I should get rid of him. I did so, and he went to the dogs entirely. So there you are, Alan, my boy, and I can't stay here all day talking about a matter which annoys me intensely." By this time the machine was alive with energy and Mr. Sorley swung himself into the saddle as he ended his voluble speech. With a nod he set the starting gear in motion, and almost instantaneously was a dot on the horizon travelling towards Lewes at the speed of a swallow. Alan looked after him thoughtfully, and tried to arrive at some conclusion regarding his apparently frank speech. By the time he reached the vicarage he came to one resolution at least, and that was to say nothing for the present to Mr. Sorley about the peacock. The young man could scarcely decide himself what made him refrain from speaking, save that the old gentleman's manner and vague speech communicated to him a sort of uneasy feeling, which hinted that reticence was wise for the time being. It might have been some sixth sense which induced the decision, for Fuller certainly could not argue out the matter logically. However, he determined to obey the intuition, and to avoid making a confidant of the uncle, while speaking freely of his errand to the niece. There was no feeling in his mind against discussing with Marie the theft of the peacock as the possible motive for the murder of the man her relative seemed to detest so thoroughly. As usual the young man received the warmest of welcomes from his parents, who adored their only son and thought him the most wonderful person in the world. The vicar assuredly did not worship the marvellous boy so devotedly as did Mrs. Fuller; nevertheless he took a great pride in Alan's handsome looks and clever brains and general good conduct. He was a bright-eyed, rosy-faced little man, who scarcely came up to his tall son's shoulder, with a kindly nature, which was always being imposed upon. His wife, a sweet-faced old lady, tall, grey-haired, and singularly graceful, was more practical in many ways than her husband. She checked the vicar's too generous way of dealing with those who took advantage of his lavish kindness, and was the true ruling power in the house. Her weak point was Alan, and she often sighed to think that he would never find a woman worthy to be his wife. A dozen of the best women in the world rolled into one perfect creature would never have come up to the standard she had set up in her own mind which the future Mrs. Alan Fuller was to reach. Alan always enjoyed his home visits, not only because he loved his parents with a tenderness and respect rare in these modern days of revolt against domestic authority, but also on account of the quiet and well-ordered life which made the vicarage so uncommonly pleasant. Mrs. Fuller was a famous housewife, and managed her establishment with such rare tact that she kept her servants for years. Her husband's income was not a large one, but no one would have guessed this, seeing the perfectly appointed dinner-table and the dainty meal prepared. The vicar's wife had brought to her husband by way of dowry a quantity of valuable old furniture, so that every room looked graciously beautiful. And as the house was quaint and old, and kept in perfect repair and order, those not in the secret of the income believed that the Fullers had ample means. But everything grateful to the eye and the touch and the palate was due to the "vicaress," as her husband jocularly called her. The worst-tempered person in the world would have succumbed to the soothing influences which permeated the place. "Home, home, sweet, sweet home," hummed Alan, when the trio sat in the fragrant old drawing-room after an admirable dinner. "Mother darling, you have no idea how restful this is, after the noise and bustle of London." Mrs. Fuller smiled from her favorite chair, and went on with her tatting, busy as a bee, for she was rarely idle. In her silver-grey dress with a lace cap of dainty gossamer resting on her white hair, worn cast back after the style of Marie Antoinette, and her old-fashioned set of amethyst ornaments, she looked singularly charming. In the subdued light which came through the pink lampshades she looked like some gentle ghost of early Victorian days, soothingly womanly and motherly. She had grown old gracefully, and as the diamonds flashed from her rings while she tatted diligently Alan thought what a delightful gentlewoman she looked, placid, dignified and gracious. It was the vicar who answered his son's question, although Alan had scarcely put his remark as such. "Ah, my boy, you'd soon grow weary of this drowsy place, and would long for the crowded hour of glorious life. It is the contrast that makes you appreciate our Eden." Mrs. Fuller nodded her approval. "White always shows up best against black." "Well, you have had some London black down here lately, mother." And when she looked at him inquiringly, Alan continued, "I mean the funeral." The vicar's face grew sad. "Yes! yes! That was indeed an unpleasant reminder of what lies beyond our quiet hills. Poor Grison and poor Louisa tool I do not know which I am most sorry for." "For Louisa?" said Mrs. Fuller, raising her quiet eyes. "You need not be sorry for her, John. She did her duty and more than her duty by that poor creature who has gone to his account, so she has nothing to reproach herself with. I am glad she is staying for a few days, as I wish to have a talk with her." "Is Miss Grison staying here then?" asked Alan, wondering if it would be worth while to look her up. "At Mrs. Millington's, the dressmaker, my dear. She and Louisa were close friends twenty years and more ago." "That was when Grison was secretary to Mr. Sorley." "Yes," chimed in the vicar. "But who told you about that, my boy?" "Miss Grison spoke about it at the inquest and also to Dick and Inspector Moon, father. Then I met Mr. Sorley on my way here and he told me that he had employed the man, but had to get rid of him for drink, and----" "I don't think that is true," interrupted Mrs. Fuller with some indignation in her usually gentle voice. "Poor Baldwin--we called him so when he was a young man--did not drink to excess, although he certainly took more than was good for him at times." "Then why was he discharged?" "I cannot say, Alan, nor can anyone else. Louisa knows, but she would never tell me. But Mr. Sorley was much to blame in throwing Baldwin on the world without a character, since he was too weak to stand by himself. Louisa did what she could, but he fell from bad to worse until--alas! alas! Tell me, Alan, has anything been discovered as to who killed him?" "Not yet, mother. You have read the papers." "Oh yes. Louisa sent all the reports down to your father and to me, knowing that we took a deep interest in Baldwin. Don't you remember him, Alan? You were a little boy of six or seven then." Alan shook his head. "I have a faint recollection only, mother. A little man, wasn't he, with fair hair and blue eyes? But there, I may have got that impression from Dick's description. He saw the corpse." "Don't talk about such things, Alan," said the vicar hastily. "It worries your mother: she is very impressionable. Let us be thankful that the poor creature has been brought back to lie in our quiet churchyard. As to the person who murdered him, he will suffer for his sin in God's good time." "I doubt if the truth will ever be discovered," said Alan with a shrug. "By the way, father, do you remember that peacock of jewels which was the fetish or luck of the Inderwicks?" Not knowing what connection there was between the murder of Grison and the ornament in question, the vicar thought that the apparently irrelevant inquiry was made by his son in obedience to his request that the crime should not be discussed in the presence of Mrs. Fuller. "Everyone in the village, if not in the county, knows about the peacock," he said with an approving smile, "but as to its bringing luck, I do not believe in such superstitions, my boy." "Perhaps not," said his wife quietly, "but you must confess, John, that since what the Inderwicks call their luck has been missing nothing has gone well with them--that is with Marie, who alone represents the family." "Nonsense, my dear. Marie is young, healthy, pretty, and happy enough in her own way, as Sorley is kindness itself to her. There's no bad luck haunting the girl so far as I can see." "No, of course not. But I allude rather to her poverty. The Inderwicks used to be rich, and Mrs. Inderwick was left comparatively well off. Then she lost her money when Marie was born, and afterwards died." "Inderwick--Marie's father, that is--should not have made Sorley trustee, for he is, and always was a bad business man. He acted honestly enough, I daresay, but even with his sister's consent he should never have speculated as he did. No wonder the money was lost." "What were the speculations?" asked Alan. "Land in Australia--in Melbourne chiefly, I believe. There was a big land boom there, over twenty years ago. Then everything failed and bank after bank went smash. Before Sorley could get a letter or even a telegram out, everything was gone. However, Marie has The Monastery and the park and sufficient to keep her in food and dress, so she can't grumble." "Marie never does grumble," said Mrs. Fuller decidedly, "she is the brightest person I know. But it's a dull life for a young girl at The Monastery. She ought to have a season in London and be presented at Court and have an opportunity," here she stole a shy glance at Alan's expressive face, "of making a good match. With Marie's blood and looks she should secure a title." "Well, perhaps she will, when the peacock returns to bring back the luck," said Alan, refusing to be drawn into an argument with his mother over Marie. "It will never be found," said the vicar positively. "How was it lost, father?" "I can't tell you. But it has been missing twenty years and is not likely to reappear. Marie can do very well without it. Such superstition is ridiculous. And now we must have prayers," ended Mr. Fuller inconsequently. His wife looked up amused, since she knew that he acted thus because he had no patience with her belief in the peacock as a fetish. And while prayers were being said Alan wondered if the peacock would ever reappear, in spite of his father's doubts, to influence Marie's destiny. CHAPTER III A STORY OF THE PAST The ancient village of Belstone, hidden in a fold of low-lying, undulating hills, is inhabited chiefly by agricultural laborers. One irregular street, four or five narrow lanes, and a few behind-the-time shops, together with many small cottages, constitute this sequestered hamlet. There are a great number of farms and several country seats in the district, but those who own them usually buy the necessaries of life at Lewes, so Belstone cannot depend upon trade for its support. The villagers, however, do not mind this neglect, as they are sleepy-headed and indifferent to all, so long as they earn sufficient for bed and board. The sole houses of any note are the vicarage at one end of the village, and the great mansion of the Inderwicks at the other. Formerly the owners of The Monastery--as the place is called--were Lords of the Manor, but, as their property has dwindled to a few acres, the title has passed to a modern and more prosperous family. The Inderwicks, formerly so rich and powerful, are now of small account amongst the gentry of the county. The Rev. John Fuller always maintained that the prehistoric name of the village was Baalstone, and that it was so termed after an altar or stone to Baal or Bel, a deity whom the Ph[oe]nicians had introduced into Britain. But it is more than questionable whether these sea-rovers ever traded so far as Sussex, and Mr. Fuller's assumption can be taken for what it is worth, although he held stoutly to his opinion. But be this as it may undoubtedly there was a Druidical temple where the big house now stands, later a shrine to Diana, and afterwards an altar to Woden, until early Christian missionaries built on the same spot a primitive flint and mortar church. Finally came a Benedictine monastery, which lasted until the reign of that arch-iconoclast, Henry VIII. From the expelled monks it had passed into the possession of Nicholas Inderwick, one of Cromwell's favorite gentlemen, and had been owned by his descendants ever since. The spot had therefore always been a holy one, until secularised in the days of the great Tudor monarch, and perhaps for this reason had never brought good fortune to the Inderwicks, who had built up what prosperity they had attained to on the ruin of sacred things and the misfortunes of sacred people. Certainly evil luck had followed them for generations: they had lost land, money, position and authority, and their family tree had been cut down root and branch, until only one feeble twig sprouted from the mouldering trunk. Marie Inderwick was the last descendant of the ancient line, and dwelt in the house of her ancestors on a penurious income which barely sufficed to keep her in food and fire and clothes. And when she married, or died, it was to be expected that the family name would vanish from the land. All these things Alan knew very well, as all his life they had been talked about in the village and at the vicarage. There was also a prophecy of an expelled monk dating over three hundred years ago, which promised renewed prosperity to the Inderwicks when their fortunes were lowest. The young man could not think how much lower the fortunes could sink, and wondered as he strolled towards the monastery, if now was the appointed time for the fulfilment of the ancient saying:-- "When most is lost and most are dead, The spoilers then shall raise their head. Jewels and gold from over-seas, Will bring them peace and joy and ease." Of course Alan in his reading of the prophecy modernized the antique diction. There was much more of it, but only Marie knew the whole of Fate's decree, and was accustomed to repeat it hopefully when she felt down-hearted. She always insisted that sooner or later the curse pronounced on the Inderwicks by the monk would be removed. As there was no money to keep things in order, the place was woefully neglected. The great iron gates which swung from pillars surmounted by the Inderwick escutcheon in the grip of tall dragons had not been opened for many years, and access to the park was gained through a small side entrance set in the mouldering brick wall which encircled the domain. The park itself was so overgrown and wild and tangled and savage that it might have been that very wood which shut in the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty. Alan dreamed that it might be so, and that he might be the fairy prince destined to awaken Marie to a new life. And indeed since she loved him, and he adored her, he had succeeded so far; but how her fortunes were to be mended at the present juncture he could not see. Yet had he been gifted with psychic powers he would have known more or less positively that he was on the eve of entering a new lane down which he would lead the girl towards happiness and prosperity. A short brisk walk up the neglected avenue brought Fuller into the wide open space wherein was placed the great mansion. Some portions of the original monastery remained, but during hundreds of years it had been so altered that the monks would have had some difficulty in recognizing their former habitation. Parts of the building had been pulled down and other parts built up, that had been altered and this had been permitted to remain in its original state, so that the old house presented an incongruous appearance which could be ascribed to no particular epoch of architecture. With its walls of grey flint, brown stone, red brick, and here and there blocks of white marble somewhat soiled by wind and rain and sunshine, it looked singularly picturesque. And the whole was overgrown with ivy, dank and green and wonderfully luxuriant, since it was never trimmed and never cut. The big building looked as though it were bound to the soil by the tough tendrils and what with the rank coarse grasses and the trees which grew right up to the walls, it might have been part and parcel of the earth itself, so swathed was it in greenery. There was something noble and austere about the dwelling befitting perhaps the Benedictines who had dwelt in it at one time, but it looked altogether too sombre and unwholesome to shelter the fair head of Marie Inderwick, who was all smiles and sunshine. And as Alan advanced towards the huge porch which was supported on twisted pillars, she unexpectedly made her appearance like a gleam of light shooting across a thunderous sky. It was Alan the lover, and not Fuller the lawyer, who made this poetic comparison. "Darling! darling!" cried Marie, running down the broken steps with outstretched hands. "I knew you would come. But how late you are! I saw you in the church this morning, and have been expecting you all the afternoon. It is now three o'clock and only at this moment do you put in an appearance. No, I won't be kissed. Uncle may be at the window and would make trouble, as he always does. Besides you don't deserve a kiss, when you neglect me so." "I shall take one for all that," said Alan, suiting the action to the word, "and in spite of possible dragon eyes at the window." "But your neglect," pouted Marie, playing with his necktie, arranging it and rearranging it after the manner of women whose fingers must always be busy. "Dearest, I stayed for the midday communion, and when I came out you had gone home with your uncle." "He hurried me away, Alan. He's always very particular to keep an eye on me when you come down." "Undoubtedly. He wants you to marry a title." Marie shrugged her shoulders in a French fashion which she had acquired from a Parisian school friend at the Brighton seminary. "As if anyone would marry a pauper like me.' "I think any man who has an eye for the beautiful would only be too glad to marry such a lovely pauper." "That's nice. Say it again and slowly." "A lovely pauper, an adorable pauper, an angelic------" "Stop! stop! You flatter too much. You don't mean what you say." "Not a word," confessed Alan candidly. Marie grew red and her eyes flashed. "Then how dare you say such things!" "You expect me to and you shouldn't fish." "In shallow water? Certainly not! Alan Eric Reginald Fuller," she gave him his complete name and pinched his arm, "you are a bear." "Bears hug," said the lover, taking her in his arms. "Oh, my gracious, you will get me into trouble," cried Marie, extricating herself with some difficulty and flying across the lawn, followed hot-footed by Alan. "Come and hide out of sight of those horrid windows. Uncle Ran is sure to see us otherwise, and will order me indoors. Come! come," she sang like a siren and fled after the fashion of Atalanta into the woods. The trees were bare of leaves, but here and there a fir stood up green and sombre, while the undergrowth of brambles and grass and ferns and various weeds had not yet lost their autumnal tints so that the park did not as yet look entirely wintry. The day was warm too for late November, and pale sunshine irradiated the grey depths of the sky, so that the birds had plucked up heart to sing, perhaps in the hope of averting coming snows. At top-speed Marie flew down a side path which twisted and straightened at intervals for a considerable distance until it ended In a kind of sunken dell in the centre of which was a circle of cemented stones rising slightly above the fading herbage. Over this was a wooden canopy of ancient appearance with a tiled red roof weather-worn and mellow, and beneath, a deep hole which seemed to penetrate into the bowels of the earth. This was St. Peter's Dell and St. Peter's Well since the monastery had been dedicated to the chief of the Apostles. Marie loved the spot, and haunted it in summer for the sake of its coolness. Now she came because she knew that her philanderings with the forbidden lover would not be seen by anyone. "And Uncle Ran is asleep," she explained as she perched herself on the ragged rim of stones. "He always sleeps for an hour in the afternoon, because he says that it keeps him alive." "I wish it didn't," growled Alan, placing himself beside the girl, and putting an arm round her, probably to prevent her from falling into the depths. "I don't like your Uncle Ran, dear." "Since he won't let you make love to me, I can quite understand that," said Marie rather pertly; "but he's all the relative I have so I must make the best of him, Alan. But you haven't told me how I am looking." "Why, I've used at least a dozen adjectives. But I shall examine you carefully, darling, and give you my honest opinion." Taking her chin in his hand, he turned her face upward, and looked into the happy blue eyes. Marie was indeed a very pretty girl, although not perhaps so superlatively lovely as Alan imagined. Her face would never have launched a thousand ships, or set fire to Troy Town. But her complexion was transparent and as delicately tinted as a rose, with the dewy look, so to speak, of that flower at dawn. Her hair was golden and waved over her white forehead in rebellious little curls. Then she had sapphire eyes and a straight little Greek nose, and two fresh red lips, which seemed to invite the kiss Alan now bestowed. As her figure was wrapped up in a heavy fur cloak of great antiquity, it could not be seen at the moment, but Alan, who was well acquainted with its suave contours, knew that it was the most perfect figure in the three kingdoms, as her hands and feet were the smallest and most well-shaped. But what really drew his heart to Marie was her sweet expression and candid looks. Some women--few, of course--might have possessed Marie's items of beauty in the shape of form and coloring, but no one, and Alan said this aloud with great decision, ever owned such heavenly smiles or could give such tender glances. Marie sighed and approved of the praise and nestled her head against his rough frieze overcoat. "You always tell the truth, darling," she said, after he had assured her that she was something higher than an angel. "Always!" Alan kissed her again for the tenth time. "And now I want you to tell me the truth, Marie." She looked up somewhat puzzled. "About what?" "About the peacock of jewels, which------" The girl drew away from his encircling arm and slipped to the ground. "Why do you want to speak about that?" she asked, standing before him and looking as charming as the Queen of Sheba when she visited Solomon; "it was lost before I was born, and no one ever speaks of it. Except Uncle Ran," she added with an afterthought, "he loves jewels, as you know, and always regrets the loss, although the peacock belongs to me and not to him." "Marie," said Alan again and gravely, "come and sit down, as I have something important to tell you which you must not repeat to your uncle until I give you leave." "I shall sit here," said Miss Inderwick, sinking on to the trunk of a fallen tree which was a few feet away, "and I wish you wouldn't look so solemn or talk about such things. You make me nervous." "There is nothing to be nervous about, my dear." "Then why am I not to repeat what you say to Uncle Ran?" demanded Marie in an inconsequent manner. "Because I think if Mr. Sorley got that peacock he would be greedy enough to keep it to himself." "He couldn't. It's mine." "He would, because he looks upon your property as his own." "The peacock was left to me by my father's will, along with the park and the house," insisted Marie folding her hands pensively. "It was particularly mentioned because of the good fortune it will bring--that is when the secret is discovered." "The secret. What secret?" Alan spoke almost sharply. "That connected with the golden peacock. You know the story?" "Only that there is such a fetish, which is supposed to be the luck of the Inderwicks." "And has been for one hundred years and more. But the secret------" "I have heard nothing about that." "Now I come to think of it, I daresay you haven't. I only became acquainted with the real meaning of the peacock of jewels a year ago. I read all about it in a manuscript which I found in the library. When was the battle of Plassey, Alan?" "In 1757," answered Fuller, who had a good memory for dates. "It was won by Lord Clive, wasn't it?" "Yes. But what has that to do with the peacock?" "A great deal, as you shall hear." "One moment, Marie. Is this peacock of Indian workmanship?" "No. It was made by a man called Simon Ferrier, who was the servant of my great great great--I don't know how many greats--grandfather." "Let us say the grandfather who lived about the time of Plassey. What was his name?" "George Inderwick. He went to India to------" Here Marie broke off and looked at her lover searchingly. "But why do you ask about the peacock?" "I'll explain that when I have heard the legend." "It isn't a legend, but a true story, and you are very mysterious," said the girl somewhat incoherently. "Well then, George Inderwick went out to India long before the battle of Plassey in the hope of restoring the family fortunes. He was only a younger brother and left The Monastery in possession of Julian Inderwick. Things were very bad with the family then and they have been worse since. Now"--Marie sighed--"everything is lost unless the treasure is discovered." "The treasure?" Alan looked excited. "Is there a treasure?" "Of course, you stupid thing. That is the secret of the peacock." Alan became exasperated by the way in which he had to drag things out of her and frowned. "I wish you would tell me the story clearly," he said tartly. "I shall do so if you won't interrupt so often," retorted Marie. Then looking round the quiet dell, as if for inspiration, and finally finding it in the eager look in her lover's eyes, she began the tale. "George went to India along with his servant, Simon Ferrier, who was his foster-brother------" "Wait a bit," interrupted Fuller again. "Who wrote this manuscript?" "Simon Ferrier, and I won't tell you anything if you keep asking questions, Alan. How can I speak when you talk?" "I am dumb, my dearest virago. Go on." "I'm not a virago, you horrid boy. Well then, George went to Madras as a clerk of the East India Company, and was lent to some rajah to drill his army. He learned soldiering from Lord Clive, although he wasn't Lord Clive at the time. Simon went with George to some hill fort and palace and the two became quite friendly with the rajah. Then some enemy of the native prince they served stormed the palace or town or whatever it was, and killed the lot of them." "Even George and Simon?" asked Alan, noting the loose way in which she was telling the tale, and privately deciding to ask for the manuscript, so that he might read it himself. "No, you silly. They were taken prisoners. But before the place was captured, the Begum--that's the rajah's wife--gave all her jewels to Mr. Inderwick, because he saved her life, and the life of her son. Simon hid them when he and his master were captured by the other king, or rajah, or------" "Never mind; say captured by the enemy." "Oh, very well," said Marie obediently, "when they were captured by the enemy. They were a long time in captivity, and George was forced to drill the native troops, while Simon was made to work as a jeweller." "Why as a jeweller?" "Oh, it seems that he had been brought up in England as a watchmaker, and having mended some clock belonging to the enemy, he was set to work in a shop to make ornaments for the enemy's wives. He learned how to make Indian ornaments and became very clever--at least he says so himself, but perhaps he was bragging." "I don't think so, if the stories about the beauty of the peacock he made are to be believed," said Fuller thoughtfully, and recalling certain stories related by old village women who had set eyes on the ornament in question before it had disappeared. "Go on, dear. This is interesting." "The most interesting part is to come," replied Marie, nodding her small head with a wise air. "Simon managed to get away, and went back to where he had hidden the jewels. He dug them up and came to England------" "Leaving his master in captivity. How shabby of him." "He only did what his master told him," said Marie quickly. "He was to take the jewels to England and give them to Julian Inderwick so that the fortunes of the family might be restored. But Simon did not like Julian and found out that he was a spendthrift and a gambler. If he had given him the jewels they would have been wasted, and the Inderwicks would have been none the better for them. Simon therefore said nothing about his mission, but he hid the jewels and then returned to India to rejoin his master, who was now free and was fighting beside Lord Clive." "Well, and what happened then?" "When the battle of Plassey was being fought, and before Simon could return to his master, he was taken prisoner by those who had before held him captive. They had come to know about the jewels, and insisted that he should tell where they were. Simon was even tortured to make him tell, but he refused to speak, so they grew tired and set him to work again, as a jeweller. It was then that he made the peacock." "Why the peacock particularly?" "Because he wished to let George Inderwick know where the jewels of the Begum were hidden in England, and could only do so by indicating the place through this golden peacock." "But in what way?" "I don't know. I can't find out. Simon feared lest the secret should be discovered by the Indians and lest they should send someone to England to get back the gems. He therefore, as I say, made the peacock, and contrived to have it taken to George Inderwick through a native who was friendly to him. He then died, after writing the manuscript, telling his master that the secret was hidden in the peacock. He was murdered, I believe, as he says at the end of his manuscript that he expected to be put to death." "But what was the use of sending the secret to George when it could not be guessed?" "It _was_ stupid," admitted Marie thoughtfully, "since George never managed to find out from the peacock where the jewels were. In his anxiety to keep the secret from everyone but his master, Simon over-reached himself, and entirely forgot that George would find it as hard to learn the truth as anyone else into whose hands the peacock fell. However, he died, and the ornament with the manuscript came to George. After the battle of Plassey George returned home with some money, and tried hard to learn the whereabouts of the jewels from the peacock. Julian by this time had died, so the younger brother succeeded to the estate--what there was left of it. He--George, I mean--was poor all his life, as he brought back very little from India, and all he could do was to keep what Julian had left." "Well?" asked Alan, seeing that she said no more. "That is all. George left a will saying that the jewels were to be found if the secret of the peacock was discovered. But Simon, in his desire to keep them safe, had hidden the truth too securely. Everyone has tried to find the truth, even Uncle Ran, for I asked him, but all have failed." "How much are the jewels worth?" asked Fuller after a pause. "Oh," Marie jumped up and spread her hands, "thousands and thousands of pounds, dear! One hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, I don't know how much. There are rubies and emeralds and opals and diamonds and--and----" she stopped for want of breath. "Isn't it wonderful, Alan?" "Wonderful indeed," admitted the young man. "So there is one or two hundred thousand pounds attached to the possession of the peacock of jewels if its secret can only be discovered. Hum! It's worth risking one's neck for." Marie ran up and shook him by the arm. "How can you say such horrid things?" "I am not talking of my own neck, Marie, but of that belonging to the man who murdered Baldwin Grison." "Oh." The girl stared. "I know that the poor man was murdered. Mrs. Millington--she's the village dressmaker, and a friend of mine--told me about that crime. Louisa Grison was Mrs. Millington's bridesmaid, and they are very much attached, and--and--but, Alan, what has the peacock to do with this horrid murder?" "Much. Baldwin Grison was murdered, as I truly believe, so that his assassin might obtain it. Now listen, dear, and be sure you don't repeat what I say to your uncle." "No, I won't. Though I don't see why you want to keep things secret from him. Go on. What is it?" Fuller quickly and concisely told her all that he had learned from Dick Latimer and Inspector Moon relative to the Rotherhithe murder, and laid great stress on the fact that Jotty the street-arab had seen the peacock of jewels. Marie listened with open mouth. "But you can't be sure that the poor man was murdered because of the peacock," she said when he ended. "Besides, how could he have it?" "Oh, that last is easy. Grison was your uncle's secretary and may have taken the peacock out of revenge, knowing that Mr. Sorley was fond of jewels. On the other hand, Grison may have read the very same manuscript about which you have been telling me and might have tried to learn the secret." "Then he could not have," cried the girl positively, "else he would not have remained in that horrid slum. Who has the peacock now?" "The assassin." "Who is he?" "No one knows, and no one can find out." "But are you sure Mr. Grison was murdered because of the peacock?" asked Marie again, and doubtfully. "I think so, since the room was ransacked, and Grison had no other object of value in his miserable dwelling to tempt anyone to commit a crime." "Well, it might be so. But why am I not to tell Uncle Ran?" "Because I wish to find the peacock and deliver the assassin of Grison to justice. If Mr. Sorley goes on the trail also he will get the peacock and will not give it to you, to whom it rightfully belongs." "I see. Of course I shall say nothing. And Alan"--she laid her arms round her lover's neck----"do find the peacock, and let us look for the treasure." "And then?" questioned the young man, smiling at the bright face. "Then! then," said Miss Inderwick, dancing away from him, "why then, you stupid creature, we can marry and defy Uncle Ran." CHAPTER IV AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR "Now that we have finished our secret conversation," said Fuller some time later, when the pair were returning towards the avenue, "I shall call and pay my respects to your uncle." "I don't think he wants to see you," answered Marie very candidly, "he is quite aware that I love you and wishes to keep us apart." "No doubt, my dear, but I don't intend him to get his own way. He never can, so long as you remain true to me." Marie squeezed the arm she held. "As if there was any question of that. All the same, Uncle Ran is sure to be nasty if you call." "He was amiable enough yesterday when we met, and outwardly he has no reason to overstep the bounds of politeness. I intend to call in order to show him that I am quite friendly, and if he objects he can speak out." "He's asleep yet, I expect," objected Marie anxiously. "All the better. We shall have a longer time to ourselves, and you can give me a cup of tea." "Uncle Ran would assuredly object to that," said the girl with emphasis. "He is becoming a perfect miser. Every penny he obtains he turns into jewels, Alan, although owing to want of money he can only buy cheap stones." "So long as he uses his own money and not yours he can do what he likes, I suppose, Marie. But you have an income and the house, so he has no right to object to your extending afternoon-tea hospitality to me." "I never get any of my own money except a few shillings a week for my pocket," admitted Marie rather mournfully. "You know Uncle Ran was left my sole guardian, and I do not come of age for another year. Then he says he will account to me for my money, which he declares he is saving." Remembering Mr. Sorley's shifty eyes and slack mouth, Fuller had his doubts as to the truth of this statement, and merely grunted. But when Marie went on to say that her uncle was selling portions of the furniture he raised his eyebrows. "He has no right to do that without your consent, my dear." "He says that he has, and that there is too much furniture in the place. I understand from him that he is selling the furniture in order to invest the money for me." "Hum! It may be so, but I should not be too sure of that. I wish I were your husband now, Marie, and then I could look after your interests." "You don't trust Uncle Ran?" "Candidly, I don't, although I have no very strong reason to say so. Do you trust him yourself, Marie?" "I don't know; I can't say," said the girl slowly; "of course he has been kind to me since I returned a year ago from Brighton, where I was at school, Alan. He doesn't interfere with me, you know." "He lets you run wild, if that's what you mean, my dear," retorted the solicitor hotly. "Now that it does you any harm of course, as you are a sensible girl. But Mr. Sorley should take you out visiting and let you go to dances occasionally, and you should have a few days in London every now and then. He should not neglect you as he does." "We are too poor to afford such things, Alan. But some day when we find the treasure, we--you and I of course--shall have a splendid time. Remember the prophecy, my dear," and she repeated two lines of the same: "Jewels and gold from over-seas Will bring them peace and joy and ease." Alan was struck by the quotation from a three hundred year old oracle after hearing Marie's story of the secret which possession and examination of the peacock would reveal. "Jewels and gold," he repeated slowly, "yes; it does sound as though that line referred to the Begum's hoard. Odd, very odd indeed." "It will come true, it will come true," sang Marie, dancing a step or two in her gleeful way, and with the exuberant joy of twenty. "Then we'll pension Uncle Ran off, and have The Monastery and the money to ourselves. Oh, Alan, let us build castles in the air." "They won't turn into bricks and mortar until we find the peacock," said Mr. Fuller gloomily, "and that will not be easy, seeing it means the capture of poor Grison's assassin. Moon can find out nothing and if he fails how can mere amateur detectives such as Dick and I are succeed. However, we know that he was murdered for the sake of the peacock, and this strange story of yours helps a bit to strengthen the clue. But let me impress upon you again, Marie, not to tell your uncle." "Certainly not, though I really don't know why you mistrust him." "I scarcely know myself," said Alan candidly, "but I certainly do." By this time--walking demurely apart in case Mr. Sorley should be awake and on the watch--they had entered the house, to find themselves in a large and chilly hall, with a black and white pavement and marble busts of the Cæsars set round about it close to the walls. No rosy glow came from the old-fashioned fireplace, since Mr. Sorley deemed it waste of coal to heat such a mausoleum; so, with a shiver, the two crossed into the library, which was at the end of a lordly corridor to the right. "There's a fire here," said Marie as they entered, "it's Uncle Ran's favorite room, and you can trust him to make himself comfortable, even if he has to pay for it." "Then he can't be a genuine miser," remarked Fuller, walking towards the fire, which was a tolerably good one; "they starve themselves in every way, my dear, and--oh, I beg your pardon." This last was addressed to a small elderly woman who suddenly rose from a deep grandfather's chair which looked like a sentry-box. She had sandy hair smoothly plastered down on either side of a sallow, wrinkled face; also thin, firmly compressed lips and hard blue eyes, staring and unwinking. Her figure was lean, her waist was pinched in, and her shoulders were so sloping that the worn black velvet cloak she wore would have slipped off had it not been firmly fastened down the front with large buttons of cut jet. As the cloak was down to her very heels, the dress she had on could not be seen, but her head was adorned with an early Victorian bonnet and her thin hands were covered with drab thread gloves. She had crape on her bonnet, and crape round her neck, but it did not need this evidence of mourning to assure Fuller that he beheld the sister of the dead man, since he remembered Dick's description fairly well. "Miss Grison," said Marie, coming forward when she heard her lover's speech and offering her hand. "I heard you were down here." Miss Grison took the hand, gave it a limp shake and dropped it. "Thank you, my dear," she said in a cold, precise voice. "I came down for my brother's funeral. He always wished to rest in Belstone churchyard and have the service read over his remains by Mr. Fuller, so I felt it was only due to his memory to do what he desired." "This is Mr. Fuller's son," said Marie, introducing Alan. "How do you do," said the visitor, still coldly. "I remember you years ago as a little boy with bare legs and a pinafore. You have grown since then." "It is impossible to have bare legs and a pinafore at twenty-seven," said Alan, not knowing if she was laughing at him. "Twenty and more years ago I saw you," said Miss Grison, who certainly seemed to have no sense of humor. "Ah, how the time passes. You were just born when I left Belstone to live in London," she added, glancing in her hard way at Marie, "a mere infant in arms." "I have seen you a few times though," murmured Marie politely. Miss Grison nodded stiffly. "Occasionally I have come down to stay with Selina Millington," she explained, "and we met before you went to school at Brighton. But since your return a year ago we have not met, as I have not been down here. How did you recognise me?" "You are not changed in any way," said Marie bluntly. "I should be," remarked the little woman with a sigh, "my poor Baldwin's death has broken my heart." "It was very terrible," Marie hastened to assure her. "I read about it in the newspapers. Who killed him?" "That's what I intend to find out," cried Miss Grison with a flash of her blue eyes. "Poor Baldwin never harmed a soul, and had no enemies--except one," she ended with an afterthought, and her lips closed firmly. "Perhaps the one enemy killed him." "I don't know. I can't prove anything. And the police seem to be doubtful about tracing the man." "It was a man then who murdered your brother?" asked Alan suddenly. Miss Grison gave him a scrutinizing look. "Yes, it was a man, as I truly believe, although there is no evidence to show the sex of the murderer." "What is the name of the person you think was your brother's enemy?" "Never mind, Mr. Fuller. I may misjudge him, and until I am sure I shall mention no names. But I shall watch and search and think and work until I avenge poor Baldwin's death!" And the fierce, determined look on her yellow face showed that she thoroughly meant what she said. "Can I help you in any way?" "Why should you?" she asked cautiously. "Because I take an interest in the case," Alan explained equally cautiously. "A friend of mine, Mr. Latimer, who was at the inquest, told me all about the sad circumstances, and the death is so mysterious that both of us wish to learn the truth, if only out of curiosity." The little woman paused almost imperceptibly and cast a swift look at the young man and the girl by his side before replying. Then she accepted the well-meant offer in her usual unemotional way. "I shall be glad of your assistance, Mr. Fuller," she said, producing a printed card from a bead bag which dangled from her lean wrist; "this is my address in Bloomsbury. I keep a boarding-house." "So Mr. Latimer told me. You stated as much at the inquest. Tell me," he asked, putting the card into his vest pocket, "have you any clue to------" "I have no clue you would call reasonable, Mr. Fuller!" "That hints some ground on your part for----" "Never mind what it hints," interrupted Miss Grison sharply. "If you call on me in London, and I feel that I can trust you, then I may speak out." "Anyone could trust Alan," said Marie indignantly. The visitor gave a thin-lipped smile. "You are quite right to defend him, my dear, and your defence is natural enough since Selina Millington told me that Mr. Fuller admires you. But he's a man and all men are bad----" "Except Alan, who is engaged to be married to me." "All men are bad," repeated Miss Grison stolidly. "I only knew one good man, and he was my brother Baldwin. "H'm!" murmured Alan, remembering what Sorley had said on the previous day. If Miss Grison heard the ejaculation, and understood its purport, she gave no sign of such knowledge. "What does your Uncle Randolph say to your being engaged to Mr. Fuller?" she asked turning to Marie abruptly. "He says nothing, because he knows nothing." "Then don't let him know. He will ruin your happiness in life if he can, as he ruined mine. A hard, cruel man is your Uncle Randolph, my dear." Marie stared at this wholesale condemnation. "Do you know him well?" "Do I know him well?" Miss Grison gave a hard laugh, and her eyes glittered viciously. "Yes, I may say that I know him very well." Alan, looking closely at her, wondered if the enemy of her brother to whom she had referred so positively was Mr. Sorley, and thought that it was extremely likely from the vicious emphasis with which she spoke. But Miss Grison, giving him no time to make any comment on her last speech, continued as though she had not stopped to draw breath. "I know the house very well also," she said calmly, "and I have been walking all over it, while waiting to see Mr. Sorley." "Walking all over it," repeated Marie rather indignantly. "A stranger?" "I am not a stranger either to Mr. Sorley or to The Monastery," replied the small woman with great coolness. "When my brother was his secretary here, years ago, I used to spend days wandering about the rooms and corridors. I know every nook and corner of it, my dear, and could tell you of many a secret hiding-place and hidden passage which were used in ancient times. Your mother made a friend of me in those days, and we used to explore the house together before you were born." "Still Uncle Ran would not like you walking about the place when I was out and he was asleep. Didn't Jenny or Henny stop you?" "Do you mean the servants?" inquired Miss Grison smoothly. "Well they did express surprise when I walked into the kitchen. But I told them I had come to see Mr. Sorley, and they showed me in here to wait for him--as if I required showing," ended Miss Grison disdainfully. Fuller stared at her hard. She seemed to be in her right senses and what she said was reasonable enough, but it struck him that there must be something eccentric about her when she ventured to enter a house and explore it without the owner's permission. Again Miss Grison gave him no time to make a comment, but went on talking in the shrill voice which Latimer had noted and mentioned. "Henrietta and Jane Trent are twins," she explained to Marie as if the girl knew nothing about her own servants. "I remember them as little toddlers in the village. The mother took in washing. Fine bouncing women they have grown into, my dear: red cheeks and black hair and wooden expressions, just like two Dutch dolls. Are they good servants?" Marie was so taken aback by the audacity of her visitor that she replied, as she would have done to her schoolmistress: "They are very good and do all the work of this big house." "There is a lot to do, I admit," said Miss Grison, nodding, "but I notice that many of the rooms are shut up, my dear." "We--uncle and I, that is--do not require so many." "I looked into some, and found them bare of furniture," pursued Miss Grison calmly, and with her hard, unwinking stare. "Yet in my time there was a lot of valuable----" "Pardon me, Miss Grison," interrupted Fuller, seeing the consternation of Marie, "but don't you think you are taking rather a liberty in entering the house and in talking like this?" "It may appear a liberty to you, Mr. Fuller," she rejoined quietly, "but it will not to Mr. Sorley. We are old friends." "Friends," said Alan with emphasis. She turned on him with a flash in her eyes. "Did he ever give you to understand otherwise?" she demanded, drawing quick breaths. "Has he ever mentioned my name to you?" She waited for a reply but none came, as Alan was deliberating whether it would be wise to inform her of the way in which Mr. Sorley had spoken. Also he wondered if Miss Grison knew that her brother had been murdered for the sake of the peacock, and if she could tell how Baldwin became possessed of the same. But he felt that it would be best not to ask questions, or to make answers, until he knew his ground better. With her hard look, the little woman waited for him to speak, but he was saved the trouble by the unexpected entrance of Mr. Randolph Sorley. He was perfectly dressed as usual in a well-cut suit of blue serge and wore patent leather boots, together with a smart scarf of white silk fastened with a black pearl breast-pin. If he was a miser in some things, as Marie asserted, he assuredly was not so in the matter of clothes, for no one could have been better turned out, or have looked more aristocratic. His carriage was so upright, his hair so short, his face so bronzed and his greenish eyes so alert that he had quite a military appearance. He even looked young in the dusky atmosphere of the big room, and it was only when he came forward more into the light that he betrayed his sixty years. And that was possibly because Alan knew his true age, for the smooth, clean-shaven face looked much younger in spite of the white hair. "Mr. Fuller! Miss Grison," he said slowly, "this is indeed a surprise. I am delighted to see you both." And indeed he appeared to be so, for his smile was open, his speech soft and his manner frank. After what he had said about the woman on the previous day Fuller quite expected that he would be rude to her and--since he had other plans in his head--the young man quite expected that he would be rude to him also. But Mr. Sorley was apparently too well-bred to act impolitely in what he regarded as his own house, even if that same house was the property of Marie Inderwick. Miss Grison's blue eyes glittered a trifle more as he shook hands with her cordially but otherwise she remained her impenetrable self. And remembering what she had said about her host, Alan was as amazed at her behavior as he was at Sorley's. As to Marie, she was so relieved that her uncle received Alan courteously that she never gave a thought to the possibility that he might be acting a part for reasons best known to himself. "Have you had tea?" inquired Mr. Sorley, poking the fire. "Marie, my dear, why did you not offer your guests tea?" And he rang the bell promptly. "I did not like to without your permission, Uncle Ran," she said timidly. "My dear child, this is your house, and here you are the mistress. I am only your guardian and live here, as it were, on sufferance. Miss Grison I am truly grieved to hear of your brother's death." "Oh, indeed," said the small woman sarcastically, "in that case, I wonder you didn't come to the funeral." "No! no! no! That would have awakened memories of the past." "There is a proverb," remarked Miss Grison coldly, "which bids us let sleeping dogs lie." "Very good advice," assented Mr. Sorley, "suppose we adopt it by letting the sad past alone and coming to the sad present. Have the police discovered who murdered your brother?" "No," snapped Miss Grison impassively. "Are they likely to?" "If I can help them, they certainly are." "Then you know of some clue?" "I may, or I may not. This is not the time to speak about such things." "My dear lady," said the host with great dignity, "I am under the impression that you came here to receive my sympathy." "Then you were never more mistaken in your life," retorted Miss Grison grimly. "I came to say what I shall say, when tea is at an end." "Nothing unpleasant, I trust?" asked Sorley distinctly uneasily. "That is for you to judge," she returned, and the entrance of Henny Trent with a tray put an end to this particular conversation. While Henny, who was large and red-cheeked and black-eyed, and who really resembled the Dutch doll Miss Grison had compared her to, was arranging the tea-table, Alan stole furtive looks at Mr. Sorley. The old gentleman seemed to have suddenly aged, and a haggard look had crept over his deceptive face, while his eyes hinted uneasiness as he watched Miss Grison. It seemed to Fuller that Sorley for some reason feared his visitor, and the fact that she had so audaciously walked over the house appeared to indicate that she was quite sure he would not rebuke her for the liberty. And, remembering the man's bluster, which contrasted so pointedly with his present suave talk, Alan felt confident that there was an understanding between them. He asked himself if such had to do with the murder, but replied mentally in the negative. If Sorley knew anything about the matter, Miss Grison would then and there have denounced him, since she appeared to hate him as much as he dreaded her. But beyond short answers and sinister glances, she gave no sign of her enmity, while Sorley masked his uneasiness under the guise of small talk. In spite of the almost immediate occurrence of the murder, and the fact that Miss Grison had come down for the funeral, Fuller noted that the tragedy was scarcely referred to--at all events during the earlier part of the conversation. Along with Marie, he remained silent, and allowed the other two to converse. "Are you staying long down here, Miss Grison?" asked the host, handing a cup of tea to her and a plate of thin bread and butter. "Why don't you call me Louisa as you used to do?" she demanded. "We were great friends, you know, Marie, before you were born." She turned to Miss Inderwick. "Yes yes," said Sorley, taking his cue. "You called me Randolph; but we are both too old now to use our Christian names." He laughed artificially. "Are we?" said Miss Grison shortly. "Perhaps we are. How are you getting along with that book on precious stones, may I ask?" "You may," said Sorley blandly. "I am getting on slowly but surely. It has taken me years to gather material." "Precious stones, I suppose." "Certain gems of small value amongst other material, such as legends and superstitions connected with jewels. It will be an interesting book." "I'm sure it will," said Miss Grison more graciously, "but don't work too hard at it. You are fond of exercise?" "Yes, I take a great deal." "Ah, Selina Millington told me that you had bought a motor bicycle." "Yes," said Sorley stiffly and still laboriously polite. "I ride it round the country." "And up to London?" "No," he replied swiftly. "I have not yet travelled on it to town." "I don't think it takes many hours to get to town on so rapid a machine," said Miss Grison in a musing tone. "But perhaps you are wise; you might get knocked over in the streets." What answer Sorley made to this speech Alan did not hear. Marie, who had resented his attention to the speech of the elderly couple, now insisted that he should converse with her. He did so rather unwillingly, in spite of his genuine love. But his brain was running on the odd and somewhat spasmodic conversation, and he wondered why Miss Grison so pointedly referred to the motor bicycle. Also it seemed strange that Sorley should be on such familiar terms with a humble woman who kept a Bloomsbury boarding-house. To be sure her brother had been the man's secretary, and Sorley probably had been intimate with the visitor in early days. Perhaps--and here Fuller started--perhaps the two had been in love, and the hatred Miss Grison felt for the well-preserved old gentleman was that of a woman scorned. When he again caught the drift of the conversation she was talking about cryptograms, and this also Alan thought strange. "My poor brother was always trying to work out secret writings," said she. "Why?" asked Sorley, again uneasy at this mention of the dead. "I don't know," answered Miss Grison indifferently. "He wanted to learn some secret that would bring him money." "In connection with what?" "I don't know." "Did he ever decipher the secret writing you refer to?" "I don't know," said Miss Grison again. "He spent his days and nights in trying to work out the cryptogram.' "Alan," murmured Marie under her breath on hearing this, "there is some cryptogram connected with the peacock, I fancy." "Yes! yes, and he had it," said Fuller hastily. Then he raised his voice. "Are you talking about ciphers, Miss Grison? I am fond of solving them myself and indeed I am rather good at it." "Are you?" It was Mr. Sorley who replied and not the woman. "I think that I could puzzle you." "No, you couldn't," rejoined Alan deliberately boastful. "Set me any cryptogram and I am sure I can solve it. I go on the system of Poe." "What is that?" Before he could answer Miss Grison rose, and shaking the crumbs from her dress walked to the door. There she halted, and turned to fix cold eyes on her astonished host, who had not expected so abrupt a move in the midst of an agreeable conversation. "I have eaten and drunk in this house," said Miss Grison sternly, "a thing I never believed that I could bring myself to do. Now I shall say what I came to say to you, Mr. Randolph Sorley, and shake the dust from my feet." "Hadn't you better speak to me privately?" asked Sorley, rising with a wan smile and a white face. "I think not. What I have to say can be heard by both these young people, who are aware of the opinion I have of you. You are a wicked and cruel and sinful man, worse than the worst of men, although all are bad now that my poor brother is dead." "Your brother Bald----" "Don't dare to take his name on your lips," interrupted Miss Grison in a fierce way. "His death is due to you." "To me? How dare you accuse me of the murder?" Sorley was whiter than ever and seemed much shaken by the abrupt accusation. "I don't. But I accuse you of having wrongfully dismissed Baldwin from this house, over twenty years ago." "I dismissed him, if you will have the truth told in the presence of others, because he forged my name to a check." "He did not. You malign the dead. You turned him out and soiled his name and ruined his life without a shadow of excuse. That he sank to a slum in Rotherhithe is your work; that he was murdered there is your work, for if he had not been in Rotherhithe he would not have died by violence. If you had dared to come to the funeral I should have spat on your wicked face." "How dare you! how dare you! Marie, go to your room." "Marie shall stay until she hears what I think of you," cried Miss Grison grimly. "With that meal you hoped to smooth me down. But I shall never forgive you for having laid Baldwin in the dust. You have had your turn: now it is my turn. Wait, wait and see how iniquity can be punished," and, shaking a menacing finger, she stalked out of the room. "Mad! mad. She is mad," gasped Mr. Sorley and literally tottered out of the library, presumably to follow his denouncer. "What does it all mean, Alan?" asked Marie with awe. "Why did she turn so suddenly on Uncle Ran?" "And why did she mention that her brother was trying to solve some secret writing which he hoped would bring him money?" asked Fuller quickly. "Her brother had the peacock and----" "Exactly. Now Marie we have a clue to the truth." CHAPTER V THE LETTER What Fuller meant exactly when he suggested to Marie that there was now a clue to the truth may be gathered from one of the frequent conversations he held on the subject with his friend. Fuller had much to say when he returned to town from his week-end visit to Belstone, but for some little time he did not find a favorable moment for an exhaustive talk. He certainly gave Dick a few hints as to what he had learned, and spoke more or less in a desultory manner, but Latimer's time was so fully taken up with journalism that the matter was not discussed thoroughly until the middle of the week. And even then the chance came about in a somewhat unexpected way, as Alan took the opportunity to detain the reporter when he strolled into the Chancery Lane office for a few minutes. Dick had stated that he was off the chain for a time, and simply wished for a smoke and a rest. "You can fire away with your work, old son," said Latimer, taking possession of the client's chair. "I sha'n't bother you." "This affair of the peacock bothers me a deal more than you do," retorted the solicitor, "and I am glad to get you to myself for a few minutes to talk it over. Hitherto you have always rushed off when I wanted you." "Humanity demands my services, Alan," said Dick ironically, "and I have to earn a ridiculously small income by attending to the squalling of brother man. However, I am at your disposal for one entire hour, so you can burble to your heart's content." "There is much more than burbling in this matter," rejoined the other man gravely. "You don't take so much interest in this matter as I expected you to, Dick, considering our first conversation on the matter." Latimer, with a lighted match held over the filled bowl of his pipe, looked up quickly. "Oh, but I do, my son. I am very interested indeed, and if you have things to tell me, as I gather from what you have let drop since you came back from the country, I have information also." "What about?" "First your story and then mine," said Dick imperturbably. "All things in order, old boy. I suppose none of your confounded clients will come in to interrupt." "I don't think so. Things are slack just now, and I am rather glad that they are, as I shall have time to attend to the Rotherhithe matter." Dick grunted and shook himself, looking like a huge good-natured bear in the fur overcoat which the bitter cold of the December day demanded. "I don't see the use of your bothering about the business unless you are legally retained to thresh it out. Why waste your time?" "Far from wasting my time," said Alan quietly, "the solution of this mystery means that Miss Inderwick may acquire a large fortune." "And you, by marrying Miss Inderwick, will gain possession of the same along with a tolerably pretty young woman," said Latimer dryly. Fuller's dark eyes flashed. "She's the loveliest girl in the world," he cried vehemently, "and you know it." "I ought to, since you have told me as much as fifty times. But I say, your hint of a large fortune sounds interesting. How much?" "One hundred to two hundred thousand pounds." Dick whistled. "The deuce. We are playing with crowns and kingdoms it seems, old son. Fire away. I'm all attention, in the hope that some of the cash may come into my pockets." Alan took no notice of this flippant remark, but went into the outer office to tell his clerk that he would be engaged for one hour. As a solicitor with a small but certain practice Fuller only enjoyed the ownership of two dingy rooms very badly lighted and still more badly furnished. His inner sanctum only contained a large writing-table, a green-painted iron safe, a shabby bookcase filled with law volumes bound in calf, and a few cane-bottomed chairs. A window with a slanting silvered glass outside to attract the light and reflect it into the dark room, was opposite the door, and beside it was a small grate in which at the present moment burned an equally small fire. Alan returned and seated himself beside this, taking out his pipe to enjoy the hour during which "he sported his oak," as the phrase goes. Dick grunted and sucked at his briar in an opposite chair, waiting for Fuller to open the conversation. "I told you that Miss Inderwick had given me a clue," began Alan, but was cut short by his friend. "Why not 'Marie' to me, my haughty solicitor?" "By all means," said Fuller readily, "since I keep nothing from you. But I have fallen so much into the habit of speaking stiffly about Marie to outsiders, so as to prevent old Sorley from interfering, that I forget how implicitly I can trust you." "I sha'n't say a word about your wooing to the man, if that's what you mean," growled Dick, "but if you talk of 'Miss Inderwick' I shall expect you to call me 'Mr. Latimer.'" "Oh, hang your nonsense. Let us get to business." "How can we when you talk all round the shop?" protested Dick, raising his eyebrows. "Well, go on. You hinted to me that you spoke to Marie about the peacock." "I did, but not to Mr. Sorley." "Why not?" "Because I don't trust him." "Why not?" inquired Latimer once more and very stolidly. "Now you ask me a question which is not easy to answer," said Alan, looking meditatively into the fire. "I can give no reason for my mistrust since, so far as I know, Sorley is straight enough on the whole." "Well then, if he is straight, why mistrust him?" "I said on the whole he is straight; but he does certain things of which I do not approve." "Such as stopping your wooing," chuckled the journalist. "Ho! Ho!" "I rather refer to his selling certain valuable furniture which belongs to Marie, and which I am pretty sure he has no right to dispose of." "It sounds crooked. But after all he is her guardian, and you don't know what power the will of her father gives him." "I mean to find that out by an examination of the will at Somerset House, Dicky. Sorley enjoys Marie's income and his own and has the benefit of living at The Monastery rent free. He is, as you know, crazy about jewels, and from what Marie tells me he uses all the cash to buy them. She only has her clothes and a few shillings a week for pocket money. But he never allows her to go into county society, nor does he take her to town." Latimer removed his pipe and nodded. "He wants her to remain as a flower unseen until she is of age. Then he will hand over the accumulated money in the form of jewels, and will present her to an astonished world when she come of age in a year and his guardianship ceases." "Hum!" said Alan dubiously, "so you say. But my impressions are quite different. It is my opinion that this precious guardian will not be able to render an honest account of his stewardship, but, when required to do so, will bolt with the jewels upon which he has squandered Marie's money and with the fortune of the peacock if he can find the same." "Is there any difficulty in finding it, Alan?" "Yes. In the first place the fortune is hidden and only by gaining possession of the peacock can the clue be found to its whereabouts. And in the second place, even if that bird----" "The ooff-bird," suggested Latimer vulgarly. "If you like. But even if it is found there will be a difficulty in reading its riddle." "Its riddle? Whatever do you mean?" "What I say," retorted Fuller impatiently. "The secret of the fortune is connected with some secret writing which has to do with the peacock." "But how can there be secret writing on a metal ornament?" "I can't say. I don't know. There's an enigma of some sort, a cryptogram." "This is very interesting but patchy," said Dick, readjusting his big body in the chairs. "Suppose you tell me all from the beginning. Then I might get a glimmer of what you exactly mean." "Very good, then don't interrupt." And Alan related the strange story of George Inderwick and his faithful servant, who had preserved the secret so faithfully indeed that not even the master had been able to find the jewels. Latimer listened with great attention, and nodded when the story was concluded with an air of satisfaction. "It's quite a romance," he declared slowly, when Fuller waited for comment, "and there is no doubt that the assassin stole the peacock by murdering Grison in order to get the Begum's gems. No man would have been such a fool as to risk his neck otherwise for a paltry ornament." "I am not so sure of that, seeing how valuable the peacock is," rejoined the other doubtfully. "It is--as I learned from my father, who saw this fetish of the Inderwicks--as large as a thrush; of pure gold elaborately worked, and is studded with precious stones of more or less price. The tail is spread out and is also jewelled. Now any of those Lascars or Dagoes in Mother Slaig's boarding-house would not mind killing a man by cutting his throat to gain possession of such an object." "Ah, but the man was not killed in that way. A seaman of whatever nationality would cut a throat, but would not use a slender instrument which scarcely drew any blood to get rid of Grison. The instrument used--which has not been discovered, by the way--suggests a refined criminal." "A slender instrument," repeated Fuller musingly, "why not a stiletto which an Italian would use? And there are Italian seamen, you know." Dick nodded. "There is something in that," he admitted, "but we'll let that point alone for the time being. Evidently the peacock is worth more than its intrinsic value to a man who can solve its mystery. Now the question is, how did Grison get hold of the ornament?" "I see no trouble in answering that, Dicky," and again Alan told the story: this time that one which dealt with Grison's dismissal from his post by Sorley on a charge of forgery, and with the visit of the sister to the big house. Then he related how Miss Grison had spoken to her host and also how she had talked about cryptograms. "Although," concluded Alan, "since I was talking to Marie at the time, I don't exactly know how she introduced that particular subject." "That she introduced it at all, shows two things," said Latimer decisively. "One, that she knew her brother stole the peacock; and two, she was aware how he was searching for the solution of the cryptogram connected with the bird in order to secure the gems." "But how could he have learned about the Begum's treasure?" asked Fuller. "Undoubtedly in the same way as Marie did. Grison, as Sorley's secretary, must have found the manuscript and----" "But if he found it, why did he not take it with him?" "I can't explain that. He would have done better had he secured it so that no one else should learn the true value of the peacock. But it was to get the gems that he stole the ornament, and perhaps told the story in a moment of weakness to the third party who afterwards murdered him for its possession. That's what I think. Have you any reason to believe that Sorley himself knows about the peacock cryptogram?" Fuller jumped up and, laying down his pipe, began to pace the narrow confines of the office. "Yes, I do, and for these reasons. In the first place, Miss Grison would not have mentioned cryptograms to him without she guessed that he knew something; in the second, when I boasted purposely about my knowledge of secret writings, he would not have told me that he had a cryptogram which would baffle my skill, as he certainly did more or less; and in the third, Dicky, he would not have been afraid of Miss Grison." "What do you mean by that exactly?" "Well, Sorley told me that he hated Miss Grison and that she annoyed him by saying that he had dismissed her brother unjustly and had practically ruined his life. She walked into the house and all over the house, and yet Sorley did not dare to object either to her taking such a liberty or to her calling him names when Marie and I were present. Also she asked about his motor cycle which I told you he had bought, and inquired if he had been to London. He denied that he had, and she sarcastically advised him not to go lest he should be knocked over in the streets." "Then I infer," said Dick, slowly removing his pipe, "that you believe Miss Grison suspects Sorley of knowing both the secret of the peacock and that it was in the possession of her brother. Also that he came up to town by means of his motor cycle and murdered the man for its possession?" "Yes, I do infer as much," said Fuller bluntly and returning to his chair. "If Sorley has not the peacock, and does not know the story of Ferrier, why should he speak to me about cryptograms?" "But he only made an idle remark which was natural, seeing that Miss Grison spoke of cryptograms, although I admit that it is strange she should talk about them at all unless----" "Exactly," interrupted the solicitor, tilting back his chair so as to get at the drawer of his writing-table; "unless she believes that he murdered her brother and now possesses the peacock with an intention of learning the cryptogram by employing me to solve it." "Sorley would scarcely do that when he knows that if he is guilty, such a revelation of his possession of the peacock would condemn him." "You forget," said Alan, who had extracted a letter from the drawer, "that the fact of the murder being committed for the sake of the peacock has not yet been made public. As I said, I told Marie, but I did not tell Sorley because I mistrust him, and warned her not to do so either. So if Miss Grison's assumption is true Sorley will have no hesitation in enlisting my services, or in showing me the peacock, always presuming that he is indeed the murderer and has it in his possession." Latimer nodded three times solemnly. "It _is_ strange, and you argue very well, my son. What's that letter you are holding?" "It's from Sorley and came yesterday morning. I have not had an opportunity of talking about it to you before, as you have been so confoundedly busy. It is a letter," said Fuller, unfolding the missive, "which illustrates the proverb that he who excuses himself accuses himself." "Ho," said Latimer with a world of meaning, "read it out, my boy." "There is no need to read it. I can give you the gist in a few words," was Fuller's reply, as he ran his eye rapidly over the lines. "Sorley begs me not to take notice of Miss Grison's wild words, as she is a trifle mad. He had to dismiss her brother for forging his name to a check, but, as the man was also insane--slightly, that is--he did not prosecute him." "Very kind and Christian-like, Alan, But why does Sorley put up with Miss Grison's vagaries?" "He declares that he is sorry for her, in this letter." "And by word of mouth as good as told you that he hated her. Humph! It seems to me that our dear friend is hedging. Well, and what more, Alan?" "Nothing more on the subject of Miss Grison, save that he declares his contempt for her threats." "Threats. What threats?" Dick sat up alertly. "She told him in the presence of Marie, and in my presence also, that he was to wait and see how iniquity would be punished." "Humph! That looks as though she means to be nasty." "Exactly. And Sorley's cringing to her implies that he guesses she can make things hot for him. However, he simply ends his letter by saying that when I come to Belstone for Christmas he will have a chat with me on the subject of cryptograms. Did I not say, Dick, that his letter illustrates the proverb I referred to. Why should Sorley think it necessary to explain about Miss Grison and her crazy words--if indeed they are crazy--or why should he wish to talk about cryptograms to me, unless----" "Quite so," interrupted Dick on the same word and in the same manner as his friend had stopped him previously. "Unless she believes that Sorley made away with her brother. It's a strange case, and grows more complicated as we go into it." "What is your opinion, Dick?" "It is rather difficult to give a hard and fast one on what facts we have before us, seeing that we are so much in the dark. By the way, how long has Sorley had the motor bicycle?" "He told me, or rather hinted at three weeks, but Marie said that he bought it four months ago." "Humph! So Sorley tells a lie about that, does he? It looks fishy. Certainly on a good machine he could slip up to town and back again in a night without anyone being the wiser." "Then you think that he committed the murder, by----?" Alan spoke excitedly. "I can't say that," interrupted Latimer swiftly. "Oh! You infer then that he is innocent?" "I can't say that either." "Then what the deuce do you say?" demanded the lawyer irritably. "This much. That before we can be sure of Sorley being mixed up with the crime, we must learn for certain if he possesses the peacock of jewels." "But how can we?" "_We_ can't, but _you_ can, Alan. Sorley's request that you should talk cryptograms with him at Christmas can only arise from his desire to solve the riddle of the peacock. Wait and hear what he has to say." "And then?" asked Fuller, nodding approval. "Then we shall be able to take another step along this dark path. You mean to travel it, I presume?" asked Dick, looking up searchingly. "Of course I do," replied the young man emphatically. "If those jewels are in existence they belong to Marie, and I want to find them before Sorley does, lest he should make off with them." "Well," said Latimer grimly, "I daresay he would bolt, both because he loves jewels and moreover--if guilty--must dread risking his neck." "Guilty? If he possesses the peacock he must be guilty." "It would appear so, Alan, since only by means of the peacock can the gems be discovered. If he finds them we can assume very reasonably that he killed Baldwin Grison, but as yet so far as we know the jewels are still hidden." Dick thought for a few moments, then ventured on advice. "You have a week or so before taking your Christmas holiday. Why not visit Miss Grison at her boarding-house? You know where it is." "Yes. She gave me her card. But she won't speak out, Dicky. Had she been certain of Sorley's criminality she would have denounced him then and there to gratify her hatred." "She may only have a suspicion of his guilt, or perhaps her wish is father to her thought. But it seems to me that by her allusion to the bicycle, and to cryptograms, she wished to arouse your mistrust of the man." "Still she cannot be aware that Marie told me about the peacock riddle?" Latimer ruffled his hair in perplexity. "Oh, hang it, what is the use of speculating!" he cried crossly, and rising to stretch his big limbs. "Before we can arrive at any conclusion we must sound Miss Grison as to what she knows, or what she does not know." "At all events she detests Sorley and, so far as I can see, will do her best to hang him." "Perhaps. But it is your task to prevent such a miscarriage. Go and see her, Alan, and then tell me what you learn." "Very good. I shall write a note and invite myself to dinner." "Why to dinner?" "I wish to see what kind of lodgers Miss Grison has, and to hear their opinion of their landlady. Much can be learned in this way. But tell me, Dick, what you have discovered." "Very little. Moon is still hunting for the assassin and is still at his wit's end how to strike the true trail. The only thing of interest that I have learned is about Jotty." "The street-arab whom Grison befriended?" "Yes. He's a clever little animal, and in better surroundings might improve into something useful. Miss Grison intends to give him his chance, and is taking him into her service as a page-boy: She'll have enough to do to teach him civilized habits," concluded Dick cynically. "Why is she acting so philanthropically?" "Out of regard for the memory of her brother, as she told Inspector Moon." "Well," murmured Fuller thoughtfully, "that is reasonable enough since she appears to have had a strong regard for her brother. Perhaps he commended Jotty to her care." "It's not improbable. The poor wretch may have wished to give the boy a chance, and if so, it shows that there were decent feelings in him. But if you visit this boarding-house I wish you to keep an eye on Jotty." "Why?" Alan looked up quickly. "Because I believe the boy knows much more than he has hitherto admitted." "Oh," said Fuller, after a pause, "so it is probable that Miss Grison's interest in the lad is not wholly philanthropic. You fancy that she may desire to keep him under her own eye lest he should say too much." Latimer shrugged his shoulders. "I can't say that I quite took that view, Alan, as Miss Grison may really be acting kindly out of regard for her brother's wishes. All the same I believe that Jotty knows things about the murder which he is keeping quiet, and it will be just as well to watch him more or less closely." "But on what grounds----?" "On no grounds whatever. It's just an idea I have, and may be all rubbish." Fuller nodded. "On the other hand it may be useful not to reject your idea, Dick. I shall watch and question Jotty if I get the chance." "Be careful, Alan. He is a sharp lad." "I'll see that he does not get the better of me. Dick, isn't it strange how suspicious one gets of everything when on a man-hunt?" "Yes. But it's natural enough. On a trail one always observes small signs to indicate the direction, and so everything around becomes of value in the way of evidence. However, you know what you have to do?" "Yes. And you?" "I shall keep in touch with Rotherhithe and Mother Slaig's boarding-house and Moon. Whatever I learn you shall know. Good luck, Alan, to your hunting." "Ditto to yours, Dicky, and now clear out and let me get to work." Latimer tramped to the door and vanished with a friendly growl. CHAPTER VI THE BOARDING-HOUSE The establishment of Miss Louisa Grison was by no means aristocratic as her house was not situated in a fashionable quarter of London and she charged extremely moderate prices for board and lodging. Petty clerks and shop-girls formed the greater portion of those who dwelt under her humble roof, but occasionally people in better circumstances came to the place. Young men learning to become lawyers, students in various metropolitan colleges, actresses in or out of employment, reduced ladies, who had just sufficient income to keep body and soul together, literary aspirants and adventurers down in their luck, were to be found at 2Z Thimble Square, Bloomsbury. It was a fluctuating population which came and went throughout the year. Sometimes the house would be full, at other times it was almost empty but in one way and another Miss Grison always contrived to satisfy her landlord and pay her taxes. She never complained of her lot, or lamented her poverty, but met everything, good, bad and indifferent, in her hard way, without emotion of any kind. Misery seemed to have turned her into stone. The house was a large corner one, with a vast drawing-room, a vast dining-room, and a sitting-room for Miss Grison on the ground floor, together with a kitchen of no great size and servants' cubicles in the basement. All the rest of the building was given over to bedrooms, so small and so many that they resembled the cells of bees. And the lodgers were exactly like bees, for the greater part of them swarmed out to their various employments in the early morning and swarmed back again late in the evening. Sometimes they had spare money for amusements, but more often they had not, and seemed to be incessantly working like the bees aforesaid to gather honey for other people. Yet as they were generally young and hopeful and healthy, on the whole they contrived to enjoy themselves in a meagre way, their standard of pleasure not being very high. Sometimes the men made love to the women, or the girls flirted with the boys, and so long as these philanderings were innocent Miss Grison did not forbid them. But in her hard way, she was rigorously moral, and any boarder, male or female, who overstepped the line was banished from this penny Eden. However, the inmates of the Establishment--as Miss Grison called it--behaved very well and she rarely had cause for complaint. They were all a trifle afraid of the landlady with her hard blue eyes and stiff manners, and she ruled them after the manner of a schoolmistress, making allowance for youthful spirits yet keeping them in strict order. Some objected to these limitations, but the food was so good and the bedrooms so comfortable and the price of both so moderate that they put up with the lesser evil to enjoy the greater good. In her reply to Fuller, bidding him come to dinner on a certain day, Miss Grison mentioned that evening dress was unnecessary, an observation which seemed rather superfluous to the young man when he learned the quality of the establishment. He entered the large drawing-room to find the men in their workaday clothes, although the ladies had certainly done their best to smarten themselves for the evening function. Miss Grison, for instance, received him in a worn black silk dress, trimmed sparsely with jet and set off with cheap lace. She still looked as though carved out of wood and still stared with an unwinking gaze which somewhat confused the young man. There is nothing so embarrassing to even a tired man or woman of the world as a steady look, and although Alan was conscious of being a perfectly proper person he yet winced at Miss Grison's hard greeting. The visitor's good looks and unusually smart clothes--although he simply wore a suit of blue serge--caused quite a sensation. Girls in cheap blouses, cheap skirts and still cheaper jewellery giggled and blushed when he was presented to them, and elderly dames with careworn faces and of antiquated garb, straightened themselves with conscious dignity. There was something pathetic in their assumption of society manners, considering the dire poverty to which they were condemned. The men--they were an ordinary lot as regards looks and brains--were disposed to be hostile as they thought that the female portion of the establishment paid too much attention to the newcomer. But they were civil on the whole and the dull quarter of an hour before the seven o'clock meal was announced by a seedy man-servant--termed grandiloquently the butler--passed off fairly well. Fuller was quiet and observant, and chatted mostly to his hostess, although for politeness' sake he had to address a few observations on safe topics to ladies, old and young and middle-aged. The dinner was plentiful and nourishing, if not particularly dainty, consisting of Scotch broth, Irish stew, rice pudding with tinned apricots and American cheese. The boarders provided their own liquid refreshments, as Miss Grison merely supplied water in large glass jugs. Consequently there were many private bottles on the table, ranging as to their contents from pale ale to whisky: some of the better-off lodgers even indulging in cheap claret. Miss Grison drank water, and her guest, since she offered him nothing better, followed suit. "I would banish alcohol of every description from my table," she whispered, with stern apology, "for it was my dear dead brother's curse. But if I kept a temperance hotel I doubt if the business would pay so well." "Then it does pay," remarked Fuller with a side-glance at her worn dress. "Oh, yes," she responded indifferently, "I manage to keep my head above water and to save a trifle against rainy days, and old age. Ah, there is our usual late comer, Mr. Bakche. Now his soup will have to be brought back, which puts the servants out. These Orientals have no idea of time, Mr. Fuller." Alan politely 'agreed and glanced carelessly at the newcomer, only to give a more earnest look later on, for Mr. Bakche was decidedly out of place amongst that shabby assemblage. He was perfectly arrayed in a well-cut evening dress, with pearl studs and patent leather shoes. Tall and slim, he was yet sinewy in his looks and possessed an admirable figure, which the close-fitting clothes set off to great advantage. He had clearly-cut features, a dark complexion, as became an Eastern, and wore a small black mustache, well twisted over very red lips and very white teeth. On the whole he was a handsome fellow and his air was somewhat haughty and reserved. As Alan observed, he ate only plain boiled rice, uncooked fruit, and drank water; just as if he were an anchorite. The looks of the man and the abstinence of the man aroused Fuller's curiosity, and he thought that he would like to talk to Mr. Bakche as well as to Miss Grison. Meanwhile he asked for information. "He is an Indian prince, so he says," replied Miss Grison in a whisper. "I understand that his full name is Mr. Morad-Bakche, which he told me means, in his own language, 'Desire accomplished.' He is only in England for a few months on some mission connected with the recovery of his family property lost during the Mutiny, and my house was recommended to him by a former boarder who went out to Ceylon." "He has a striking personality," said Fuller when this information was given, and then asked his hostess about Jotty. "Mr. Latimer told me that you intended to give the boy a chance in life, Miss Grison. It is very good of you to do so." She shrugged her sloping shoulders. "Oh, I don't know," she answered, sinking her metallic voice. "I want a page-boy to open and shut the door, so as to save the servants' legs. Jotty does as well as another and since my poor Baldwin took an interest in him, of course I feel that it is my duty, to do what I can. I have had him washed and dressed and fed and have given him the more Christian name of Alonzo. The boarders do not know his real name, if indeed it can be called one, and they are not aware that he is the boy who appeared at the inquest." "They know, I presume, that it was your brother who was murdered?" "Oh yes, the name appeared in the newspapers, and I had to give evidence at the inquest, so there was no keeping the relationship quiet. But I beg of you, Mr. Fuller, to call Jotty by his new name of Alonzo, as I don't want it generally known that I am helping my poor brother's protégé. As the head of the Establishment," Miss Grison drew up her spare form proudly, "I do not like scandal to be connected with my name." "But, my dear lady, your behavior calls for nothing but praise." "Human nature is more prone to blame than praise," answered the hostess bitterly, and gave the signal to the ladies for departure. "We will leave you to smoke with the other gentlemen, Mr. Fuller, and afterwards you can come and talk to me in the drawing-room. Alonzo you will probably see when he opens the door for your departure," and with a stiff bow she left the room at the head of the shabbily-dressed females, who thus followed the customs of the west end. For a time Alan was left severely alone, and smoked his cigarette in silence, since the men seemed to be too shy to venture on conversation, and had many matters to discuss among themselves. But after a time Mr. Bakche left his seat and moved to a chair at the young man's elbow, offering, as he sat down, his cigarette-case, which was well filled. "You will find these particularly good," said Mr. Bakche in a deep and mellow voice, which accorded well with his grave dignity. "I received them from a friend of mine in Constantinople." "Thank you," answered the solicitor readily, and anxious to respond to this politeness, "you are very kind." "The kindness is on your part, Mr. Fuller." "You know my name, Mr. Bakche?" "And you know mine, I observe. We have made mutual inquiries about one another, no doubt. Mr. Potter informed me about you; and Miss Grison, I presume, gave information about me." "Yes," assented Fuller easily. "She tells me that you are an Indian prince!" Bakche laughed in a silent manner. "She places me too high, Mr. Fuller, I assure you," he responded quietly. "I come of a princely family, but I am not of princely rank. You can look upon me as a plain Mahometan gentleman of Tartar descent." "Of Tartar descent," echoed Fuller, who found his companion interesting. "Yes. Did Miss Grison tell you my full name?" "Morad-Bakche! Indeed she did and gave me its meaning." "'Desire-accomplished,'" said the other, with half a sigh, "although I fear that my desire will never be accomplished. However, that is by the way. I wonder, Mr. Fuller, if you have read the 'History of the Moguls.'" "I regret to say that I have not." "Well, it is rather an unusual book for anyone to read unless he is a student. But you will find mentioned therein my ancestor, after whom I am called. He was also Morad-Bakche, the youngest son of Shah Jahan, who was descended from Timur the Tartar. My family were rich and famous when the Mogul emperors ruled at Delhi, but everything belonging to us was swept away in the Mutiny, as you English call it." "I can quite understand that you give it a different name," said Alan sympathetically. "You naturally desired to be free." "Naturally, but injudiciously, Mr. Fuller. If the British Raj ended, my unhappy country would become the cockpit of contending hosts. We are too divided in India to rule ourselves, and the great powers would interfere, so that we should only exchange King Stork for Queen Log, or the reverse, as I forget the exact details of the fable. But what I mean is that England is a better ruler of our country than Germany or Russia would be." "Your sentiments are very liberal, Mr. Bakche." "I have read history," replied the other. "Believe me, Mr. Fuller, that if people only read history more carefully so many mistakes would not be made in this world. The past life of nations is more or less only what the future will be, making reasonable allowance for development." Bakche talked on this strain for some time, and displayed a great knowledge of history, and betrayed a shrewd observation of men and manners, so that Alan found the conversation very enjoyable. Later on, his companion became particular after general, and gave a few hints about his family. "At the time of the Mutiny my grandfather was the Rajah of Kam, which was a little-known state which is in the Madras presidency. That is, it was." "Was," repeated Fuller, surprised, "a state cannot vanish out of existence, Mr. Bakche, since it is land and----" "Oh, the land is still there and the villages and towns. But the name has been changed and my family have been turned out. I am the sole member left alive, Mr. Fuller. But I have no ambition to get back our former royalty." "But I understood from Miss Grison that you had come to England on a mission of that sort." "The good lady is wrong again. I want no forfeited title, but I do want certain property." "I see. So you are applying to the Government?" "No," said Mr. Bakche unexpectedly and somewhat grimly, "my property cannot be recovered by the Government. I have to search for it myself. It is----" Here he checked himself. "But I don't see why I should trouble you with all this dry talk." "It is most interesting, I assure you," Alan assured him quite truthfully. "Then we must resume it on another occasion," said Bakche, rising. "I have to keep an appointment. Perhaps I shall see you again here." "Possibly, but if I do not come again here is my card." Fuller passed along his business address. "I shall be glad to see you at any time." Bakche glanced at the card ponderingly. "You are a solicitor, I see. It is probable that I may want a solicitor." "I am at your service." "You may not be when you know what I want," said the Indian dryly, and with a sudden gleam in his dark eyes. "However I am glad that I have met you, and perhaps I may call and see you. Good-night, sir," and with a grave bow Morad-Bakche took his departure from the room which was now almost empty. Fuller drew a deep breath as he rose to go to the drawing-room. His late companion being of an unusual kind had interested him not a little, but in spite of his suave manners and gentle voice there was something dangerous about him, betrayed for the moment by that sudden gleam of ferocity. Alan felt as though he had been playing with a tiger who had been careful for reasons of its own not to scratch, but would do so when the appointed time came for it to reveal its true nature. He half hoped that Bakche would not come to the Chancery Lane office, and regretted momentarily that he had given his card. But reflection made him laugh at his nervous dread, since he was well able to look after himself and need have no fear of Bakche or of any man. Besides he wanted to get all the business he could so as to make money and marry Miss Inderwick, therefore it would have been foolish to lose sight of a prospective client. Wondering what the precise nature of the man's business could be, Alan sauntered towards the drawing-room, when in the passage he came across a diminutive urchin with a peaked face, arrayed as a page. "Oh," said Mr. Fuller, stopping, "so you are Alonzo." "Yessir," gasped the boy in one breath, and looked at the tall gentleman from under light eye-lashes out of light eyes. "You have another name?" "Nosir," said the urchin again in a breath and lying glibly, "never was called anything but Alanzer." Fuller nodded, seeing that the lad was loyal to Miss Grison, and did not try to wean him from his allegiance. All the same he wished to ask him questions about the dead man, but did not think the present moment a judicious one to do so. "Some day you must ask your mistress to let you come and see me at my office," he remarked carelessly, and passed on. In a moment Jotty was tugging his coat-tail. "What jer want ter arsk?" "I shall tell you when the time comes. Do you know Mr. Latimer?" Jotty nodded with bright inquisitive eyes. "Him with the big coat like the bear them Italyains chivy about?" "Yes. You see that I know something about you, Alonzo. But you are quite right to say what you have said. I don't want you to call and see me unless Miss Grison permits you to." "Yer a lawr gent?" inquired Jotty, pondering. "In Chancery Lane." Fuller gave his number. "If you do happen to be passing, Mr. Alonzo, just look in and earn a few shillings." "I'm game for that anyhow, if it doesn't hurt her." He jerked his head towards the room where Miss Grison was supposed to be. Fuller turned on him sharply. "Why should anything hurt her?" he inquired. Jotty did not answer directly. "She's bin good t' me, and he wos good--him es died, sir. I don't want no hurt t' come t' her anyhow," and with a flash of his light eyes the boy sprang down the stairs leading to the kitchen, while Alan entered the drawing-room wondering what the observation meant. It seemed impossible that any harm could come to Miss Grison out of any inquiry into the death of her brother. Again it struck Fuller that the woman's reason for helping Jotty might not be entirely philanthropic. However he had no time to dwell on this particular point, but looked about for Miss Grison, who was not to be seen. An elderly lady with a simper informed him that the landlady was in her own room, and pointed out the direction, so Fuller knocked at the door softly. The sharp voice of Miss Grison invited him to enter, and he found himself in a small apartment crowded with furniture. "Oh, here you are, Mr. Fuller," said his hostess, rising from a low chair in which she was seated by the fire. "I thought you would find me here. I cannot stay listening to the twaddle they talk in the drawing-room, having much more serious things with which to occupy my thoughts." "Very natural, after your great loss," replied Alan, accepting the chair she pushed towards him. "I suppose you wonder why I have come to see you." "No," said Miss Grison in her sharp, blunt way. "You mentioned at Belstone that you would help me, and I am glad to have your assistance." "I can give it, if you will be frank with me." "What do you wish to know?" Miss Grison took a fan from the mantelpiece as she spoke, and used it to screen her sallow cheeks from the fire. "Have you any idea who murdered your brother?" "If I had, do you think I should invoke your assistance," she asked, evading his question dexterously. "Two heads are better than one," countered the solicitor. "True enough, and yet one head may be able to bring the beast who killed Baldwin to the scaffold." "Then I must apologise for troubling you," said Alan, rising. "As I told you at Belstone my only desire to unravel this case is one of curiosity, and if you think that I am meddlesome I----" "No no! no! You are really very good. Sit down and I shall answer what questions you like. After all I should be glad to have the advice of a solicitor for nothing, unless you expect six and eightpence, Mr. Fuller." "I expect nothing but straight replies to my questions, Miss Grison. "Go on, then. As to the one you have already asked, I can say nothing at present. I don't know for certain who murdered Baldwin." "But you have some suspicion?" "Nothing that has tangible proof." Apparently she would not put her feeling against Sorley into words, so Alan tried another tack. "Would you mind telling me your history?" "And that of Baldwin, I suppose. Why should I?" "Because I may then learn if there is anything in his life or in your life which would cause his death." "I fear you will be disappointed, Mr. Fuller," she replied coldly, "for my history and that of Baldwin is uneventful on the whole. We are the children of a doctor who practised at Canterbury, and who made money. Mr. Sorley was a patient of my father's and took a fancy to Baldwin when he came home from Oxford, where he was being educated. When Baldwin finished his college career and got his degree----" "Oh," Alan was plainly surprised, "he got his degree, did he?" "Baldwin was an extremely clever man," cried Miss Grison impetuously, and her hands trembled with emotion. "I don't see why you should ask me such a question in such a manner. He took his degree with great credit, and came home to go in for the law. But Mr. Sorley, who was writing his book on precious stones, offered to make Baldwin his secretary, and the offer was accepted because my father had died and did not leave us so well off as was expected. My brother went to The Monastery and I stayed with my mother for some years, until she died. Then I paid a visit to Belstone, and Mrs. Inderwick, who was then alive, asked me to remain as her companion. I was with her for years, until she died, and managed to gather enough money out of my salary to start this boarding-house. Shortly after Marie was born her mother died, and she was left to the grandmother of Henny and Jenny to look after." "Why not to you?" "Because I had already left the place," said Miss Grison, flushing, and with sparkling eyes. "Sorley quarrelled with my brother as he quarrelled with everyone, and it ended in Baldwin being dismissed." "But what reason was given for his dismissal?" Miss Grison hesitated and looked at the fire. "I suppose I may as well talk candidly to you, since so much rests on your knowing the exact truth." "It will be just as well," said Fuller positively. "Well then," she drew a deep breath, "although I loved Baldwin and although he was clever and amiable, he had a weak character. He learned to smoke opium and he took more drink than was good for him. In a moment of madness, and because Mr. Sorley paid him so badly, he forged his employer's name to a small check for five pounds. Mr. Sorley found this out and threatened to prosecute him, especially as Baldwin--I don't deny it--made himself objectionable to Mrs. Inderwick. However, Mr. Sorley did not prosecute----" "Why not? He doesn't seem to me to be a merciful man." "He's a cruel, hard beast," said Miss Grison fiercely, "and you heard my opinion of him at Belstone. It was no fault of his that Baldwin was not put in jail. I managed to stop that." "In what way?" "I sha'n't tell you; there is no need to tell you, Mr. Fuller. It is enough for you to know that I had the power to stop the prosecution and did so. I had just started this boarding-house, and I brought Baldwin here. But what with his drink and his smoking opium, he behaved so badly that, dearly as I loved him, I had to find another home for him, or be ruined. I got him a home with a doctor, who looked after him, but Baldwin ran away and went to Rotherhithe, for there he was near the opium dens. I begged and implored him to lead a better life. He always promised, and he always failed to keep his promise. All I could do was to allow him so much a week, which I did, as I stated in my evidence at the inquest. He lived a degraded life at Mother Slaig's house, which is down a slum, and there he met with his death at the hands of----" She stopped short. "At the hands of the man whom you suspect," finished Alan bluntly. "I never said it was a man," retorted Miss Grison abruptly. "It couldn't possibly be a woman." "I never said that either." "Then what do you say?" "Nothing, because I am certain of nothing. You have heard the story you wish to hear, so make what use you can of it." "I shall do so if you will answer one other question?" "What is it?" She screened her face. "Did your brother steal the peacock of jewels from The Monastery?" The screen dropped. "Marie has been telling you about that." "She told me the legend of the jewels and the cryptogram. But of course as she was a child when the peacock was stolen, she could say nothing about the theft. But as Inspector Moon learned from Jotty, your brother had the peacock in his possession. "That is true." "And he was murdered on account of the peacock?" "I believe so." She clasped and unclasped her hands feverishly, not giving him time to ask another question. "Do you know who stole it from Belstone?" "Your brother, since he had it at Mother Slaig's." "No. He stole it from me and I stole it from Mr. Sorley." "You stole it!" Fuller started up in amazement. "Why did you?" "Oh, I had good reason to, I assure you. I am not ashamed of my theft. That peacock ruined Baldwin, and that peacock shall ruin----" "Mr. Sorley," broke in Fuller, keeping his eyes on her face. "No! no." She flung up her hands. "It will ruin me! me! me!" CHAPTER VII YULETIDE Alan could make nothing of Miss Grison's final remark, for after stating--and in a somewhat hysterical fashion--that the peacock would ruin her, she asked him to leave. In vain he asked for a more detailed explanation. Recovering her usual wooden manner, she declined to speak further, and Fuller returned to the rooms at Barkers Inn to report the result of his visit to Dick. It was unsatisfactory, and Alan said as much. "I don't agree with you," remarked Latimer, after some reflection. "You have seen Jotty ticketed as Alonzo--what a name; and have learned the early history of this unfortunate brother and sister. Finally, you have met with Mr. Morad-Bakche." "He's got nothing to do with the matter anyhow." "My dear son, George Inderwick obtained this treasure you are looking for, in India. Simon Ferrier manufactured the peacock in India, and Mr. Morad-Bakche comes from India." "So do half a hundred other students of the kind," retorted Fuller. "You are too suspicious, Dick, and see a bird in every bush." "Perhaps I am. But I should like to know why Mr. Bakche was so friendly with you and told you so much about himself. Orientals are generally reserved and don't talk all over the shop. Mr. Bakche told you that he had come to look after some family property. How do we know but what it consists of those gems which the Begum of Kam gave to George Inderwick?" "Over one hundred years ago, remember. How could Bakche know about them?" "Orientals have long memories. However, I admit that I may be unduly suspicious, as you observe, Alan. All the same I should like to know what Mr. Bakche is doing in Miss Grison's house and why he was so friendly to you even to the extent of hinting that you might be his solicitor." "Well then, if he does consult me he will have to state his reason. And if that has to do with the Begum's gems, I shall know where I am. Your imagination is too vivid, Dick." "It is not imagination but the use of a sixth sense, which gives me impressions contrary to facts," insisted Mr. Latimer, "and if----" "Oh, I know you believe in all that occult rubbish," interrupted Fuller in a rather rude way, "but I am too matter-of-fact to be superstitious." "Too obstinate to change your opinion, you mean," replied Dick equably, "Well, well, my son, we will not quarrel over the matter. Time will show if I am right. In the meantime what do you make of Miss Grison's statement that the peacock would ruin her?" "I can make nothing of it, and ask you for an explanation." "Humph! The riddle is hard to guess. The only thing I can say is that she dreads lest Sorley should learn of her theft. If so, he would prosecute her and so she would be ruined." "She is not afraid of Sorley." "Not now, because he doesn't know--so far as we can see--that she stole the peacock." "But why did she tell me that? If I told Sorley----" "Miss Grison knows that you are on her side, so to speak, and will not say anything to Sorley, who is dead against your marriage with Miss Inderwick." Alan ruffled his hair, as was his custom when perplexed. "I can make nothing of the matter," he cried, greatly exasperated. "What's to be done?" "See Sorley at Christmas when you go down to Belstone," advised Dick in a calm way, "and hear why he wants to discuss cryptograms with you. In that way you may get on the trail of the lost peacock." "But if Sorley has it, Miss Grison need not be afraid that he will ruin her, Dicky. If she is a thief, Sorley is a murderer." "We can't be sure of that." "If he has the peacock we can be sure." "First catch your hare," observed Latimer sententiously. "In other words, my son, wait and learn if Sorley has the thing. It's no use theorizing, Alan; we can do nothing until we learn more. Bakche probably will call and see you, so we shall learn what he has to do with the matter." "He has nothing to do with it, I am sure," said Fuller vehemently. "My sixth sense tells me otherwise," observed Dick dryly. "Hang your sixth sense." "By all means. But to continue: Jotty will come and see you, sooner or later, I feel convinced, and then you can learn." Dick paused. "Learn what?" "My sixth sense doesn't tell me. Wait and see." "Oh, hang it, Dick, what nonsense you talk! It's all moonshine." "I grant that," returned Latimer serenely. "Until we can gather more facts it is certainly all moonshine. But since seeing you last I have learned a fact which may startle you. Moon told me when I went to look him up yesterday, Baldwin Grison was a murderer." "What's that you say?" cried Alan, as startled as Dick could wish. "Ah, I thought I'd raise your hair. Yes, my son. A couple of months ago, in the opium den kept by Chin-Chow--or rather in the lane outside it--a well-dressed man was found dead. He had been knocked on the head with some blunt instrument of the bludgeon kind. From letters and cards found in his pockets it was discovered that he was an independent gentleman who lived in the west end, and who went down to Rotherhithe to indulge in the black smoke. His watch and studs and purse had been taken, so it was supposed that he had been robbed by some scoundrel haunting those very shady parts. Inspector Moon could find nothing, however, to point out the criminal, but has always been on the hunt. The other day he came across the dead man's watch, which had been pawned by Mother Slaig. She said that Grison had given it to her instead of money for his rent and had stated that it was his own watch. Moon thinks that Mother Slaig is quite innocent of guilty knowledge and that Grison, being hard up, must have knocked down and robbed the dead man when they both left Chin-Chow's opium den. Search was made in Grison's room afterwards, and under a loose board the studs of the victim were discovered. So there is no doubt that Grison murdered the man for money and was afterwards murdered by his unknown assassin for the sake of the peacock. It is just as well that Grison is dead, as he certainly would have been arrested and hanged for his crime." "Destiny gave him a dose of his own gruel," said Alan thoughtfully. "He must have been a bad lot, in spite of his sister's eulogies." "Well," remarked Dick with a shrug, "Sorley's opinion of the man seems to be more correct than Miss Grison's. Poor soul, I wonder what she will say when she learns that her brother acted in this way?" "She will be thankful that his violent death prevented his appearance on the scaffold," said Alan dryly. "What is Moon doing about the matter?" "Nothing. What can he do? Grison is dead, and the relatives of the victim, being of good position and well off, are not anxious to have a fuss made over the matter, since the murder took place in such a locality. You can well understand that, Alan, my son." "Yes, I can well understand that. Well, Grison had to pay very speedily for his wickedness. You don't think that a relative of the dead man killed him out of revenge." "Oh, dear me, no! The relatives are most respectable, and never went near Rotherhithe. The first murder has nothing to do with the second, I assure you, Alan. However, there is nothing more to be said about Grison's crime and we must content ourselves in learning who killed him." "After what you have told me, I don't think he is worth it." "Worth revenging, do you mean? Well, perhaps not; but the peacock is worth the search for the assassin, since finding him means finding the means to discover the treasure." "And you suspect Sorley, with Bakche as a factor in the case?" "I suspect no one at present, and only my sixth sense, which is not invariably to be relied upon, thinks that your Indian friend may be mixed up with the matter. Go down to Belstone, Alan, and see if Sorley still talks about cryptograms. If he does, and submits one for your solution, it will probably have to do with the peacock, if Miss Inderwick's tale of her ancestor and Ferrier is to be believed." "Of course it is to be believed," said Alan tartly; "however, I shall make quite sure by seeing Ferrier's manuscript for myself." "It will be just as well," said Latimer, ending the conversation, and so matters were settled for the end of the year. Shortly afterwards Dick went to Paris to keep his Christmas as a kind of heathen festival with an artist friend in the Latin Quarter, while Alan packed his kit to journey to Belstone and enjoy the simpler pleasures of a British Yuletide. The great season of the Church was on this occasion quite one of the old style, such as would have delighted the heart of Dickens. That is, it had plenty of snow and holly and mistletoe peace-on-earth, good-will-to-men and such like traditional things which had to do with the Holy Birth. The undulating hills around Belstone were clothed in spotless white, and the ancient trees in the park of the Inderwicks stood up gaunt and bare and black amidst the chilly waste. Coals and blankets, food and drink were bestowed on the villagers by the gentry around, who suddenly seemed to recollect that Belstone existed, so that the poor had what Americans call "the time of their lives." Mr. Fuller also behaved philanthropically, although he was by no means rich, and the sole person who did not act in the traditionally charitable manner was Mr. Randolph Sorley. He said bluntly that he had enough to do to look after himself, and gave his blessing instead of more substantial gifts. As to Marie, she never had a single penny, which she could call her own, and lamented that poverty, and Sorley's niggardly ways as her guardian, prevented her from obeying the kind dictates of her heart. "But when I am of age and have my money," she informed Alan after church on Christmas Day, "I shall make everyone happy." "You have made me happy anyhow," replied Fuller, enjoying the stolen moment which they had obtained by evading Sorley, "so nothing else matters." "You greedy boy," laughed Marie, patting his cheek, "you are not the only person in the world I have to consider. My uncle is my uncle." "And your uncle is your guardian," said Fuller grimly. "I wish he were not, my dearest, for the course of our true love will never run smooth so long as he has a say in the matter. I don't like him." "You must like him to-night when he comes to dinner at the vicarage," said Marie with alarm. "If you aren't agreeable, Alan, he will be so unpleasant." "I am always agreeable, in my father's house," said Alan stiffly, and then he kissed away her fears. "There, dear, don't worry; I am a most diplomatic person, I assure you." Marie agreed, for everything that Alan did was right in her eyes, and afterwards ran away across the snow to join her uncle, who was looking for her. Alan returned to the vicarage to find his mother much exercised in her mind over the Christmas dinner, and had to console her as usual. Every year Mrs. Fuller doubted the success of the meal, and every year it proved to be all that could be desired. Alan reminded her of this. "My dear mother, you have never had a failure yet. To-night we shall have a very jolly meal." "I hope so," sighed the vicar's wife, "but I confess that I am not quite at rest in my mind about the pudding." "And there may be something wrong with the mince pies?" "It's very likely there will be, since the oven doesn't heat properly." "And the roast beef will not be up to the mark?" "Now, Alan, you are making fun of me. You don't know what it is to be a housewife, my dear." "I don't, mother. Dick and I are very rough and ready in our domestic arrangements. You have asked Sorley to dinner as usual, I hear from Marie." "Yes, dear," replied Mrs. Fuller complacently, "your father knows he is not well off, and wishes to show him this yearly attention. Besides, since you love Marie, who is a sweet girl, you should be pleased." "I am pleased," said her son gravely, "although Sorley doesn't approve of my attentions to his niece." Mrs. Fuller bristled. "What better match does the man want for the girl," she demanded, all her maternal feathers on end; "you have good blood in your veins, Alan, and good prospects, besides being very handsome and----" "I'm a paragon, mother, there's no doubt of that. All the same, Sorley, as you observed when I was last here, wants a title and wealth for Marie." "He'll never find either in this back-water of life's river," retorted Mrs. Fuller rather crossly, "and since Marie loves you there is no more to be said, in my opinion." "There's a good deal more to be said in Sorley's," said Alan dryly. "He should remember his own love romance, dear, and be more sympathetic with Marie's desire to become your wife." "I never knew that Sorley had a love romance, mother. I thought he was wrapped up body and soul in his book on precious stones." "Oh, he has always been writing that, Alan," said Mrs. Fuller, with a shrug to hint that she did not think much of the man's literary abilities, "but he was courting Miss Marchmont over twenty years ago--that was shortly after Squire Inderwick's death, and before Marie was born. You know, dear, her father died almost immediately after the sweet girl's birth, and appointed Mr. Sorley to be her guardian. He settled at The Monastery with his sister. Mr. Inderwick and that miserable man Grison were with them for a time. His sister also stayed as Mrs. Inderwick's companion, but when her brother was dismissed, she went to London and started that boarding-house in Thimble Square, Bloomsbury. Marie was brought up by old Granny Trent, who was the housekeeper. When she grew too old, and Marie went to school at Brighton, her granddaughters, Jane and Henrietta, came to look after the house, and do the active work, although Granny superintends still, I believe. Then Marie returned from school, and----" "Mother, mother, you are repeating history," interrupted Alan, vexed by this prolix narrative. "I know all this. What about Sorley's love affair?" "He loved Miss Marchmont, and she died." "Was she one of the Marchmonts of Augar Place, near Lewes?" "Yes; the only daughter and heiress. Mr. Sorley would have got a lot of money and property had he married her. But she died, and the Manor, along with the income, passed to distant cousins after the death of old Mr. Marchmont some ten years ago." "What did Miss Marchmont die of?" "A chill contracted by getting wet in the hunting-field, dear. Mr. Sorley was very fond of her, and greatly lamented her death." "Or the loss of her money," said the solicitor doubtfully. "No, dear. He really and truly loved her. I sometimes think, Alan, that you are not quite fair to Mr. Sorley. He has had his troubles." "I don't like him personally," said Fuller roundly, "there is an insincere air about him." "I am not particularly fond of him myself," confessed Mrs. Fuller in an apologetic way, "but he is always agreeable to me. And, although he has lived here for quite five and twenty years, if not more, there has never been a word said against his character save that he is not generous. And his poverty excuses that, Alan. So try and be agreeable to him this evening, dear," finished Mrs. Fuller, making the same request as Marie had done. "Of course I shall be agreeable. I wish to be very friendly with him." "That is natural, dear, since you desire to gain his consent to your marriage with Marie. But, dear me, I am quite forgetting the dinner," and Mrs. Fuller hastened to the kitchen with her mind full of the pudding, the mince pies, and the roast beef. Alan's reason for being friendly with Sorley was not entirely due to the cause mentioned by his mother, although he was anxious enough to gain the man's consent to his wooing. But he felt confident that--unless for a purpose--Sorley would never give that same consent, since he did not think that the vicar's son was a good match for his pretty and long-descended niece. In a year when Marie was of age, the consent of the guardian could be dispensed with; so that particular matter did not trouble the young man overmuch. He really desired to establish friendly relations with Sorley in order to learn if he had the peacock of jewels in his possession, as it was Marie's property and should be given to her. Since the uncle loved jewels, and probably knew that the peacock, besides being covered with precious stones, could indicate the whereabouts of a box filled with similar gems, it was probable that he would seek to keep the ornament to himself. Always provided that he possessed it, of which Alan was not quite sure. But if he did have it, then the supposition would be that he had murdered Baldwin Grison for its possession. It was difficult for Fuller to see what he would say in the way of excuse for owning it. "But, of course," thought the young man, when he went to dress for dinner, and threshed out the matter in his own mind, "if he has it he won't make any fuss about my seeing it, should he desire me to solve the riddle since at present there has been no public mention that Grison was murdered for its sake. "But if he does show it to me----" here he paused, greatly perplexed, as he foresaw how difficult it would be to know how to act. Even if the possession of the Peacock proved Sorley to be a criminal, for the sake of Marie, Alan was unwilling to bring him to justice. And yet, on the face of it, the man should pay for his crime. "It's confoundedly difficult to know what to do," was Fuller's natural conclusion. The Christmas dinner was a great success in spite of the doubts expressed by the hostess, and the five people who sat down to enjoy it, passed a very agreeable hour. Marie had a healthy appetite, and had no reluctance in satisfying it on fare, which was much more dainty than that prepared by Henny Trent, who acted as cook at The Monastery. The girl in a simple white dress and without any ornaments, save a childish necklace of red coral, looked very pretty, and behaved very charmingly. By the end of the quiet evening Alan was more in love with her than ever, and wondered if the earth contained a more delightful little lady. Sorley also made himself most agreeable, being soothed by the excellent dinner, and showed no disposition to frown on the young couple. As to Mrs. Fuller, now that the dinner was off her mind, she beamed on everyone, including her rosy-faced sturdy little husband, who overflowed with Christian charity, which did not need the season of Yuletide to enhance its ready generosity. Mr. Sorley was perfectly dressed as usual, and looked wonderfully well in his young-old way, which was so deceptive. He was well-informed too, and talked on this subject and that, in a most exhaustive manner, arguing with the vicar and agreeing with Mrs. Fuller, and giving an occasional word to Alan. Afterwards in the quaint old drawing-room the conversation turned on the death of Grison, although Mr. Fuller did his best to taboo the subject, on the plea that it upset his wife. "Mrs. Fuller always liked the poor man," said the vicar finally. "He was agreeable and clever, but woefully weak," confessed the old lady. "If he had only stayed here, he would never have met with such a death." "I would willingly have kept him at The Monastery," explained Sorley in a frank manner, "but he was rude to my sister, and, owing to his drunken habits, kept the house in a constant state of turmoil. I had to dismiss him although I gave him every chance to reform. And you heard, Alan," he added, turning to the young man, who was listening intently, "how his sister blamed me for his death. "What's that?" asked the vicar sharply. "Not directly," said the guest calmly. "She could scarcely do that seeing I was fifty miles away at The Monastery when Grison was murdered in Rotherhithe. But his sister said that my dismissal made him take more than ever to opium smoking, and that drove him to the slum where he met with this tragic end." "Pooh! pooh! Louisa Grison talks rubbish," said Mr. Fuller sturdily. "She was always crazy about Baldwin, although he certainly had his good points, foolish as he was. Don't let us talk any more about the matter. It upsets my wife, and is not a topic for Christmas Day." "Oh, I don't mind hearing of his death," protested Mrs. Fuller, "I am only too anxious to know who killed him, poor creature." "I shouldn't be surprised to hear that he killed himself," remarked Sorley in an abrupt way. "Oh, that's impossible," said Alan quickly; "the medical evidence proved conclusively that he was murdered, stabbed to the heart." "Well, my boy, a man can stab himself to the heart, can't he?" "Yes," replied the young man dryly, "but he could scarcely hide the instrument with which he killed himself after his death, and that, as we know, is missing." "What sort of instrument was it, Alan?" asked Mrs. Fuller. "A stiletto, it is thought, mother." "That sounds as though an Italian had a hand in the crime," remarked the vicar; "they generally use the stiletto!" "I can't say who killed him, or of what nationality the assassin was, father, since nothing can be learned likely to cast light on the subject. But I am sure of one thing from what Latimer has told me, which is that Grison did not stab himself. He had no reason to." "Mad people never do have any reason," remarked Mr. Sorley pointedly. "But Grison was not mad." "Indeed I have every reason to believe that he was," insisted the other; "the father was an eccentric doctor who practised in Canterbury, and the mother of Louisa and Baldwin died in a lunatic asylum." Mrs. Fuller nodded sadly. "Yes, Louisa told me as much," she said, "and for that reason I excused her oddities and those of her brother. They certainly had queer ways, hadn't they, John?" "Yes! yes! yes! But no worse than other people," rejoined Fuller senior, in his vigorous fashion, "but Louisa certainly manages her boarding-house in a sane enough manner, as I found when I stayed there." "Did you stay there, father?" asked Alan. "Twice or thrice when I went to town years and years ago, although I have not stayed there lately. I wanted to help Louisa, poor soul. But now she is doing so well that there is no need for me to assist her by becoming a few days' boarder. Baldwin may have been a trifle mad," added the vicar, addressing Sorley, "since he sank so low and displayed such weakness; but his sister is sane enough, I am sure of that." "She did not speak very sanely the other day when attacking me, as Alan heard," said Mr. Sorley significantly. "We were quietly having afternoon tea when Miss Grison rose and suddenly denounced me. She is mad." "I don't agree with you," retorted the vicar. "What do you say, Alan?" The young man shook his head with an embarrassed laugh. "I have not seen sufficient of Miss Grison to pronounce an opinion," he said, and turned to Marie, who was feeling rather neglected. "This is rather dull for you." "And the subject, as I said before, is not a suitable one for Christmas Day," observed Mr. Fuller. "Marie, my dear, give us some music." The girl obeyed with alacrity, as she had been yawning during the dreary talk of her elders. In a very musicianly style she played two or three classical pieces, and then with Alan sang some of Mendelssohn's duets, in which their voices blended far more agreeably than Mr. Sorley approved of. The late conversation seemed to have upset his nerves, for he wandered in a restless manner round the room and betrayed a disposition to come between the young people, in strange contrast to his earlier demeanor. When Mrs. Fuller was playing an old-fashioned selection of melodies, called "Irish Diamonds," which her husband loved, Sorley came to sit beside Alan and engage him in quiet conversation, while Marie and the vicar remained near the piano, listening to the variations on Garry Owen. "You must come over to The Monastery during this week, Alan," said Mr. Sorley in a discreet whisper. "I should like to show you my collection of jewels, which will belong to Marie after I am gone." "Oh, you will live for a long time yet," said Alan affably. "I doubt it. I have my enemies like other men, and you need not be surprised if I meet with Grison's fate, poor wretch." "Whatever do you mean?" demanded the other sharply. "I mean that in the midst of life we are in death," rejoined Sorley tartly, and in a somewhat enigmatic manner, "What else should I mean?" "I'm hanged if I know," said Alan frankly, and spoke from his heart. He really could not understand the man's strange reference to a violent end. "Well! well! well!" remarked his companion with affected cheerfulness, "it may be all imagination on my part. But when one has such a collection of gems as I have in the house, it is not improbable that an attempt may be made to get them on the part of some thief." "Have you any idea that such an attempt will be made?" "Oh dear no. I speak generally. For my collection is valuable, Alan, although perhaps not worth so much money as those gems which were given to George Inderwick over one hundred years ago, by the Begum of Kam. Why do you start?" he asked in surprise. "Marie told me that she related the story of the jewels to you." "Yes--that is--she did say something about the matter," stammered Alan, "only I did not know that Kam was the place where George Inderwick went on behalf of the H.E.I.C. to serve as a native drill sergeant." "Oh yes. The Rajah of Kam's town and state in the Madras Presidency. You can see the manuscript to-morrow when you come over. Hush, the music is stopping; don't say anything more. Let us keep these matters to ourselves," and having thus forced Fuller, as it were, to be his confidant, Sorley strolled across the room to congratulate Mrs. Fuller on her still brilliant touch. Alan remained where he was on the sofa, staring at the carpet, and wondering what revelations would be forthcoming when he visited The Monastery the next day, for he was determined to pay the promised visit as soon as he could, lest Sorley should change his mind. But what startled him most was to learn that the jewels had belonged to the Begum of Kam. And that was the very place mentioned by Morad-Bakche as the former territory of his family. "Dick was right," thought Alan. "Bakche _is_ after the gems of the peacock." CHAPTER VIII AN EXPLANATION For the next two or three days Alan enjoyed the rural peace of the country and gave his parents a great deal of his society. Anxious as he was to follow up the hint of Sorley with reference to the story of George Inderwick's treasure, he did not display undue eagerness, since it was better to behave in a casual manner, lest suspicion should be aroused. The young man did not wish Sorley to think that he knew too much about the matter, or had been making any inquiries, for it was not improbable that he might take alarm and decline all assistance. Fuller felt certain that there was a skeleton in Sorley's cupboard, safely locked up, but, "as suspicion ever haunts the guilty mind," it would require a very slight circumstance to render the worthy gentleman uneasy. Therefore Alan pretended to an indifference which he did not feel, and kept away from The Monastery, until his diplomacy was rewarded about the middle of the week, by the appearance of Marie with a request that he should come over. "This afternoon Uncle Ran wants to see you," said the girl pouting, for she was not pleased that Alan had kept clear of her company. "He has gone this morning to Lewes on his motor bicycle, and will be back at two o'clock to meet you." "In that case," said Fuller promptly, and glancing at his watch, "since it is just eleven, we can have three hours all to ourselves." "I don't think you want to pass all that time alone with me." "Oh Marie, when you know how I love you." "You don't; you really and truly don't;" said Miss Inderwick, who was looking provokingly pretty in a fur jacket and a fur toque; "if you loved me you wouldn't waste your time as you do." "Waste my time. Why not, when I am on a holiday?" "I don't mean that sort of waste, you horrid boy. But you know that you are always in town and I am always here, so when you are down for a few days, you should be with me constantly." "I should very much like to, my dearest spitfire, but would it be wise when your uncle discourages my attentions to you so pointedly?" "Oh!" Marie raised her eyebrows and pouted again. "If you are afraid of Uncle Ran there is no more to be said." "There is a great deal more to be said," retorted Alan, tucking her arm under his own, "and we can say it on our way to The Monastery. When the cat's away at Lewes, we two dear little mice can play at Belstone. Marie, darling, don't make faces; we must be sensible." "I _am_ sensible; you have said dozens of times that I am the most sensible girl in the whole world." "So you are. All the same we must be diplomatic in case your uncle----" "Bother my uncle." "I think you do, my dear," said Alan dryly, "and just now you are bothering me by being cross about nothing. Marie, if you don't smile in your usual angelic way, I shall kiss you here in the open road, Smile, smile!" "I sha'n't," said Marie, trying to pucker her small face into a black frown, and then had to burst out laughing. "You silly boy!" She hugged his arm. "I spoil you, don't I?" "You do, you do, like the angel you are." "There's a want of originality about you, Alan. You are always calling me an angel. What else am I?" "A goddess, a gazelle, a Queen of the May----" "In December; how ridiculous!" and Miss Inderwick laughed gayly, her good temper quite restored. The lovers walked slowly through the village and up to the gates of the neglected park, chatting much in the same strain. Of course they talked great nonsense, as lovers do when together, and the language of Cupid can scarcely be described as instructive. Alan was a sensible and clever young man, and Marie was by no means wanting in mother-wit, and yet their conversation was so characteristic of their several states of mind, which had entirely to do with the wooing of man and maid, that a common-sense person past the turtle-dove stage would have doubted their sanity. But then love is a madness which attacks the young at certain seasons, and custom has so sanctified the lunacy, that those so crazed are not locked up. And mercifully when the glamor of love is on them, they prefer to keep to themselves, so that indifferent people are not compelled to witness their eccentricities. Only when they were walking up the avenue, did the conversation become more reasonable. "Why does Uncle Ran wish to see you, Alan?" asked Marie curiously. "He intends to show me his collection of gems," replied Fuller, who did not think it prudent to be too open, until he knew more of Sorley's mind. He did not like the man, and suspected him of having committed a crime; but until he was certain of his guilt, he wished to keep silence. After all, the girl by his side was the daughter of the man's sister, and her guardian, so it was best to say as little as possible. "Oh, he has got lovely jewels," said Marie, readily accepting the explanation, which certainly was a true one. "I wish he would let me wear some of them. It seems so stupid to lock up a lot of beautiful diamonds and emeralds and sapphires. When they come to me--as Uncle Ran says they will--I sha'n't leave them in their care, but wear them." "You will look like the Queen of Sheba, my darling." "Or like a rainbow," replied Miss Inderwick smartly, "all sorts of colors sparkling like--like--like frosts," she finished, taking her illustration from the glittering rime on the bare trees. It was a perfect December day, and the blue sky arched over a white expanse of snow untrodden save for the track up the avenue along which the young couple had travelled. By this time they had come in sight of the great mansion, and paused to admire its irregular beauty. Its red roofs were hidden under billowy masses of dazzling whiteness, as they caught the sunlight, and the darkly-green garment of ivy which clothed it was flecked everywhere with snow wreaths. Icicles glittered like jewels hanging from eaves, porch, windows, and from the carved stonework, discernible through the greenery, so that the place looked like a fairy palace. Although Marie, its fortunate possessor, saw the house daily, she could not forbear an exclamation of delight. "Isn't it lovely, dearest?" "As lovely as you are, my darling," assented Alan readily. "I think you might show me over the house, Marie, as I have never explored it completely." "I daresay. Uncle Ran won't let anyone go over it, although no end of artists wish to come to it. He wouldn't even let anyone paint a picture of the outside. I don't know why?" "Nor do I," murmured Fuller, half to himself, "No more than I know why he was not angry with Miss Grison for going over it uninvited." "That was strange," replied Miss Inderwick thoughtfully, "but I think he is a little afraid of Miss Grison, dear. He thinks she is mad." "What do you think?" "I haven't seen enough of her to say. But Mrs. Millington, her greatest friend, told me that she thought Miss Grison's mind was giving way." "It is certainly not apparent in her management of her boarding-house." "Well, she may be mad on one point and sane on many," remarked Marie pertinently, "she seems to hate Uncle Ran dreadfully." "That is because she ascribes her brother's downfall to him. But don't let us talk about such dreary matters, darling, but look over the house, and arrange how we will restore it when we are married." "And when we find the treasure," cried Marie, skipping lightly up the steps to the open door. "Come in, Alan. We must make the best of our time before Uncle Ran returns." "He won't be back until two o'clock." "So he says, but I don't trust him. He's always trying to catch me in mischief, as if I ever had a chance of doing any. I shouldn't be surprised if he pounced down on us unawares." "In that case I can excuse myself by saying that I have come, at his request to see him," said Alan promptly. "Lead the way, Marie, and let us look over the place from top to bottom." Marie assented very readily to be her lover's cicerone, and for the next hour they were passing along corridors, peeping into rooms, ascending and descending stairs, and searching for secret chambers and outlets. All the time Marie talked, telling Alan tales about this room and that, which she had heard from Granny Trent, who had lived nearly the whole of her long life in the old building. But what struck Alan most was the absence of furniture. Room after room had been stripped bare, and the vast house gave him the impression of being an empty shell. Yet according to the old woman, whom they looked in to see in her particular den, the place had been crammed with treasures no later than twenty years ago when Mrs. Inderwick had died. "But he's sold them all," mourned Granny, who did not seem to have much love for her master--"tables and chairs and wardrobes and pictures, and all manner of things, my dears. It's a shame I say, for they belong to you, Miss Marie, and he ain't got no right to get rid of your property." Granny was a lively, active woman, small and shrivelled in her looks, with twinkling black eyes and an expressive face. Age did not seem to have dulled her faculties, for she spoke clearly and to the point, and what is more, intimated that she could see through a brick wall, meaning in plain English--how easy it was to guess that the young couple were in love. "And a very good thing too," said granny nodding sagely; "you being handsome and good and kind-hearted, Mr. Alan, or you wouldn't be the son of them dears at the vicarage else. Just you marry my lamb, sir, as soon as you can get your pa to read the service, if it's only to look after him." "Mr. Sorley?" inquired Fuller pointedly. "You mean him?" "And who else should I mean, Mr. Alan, if not him? A poor feckless thing I call him, selling up my lamb's goods to waste money on bits of stones. Ah, if the luck of the Inderwicks wasn't missing there'd be plenty of them." "You mean the peacock?" "I do. That blessed bird that means good fortune to my lamb here, sir. Them Grisons took it I'll swear when they went away over twenty years ago, and took the luck along with them, for never will it come back--it's the luck of the family I'm talking of, Mr. Alan--until the peacock is under this roof again." "What sort of luck will it bring, Granny?" asked Marie eagerly. "Marriage to you and Mr. Alan here, a fortune when the riddle is read as it surely will be, and an outgoing for him, as is your uncle and don't look after you, my lamb, as he should, drat him." "Oh, he means well, Granny." "If he means well, why don't he do well," retorted the old woman. "Never mind, the luck will come your way, my lamb, when you least expect it. Now go down to the dining-room, my dears, and I'll tell Jenny to set out something for you to eat. You can't live on love," chuckled Granny, her eyes twinkling. The two laughed and took her advice, even to the extent of making a very excellent luncheon, plain as the fare was. When the meal ended, Marie carried off Fuller to the library and lighted his cigarette with her own fair hands. When he was comfortably puffing clouds of bluish smoke, Miss Inderwick, perched on the arm of his chair, ruffled his hair and told him that he was the most disagreeable person in the wide world. This led to amiable contradiction, finally to kissing and it was when they were in the middle of these philanderings, that they raised their eyes to see Mr. Sorley standing at the door. He was stiff with indignation, and looked more like a haughty unbending aristocrat than ever. "So this is the way in which you deceive me, Marie?" he said with an angry look. "How dare you?" "Why not," said Fuller, as the girl sprang away from his chair in alarm. "I love Marie and she loves me. You must have seen that ages ago, Mr. Sorley." "I did, sir, but the position does not meet with my approval." "Who cares," cried his niece defiantly. "I shan't marry anyone but Alan." "You shall marry the man I select," said Sorley sternly, "unless----" "Unless what?" demanded Fuller coolly. He was perfectly sure that Marie would remain true to him, and therefore had no fear of her uncle. "I shall explain that when we are alone." "Explain now," said Miss Inderwick swiftly, "I have a right to know why you object to Alan becoming my husband." "He has no money and no position." "I shall make money and make a position," said Alan calmly, "all in good time, Mr. Sorley, all in good time." "He will be Lord Chancellor one day," said Marie boldly. "You will have gray hairs by that time," snapped her uncle, "and until he is Lord Chancellor, you certainly shan't marry him." "I shall. So there." "You shall not." "Unless," observed Alan smoothly, "you said unless, Mr. Sorley." "Unless you find the Begum's treasure." "Oh, Uncle Ran," cried Marie in dismay, "when you know that the peacock is lost, and without that no one can solve the riddle, or even know exactly what it is." "The peacock is----" began Sorley, and stopped short. "Never mind. Go away, my dear, and let me talk to Alan." He spoke so mildly that Marie began to think better of the position. He did not appear to be so dead against her marriage with Fuller, as his earlier words had intimated. Alan, on his part, guessed from the abrupt stopping of the sentence, that Sorley knew something about the missing peacock which he did not wish to reveal while Marie was in the room. Acting on this hint he took the bull by the horns. "Look here, sir," he said, rising to address his host more impressively, "I know that the discovery of this treasure is connected with some cryptogram which has to do with the lost peacock. I accept your terms, as, having experience in secret writings, I am sure that I can solve the mystery which has baffled everyone for so long. If I do, and the treasure is found, will you--as you say--consent to Marie becoming my wife." "Yes," said Sorley tersely and decisively, "but of course part of the treasure must be given to me." "Oh, I shall buy your consent to my marriage with half of it," said Marie in a rather contemptuous tone. Fuller secretly did not endorse this too generous offer, and determined that if he did solve the riddle, to hand over the gems to Miss Inderwick. But it was not diplomatic at the moment to insist upon this too much, particularly as Sorley had practically agreed to the marriage. "The first thing to do is to find the jewels," said Alan easily, "and then things can be better arranged, Mr. Sorley." "Very well," said the old gentleman, taking it for granted that Alan as well as his niece agreed to the terms, extortionate as they were, "we understand one another. Marie, you can go away." "But I want to stop and hear everything," she exclaimed rebelliously. "The time is not ripe for you to hear everything. As yet I know very little, and wish to consult Alan about arriving at the truth. He can tell you all you wish to know later." "Go, dear," said Fuller in a low voice, and leading the girl to the door, "I can act for us both." Marie pouted and tossed her pretty head. "You are horrid," she murmured. "I do want to know all about the peacock." "You shall know if anything is to be discovered about it." "Very well," she said obediently, "but I think you're horrid all the same." When she left the library and the door was closed, Sorley, who had removed his overcoat and gloves and cap, sank into a chair with a sigh. He was evidently tired out by his ride to Lewes and back again. Alan waited for him to open the conversation, for having his suspicions of the man, particularly after his hesitation when Marie had mentioned the peacock, it behooved him to be cautious. Sorley thought for a few moments with his eyes on Fuller's face then spoke abruptly. "You know that Miss Grison hates me, and why?" he demanded shortly. "Yes. She accuses you of having ruined her brother by having dismissed him wrongfully." "Quite so, and acts like a mad woman in consequence. As if I could help the man going to the bad. I gave him every chance, and instead of prosecuting him for forging that check I let him go free. I don't see that I could have behaved better. That he sank to the Rotherhithe slum was purely his own fault." "Miss Grison doesn't think so." "She can think what she chooses," retorted Sorley, coolly. "I need take no notice of the vagaries of a crazy creature such as she surely is." He paused, and looked oddly at his companion. "Do you know why I dismissed her brother, Alan?" "You have just explained; because of the forged check." "That is not the exact cause. I could have overlooked that, since I really was sorry for the poor wretch, even though he was rude to my sister, and a decided nuisance in this house with his drunken habits and use of opium. My real reason for dismissing him was that Miss Grison--Louisa as we used to call her--stole the peacock of jewels." "Oh," said Fuller with a non-committal air, for he wished to know more about the theft before stating that Miss Grison had confessed to it. And even when he knew all he was not sure if he would be thus frank. "Yes! she knew how I valued it, both because of its workmanship and the gems set in its golden body, and because it is the clue to a large treasure which was hidden--you know the story--by Simon Ferrier. I told her that if she did not return it I would dismiss her brother on account of the forged check. She refused and I did dismiss him, so she really has only herself to thank for Baldwin's downfall, although, like a woman, she blames me in the silly way she does." "But if she took the peacock why didn't you have her arrested?" "I should have done so, but that she declared her intention of destroying the ornament should I act in such a way. She said that she would drop it into the Thames--she was in London when I found out about her theft--or would melt it in fire. As the peacock is the sole clue to the hiding-place of the Begum's gems, you may guess that with such a desperate woman I did not dare to act so drastically as she deserved." "I suppose she gave the peacock to her brother," suggested Alan artfully, hoping that Sorley would commit himself by confessing the knowledge that Grison held the ornament at the time of his death. But the man did nothing of the sort. "No, she didn't," he said sharply, "so far as I know she had it in her possession all these twenty years. I went again and again to see her and try for its recovery, but insisting that I had ruined her brother, she refused to surrender it, and lest she should destroy it, I could not use the force of the law. Now I am certain that he had it all the time." "Why are you certain?" asked Fuller, who was impressed by the frank way in which the man spoke. He certainly did not seem to have anything to conceal, and the solicitor wondered whether he had misjudged him. Mr. Sorley waved his hand. "One moment," he said slowly, "you may wonder why I am telling you all this, and why I have brought you into the matter? I do so, because you tell me that you are good at solving riddles, and also since you are in love with Marie you are bound to protect her interests. The jewels belong to her, so I am anxious that you should help me to find them, so that Marie may get the benefit of their sale. As she will have this house, her own income, and my collection of gems when I die, I do not think I am asking too much in requesting a share of the treasure, especially when that also will go to my niece after my death." Alan nodded, since all this was reasonable enough. "I know why you want me to help," he remarked, "but without the peacock we can do nothing." Mr. Sorley rose and went to an alcove of the room in which was set a tall carved cupboard of black oak. Opening this he took out an object wrapped in chamois leather, and returned to the writing-table to display to his visitor's astonished eyes, the missing peacock of jewels. "On that day when Miss Grison called me names, and by her own confession wandered over the house uninvited," said the man quietly, "she must have brought this back. The day after she departed I found the peacock in yonder cupboard, a place where I frequently go, as Miss Grison knew. Why she should restore it in this stealthy way, or restore it at all, I am not able to say. But I know that she took it from here twenty years ago--from that cupboard in fact, where it was always kept--and her unasked-for visit to this house must have been to replace it." Alan stared at the glittering bird which was--as Latimer had stated--the size of a thrush, and greatly admired its beauty and perfection of workmanship. Ferrier assuredly had learned a great deal in the East, for the shape and feathers of the bird were truly wonderfully created in delicate lines. The eyes were rubies, and there was a tuft of emeralds on the head but comparatively few stones studded the body, as all were reserved for the glory of the tail. This was outspread like a large fan--and in it were set sapphires, opals, rubies, and many other precious stones which scintillated a glory like a rainbow, especially when Sorley moved the gems to and fro in the thread of sunlight which pierced the dusky atmosphere of the room. But what the young man thought, while he stared at the lovely object, was whether Sorley was guilty or innocent. The presence of the ornament which had been in the possession of the dead man hinted the former, but Sorley's explanation--feasible enough on the basis of Miss Grison's abrupt visit--seemed to declare the latter. As no man is considered guilty in English law until his criminality is proved, and as Alan was a solicitor, he gave Sorley the benefit of the doubt until such time as he had more trustworthy evidence to go upon. Having taken up this attitude he treated the man as innocent, and asked questions about the peacock. It was necessary to do so, if the riddle was to be solved. "And, so far as I can see," said Fuller, following his train of thought, "there is no secret writing to be seen." "There is no secret writing," said Sorley unexpectedly. "But I thought you wished me to solve a cryptogram." "So I do; but a cryptogram can be other than in letters or figures." Fuller gazed at the peacock. "I can't understand," he said bewildered. "Well, Alan," rejoined Fuller with a shrug, "I can't myself, and so have brought you into the business on the assumption that two heads are better than one. I have even opened the peacock to find its secret, but there is nothing inside. In my opinion the secret is hidden in the tail." Alan was still puzzled. "In the tail?" he echoed. "In the jewels somehow," explained Mr. Sorley meditatively. "You see there are three semicircles of gems on the tail, and between the second and the third appears a triangle of rubies. Now if we can read the meaning of the three rows of precious stones, they may explain the triangle, which is probably the key to the whole mystery." "I still can't understand. Why should the mystery be concealed in the jewels of the tail? They may be merely for decorative purposes." "I don't think so. Of course the gems may imitate the peacock's tail from nature, but you never saw a bird with a triangle marked in this way." "No," Alan nodded. "You are right so far. Have you any further ideas?" "Not one. The riddle is to be read on the tail, and by means of the precious stones, but how, I can't say. What's your opinion, Alan?" "I have none," said the young man hopelessly. "I shall have to turn over the matter in my own mind, and then shall let you know." Mr. Sorley carefully locked up the peacock in the cupboard and shrugged his shoulders. "I have thought over the problem for years, and I am no nearer the solution than ever I was. But if you solve it, you shall marry my niece." "With such a prize in view I cannot fail," said Fuller hopefully. All the same the outlook regarding the reading of the riddle was very doubtful. CHAPTER IX ANOTHER TRAIL Alan Fuller left The Monastery in a very perplexed state of mind, as may be guessed, for the revelations, made by Mr. Sorley startled him considerably. On the hints given by Miss Grison he had suspected that the man knew something about the Rotherhithe crime, and now the production of the golden peacock seemed to endorse his suspicions. According to Jotty--who could not have manufactured such a story--the deceased had been in possession of the ornament shortly before his death. Miss Grison also had stated that the same had been given by her to the man, although she admitted having stolen it from the great house. How then did it pass into Mr. Sorley's hands unless that gentleman had committed the crime? Certainly his explanation, or rather his belief, that Miss Grison had restored the peacock to the cupboard when she paid her unexpected visit appeared to be feasible, but before Fuller could entirely believe this, it was necessary that Sorley's suggestion should be supported by the woman's acknowledgment. And it must be mentioned as a point in the man's favor that he did not say positively Miss Grison had brought back the ornament on that occasion, but only gave out the idea to account for his own production of the article. "And," considered Alan, while plodding homeward, "Sorley is not aware that it is known to Moon, Jotty, Dick, and me that the crime on the face of it was committed for the sake of the peacock. Had he known as much, he might have accounted for its coming into his possession by saying that Miss Grison had brought it back. But since he is ignorant, I don't see the use of his making such an excuse. He could easily have said that the ornament had been mislaid, and that he had found it by chance. Or indeed that Miss Grison had hidden the thing when she stole it in some room, without troubling to remove it from the place. Sorley's explanation certainly seems to point to his complete innocence." But then again, as the young man considered later, Sorley had, within the last few months, purchased a motor bicycle, and had told an obvious falsehood as to the time of possession. On such a machine he could easily cover the fifty miles between London and Belstone twice over in a night by hard riding, and thus might have been in town about the time when the crime was committed without anyone being the wiser. The ownership of the motor bicycle assuredly hinted that the man had acted in this way, and if so, the chances were that he had murdered Grison to recover the peacock. But in that case, he would hardly venture to show his spoil so openly, knowing at what cost he had obtained it, even though unaware that the police knew how the dead man had been slain on account of the ornament. Certainly he desired Fuller's assistance to unravel the problem connected with the golden bird, but then--as Alan thought--he could have produced a drawing of the article, saying that it had been made by himself or someone else before Miss Grison had stolen the fetish of the Inderwicks. In a correct picture drawn to scale and colored, there would be quite enough to go upon to guess the riddle since the mystery of the peacock was evidently on the surface, and not connected with the interior of the body. Sorley--as he stated, had opened that to find nothing; and, wanting Fuller to help him, he assuredly must have spoken the entire truth. While Alan was thus turning matters over in his bewildered mind, he heard his name called, and looked round to see Marie flying over the snowy ground. She caught up with him breathless and crimson with the race, to seize his arm with a reproachful expression. "You _are_ mean," she cried, recovering her breath, "I've been waiting for you to come out and tell me what Uncle Ran said to you. But you left without a word. I saw you passing down the avenue, so followed as hard as I was able. Why do you act in this horrid, secret way, you disagreeable thing?" Fuller halted and looked at her doubtfully. Since he had imparted to the girl that knowledge regarding Grison's possession of the peacock, which he had obtained from Inspector Moon, through Latimer, he certainly did not intend to reveal that Sorley had displayed the ornament in the library. Should he do so, Marie would at once, on what she knew, jump to the conclusion--and very naturally--that her uncle was guilty. Being of an emotional nature she would probably refuse to remain in the house with the man, in which case the truth would have to be told. If it were, and Sorley learned that he was suspected, he would probably place obstacles in the way of what really happened coming to light. That is, assuming he really was the criminal, a fact of which Alan, after thinking over things was by no means certain. And if the man was innocent, he might make an outcry to clear himself, which would be equally prejudicial to the solution of the problem. The more secretly all operations were conducted until positive knowledge was forthcoming, the better it would be for the cause of justice. And in this case, justice consisted in bringing the assassin of Baldwin Grison to the gallows. "Oh," said Alan lightly, and smiling at her inquiring look, "your uncle only asked me to assist him to learn the riddle of the peacock." "But how can that be done when the peacock is missing?" "Your uncle had drawings of the bird," replied the young man evasively. "I have never seen them," declared Marie rather crossly, "and as the peacock belongs to me, I should see them." "I will show them to you in a few days," answered Alan quickly, and made a mental resolve to prepare the drawings himself. And indeed it was necessary that he should have them, since he could not take the actual bird to town, and required something tangible upon which to work. "Don't you bother your uncle about the matter, Marie, or he may withdraw his permission." "What permission?" "That I should become engaged to you." "Oh Alan! oh Alan! oh Alan!" Marie could only gasp and blush. "That is," said Fuller correcting himself, "he does not directly sanction an official engagement. But he says that if I solve the problem and find the jewels that he will agree to our marriage. Meanwhile we can be together as often as we like." "That is as good as an engagement," cried Marie, clapping her hands with delight, "how good of Uncle Ran. I love him for this." "Don't tell him so," interposed Fuller hastily; "he's an odd fish, and if he knows that I have told you of his yielding so far, he may change his mind, my dear." Marie nodded very wisely and solemnly. "I see; I quite understand. I shall say nothing to Uncle Ran." "And ask no questions?" "Not one. But you will tell me everything, won't you?" she said, pressing up to his side in a coaxing manner. "Of course," Alan assured her, "whatever discoveries I make regarding the riddle you shall know," and the girl was satisfied with this, not guessing that her lover was withholding information connected with the more serious matter of the Rotherhithe murder. Having--as she now presumed--full permission from Sorley to display her preference for Alan, Marie boldly took his arm and walked through the village with him in a most open manner. There was no chance now that her Uncle Ran would appear to make trouble, and the girl declared as she clung to her lover that all their troubles were over. "For of course, such a very clever boy such as you are, dear, will easily solve the riddle." "I hope," replied Fuller doubtfully, "but it is a hard riddle, Marie, and has baffled everyone for over one hundred years." "Well," said Miss Inderwick, arguing from a feminine standpoint, "if anyone had guessed the riddle the jewels would have been sold by this time, and probably the money would have been spent. So it is just as well that the truth has not become known. You will guess the riddle, dear, clever boy that you are, and then we shall become very, very rich, even though the half of what you find goes to Uncle Ran." "Nothing shall go to Uncle Ran," said Alan grimly, "because Uncle Ran has no right to ask for a share--unless, of course, he solves the riddle. The peacock and the treasure it can point out, Marie, both belong to you, so don't go making hasty promises to Mr. Sorley; and above all, dear--mark what I say, little featherhead--don't sign any paper if he asks you to." Marie nodded meditatively. "I understand what you mean, Alan. Of course Uncle Ran is fond of jewels, and--well then I shall sign nothing without consulting you, dear." "And don't tell him that I advised this." "Of course not; he would take a dislike to you if I did. Don't worry, Alan darling, for I know exactly how to behave." "Behave just as you have done, Marie, and do not let Mr. Sorley believe that anything new is afoot, or that there is any understanding between us." Miss Inderwick nodded vigorously to imply that she knew what she was about, and the two walked on for some distance in silence, over the cobblestone pavement of Belstone main street. Occasional smiles and looks of approval were cast at the young couple by stray villagers, for Alan was a great favorite in his father's parish, and Marie was much more popular than her uncle. The inhabitants of Belstone believed that if Marie became Mrs. Alan Fuller, that the old day of plenty would return to The Monastery in which all would share, for they credited the young man with brains which would enable him to make a great deal of money. And if he did, seeing that he had a generous nature, it was just as well that he should marry the last descendant of the ancient family who had ruled the neighborhood. All public sympathy was on the side of the lovers. But to this Marie and Alan paid no attention, since they were wrapped up in one another. The girl felt quite happy in Fuller's company and occasionally glanced at his meditative face. Alan appeared to be thinking deeply, and apparently of something not connected with herself. With the natural jealousy of a woman in love, Marie could not permit this. "What are you thinking about, dear?" she asked suspiciously. "About Morad-Bakche!" Miss Inderwick opened her eyes on hearing this strange name. "Who is he?" "He is an Indian gentleman, dear, whom I met at Miss Grison's." "Why should you think about him just now when I am here, Alan?" Fuller answered the first part of the question, and passed over the latter. "I am wondering if he has anything to do with the peacock?" This remark put an end to Marie's egotism for the time being. "Why should he have anything to do with it?" she demanded, astonished. "Well," exclaimed the young man quietly, "he has come to England, so he told me to search for some mislaid family property. He is descended from that Rajah of Kam to whom George Inderwick was sent by the H.E.I.C., my dear." Marie, having read and re-read the story of Ferrier grasped the connection at once. "Then he knows about the peacock?" she cried in dismay. "That is what I wish to learn. The Begum of Kam certainly gave the jewels we are looking for to George Inderwick, from whom they descend to you, so as Morad-Bakche represents the Kam family it is just possible that he has come to get back the gems if he can." "He sha'n't have them," cried Marie, becoming flushed, "don't let him take them, Alan." Fuller laughed. "We have to find them first," he remarked coolly. "When we have them in our possession, then we can talk over Morad-Bakche's claim." "He sha'n't have them," murmured Marie, much disturbed; "they are mine. And after all, Alan, he may not have come for the Begum's treasure." "He may, or he may not. I am unprepared to give an opinion. Only it is so strange that he should live at Miss Grison's boarding-house, considering that she knows about the peacock, which is to reveal the whereabouts of what the man probably desires. He didn't get to that boarding-house by chance, I am certain. And Dick fancies also--by his sixth sense, as he declares--that Morad-Bakche may have designs on the treasure." "It is very strange," said Miss Inderwick, pondering over this speech; "but how could he find out that Miss Grison knew about the peacock?" "We must learn. Have you ever seen an Indian gentleman in the village, my dear, or haunting The Monastery?" "No. If I had I should have told you, or would have written about it. We see so few people about here, Alan--strangers that is--that anyone new is quickly noticed." "Well, you may not have seen the man, but others may have. Who is the greatest gossip in the village?" "Oh, Alan, as if you didn't know, when your mother is always talking about her. It's Mrs. Verwin, of course." "Ah yes! and she keeps The Red Fox, our one and only inn. Marie, she is the very person to know, for besides being a gossip, she is the landlady of an inn to which a stranger would go even if he only came for the day. Come and let us interview Mrs. Verwin." Marie assented eagerly, for the search was like a game, and interested her greatly. The pair simply retraced their steps and entered the green space in the centre of Belstone, whence streets and lanes diverged, to behold the shabby old inn facing them directly. It was an ancient Georgian building, ugly without, and comfortable within, and had been more notable in the day of stage-coaches than it was now. Its walls sadly needed a coat of paint, its roof required patching, while both doors and windows would have been the better for a little attention. In fact, there was a half-hearted look about The Red Fox, which showed that the good lady who owned it had given up any idea of making her fortune, and was content to exist for the day without troubling about the morrow. Sometimes tourists stayed in the old place, more frequently artists, attracted by the romantic beauties of The Monastery, for the shabby rooms were fairly comfortable, and the cooking, within limits, was tolerably good. Mrs. Verwin's money mostly came from the pockets of laborers and yokels, who drank the very inferior beer she supplied while they talked over the news of the countryside in the smoky taproom with the sawdust floor, and cumbersome settles. In the evening when the day's work was ended, that taproom was the meeting-place of gossips both male and female. And Mrs. Verwin was the greatest and most famous gossip of the lot. How she gathered all the news she did was a mystery to everyone, since she never left her abode, and worked from morning until night in order to keep things going. But somehow she managed to hear all that was going on both near and far, and used her long tongue freely in discussing what she heard. But that the villagers were so somnolent Mrs. Verwin would many and many a time have been in danger of a libel action, but reigning as a kind of rural queen, no one was bold enough to bring her to book. If anyone had dared to venture on such a course, he or she would have been excluded for ever from the taproom, and such excommunication was not to be thought of by anyone who desired to see life. And life was nowhere to be seen in Belstone save under the noisy roof of The Red Fox. Mrs. Verwin herself welcomed the young couple the moment they set foot on the threshold, as she had already espied them from the window. Being a very stout woman, she could scarcely curtsey, but did her best, and invited her visitors into the best parlor. It was a great honor that the vicar's son and the leading lady of the neighborhood--for that Marie was by virtue of descent if not of money--and Mrs. Verwin was quite overwhelmed. As the inn was quite respectable and well-conducted, Alan had no hesitation in taking Marie into the place, although Mrs. Fuller would scarcely have been pleased, because she disliked the landlady's too ready tongue. But as that lively, black-eyed dame was a good churchwoman and really kind-hearted, the vicar had a better opinion of her. "Lor' sir and miss," cried Mrs. Verwin, energetically dusting a chair for Marie to sit down on. "Who'd ha' thought of you an' Mr. Alan coming to see me, friendly like. And very well you're looking miss, though Mr. Alan there could do with a little red in them pale cheeks of his. London smoke," added Mrs. Verwin in disgust, "and London food, and the milk that blue with watering as the sky is gray to it. Now do have a cup of tea, sir, and----" "No, thank you, Mrs. Verwin," interrupted Alan quickly, for there was no chance of getting a word in edgeways save by cutting short the good lady's voluble speech; "we have only come for five minutes. I want to ask you a question, if you don't mind." "Mind, Mr. Alan, and why should I mind, me being all straight and above the sky-line, respectable as my parents were before me, as anyone who can read is able to see on their tombstones in the right-hand corner of the churchyard looking from the porch. Ask me what you like, sir, whether it means weddings or funerals, or all that goes between in----" "I simply wish to know if during the last year you have seen an Indian gentleman in the village," interrupted Fuller again, and with a look at Marie to show that he desired to conduct the conversation himself. "Well, I never, and to think as you didn't hear of him, stopping here as he was in July last for one night, and saying as the rice he ate was boiled in a way he admired." "Oh, so there was an Indian here?" Mrs. Verwin nodded and placed her stout arms akimbo, with curiosity in her snapping black eyes. "Quite the gentleman he was, though I hope there's nothing wrong with him, meaning courts and docks and lawyers, as is all the sons of Old Nick, asking your pardon, Mr. Alan, for saying so, and yours, miss, for talking about him, as shouldn't be spoke of, nohow. Now if----" "There's nothing wrong about him," said Alan, again stopping the flow of the landlady's conversation, or rather monologue; "but I happened to meet him at Miss Grison's boarding-house in London and----" "Lor' sir," said Mrs. Verwin again, and taking her turn to interrupt, "may I never speak another word, if she don't owe me a good turn for having told him to go there, where he'd be comfortable, though I never could see as Miss Grison, and Louisa's her name, was much of a housekeeper." "You told Mr. Bakche to go," said Alan, remembering how the Indian had mentioned to Miss Grison that someone in Ceylon had sent him to Thimble Square, "and why?" "Batch. Yes sir, Batch was the name, and he was a very dark gentleman with eyes like gimblets for boring a person through and through, haughty like and grand in his manners, speaking English like a native in spite of his having been reared in a country where they chatter French and German, the last a language I never could abide, since a waiter of that sort went away when the house was full, and I needed all the hands I'd got besides a few more. Oh, Mr. Batch was a gent sure enough, though a son of Ham as we are told in the Bible, your pa, Mr. Alan, having read about them children of Noah only three Sundays back, and then he----" "Why did you send Mr. Bakche to Miss Grison's?" asked Alan impatiently. "Well, I didn't in a way, sir, because it was the peacock as sent him to----" "The peacock," repeated Marie, and looked at Alan anxiously. "And well do you know all about it, miss," cried the voluble Mrs. Verwin, turning to face the speaker, "it being the luck of your family as will never have no fortune till it's brought back again. And that Grison person as was your uncle's clerk took it over twenty years back, as I'm a living woman, which we all said when we heard as he was gone and it was missing. I said and others said as Mr. Sorley should have persecuted----" "Did you tell all this to Mr. Bakche?" questioned Fuller quickly. "And why shouldn't I tell him, Mr. Alan?" inquired Mrs. Verwin, wiping her heated face with a corner of her apron and bridling. "He asked if there wasn't people called Inderwick hereabouts, and I up and told him all about the family. Mr. Batch says, as his father knew some of 'em in his own land, and said as how him he met--not mentioning names, though it was an Inderwick as spoke, and perhaps, miss, a cousin of your very own--well, him as he met mentioned a peacock. So I tells Mr. Batch all about the story of the peacock being the luck of the family, as all the countryside knows, and says as how we believed that Grison person had took it. He said he'd like to ask him or her about the peacock--meaning them Grisons--since he liked to hear them sort of stories, so I recommended her house to him as being comfortable, and heaven forgive me for the lie, seeing Miss Grison--and Louisa's her name--ain't got no more idea of cooking than a cat." "Oh, Mr. Bakche is very comfortable there," said Alan easily, and very glad that he had learned so much; "did Mr. Bakche say nothing about any treasure connected with the peacock?" "No," cried Mrs. Verwin, her face alive with curiosity, "never a word did he mention of a treasure, and where----" Fuller saw that he had made a mistake in hinting a thing which was known only to the Inderwicks to this gossip, and hastened to repair his error. "I am talking of the peacock itself, which is a treasure," he said quickly, "for it is made of gold with precious stones----" "I know, Mr. Alan, of course I know, sir, for didn't I see it on my wedding-day forty years ago, when your dear ma, miss, was alive and well along with your late pa. My husband--poor Verwin as is dead and gone--said as he give me a wedding treat, and he takes me to see The Monastery and asked Squire Inderwick to show that blessed peacock. Oh," Mrs. Verwin raised her fat hands and closed her eyes in ecstasy, "well may you call it a treasure, Mr. Alan, for such glitter I never did see. It was like the New Jerusalem for shine and----" "Well that is the treasure I meant, Mrs. Verwin." "And you never spoke a truer word, Mr. Alan. But I hope sir, and you, miss, as I didn't do wrong in telling Mr. Batch--and a pleasant gentleman, though dark, he was too--about the peacock, for it's a story as we all know for years and years and years. The luck of the Inderwicks! Why I heard my dear, dear pa as is dead these fifty years tell all about the blessed idol, so I thought t'was no harm to let Mr. Batch know as we'd something in Belstone he hadn't got in his own country, wherever that may be, though they do say as it's across channel somehow, and, if he----" "You didn't do wrong, Mrs. Verwin," said Alan, striking in hastily, as he was anxious to get away with Marie, "and I merely asked about Mr. Bakche because he seemed to know something of Belstone." "He know. Now I ask you, sir, what can he know, staying but for one day, and only giving an eyewink at The Monastery where he----" "Oh, he went there, did he?" asked Fuller, turning back at the door. "Yes sir, he did, saying he'd like to see such a lovely place about which I'd told him such a queer story, for queer he said was the name for the luck of the peacock. I think Mr. Batch was one of them gents who write and who ask others for things as they can't think of themselves, to----" "Yes! Yes. Very probably, Mrs. Verwin. Thanks for answering my questions. I just did so because I chanced to meet this gentleman at Miss Grison's." Alan, and Marie, who had taken scarcely any part in the conversation, managed to get outside the door, but were followed into the open by Mrs. Verwin, talking all the time, and curtseying at intervals with difficulty as she said good-bye. "For I do hope miss, and Mr. Alan, sir, as you'll come in again, you not forgetting, miss, as I was kitchen-maid at The Monastery before Verwin came along to make me a happy bride; and so have the interest of the family at heart. Sitting on a throne is where you should be, miss, with all under your pretty feet as you will be when the peacock comes again to its own. And if that Grison person is dead, murdered they say with much blood, and serve him right, I hope as he's sent back the peacock by post, if his sister--Louisa's her name--ain't got it, which is just as likely as not, taking into---- Well good-day, sir--good-day, miss--and bless you both for a nice-looking couple," and Mrs. Verwin's voice arose to a perfect scream, as the distance between her and the visitors increased. Not until they were on the verge of the green entering the lane which led to the vicarage, did the sound of her adieux die away. "Marie," said Alan seriously, "if you ever talk so much, I shall divorce you at once. Poor Verwin. He must have been glad to leave the world." "She always makes my head ache," said Marie laughing. "And other people's hearts ache, owing to her gossip. However, she can't make any mischief about what we have been talking, since I explained exactly what I meant. So Bakche came down here to ask after the peacock. That shows, as I thought long ago, that he is after the Begum's gems." "What will you do, Alan?" asked Marie anxiously. "Consult Dick, and tell him what I have found out. Meanwhile Marie, you need not tell your uncle what we have discovered." "Mrs. Verwin will probably do that," said Marie darkly. Alan frowned. "We can't stop her tongue, worse luck," he said with a sigh. CHAPTER X MR. SORLEY'S JEWELS There was no doubt that the evidence of the village gossip would be valuable in connection with the Rotherhithe crime, since it showed that another person besides Mr. Sorley desired to obtain possession of the peacock of jewels. From oral tradition or perhaps from some family paper, it was apparent that Morad-Bakche had learned how his great great grandmother, or whatever the relationship might be, had presented the gems to George Inderwick. Also the mere fact that he had sought to learn the history of the fetish from Mrs. Verwin indicated that he knew in some way, not yet to be explained, how the golden bird could reveal the hiding-place of the treasure. That he had met with a cousin of Marie's in India, as he had told the landlady to account for his knowledge of the peacock, was merely an excuse, as no relative of the Inderwick family was in India at the present time. But of course only Bakche himself could explain how he had managed to trace the fetish which had to do with the family treasure of his ancestors, and he might do so when he called on Fuller, which the young man quite expected him to do. "Mrs. Verwin," thought Alan, as he retired to bed, "undoubtedly must have told him that I was paying attentions to Marie, so that was why Bakche behaved so amiably to me at the boarding-house. Dick was right after all, for the man is seeking for the gems, and his politeness to me had something to do with his hope of getting them. He is certain to look me up again, and if I pretend to know nothing, he will have to speak out himself if he desires my assistance. But then there's Sorley----" It was at this point that the young man's senses became confused, and he fell asleep. But next morning he determined to see Marie's uncle, and ask if he had seen Bakche in the village or haunting the grounds of The Monastery. Of course the Indian was working secretly to regain what his people had lost; all the same he might have gone boldly to Sorley, and sought to learn if that gentleman knew details of the gems and their whereabouts. Alan remembered vaguely that Sorley had talked of the possibility of his being murdered, and although the man insisted that the chance had to do with his own private collection of jewels, yet it was not improbable that Bakche had threatened him. The Indian was not the man to stick at murder if he wished to gain his ends, and Alan wondered if he had killed Baldwin Grison in order to get the peacock. But this supposition he dismissed as ridiculous, since had Bakche secured the plunder he assuredly would not have sent it to Mr. Sorley. However the sole chance of learning more or less of the truth lay in questioning both men. Alan began with Sorley. Also he wished to make a drawing of the peacock, so as to have before his eyes an exact representation of the bird. Alan had a fair idea of art, and had at one time amused himself with sketching, but not being particularly successful had abandoned his hobby. However, he possessed sufficient technical skill to draw the bird and color the drawing, so looked out his japanned tin paint-box and took it in his pocket to The Monastery. This was a couple of days before he returned to town, and at the beginning of the New Year. Luckily on this occasion Marie had gone to see a schoolgirl friend at Brighton, so Fuller was glad that she would not be at home to interrupt his interview with Mr. Sorley. She asked too many questions, and having regard to her uncle's very peculiar position, Alan found a difficulty in answering them. Finally although he intended to show her the sketch of the peacock, he did not desire her to see him preparing it, since that would have given the lie to his assertion that Sorley already possessed such a drawing, and moreover might reveal that the peacock itself had returned to its old home. Therefore Fuller entered the big house feeling thankful that Marie was out of the way for a few hours. Being very much in love with her he had never expected to have such a feeling, and felt rather ashamed of himself in consequence. But as he knew that he was acting straightforwardly under particularly difficult circumstances he cheered up and saluted his host with a smile. Henny Trent with a grin on her Dutch doll face had introduced him into the library, and here Mr. Sorley was writing letters. "How are you, Alan," he said, rising to greet his visitor, and looking as spick and span as though he had just stepped out of a bandbox. "I thought you had returned to your duties in Chancery Lane?" "I go back the day after to-morrow," replied the solicitor, shaking hands, and wondering if he was doing so with a man who ought to be in the New Bailey dock; "I came to say good-bye and to ask you to allow me to make a drawing of the peacock." "For what reason?" questioned Sorley suspiciously and uneasily. "My reason is very apparent, sir. The riddle is to be read on the exterior of the peacock, you say?" "I think so, since I have opened the bird and found nothing inside it." "Then I must have a representation of the article before my eyes in order that I may ponder over the signs." "What signs?" "There you have me," answered Fuller frankly; "so far as I can see there are no signs of hieroglyphics or writing on the bird, so I don't see that it can in any way indicate the hiding-place of the Begum's gems. But if I have a picture and examine everything about it carefully, I may hit on the solution." "You don't appear to be very certain of success," said Mr. Sorley dryly, "yet you told me that you were an adept at solving cryptograms." "If they consist of signs," Alan explained cautiously, "and I can see no signs on the peacock. Well sir, will you let me draw it?" "Certainly, since I wish you to work with me in the endeavor to learn where Ferrier concealed the treasure. But I don't want you to show the drawing all over the place, lest someone else should guess the secret." "Oh, I shall be careful," said Fuller cheerfully, but making a mental reservation that Dick Latimer should see the sketch. Satisfied with his promise, Sorley took the golden peacock from the cupboard of black oak, and unwrapped the chamois leather covering to display it on the table. But before doing so he locked the library door without apologizing, an action which seemed highly suspicious to his visitor. But if cautious with others who were in the house, Sorley was certainly very frank in his dealings with Alan, and although the young man could not bring himself to entirely trust his host, he admitted privately that the man did not act in a way which suggested terror of the law, And if he had murdered Grison to gain possession of the fetish, he assuredly would be more cautious in showing it to a lawyer. But Fuller never could make up his mind as to Sorley's innocence or guilt, and wavered between belief and disbelief in a way which annoyed himself. But there was nothing else to be done until more evidence was forthcoming. The young man looked searchingly at the beautiful specimen of goldsmith's work which glittered on the table. Ferrier knew his trade thoroughly, and probably had acquired some skill when in India. The feathers, the form, and the head of the bird were perfectly done, and in a minute, delicate manner, which showed how painstaking its creator had been. The tiny emeralds on the head-tuft trembled on golden wires like the filaments of flowers, and the ruby eyes were set admirably in their sockets. The breast shone with few gems, but the body of the bird was of feathered gold, and the artist seemed to have reserved the full blaze of beauty for the outspread tail. Yet there were fewer jewels in this than might have been expected, for in the three curved rows which followed the semicircular outline of the tail, Alan counted only fifteen precious stones, namely: eight gems in the first row, four in the second, and three in the third. Then between the second and third was the triangle which contained fifteen minute rubies on each one of its three sides. "Fifteen gems in the lines," murmured Fuller thoughtfully, "and fifteen of them in each line of the triangle. I wonder, Mr. Sorley, if the number fifteen is the key to the secret." "I can't say, I don't know; I certainly cannot see how it can be," replied the host doubtfully. "I have tried in every way to solve the riddle, but I cannot even see how to make a beginning, The secret may be contained in the position of the stones, the shapes of the stones, or the color of the stones." Alan faced round. "What do you mean by the color answering the riddle?" "It is just an idea I got from a man who is a theosophist. In what they--the theosophists I mean--call the aura of a human being, which can be seen by those gifted with astral sight, the colors all mean something." "I don't quite follow you, Mr. Sorley, although I have heard something of this sort from Dick. He believes in these occult things. Do you?" "I can't say that I have looked into them," rejoined Sorley in a careless manner. "I only attended to the matter so far as the meaning of colors was concerned--a kind of color alphabet as it were. Pink means affection, blue means religion, green sympathy, and so on. I applied the principle, but it wouldn't work." Fuller quite believed this, as he did not see how the principle in question could be applied. However, he was too engrossed in drawing the bird to go into the subject at the present moment, but promised himself to ask for a more thorough explanation of the color alphabet--as Mr. Sorley aptly called it--from Dick Latimer. Meantime he drew the outline of the peacock, filled in the details, being particularly careful as to the position of the stones in the tail, and then slowly colored every part in accordance with the original object. When finished he laid down his brush with a tired sigh and held out the sketch at arm's length. Mr. Sorley restored the peacock to its chamois leather wrapping and to the cupboard, after which he returned to examine Alan's artistic effort. "Very good, very good," he said nodding, "you have done it very exactly, although the drawing is very stiff." "Rather architectural isn't it, sir? But the original is stiff also, and I am not drawing from an artistic point of view, but with the idea of getting an exact representation of the thing," said Alan, and slipping the sketch into an envelope, he put it along with the paint-box into his pocket. Before leaving, Fuller determined to speak to Sorley of what he had heard from Mrs. Verwin regarding the visit of Morad-Bakche to Belstone. He had immediately after the interview warned Marie not to mention what had been said to her uncle, but on reflection he thought that it would be just as well to learn what he could. Moreover Mrs. Verwin being loose-tongued would probably talk about the matter, and if it reached Sorley's ears he might get it into his suspicious mind that Alan was working against him, rather than with him, an attitude which was not to be permitted, since in this case union was strength. Whether Sorley was guilty or innocent the young man--as had been said before--could only decide on what evidence he possessed; but in any event, seeing that the gentleman in question was Marie's uncle, Fuller wished to arrive at the truth without too much publicity. For publicity on the face of it, meant the intervention of the police. "Do you know that I went to dinner at Miss Grison's boarding-house?" asked Alan in a would-be careless manner. "No," retorted Sorley, again looking uneasy, "and it does not interest me if you did," his manner gave the lie to this statement. "That woman hates me and is trying to injure me!" "In what way?" Sorley looked hard at the speaker. "By bringing back the peacock." "I don't quite understand." And Fuller did not, as the remark puzzled him a great deal, lacking, as it did, a feasible explanation. "The woman stole the peacock," said Sorley gloomily, "because she knew that I valued it and knew also that there was a riddle connected with it which would probably result in a treasure being found. For over twenty years she resisted all my supplications and threats to give it back, and I did not dare to move in the matter--as I told you before, Alan--lest she should destroy it. Yet here she comes down secretly and puts back the peacock in its old place without a word of explanation. "Have you asked her why she behaved in this manner?" "No; I am only too content to have the golden bird back again without asking questions. She would probably tell a falsehood since she hates me." "But if she hates you, Mr. Sorley, why did she give you back what you so very greatly desired?" "That is what I wish to know," cried the elder man excitedly. "It is for no good object I am certain. She means to cause trouble in some way, but how, I fail to see. Remember her threats in this very room when she was here." Alan nodded. "It is very strange," he murmured, and wondered if Sorley really meant what he said, or whether he was preparing an excuse for himself should he be told--say by the police--that Grison at the time of his death had possessed the golden peacock. "It is very strange," said Alan again, and pondered deeply, while Sorley watched him gloomily and in a shifty stealthy manner. He seemed more uneasy and anxious than ever. "Why did you visit Mrs. Grison's boarding-house?" he asked abruptly. Fuller roused himself. "To hear all I could about the Rotherhithe crime, Mr. Sorley. Dick was at the inquest----" "Dick. Who is Dick?" "Dick Latimer, a reporter, the man who shares my rooms. We were at college together. You have met him down here, Mr. Sorley." "Yes, yes, I remember now. His name slipped my memory. So he was at the inquest, was he?" "Yes, and like myself he is very interested in this crime." "There is nothing interesting about it," said Sorley abruptly once more; "some scoundrel of a sailor murdered the poor devil." "But the motive?" asked Fuller, wondering if his host hinted at the dead man's possession of the peacock. Sorley shrugged his shoulders. "Have those sort of people ever any motive, Alan," he asked skeptically. "Certainly. A man doesn't put his head in a noose for nothing." "A noose." Mr. Sorley shivered and put his hand to his throat with an uncomfortable look, "no I suppose a man would keep clear of the gallows if he could. But--but--well never mind, Alan, let us change this disagreeable subject. I promised to show you my own private collection of gems." "Yes, I shall be pleased to look at them," answered the young man, who saw that his last remark had greatly affected his host, a fact which again aroused his suspicions, and made him shrink from the dapper gentleman. Mr. Sorley made no reply, but went to a panel marked with a cross cut in its wood, which formed a portion of the inside wall of the library. He fumbled at some spring for a moment and then the panel slid into a groove to display a cupboard with many shelves upon which were ranged trays of jewels. One by one the man brought them to the central table, and his eyes glittered with fanatic joy as he pointed out their various beauties. And certainly throughout many years he had succeeded in gathering together a number of precious stones. "Little by little I have collected for over thirty years," explained Mr. Sorley, mounting his hobby-horse, "buying here and there whenever I had the chance, and sometimes selling at a bargain what I had bought, so as to get some particular gem. There are quite six thousand pounds worth of jewels here, Alan, and only my poverty has prevented my buying more." Fuller did not hint, as he might have done, that the collector had used his ward's income as well as his own to indulge his expensive taste, and had also sold furniture to which he had no claim for the same reason. Under the circumstances it was foolish to quarrel with Sorley on this point. Until the mystery of the murder and the peacock was solved Alan wished to keep on good terms with the man, who evidently had to do with both. He therefore examined the gems and listened patiently to Sorley's explanations. And the jewels were certainly well worth looking at. There were diamonds cut and uncut, rubies colored like port wine, and some of the true pigeon blood hue; emeralds displayed their verdant tints, and there were sapphires the color of a summer sky. Pearls were conspicuous by their absence, as if kept in a collection and not worn, Sorley explained this--they became discolored; but beryl stones, amethysts, carbuncles, and opals, many-hued as a rainbow were displayed on the black velvet of the shallow trays. The collection was not of extraordinary value, but Sorley gloated over his darlings, streaming the stones between his fingers, holding them up to the light, and pointing out to Fuller the particular excellence of each. "It's an expensive hobby," said Alan, after an hour had been passed in this way, for Sorley talked on with the merciless zeal of a collector. "In a manner it is, my boy; but then gems are always worth money, and I can always sell these if necessary." He shuddered, "I hope it will not be necessary. It would be like parting with my life to give up these. I know every single one and each represents days and weeks of bargaining. I could tell you the history of each gem." "I fear that would be too long," said Fuller hastily, for he was growing weary of this enthusiasm; "but are you not afraid of these being stolen?" "No," snapped Sorley, putting back the trays and adjusting the panel, so that it looked exactly like a portion of the wall, "no one would ever guess that the jewels were behind that cross. You know, but I don't think you will rob me, Alan. Ha! ha! ha!" "I am not fond enough of gems to do so," said the young man indifferently; "but you said at the vicarage that you feared lest you should be murdered for the sake of your collection." "Did I? Did I? I forget." "You certainly did," insisted Fuller, looking at him searchingly; "and you seemed to be very much afraid." "Well of course there is six thousand pounds worth of gems there. Some one might----" "Have you any particular person in your mind?" Sorley turned gray and gasped. "Why do you say that?" he asked sharply. Fuller looked at him harder than ever. "I told you that I dined at Miss Grison's boarding-house," he explained; "while there I met with a man, who called himself Morad-Bakche!" Mr. Sorley gasped again. "The Indian," he muttered nervously. "Ah!" Alan gasped. "So you have seen him." "Seen him, seen him. What do you mean?" "I mean that this Morad-Bakche came down to Belstone to ask after the peacock, and gained some information from Mrs. Verwin at the inn. She told him how it was suspected that the Grisons had stolen the ornament, and gave him the Bloomsbury address." "So Morad-Bakche is at Miss Grison's," muttered Sorley, sitting down; "that makes it more certain that she is up to no good in connection with me." "I thought it strange myself," said Alan dryly. Sorley did not reply, but looked hard at the carpet, "What do you think of this Indian?" he asked abruptly. "I think he is a man who will stick at nothing to get the peacock." "Then he is after that?" "You should know," said Alan meaningly. "How should I know." There was a note of defiance in the man's voice. "Because Mrs. Verwin declared that Bakche went to look at The Monastery. If he did, I think--from what you hinted just now--that you saw him." "Yes, I saw him, and what is more I spoke to him. Confound that woman! She chatters too much." "Why should she not?" questioned the solicitor. "The story of the peacock is well known--that is the history of its being a fetish of the Inderwicks. That it can reveal a treasure is not known, I fancy." "No. Quite so. After all Mrs. Verwin only said what everyone else can say, Alan. But I wish she hadn't told Bakche about the Grisons." Fuller shrugged his shoulders. "What does it matter now. You have the peacock in your own possession." "Yes, I have the peacock, and if Bakche learns that, he may try and murder me. He is just the man--as you say--to stick at nothing." "Oh, then, that was what you meant when you hinted your fears to me on Christmas Day at the vicarage?" "Yes." Sorley wiped his face again, looking still gray and anxious, "and of course Miss Grison had brought back the peacock by that time. If I hadn't got it I should not be so afraid. Ah," he rose and began to walk up and down in a startled way. "I see her game now Alan. She will tell Bakche how I have the peacock and he will--and he will--oh Alan!" The man gripped Fuller's arm and appeared to be thoroughly frightened at the idea of a raid being made by the Indian. The solicitor gently forced Sorley to sit down again and asked for an explanation. "You must be frank with me if I am to help you," said the solicitor. "Oh I shall be frank," panted Sorley, as though he had been running for a long distance. "I can trust you, and you want to marry my niece. It is to your benefit to be on my side, and then----" Alan cut short this vague chatter. "Tell me about Bakche?" "Well then, he did come to The Monastery about July last. He called here openly, and told me what Mrs. Verwin had stated. He gave me to understand that he was the representative of the Kam royal people, and knew all about the peacock." "How did he learn?" "From some family papers which stated that the Begum had given the gems to George Inderwick because he saved her life and the life of her son." "Hum!" murmured Alan to himself. "So the excuse of having been told by an Inderwick in India it was lost." "Bakche wanted the peacock, and I told him that it was lost?" "Did you say who had stolen it?" "No, I didn't. I thought if I did, that Miss Grison out of spite might give it to him, and so I should lose the treasure." "Did Bakche know that the peacock would reveal the whereabouts of----" Sorley interrupted eagerly. "Of course he did. The papers in question told him that Ferrier had manufactured the peacock as a guide. Bakche declared that the Begum had no right to give family jewels to Inderwick, and insisted that I should surrender the peacock so that he could trace and recover them. I said that the bird was lost, and he went away greatly dissatisfied, saying that he would look for it." "Of course," said Alan nodding; "and as Mrs. Verwin had told him that the Grisons had stolen it, and had given him the boarding-house address, he went there to get it from her." "I wonder why she didn't give it to him to spite me," groaned Sorley. Fuller was on the point of saying that she could not because her brother possessed the desired article, but checked himself. He did not wish to let Sorley know that he knew how Baldwin Grison had been murdered for the sake of that very peacock. And apparently from what had just been said, Sorley believed that the sister had always possessed it. "She preferred to give it to you," said Alan. "Yes," cried the man, "and why? Because she knew that Bakche wanted it. Now she will tell him and he will come and murder me to get it." "He may not be so bloodthirsty," said Fuller encouragingly, "and after all if you fear that, why not give him the peacock." "No," said Sorley energetically, "I shan't give up the chance of getting the treasure. It belongs to Marie. I can't as her guardian give up that." "No." Alan thought that Sorley was rather thinking of himself, than of his niece, "but what's to be done?" "Nothing, I tell you, nothing," said the other man almost fiercely, "I shall hide the peacock along with my own jewels behind that panel. No one will ever guess that it is there, and I shall ask the village policeman to keep an eye on The Monastery in case Bakche tries to rob me . . . And what will you do, Alan?" "My course is obvious, Mr. Sorley. I shall try and solve the riddle." "Yes, yes. And we can then get the treasure, and Bakche will be outwitted. Even if he steals the peacock, we have the drawing to unravel the problem. Go! go! Alan go! and hold your tongue, for Miss Grison may not have told the man that I have the bird." "Perhaps," said Fuller dubiously, "time alone will show!" and he took his leave feeling that Miss Grison had probably informed Bakche about the peacock, on the chance that he would trouble the man she hated. CHAPTER XI JOTTY In due course Mr. Fuller returned to his office and to the chambers in Barkers Inn, only to find that Dick had not yet put in an appearance. Alan regretted his absence greatly, since Latimer was the one person to whom he could talk freely. Needless to say, the young man was bubbling over with the information he had acquired, and found it very difficult to think of anything else, which was scarcely a good state of mind in which to attend to his clients' affairs. Had the solicitor been able, he would have set everything else aside until he had solved the mystery of the Rotherhithe murder, and had learned the secret of the peacock; but as he had to earn his bread and butter, such indulgence in gratifying his curiosity was not to be thought of. Alan felt very unsettled for quite a week after his arrival in Chancery Lane. Nor were his anxieties allayed when he heard from his clerk, that during his absence, an urchin who called himself Alonzo had haunted the office, demanding on every occasion to see Mr. Fuller. And the odd thing about the matter was, that when Alan really did return, Jotty--to give him his slum name--failed to put in an appearance. The solicitor did not dare to write to the lad saying that he would be glad to accord him an interview on a settled date, since Miss Grison might read the letter and prevent the boy's attendance. For the same reason Fuller did not call at the Thimble Square house, lest its landlady, being extremely sharp, might--and probably would--guess that he was tampering with Jotty's loyalty. As a matter of fact Alan was not, as he did not seek to question the page about the lady, but simply wished to learn what he had to say concerning his association with Baldwin Grison. And as the dead man's sister desired that the assassin of her brother should be captured and punished, Fuller deemed that he was right in using every means to forward her aims. Jotty--Alan felt sure of this--was a valuable witness, and, if dexterously questioned, might be able to throw some light on the darkness which environed the crime. It certainly seemed that the next step to be taken was the examination of the street-arab, but as the lad did not put in an appearance, and Fuller--on the before-mentioned grounds--did not dare to awaken Miss Grison's suspicions by sending for him, he had to wait patiently. And this, coupled with the continued absence of Latimer, did not tend to sweeten the young man's now irritable temper. In fact the wear and tear of thought so displayed itself outwardly that when Dick did arrive he commented openly on his friend's sorry looks. The reporter came back to London by the night mail, and finding when he got to Barkers Inn that Alan had already gone to his office he followed him there as soon as a bath and a change of clothes had made him respectable. Breakfast he had already dispatched in a restaurant on his way from the railway station. Dick, having enjoyed his holiday, was in a happy frame of mind, but his smiles left him when he saw his chum's anxious face. "What the deuce is the matter?" asked Mr. Latimer, when the first greetings were over, and he was smoking comfortably in a chair, "you look sick." "I am sick--with worry," said Fuller emphatically, "it's that infernal case." "Oh," said Dick leisurely; "which part of it in particular?" "The whole. I have much to tell you, as I want your opinion. The more I look into the matter the more confused does it grow." "Have you been looking into the matter?" asked Dick provokingly calm. "Yes, I have, and in consequence I have scarcely enjoyed my Christmas at home," cried Alan. "Not even with the most charming girl in the world?" "No. Because she asks questions, and I have to keep a great deal from her." "On account of her uncle?" "Precisely!" "Hum! Is he guilty?" "I don't know. Anyway he has the peacock." Latimer pushed back his chair and let his pipe fall. "What?" "He has the peacock. I've seen it, and what is more he allowed me to make a drawing of it," and Alan fumbled among his papers for the sketch. "Here it is, Dicky!" "The devil!" ejaculated the journalist staring at the painted bird; "then the man murdered Grison after all." "I'm not sure. I have my doubts." "But hang it, man, you know that Grison was murdered for the sake of the original of this." He laid his finger on the sketch, "and if Sorley has it, he must have taken it out of the murdered man's room." "Well you won't be so sure of that when you have heard my story," said Alan in a tart way, for his nerves were all jangling. "Tell it, old son," remarked Latimer, recovering his pipe, and not another word did he utter until he was in full possession of Alan's information. The solicitor told him everything from the time he had arrived at Belstone until the moment of departure, and carried up the narrative as far as London by relating how Jotty had been haunting the office. "And now that I am back, the little fool won't turn up," finished Fuller, greatly exasperated, "and I dare not send for him." "No," nodded Dick grimly, "that is very obvious. The quieter you keep this business the better it will be until we get at its truth. Hum! It's a most extraordinary complication, Alan." He stared at the sketch which was now lying on the table. "Have you solved this riddle?" "No. So far as I can see there isn't any riddle to solve." "It looks like it," murmured Dick, looking hard at Fuller's artistic effort; "so my sixth sense was right when it told me that Morad-Bakche was mixed up in the matter." Alan nodded crossly. "But I wish that your sixth sense would tell you who murdered Grison." "We shan't learn that until we question the sister. If she admits that she took the peacock to The Monastery at Belstone, Sorley will be exonerated. If she declares that she did not, Sorley will have to account for its being in his possession." "But confound it man, can't you see that if--as Sorley says--she wishes to get him into trouble, she will certainly decline to tell the truth." "What is the truth anyhow?" asked Dick, after the fashion of Pontius Pilate. "Lord knows!" replied Fuller disconsolately. "Of course Jotty never said that Grison had the peacock on the precise night of his murder. The boy only saw it on previous occasions. It is quite possible that the dead man may have given it to his sister to send to Sorley and make trouble. They both hated the man, and evidently with good reason." "Yes; but if that were the case, it would argue that Grison knew he would be murdered, which is ridiculous. Besides Sorley told a lie about his motor bicycle, which shows that he does not wish it known he was able to slip up to town and back again without making use of the publicity of the railway. I am inclined to suspect Sorley as the guilty person." "Do you think Bakche may have killed Grison?" "No; for if he had he would scarcely have given the peacock to the sister for Sorley's benefit." Alan nodded. "I thought that myself," he said slowly. "Well what is to be done now, Dicky?" "Inspector Moon ought to know," said Latimer significantly. Fuller jumped up quickly, "Not just now, Dick; don't say anything to him. He would certainly arrest Sorley straight away, and I wish to spare Marie the disgrace." "But the truth is bound to come out sooner or later, Alan," remarked Dick, perplexed how to act. "The truth! Quite so. Still, when known, the truth may not implicate Mr. Sorley. For all we know he may be perfectly innocent." "He may be," retorted Latimer dryly, and with a shrug, "but to my mind he seems to be deeply involved in the matter. The evidence is strong----" "The circumstantial evidence," corrected Alan quickly. "I don't see that your interpolated word matters a cent, sonny. The peacock being in the man's possession points to his guilt." "Unless Miss Grison left it secretly at The Monastery." "There is that chance certainly," admitted Dick with another shrug. "However as Sorley is not aware that he is suspected he won't try to bolt, so under the circumstances I shall hold my tongue until things straighten out a trifle. But if he does try to leave the country, I must speak, Alan, and so must you, else we may be accused of compounding a felony. As a lawyer you ought to know that much." "I do know it," said Fuller impatiently, "and if Sorley is guilty he assuredly must be arrested and punished when the case is proved. All the same we must give him the benefit of the doubt until his criminality is placed beyond all question." "Why do you defend the man so?" asked Latimer suspiciously; "you don't approve of him, as you have told me dozens of times." "I am not thinking of the man so much as of Marie. The shame of having her uncle tried and hanged for a sordid murder would certainly break her heart, Dick." "Well there's something in that. How love does complicate honest behavior. But that you love Miss Inderwick you would have no hesitation in telling Moon the truth." "I admit that. But things being as they are, I must ask you not to speak to the police until I give you leave." "Very good, old son. I see we'll both end in jail, for tampering with the course of justice. All the same I shall hold my tongue. And now that being settled so far may I ask what you intend to do?" "I can hardly say. What in your opinion is the step I should take?" "Question Miss Grison and learn if she took back the peacock," said Dick without a moment's hesitation. "But hang it all man, she will only tell lies." "Why should she?" "Your common-sense, let alone what we talked about a few moments ago, should tell you," said Fuller impatiently. "If she did take all that trouble to implicate Sorley, she won't give herself away by acknowledging it. The admission that she concealed the peacock in its old cupboard would exonerate Sorley. You can see that?" "Yes! Of course since she hates the man, she---- Hullo, what's up?" Latimer asked this question because Alan suddenly started to his feet and listened intently to a noise in the outer office. "I hear a boy's voice," said the solicitor hastily throwing open the door just in time to permit Jotty to be pushed into the room by the indignant clerk with whom he had been arguing. "Oh it's you, young man. I thought so. That's all right, Seymour, I'll attend to him," and Fuller, closing the door, pointed out a chair to the page. "Sit down, Jotty." "Alonzer, please sir," said the lad quickly, "I don't want t' hey anythin' t' do wiff m' ole bad self. I've turned over a new leaf, Miss Grison ses." "We'll take a look at the old leaf before you do that finally," said Alan, seating himself at his desk. "Just now and for the next half hour, you are the disreputable Jotty, and not the Sunday-school Alonzo." The boy grinned cunningly and nodded, glancing round the office and at Latimer in a furtive and stealthy manner. He did not wear his page's suit of many buttons, but a civilian kit of badly-cut tweed clothes. But as his sleek hair was well oiled, and he had a penny sprig of holly in his button-hole it must be presumed that Jotty was out for the day, and was very pleased with his general appearance. Being small and wizen, his legs scarcely touched the ground, when seated, and he looked not unlike a monkey. But his very shrewd and restless eyes, which were taking in everything to be stored in his active brain, showed that he was a clever and decidedly dangerous lad. "Who's him, sir?" asked Jotty, pointing at Dick in negro fashion with his sharp chin, "d'y wan' me t' tork wen he's here?" "Yes, and you know this gentleman, so don't pretend ignorance." "Ho yes," murmured Jotty with pretended surprise, "y'wos at th' inquitch wosn't y'sir." "I was, Jotty. You and I and Inspector Moon had a talk." "'Ad we, sir?" asked the lad with a vacant look. Fuller leaned over and gave him a shake. "No nonsense, boy," he said sharply, "you have to answer a few questions. I'm glad you have come to see me at last, you young rip." "At larst, sir," protested the page meekly, "why I've bin an' bin an' bin ever so oftin and couldn't spot yer nohow, sir. An' t'aint easy t' git out of th' house wen she's got her eyes abaout nohow. But it's m'day orf an' I come along t' see if I cud make a quid or two." "Your price is a high one," said Alan dryly, "how do I know what you have to tell me is worth a pound, or a quid as you call it." "Oh I ain't got nothink t' tell," said Jotty readily, "but I thought es y'd help a pore cove es wants t' be respectable." "I shall help you at a price," said Fuller, who did all the talking while Dick smoked in silence and kept his ears and eyes open. Latimer had not a very good opinion of the witness, as he thought him cunning, and likely to tell lies unless he was driven into a corner, and perhaps for that very reason. "Do you know this?" asked Alan, pushing the sketch under Jotty's shrewd blue eyes. Dick frowned at the action, as he deemed it wise that Alan should have kept the fact of the peacock being in Sorley's possession to himself, in the meantime at all events. "Yessir," said Jotty quickly, "it's a picter of him es was kind t' me's goldbird es he showed me times an' agin." "Well then," said Alan, and Dick's frown relaxed as he spoke, "this picture, as you call it was taken long ago, before Mr. Grison got the peacock. Was the bird like that sketch, or is there any change." "Nosir. It wos just like that here. Wiff a big tail and shiny things on it. Them spots is th' shiny things ain't they, sir?" Alan nodded, while Dick grinned at this compliment to his friend's artistic abilities. "When did you see the peacock last?" "On the very night es he es wos kind t' me wos murdered." "Can you swear to that?" asked Alan with secret dismay, for this reply seemed to prove that Sorley was guilty. "Yessir. I kin swear hard I kin," said Jotty with a frank smile. "Are you sure that Mr. Grison didn't give the peacock to someone, say a day or so before he met with his death?" "Him give it away," cried Jotty with supreme contempt, "why sir, he es wos good t' me, ses t' me es he'd rather die nor give up thet shiny thing. An' die he did, when it wos took." "Who took it, boy?" demanded Dick suddenly. "Him es slipped the knife int' th' pore cove." "Are you sure that Grison had the peacock on the night he died?" asked Alan, fighting against hope for Marie's sake. "I'd swear t' it anywhere, sir," said Jotty confidently. "I liked t' hev a look et that there shiny thing, and him es wos good t' me, he shows it t' me most every night, saying wot lots of swell things it cud buy. Every night he showed it t' me," repeated Jotty with emphasis, "and afore he went t'bed that night he let me 'ave a squint." "On the night he was murdered." "On the night he was done for," said Jotty in his own simple way. "That seems conclusive, Alan," put in Latimer. "Yes," said the lawyer with a sigh, then added under his breath. "Poor Marie, what a shock for her. Jotty, you liked Mr. Grison, didn't you?" "Yessir, no end. He wos good t' me, and guv' me things t' eat an' drink. Oh my," Jotty rubbed his lean stomach vulgarly, "the baked taters an' corfee and saveloys I hed when he stood sam." "Then you would like the man who stabbed him to be punished?" pursued Fuller artfully. "Yessir; and bring him t' th' gallers I shell somehow." "But you have no idea who murdered Mr. Grison?" remarked Latimer quickly. "Oh hevn't I? Perhaps not, and praps I ain't sich a fool es you'd think me t' be, mister. I knows whot I knows anyhow." "What is that, Jotty." The lad looked indescribably cunning. "I ain't agoin' t' tell till I'm a dead cert es I'm right." "But if you tell me, Jotty, I can help you." "I don' want no help," said the boy sullenly. "If I speak to Inspector Moon you'll have to tell," said Dick sharply. "Sha'n't, so there," growled Jotty, his shrill voice becoming gruff as if the change to manhood had suddenly taken place. "You shall." Jotty made no reply, but looked at both gentlemen with a mulish expression evidently determined not to speak. "It's wuth a quid or two," he muttered after a long pause. "What is worth a quid or two?" demanded Alan, eyeing him with a strong dislike, for he objected to the brat's obstinacy. "What I knows." "What do you know?" "That's tellin's." "If I give you a quid, as you call it, will you tell." "Yessir," said Jotty promptly, and held out a curved claw in which Alan, as promptly, placed a sovereign. The boy bit it to prove its quality and then spat on it for luck. "I knows someone es wos with him es wos good t' me, on that night," said Jotty, agreeably supplying the information. "Who was the person?" asked Latimer, while Alan winced, quite expecting to hear the name of Sorley. "Sha'n't tell." "Do you know the name?" "Yessir. Leastways I spelled it out fro' th' letter. Oh I've 'ad schoolin', I 'ave, gents both, and knows m' letters somehow." "What is this letter?" asked Alan in a peremptory tone. "A letter es the cove es came wrote sayin' he'd come. I never sawr him es wrote the letter," explained Jotty, "cos, after I seed the peacock on th' night; him es wos good t' me turned me out to dos elsewheres. But I fun' the letter I did in them ole clothes." "Whose old clothes?" "Him es wos good t' me." "Mr. Grison?" "Yessir. He fell an' got covered with mud like. An' he ses t' me he'd like me t' taike the mud orf, and I did. In th' coat I fun' th' letter, an' wrapped up marbles in it. I furgot t' put it back," added Jotty in an apologetic manner, "an' es he es wos good t' me didn't ask fur no letter, I never said anything, I didn't, nohow." "When was this?" questioned Alan anxiously. "On the day afore he es wos good t' me wos made a dead un." "Have you the letter?" "Yes sir!" and Jotty clutched the breast of his ill-fitting jacket, "but I want another quid or two for it." "You know how to make a bargain, young man," said Latimer humorously; "just hand over that letter at once." "I sha'n't. So there," said Jotty, turning obstinate again. "It's wuth another quid anyhow. An' I sawr him es wrote it when he called t' see him es wos good t' me afore." "Oh this person called to see Mr. Grison before, did he." "Onct or twice he did. Allays at night, and then they torks." "What about?" "I dunno, sir. I never heard. Him es was good t' me, he allays turned me out wen the gent came." "Oh," said Dick meditatively, "so this visitor was a gent?" "Yes sir. A real gent, wiff slap-up clothes and----" The description sounded like that of Sorley, and Alan stretched out his hand. "I want that letter, you imp?" he said impressively. "Give me a quid an' it's yours." Fuller shrugged his shoulders and glanced at Latimer, who nodded. It was unpleasant being dictated to by a boy, but the issues were so great that Dick's nod intimated it was best to agree, and get the epistle in question with the least possible trouble. Money was scarce with Fuller, but so anxious was he to arrive at the truth that he reluctantly brought forth another sovereign. Jotty clawed it and went through the same ceremony. He then produced a letter written on very excellent paper, which was dirty with having been in his pocket for some length of time, probably to wrap up the marbles he had mentioned. In his anxiety Dick rose and looked over his friend's shoulder to read the letter. It did not take long, as it only consisted of a date, a line and the writer's initials as follows, on a plain sheet of gray note-paper without any address:-- "11 _November_. "Will see you seven o'clock, 13: 11: 08. "R. V. S." "Is it his writing?" asked Latimer, referring to Sorley, but not mentioning the name because of Jotty's presence. "I think so. I can compare it with the letter he wrote me. The initials are certainly his, and the appointment is for the night of the murder." "But he wos up afore," put in Jotty, who grinned in a very satisfied manner, as he well might do, considering he had just made two pounds. "Who was up before?" asked Latimer sharply. "Him es wrote thet letter." "Can you describe the man?" "Ain't I done so," said Jotty in an injured tone, "he wos a real gent wiff slap-up clothes. Hadn't got no hair on his face he hadn't and torked es if every cove wos dirt. Stiff-like, too, an' an ole 'un, tryin' to look like a young toff." Alan winced again as both the letter and Jotty's very excellent description seemed to prove that Sorley was the guilty person. "How do you know that this gentleman you describe wrote the letter?" "Cos I seed him coming up an hour or so afore him es wos good t' me kicked th' bucket. I wos turned out, long afore he come in. So I goes away an' dosses wiff a friend o' mine, and never hears no more till nex' morning when Mother Slaig, she ups and ses es murder had bin done cruel." "Is that all you know?" "Every blessed bit, sir," said Jotty cheerfully. "Why didn't you tell this to Inspector Moon at the inquest?" demanded Latimer sharply. "Cos there wasn't no quids in it then," retorted the boy impudently, "an' I do nothin' fur nothin', I do anyhow. An' now I've got wot I arsked fur," he placed his cap on his head, "I'm on t' give m'self a treat." The youth had edged near the door by this time, and held it slightly open, evidently expecting to be stopped. Indeed Fuller put out an arm to detain him and ask further questions, only to cause Jotty to vanish in a remarkably swift space of time. Dick prevented Alan, who was about to follow. "Let him go," said Latimer quickly, "we can always get hold of him when we want. Compare the letters?" Without a word Alan did so, and placed both the one he had received from Sorley and that which Jotty had sold, under Dick's eye. The latter drew a long breath. "There's no doubt about it, Alan," he said sadly, "they are written by one and the same man. Sorley had an appointment with Grison at Mother Slaig's on the night of the crime, as this letter proves. Also Jotty declares that he saw him, for the description is very accurate. Hum! I wish you had not shown the boy that drawing of the peacock." "The moment I did show it, I guessed that I had made a mistake," said Fuller quickly; "and so I was forced against my will to tell a necessary lie in order to lull the lad's suspicions. But it seems evident, Dick, that Sorley got the peacock from Grison, and that the yarn about the sister leaving it, is wholly untrue. What's to be done now?" "Sorley must be arrested for murder," said Dick decisively. "No, no. He may be innocent after all!" "Innocent when you have seen that note and heard Jotty's description?" "Well," said Alan anxiously, "wait for three days before doing anything." Dick wavered then made up his mind abruptly. "All right, I'll wait," he said gruffly. CHAPTER XII AN INDIAN CLIENT Dick Latimer had promised to hold his peace for three days before imparting to the inspector who was in charge of the Rotherhithe case what had been discovered with reference to Sorley. All the same he was troubled in his mind, as he could not be sure if he was acting rightly. Much as he sympathized with Fuller because the man likely to be arrested was the uncle of the girl to whom his friend was engaged, it did not seem right that a criminal should remain at large. The journalist indeed thought that Alan's objections were rather sentimental, and that justice should be done in spite of Marie's feelings, which assuredly would be outraged. Nevertheless he admitted that Fuller was placed in a difficult position, and it was natural that he should wish to gain time in the hope of proving Mr. Sorley's innocence, and so avert the scandal. But, so far as Dick could see, there was no chance of clearing the man's character. He had been with Grison, whom he openly detested, on the very night when the murder was committed, and shortly before it took place, as was conclusively proved not only by the letter, but by the evidence of the street-arab, who certainly could never have invented such an accurate description of the guilty person. Then again, Jotty had sworn that on the night of the crime he had been given his usual treat of a display of the peacock, and since that was now in Sorley's possession, it could only have passed into it directly from the dead man. And as the presumed criminal's full name, Randolph Vernon Sorley, was intimated by the initials R. V. S., and the note to Grison was certainly in his handwriting there appeared to be no doubt that he had murdered the miserable creature to obtain wrongful possession of the Inderwick fetish. Finally, since that had been stolen, all Sorley's energies had been bent upon getting it again, and in desperation he probably had struck the fatal blow. Of course the story of Miss Grison having taken the peacock back to The Monastery was one--so Dick thought--deliberately invented to implicate the woman and account for the reappearance of the desired article. Upon this evidence it could scarcely be doubted that Sorley was guilty, and when the fact that he had purchased a motor bicycle was taken into account, Latimer could see no flaw in the indictment. More than ever he considered it necessary to have Sorley brought to justice, which would be done as soon as Inspector Moon was informed of these discoveries. But having made a promise, Dick faithfully kept it, in spite of the many qualms of conscience he daily felt. Then on the third day he took up a newspaper to find a new and extraordinary development of the case. After mastering the article, which appeared in _The Latest News_, a daily paper much given to gossip, he jumped into a hansom and drove direct to Fuller's office. It chanced that Alan was not engaged, so Dick entered at once into his friend's private room, flourishing the paper. "Have you seen this?" he asked, placing it before Alan. "Seen what?" asked the other, glancing at the heading indicated, and then he took in the meaning at once. "Good Lord!" He might well utter the ejaculation, for the article contained an account of the Inderwick fetish given--as was intimated--by no less a person than Miss Louisa Grison. The story of Ferrier was narrated, much in the same fashion as it appeared in the manuscript at The Monastery, and it was very plainly stated that a treasure was to be found when the riddle attached to the peacock was solved. Finally, Miss Grison ended the interview with the man, who had written the article, by saying that her dead brother had possessed the golden bird at the time of his death, and that in her mind there was no doubt that he had been murdered for its sake. "Find the peacock," said Miss Grison, "and you find the assassin of my dear brother." Then the article terminated with comments by the writer on the extraordinary and romantic story which had been set forth, and with the original remark culled from Hamlet, "That there were more things in heaven and earth, etc., etc." "I wonder he didn't add that truth is stranger than fiction," remarked Dick, while Alan hastily skimmed the account. "It is just as original. Well, my son, and what do you think now?" "I think," replied Fuller, very decisively, "that Jotty has repeated to his mistress what he told us, and she has taken steps to trap Sorley." "But she doesn't know that he has the peacock--for certain that is?" Alan shrugged his shoulders. "My mistake in showing the drawing to the boy has proved that Sorley has the bird. Miss Grison, I daresay, knew that no sketch had been made of it before it was taken away; and in any event what Jotty told us is sufficient evidence to secure Sorley's arrest." "I think so indeed. There is no longer any need for me to keep silence." "Well," said Fuller hesitatingly, "I suppose there isn't. Moon is certain to see this account, and will come to ask Miss Grison why she has made the matter public after promising to be silent. She can only excuse herself by repeating Jotty's story, and Moon will certainly go down to Belstone to arrest Sorley. Poor Marie!" "I'm not so sure you can call her that," put in Dick hastily. "After all if the man is a criminal, it is better that she should not be in his company." "But the disgrace to the name----" "To Sorley's name, not to Miss Inderwick's. Besides when she marries you she will change her name. It is no use being sentimental any longer, my boy," said Latimer resolutely. "The man must be punished. I'm off to see the inspector, and tell him what I know." "But Dick won't it be best to question Miss Grison first, and learn if she really has heard Jotty's story." "I am quite sure she has," said the reporter emphatically, "else she would not have broken her promise to Moon. The matter of the peacock was kept silent so that the assassin, feeling safe, might betray himself--as he has done, by the way to you. Miss Grison, learning from the boy that Sorley is guilty, has taken the opportunity of making the story as public as possible so that the man can't escape." "He may see the papers and take warning," suggested Alan. "I expect this tale will be in every paper in the kingdom to-morrow." "All the more reason that I should see Moon at once. I am not going to dilly-dally any more, Alan, but do my duty, as I expect you to do yours." "I can't blame you. Go and see Moon." Latimer hesitated at the door. "You won't wire to Sorley, or send that paper to him, I suppose." "No. If the man is guilty and it certainly looks as though he were, he must be punished. I shall not interfere, unpleasant as the scandal will be for Marie. Go and do your duty, Dick, by telling Moon, and I shall do mine by keeping perfectly quiet." Latimer argued no longer but took his departure, leaving Alan much disturbed in his own mind. And no wonder. Marie did not love her uncle, who had always treated her with indifference, and had made use of her money for his own purposes. Still, it would be a terrible shock for her to hear that he had murdered the brother of Miss Grison, and of course the shame of having a relative hanged would be great. And Fuller did not see how Mr. Sorley could escape the gallows, since the evidence on the whole was so very decisive. At the best he could only defend himself by putting forward the story about Miss Grison, and that was but a weak line to take up. "Hum!" said Alan, opening the drawer of his desk to look at the sketch he had made, "I wish I had not showed this to Jotty. He must have mentioned it to Miss Grison, and from that fact she probably guessed that Sorley had the peacock. The man will certainly be arrested, for he will have no time to escape." As Alan murmured this he glanced idly at the paper which Dick had brought, and saw that it was dated the previous day, and of course had been issued yesterday morning. It occurred to the young man that chance might possibly bring the paper to Sorley's notice, since four and twenty hours--if not more--had elapsed since its publication. And if the man was warned in time he assuredly would escape, before Inspector Moon could lay hands on him. Fuller hoped that this would be the case, if only to spare Marie the shame and pain of the scandal. But after all it was doubtful if the account would fall into Sorley's hands immediately, as few newspapers arrived at Belstone, and the doings of the world were always hours and days and, at times, weeks late. The solicitor shook his head dubiously, and wrapping up his sketch in the journal, he placed both in the drawer of his desk. There seemed nothing for it but to wait for Sorley's arrest, and to hear what defense he would make to the charge brought against him. Shortly a card was presented to the lawyer by his clerk, and on seeing the name Fuller ordered the owner to be shown in at once. In a few moments he was face to face with Mr. Morad-Bakche, who looked calm and aristocratic and--as Alan judged--indifferent. Yet if he had seen the article in _The Latest News_, and really had come to England to search for the treasure, Bakche surely would not feign a nonchalance he could not possibly feel. "How are you, Mr. Bakche?" asked, Alan, polite and watchful, while placing a chair for the Indian, "so you have come to see me as you said you would." "Yes, sir, and about a very important subject," replied Bakche, sitting down stiffly, and taking a newspaper out of his pocket. "Yes?" said Alan inquiringly, though of course the moment he saw the paper produced he knew why the man had come to see him. Bakche doubled back the journal and pointed out the article with a slender brown finger. "Have you seen this?" he asked quietly. It was not to Fuller's interest to admit anything, as it was necessary to conduct this interview with great caution. The young man quietly read again the account of the interview with Miss Grison. All the time, Bakche was looking at him hard, trying to guess by the expression of Alan's face what he truly thought. But the solicitor was prepared for the scrutiny, and kept an unmoved countenance. "Very interesting," remarked Fuller coolly, when he had finished. "But not new to you, sir, I presume." "Well no, Mr. Bakche. The story told by Miss Grison is well known in Belstone, the parish of which my father is the vicar. I have heard it before." "Have you heard before that this man Grison was murdered for the sake of the peacock?" demanded the Indian rather impatiently, and thereby showed that his indifference was mainly pretence. "It was commonly reported in Belstone that the Grisons, brother and sister, had stolen the peacock from the Inderwick family when they left The Monastery some twenty years ago. But, pardon me, Mr. Bakche, why do you come here and ask me these questions?" "Can't you guess, sir?" "How can I guess?" retorted Fuller cautiously. "By putting two and two together, as is your English way," said Bakche in a calmer manner. "I told you when you dined at Miss Grison's that I had come to England in order to recover certain family property." "You did. Well?" "The property I referred to is the peacock of jewels," "How did you expect me to know that, Mr. Bakche?" "I can answer that if you will reply to a question?" "What is the question?" "Do you know the story set forth in this article?" asked the Indian quickly. "Yes. As I told you the whole countryside knows it." "Then you must be aware that the Begum of Kam gave the jewels to Simon Ferrier. I told you that I am a descendant of the Rajah of Kam, so you must have guessed that I desired to obtain possession of the peacock." "Quite so," said Fuller coolly, "but there was no need for me to say so." Bakche was honest enough to admit this. "You are very cautious, you English gentlemen," he said with a faint sneer, "and no doubt you did not wish me to get the peacock." "I fail to see how my telling you what you have now told me would aid you to get what belongs rightfully to another person." "It does not belong to another person, but to me," cried Bakche wrathfully. Alan raised his eyebrows. "How do you make that out?" he demanded in an exasperating manner. "George Inderwick's servant, Ferrier, manufactured the peacock for his master and----" "And so manufactured it that in some strange way it reveals where the jewels of the Begum are concealed," finished the Indian sharply. "Understand Mr. Fuller, that I do not exactly claim the peacock----" "You did just now," interrupted Alan in his turn, and shrugging. "Only because I wish to learn where the jewels are hidden." "Indeed. You will find that difficult, since for over one hundred years, the riddle of the peacock has been unsolved." "Never mind," said Bakche doggedly. "If I see the bird I shall probably be able to learn the truth." "And then?----" Alan raised his eyebrows again. "Then," said the other confidently, "I shall take the jewels." "You may not be allowed." "Why not. The jewels belong to me as the descendant of the Rajah of Kam." "You forget," said Fuller smoothly, "that the rajah's wife gave the same to George Inderwick because he saved her life and the life of her son." "She had no right to do so," cried Bakche loudly, "the jewels were not her private property to dispose of, Mr. Fuller. They belonged to the family--to the state as it were. Royal treasure cannot be parted with in this way." "I am not prepared to argue the matter, Mr. Bakche," remarked Fuller in a dry manner, "since--beyond the known story, which has become a Sussex legend--I am not acquainted with the exact facts. But I would point out that the rajah may have given his wife permission to reward her preserver in this way. Inderwick assuredly deserved a return for what he did." Bakche bowed stiffly. "I admit that the gentleman acted bravely, and as I am descended from the young prince he saved I am indebted to him for the fact that I exist at all. Nevertheless, Mr. Fuller, the reward need not have taken the form of almost the whole of the royal treasure of Kam." Alan shrugged his shoulders again. "The Begum was apparently a very grateful woman, Mr. Bakche. And if she had retained the treasure, it would have been confiscated by the British Government when the royalty of Kam was abolished." "It is probable," said Bakche dryly; "but I think that the priests would have taken care to preserve the jewels and give them, when times became quieter, to the rightful owner." "In which case you would now be in possession of them, I presume?" "Certainly. I am a direct descendant of the prince saved by Mr. Inderwick, sir. As it is I shall certainly claim them." "You have to find them first," retorted Alan coolly. "Show me the peacock and I shall try to solve the riddle and find them." Fuller laughed and shrugged. "Does that mean I am the criminal?" "Oh no," Bakche hastened to explain smoothly; "but you may know where the peacock is to be found." "Really, I don't quite follow your line of argument, Mr. Bakche. "Let me put the matter in this way," said the Indian deliberately: "The peacock is not only valuable in itself, but also indicated the whereabouts of a great treasure. Miss Grison declares that her brother was murdered for the sake of the bird, so it is plain that the assassin must have known the meaning of the riddle." "Still I cannot follow your line of argument," persisted Fuller; "so far as I know the riddle has never been solved, unless Baldwin Grison, who had the bird for over twenty years--according to his sister that is--guessed what has baffled everyone." "Well," said Bakche sullenly, "whether he solved the riddle or not, some one who wanted the treasure murdered him to obtain the clue." "On the other hand some rough sailor may have killed the man merely for the sake of getting the bird. It is valuable enough, as you say yourself, to account for the assassin risking his neck. But why come to me, Mr. Bakche, since on the face of it I can possibly know nothing." "You know who wants the bird!" "Oh yes. Miss Inderwick, from whose house it was stolen, and to whom I am engaged, wants the bird very much, since it belongs rightfully to her. But I hope you don't accuse a girl of twenty of the crime." "No! no! no!" said Bakche earnestly; "but other people know of the value of the peacock." "I agree. The whole countryside knows the story. If you suspect anyone in Belstone you had better go down and look for the individual." "I suspect Mr. Sorley!" "Why?" demanded Alan, who had quite anticipated the question. "Because he wanted the peacock." "So did Miss Inderwick, so did many other people. Everyone who knows the story would like to find the jewels." Alan paused for a reply but as none came he continued coolly: "How did you trace the possession of the peacock to Baldwin Grison?" "I didn't--that is, I did in a way," stammered the Indian nervously. "In what way?" asked Fuller relentlessly, and trying to make Bakche tell what was already known to him, "for instance how did you come to live at Miss Grison's boarding-house?" "I explained when I met you there, sir." Fuller laughed ironically. "You did, and I beg leave to doubt the truth of the explanation, Mr. Bakche." "How dare you, sir; by what right do you doubt me?" demanded the man furiously, and his dark eyes shot fire. "By the doubt of common-sense. You were in search of the peacock in order to gain a clue to the hiding-place of these jewels you claim. Come now, Mr. Bakche, it was not mere chance that guided you to Miss Grison, who of all the people in London, knew about the matter." Morad-Bakche looked sullenly at the carpet, and evidently saw that Alan was one too many for him. After a long pause, which Fuller took care not to terminate too soon, he looked up with a would-be frank smile. "As I wish you to help me in the matter," he declared, "I may as well make a clean breast of what I know." Alan nodded, and neither refused or agreed to accept the man as his client, but intimated that he was ready to give his attention to the confession. Morad-Bakche at once took exception to the word. "It is not a confession I wish to make, sir, but merely a statement to show how I came to learn about the matter we are discussing." "Oh, I beg your pardon," said Fuller ceremoniously, "go on please!" Bakche frowned at the irony of his tone, but made no further objection to relating what he knew. "My explanation as to how I came to Thimble Square was not wholly true, Mr. Fuller," he said abruptly. "So I thought at the time?" "Why did you think so?" asked Bakche quickly. "Because I got it into my head that you were after the Inderwick fetish, although when you spoke I did not know that it was the Begum of Kam who had given away the jewels. That fact I learned later. However, it struck me that if you had come on some such errand, you went for that reason to Miss Grison's boarding-house, and not because your Ceylon friend recommended it." Bakche nodded. "Very creditable to your intelligence," he said in a patronising manner. "To be plain, sir, I learned the story which is set forth in the newspaper, from some family documents." "As I thought," murmured Fuller softly. "Seeing that the Begum had given away jewels which should rightfully belong to the family I determined to find them. I came to England and went to Belstone, where the documents I mentioned informed me the Inderwicks lived. At the inn there I learned from a very voluble woman all that was to be known about the loss of the peacock. . . Afterwards I visited Mr. Sorley, who is, I understand, the guardian of Miss Inderwick, to whom the peacock is supposed to belong. He told me that the ornament was lost, but he did not say who had taken it from The Monastery." "Quite so," said Alan, remembering that Sorley had withheld such information lest Miss Grison should give the peacock to the man; "but of course Mrs. Verwin at the inn hinted that the Grisons had the bird." "She did, sir and what is more she gave me the address of the boarding-house in Thimble Square. I returned to London in July last and took up my abode there, determined to learn all that I could." "Well?" asked Fuller, when the Indian paused. "Well," echoed the other, "I learned nothing particular." "Hum!" remarked Alan doubtfully, and looking hard at the speaker, "did you tell Miss Grison the story of your search?" "Yes I did, at a later period when I had become more or less friendly with her. I even stated that it was reported how she and her brother had stolen the peacock." "What answer did she make?" "She said nothing to the purpose, only stating that she believed there was such an ornament, but that she did not know where it was. Of course in the light of this interview," added Bakche, placing his hand on the newspaper, "you can see that for her own ends she spoke falsely. Evidently Baldwin, her brother, was the thief, and possessed it the whole time. The wonder is, Mr. Fuller, that being desperately hard up as he was, he did not sell or pawn the peacock." "I rather think that the man hoped to learn the secret and get possession of the jewels. Did you ever see Grison?" "No," said Bakche so quickly that Alan felt sure he was not speaking the exact truth, and became more sure of the fact when he elaborated his denial. "Miss Grison refused to give me her brother's address, which I knew was in some slum. And of course, not guessing that Grison had the peacock, I did not push my enquiries. Had I known that he had the bird I should have placed the matter in the hands of a private detective, and in some way I should have learned his whereabouts." "And then?" "Then," said Bakche, drawing a deep breath and clenching his small hands, "I should have forced him to surrender it to me." "You would have used violence?" asked Alan in A peculiar tone. "Yes! That is----" Bakche broke off with a laugh of contempt. "Why do you look at me so suspiciously, Mr. Fuller? Do you think that I did see the man and did use violence even to the extent of stabbing him? You are entirely wrong, sir. Had I murdered him and obtained the peacock I should by this time have been far away on the Continent out of danger, and until things grew quieter, I should have remained absent trying to solve the riddle. I am not the criminal, and I am not the possessor of the peacock." "I grant that," said Fuller quietly, who knew well that the man spoke the truth, since Sorley owned the bird at that moment. "Well, and what do you expect me to do, Mr. Bakche?" "I wish you to find out who murdered Grison, so that the peacock may be recovered and handed over to me." "On behalf of Miss Inderwick I am doing that," said Alan dryly, "so I cannot possibly act on your behalf." "The peacock is mine," cried the Indian, rising to his feet with a snarl which again reminded Fuller of his tigerish nature. "The peacock is Miss Inderwick's, and should I find it, I shall hand it over to her so that she may discover the treasure." "You are----" began Bakche violently, then suddenly and dangerously restrained his anger and smiled meaningly. "Well, since you are engaged to the lady, it is natural that you should want her to gain the jewels----" "Mr. Bakche, stop that if you please." Alan rose in his turn with indignant looks. The Indian shrugged his shoulders and walked to the door. "It is a duel between us," he said smoothly, "you want what I want, so we shall see who wins. And I can tell you what is your best step to take." "Very kind of you, Mr. Bakche. And that is----" "To find the boy Alonzo, formerly called Jotty. He knows the truth." "Then why not question him, since he is at Miss Grison's house?" "Indeed he is not; Jotty has been missing since last night!" and refusing to explain further, the Indian departed, leaving Fuller greatly astonished and greatly annoyed also, that the boy should have disappeared. CHAPTER XIII AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR Dick's remark when he brought news of the Rotherhithe crime, that there were more romantic than commonplace events to be found in present-day life, seemed to be verified by what had taken place. A hidden treasure, a riddle in gems and gold, a mysterious murder, a melodramatic Indian, and the necessary pair of lovers to spice the whole--these were certainly details out of which to weave a tale worthy of more highly-colored days. And Destiny who was relating the story to an interested world was doing her best to involve her characters in a whirl of unhappy things. For even if Sorley were arrested and confessed his guilt and suffered punishment, the story--as Alan considered--would by no means be ended, since the jewels had to be discovered and detained from the clutch of Morad-Bakche. Marie had to be comforted and married, and Miss Grison--the Atê of the tale--had to be appeased. There was a great deal yet to be done before things could be settled, and Fuller, as the hero of Fate's fiction, felt that he ought to do something towards bringing about a necessary climax. But as yet he could not see his way to do anything. And to make matters worse, Latimer next day arrived with the news that Sorley had disappeared. On the previous day Inspector Moon had been duly told the story, and the evidence of Sorley's complicity had been placed under his official eye. With the joyful feeling that here was a case which would reflect credit on him if dexterously managed, Moon procured a warrant, and took the night train to Lewes. About midnight he arrived at The Monastery, only to learn that Sorley had gone away early in the day, and neither Marie, nor the three Trents, were able to tell the inspector whither he had departed. Hastily packing a small bag, and wearing an unpretentious tweed suit, the suspected man had vanished from The Monastery and Belstone on his motor bicycle. Moon, having acted immediately on Latimer's information, was furious at the escape, and could not understand how the man had been warned. Henny Trent however threw some light on the darkness of this point by stating that Mr. Sorley had been visited by a small boy with light hair and blue eyes. The urchin had not been seen since the departure of Marie's uncle, so it was presumed that he had left earlier. In disgust at his bad luck, Moon installed an officer in the house to watch for the possible return of Sorley, and had come back in the morning to London, where he informed Dick that the bird had flown. Now Latimer had come in the afternoon to the Chancery Lane office to explain to his friend. Alan was much surprised to hear that Sorley had been warned, and from a suspicious look in Dick's eyes fancied that Latimer suspected him. "I did not break my promise," he protested sharply and stiffly and unasked. "No one suggested that you did," growled the reporter, who was annoyed that the criminal--as he truly considered Sorley--had escaped. "Your eyes suggest quite enough," retorted Fuller, hurt by the suspicion, "and you should know me better, Dick, than to think that I broke faith." Latimer flushed. "I'm sorry, Alan, but I really did have some such thought, although I see now that it was unwarranted. But you had every temptation to save the man, seeing that he is Miss Inderwick's uncle." "You should have known me better," persisted Fuller stubbornly. "I gave my promise, and I kept it." "I am sure you did." Latimer extended his hand. "Forgive me Alan." The other gripped it. "Of course. A vague suspicion such as you have entertained won't spoil our friendship. And yet, Dick," he added, when they had both cooled down, "I am not exactly surprised, now I think over Bakche's last words." "Bakche, the Indian? Has he been to see you?" "Yesterday. He came as a client, and confessed much of what we already know." "Then my sixth sense?----" "Oh, hang your sixth sense. We agreed that it was right when I related Mrs. Verwin's story. Bakche's yarn is merely corroborative. He did find the history of the peacock in some family papers, and did come to look up Belstone village to see if he could get the peacock and find the treasure, and yesterday he came to me to ask if I would engineer the job." "Hum! You refused, I expect." "I should jolly well think so, Dicky. Bakche claims the treasure, as he says that the Begum of Kam had no right to give it away. He wants to find the assassin of Grison, and recover the bird and read the riddle." "Does he know that Sorley is the culprit?" "He didn't yesterday, whatever he knows now. I declined to receive him as a client saying that I was working for Marie, and intended to give her the treasure when it was discovered." "Will it ever be discovered?" questioned Latimer skeptically. Alan sighed. "Lord knows! I have been trying my hardest to read some meaning into the sketch I made, but so far I have failed." "We'll have a look at it together," said Dick encouragingly, "my sixth sense may help you where others have not been able to arrive at any conclusion. I owe you that much for having suspected you had broken faith with me, even for a moment," and Dick looked very repentant. "Oh, that's all right, old man," said Alan heartily "seeing that I love Marie so much it was natural you should credit me with trying to spare her pain by getting her uncle saved. But I thought it was best to let the law take its course, as in any case if he was saved now, he would only be discovered and arrested later on." "I suppose you and Bakche are enemies now?" "He gave me to understand that he would do his best to get the better of me," remarked Fuller a trifle dryly, "and then like a fool, he gave me a hint as to who knew the truth." "I don't think I should take that hint coming from such a quarter," said Dick reflectively, "who knows the truth according to Bakche?" "Jotty!" "H'm. He may be right after all, although it is odd he should give you a chance to outrun him in this way. I always did think that Jotty knew more than was good for him. Of course he gave Sorley warning." "Of course," assented Fuller quickly; "only Jotty could have been the blue-eyed, fair-haired lad, who called to see the man. He disappeared from Thimble Square, as Bakche told me, the day before yesterday, so I expect he saw the news about the peacock in that paper, and bolted to warn Sorley." "But why should he do that?" asked Latimer with a puzzled air; "he evidently told Miss Grison--guessing the fact from the drawing you showed him--that Sorley had the bird. And on account of that, Miss Grison related what she did to the interviewer. But I can't understand why Jotty having brought about the trouble, should try to save Sorley from it." Alan shook his head. "It is impossible to say, unless we can get hold of the boy again and make him speak out. He may return to Miss Grison----" "No," said Dick decisively, "he won't. She has done her best to get Sorley into trouble, and won't thank Jotty for giving him warning. I wonder where he has gone?" "Jotty?" "And Sorley; both of them. Moon has left a detective at The Monastery on the off-chance that Miss Inderwick's uncle may return. But I don't think he will. Probably he has taken those jewels of his own, you spoke of, and has left the country." "It looks as though he were guilty," observed Alan with a groan. "It does," assented Latimer quickly; "but it is just as well that he has got away, and so avoided arrest and trial, and probably hanging. I don't expect you'll set eyes on him again or on Jotty either, as maybe he has taken the lad with him." "Why should he do that?" "Jotty--as I always suspected--knows too much, and Sorley wants to get him out of the way." "It is too late," replied Fuller doubtfully. "Jotty has given us the letter, and has told us enough to hang Sorley unless the man has a very good defence. Probably he hasn't any, else he would have stood his ground. Oh, my poor Marie, how dreadful it is for you to have a criminal for an uncle." Dick patted Alan's shoulder. "See here, old son," he remarked with rough sympathy, "I was annoyed when I heard that the man had bolted. Now I am very glad for your sake. As I said you won't hear of Sorley again. So go to work and solve the riddle of the peacock; marry Marie and tell Bakche he can go back to India with his tail between his legs." "But Sorley has probably taken the bird with him." "What does that matter? You have the drawing, and can solve the riddle from that, as you have always expected to do. The mystery of Grison's death is an open secret now, Alan, my boy, so let the past bury itself, and look forward to your marriage with the girl, and possession of the treasure." Fuller nodded in an absent-minded way, but did not reply. Before he could make up his mind what to say, there came a knock at the door, and Seymour, who was the solicitor's one and only clerk, appeared with the intelligence that a lady wished to see his employer. Thinking that this was a client, Latimer moved into the outer office, only to come face to face with Marie. The girl looked ill, and all the bright color of her face had faded to a dull white, while there were dark circles under her eyes. "Miss Inderwick," cried Dick in amazement, and, on hearing the name, Alan appeared at the door with a look of equal astonishment. The last thing in the world expected by either man was the visit to London of Marie. "My dear girl, what are you doing here?" questioned Alan in tones of alarm when he saw her pale face and anxious eyes. "Come in, Dick, close the door," and shortly the three were in the private office, and Seymour had received orders to admit no one. "I had to come up, Alan," said Marie, clinging to his sleeve. "Oh, my dear, it is dreadful. Last night a policeman came with others, and they say that Uncle Ran murdered Mr. Grison. But it's not true, I am sure it is not true," and Marie burst into tears. "I can't say if it is or not, dear," replied Alan uneasily, and kneeling by the side of the chair she dropped into. "But--but Mr. Sorley has not been arrested has he?" "No," wailed Marie, "and that is what makes me so afraid. Some boy came in the afternoon, and Uncle Ran went away on the motor bicycle, after giving me twenty pounds and saying that he would not return for a few days. The boy left the house also; I suppose so, although neither I nor Henny nor Granny nor Jenny saw him go. If Uncle Ran were innocent he wouldn't run away, I'm sure. Oh, Alan, what is to be done? I can't stay in the house, and as I had the money I came up to ask your advice." "Dear," said Fuller, placing his arm around her waist tenderly, "the best thing for you to do is to return to The Monastery and wait." "But I'm all by myself Alan, and that horrid detective person is staying in the house. I can't stop on there alone." "The girls and their grandmother are there, darling." "Oh, but what use are they. I want you," she leaned her head on his shoulder, weeping profusely. "But I can't come and stop in The Monastery while your uncle is away, my dearest girl," cried Alan much distressed; "people would talk. Suppose you go and stay with my mother for a time." "But if I did I should have to tell her the truth," wept Marie; "and how can I say that Uncle Ran did what he didn't do." "It has to come out sooner or later, Miss Inderwick," remarked Dick in a voice full of regret, for the girl's tears made him feel ashamed of having brought about the catastrophe. "What has to come out?" "The fact that Mr. Sorley murdered----" Marie sprang to her feet and the color flew to her wan cheeks. "I don't believe it; I don't, I don't, I don't," she said almost fiercely. "Uncle Ran has his faults, and never did care much for me, besides using my income and being nasty to Alan because he loved me. But he would never kill anyone, I am sure, Mr. Latimer. What Miss Grison says in that paper is a lie." "Oh," cried Fuller quickly, "you saw that paper?" "Yes; _The Latest News!_ That boy brought it to Uncle Ran, for I saw him give it through the window of the library while I was walking on the terrace. Uncle Ran left it behind in his hurry, and----" "He left in a hurry?" asked Dick suddenly. "Yes. He told me that he had received bad news and would be away for a time and that I was to use the money--the twenty pounds I mean--to keep things going." "Did he say anything about returning?" "No. He was in such a hurry that he had no time to say much. And then very late at night there was a ring at the door, and Henny went down to find a man with another man who said they had come to arrest Uncle Ran for murder. I had to get up and answer questions, and then one man went away while the other stayed. He's at The Monastery now," cried Marie with a fresh burst of tears, "and I haven't been in bed all night. Henny made me lie down for a time this morning, and then I came up by the midday train to see you, Alan. Oh, what does it all mean?" Alan glanced at his friend, for the situation was very painful. He opened his mouth to speak, but could not, while Marie looked at him so appealingly. Dick, more hardened to the world, and not being in love, solved the question, as to frank speech or silence. "Miss Inderwick," he said bluntly, "believe me I am very sorry for you in every way, but it is just as well that you should know the truth. What Miss Grison says in that interview is true. The holder of the peacock is the person who murdered Grison for its possession." "But not Uncle Ran, not Uncle Ran!" she pleaded anxiously. "I fear so," said Latimer turning away his head; "he has the peacock." "It's not true, it's not true, Alan----" "I fear it is, Marie," said the young man sadly. "I saw the peacock myself in your uncle's hands when I was down at Belstone for Christmas." "Oh! and you never told me." "I did not wish you to learn the truth, and tried to keep it from you. But since the matter has been made public, you have become acquainted with what has happened, and the flight of Mr. Sorley seems to suggest a guilty conscience. I hope he is innocent, but----" "He _is_ innocent," interrupted Marie with the tears streaming down her face; "nothing will ever make me believe that Uncle Ran murdered anyone. How did he account for possession of the peacock?" "He declared that Miss Grison must have left it in the cupboard where it had been stored twenty years ago." "On that occasion when she came and walked all over the house; when we found her sitting in the library?" "Yes." "Well then," said Marie triumphantly, "Uncle Ran is innocent, and Miss Grison is a wicked woman to say that whosoever holds the peacock murdered her brother, since she had herself----" "But, Miss Inderwick," broke in Dick, "we cannot be sure if Mr. Sorley's explanation is a true one." "It is; I am sure it is. But what does Miss Grison say?" "We have not questioned her yet." "Then I shall question her," cried Marie, starting to her feet with a very determined air, "she shall confess to me that she brought the peacock to The Monastery so as to get Uncle Ran into trouble. She always hated him, and you heard yourself, Alan, what she said on that day. She is mad, she is mad. Uncle Ran said as much, and now I quite believe him." "Dear Marie," said Fuller, taking her hand, "let us hope for the best. You may be certain that for your sake I shall do my best to prove your uncle's innocence. But there is no doubt that the evidence against him is very strong, and his flight seems to prove that the charge is true." "I don't believe it," said Miss Inderwick obstinately, and sitting down again to tap a vexed foot on the ground. "Uncle Ran will come back again with an explanation. I'm sure he will." "Let us hope so," murmured Latimer skeptically; "but I doubt it." "As to the evidence against him--what is it, Alan?" He told her, relating Jotty's discovery of the letter, and showed her a copy of the same, which he had taken before Dick passed on the original to Inspector Moon. "So you see, Marie," he ended, when she was in full possession of the painful facts, "that it seems almost certain----" "I don't care what it seems," interrupted Marie in her wilful feminine way, "Uncle Ran never murdered that wretched Grison." "Then why didn't he remain and say so?" asked Dick sharply. "He will explain that when he returns," she retorted in a lofty tone. "In the meantime we must learn the truth." "We know the truth," Latimer replied. Marie stamped. "How horrid of you to take it for granted that Uncle Ran killed this man. I say he didn't, and nothing you say, or Alan says, will convince me that he did." "I say nothing," put in Fuller quickly; "things look black against Mr. Sorley, but I wish to give him the benefit of the doubt." Marie flew at him and threw her arms round his neck. "Bless you, Alan, for the words you have spoken. I am not very fond of Uncle Ran as you know, but I am sure he is innocent and you must try and prove his innocence." "I shall do my best, darling, if you will leave the matter in my hands and return to Belstone." "No, Alan don't ask me to. I want to go down to Rotherhithe." "What for?" asked Dick surprised. Marie looked at him disdainfully, for she gathered very plainly that he was not on her side. "To ask questions of that woman who keeps the house where Mr. Grison was murdered." "Mother Slaig? Oh, my dear Miss Inderwick you can't go and see her. She is a virago, and her house is most disreputable. Besides she cannot help you, as she gave her evidence at the inquest----" "And didn't accuse Uncle Ran at all," interrupted Marie. "I shall get at the truth if I see her." "Marie," said Alan quickly, "you can't go down to Rotherhithe." "I can and I shall," cried Miss Inderwick with another stamp, and looked like a small goddess of war. "Uncle Ran shan't be hanged for what he never did, if I can help it." "So long as he keeps away he cannot be caught to be hanged," said Alan in a pacific manner, for it was necessary to deal in a wary manner with the infuriated girl. "Meanwhile I shall look into the matter and do my best to clear his character. If you go to see Mother Slaig, you may prevent Mr. Sorley's innocence from being proved." "But I want to help," cried Marie, weeping again; "he is my uncle." "You shall help," said Alan, taking her in his arms, "when I know in what way you can aid us. Marie, doesn't everyone in the village know about the accusation of your uncle, and that a detective is in the house?" "Yes. It's horrid. Everyone is talking about it." "Then you can have no hesitation in going to my mother and father and in laying the true facts of the case before them. My mother will surely ask you to stay at the vicarage, so remain there while I look into the matter, dearest. Believe me it is the best course to take." "Then I shall do what you want me to do. But tell me, Alan, when it is necessary for me to come into the matter. I must have a hand in proving the innocence of Uncle Ran." "I promise you, that as soon as I require your aid I shall ask for it." Satisfied with this promise, Marie dried her tears, and then asked Alan to get her something to eat, as she was very hungry, and it was now close on five o'clock. Her lover put on his hat and coat and took her out to a restaurant near at hand, where she made a fairly good meal. Dick came with them, as he did not wish Marie to go away with the impression that he was hostile to the accused man. "Believe me, Miss Inderwick," he said when they were at the table, "no one will be more pleased to hear of your uncle's innocence than I shall be." "You believe that he is guilty?" "Well, the facts are against him, but I shall adopt Alan's line and give him the benefit of the doubt. When we face Miss Grison she may exonerate him. It is not likely, since she hates him for some reason, but----" "She won't, she won't; and I don't care if she doesn't, Mr. Latimer. In some other way we must save Uncle Ran. Will you see her?" "This very evening," promised Dick earnestly. "And so shall I," said Alan suddenly. "Hope for the best, darling." "Yes," sobbed Marie, who felt better after her meal, but still was unable to restrain her tears, for the poor girl was greatly shaken, "but is it not terrible, Alan?" "Very, my dear. But you must be a heroine and keep up, for your uncle's sake. Now we must take a taxi to Victoria, and you can catch the something after six train to Lewes. There is one about this time, I know. Have you enough money to take a fly to Belstone, dear. No, don't take a fly. On second thoughts I shall wire to my father to send his trap to meet you; that will be best." "But the trouble, Alan," faltered the girl as he handed her into the taxi. "It's no trouble. Dick, will you come, or----" "I am coming of course," said Dick, bestowing his burly form in the taxi. "I don't want Miss Inderwick to go away with the idea that I'm a beast." "I'm sure I never said so," sighed Marie, "and if I was rude, Mr. Latimer, you must put it down to my being so upset." "My dear young lady, you are right to stand up for your uncle, and I have nothing but praise for your conduct. With all my heart I trust that he will return again to face the accusation and prove his innocence." "Thank you," replied Marie softly, and gave him her hand. Then she sat close to her lover, and the three spoke very little until the station was reached. Here Alan sent a telegram to his father, and placed the girl in the train. He bought her a first-class ticket, and asked the guard to look after her comfort, as he did not like the idea of such an unsophisticated damsel travelling all alone. Her freak of coming to London so unexpectedly, though natural enough under the circumstances, caused him great anxiety, and he heaved a sigh of relief when the train steamed out of the station. Marie would be looked after by the guard as far as Lewes, and then the Rev. John Fuller would meet her and take the stray lamb to the vicarage, where his wife would console her. Dick laughed when he heard his worried friend sigh so thankfully. "All's well that ends well, my son," he said, clapping the young man on the back, "and Miss Inderwick has behaved like a heroine." "I daresay; but I hope she won't come to London again, as she is not used to being by herself, and may get into trouble." "She certainly will," said Dick grimly, "if she goes to see Mother Slaig in that Rotherhithe slum." "Oh, I shall see to it that she does not go. Well, I am tired, Dick. Are you coming home, or have you business to attend to?" "I'm coming with you," responded the big man, affectionately, taking out his pipe, as the presence of Marie had hitherto prevented his indulging in a smoke, and he felt the need of the soothing weed. "I have nothing to do this evening--nothing particular that is--so I may as well have a few quiet hours at home, and talk this case over with you." "There's nothing to talk about." "Well, I don't know. It seems to me that the Indian is mixed up in the business somehow. From what you describe I believe that he guessed Baldwin Grison had the peacock." "I thought so myself, but then if he had killed the man and got the peacock he wouldn't have sent it to Sorley." On the way to Fleet Street and Barker's Inn they went over the same old ground, but without coming to any definite conclusion. Besides the strain of the last few days was telling on both men, and they felt very weary. It was with a sigh of relief that they arrived at the dark cobblestone court and mounted the crooked staircase. Alan used his latchkey and admitted both himself and Dick into their chambers. When they entered the sitting-room they received a surprise and a shock. In a chair by the fire sat a figure, and in a moment he was recognized in spite of his shabby looks. "Mr. Sorley!" cried Alan and Dick in a breath. CHAPTER XIV FACE TO FACE It was indeed Mr. Randolph Vernon Sorley who spread out his hands to the fire in a crouching attitude, but woefully changed from the debonair and juvenile gentleman of former days. His aggressively shabby overcoat and worn boots showed that he had some idea of disguising himself, since he had both money and clothes at his command to dress better. He was unshaven, his cheeks and chin being covered with a silvery stubble, and in his sunken eyes there lurked a hunted look. The man looked both broken up and broken down, and had aged at least twenty years since Alan had last set eyes on him. The terror he displayed when the young man entered the room showed how apprehensive he was of being arrested by the police. "Oh, it's you, Alan," he gasped with a sigh of relief, when the newcomers, in sheer surprise, called out his name. "I'm glad it's only you and your friend." "I am Fuller's friend," remarked Latimer with emphasis, "but not yours." "Ah!" Sorley shivered and cringed fearfully, "you're against me too. Am I to find an enemy in you also, Alan?" "No," said the young man briefly; "I never kick a man when he is down." "I'm glad to hear that, Alan, for I am very down indeed. A few days ago and I could hold up my head with the best; now I am hunted for a crime. "If you are guilty----" "I swear I am not," interrupted Sorley, his voice rising to a scream, "on my soul I swear to both of you that I am not." "Then why did you run away?" asked Dick. "Because, after reading the newspaper interview with that vile woman, I saw that appearances were against me. I fled to gain time." "Time for what, Mr. Sorley?" "To prepare a defence." "Oh," said Latimer doubtfully and staring at the limp figure of the fugitive, "then you have a defence." "Yes--that is, I can--I can--oh, Alan," wailed Sorley piteously, "in heaven's name give me some wine or brandy. I have scarcely touched food since I left Belstone, and I am that weak I can scarcely speak. Give me drink and food, then we can talk." Fuller nodded silently, and went to a cupboard, whence he brought out a loaf of bread, some butter, and a jar of _pâté de foie gras_, which had been given to Dick by a friend, together with a bottle of good port wine. The hunted man, who had sought the sanctuary of their hearthstone, staggered to the table and began to eat and drink with avidity. Both men pitied the unfortunate creature, whose arrogance had been thus laid low. Whether he was innocent or guilty they could not say on what evidence they possessed; but it seemed terrible that a gentleman should be brought to such a sordid pass. While Sorley methodically filled himself with food, there was silence for quite a long time. Alan finally broke it. "Why did you come here?" he asked abruptly. "I want you to help me," mumbled Sorley hastily. "How can I help you, man? You know that there is a warrant out for your arrest, so if either Latimer or I assist you to escape we shall be compounding a felony." "I never asked for your assistance to escape," retorted Sorley tartly, and in a stronger tone, for the food and drink had put life into him. "Then why did you come here?" asked Alan again, and stiffening, as the old arrogance was perceptible in the man's tone. "I have told you; I want help." "What sort of help?" "To prove my innocence." "How can I, or how can Latimer? We know nothing." "I think you know a great deal," returned the other acidly, and shuffled to the fire again, as the night was chilly and he required warmth; "from what Jotty told me, you brought about my arrest." "Pardon me, Mr. Sorley," struck in Dick before his friend could speak, "but I am the one who did that. Since you have seen Jotty you must know that he found the letter which you wrote making an appointment with Grison on the very night and about the very time when the poor devil was killed. He showed that letter to us, and Alan was all in favor of leaving the matter alone, since he has some sympathy for you as the uncle of Miss Inderwick. But I declined to compound a felony, and I went to Inspector Moon to explain that you were the criminal." "I am not the criminal," cried Sorley furiously. "I did not murder the man. As to Jotty showing you my letter----" "Then you admit the letter?" demanded Dick swiftly. "Certainly I do. Why should I not? But the boy never told me that he had acted in such a Judas way. He came down to see me with a copy of _The Latest News_ in his pocket, and when I read the interview I went away on the impulse of the moment, recognizing how dangerous was my position." "Why did the boy go to warn you?" "Because he wanted money. Didn't he get money for giving up that letter?" "Yes," answered Alan readily; "two pounds." "He received five from me for bringing down the newspaper," said Sorley in a hasty tone, "he sold me to you, and later he sold you to me. You expected to have me arrested, but the boy's warning enabled me to escape. It is all a question of money. Jotty, as I knew and Grison knew, would sell his soul for gold." "Where is the boy now?" asked Dick suddenly, and watching Sorley through half-closed eyes. "I don't know. He got his price and left The Monastery, shortly before I went away on my motor bicycle. He may have gone back to Miss Grison for all I know." "I don't think that is likely," said Alan dryly, "since she hates you, and will not be pleased if she finds out--as she must have done by this time--that Jotty has thwarted her revenge." "There you are, there you are," cried Sorley, greatly excited and gesticulating vehemently, "that beastly woman hates me. It is she who has got me into this trouble. What did I tell you, Alan, what did I tell you? That she had some reason for bringing back the peacock and leaving it in its old place. Now you see the reason; she wished to implicate me in the death of her infernal brother." "Did she really bring back the peacock?" was Dick's question. "Yes, she did; I swear that she must have brought it back on the day she came unexpectedly to The Monastery and walked--as I learned later--all over the house. It's a trap--a trap I tell you. I am innocent; oh yes, I am innocent as a child unborn, but she is doing her best to put a rope round my neck. What are her words in the interview. 'Find the peacock and you find the assassin of my brother!' Those are her words, because she knew that I had the bird, and that the mere possession could hang me. Oh, the devil, the cruel vampire that she is!" and he trembled with rage and terror. "But there is not only the peacock to be considered, Mr. Sorley," put in Latimer, struck by the vehemence of this defence, and wondering if the man was really innocent after all. "The letter----" "I wrote the letter," admitted Sorley swiftly, "and--but one moment Mr. Latimer, you had better present me with a full statement of the evidence upon which you and the police base your charges against me. Then I shall be able to defend myself." "I hope so, sincerely," murmured Alan, who sat back in his chair with folded arms, and allowed Dick to conduct the conversation. The journalist wasted no time in preliminary explanations, but bluntly set forth the whole story from the time he had entered that very room in November to report the murder, down to the moment when Marie departed from the Victoria station for Belstone _via_ Lewes. Sorley still crouching and still haggard in looks, though stronger in voice, listened intently, but did not interrupt. Alan noticed, however, that at certain portions of the recital he trembled, probably from overstrained nerves. When Dick ended, and relighted his pipe, the old man nodded gravely. "I am indeed in a dangerous position," he said, striving to steady a voice that would quiver with ill-concealed alarm, "all the same I am entirely innocent. I swear to it." "A judge and jury will not believe in such swearing without proof," said Fuller, shaking his head. "Proof! Proof! What proof can I give? Only Louisa Grison can prove that the peacock was brought to The Monastery without my knowledge, and she hates me too greatly to confess as much. Do you think," cried Sorley bitterly, "that she will spoil the trap she has set? Not she. I know her venomous nature too well." "There's the letter, you know," Dick reminded him. "Yes! The letter. I don't deny the letter, which that Judas of a boy showed to you. He betrayed me----" "And he saved you," interpolated Alan quickly. "For money in both cases," sneered the other, "if the truth is to be found that lad knows it. If so, he is aware that I am guiltless, and thus he may have come to warn me because his conscience smote him." "I scarcely think that Jotty is sufficiently evolved to possess a conscience," said Latimer dryly; "he helped you for the five pounds, as he betrayed you for the two pounds. It is all a question of money. But since you insist so strongly upon your innocence, Mr. Sorley, I should like to hear on what grounds you do so." "On the grounds that Miss Grison brought the bird to----" "Yes, yes; but the letter; your presence at Rotherhithe on the night and about the time the crime was committed?" put in Alan hastily, for he felt that they were losing time. The old man was silent for a few moments, and his fingers played in a senile manner on his unshaven chin. Then he appeared to gain a sudden strength from the steady looks of his companions, and spoke with some dignity and considerable strength. "I make an admission to you both," he said in a surprisingly clear tone. "I knew that Grison had the peacock." "Oh!" said the listeners simultaneously, and looked at one another, wondering if Sorley was about to confess his guilt. The man saw this and smiled in a sardonic manner. "If I were what you suppose me to be," he said coldly, "I should scarcely admit as much; but being innocent, I can do so. For many years I believed that Louisa Grison had stolen the peacock out of revenge, because I dismissed her brother." Alan nodded at this point, as he had heard the woman acknowledge as much, but did not interrupt. "It was twelve months ago when I became aware that Grison possessed it. He wrote me a letter saying that he could not live long, and was ready to give up the peacock on condition that I came to hear on what terms he was prepared to surrender it. I went up to town and to Rotherhithe to that dreadful woman's house." "Mother Slaig's, I suppose. Did you ride your motor bicycle?" "No, I did not have it twelve months ago," said Sorley quickly. "I went up and found Grison better than I expected. He had rallied since writing to me, and refused when we met, to give up the peacock. I departed, and later--in a few weeks, went up again, when I saw that he was very sick indeed with his profligate ways. He said that if I would promise to give his sister half of the treasure when it was discovered, he would hand me back the peacock. I refused, as I had no right to dispose of Marie's property in that way." Alan smiled grimly when he remembered how this scrupulous man had disposed of furniture which belonged to the niece whose goods he was supposed to safeguard. However he did not make any remark on this point, but asked a pertinent question: "Had Grison discovered the secret?" "No; he had tried to, but had failed, as everyone else has done up to the present," said Sorley, continuing his narrative with an effort, for he appeared to be very weary. "When I refused to give up half the treasure he declined to restore the golden bird. Up till November last I continued to call on him and urge him to return what his sister had stolen, and it was because of my frequent visits that I purchased the motor bicycle." "Ah," said Dick, who was nursing his chin, "you didn't want your visits to be known to the railway authorities." "You are quite wrong, Mr. Latimer. If I chose to go up to town every now and then that was no business of anyone. Had I contemplated murder I might indeed have shirked giving color to my doings by travelling so often by train. But I bought the bicycle to save expense in one way, and because I found it easier to slip out of the house and up to town in this style." "Hum!" murmured Latimer, to whom the explanation sounded weak, "we'll admit so much for the time being. Well, sir?" "Well," said Sorley taking no notice of the implied doubt. "I went up and down constantly. Sometimes Grison when sick would agree to give up the peacock without terms; then, when well, he would refuse to surrender it on any condition. Also sometimes he wanted half the treasure for his sister, since--as he put it--she had stuck by him in his fall. Finally, so as to get the bird and try to unravel the secret I compromised by offering to give a third of the jewels to Louisa." "You had no right to promise that without submitting the proposition to Marie," said Alan. "I didn't want Marie to know anything about the business until it was entirely settled and the jewels were in our possession," said Sorley doggedly, "she never dreamed that I went so frequently to London, for I was often by myself for days, and had my meals alone. When I got the motor bicycle she and the other women more than ever were unable to learn about my movements. Things went on in this way until November last, and I could do nothing with Grison, who was as obstinate as a mule. He then wrote me saying that he wanted to see me on the evening of the thirteenth November, and this time would really make terms. I replied that I would be there at eight o'clock." "Seven o'clock," corrected Alan quickly. "Thank you; it was seven, but my memory is not so good as it was, my boy. I went up on my bicycle and saw Grison at the appointed time at Mother Slaig's. He was as difficult to manage as ever, and I came away about eight, quite angry at my constant failures to get what I desired. I rode back during the night and gained The Monastery as usual. Next day, or rather the day after, I heard through the medium of the newspapers about the murder. Having regard to the time and place and my presence on the spot I saw in what danger I stood, so I held my peace. In one way I fancied that I could not be taxed with the commission of the crime, since I had not the peacock. Then I found it in its old place after the unexpected visit of Miss Grison, and guessed that she had brought it. I guessed also--since I knew that her brother had possessed it--she was setting a trap of some sort. Had I been wise," he looked frankly at the young men, "I should have told the police at once about the matter; but I saw then, as I see now--and as you, Mr. Latimer, have so plainly set before me that everything was in favor of my guilt." Dick nodded and pulled his mustache meditatively. "You didn't improve matter by bolting when Jotty warned you," he remarked pointedly. "I lost my nerve," gasped the other man, his pale face becoming still more pale, "and on the impulse of the moment I fled." "Why did you fly here?" asked Alan, irritated by the problem presented to him as to letting the man go, or handing him over to Inspector Moon. "I have told you twice, my boy; I wish you to help me. Long ago I told you that I believed Louisa Grison was laying a trap for me with that peacock. Now you can see that I was right, and your evidence that I spoke as I did, will help me at the trial." "At the trial." Dick looked swiftly at the fugitive. "Then you----" "Yes; I intend to give myself up." Sorley rose and stood up lean and haggard, yet with something of his old self-assertion, "but before doing so I wish you both to come with me to Thimble Square and see Miss Grison." "Why?" demanded Fuller, jumping up with an inquiring look. "I desire to face her in your presence, and accuse her of having brought the peacock down to The Monastery to get me into trouble." "But how could she get it from her brother, when Jotty said that he saw it on the night of the murder in Grison's possession?" "I can't explain," said Sorley with a vexed air, "and I am sure that Louisa hates me too much to do so. She may have induced him to give it back, lest he should return it to me; she knew of my visits." "Did she know of your visits?" "She must have. Baldwin doubtless told her, for he never could keep his own counsel, being as weak as water. And if he did hold his peace, I am very sure that Jotty did not. The boy saw me frequently." "Yes," said Alan reflectively, "he told us that he did, and described you." Sorley smiled bitterly and revengefully. "The boy seems to have given me away thoroughly. Had he come to me I could have paid him more than two pounds, and would have done so to close his mouth and regain that letter." "It is just as well that Jotty did speak out, and has placed you in your present position," said Latimer coldly, "for if Miss Grison did lay the trap you speak of, the exposure would only have come about in another way.' "I daresay you are right," sighed the old man, putting on a shabby cap which also formed a portion of his disguise, "and after all, Jotty, by coming down to warn me, gave me a chance of escape." "Hum!" said Alan after a pause, "your flight only lent color to the suspicions against you, on the evidence we gave to Moon. It is just probable since Jotty is in league with Miss Grison--for I believe the brat is--that the warning was arranged so that you should incriminate yourself." "I shall do so no longer," said Sorley opening the door, "come both of you with me. You need not fear that I shall try to escape as I quite intend to give myself up, knowing my complete innocence. If you doubt me take each of you an arm." "Oh, we'll trust you," said Latimer with a shrug, much to Alan's relief. All the same Dick intended to keep a sharp eye on the man, since the talk might be mainly for effect, and there was no knowing if an escape might not be attempted. And when the trio got outside, it proved to be a night very propitious to a fugitive, since an unexpected fog had rolled down on the city. London was enveloped in a dense gray smoking cloud chilly and clammy, and intensely disagreeable. Alan and his friend had, after all, to take Sorley's arms to guide him out of the court and through the rusty iron gates, and he went along so passively between them that Latimer became ashamed of his suspicions, since the old man appeared to be acting very straightforwardly. It was not easy even for those who knew the neighborhood, to get out of the labyrinth surrounding Barkers Inn, for the dense fog made the place as unfamiliar as the desert of Sahara. But in some way they managed to reach Chancery Lane, and turned up towards Oxford Street on their way to Thimble Square in Bloomsbury. So thick was the fog that all traffic had ceased, although it was still early in the evening, so the three men, by keeping close to the houses, had to literally feel their way like the blind to their destination. It was a long time before they managed to strike the Square, and longer still before they found the house. But in the end they crossed the threshold, and told the Swiss waiter, who opened the door that they wished to see Miss Grison. As the man was going upstairs, Latimer called him back to press a shilling into his palm. "Where is Alonzo?" he asked under his breath. The waiter threw up his hands and explained that the boy had gone away and had not returned, and madame was greatly vexed by his absence. "Hum!" said Dick to himself when the waiter finally departed to announce their arrival, "Jotty seems to have engineered Sorley's escape on his own account, and fears lest his mistress should turn crusty." Shortly the Swiss came back and conducted them up the stairs and into the private room of Miss Grison. Looking more acid than ever she stood by the fireplace to receive them, but smiled in a wintry fashion when the two young men--who had sent up their names--entered. But they had--for obvious reasons--omitted to inform her that they brought a companion with them, and Miss Grison's face grew hard and malignant, when she saw Sorley steal in behind them. Her shallow blue eyes flashed like sapphires, and if looks could have killed her enemy, Sorley would have fallen dead that very instant. Hate was written all over that wasted face. "How dare you bring that beast here?" she demanded shrilly, yet--as Dick observed mechanically--lowered her voice lest those in the near drawing-room should overhear, "he ruined my brother and murdered him." "It's a lie," said Sorley savagely, and glared fiercely at her. "Beast! beast! it's the truth, it's the----" she stopped, and her hand went to her heart suddenly, "My drops, my drops," she staggered to the door, avoiding her enemy even at the moment of pain. "Wait, wait," she breathed hurriedly to Latimer, "weak heart--drops--a moment a----" she almost reeled out of the room, seeking medicine to recover her from the shock which Sorley's presence had inflicted upon her. "Is her heart weak?" asked Alan, turning to the man. "Not that I ever heard of," he retorted sharply, and wiping his face, "she was all right when at Belstone twenty years ago. Perhaps it is weak now. I wish it would break and she would fall dead." "You mustn't say such things, Mr. Sorley," said Dick frowning. "But I shall. What would you say of a woman who ruined you?" "She's not ruined you yet," remarked Alan, soothingly; "if you are innocent you will be set free." "Oh, I shall be set free all right, even if I have to drink poison to rid myself of my bonds," said the old man, recklessly. "Oh, that woman, that woman, you don't know of what she is capable. Wait till she returns and hear the lies she will tell. All is against me, and only she can prove that I did not take the peacock from her brother. But I am innocent; I swear before heaven that I am innocent." "Hush! Don't make a row," said Dick, who did not wish the house to be disturbed, and for the next ten minutes both he and Alan were trying to reduce the excited man to a quieter frame of mind. Miss Grison was absent quite that time, if not a few moments longer, and when she returned her looks were much stronger and more composed. "Why did you bring that man here?" she demanded again, and took up a defiant position on the hearthrug. "I wish to ask you a question," said Sorley feebly, for his wrath had almost worn him out, and he felt that he was at the mercy of his enemy. "_You_ ask me a question," she echoed contemptuously, "the police wish to ask you one or two, you--you criminal." "I--I--I am not a criminal," panted the other, sitting down suddenly. "You are. Inspector Moon has been to see me. He related how Mr. Latimer--and I thank Mr. Latimer for doing so--gave him the letter you wrote to Baldwin which proves that you were with him on that night. I know also what the police know, that you have the peacock which you took from his body, you beast!" "It's a lie! a lie, Louisa, and you know it. It was you who brought the peacock to The Monastery when you came down for the funeral." "Ha! is that so?" she said tauntingly; "and how are you going to prove I did such a thing?" "You don't deny it, Miss Grison?" asked Alan, with some sharpness. "Yes, I do. I deny it at once and with all truth. I stole the peacock to punish that brute who ruined us, and I gave it to Baldwin. He had it in his possession when he was murdered, and since he has it," she pointed an accusing finger at Sorley, who winced and wilted, "he is guilty." "You brought it to The Monastery to trap me," said the man resolutely. "I did not," she retorted equally resolutely, and the two argued the question on and on and on until Alan and Dick both felt their heads reeling. For almost an hour the conversation continued, Latimer sometimes putting in a question, and sometimes Alan suggesting an explanation. But every time, the result was that Miss Grison refused to acknowledge that she had taken the peacock to Belstone. Then, while they were in the full tide of talk, she rose unexpectedly, and pointed towards the door. "Come in, come in," she almost shouted, "this is the beast." Inspector Moon appeared, and behind him were two policemen in plain clothes. CHAPTER XV THE BLACK BAG Sorley shivered and shrank back when he saw the uniform of Inspector Moon and the two men behind him. Miss Grison, with an exulting look on her hard face, pointed to her prey, glorying in the way she had trapped him. And that it was a trap, Fuller now truly believed, since the police had appeared at so opportune a moment for the capture. "There he is," cried the woman excitedly; "take him away, the beast!" Moon moved forward and laid a heavy hand on the shoulder of the wretched man, who moaned and trembled at the fatal touch. "I arrest you, Randolph Sorley, in the name of the King, for the murder of Baldwin Grison," he said in unemotional tones, and reciting the regulation formula; "anything you say now will be used in evidence against you." "I am innocent, I am innocent," was all that Sorley could say. "And upon my soul I believe he is," murmured Alan softly to Dick. "If so it is just as well to have the whole matter threshed out in a proper manner," rejoined the reporter. "How did you come here, Mr. Inspector?" Miss Grison replied before the officer could open his mouth. "I telephoned for him," she said sharply. "You thought that I left the room to take medicine, but it was to send for the police." "Then you were not ill?" said Latimer taken aback. "No," she answered coolly; "it was all acting; didn't I act well?" "I told you she was a wicked woman," moaned Sorley, who stood passively between the two plain-clothes men. "Wicked!" repeated Miss Grison with scorn; "if I am wicked, what are you?" Inspector Moon made a sign that she should be silent, and explained his speedy presence quietly. "Miss Grison telephoned to me at Rotherhithe," he said; "and as I happened to have business in the Bow Street police office my clerk repeated the telephonic message to that place. I was thus enabled to drive here in a cab with my men, in spite of the fog, although I must say that we drove very slowly. However," he looked at Sorley, "we are in excellent time. May I ask what you two gentlemen are doing here?" "We brought Mr. Sorley to see Miss Grison at his request," said Latimer. "You should have sent for me as this lady did," rebuked Moon sharply. "There was no need," put in Alan. "Mr. Sorley intended to give himself up." Moon smiled derisively. "I doubt that, seeing how he ran away from his own house at Belstone." "I did so on the impulse of the moment," cried Sorley, drawing himself up with some dignity; "but later I saw that my flight gave color to the charge against me. As I am quite innocent, I intended to give myself up so that the matter could be inquired into, and I do so now." "Because you can't help yourself," said Moon with a shrug; "come away, sir, at once. I have a cab at the door." "Oh, I sha'n't try to escape, for I am innocent," persisted the old man; "because I have the peacock it is supposed that I murdered Grison." "It is very good evidence, you know," Moon assured him. "It was that woman, who brought the peacock down to The Monastery." Miss Grison laughed scornfully. "I told you he would say that," she said, addressing Moon, "and I solemnly swear that I did no such thing." "You stole it from me over twenty years ago," cried Sorley insistently. "I took it, certainly," admitted the woman coolly, "because you owed my brother money, and it was necessary to hold something valuable belonging to you so that he might be paid. You never paid, and preferred to get back your property, or rather that of your niece, by crime." "It is wholly false." "Tell that to the judge and jury," she sneered, "I warned you that you would be punished for your iniquity, and now the time has come." "The time has not come," said Sorley furiously; "you have involved me in difficulties somehow, and I am trapped. But I believe that the Indian who lives here has been used by you to bring about my disgrace. He also knew about the peacock---- "Come! come," interrupted Moon in a peremptory manner, "remember what you say will be used in evidence against you. Better hold your tongue and come away at once. I regret to say----" He stepped forward clinking handcuffs. "No," almost screamed Sorley, backing against the wall with a gesture of refusal, "there is no need for that shame. I won't run away; I intended to give myself up, indeed I did, I did." "Put them on, put them on," cried Miss Grison, clapping her hands with delight, "he murdered Baldwin and deserves punishment." "I won't run away, I won't run away," whimpered Sorley piteously. Alan, sorry for the man, interfered. "Indeed I don't think that there is any need to take such a precaution, Mr. Inspector. He really came to me and Mr. Latimer this evening to surrender himself to the law." Dick nodded. "I agree with Fuller," he remarked, and Sorley cast a grateful look in his direction, as Moon after a moment's hesitation placed the handcuffs in his pocket. "I won't put them on in the house," he said graciously, "so when we go, no one will see that you have been arrested on so serious a charge. But in the cab----" "I don't mind that," said Sorley eagerly; "only spare me the shame of being seen with them on by my fellow-creatures. Oh, dear me, and I am quite innocent," he maundered on in a senile way, "quite innocent. When----" "Come," said the inspector imperiously; "I don't wish to use force." "I should drum him out of the house with the Rogue's March," said Miss Grison laughing fiercely, "beast that you are!" Sorley did not reply, for he was already tottering towards the door between the two officers, and followed by the inspector. As he passed out of the room, he turned and looked significantly at Alan, "The black bag, don't forget the black bag," he said, and, as Moon touched him on the shoulder he went stumbling out of sight. Strange to say no one attached much meaning to his last words, and Alan himself was bewildered. "What the dickens does he mean?" "Something bad, you may be sure," retorted Miss Grison malignantly. "I think Sorley is a better man than you admit him to be," remarked the young man indignantly. "Dick, where are you going?" "I intend to follow Sorley and Moon," answered Latimer, "come with me." "No," said Fuller with a glance at the landlady, "I wish to ask Miss Grison a few questions." "They won't be answered," cried Miss Grison exultingly, "my enemy has been trapped, and there is nothing left for me to wish for." Latimer was so annoyed at the malignity of the woman, that he turned at the door as her victim had done. "Let me remind you of an excellent proverb, Miss Grison," he said quietly: "there's many a slip t'wixt the cup and the lip!" and then he went out quietly. "There will be no slip except that of Sorley when he is hanged," said the woman savagely. "Now, you can go, Mr. Fuller, I have no quarrel with you." "There is one on my part, however," said Alan, taking a seat; "you have disgraced Marie by this arrest of her uncle." "Oh, indeed. And you say that because you love her. Is the course of justice to be stayed for the tears of a chit?" "Marie is not a chit," retorted the lover angrily. "Yes she is; yes she is," taunted Miss Grison in quite a schoolgirl manner. "I hate her, I hated her mother, who made me a slave to her whims. I hate Sorley, and have paid him out." "Not yet." "What do you mean with your 'not yet,'" asked Miss Grison contemptuously. "I mean that he may prove his innocence at the trial." "He can't; everything is against him." "So far I admit that. But some new evidence may turn up." "I don't care what turns up," said Miss Grison vehemently; "the man is a guilty beast and must be punished. I hate him, oh, how I hate him!" Fuller was about to ask why, when the door opened slightly and the brown haughty face of Morad-Bakche peered in. "Pardon my intrusion," he said in his best English, "but the whole house is in commotion about a reported arrest. How are you, Mr. Fuller." He stepped into the room as he spoke. "Wait here," said Miss Grison to Alan imperiously. "I must explain to these people, as there is no need to make bad worse. Sorley has ruined me before, and my brother with me. He will ruin me now by coming here to be arrested, since many of my boarders will leave the house." "Let me remind you, Miss Grison, that you are responsible for his arrest." "Because you and Mr. Latimer would have allowed him to escape," she said in angry tones. "Better that I should lose every boarder I have than let that beast go free," as the murmur in the near drawing-room increased. She opened the door which Bakche had closed. "Wait here," she said again to Alan, and vanished to pacify the inmates of the establishment. Left alone with Morad-Bakche, the young man made no remark, as he did not feel inclined to talk to the man. But he was not permitted to be at peace, for the Indian advanced eagerly, his eyes sparkling. "Has Mr. Sorley been arrested?" he asked swiftly and anxiously. "Yes," answered Fuller shortly. "On a charge of murder?" "Yes!" "How did he come here?" "I think you had better ask these questions of Miss Grison." "I shall do so," rejoined Bakche calmly, "when you are gone. But there is one she may not be able to answer." "Probably!" Alan shrugged his shoulders with feigned indifference, guessing what the question was, and not choosing to reply to it immediately. But Bakche was not to be put off by a contemptuous manner. "Has Mr. Sorley given up the peacock to the police?" he demanded. "I cannot say. If he has, the police will give it back to me." "Why should it be given back to you?" "Because it is the property of Miss Inderwick; and until her uncle is free I intend to look after her interests." The other man sneered. "I can understand that." "If you do, there is no necessity for you to ask questions," rejoined Alan coolly. "You are no client of mine, Mr. Bakche." "It would be better for you if I were." "I fail to see that. You want the peacock, and I don't intend that you should have it, or the treasure either." "Both belong to me," cried the Indian angrily. "I think not. And as our interests are opposed, you can scarcely expect me to reply to your questions further." "But if we join forces, we shall be stronger to learn the truth." "Possibly, but if the discovery of the truth--I suppose you mean in connection with the whereabouts of the treasure--means your having half the jewels, I prefer to work alone." Fuller thought for a moment, then added slowly, "of course Miss Inderwick may be willing to make terms with you regarding the sharing of the gems on one condition?" "What is that?" demanded Bakche eagerly, and with flashing eyes. "She believes her uncle to be innocent, and I am half inclined to agree with her, notwithstanding the weight of evidence against him. Now if you can prove his innocence, and thus do a service to Miss Inderwick, why then----" "But how can I prove his innocence?" asked Bakche in a puzzled manner. "I know nothing about the murder." "I never supposed you did. However, the proving of Sorley's innocence is your affair, if you want to get a share in the jewels." Bakche took a turn up and down the room. "I may know more of this affair than you think," he said abruptly. "Probably you do since you say so. Well?" "Well, if I get Mr. Sorley released can I take your word for----" "Certainly you can take my word," replied Fuller stiffly; "and my offer is such a sporting one, that it is not worth while committing it to paper." Bakche nodded. "I have always found that an English gentleman keeps his word, sir," he said cordially, "so on those terms I shall hunt for the assassin of Grison." "Don't you then believe that Sorley is guilty?" asked Alan suddenly. "On those terms I shall hunt for the assassin of Grison," said Bakche once more. "I decline to speak further, and----" he stopped short as Miss Grison re-entered the room and moved towards the door. "We can talk further, Mr. Fuller, when you are more at leisure," was his final remark as he stole out and closed the door swiftly behind him. "What is that?" asked Miss Grison with a searching look at Alan. "Bakche wants the peacock and the jewels, as he says that they rightfully belong to him. He wishes me to help him." "Will you do so?" "No. They belong to Miss Inderwick." "And you intend to marry Miss Inderwick," said the woman with a hard laugh; "well you are wise. But Mr. Bakche is the rightful owner." "On what grounds?" "The Begum's jewels, which she gave George Inderwick were temple treasures and should not have been parted with." "Hum!" said Alan meditatively. "I remember Bakche saying something about priests. Is he one himself?" "No," answered the woman quietly, "but he is the rightful heir to the jewels, as you can see from the snakes on his right arm." "I don't see how that proves his ownership!" "Many of the ornaments are in the form of snakes set with gems." "Still I don't see," persisted Fuller doubtfully. Miss Grison sat down impatiently, as apparently the late excitement had affected her nerves. "I'm sure I can't explain further. Mr. Bakche declared that the jewels are sacred and that he wants to get them back. The snake sign I mention is tattooed on his right forearm twisting in spirals up from the wrist to the elbow. Ask him to show it to you." "I don't think it interests me," said Fuller dryly. "Mr. Bakche assuredly shall not get Marie's property if I can prevent it." "I think the peacock prevents it," said Miss Grison spitefully. "Until you guess the riddle you can't find the gems, and I hope you never will.' "Why?" "Because I hate Sorley, and I hate the girl, and the whole horrible lot," she cried furiously. "So you said before. This conversation is getting monotonous." "End it then; I don't want you. But if you will take my advice you will give the peacock to Mr. Morad-Bakche. He has sworn to have it." "And I have sworn that he shall not have it. Do you think that I am afraid of a black man, Miss Grison? Moreover I have not got the bird." "Oh!" She shrugged her shoulders, "I daresay Sorley has concealed it somewhere, and will tell you where to find it before he is hanged." "He never will be hanged." "Yes he will. He can't escape." "Unless it can be proved that you took the peacock to Belstone." "I never did," said Miss Orison coldly; "Sorley made up that story to account for its possession and to implicate me." "Well," said Alan rising, "I shall ask Jotty, for I verily believe he is aware of much more than he chooses to say." "He has never told me anything," snapped the woman; "and moreover is the most ungrateful little reptile I ever met. I gave him a good home and a new name and food and clothes and every chance of being respectable; yet he ran away, and heaven only knows where he is." "I can't tell you his whereabouts now, Miss Grison, but I can tell you in what direction he went on leaving the house a few days ago." For the first time the landlady showed some curiosity. "Where did he go?" "To Belstone with a copy of your interview in his pocket to warn Sorley that----" He got no further, for Miss Grison jumped up with her hard blue eyes flashing with rage. "The traitor," she said in an ominously calm voice. "After all I did for him, he tried to save Sorley, did he?" "For money?" "Of course. The boy is a born miser. Well, if he returns here, I shall know how to punish him. Never mind how; don't ask; I may box his ears, or I may have him put in jail for theft." "But since you have given him a chance of being respectable why ruin him?" "Because he has sided with my enemy." "Why do you hate Sorley so?" questioned Fuller, bluntly. "You wish to know. Then you shall. I hate him because he ruined my brother Baldwin, because he murdered my brother Baldwin, and because he deserted me twenty years ago." "What do you mean?" "I mean what I say, Mr. Fuller. Do you know who I am? You don't. Well, I am Mrs. Sorley." Alan stared. "His wife?" "His deserted wife," corrected the woman bitterly. "Yes; Randolph married me because I was a pretty girl. But he grew tired of me, and then he wanted to make a rich lady his wife." "Yes; I have heard that," said Alan recalling the story of his mother, about Miss Marchmont. "It was a secret marriage," said Miss Grison; "he asked me to keep it secret, as he feared lest his sister, Mrs. Inderwick, should ask him to leave The Monastery if she learned what he had done. The lady he wished to make his wife died, or I should have spoken out. But Baldwin forged that check, and the sole way in which I could prevent Randolph from putting him in the dock was by promising to hold my tongue for ever. He gave me money, and I came here to set up this boarding-house. And I took the peacock to punish him, afterwards giving it to Baldwin. Randolph fought me, but I said that I would destroy it if he used force. And then--well," she broke off abruptly, "can you blame me for hating this man? He ruined my brother and he ruined me and I--hush! What's that? Mr. Latimer!" It was indeed Dick, who came hastily into the room. "Alan! Alan, come with me to the police office." "What is the matter?" "Sorley has escaped." "Escaped," Miss Grison screamed, and then suppressed her emotion lest more trouble should be caused in the house. "How--how did he escape?" she asked, clenching her hands so tightly that the nails were driven into the flesh. Dick was recovering his breath by degrees. "When the cab stopped at Bow Street police office, and we alighted--that is, when Moon and his officer and Sorley alighted, for I followed him in another cab--Sorley suddenly darted away and was lost in the fog." There was a look of mingled dismay and anger on Miss Grison's face at this unexpected intelligence. She tried to speak and could not, so Fuller asked the necessary question. "Didn't the detective hold him when he alighted?" "Yes, and there came in Sorley's cleverness. On the way out of this house he managed to slip his arms out of the sleeves of that overcoat he wore and simply left it buttoned on his shoulders. When one of the men held him by the arm, he suddenly slipped the coat and ran away. Of course Moon and his underlings followed, but the fog was so thick that they could not catch him. I arrived a moment later, and then came back here to tell you." "He is guilty, he is guilty," said Miss Grison persistently. "What do you say now, Mr. Fuller?" Alan was puzzled. "He certainly gave himself up," he remarked. "And intended to give the detectives and Moon the slip whenever he had the chance," retorted the landlady. "Bah! Don't tell me; the man is the murderer of my brother, and came here to try and force me to prove his innocence by admitting that I took the peacock down to Belstone, which I certainly did not. What is your opinion, Mr. Latimer?" "I can't say," replied Dick with a perplexed air. "To-night, since the man was giving himself up so frankly, I half believed that he was innocent. I have my doubts now. But it is a very puzzling case," ended Dick with a sigh. Fuller, preparing to take his leave buttoned up his coat and picked up his hat. "There is one thing to be said in Sorley's favor," he remarked, addressing Miss Grison, "if he did murder your brother, he did you a service." She threw back her head scornfully. "Oh indeed! I should like to know in what way, Mr. Fuller?" "I heard--and Latimer there is my informant--that your brother murdered a man just outside the opium den he frequented in order to rob him of watch and money and general jewelry. Since this is the case, Sorley saved your brother from being hanged, and your name from being further disgraced." Miss Grison's head drooped. "Inspector Moon told me about the matter," she admitted, "and how the watch had been traced. But I don't believe Baldwin killed anyone. He was much too kind and thoughtful." "My dear lady," said Latimer impatiently, "let me point out that no one but yourself entertains this good opinion of your late brother. According to everyone else he was a bad lot. I regret having to say this, but you must be just. If Sorley has acted wickedly--and of that we cannot be sure--your brother is not free from blame. That he murdered this man is certain, so his own violent death is simple justice." "I don't believe what you say, Mr. Latimer; you are prejudiced in favor of that beast." "On the contrary, as Mr. Fuller will tell you, I have been hot against the man, Miss Grison. Now I have my doubts of his guilt." "In spite of his escape?" "Yes It is a perplexing case, and until I can gain more evidence, I am not prepared to give an opinion. Why do you hate him so?" The woman gave the same answer to Latimer as she had given already to Alan, detailing the circumstances which led her to become her enemy's wife, and emphasizing his desertion. "And I kept silent for Baldwin's sake," she ended in a grating voice; "but he is dead, so there is no longer any reason for me to deny that I am Mrs. Sorley. Not that I shall ever take my real name, seeing how my husband has disgraced it. Now I don't want you to make any remarks, thank you, Mr. Latimer. You can go, and you can be sure that I shall do my best to get Randolph arrested again." "You won't find it easy to discover him in this fog," said Dick dryly, and with Alan took his immediate leave, for there seemed no necessity to remain and listen to Miss Grison's wrath which was that of an unreasonable woman obsessed by one bitter idea. The fog was still thick, and Fuller remarked that he wondered how Moon had managed to get a cab. "We couldn't do it, Dick." "The fog gets lighter at times and then thick again," said Latimer absently. "I suppose when Moon took his cab, traffic was resumed for the moment." "It seems to have stopped now," answered Alan, trying to peer into the darkness blurred by the street lamps. "Let us go home. Why do you want to go to the Bow Street office again?" "I only wished to learn the latest details with an eye to copy," said Dick, "but I think I shall leave things until to-morrow, as I am quite tired out." Having arrived at this conclusion, the two groped their way back to Chancery Lane and to Barkers Inn. The true reason why Latimer had so readily yielded to Fuller's suggestion was that he greatly desired to learn if Sorley had again sought shelter with them. But on entering their chambers they found that no one had come during their absence, and Dick heaved a sigh of relief, which was echoed by Alan. "I'm glad he didn't come back," remarked Alan, "we should have had to give him up." "I think he knew as much, and so did not return. However, the fog will afford him an excellent chance of escape, and I doubt if he will be caught a second time. What's the matter?" "The black bag," gasped Fuller, pointing to an article of that description which was on a chair in the corner of the room, "he mentioned that when he went away with Moon." Alan picked up the bag. "What is in it?" "The peacock for a hundred pounds," cried Dick swiftly. He was right, for when the bag was opened, Fuller found wrapped in the chamois skin the golden bird, which was the cause of all the trouble. "Ha!" said Latimer staring at it, "now we can try and solve the riddle." CHAPTER XVI MISS INDERWICK'S EXCURSION While these events were taking place in London, Marie, isolated in The Monastery, anxiously waited to hear news from her lover. As arranged, Mr. Fuller met her at the Lewes station and drove her to Belstone in his trap. As Alan had guessed, the vicar was in full possession of all that had taken place, and invited the girl to stay with himself and his wife until matters were more settled. While in London Marie had complained of her loneliness at the big house, and had looked forward to some such invitation. But on the way down in the train she had changed her mind, since she felt that she could think things out better when alone. However, she did not object to dining at the vicarage, and explained the whole matter to her hostess. They were naturally horrified, as no such event had ever before disturbed the village. "I can't believe that Mr. Sorley would commit a crime," said Mrs. Fuller, greatly distressed, "gentlemen don't do these things." The vicar drew down his long upper lip. "I fear that gentlemen do what suits them, when the temptation is strong, my dear." "Does that mean that you believe Uncle Ran is guilty?" flashed out Marie in a resentful tone. "Not necessarily. I am not yet acquainted with the whole story, save what scraps you told me as we drove here." Marie looked round the room, and seeing that the servants had taken their departure, leaving those at the table to walnuts and wine, she concluded that the moment had come to make a clean breast of things. In a low voice, and entirely without emotion, she related all that she had heard from Alan and Dick. The story sounded black enough, and the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Fuller grew longer as she proceeded. When she ended there ensued a silence which rasped Marie's nerves. "Well?" she asked sharply, and looking from one to the other, "what do you think of it?" "The weight of evidence is decidedly in favor of Sorley's guilt," said Mr. Fuller sadly. "I daresay. All the same he is innocent." "How can you prove that, my dear girl?" "I can't prove it," responded Miss Inderwick in a truly feminine way, "but Uncle Ran never did it for all that." "It is all very dreadful," moaned Mrs. Fuller, shaken out of her usual state of placid happiness. "I wonder you can speak so quietly, Marie." "I cried awfully in London," acknowledged the girl frankly; "but I can't cry any more. Tears won't help Uncle Ran, and common-sense will. He is not going to be hanged if I can help it." "Oh, my dear." Mrs. Fuller shuddered at the mention of the sinister word. "You intend to prove your uncle's innocence--or what you presume to be his innocence?" asked the vicar, looking at her doubtfully. "Yes, only I don't presume anything. I know that Uncle Ran never killed that poor thing. I don't know who did, but he didn't." "How are you going to set about the matter?" "I can't say," said Marie curtly, although this statement was not quite true, for she had an idea of making a start, which she did not intend to place before these two ordinary people. "Of course, if your uncle had the peacock, my dear----" "Mrs. Fuller, I am quite sure that Miss Grison brought down the peacock on that day when she paid a visit unasked to The Monastery. She hates Uncle Ran because she thinks he ruined her brother, and is only too glad to get him into trouble." "But how could she get the peacock?" "From her brother. He had it all the time. Alan said so, and he knows a very great deal about matters." "Alan has a good head," said the vicar approvingly. "I think Marie you had better allow him to look into the matter, and stay with us meanwhile. We can send over to The Monastery for your clothes, my dear." "No thank you. I wished at one time to stay here until Uncle Ran was proved innocent, but I think it is best for me to return to the house in case he should come back again." "Oh, I hope not," cried Mrs. Fuller in alarm, "he would assuredly be arrested as soon as the news got about." "It wouldn't get about," said Marie resolutely, "for I should hide Uncle Ran somewhere until we learned the truth. There are plenty of secret places in the house where he could be concealed." Mr. Fuller passed over this latter statement to remark upon the first. "The question is, what is the truth? If Sorley is innocent, and I sincerely trust that he is, who murdered this unfortunate Baldwin?" "Morad-Bakche," said Marie promptly. "Who is he? You never mentioned him before," said Mrs. Fuller, startled. "Did I not?" observed Miss Inderwick with a lightness she was far from feeling. "Oh, he is an Indian who wants to get the jewels because he says that they belong to the royal family of Kam. He came down here and stopped a night at The Red Fox." Mr. Fuller nodded. "I fancy I heard something about a foreigner staying there," he said quietly, "in July last was it not?" Marie nodded. "He learned all about the peacock from Mrs. Verwin--the common talk of the village, that is." "Oh that woman is a terrible gossip," exclaimed Mrs. Fuller distressed. "I dread her tongue. What did she say exactly, my dear?" Marie reported the interview between herself and Mrs. Verwin and Alan, and shortly, the vicar and his wife were acquainted with the way in which Morad-Bakche had traced the peacock to Belstone and afterwards to London. "And I believe that he learned Mr. Grison had it," finished Marie, "and must have tried to get it from him. A man like that is much more likely to murder a person than poor dear Uncle Ran, though he has his faults, and has always been horrid over my engagement to Alan." "But are you really engaged to Alan?" asked the vicar sharply. "Yes, I am. Uncle Ran said that if Alan found the jewels that we could be married, so I look upon myself as being engaged to him." "But Alan has never found the jewels," objected Mrs. Fuller tremulously. "He may never find them, my dear." "It doesn't matter," replied Marie, getting on her feet; "we shall marry all the same. But the first thing to be done is to save Uncle Ran, and I am doing what I can--that is, I intend to do what I can. Alan will work also, and Mr. Latimer, though he doesn't seem to think Uncle Ran is innocent.' "On the face of it it looks as though he were not," said the vicar doubtfully, and rising in his turn, "however we can talk over the matter in the drawing-room." "No," said Marie standing very erect, and looking at the elderly pair with very bright eyes. "I am now going home to think out things." "Oh, Marie, won't you stay here?" "I think it is best to go home," repeated the girl gently, but kissing the soft and withered old cheek. "I am all right with granny and Henny and Jenny to look after me. If Mr. Bakche comes I shan't be afraid." "My dear girl, you may suspect him wrongly," said Mr. Fuller. "Well, other people are suspecting Uncle Ran wrongly," retorted Miss Inderwick, "so that balances things. Now I must go away. Good-night Mr. Fuller; good-night, Mrs. Fuller. If I learn anything I shall come and tell you." "I shall write at once to Alan and ask him to explain things precisely," said the vicar, as he saw his guest at the door; "and keep up your heart my dear child. This trouble, like all troubles, is a blessing in disguise." "It is a very good disguise, then" said Marie sadly, "no, don't come with me," she added when Mr. Fuller assumed his soft hat and took his stick. "I can get home by myself." "No," said the clergyman grimly, and took her arm, "after you have hinted about that Indian, I think it is just as well to see you safely into the hands of your servants." "But you don't think----" "I think that one should always be on the safe side, my dear. If this man wants the peacock, he may try and enter the house. If he does I am sorry for him, as Henny and Jenny are as strong as men. By the way where is that wretched bird, which has caused so much trouble?" "I don't know," sighed Marie, as they walked through the village, "uncle took it away with him I think, although he has left his gems." "I should think if Sorley clears his name he will have had enough of gems for the rest of his life," remarked Mr. Fuller rebukingly, but as Marie did not answer, and he did not wish to cause her pain, he said no more. They passed through Belstone, and into the park, and Marie said good-bye to the vicar when Henny with a noisy joy received her at the door. Mr. Fuller was now at ease in his mind, as he knew how devoted the Dutch dolls were, and returned home wondering how these crooked things would straighten out. Granny and the two servants were overcome with delight when their young mistress was within doors, for they had troubled considerably over her visit to London. Marie laughed them out of their fears and assured them that she was quite able to look after herself. They asked after Mr. Sorley, who was no great favorite with the three, but of course Marie, ignorant of what had taken place at Miss Grison's, could give them no information. In her opinion Uncle Ran had gone abroad, and would wait there until his innocence could be proved. "Well, my dear Miss Marie," said granny polishing her spectacles. "God forbid as I should say what I shouldn't say, but there's no doubt as Mr. Sorley ain't the proper person to be your guardian, my dear. He's took your money and kept you short and mewed you up here like a nun, to say nothing of having behaved very badly to that poor Miss Grison, not that I'm fond of her myself." "Did Uncle Ran ever care for her?" asked Miss Inderwick anxiously. "Well he did and he didn't. She was pretty, in a light-haired skimpy way, I don't deny, and I thought as he loved her; and then--but it's too long a story, Miss Marie. I'll tell it you to-morrow when you are rested. Let us hope that Mr. Sorley won't be hanged, which would be a sore disgrace to the family, and that you'll marry Master Alan, who is just the kind-hearted gentleman to look after your interests properly." "Look after them and me also, you mean, granny," said Marie, who was really too weary to listen to an account of her uncle's early delinquencies. "I shall go to bed now," and she did, feeling quite worn out. But before falling asleep she arranged in her own mind to go to London the next day. The fact is, Marie being anxious and wilful, was not at all pleased to remain passive while things were so unpleasant for her uncle, and incidentally for herself, since she was his niece. Alan had insisted that she should not see Mother Slaig, whereupon Marie, although promising to obey him, mentally vowed that she would do so. Mother Slaig, if anyone, would know the truth and might be persuaded to reveal it to a dexterous questioner. Of course this was Marie's own opinion, and she intended to prove to Alan that she was right. Sorley had given her twenty pounds, so there was no lack of money, and the girl decided firmly to do a little detective business on her own account. For no visible reason she believed that Bakche had something to do with the death of Grison, if not indeed the actual doer of the deed. Should her surmise prove to be correct Mother Slaig might be able to say if the Indian had haunted the slum, or had come into touch with the deceased. And Marie wished her uncle would return home if only to tell her that he had seen Bakche at Rotherhithe, which was not impossible, considering that Mr. Sorley had been too often to interview Grison. But Sorley, as she sadly reflected, did not dare to come back, for the detective left behind by Moon was still in the house, and would arrest him at once. Of course granny made an outcry the next morning, when Marie announced her intention of going again to London. All her arguments were in vain, however, and Miss Inderwick left the house early so as to catch a morning train. She promised to be back again by six o'clock, but did not tell granny where she was going--that is she admitted that the metropolis was her goal, but did not specify whither she would precisely go. Granny, believing that the wilful girl was to meet her lover, felt fairly comfortable in her mind. Had she known that Miss Inderwick purposed exploring a slum, she would have sent a telegram to Fuller to stop the excursion. Marie guessed this, so held her peace. The girl knew exactly how to get to Rotherhithe, as she had peeped into an ABC. before leaving Belstone. On arrival at Victoria it was necessary to take the underground route, which would conduct her directly to her destination. When on the spot Marie hoped by enquiries to learn the precise whereabouts of Mother Slaig, and moreover had a faint idea that the slum the harridan lived in was called Gibson's Rents. To explore this low neighborhood she had put on an old serge frock and a shabby black jacket, so that she was as well disguised as her uncle had been when he sought Barkers Inn. Not that Marie was ever so well dressed as Mr. Sorley, for he never gave her sufficient money to be extravagant. The venturesome damsel duly reached Victoria Station, and had no difficulty in dropping downward to the nether railway line. Being yet a schoolgirl and feeling hungry, she bought some pastry of the jam-puff order and devoured it in the first-class compartment, which she shared with other ladies. Marie travelled in this most expensive fashion, because she thought she would be safer from being accosted by strangers. Destiny protected her in this especial way, and she gained Rotherhithe without having a single remark addressed to her. When she emerged into the open air once more, she looked helplessly around, not knowing which way to go. But she felt sure that Gibson's Rents was the name of the slum, and asked a tall and burly policeman where it was to be found. The officer looked at her keenly, and saw that she was a lady in spite of her shabby clothes. "Why do you wish to go there, miss?" he asked, and touched his helmet, "it's a rough place." "I wish to see a woman called Mrs. Slaig." "Mother Slaig. Why, miss, she's one of the worst creatures in the slum. I don't think it is wise of you to go, miss, I don't indeed. You're a district visitor, I take it, miss," went on the man, who could conceive of no other object but philanthropy which would take the young lady into such a hole, "and Mother Slaig don't want tracts." Marie did not deny the identity the policeman attributed to her, as she was quick enough to see that such a character would expedite her journey, and would conceal her real intentions. She did not wish to be asked questions lest she should get into trouble, by interesting herself in a police-court case, such as the murder of Grison truly was. "I shall be all right, officer," she answered lightly; "no one will hurt me." "Well, miss, I don't think they will, for they think a heap of district visitors at Gibson's Rents, as these ladies give them money. But I can take you to the end of my beat and pass you on to another officer, who will show you the way. Come along, miss." Marie conceived a high estimate of the guardians of the law, for her friend passed her along to another, who transferred her to a third, and all three men were courteous and considerate in every way. Perhaps Marie's good looks, and engaging manners had something to do with this suavity, but she was certainly charmed with her guides. It was a fourth policeman, tall, slim and military-looking who conducted her down the crooked alley, near the riverside, where Mother Slaig had her boarding-house. There were numbers of disreputable people about, both male and female, and when the oaths of these unfortunate creatures struck her ear, and her eyes rested on their animal faces, the girl felt glad that she had a constable at her elbow. In her ignorance, she had never thought that the neighborhood was so vile as this, and half regretted coming. However, she had the high spirit of the Inderwicks, and declined to turn back, for having put her hand to the plough, the did not intend to leave it until she had driven her furrow. The fourth policeman saw her shudder of disgust, when they stopped before a disreputable house, dingy, tumble-down, and dilapidated. "I shall stay here while you give Mother Slaig your tracts, miss," he said politely, also taking her for a district visitor, "and if anything goes wrong, you just call for me." Perhaps for this reason Mother Slaig received Marie graciously, when she ventured into the evil-smelling place. It was like a rabbit-warren with innumerable doors, passages, stairs, and rooms, all equally foul. Men and women in ragged garbs swarmed in and out, while children tumbled here there and everywhere, shrilly crying and swearing and quarrelling. The police introduced Marie to the landlady of this thieves' kitchen, as it truly was, and then took up his station at the door with his thumbs in his belt, to look benignly on the ebbing and flowing of the populace in and out of the lane, and in and out of the dens which bordered it. Mother Slaig, not approving of district visitors--for Marie had been presented as one--led the young lady into a small dark room on the ground floor, and sat down with a sniff, prepared to battle for her rights as an Englishwoman, who declined to be converted. She was a shapeless stout old creature swathed in various rags which had long since lost their color. Her face was so swarthy as to suggest gipsy blood, and her snappy black eyes and the quantity of cheap jewellery she wore emphasised the fact that she probably belonged to the gentle Romany. "I don't want no Bible talk, young lady," she said in a harsh voice, "nor no tracts, nor no arsking if I'm saved. Whether I am or I ain't's my look out, so just say your say and git, though I don't deny," added Mother Slaig in a whining tone, "as a shilling or two, let alone gold, would help me to bear me sorrers better, bless you, my dearie." "I shall give you a pound if you will let me have a talk with you," said Marie, smiling, for in spite of the woman's disreputable looks there was something oddly attractive about her. "A pound, and what's a pound, miss?" grumbled Mother Slaig. "Not much, but it is all I can afford. You are a kind-hearted woman, Mrs. Slaig, I am quite sure." "Me!" Mother Slaig stared. "Why I'm the tork of the place for me languidge and slappings." "Ah," said Marie diplomatically, "no one has taken you in the right way." "P'raps they 'ave an' p'raps they 'avn't," growled the woman restlessly, for Marie's charm of manner softened her, "an what's all this oil and butter for, miss. You want something, you do. Oh trust you fur that." "Yes, Mrs. Slaig, I do want something, and I am going to throw myself on your mercy, because I trust you." The old hag stopped scratching her elbow, and stared harder than ever. "I never was spoke delicate-like to afore," she muttered. "You ain't the sort of lady with tracts as I' 'ad 'ere, bullying me no end." "I hope I'm not," said Marie with a girlish laugh, which brought a perplexed smile in answer on the old woman's dirty wrinkled face. It was rare that such pure innocent laughter was heard in Gibson's Rents. "I know you will help me, Mrs. Slaig." "Well, I don't say as I won't, for there's no denying you've got a way with you, as ain't bad. What is it?" "It's about the murder of Mr. Grison?" said Marie slowly. Mother Slaig aroused with a subdued screech, "Blimme if you ain't one o' them wimin 'tecs. Now ain't y', ain't y'?" "No; I am the niece of Mr. Randolph Sorley who is accused of the crime." Mother Slaig dropped again into her chair a shapeless bundle of clothes, and with a bewildered look in her eyes. "Ho! you're her, are y'?" she growled, but not in a hostile manner. "Moon--he's the head peeler hereabouts, dearie's been nosin' round about that murder. Only this mornin' he comes an' ses as they caught that Sorley cove larst night, and he got away in th' bloomin' fog. Yuss," said Mother Slaig, anticipating Marie's question. "I knows the Sorley cove. Many a time he's come t' see that Grison chap, as was a rotten bad egg, and guv me shillin's and tanners endless. A swell, a toff, he was tryin' to look what wasn't his age, but a good 'un wiff his cash. I 'adn't got no row with him, nohow," and she nodded vigorously. "You don't think he murdered Mr. Grison?" asked Marie apprehensively. "Blimme if I knows," said Mother Slaig reflectively, and scratching her elbow again, "and what odd's 'f he did anyhow, miss. Grison was better undergroun' than above it in my opinion. Never paid his rent rigler he did, cuss him," swore Mother Slaig furiously, "an' if I'd knowed about that gold hen as they're makin' sich a fuss round, I'd ha' had it out of him for a whelp as he allays was, an' that same, you kin taike fro' me, miss." "Well I don't believe that my uncle murdered Mr. Grison," said Marie in a resolute voice, and looking hard at the harridan. "That's right, dearie, allys stick up fur them as is relatives, though I don't think much o' mine leavin' me 'ere to slave cruel, and never givin' no cash whiff their stingyness. He was 'ere that night y' know anyhow." "He came away at eight o'clock and Mr. Grison wasn't killed till after," declared the girl. "So he ses," murmured Mother Slaig, "p'raps some frien' of him es Grison stuck paid him out in th' saime waif." "What do you mean?" asked Marie who had not heard of the man's act. "Didn't y' know," cried Mother Slaig with relish "why, bless y' miss--an' bless y' I kin, fur I've kind o' taiken a fancy t' y'--Grison killed a cove es he smoked wiff in, that Chinky's den. We fun' the watch of th' cove an' his juwulery in Grison's room. A frien' of him es wos done fur may 'ave stuck Grison out of revenge, and no blame t' him, dearie." "Do you know if any relatives of this dead man came down here?" "No, I never did. I don't know anything, miss, and what's more I don't want to i' case I shud come bunkin' against them beastly perlice, as is allays interferin' with an honest woman who's tryin' to git 'er livin'." "Well then," asked Marie coming to the point "can you tell me if an Indian called Morad-Bakche ever came to see Mr. Grison?" "Don' no th' naime," said Mother Slaig, after a moment's thought, "an there's lots of them dagoes abaout 'ere, lascars an' mulletters and all that sort o' scum. Grison torked t' one an' all. What like's the cove's y've got in yer mind, miss?" As Marie had heard Bakche described both by Alan and Mrs. Verwin she was able to convey to Mother Slaig's shrewd intelligence a fair picture of the man. The old hag reflected again, then slapped her fat knees with both fat hands. "Know 'im, dearie; 'course I knows him, 'Aughty-like, fur a nigger, an' looked on me, es is a free born British woman jus' like mud. I guv him bits of m' mind when he sneaked round 'ere." "Then he _did_ come to see Mr. Grison?" asked Marie, delighted that she had succeeded in establishing the fact of Bakche's acquaintance with the dead man. "Did he come often?" "Carn't keep count, miss, me not 'aving a 'ead fur figures, tho' me sister was grand at them, dearie. But he comes times an' again. Oh, yuss," she went on as the memory returned to her, "he was stan'orf fur a nigger. 'Thort he was a lascar at fust, but he wasn't, tho' he did live on rice and water like them sweeps. Dress'd like one of them stokers tho'--if y' know what a seedee boy is, miss, which of course y' wudn't, bein' a lady. I sawr as he was a cut above them, I did. He wore a snake?" "Wore a snake," repeated Marie bewildered. "On his right arm, below th' elber," explained Mother Slaig, "'tattooted it was, as them sailors 'ave a fancy fur; twistin' round' an' roun' till it made me giddy t' look at it." Marie was glad she had heard this mark of identification was to be found on the haughty dark gentleman who had visited Grison. She was certain that the man in question was Bakche in search of the peacock, but it was just as well that Mother Slaig could identify him by means of the tattooed snake. "Was he here on the night of the murder?" asked Marie anxiously. "Ah, now you 'as me," said Mother Slaig in an expansive fashion, "me, on th' night as he was done fur, bein' 'appy." "Happy?" Marie did not know what was meant. "Gin," explained Mother Slaig rocking to and fro. "White satin as some call it, tho' blue ruin is my naime fur it. I got half a quid fro' that Sorley chap, es he come in or wen' out--I dunno which. 'Laid it all out in gin wiff frien's o' mine, and we did 'ave a time t' dream of. Never thort I cud ha' swallered such oachings o' gin; but I did, an' the thust as was on me nex' mornin', dearie, you'd never believe." "But isn't it bad to drink so much," asked Marie, rising timidly. "Fur sich es you es is a flower it is," agreed Mother Slaig, rolling out of the chair and getting on her feet with an effort, since she was so stout, "but not fur me, es 'as a 'ard time, dearie. You've fun' me sober thro' me not 'aving--where's that there quid y' promised?" she demanded suddenly. "There," said Marie, taking the money from her pocket, "but don't drink it away, Mrs. Slaig. It's a pity such a nice woman as you should drink gin." "Well, I don't git no shampin down 'ere, dearie," said Mrs. Slaig crossly, and, like Jotty, biting the gold to make sure it was genuine. "We taikes what we can. Wan't t' know anythin' else, lovey dovey?" "No," answered Marie, walking into the passage, for the smell and closeness of the place was making her feel faint. "But you needn't tell anyone what I asked you about." "Sha'n't nohow," said Mother Slaig firmly. "Y've browt back daiys when I was a pretty girl and 'ad all the men arter me, furious-like. You're a breath o' fresh air an' a smell of country roses, an' a sight o' green fields, t' yours truly, dearie. An, never a word shell I say, save as you're a visitor with tracts--tho' you ain't guv me one, but summit better." Mother Slaig felt for her sovereign as she spoke. "But if there's police, dearie, an' I 'as t' saive m' bacon, I mus' speak." "There will be no trouble with the police," Marie assured her in a low and hurried voice, for her friendly constable was just at the end of the passage. "Good-bye, Mrs. Slaig." "Go'bye, dearie," she attempted a curtsey, but failed for want of breath. "'An bless y' fur an angil o' delight wiff stars roun' yer 'ead." Marie laughed and hurried away in the shadow of the policeman, who refused to accept a tip. Again she was passed from one constable to another, until she regained the station, and every one of her temporary guides declined money. "The most chivalrous men in the world," said Marie afterwards, "are London policemen!" and she never changed her opinion on this point. CHAPTER XVII THE SECRET Considering that Marie was inexperienced in worldly matters, she acted with extraordinary foresight and determination. Few girls would have risked that journey to the Rotherhithe slum, or would have conducted the interview with Mother Slaig so discreetly. Certainly her lucky star was in the ascendant when she plunged into those malodorous depths, as she had been guarded from all peril by the various policemen; but her own diplomatic behavior had accomplished the impossible with the old harridan. Marie returned home with the full belief that Morad-Bakche was the guilty person, since he desired to obtain possession of the peacock, and he had been haunting the house wherein Baldwin Grison resided. That Sorley had held the bird--a fact vouched for by Alan--she believed was due to the machinations of Miss Grison, who evidently was working in concert with the Indian to ruin the man. And Bakche's reward would be possession of the jewels, since Marie fancied the dead man's sister had possibly guessed the riddle of the ornament. If this was so, there was no need for either of the conspirators to retain possession of the peacock, since it had yielded up its secret. With this idea Marie came back to Lewes, and there she sent a telegram to Alan asking him to come down the next day. She was anxious to impart her discovery to her lover, and to show him that she also was able to kelp in the matter of tracing Grison's assassin, and obtaining the treasure. On the evidence she had discovered concerning Bakche's presence at Rotherhithe, a new departure might be taken relative to the conduct of the case. But Marie felt that she could venture no further along the dark path unassisted, and therefore wished for Alan's co-operation. She knew that the telegram would bring him to her at once, and retired to bed with the conviction that he would lose no time in coming to Belstone. Of course on her return, she had to answer numerous inquiries from granny and the maids as to what she had been doing, but managed to answer without stating too plainly what her errand had been. She was very weary when she placed her head on the pillow, and fell asleep almost immediately. Fuller duly arrived by an early morning train, and it was ten o'clock when Marie--who was watching for him like a veritable Sister Anne--saw him walk up the avenue. She rushed out of the house and led him into it, hanging fondly on his arm, while asking innumerable questions. "Oh, darling, I am so glad to see you. And how are you? and when did you arrive? and how long are you going to stay? and will we go into the library? and what have you in that black bag?" The young man laughed at her eagerness, and was surprised to see how gay and happy she looked, which was indeed remarkable, seeing that Sorley was in such straits. He replied to her questions in sequence. "I am quite well, dearest; I arrived an hour ago, and walked direct from Lewes to you, not even troubling to go to the vicarage; I shall stay for the whole day, as I want to be with you, and have much to tell you; we may as well go into the library for a purpose which I shall explain soon; and in this bag I have the peacock of jewels." "Oh," cried Miss Inderwick greatly astonished, "how did you get it?" "Mr. Sorley left it in my chambers last night." "Then you have seen Uncle Ran?" "Yes; and so has Latimer." Marie looked nervous. "Mr. Latimer doesn't like Uncle Ran," she said thoughtfully, "but I hope he has not given him up to the police." "Your Uncle Ran gave himself up of his own accord," said Alan grimly, "but repented at the eleventh hour and made his escape." "I'm glad of that," remarked the girl thankfully, "as I believe Uncle Ran is quite innocent. But why did he give himself up at all?" "I don't know, no more than I can say why he changed his mind and bolted, my dear. However, I can tell you the whole story if you will listen." And when Miss Inderwick signified by a gesture that she was all ears, Fuller detailed all that had taken place on the previous night. By this time they were in the library with the door closed, and Alan related his story seated in a deep armchair with Marie balancing herself on the table. "Poor dear Uncle Ran," she said when Fuller ended; "he wished to give that horrid Miss Grison a chance of confessing her guilt." "Confessing her guilt! What do you mean, Marie?" "I mean that she knows more about the murder than she admits, and that she is in league with that nasty Indian to ruin Uncle Ran." Alan shook his head gravely. "You can't be sure of that, Marie." "But I am," she insisted positively. "Mr. Bakche knew that Mr. Grison was at Mother Slaig's and went there heaps of times. She saw him." "How do you know?" asked Alan, surprised by her decided tone. "Because she told me herself. Of course she didn't know his name, but her description is exactly the same as yours--haughty, dark and----" "Marie! Marie! How do you know this?" "Because I visited Mother Slaig yesterday." Fuller looked startled. "Darling you never went by yourself to see that dreadful old hag?" "Yes, I did, and I don't think she's so very dreadful. She was very nice to me in every way, and what she told me only cost a sovereign." "Marie, you shouldn't have gone to Rotherhithe without telling me." "If I had you would have stopped me," pouted Miss Inderwick; "and I did so want to do something to help Uncle Ran." "But has your visit helped him? Mother Slaig may be wrong about Bakche, and may have mistaken a lascar for him." "There was no question of mistaking anyone," retorted Marie quickly, "for Mother Slaig did not know the name. I described Mr. Bakche as you did, and she said that she had seen a man of that description--the snake man she called him." "The snake man," repeated Alan swiftly. "Why?" "On his right arm from the wrist to the elbow he had a snake tattooed in spirals." Fuller slapped his knee, and spoke excitedly. "Mother Slaig is right, dear, and so are you. Miss Grison told me that Bakche had such a mark." "Then he must have been at Rotherhithe and known Mr. Grison," said Miss Inderwick. "Certainly; since Mother Slaig would otherwise have known nothing about the tattooed snake. Tell me exactly what she said, Marie." Miss Inderwick did so, omitting nothing, and shortly Fuller was in possession of all that had taken place at Rotherhithe. The recital so excited him that he rose to his feet and began to pace the room. "And Bakche denied that he visited Rotherhithe, or knew Grison," he cried. "Marie you have undoubtedly found valuable evidence which may help to clear your uncle's character, I admit that." "I am quite sure that Uncle Ran is innocent, and that Miss Grison is conspiring with Mr. Bakche to ruin him," said Marie firmly. Alan shook his head. "No, dear, I don't think that there is any conspiracy between them. If Bakche gained the peacock by murder, he certainly would not have sent it to your uncle. And if Miss Grison knew that he had the bird, she must have guessed that he stabbed her dearly-beloved brother. In that case she would have denounced him. Of course, she denies having brought the peacock down here; but if she did, Baldwin gave it to her before his death." "And if she did not, Mr. Bakche must have sent it." "Why should he do that?" "To get Uncle Ran into trouble." "My dear, Bakche did not wish to get Mr. Sorley into trouble. All he desired, and still desires, is to obtain the peacock." "Then why did he haunt Rotherhithe?" "To get the peacock," repeated Alan; "and if he did get it, he certainly would not have given it to your uncle. No, Marie." Fuller shrugged his shoulders. "What you have discovered implicates Bakche plainly enough, but it does not solve the mystery of the death. That is as great a riddle as ever." "What is to be done now, then?" asked the girl, fuming at the judicious way in which her lover talked. "We must tell Inspector Moon about Bakche's visits to Rotherhithe, and then the Indian can be questioned. I shall do that to-morrow. Meanwhile--" Alan opened the black bag----"look at this." Marie greatly admired the peacock, as it was the first time she had set eyes on the beautiful object. The glitter of the gold, the radiance of the many gems appealed to her feminine love of color, and she clapped her hands with delight when the gorgeous ornament glowed like a rainbow-hued star in the sunlight. The lovers sat down and admired the luck of the Inderwicks, which held a secret hard to solve, a secret which would, if guessed, bring a fortune to the last member of the family and restore the faded splendors of the line. The girl with her eyes fixed on the treasure, murmured words from the ancient prophecy:-- "Jewels and gold from over-seas Will bring them peace and joy and ease." Alan nodded. "If that is applied to this bird," he said slowly, "it is perfectly true, since the riddle, when guessed, means a gigantic fortune. You will be a wealthy woman, Marie, and then I shall have some hesitation in keeping you to your engagement." "Oh, Alan, darling, why?" asked the girl jumping up in dismay. "People might call me a fortune-hunter." "I don't see how they could, seeing that you love me now when I have next to nothing. And if the fortune is found it will be through you, dearest, so you will have a right to share it. And after all," ended Marie earnestly and inconsequently, "what does it matter what people say seeing that we love one another?" Alan kissed her. "That being the case, Marie, I promise you that no wealth shall part us. But had we not better put the peacock away?" "Won't we try and solve the riddle?" "It's impossible. I've tried in every way to do so, and am still quite in the dark as to how that jewelled bird can indicate the hiding-place." Marie took up the luck of her family and turned it round upside down, and looked at it from every side. "It does seem impossible," she confessed with a reluctant sigh. "I suppose we must give up trying to guess its riddle for the present. Where shall we put it, Alan?" "In the cupboard, I suppose," said the lawyer carelessly, and pointing to the dark oak press, out of which Sorley had produced the peacock when it first appeared on the scene; "it has always been there." "If so," said Marie shrewdly, "someone--Miss Grison for one--may know where to find it, and she is quite capable of telling Mr. Bakche who is in league with her, I am sure. No, Alan, I shall put it along with Uncle Ran's private collection of gems," and she moved towards the panel marked with a cross, which Fuller remembered very well. "Can you open it, Marie?" he asked, walking beside her to the place. "Yes! See!" She touched the hidden spring, and the panel slid aside into its groove. "Uncle Ran showed me how to work this before he left, in case--as he said--he should never come back." "Hum!" muttered Alan, staring into the dark recess with its many shelves, "he seems to have his doubts as to whether his innocence will ever be clearly proved. Put the peacock back on the table, Marie, and let us look at the gems. If your uncle does not return they belong to you." "Yes, he said that," replied Miss Inderwick, putting down the peacock near the black bag. "Many of the gems are bought with my money. I always thought that you were hard on Uncle Ran, dear; he saved money for me." "Marie, I have every wish to think well of your uncle," confessed Alan, "but it seems to me that he does not act quite straightly. For one thing he undoubtedly treated Miss Grison very badly, and----" Fuller checked himself, as it did not seem necessary at the moment to reveal the strange truth regarding the woman's claim to be Mrs. Sorley. "And what, dear?" asked the girl innocently. "Nothing. I shall tell you later. Let us think the best we can of your uncle, and examine his gems. I have seen them before, but I should like to admire them again. Bring the trays to the table, Marie." The girl did so, and tray after tray of jewels was placed in the flood of sunshine which streamed through the windows of the room, until the whole table glittered with rainbow fires. When the shelves were empty, Marie put her hand in and groped round to see if she had missed any gem. Suddenly she uttered an exclamation, and brought out a long steel instrument, with a silver handle set with rough turquoise stones. "Oh, Alan, look at this, dear," she said, bringing it to her lover. Fuller started and frowned, remembering how Grison had been stabbed with a slender instrument, a stiletto for choice. And here was a stiletto in the secret hiding-place of Sorley's jewels. There was blood on the handle, and the young man looked at it with a shudder. Was Sorley guilty after all, and were these stains the life blood of Baldwin Grison? It would seem so, he thought, and his thoughts showed themselves in his face, for Marie uttered an exclamation and grew pale. "Oh Alan, dear, you don't think that, do you?" she asked piteously. "Think what, dear," he asked in his turn, and evasively. "That Uncle Ran murdered Mr. Grison with that stiletto." She had made use of the very word mentioned at the inquest. "It looks like it, dear," said Fuller sadly. "The evidence showed that Grison was murdered with a weapon of this sort, and now that we find it in a secret place known only to your uncle----" "Miss Grison knows it also," cried Marie, determined to believe nothing against her relative. "We can't be sure of that, dear. And if she did, she would not have placed the weapon there. You surely don't think she killed her brother?" "Oh no; oh no. Still, if only to revenge herself on Uncle Ran because he--as she says--ruined Mr. Grison, she may have----" "Marie, it is no use building up theories," interrupted Alan firmly; "the presence of this stiletto looks bad, I don't deny. Still Mr. Sorley may have some explanation to make of its presence." "I am sure he is innocent, and will return to explain everything," said Marie obstinately. "Nothing will ever make me believe that Uncle Ran killed the poor thing. We won't think anything more about the matter until he comes back," she ended, and returned the stiletto to the hiding-place. "If he ever does come back," murmured Alan under his breath, for he looked on the presence of the weapon--and stained with blood as it was--as a very good proof of the man's guilt. However, so as not to vex Marie, and because he could not, in legal words, prove his case, he made no remark. For the next quarter of an hour they examined the gems, and, becoming absorbed in this one and that, (so beautiful were the objects), both quite forgot the discovery of the stiletto which seemed to incriminate the collector. Marie tried the effect of several jewels against her fair skin and admired herself in the mirror over the fireplace. Amongst the loose ornaments--for some of the gems were set in gold--she found a curious ring of silver entirely circled by precious stones. "Isn't that odd, Alan," she asked, slipping it on her finger, "and how uncomfortable to wear, dear. The stones go right round and hurt one so between the fingers. Oh!" she pulled it off, "I could never wear that with pleasure. Perhaps it is a nose ring--one of the Begum's treasures." Fuller examined the object, which was a broad band of silver set with gems at various intervals, entirely round its circle. "It's not of Indian workmanship, Marie," he said, after a pause; "there's an English look about it. I wonder why the stones are set all round it, though?" Marie peering over his shoulder pointed out a point that had escaped Alan's attention. "See, there is a letter," she observed, "it's a 'K.' Look, Alan, between that bit of coral and that pearl." "So there is. I wonder what 'K' means," Alan mused, then threw back his head trying to remember something. "I have heard of a ring set round with stones before," he said thoughtfully, "and it was explained to me why the gems were all over it. Who has that ring? Oh!"--a memory suddenly came into his mind----"it was my grandmother who showed it to me when I was a tiny boy. It was a golden ring with six stones, and each meant a letter." "How do you mean meant a letter, dear?" asked Marie, greatly puzzled, "and what word did it make?" "Regard," answered Alan carelessly, "the first word of each stone-name gave the meaning: Ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby again, and diamond." "Regard," repeated Marie, clapping her hands. "Oh, how clever. You must give me a ring like that some day, Alan. Only we'll have love on it. Lapis lazuli, opal, and--and--what precious stone begins with 'V,' Alan?" "There is none," he said smiling at her earnestness, and glancing at the silver ring he still toyed with, "no more than there is a gem beginning with 'K.' I expect the maker of this ring chose a word which contained that letter, and as he could not suggest a stone, engraved the word on the silver in this fashion. Strange that he had not more foresight." "Let us see what the word is, Alan," cried Marie much excited, "begin with the letter 'K.' That's a start. Next is a piece of coral--that's 'C.' "Then an opal standing for 'O,' another piece of coral----" "C," said Marie anxiously, "an amethyst for 'A,' an emerald for 'E'----" "And a pearl for 'P.' The word therefore reads K. C. O. C. A. E. P. And that, my dear, makes nonsense," finished Fuller with disgust. "Spell it backwards," suggested the girl, "we may as well try all ways." Almost before she ended, Alan, following her advice, had arrived at the truth swiftly. "Peacock!" he shouted, "Marie, this ring was made by Simon Ferrier." "But it isn't of Indian workmanship," she protested. "No; but Ferrier, although he learned from Indian jewellers, was an English workman first of all. Peacock"--he twirled the ring----"Darling, I really and truly believe that we have discovered the secret." "Oh Alan! oh Alan!" the girl shrieked in her excitement and ran to the table quickly, "I see your meaning. We take these stones in the tail and--" "And read them as we have done those of the ring, making the first letter of each stone stand to spell the word. "Yes! yes! yes!" Marie clapped her hands. "But there is more than one word in that tail, Alan. Oh--perhaps it indicates the hiding-place?" "I'm sure it does," cried Fuller, taking out a pencil. "Marie, read out the stones in order, beginning at the top, and I'll set them down." Almost too excited to speak, the girl did so with sparkling eyes, and the result when finished was as follows, with the three lines and the triangle of rubies, indicated plainly: Sapphire, Turquoise, Pearl, Emerald, Turquoise, Emerald, Ruby, Sapphire, Pearl, Opal, Onyx, Lapis lazuli. Ruby, Emerald, Diamond. Alan rapidly set down in order the first letter of each stone, and Marie, looking over his shoulder saw that they read thus:-- "ST PETER'S POOL [Illustration: triangle] RED" "Oh," she cried with a grasp. "St. Peter's Pool, the triangle, red," murmured Alan, still perplexed, till the feminine intuition of the girl came to his aid. "It's the well," she cried, "St. Peter's Well in St. Peter's Dell, can't you see. The jewels are hidden in some place marked with a red triangle. Oh I am sure of it, because the word is 'red,' and the stones of the triangle are rubies." "By heaven, Marie! I believe you are right." "Of course I am. Simon Ferrier came back to England to hide the jewels." "No Marie, he returned to give them to Julian Inderwick. But since that man was a profligate and would have squandered them, Ferrier evidently hid them somewhere about St. Peter's Well, or pool, as he calls it on the tail of the bird, and marked the hiding-place with a red triangle. And of course, if George Inderwick had been able to read the riddle he would easily have found the gems. My word!" Alan stared at the golden bird, now reft of the secret it had held for so long, "and to think that the solution is so easy after all. Why those rings such as I have described my grandmother having, are by no means rare." "I believe Simon Ferrier did make this silver one," said Marie, fingering the article thoughtfully, "since it is a kind of key to the riddle." Alan shrugged his shoulders. "I believe that George Inderwick found it as hard to guess as the mystery of the peacock. At all events he never arrived at the solution of the thing. And so easy, so easy after all." "Perhaps the very ease made it difficult to guess," suggested Marie. "Like Columbus and the egg," laughed Fuller, taking back a tray of gems to the hiding-place. "Let us put these away, Marie, and then go down to the well. We must close the panel in case that man Moon left behind should come in and learn too much." He was thinking of the stiletto as he spoke. "Oh, that is all right," said Miss Inderwick, assisting to replace the jewels; "he went away this morning. Inspector Moon sent him a wire saying he was to go back to town." "Oh!" said Alan thoughtfully, as he closed the panel, and it resumed its innocent look. "I expect Moon has given up all hope of Sorley returning to this place. Well, I expect he is right. It would be foolish of your uncle, dear, to thrust his head into the lion's jaws." "I am sure he will return and prove his innocence," cried Marie resolutely; "and won't he be pleased when he learns that we have found the Begum's jewels, Alan?" "We haven't found them yet," answered Fuller, determined in his own mind that whether innocent or guilty the man should not meddle with the girl's property. "Let us go and look, Marie. Ask Henny or Jenny for a crowbar." "What for?" "We must pry up the stone under which the treasure is hidden. I expect, as you suggest, that it is marked with a red triangle." "I don't expect we have a crowbar," said Miss Inderwick dubiously, but went into the back part of the house on her errand, nevertheless, while Alan took his way to St. Peter's dell. He surveyed what Ferrier had called "The Pool" in his cryptogram, and expected that he had done so, since there was no gem's name beginning with "W" which he could have placed in the peacock's tail. The man had engraved the letter "K" on the ring as a hint to his master, as was evident, but had not taken the same liberty with the peacock, since it might solve the riddle too easily. "And hang it, how easy it was after all," said Alan, who could not get over this point. Then, while awaiting the coming of Marie, he surveyed the well. There it was, standing amongst the still leafless trees, and amidst the rank slushy grasses, a circle of stone, surmounted by the wooden canopy with its mellow red roof. The windlass was rotten with age, and the rope, formerly used to wind up the bucket, was conspicuous by its absence, as was the bucket itself. Fuller peered into the depths and saw the water far down twinkling like a star in the uncertain light, which filtered to the depths. The sides of the well were of massive masonry, green with moss and slime, while the circle above ground was overgrown with herbage. In the hope of finding the marked stone, he began to tear away the grasses and briars and ivy, scratching his hands considerably as he did so. To save these he put on his stout deerskin gloves, which he fortunately had slipped into his pocket. Marie found him thus occupied. "We have a crowbar after all," she cried, bending under the article she mentioned, along with a spade and a coil of rope. "One of the workmen who was building a new wall at the back of the house, left it a year ago." "Why have you brought the rope, Marie?" "I thought you might have to go down the well," she said quickly, "we can fasten it to the windlass." Alan eyed the same dubiously. "I fear it's too rotten to support us, or rather to support me," he remarked; "and we may not have to explore the depths of the well." "The pool, the pool," cried Marie, throwing down her load; "why do you drag away those grasses, Alan?" He explained, and she saw the necessity of helping, although to save her tender hands he transferred his gloves to her. The two, buoyed up with the hope of treasure went to work with a will and soon the cemented circle of gray stones round the well was quite bare. Alan searched, as did Marie, but on no stone, could they find the desired red triangle. "It must be down the well," said Fuller with a shrug; "but I'm not going to trust that rotten windlass. "Tie the rope to this tree," said Marie pointing to a young beech which was growing close to the opening, and, as Alan thought this was an excellent idea--he gave her a kiss for the suggestion--he fastened the rope to its trunk and then made a slipknot, which he bound under his arms. "Now dear take a turn on the rope round the tree and lower me gently, that will prevent the strain being too great." "I hope so," said Miss Inderwick, doing as she was told. "I don't want you to be drowned." Alan slipped over the edge of the well, and the rope grew taunt from himself to the beech, where the several twists round the trunk stopped the drag being too great on Marie. Nevertheless she felt anxious when she saw her lover disappear into the dark depths. "Oh do take care, darling," she cried holding on to the rope at the part beyond the twists round the beech-tree trunk, "do take care." A laugh came up which sounded very clearly, for Alan was only a few feet below the surface. He looked round and round, twisting himself with his hands, and thrusting his toes into the crevices of the stones to gain foothold, and not to strain either the beech-tree's strength or that of the girl. But the moss and the lichens grew so thickly that he could not see the surface of the stonework, and therefore could espy no triangle. And small wonder, since it was over one hundred years since the treasure had been stowed away by Inderwick's faithful servant. "I wish I had a knife," muttered Alan, and Marie heard him. "Get out of the well, and I'll fetch one," she said fastening the rope to the tree trunk firmly; "I sha'n't be a minute," and she flew up the path. "Bring a carving-knife," Alan shouted after her, getting his head above the surface circle of stones, and Marie waved her hand to show that she heard him. But he did not get out of the well, as she advised, but braced his feet and shoulders against the masonry and continued his examination. But when she returned with the knife he was still at fault. "Clever darling," he said, taking the carving-knife and dropping down again. Then he went to work, while Marie called out every now and then from the beech-tree to know if he was safe. Everywhere he scraped the moss off the stones and laid bare one row after the other, but for at least one hour he failed to find what he sought. He was just thinking that it would be as well to get out and have a rest, particularly as Marie was imploring him to do so, when suddenly she heard him shout. "Dear, have you found it?" she cried, not daring to leave the rope or the tree, lest the first might slip from the last. "Yes! yes. Here is the red triangle marked on the fourth row of stones--on one big one, that is. Tie up the rope, Marie and give me the crowbar. I won't need to descend further." The girl did as she was told, and leaning over the edge of the well, handed her lover the crowbar. Already Alan had worked away at the interstices of the marked stone with the knife point. He deepened these sufficiently to slip in the point of the crowbar, which was rather blunt, and then began to strain in his effort to loosen the block. Marie anxiously looking down, heard him breathing hard with the effort, and implored him to take a rest. But Fuller was too anxious to find the treasure to do so, and with aching arms and legs--for he was resting his weight on them with his toes in a crevice--worked away desperately. Little by little, the mortar in the interstices of the block crumbled, as he drove in the crowbar, and finally the stone became so loose that he could ease it with his fingers. Again he shouted, and this time with relief, as the big stone splashed down into the dark waters below. "Have you got it, Alan?" cried Marie, quite sick with excitement. "Yes, I think so." He was feeling in the dark hole which the displaced stone had revealed; "but it doesn't seem to be very much. Only a small box. Oh Marie, there can't be many jewels in this." He handed up as he spoke a tin box of no great size, which Marie received with manifest disappointment, and went on groping. However he found nothing else, so emerged from the well, with his clothes considerably damaged, and with a red perspiring face, for the task had made him quite hot. "How can we open the thing?" asked Marie, when they sat on the edge of the well to examine the box, "It's locked." "Pooh! it's only tin," said Alan, and looked rather annoyed. "What a sell if this little thing contains the whole treasure." "Perhaps it's a big diamond," said Marie, watching her lover pry open the locked lid with the edge of the spade. "Perhaps," assented Alan dubiously, and worked away hard. It was not an easy job, in spite of the box being merely tin, but in the end he managed to get the lid off. "Huh! it's only papers." And that was all. Papers wrapped up in linen to preserve them from damp, though the box was dry enough, since it had been hermetically sealed by the stone block. One paper, on examination, proved to be a statement signed by the Begum and Rajah of Kam and their vizier, saying that the jewels, which were enumerated, had been given to George Inderwick because he had saved the life of the royal woman and her son. Then there was a letter to Inderwick written by Ferrier, which stated that he had placed the jewels in Yarbury's Bank, Monks Lane, Cheapside, London. "To be given up to you when you produce to Mr. Yarbury the peacock of jewels," ended the instructions. CHAPTER XVIII THE TREASURE HUNT "Have you the papers, Alan?" "Yes dear." "And the key which came out of that box?" "Yes, dear." "Then I have the golden peacock in this bag of Uncle Ran's," ended Marie, quite satisfied that all was well. With Fuller she occupied a first-class carriage of the London express from Lewes, and the two had it all to themselves, since Alan had bribed the guard to keep out other passengers. As the lovers were so excited over their solution of the riddle and their discovery--if not of the treasure--at least of certain evidence that the same existed, it was little to be wondered at that they could talk of nothing else. Hence the necessity for a compartment all to themselves, for they did not wish anyone else to know of their newly-acquired fortune, until it was in their own possession. Then Alan intended to advertise the affair far and wide through the medium of the daily newspapers, so that Mr. Sorley--wherever he might be--should become cognizant of the fact, as well as Mr. Morad-Bakche. It was just as well to let both these gentlemen know that Miss Inderwick had the jewels, and intended to keep them. Fuller was quite certain that he could safeguard her interests in every way, should the Indian try to gain what he had come so far to seek. As to Mr. Sorley, that gentleman being in his present straits, scarcely counted. But Marie wished him to know the truth, as she believed he would then return. Alan was of a different opinion. On the previous evening there had been great excitement at the vicarage when the lovers returned from their investigations and told the story of how they had guessed the riddle together, besides narrating, with much wealth of detail, the search down the well. Both Mr. and Mrs. Fuller had expressed the greatest surprise, as well they might, and both congratulated Marie on her good fortune. If indeed the jewels--as was hinted in Ferrier's story--were worth from one to two hundred thousand pounds, she would indeed be able to restore the family prestige and repair The Monastery. And then, as Marie intimated firmly, she intended to become Alan's wife, a declaration which Mrs. Fuller received with unfeigned joy, as she loved Marie as fondly as though she were her own flesh and blood. The vicar also was gratified, as of course if his son became the Squire of Belstone, that fact would help him greatly in controlling the parish. On the whole they had a very happy evening, and when Marie returned to The Monastery, she could not close an eye. Also next morning when Alan met her to catch the express, she informed him that she had heard strange noises during the night, and had been rather terrified. But of these things the two did not talk much until they were travelling towards London, and until Marie had assured herself that both she and Alan possessed the necessary articles to secure possession of the jewels. There was the letter of Simon Ferrier, and the signed agreement that the gems belonged to George Inderwick, besides a curiously shaped brass key which was supposed to open the box of gems now at Yarbury's Bank, Monks Lane, Cheapside, London. Finally Marie held tightly on to the bag which contained the golden peacock without the production of which she would not be able to take the jewels away, as she intended to do. "And I only hope," said Alan, when they were both satisfied that all was in order, "that Yarbury's Bank is still in existence." "Oh, Alan! I hope so. Why shouldn't it be?" "Well the jewels were deposited there one hundred and fifty years ago more or less my dear, and it is possible that the bank may have smashed. There have been plenty of panics during the century." "What would have become of the gems had the bank smashed?" asked Marie in a timid and rather tearful voice, for it was a terrible thought to think that her dreams might dissolve into thin air. Alan shrugged his shoulders. "Really, my dear, I can't say. They might be passed on to another bank, or might remain with the reconstructed old one. On the other hand they may have been stolen and dispersed. I never heard tell of Yarbury's Bank myself; but then I am not closely acquainted with what goes on in the city." "I daren't think of it not being there," shuddered Miss Inderwick. "Oh it would be a shame if we lost everything at the eleventh hour." "Well," said Fuller with a philosophy he was very far from feeling, "let us hope for the best, and talk of other things until we arrive at Monks Lane. These noises, Marie? weren't you dreaming?" "No, dear, no. Certainly not. I was wide awake. I fancied I heard a scream; it sounded like the cry of a woman in distress. Then there were footsteps--muffled footsteps far below. Of course The Monastery is haunted, so I thought it was the ghosts." "Are there more than one?" asked Alan, suppressing a skeptical smile. "Oh yes. There are two monks, and one cavalier, and a lady who has no head at all," said Marie solemnly. "Granny knows all the stories, and some of them are just horrid. This morning when I told her about the noises, she said that Henny and Jenny and she had heard them several times during the last week, but she believed they were only the ghosts. Granny is quite proud that we should have them, as we are such an old family." Alan shuddered. "Well, dear, I sincerely hope that when we live at The Monastery, these uneasy spirits will take their departure. I don't believe in ghosts; all the same, I don't like odd noises. Marie," he sat up suddenly as a thought struck him. "I know what you're going to say, Alan," she cried quickly. "What?" He looked at her sharply. "That the noises might have been made by Uncle Ran." "Yes I did, my dear. It is just possible that he may have come back secretly to The Monastery, knowing that Moon would not search there. And a very good idea it would be if he did; safe as houses." Marie shook her head solemnly. "No. If Uncle Ran had returned he would have let me know, since he could be certain that I would not betray him. And he would require food and drink, which would be another reason for him to let me know he was hiding. No, Alan. I tell you the cry I heard was that of a woman, and I believe that Miss Grison is in the house." Fuller stared. "What on earth put that into your head?" "Well, she knows all the secret passages and chambers of The Monastery better than I do, since she lived there for so long before I was born. As Uncle Ran had the peacock, she may have thought that he left it behind, and may have come down to steal it. She uttered that cry I am sure." "I don't think so," said Fuller scouting the idea, "She wouldn't be such a fool, Marie. However, when we have been to Yarbury's Bank--if the blessed place still exists, that is--we can drive to Thimble Square, and see if she is in or out of London." "She's out of it, and in The Monastery," cried Miss Inderwick very decisively, "It's no use talking, Alan, I am sure it was she I heard screaming. And if she is there--which I am sure of--she will probably let that horrid Indian into the house, so that he can take the peacock. I sha'n't sleep there to-night, Alan, but at the vicarage, I don't want to be murdered by that Mr. Bakche as he murdered poor----" "Marie, that is all theoretical." "I don't care, it is true," insisted Marie, and although Fuller argued the point until they arrived at Victoria Station, she still held to her opinion, rather to the young man's annoyance. He had not thought Miss Inderwick was so obstinate, and told her as much in a most provoking manner, whereat the girl pouted. Of course Alan had to kiss her into a more amiable mood and admit that he was entirely wrong, and make sundry apologies for being the most disagreeable man in the world. The two were driving along Piccadilly in a taxi, before this comedy was finished, as such comedies always do, with the subjugation of the stronger by the weaker. "And you're quite horrid, aren't you?" finished Marie, pinching his arm. "Quite," admitted Alan gravely. "And I'm an angel." "Rather; an archangel if you like!" "Then I forgive you, dear. No, don't kiss me. You'll spoil the set of my hat, and make the driver turn round. And--and--oh Alan," she suddenly dropped her bantering tone and became anxious. "I do hope Yarbury's Bank is in existence. Where did you tell the man to drive to?" "Monks Lane, Cheapside, dear. As he is doing so, thank heaven _that_ is yet in existence. So much we have to be thankful for." In Cheapside, and at the entrance of a narrow side street which the driver assured them was the lane in question, they alighted, and walked down it after the taxi had been dismissed. Both Marie and Alan crooked their necks staring upward to see the much-desired name; but not finding it, the lawyer asked an office-boy who came out of a near building if he could direct him to Yarbury's Bank. To the relief of the couple, an answer came terse and sharp, that it was number twenty, just round the corner, which meant that the place was situated where the lane suddenly, so to speak, crooked an elbow. "Oh thank goodness!" murmured Marie, when they came face to face with a very dingy building, black with age and grime, and wedged in between two tall houses which overtopped it considerably. "It's Yarbury's!" "Sure enough," replied Fuller, staring hard at the wire blinds--half blinds they were--which displayed the magic name in dull gold letters. "Cheer up, Marie; since the bank is here, we are certain to find the treasure." "I hope so," answered the girl doubtfully, "but I shall believe nothing until I see the gems with my very own eyes." Alan laughed, and led the way into a broad and low room of vast proportions filled with mahogany counters, protected by shining brass railings, and a number of desks, high and low, with shaded electric lamps over each; for the place was darkish even at noon. A number of clerks were busy with the usual business of the bank, and two or three customers were paying in, and drawing out money. On inquiring if the manager could be seen, a message was sent and an answer received that the great man would accord an interview to the strangers. Alan sent in his card and that of Miss Inderwick, and after another short delay the two were conducted into a fair-sized room at the very back of the building, to be welcomed by an elderly gentleman with white hair and a brisk expression. He was small and neat and very well dressed, and his manners were scrupulously polite. Yet as he placed a couple of chairs for his visitors, Alan noticed that he cast a curious glance at Marie. "What can I do for you?" he asked, addressing himself to Fuller. "You are the manager of Yarbury's Bank?" inquired Alan rather unnecessarily, but anxious to be quite sure of his ground. "Certainly. Berwick is my name, and I have been in charge for some years." "It is a very old bank, isn't it?" asked Marie timidly. "Very, my dear young lady!" "One hundred and fifty years more or less," put in Fuller suddenly. "More rather than less," said Mr. Berwick with a genial smile, "but how do you know, Mr.--er," he glanced at the card lying on his table, "Mr. Fuller?" "If you know the name of Inderwick, Mr. Berwick, you may have some idea of how I come to know." Again Berwick cast a look in Marie's direction. "Inderwick! Yes, I do know that name. It was mentioned in the newspapers some little time ago, and had to do with a murder case connected with Rotherhithe." "And with a peacock," said Marie quickly. "Yes." Berwick scratched his chin meditatively. "It was supposed--I am quoting from the newspapers--that the man at Rotherhithe was murdered for the sake of the peacock, not a living bird, of course, but a certain ornament." Marie nodded. "Which is the luck of our family," she finished. "Oh, then you are one of the Inderwicks of Belstone?" "Yes," said Alan slowly, "she is the last representative of the family, and the heiress of George Inderwick. Do you know that name?" "I do," assented Berwick alertly. "On reading the newspapers it led to my recalling certain transactions, which--but pardon me." Mr. Berwick interrupted himself, "how can I be sure that this is Miss Inderwick?" Marie was about to indignantly assert that she alone had the right to the name, when Alan prevented her. "That is a very natural question, sir," he remarked, opening the black bag, "perhaps this will assure you of the identity of this young lady." Berwick stared when the peacock in all its glittering glory was placed under the electric light, and his ruddy face grew a trifle pale as he pushed back his chair uneasily. "It's the peacock," he muttered. "You know about the peacock then?" questioned Alan sharply. "Yes! When taking charge of the affairs of Yarbury's Bank I looked into all business old and new; also searching amongst old documents and examining deeds and papers dealing with various transactions which are in our strong-rooms below. I came across the account of the peacock, and the meaning of the peacock, belonging to George Inderwick, although a certain box which had to do with that bird was placed here by Simon Ferrier." "Inderwick's servant," said Alan dryly, "hum! it seems to me that we are on the right track, Marie." She nodded again, but Mr. Berwick, who still seemed much perturbed, moistened his lips and spoke unsteadily. "I can certainly supply you with information, which I can guess you require; but before doing so, I should like to send for Inspector Moon." "But why----" began Marie hotly, only to be interrupted by her lover. "I quite understand what you mean, Mr. Berwick," he said calmly, "and, of course, under the circumstances, it is necessary that you should take every precaution to safeguard the interests of the bank." "Precaution, Mr. Fuller?" stammered the manager uneasily. "I also," continued the lawyer imperturbably, "have read the account in the newspapers of the interview with Miss Louisa Grison. She declared therein that if the peacock were discovered, the assassin of her brother could be brought to justice. Is that not so?" "Yes," admitted Berwick readily, "it is so." "Since we have brought the peacock, which it is necessary to do, in order for Miss Inderwick to obtain possession of the box deposited here over one hundred years ago by Simon Ferrier, you naturally wish to know how we come to possess it." "But surely Mr. Berwick doesn't think that we murdered Mr. Grison to obtain this," said Marie indignantly, touching the glowing splendor of the bird. "No! no! no!" the manager assured her hastily, "nothing was further from my thoughts, my dear young lady. But, as Mr. Fuller sensibly observes, it is necessary for me to safeguard the interests of the bank." "All the same you did think that I or Mr. Fuller had killed Mr. Grison," persisted Marie, her obstinacy again coming uppermost. "No! really, really----" "Never mind," remarked Alan impatiently, and cutting short the man's protestations, "it is natural that Mr. Berwick should suspect us, in the face of Miss Grison's statement. Better send for Inspector Moon, who has charge of the Rotherhithe case; and also I must ask you to send to the office of _The Latest News_ for Richard Latimer." "Why?" asked the man rising and staring. "Because he can prove how I became possessed of the peacock." "I shall do what you ask, and you will excuse me, Mr. Fuller, if I am rather punctilious in dealing with the matter." "I quite understand, Mr. Berwick. The affair is an odd one, and when we tell you what we know, you will find it even odder than you suspect. In the meantime, please telephone for Mr. Latimer and Inspector Moon, mentioning my name to both of them, and Miss Inderwick's also, if you like." With a look of wonder written all over his ruddy face Berwick departed and personally telephoned for the two necessary persons in question. Marie rather fumed while he was absent, as woman-like she expected to be taken as genuine on her bare word. "He thinks we are swindlers," she said crossly. "And small blame to him," rejoined Alan good-humoredly, for it was evident that the gems were all right, as he judged from Berwick's hints. "You can't expect the man, my dear, to hand over thousands of pounds worth of jewels without making inquiries.' "The peacock is enough," said Marie stubbornly. "The peacock is the cause of the trouble," retorted her lover; "but here is Mr. Berwick. Well, sir?" "I have received a reply from both," said the manager, resuming his seat, and looking apologetically at Marie, "they will be here as soon as possible. Pardon me taking these precautions, and perhaps while you are waiting for Inspector Moon and Mr. Latimer, you will explain how you came to find out that the box of Ferrier was in our bank?" "We guessed the riddle," said Marie suddenly. "Oh!" Berwick looked at the peacock in a puzzled way. "I knew from what the newspapers said that there was a riddle to be solved, although I can't see what this golden ornament has to do with it. Did you not know that the box was at Yarbury's Bank?" he addressed Miss Inderwick. "No; nor did anyone else, Mr. Berwick. Only when Mr. Fuller and I guessed the riddle did we learn the whereabouts of the box. It is here then?" "Certainly," Mr. Berwick assured her promptly, "and has been here for over one hundred years. When I looked into matters on taking charge of the bank, I, like all former managers, became acquainted with the fact that a box of jewels had been deposited with us by Simon Ferrier on behalf of his master, George Inderwick, shortly after the Battle of Plassey. We have the letter of instructions concerning it." "What are the instructions?" asked Alan. "The box of jewels is to be held by the bank authorities, whom I at present represent, until someone brings a certain golden peacock studded with gems, certain papers explaining the peacock, and others dealing with the transfer of the jewels from the Rajah and Begum of Kam to George Inderwick, and finally a key which will fit the box." Marie looked at Alan, who brought out the objects named. "There you are, Mr. Berwick," and he placed them under the manager's very nose. "Oh, ah, excuse me," said Berwick, deeply interested at the sight of the old documents, and forthwith devoted himself to reading them. As the English was odd, to say the least of it, and the handwriting was crabbed--apparently that of a somewhat uneducated person--he was some time deciphering what was before him. Both Marie and Alan waited his pleasure quietly. "I am quite satisfied," he said when he finished his reading, "that these are the necessary papers, and the key can speak for itself if it fits the lock of the steel box. Meanwhile, and until our two friends arrive, Mr. Fuller, perhaps you and Miss Inderwick will explain how you came to guess the riddle which is referred to in the letter from Simon Ferrier to his master." "And you can tell him also how we come to have the peacock," said Marie, who still felt annoyed by the suspicious attitude of Berwick, although that was considerably modified by the production of the papers and the key. "No," said Alan decisively, "I shall tell that when Moon and Latimer arrive; there is no need to repeat the story twice. But it will serve to while away the time if we tell Mr. Berwick about the riddle." "Certainly it will," said the manager in a lively tone; "and don't be angry with me, Miss Inderwick, I must protect the interests of the bank, you know." Marie smiled and began to be somewhat ashamed of her irritation. "You must excuse me, Mr. Berwick," she said cleverly, "but the discovery of my fortune has somewhat excited my nerves." "Very natural, very natural indeed. Well, Mr. Fuller, what about the riddle?" Fuller lost no time, but related the various stages by which he and Marie had been led to guess the mystery of the peacock's tail. He produced the silver ring by way of illustration, and finally convinced Mr. Berwick of the manner in which the secret had been discovered. "And the annoying part of the whole business," concluded Alan, "is that the riddle is so easy." "When guessed, Mr. Fuller, when guessed," said Berwick staring at the peacock, "but I assure you that I don't wonder it has been hard to solve, and had not the accident of the silver ring, or rather that of the letter 'K' on the silver ring led you to the truth, I doubt if you would ever have solved it." Berwick still eyed the bird steadily. "Most extraordinary! Ferrier was too clever, however, if I may say so; he concealed the treasure so well that the man he intended to benefit never did. Fate----" he bowed gallantly to Marie---- "reserved the gems of the Begum for fairer hands." "Then you will give me the box," said Marie, timidly. "Of course; it rightfully belongs to you, since you have fulfilled the conditions of Ferrier's letter of instructions to the then manager of Yarbury's Bank. Here is the key, the peacock, the letter of Ferrier to his master, and the assignment of the jewels to the same person by the rulers of Kam. Oh yes, Miss Inderwick, the fortune is yours, and I congratulate you." "What is the value of the jewels?" asked Alan abruptly, and drawing a breath of relief when he heard this speech. "Really I can't tell you, Mr. Fuller. There is no mention of their value in the letter of instructions, and of course the box has never been open, since only the key you have brought can do that. Then----" Berwick was interrupted by a clerk entering with a card inscribed with the name of Latimer, and Dick entered all alive with curiosity to hear why he had been summoned to such an unexpected place. After greeting Miss Inderwick and his friend he began to ask eager questions, which Alan proceeded to answer, until Inspector Moon arrived a few moments later. The officer opened his eyes wide when he saw the golden peacock on the table. "How did it come here?" he asked suspiciously, and looked at the company. Berwick explained the circumstances of Alan and Miss Inderwick's visit, and gave both Moon and Latimer an account of the trust held by Yarbury's Bank. Then Fuller explained more directly about the peacock. "Sorley called at my chambers on that night he escaped," said Alan, addressing the astonished inspector. "Mr. Latimer and I took him to Miss Grison as he wished her to acknowledge certain things. He intended to give himself up, but--as I learned--he ran away at the eleventh hour. Have you arrested him yet, Mr. Inspector?" "No. We have searched far and wide, but he is still at large. Still, Mr. Fuller, this explanation doesn't show how you became possessed of the peacock." "Mr. Sorley left it behind in this black bag," said Alan readily, "you may remember, Mr. Inspector, that when you were taking him away, he called out to me to remember the black bag. I did not know what he meant, but when Mr. Latimer and I returned to our chambers, we found the bag there, and in it the golden peacock." This seemed satisfactory to Moon, especially as Latimer vouched for the truth of the story. "Sorley is undoubtedly guilty," he remarked, and Alan had to press Marie's arm to prevent her bursting out with an indignant denial, "but you should have brought the peacock to me." "Not at all, Mr. Inspector," said Fuller coolly and resolutely, "that is the property of Miss Inderwick here, and was stolen by Miss Grison over twenty years ago, because she thought that Mr. Sorley had treated her brother in a cruel way. It is only just that it should return to its owner, and I don't think that you can take possession of it." "No," said Moon reluctantly, "I suppose not, since Miss Inderwick certainly possesses it legally, and came by it--according to your story, vouched for by Mr. Latimer--in a perfectly honest way. I understand from hints given, Mr. Fuller, that you have solved the riddle alluded to by Miss Grison in her published statement." "Have you, Fuller?" asked Latimer in excited tones. "Yes. Marie and I found it out, more by accident than in any logical way, Dick. See here!" and to Moon and the other man Fuller explained the method pursued, and showed the meaning of the precious stones in the tail of the bird. Berwick chuckled and rubbed his hands at the astonishment displayed by the newcomers, then quietly left the room. While Moon and Latimer were still expressing their surprise, and examining the bird, Berwick returned with one of the clerks carrying a good-sized box. "Here are the jewels," he said expansively, when the clerk had been dismissed, and the box was placed on the table. "Use the key, Miss Inderwick." They all crowded round to admire the box, which in itself was really curious and artistic. It was of polished steel, greatly tarnished by damp and age and sundry batterings which might be ascribed to its career in India before Ferrier had used it to store the jewels. The steel was enclosed in a network of delicate brass, scrolled and twisted and plaited and woven in a most elaborate manner. It was deep and rather large, which augured well for the quantity of gems it contained. Marie with a fluttering heart inserted the key, while the others looked on eagerly. She had some difficulty in turning it, since the lock had not been used for so long; but Alan aided her with his strong wrist, and with a click the key did its work. Then appeared the sandalwood lining of the box and a rich piece of Indian silk covering the contents. Miss Inderwick twitched this away, and a cry of amazement and admiration rose from everyone. In the glare of the light a perfect glory of color and radiance flashed out. "Why, there must be a million pounds' worth," muttered Moon, astonished. He might well say so, for the sight was enough to bewilder a miser. No pearls were visible, as they would have lost their color in the long darkness to which the gems had been submitted. But there were emeralds, rubies, sapphires and opals of many hues. Some of the precious stones were loose and polished, while others, also loose, were uncut. Still many jewels were set in various golden and silver ornaments, such as nose-rings, bangles, anklets, brooches, belts, and adornments for the head. Four trays piled with these treasures were lifted from the box, and at the very bottom, lying on a pad of rose-colored silk, were many loose diamonds glittering with multi-hued fires like the suns of innumerable solar systems. It was a royal heritage that Marie had entered into possession of, and worthy of a princess. "And all for you and me, Alan," she whispered, joyously slipping her hand into that of her lover. "No more trouble now, dear." "Well," said Moon, reflectively. "I don't wonder that Sorley risked his neck for an Arabian Nights' heap of jewels of this sort." "He did not," cried Miss Inderwick, who could not be restrained this time; "my uncle is perfectly innocent." "For your sake I sincerely trust that he is, Miss Inderwick," said Moon in grave tones; "and I hope he will prove your trust in him by giving himself up to the law. But this is not the time or place to talk of these things, and I do not wish to spoil your pleasure in inheriting a fortune of gems sufficiently beautiful to make a queen envious." "I shall devote the fortune to proving my uncle's innocence," said Marie haughtily and stubbornly. "In the meanwhile, Mr. Berwick, put the box back in your strong-room along with tile peacock." "Don't you wish to take it away with you?" asked Alan quickly. "No. I don't like those noises in The Monastery, and I am sure that Miss Grison and that horrid Indian have something to do with them. If I took the gems down she and he would steal them." "Noises," repeated Inspector Moon reflectively, "and in Mr. Sorley's house?" "It is my house," said Marie quickly, "and if Miss Grison is down there, I shall order her out." "You will be quite right in doing so, Miss Inderwick," said Inspector Moon with a bow, "and now I shall take my leave with renewed congratulations." He went out repeating under his breath the word "Noises!" and Alan overhearing guessed that Marie's statement had aroused his suspicions as to the whereabouts of the much-wanted Sorley. He hoped that, after all, these same noises were due to Miss Grison, and felt anxious to call at Thimble Square after the box of gems and the peacock had been carried back to the strong-room of Yarbury's Bank. "Let us visit Miss Grison now, Marie," he said when they were in Monks Lane again, with Dick beside them. "You won't find her at home," said Latimer. "I called, but she has gone away." Marie turned triumphantly to Alan. "There!" she cried, "what did I tell you, my dear? That horrid woman is hiding in The Monastery after all." CHAPTER XIX AT DAWN It had been Alan's intention to send Marie back to Belstone by herself, and ask his father to meet her at Lewes, so that she could sleep at the vicarage. He had spent a great deal of time over the business connected with the murder of Grison and the finding of the jewels, therefore his clients were being neglected, much to their annoyance. His days of searching could scarcely have said to have been wasted, since they had ended in the acquisition of a fortune. Certainly it did not belong to him, but as he was to marry the girl who possessed it, in the end he would undoubtedly benefit. All the same he decided that he would have to attend to his own affairs, and it was only the fact that Miss Grison was not at Thimble Square, which caused him to change his mind. He therefore returned to the village with Marie, and what is more, insisted that Dick should return with him. "We must get to the bottom of these matters," said Alan late that afternoon; "and if Marie will not sleep at The Monastery, Dick, you and I must do so." "Oh, Alan," cried Miss Inderwick nervously, "why need you and Mr. Latimer do that when there is no need?" "I think there is every need," rejoined her lover dryly. "Your remark as to inexplicable noises has aroused Moon's suspicions, and I should not be surprised if he either sent back that detective to keep watch, or came himself to-night or to-morrow." "But how can our sleeping there alter Moon's intentions?" asked Latimer. "I want to learn the meaning of these noises, so you and I, Dicky, can keep watch, while Marie is safe at the vicarage." "If the noises are caused by Sorley," said Dick leisurely, and rather uncomfortably, "and we find that he has gone to earth there, you can't expect me to hold my tongue." "Uncle Ran is innocent," protested Marie furiously. "If he is--and I sincerely hope for your sake, that such is the case--it will be much better for him to come forward and face the worst. Otherwise, he will remain a hunted fugitive. Believe me, Miss Inderwick, by refusing to compound a felony--for that is what silence in this matter amounts to, as Alan will tell you--I am doing Mr. Sorley a greater service than you think." "I agree with Dick," said Fuller quickly, and before Marie could make another protest; "it is best to bring matters to a head. If Mr. Sorley is indeed hiding at The Monastery, he is bound to be discovered some time, especially after the unconscious hint you gave Inspector Moon, my dear." "I don't believe Uncle Ran is there," declared Marie pouting. "If he were he would look to me to give him food and drink, and he knows--as I said before, Alan--that he can trust me. It is that horrid woman." "If Miss Grison is there, all the more reason Dick and I should sleep in the house, and learn what she is driving at." Latimer nodded. "I'll come with you, Alan," he said quickly. "Since Miss Grison is not in her house, it's just possible she may be at Belstone." "When did you call to see her?" "Yesterday afternoon," explained Dick quietly. "I wished to learn how she knew that her precious brother had murdered a man outside Chin Chow's opium den." "Moon told her that, and she swore that Baldwin was incapable of such a wicked deed," replied Alan with a shrug; "she seems to have a most touching belief in the creature, even though he is dead." "Well, I learned that Miss Grison had gone away at noon for a few days." "Where has she gone to?" asked Marie sharply. "Her servants could not tell me, since she has left no address. All she said was that she would be absent for a few days, and she left her establishment in charge of the head waiter." "That secrecy shows that she is at Belstone," cried Miss Inderwick triumphantly; "it is just the kind of underhand thing she would do." "Well," said Alan, settling the question, "she may suspect that Sorley is hiding in The Monastery and may wish to catch him. If she gets into the house, Dick and I can compel her to state her reason. But indeed, Marie, I don't see how she could enter The Monastery without Henny or Jenny or Granny Trent seeing her." "You don't know what a curious house it is, Alan. There are ways of getting out and in and hiding and spying, which no one would believe. I know of some myself, but Miss Grison is better acquainted with the place than I, as Granny always said that she explored the house thoroughly when she was my mother's companion. I'm sure you'll catch her; and if you do, tell her that we have found the jewels. That will settle her." "Nothing will settle her until Sorley is proved innocent or guilty," said Fuller gravely. "The woman is obsessed by one idea, and that is revenge. I only wish we could find Jotty, for he knows a lot, I am sure, which could put things straight." "Jotty can't be found," said Latimer lazily, "although Moon and his underlings are keeping their eyes open. He hasn't gone back to Miss Grison's or to Mother Slaig, either. He has vanished as completely as Mr. Sorley has. However, we shall see what can be done by our sleeping a night in your old family mansion, Miss Inderwick. I'll come down." This being settled, the trio went to the station, and in due time arrived at Lewes. They talked during the journey about the jewels, and Dick had again to listen to the account of the solution of the riddle, in which, after all, he was so deeply interested that he did not object to the twice-told tale. Then Marie chattered about her good fortune, quoted the prophecy which certainly now seemed to be fulfilled, speculated on the amount of money which the sale of the gems would bring her, and talked of the improvements she would make in her family mansion. All this may seem rather heartless, when her uncle was under a cloud of suspicion; but the girl was so thoroughly convinced that the man was innocent and that her newly-acquired fortune would enable her to prove his innocence, by employing the best detective talent to hunt down the true criminal, that she did not worry over the matter so much as might have been expected. Moreover, her uncle had always behaved selfishly to her, so she did not think that trouble would harm him for the time being. Indeed she hoped that it might improve him into something less egotistical. On arriving at Lewes, they found Mr. Fuller in person waiting for them in his pony-chaise, bubbling over with unexpected news. "I am glad you have returned, Marie," he said, as he assisted the girl to get in; "a man has been asking for you." "Who is he?" "An Indian gentleman called----" "Morad-Bakche," interrupted Alan breathlessly, and with a glance at Dick. "What does he want with Marie?" "Perhaps he has learned that I went to Rotherhithe," murmured Marie, but too low for the vicar to hear. "I don't know what he wants," said Mr. Fuller rather irritably, "he is stopping at The Red Fox, I hear, having come down this morning. He called at The Monastery to see Marie, and not finding her there, he came to the vicarage. He declined to believe that Marie was in town, although Henny told him so. However I convinced him." "You didn't say why Marie had gone up, father," said Alan, in alarm. "No no. Why should I? I simply said that Marie would return, and Mr. Bakche is on the watch." "Don't see him, Marie," said Alan quickly. "Dick and I can interview him privately and learn what he has come about. And father, Marie will sleep to-night at our house, since she is afraid to remain at The Monastery. I and Latimer stay there. "Why?" asked the vicar sharply. "Marie will tell you while you drive back to Belstone, father. We can't all get into this small trap, so Dick and I will walk." "Very good," said Mr. Fuller gathering up the reins, "but tell me, both of you, about the jewels." "We have found Yarbury's Bank and the jewels also," said Marie gaily, "I can relate our day's experience while you drive, dear Mr. Fuller. And, Alan, do come to the vicarage before you go to sleep at The Monastery." "Yes; Dick and I can spend the evening with you and mother and father. Afterwards we can walk over to your house to sleep there. I shall call and tell granny--with your permission--to get a couple of beds ready for us. Only don't you speak to Morad-Bakche, my darling; refer him to me." Marie nodded and waved her hand as the vicar--who was rather bewildered by all this mystery--drove the pony-chaise out of the station yard. The two young men braced their muscles and started on the five miles' tramp to Belstone in very good spirits. Alan fancied, and communicated his fancy to his friend, that the presence of Bakche augured good, since the man undoubtedly knew something, and would be willing to impart it if he shared the fortune. "But why should he?" objected Dick, lighting his pipe; "the assignment of the gems to George Inderwick puts him out of court." "Marie wants to use some of the money to clear her uncle's name," explained Alan gravely, "and although I don't like Sorley, I am willing that she should do so. It will be worth the money." "That depends if Bakche can say anything useful," growled Dick doubtfully. "I am certain that he can, since he hinted something of the sort to me. He knew Grison at Rotherhithe also, and knew that he had the peacock." "No!" said Latimer, greatly surprised. "Yes, indeed," and Alan related Marie's daring visit to Mother Slaig, and what she had discovered regarding the movements of the Indian. "She's a plucky girl," said Dick, referring to Marie; "fancy her tackling that horrible old woman. Hum! So Bakche was in the swim also, was he? I wonder if he murdered the man himself?" "I don't think so; but we can ask him, for here he is." Fuller's sharp eyes had seen the tall figure of the Indian almost running along the high road, and as the atmosphere was very clear he saw at some distance the brown tint of his face. Bakche met them quite breathless, and explained his haste. "I came down to see Miss Inderwick," he said, rather short of wind. "I met her--in the carriage--with--the--the clergyman. She refers me to you--Mr.--Mr. Fuller." "I am conducting all business on Miss Inderwick's account," said Alan in a quiet tone; "but why are you in such a hurry, Mr. Bakche?" "I thought that I might lose you. I stay at the village inn to-night, as I stayed last July; but I wish to see Miss Inderwick this evening, or you as her representative," he looked hesitatingly at Latimer. "My friend knows all about the matter of the Rotherhithe crime," said Alan quickly, "you can speak frankly before him." "How do you know that I came down to speak of the crime?" asked Bakche in a haughty tone. "Because you know more about it than you have hitherto chosen to confess." Bakche replied, still haughty, "I object to the word 'confess,' Mr. Fuller; I have no feeling of guilt in the matter." "I don't say that you murdered the man yourself, but you know who did." "Perhaps I do," answered the man significantly; "but you can't expect me to give you that information without payment." "Oh, if you want money----" Bakche flushed through the clear brown of his skin. "I do not want money, Mr. Fuller; a gentleman of my rank does not take money. I only desire a share of the jewels which rightfully belong to me--the whole of them." "I think not," said Alan, while Latimer kept step beside him in silence, leaving his friend to adjust matters. "There was a proper assignment of the jewels made by the Rajah of Kam, the Begum and their vizier. All is in order, Mr. Bakche, and you have not a leg to stand on." The man was silent for a few moments in sheer surprise at this very authoritative statement. "How do you know this, Mr. Fuller?" "I read the statement myself, and saw the jewels of----" "You saw the jewels," almost shrieked Bakche, clenching and unclenching his hands; "then you have--you have----" he could speak no further. "Yes," growled Dick, breaking his self-imposed silence, "Fuller and Miss Inderwick have solved the riddle of the peacock, and have found the jewels." "Where are they? where are they?" "In a certain bank in London," said Alan quickly; "they are there now in Miss Inderwick's name along with the peacock." "So if you intended to burgle The Monastery," growled Dick grimly, "you only waste your time." Bakche drew himself up proudly. "You speak to an Indian gentleman, sir." "I speak to a man who wants certain jewels, and who will stick at nothing to get them," retorted Latimer bluntly; "how do we know but what you may have murdered Grison?" "I did not; and," added the man superciliously, "you will have some difficulty in proving that I did." "I am not so sure of that, Mr. Bakche," put in Fuller; "after all, Mother Slaig can prove that you frequently saw Grison at her house." Bakche looked startled and turned gray. "How can she prove that?" "By means of that tattooed snake you have on your right arm." "Ah-r-r-r! So you have been making inquiries? No," Bakche threw up his hand with a haughty gesture. "I don't want to hear what you have to say, for I admit that I often visited the house you mention. I knew that Grison had the peacock through his sister. She told me. I tried to get it from him, but he refused to surrender it. But I did not murder him." "But you know who did?" "Perhaps," said the Indian ambiguously, "only I shall not tell unless Miss Inderwick--as you suggested yourself, Mr. Fuller--gives me a portion of the jewels. If they did not belong to me rightfully I should not ask for even a part. I am," he drew himself up again, "an Indian gentleman." "Well," said Fuller, who wished to be fair, "I don't deny but what your family jewels being given away is hard on you. Miss Inderwick wishes to clear the character of her uncle, and will be willing to give you some of your own back--I expect you put it in that way to yourself--if you can denounce the true murderer." "I think I can." "Are you not sure." "I shall be sure if you can bring me face to face with that boy." "Jotty?" cried Latimer, taking his pipe from his mouth. "I always said that the brat knew a lot." "Yes. He knows a lot, and so do I," answered Bakche smiling dryly. "However you must give me a night to think over matters. To-morrow I shall call at The Monastery early in the day, and if we can come to an arrangement you shall have your minds set at rest. Always," ended the Indian taking off his cap, "always presuming that the boy is confronted with me." "Do you hint that Jotty is guilty?" asked Fuller suddenly. Bakche, who was turning away, looked back with an enigmatic smile. "A weak arm can drive a stiletto into a sleeping man, as easily as can a strong one, sir," and, still smiling, he walked off rapidly in the direction of Lewes, evidently objecting to further questions. "By heaven!" muttered Alan aghast, "he knows the truth." "It seems so," observed Dick with a thoughtful frown, "don't go after him, Alan. He will tell us all to-morrow, and you needn't be afraid of his running away, since his revelations mean that he gets a share of the gems." "But we have to confront him with Jotty; and where is the boy?" Dick shrugged his shoulders as they resumed their walk to Belstone. "Who knows? But even if he doesn't appear Bakche won't keep silent, for in that case he will lose his reward. Hum! I wonder if Jotty--as he infers--murdered Grison?" "Well, Jotty is a greedy little beast, and admired the peacock. As he was a protégé of Grison and could run in and out of his room at will, it might be that he stole in when the man was sleeping and killed him. Bakche seems to hint at that. And then," added Fuller, warming to his theme, "remember how Miss Grison took charge of the lad. Perhaps he gave her the peacock and the stiletto, which she took down to The Monastery to implicate Sorley and revenge herself on him." "She denied plainly enough that she took the bird to Belstone," replied Latimer, shaking his head, "and if Jotty had the peacock she would have guessed that he had murdered her brother. Seeing how she loved the man she would not have condoned Jotty's crime in any way. No, Alan, I don't agree with your theory. Better wait and hear what Bakche has to say and then we can be certain. But the stiletto? I thought that was missing?" "From Mother Slaig's house," said Alan quickly, "but Marie and I found it in the secret cupboard where Sorley keeps his own private collection of jewels. Either he is guilty, and concealed it there, or Jotty--who came to warn him--did so; or Miss Grison did in some way manage to get the weapon and hide it. But then her possession of it would certainly entail her knowing the truth, and she would not--as you said before--spare the murderer of the brother whom she loved so dearly." "Perhaps Bakche is guilty and is using Jotty as a screen," suggested Dick with a shrug; "however it is no use speculating, Alan. What we have to do is to watch to-night in The Monastery in the hope that Sorley has returned there, and to-morrow hear what the Indian has to say." This was very good advice under the circumstances, and the young men took this very natural course. They arrived at the vicarage in time for dinner after calling at the big house to arrange with Granny Trent about sleeping there for the night. All the evening the vicar and his wife asked questions about the gems, and built castles in the air along with Marie as to the best use to be made of the money. Mention was made in the course of the evening by Mrs. Fuller that Miss Grison was staying with her dressmaker friend, and when Alan and Dick left to take up their quarters at The Monastery, they felt convinced that the woman had some idea of the whereabouts of her enemy. "She's on the watch," said Fuller, as they walked to the big hole, "and if Sorley really has returned to hide, she will smell him out. I daresay he treated her and her brother badly, Dick, for Sorley is an utterly selfish creature, and perhaps deserves what he has endured. But what a vindictive person Miss Grison is." "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," quoted Latimer sententiously, "and since Sorley scorned his true wife by making love to another woman, and used her love for her brother to free himself, you can scarcely wonder that she hates him as the devil hates holy water. She would be more than human if she did not. I am sorry for Miss Grison, or rather, as we should call her, Mrs. Sorley." "She doesn't want to take that name," said Alan, shaking his head; "but if her husband gets off through Bakche's evidence, she may do so in order to show him up and spite him. As long as Sorley lives he will have to pay for his behavior." "Serve him jolly well right," said Latimer grimly, and the conversation ended on the steps of the great house, where Henny Trent stood to receive them. Granny was annoyed that her young mistress was sleeping at the vicarage, as she maintained that the noises were only due to ghosts, and that there was nothing to be feared. She scouted the idea that Sorley had returned, although she admitted that the old mansion was full of hiding-places where he could conceal himself. Her point was the same as Marie had mentioned, that the fugitive would require food, and knowing that all in the house would be loyal to him, he would not have hesitated to reveal himself had he actually sought refuge at The Monastery. The young men heard all these arguments passively, without seeking to contradict them, and then retired to bed wondering if granny was right and they were wrong, or if the reverse was the case. It is not quite precise to say that they retired to bed, for they did not remove their clothes, and simply lay down, ready to spring up when the noises called their attention. They wore slippers, however, instead of boots so as to move softly about the place, and thus pounce unawares on anyone--Miss Grison or Sorley--who might be haunting the place. "But if it is a ghost, Alan, all our dodging and preparations won't be of much use." "I don't believe in ghosts," said Alan curtly. "I do," said Dick with equal terseness, but was too tired to argue the knotty point, and then they lay down, clothed as they were, to snatch a few moments of sleep. Latimer certainly fell into a deep slumber, but his friend was too excited to follow his example. It occurred to him that if Sorley really were in the house and given to explorations by night, that he would assuredly haunt the library, if only to look at his beloved jewels. Hour after hour the young man dwelt on this point, and by the small hours of the morning had worked himself up to such a pitch of excitement that he could no longer endure inaction. Without disturbing Dick, who was sleeping in an adjoining chamber, he rose and stole down the stairs cautiously, making scarcely any sound, since he carried his slippers in his hand and walked in his socks. Also he had a revolver in his hip-pocket, lest the intruder should prove to be Bakche, admitted by Miss Grison through one of the numerous secret entrances. The Indian would be certain to show fight even if the woman did not. But of course, as yet Alan had heard no sounds, and was beginning to think that Marie's report was due to imagination. He opened the library door cautiously, shading the candle he carried with his hand, after thrusting the slippers into the pocket of his tweed coat. The room was in complete darkness, as the shutters were closed, and there was no sign that anyone was about. However, as Alan assured himself once more, Sorley, if on the spot, would certainly come to the library, so the young man extinguished his candle, and concealed himself behind an Indian screen near the middle French window. Here he lay down on the carpet and waited patiently. An hour passed and then another, and the night wore on to dawn. Still the room was quiet and Alan at length began to feel drowsy, for his long vigil was telling on his tired body. Through the shutters he saw a thread of cold light, which showed that day was breaking, and heard the early outburst of song with which the birds greeted the dawn. He shifted himself into a more comfortable position, and closed his eyes, when suddenly he opened them again widely, and every sense intensified its power. There was certainly a noise--that of shuffling footsteps, hesitating, dragging, doubtful, as though the individual was in deadly terror of discovery. Then after a pause came the cautious opening of the library door, and Alan peering round the corner of the screen, saw a gleam of light. It came from a candle held in a man's hand, and the glimmer shone faintly on the haggard face. The newcomer was Randolph Vernon Sorley, and he looked like a ghost of his former self, bowed-down, white-faced, and lean. Closing the door he went to the cupboard where the golden bird had been found by him, and opened the same. In a moment or so Alan heard the sound of eating, and saw that Sorley was eagerly devouring food. Apparently in his prosperous days he had established a larder in the cupboard against the time when he might be hunted down. The sight gave Alan the idea that the man might be guilty after all, since otherwise he would not have prepared for such a contingency. However, there was small time to consider this reason and that, for Sorley having eaten, might slip away to his hiding-place, and then in the rambling old mansion it would be impossible to discover him. When the man left the cupboard and came to the table, he placed his candle thereon, took a long drink from a flask--it probably contained whisky and water--and then shuffled to the panel marked with a cross. Slipping this aside he held the candle so that he might admire his jewels. Alan thought it was now time to make his presence known in the least startling way possible. "Mr. Sorley!" he said softly, and rising with caution. "Oh God!" gasped the man, dropping the light, and suppressing a scream. In the darkness Alan groped his way forward. "Don't be afraid. It is Alan Fuller. I am your friend. "Alan," the young man heard the click of the door, and knew that the fugitive was making for his hiding-place. But he halted when hearing the voice and the name. "Alan," said Sorley in the darkness, and his quavering voice hinted at relief. "Oh thank heaven you have come! How did you guess----" "Marie and granny heard certain noises," said Alan quickly. "Yes," muttered Sorley, lighting another candle which he apparently took out of his pocket, since the fallen one was lying near the panel. "I was not so careful as I should have been. But it could not go on for ever, so I am glad you have come, Alan. I want help," his voice trembled piteously, "yes I want help to escape." In this turn the young man lighted the candle he had kept beside him, and in the radiance of the two tapers surveyed the broken-down creature before him, who looked quite his age, if not more. His face and hands were black with dust and dirt, his clothes were stained and torn, while his beard had grown considerably, and despair lurked in his sunken eyes. In place of the alert, soldierly man of yore, Alan beheld a trembling, shivering, cringing thing, wincing at every sound, shrinking from every shadow. Guilty or not, Sorley was surely paying in full for his sins, since the agony and terror of his soul was made manifest in his body. "And I am innocent," he muttered again and again. "If you are innocent why do you wish me to help you to escape?" asked Mr. Fuller gravely. "Because I can't prove my innocence," said Sorley with sudden energy. "I am in a net woven by that infernal woman." "Your wife?" "Oh, so she told you that, did she? Yes, I admit she is my wife, and a bitter one she has been to me. But this is not the time or place to talk of these things. I could defend myself on that score if necessary, but there is no need. Place me in safety, Alan, and I can explain everything. You do not believe that I, am guilty; surely you don't?" and he looked piteously at the young man, shaking like a leaf. "No, I can't say that I am absolutely convinced of your guilt," admitted Alan cautiously, "but when you gave yourself up why did you run away again?" "I can explain that," replied Sorley with a cunning look, "only give me time, and all will be explained. I got away in the fog and came down here on my motor bicycle which I had kept ready in town. Now I am hiding here in a secret place below the earth--down in the cellars. There are ranges and ranges of cellars here, you know, Alan. I come up here at night to get food which long ago I placed in that cupboard"--he pointed to the recess with a trembling hand--"biscuits and potted meat, whisky and claret." "That storage looks as though you expected to be accused," said Alan dryly. Sorley nodded. "I was never sure of Louisa," he muttered shuffling with his feet. "I knew she would get me into trouble some day, and she has done so. She is here now. Yes, I know that, for I saw her from a peephole yesterday evening wandering round the house. I daresay she entered it, for she knows all its secrets as well as I do. And if she finds me"--he gripped Alan's coat--"she will give me up. I must get away; help me to fly beyond the seas until such time as I can prove my innocence. I won't take the peacock with me," he went on eagerly, "you can have that, and you can find the treasure. I shall only take my own jewels," and he glanced at the panel which was still open. "The treasure has been found, Mr. Sorley." "What--what--what!" the man would have fallen had not Fuller held him up. "Marie and I solved the riddle!" and to quieten the babbling creature Alan hurriedly related everything in as few words as possible. "The peacock and the jewels are now at Yarbury's Bank, so things are all right in that respect, and Marie is now wealthy." "She has the jewels," muttered the old man jealously. "Oh, the beautiful jewels. They are beautiful, are they not, Alan?" "Don't trouble about what is not yours," said Fuller sharply, "what we have to do is to come to an understanding. Miss Grison is here, staying with Mrs. Millington, while Morad-Bakche is at The Red Fox, and I shrewdly suspect that Inspector Moon will come down this very day, since he guesses that you are here, because Marie let drop a word or so about the noises she heard." Sorley staggered to the door. "I am surrounded by my enemies," he gasped, "but I sha'n't give in. I shall go back to the cellars and hide myself." Alan ran forward and grasped his arm. "No," he said strongly, "you must act like a man, Mr. Sorley, and give yourself up. If you are innocent you need fear nothing, and I shall stand by you throughout the trial." "The trial! the trial!" wailed Sorley; "no, no, I cannot, I dare not. Louisa is too strong for me, indeed she is. Unless he knows the truth. "He. To whom do you refer?" "He--I mean--I mean--ah, you asked me why I ran away again after giving myself up. Stop here and you shall see, you shall see with your own eyes, Alan, I swear you shall see," and wrenching himself free, Sorley flung open the door and passed hastily out of the room. Alan had half a mind to follow, since once hidden again, it would be difficult to discover the old creature. But then Sorley believed that he would help him, so Fuller was satisfied that he would return, although he could not conjecture the reason why he had gone away. It seemed impossible for him to produce any proof to show why he had fled in the fog. Fuller determined to wait, and meanwhile opened the shutters. The cold searching light of the morning penetrated the large room in a chill manner, and Alan shivered in the keen air when he opened the middle French window. But he did not shiver when the sound of Sorley's returning footsteps was heard and when the door re-opened to show the old man dragging a miserable object forward by the arm. "Jotty!" cried Alan with a bewildered stare. "Yes, Jotty," echoed Sorley; "and now you know why I bolted." CHAPTER XX WHO IS GUILTY? The urchin presented a more dilapidated appearance than he had ever done before even when in his native slums as a street-arab. The neat serge suit with which Miss Grison's kindness had supplied him was smeared with green slime and covered with cobwebs, besides being torn in many places. But Alan did not look so much at the lad's clothes as at his face and figure, for he was terribly emaciated, and so weak, apparently with hunger, that he could scarcely keep his legs. When he saw Fuller he burst into tears, and Sorley allowed him to drop on to the carpet. "How does the lad come here?" demanded Fuller indignantly, "and what have you been doing to him that he should be in this terrible state?" "He knows the truth," snarled Sorley, who looked quite wolfish at the moment, and cast a vindictive look at his victim, "and I have been trying to starve it out of him." "But y' haven't," murmured Jotty feebly, game to the last, "gimme sumthin' t' eat an' drink, mister, or I'm a goner," and his head dropped as though he would die then and there. But Sorley only laughed at his sufferings. "I was certain that the boy knew the truth," he declared savagely; "and when he came to warn me I lured him to the cellars and locked him up." "Without food?" questioned Alan with horror, and knelt by the boy to put one of the biscuits Sorley had left on the table between his lips. "No, I fed him occasionally," said the man sullenly, "but kept him short so that starvation might make him speak." "But it didn't," murmured Jotty again, trying to eat the biscuit. "Little devil!" cried Sorley in a transport of rage. "I'll make you admit that you are in league with that woman to ruin me before I've done. It was because you were locked in the cellar and no one but I knew where you were, that I bolted from Moon in London. If I had been locked up you would have died of starvation, and, bad as you are, I didn't want that. And now you know," he said defiantly to Alan, "why I changed my mind after giving myself up. It only occurred to me that Jotty might starve when I was in the cab driving to Bow Street with Moon. I therefore determined to get away in the fog, and I did." "You should have told Moon where the boy was to be found," said Fuller in sharp tones. "Hand me that flask of whisky; the boy is nearly dead." "Oh I hope not, I hope not," said Sorley in alarm, and anxiously watching the young man moistening Jotty's lips with the powerful spirit. "I didn't mean that he should die, for then he would take his secret with him, and I might be hanged through Louisa's lies. As to telling Moon about the cellars, I wasn't such a fool," he went on in an injured tone. "I wasn't going to reveal my hiding-place, which I knew would come in useful, if I were driven to extremities. But I'm poor old man, and everyone is against me," he ended sobbing bitterly. Fuller was too disgusted with the man's behavior to say a word, but busied himself in feeding Jotty cautiously with biscuits soaked in whisky. The boy soon began to pick up, and eagerly demanded more food, which Alan refused to give him lest he should suffer from overeating, after being so long without nourishment. Besides he thought that the whisky might make him drunk, which was not to be thought of, since the boy had to give his evidence and tell his secret, whatever that might be. So while Sorley wept and maundered on about himself in an agony of self-pity, Alan lifted Jotty and placed him in a deep armchair. By this time the color had returned to the lad's face, and he was much stronger for the moment, at all events, so Fuller thought that it would be just as well to question him. "Why did you warn Mr. Sorley after betraying him to me?" he asked. "'Wanted quids," admitted Jotty frankly, and with a malevolent glance at Sorley; "'knew he'd pay t' git awaiy fro' th' coppers. 'Said es he would, an' tole me, es his cash was in his bloomin' cellars. I was fool enuff t' g' daown, I was, an' he shoved me int' one of 'em an' keeps me wiffout grub till I fair screeched wiff 'unger. But I'll 'ave th'lawr of him, I will," said Jotty vindictively and very humanly. "Why didn't you escape?" "'Couldn't, nohow. Thet cove lock'd th' beastly door, he did." "Couldn't you cry out?" "I cried and hollered till I was fair sick, but it warn't no' good, nohow, es I soon sawr, mister. He guv me grub et toimes t' keep me fro' becomin' a deader," acknowledged the lad grudgingly, "but he ses as he'd not feed me up till I tole. But I didn't, you bet I didn't." "Tell what?" "The truth about the murder," sobbed Sorley; "he knows it, the reptile." "I dunno no nuffin;" murmured Jotty sulkily; "give me another bisket, mister, 'cept y' want t' play the saime game." Fuller gave him what he wanted, and a little more whisky and water to bring back his strength. Then he turned his attention to Sorley, and wondered what was best to be done. "You will have to surrender yourself and stand your trial, you know," said Alan firmly, "things can't go on in this silly way, Mr. Sorley." The old man pitched forward, sobbing at Alan's feet, while Jotty, who was now top-dog, grinned delightedly at his enemy's downfall. Fuller stooped to pick up the wretched creature, and to repeat his determination when he heard Dick rushing down the stairs shouting his name. "Alan! Alan Where are you?" "In the library. Come in. What's up?" Latimer burst into the room with dishevelled hair and untidy clothes, just as he had leaped out of bed, and evidently was greatly excited. He was on the eve of imparting the cause of his hurried coming, when he stopped short on beholding Sorley and the missing lad. "Well I'm hanged!" said Dick, and gasped with amazement. "I shall be, I shall be," groaned Sorley still grovelling on the floor, "if Louisa has her way. And you hate me, Latimer, you know you do. You will give me up after all my trouble in coming back to hide here." "Oh so you did hide here," said Latimer slowly, "and Jotty?" "He lock' me up, cuss him!" whimpered the boy, "'cos I wouldn't tell him things es I ain't agoin' to tell, nohow." "What re----" began Dick wonderingly, when Alan cut him short. "You'll hear later, old man. Meanwhile what's up, that you rush in like a whirlwind?" "I missed you when I woke up, and wondered where you were. I looked out of the window of my bedroom and saw a woman coming up the avenue with a man. As they came nearer I saw that it was Miss Grison and Moon." "I'm lost, I'm lost," shouted Sorley scrambling to his feet; "let me hide, oh let me hide," and he rushed to the door. "Ain't no go, mister," yelled the malignant Jotty, nibbling at his biscuit, "fur I knows yer hole an' I'll sell y' fur a sneak." But in spite of this assertion, Sorley, in a fever of terror would have fled, but that Alan caught him by the arm. "Stay here and face things like a man," he said sternly. "Dick run out and ask Moon and Miss Grison to come here. Then dash down to The Red Fox and bring Bakche to prove the poor devil's innocence." "What--what--what," gurgled Sorley, as Dick lost no time in obeying, and sprang out of the French window which Alan had opened. "Can he----" "I think so; I am not sure," said Fuller sharply. "However you shall stay here and face the best or the worst." "Louisa will hang me," murmured Sorley, sinking into a chair and covering his face with two grimy hands. Jotty grinned, and did not seem disturbed at the announcement that Bakche would prove his captor's innocence, which made Alan think that the brat could not be so guilty as the Indian had hinted. Feeling weary with his long watching and the late exciting events, the young man went to the window to inhale deep breaths of the keen morning air. The sun was now rising, and the eastern sky was radiant with golden floods of light, while the chill atmosphere felt perceptibly warmer. Trees and lawns and beds of early flowers presented themselves with photographic distinctness in the crystalline clearness of the dawning, and there was a feeling of freshness, as if all old things were being made new by the magical workings of nature. But Fuller had small time to gratify his jaded senses with this cool beauty, for crossing the lawn were Inspector Moon and Miss Grison. Dick had just delivered his message and had left them to dash down the avenue to Belstone, while the woman and the officer advanced towards the open window, as they had been directed. Alan stepped down to meet them, quite satisfied that the vindictive Jotty would keep a close watch on the miserable old man. The tables were now turned with a vengeance. "How are you, Miss Grison? and you, Mr. Inspector?" said Alan quietly. "I heard that the lady was here, but you sir?----" "I brought him," said Miss Grison triumphantly, and looking wooden and washed out and as hard as ever. "I wired for him last night, for I was certain that Sorley would come back to The Monastery." Moon nodded, and looked curiously at Alan's drawn face, and disordered clothes, and especially at his feet which were without slippers. "I came down late last night to Lewes," he explained, "and drove over early this morning. That is why I am here at so unexpected an hour. And even if Miss Grison had not wired me, I should have come, although perhaps later. Miss Inderwick's remark about noises in her house----" "Yes! yes!" interrupted Fuller with a shiver, for the dewy grass chilled his feet. "I guessed that you would come after that unconscious hint." "Well of course Miss Inderwick naturally; wants to save her uncle----" Miss Grison interrupted the inspector in her turn. "She won't though, try as she will. I know all the hiding-places in The Monastery, and wherever Sorley may conceal himself I can hunt him out." "He doesn't wish to conceal himself," said Fuller coldly, for the look of malicious triumph on her sallow face was terrible. "He is in the library and wishes to give himself up." "He did so before," remarked Moon dryly, "and then ran away." "Because he had Jotty locked up in a cellar here, and feared lest the boy should starve to death. Come in, Mr. Inspector. This is surely the beginning of the end." "The end, the end," cried Miss Grison joyfully, and absolutely chanted the words as if they were the funeral hymn of a victim, "the end of the beast and all his wickedness. I hope they'll let me see him hanged. And he'll have no coffin, but be buried in lime and----" "Hold your tongue," said Moon roughly, for even his tried nerves gave way with a quiver when the vindictive woman expressed her unholy joy. "Come on, Mr. Fuller. I'm glad you didn't help this man to escape." "I never intended to," Alan assured the officer as they stepped into the room through the open window, followed by Miss Grison, who slunk behind like halting Nemesis, silent and sinister. "I forced him to stay and surrender." "He sha'n't escape this time," growled Moon, looking at Sorley who stared rigidly from the chair he was seated in, not at the officer of the law, but at the cruel face of the wife who had hunted him down. He seemed like a rabbit fascinated by a serpent, and could utter no sound. Even when Moon again recited the formula of arrest he did not speak. But Miss Grison did. "Ha!" she jeered, pointing a finger of scorn at the motionless man, "now do you receive the wages of iniquity, you beast!" "Be silent," said Alan tartly, while the inspector turned to address a few words to Jotty, who looked at him impudently. "I shall not be silent," raged the woman; "you know what I am, and who I am in every way, Louisa Sorley--that is my name." Moon overhearing, turned with a blank look of astonishment. "Yes, you may look and look and look!" she taunted, snapping her fingers. "Louisa Sorley, and that fiend's lawful wife. Ah!"--she turned furiously on her husband--"you cast me off, you made me hold my tongue by threatening to imprison Baldwin so that you could marry the wealthy slut you set your mind on. I could do nothing, because I had to save my brother; all I could do I did, and that was to steal the peacock. And now the secret has been guessed and the jewels belong to your minx of a niece----" "Stop that," cried Fuller in a fierce way; "not a word against my promised wife, Miss Grison." "Mrs. Sorley, if you please," retorted the woman making an ironical curtsey, "and the girl is my niece by marriage as well as your promised wife. But she has the jewels, and much as I hate her I am glad, since this sneaking reptile will not get them into his clutches. I have waited for this hour; for years have I waited; lying in bed, walking during the day, working or playing I have plotted and planned and thought and striven to bring you down to the dust. You scorned me, who loved you, you tortured Baldwin who was your friend, and you drove us both in disgrace from this house. Now it is your turn--yours! yours! yours!" She pointed her finger again and laughed with savage delight. "You shall be driven from the house; you shall go to jail; you shall be hanged by the neck until you are dead, and may God _not_ have mercy on your soul." Moon caught her by the arm, and shook her sternly. "You mustn't talk like that, you know," he said in a peremptory manner. Miss Grison--as it is more convenient to call her--wrenched herself free, and her little lean figure quivered with unrestrained rage. She wore the long black velvet cloak, the early Victorian bonnet, and the drab thread gloves in which Alan had seen her when she had been surprised by himself and Marie in the library. But she was no longer demure, no longer did she compress her thin lips and stare in an unwinking unmeaning way. Her terrible triumph had stirred up the depths of her nature, and she acted like a woman bereft of reason, as indeed she was for the moment. "Damn you, let me be!" she screeched, getting free at the expense of a torn cloak. "I can speak to my husband, I suppose. Ha! ha! A nice thing it is for me to have a murderer for a husband." "I am not a murderer," wailed Sorley tremulously. "I left Baldwin alive and well. She--she--she----" "She--she--she," mocked his wife, "you, with your she--she--she. You are a murderer; you had the peacock; you have the knife which killed My darling brother. Deny it if you dare." "I do deny it," stammered Sorley with an attempt to assert his dignity. "I had the peacock, because you brought it here secretly." "You lie, as you have always done. I did not. Perhaps you will say that I brought the knife--the dagger--the thing with which Baldwin was stabbed also, you animal!" "No--no--no. I have never seen the knife. But I believe you would have brought it if you could, so as to make me out to be guilty." "You liar!" raged the woman, while both Moon and Alan stood aside silent, wondering what would be brought forth next. "I came here on that day when I warned you, and walked all over the place while you were snoring, like the hog you are. Here!" she brushed Moon aside with a force surprising in so small a woman, and marched to the open panel. "I looked in here, where I always knew you kept your bits of glass, and I intended to take some, so as to make you suffer, just as I did with the peacock; just as I did with the peacock, you wretch! But I found hidden there the dagger which was used to murder my dearest brother, so I left things alone knowing you were the beast who murdered him, and knowing that I at last had you in my power to hunt down." She thrust her arm into the recess and tore out tray after tray of jewels which scattered themselves about the floor, and finally pulled out the stiletto which Marie had found and Alan had seen. "There! oh there you are! Do you see this, policeman? blood on the handle? Yes, take it, and bring it up in the evidence against him." Moon handled the stiletto with a frown. "This looks bad," he said to the terrified Sorley; "is it yours?" "It was--it was," stammered the old man, shaking with nervous fear, "but if I were truly guilty I would not dare to say so. I bought it in Venice--in Italy--where I--I----" he broke off with a cry rising to face his wife with what courage he was able to summon to his heart. "And you stole it over twenty years ago, along with the peacock; you stole many things--you know you did, Louisa. I believe--yes--I believe----" "That I put it there," interrupted Miss Grison with a shrill laugh. "Oh I daresay. To save your own bacon you can say no more and no less. Liar and murderer and wife beater that you are! You struck me once, you did, you did, and now I have come back to repay the blow with interest. Man!" she faced round fiercely to Moon, "why don't you put the handcuffs on him? Make him a shame and disgrace in the village where he has lorded it for so many guilty years. I could----" she dashed forward with a raised arm, her face working with furious passion. Fuller caught her back. "Steady! steady!" "Beast!" she turned and struck him full in the face, whereupon Moon came to the young man's assistance, and the two forced her back into a chair. For a few minutes she struggled, screaming, spitting, kicking and fighting with all the abnormal strength which her fury against her husband gave her. All at once she collapsed, and became as weak as an infant, to burst into tears, and huddle up, a nerveless heap, in the deep chair. "She's finished now," said Moon, wiping his red face; "all the fight's gone out of her. Whew! I've seen women in the cells like her before. She's a crazy bit of goods." "She's mad, quite mad," quavered Sorley, wringing his hands in a senile manner, "I always said that she was." "Then you sent her mad," muttered Alan, who did not think Marie's uncle was wholly the injured person he presented himself to be. All the time Jotty surreptitiously devoured all the biscuits within reach, and enjoyed what was to him quite a performance--and a well-known one at that, as often he had seen Mother Slaig and others of her kind raging in just such an animal manner. "She's a oner, ain't she?" he said grinning, "but not a bad ole gal, oh no, not at all." Miss Grison, who was lying back apparently exhausted, unclosed one eye and then two, shooting such a malevolent glance at the boy that he held his tongue and looked away uneasily. Moon was about to take up again the stiletto which he had cast carelessly on the table in order to ask questions, when Latimer, hot with rapid walking, made his appearance through the window followed by Morad-Bakche, who looked uncomfortable. The inspector nodded to both, but did not speak for the moment, as his attention was taken up with Alan's attempt to pacify granny and the two servants who had been attracted to the library by Miss Grison's screams. The three wished to stay, and argued the point, but Fuller managed to finally turn them out and then came back to witness what would doubtless prove to be the final act of the drama. Meanwhile neither Bakche nor Latimer said a word, and Miss Grison still lay back in her chair broken up much in the same way as was her husband. They were both wrecks, the sole feelings predominating being terror in the man's heart and hatred in the woman's. "Well, sir," said Inspector Moon, turning sharply on the dignified Indian, "and what do you know about this matter?" "I have some idea of the truth," answered Bakche quietly, and now more at ease, "and I am willing to state what I know on the condition which I arranged with Mr. Fuller yesterday. Indeed, Mr. Fuller, so to speak, suggested the condition some time ago, and I came down here to see Miss Inderwick as to whether she would be willing to fulfil it." "If you know the truth, you must tell the truth without any condition. That is the law of this country. If you impede the course of justice by keeping back necessary information you are liable to a penalty." "I am willing to take the risk," responded the Indian dryly, "since I have so much at stake. I appeal to Mr. Fuller as to whether he is willing to agree to my condition?" "On behalf of Miss Inderwick I am," said Alan quietly, "since she leaves me free to use her jewels in any way likely to free her uncle from this charge of murder brought against him by Miss Grison." "Mrs. Sorley, if you please," murmured the woman without unclosing her eyes. Bakche took no notice. "I want half the jewels," he stated coolly. "You shall have a third," answered Alan. "Then I don't speak." "What's that?" cried Moon. "Let me tell you, that if you don't, I shall arrest you as being concerned in this crime." "You have no warrant!" said the man uneasily. "I shall arrest you without a warrant, and make good my reason afterwards." The Indian looked uncomfortably from one to the other, and finally seeing that the Inspector was in earnest, he yielded to circumstances too strong for him. "You agree to give me a third of my family jewels?" he asked turning to Alan nervously. "Yes; I shall put it in writing if you like." "No; I am willing to take the word of an English gentleman. That lad," the man looked at Jotty, "also knows something of the truth; at least I think that he does." "Don't know nuffin," muttered the boy truculently, for the drink was telling on his weak condition. "If I did, I wouldn't tell when that cove," he pointed to Sorley, "lock'd me up." "Tell," said the inspector sharply, "or I'll box your ears." "Sha'n't, sha'n't, sha'n't," babbled Jotty, "wot I knows is wuth quids, an' quids I'll 'ave or say nuffin." Sorley scrambled on the floor and swept together some of the gems. "Take these; take these and save my life," he implored, thrusting them into the boy's hands. "You wouldn't tell by force but these are worth money, so----" Jotty played with the gems and put them into his pocket. "If they're wuth quids," he said thickly, "I'll split." "Do you know the truth?" asked Latimer quickly, "I always thought you did." "Perhaps you saw the murder committed," Alan remarked, and they all stared hard at the boy. "No I didn't," snapped Jotty, "but I sees sumthin', and I think es I kin spot who did it." "Who did it then?" demanded Moon impatiently. "Sha'n't speak till thet cove does," muttered Jotty, pointing his chin at Bakche with an obstinate look; "don't b'leve he knows tho'." "Don't I?" cried Bakche drawing himself up to his stately height, "I was at Rotherhithe when the man was murdered by his sister." "Miss Grison!" cried Alan confounded. "Good Lord! Miss Grison killed him?" "Yes," said Bakche, "Miss Grison killed him." CHAPTER XXI THE TRUTH The accusation of the Indian, which seemed to be emphasized by Jotty's silence, brought Miss Grison, still weak and broken, to her feet. "It's a lie! a lie! a lie!" she stammered, holding on to the chair for support. "It's the truth," insisted Bakche deliberately. "But it's impossible," murmured Fuller, who was quite bewildered, "she loved her brother dearly." "I did, I did. Bless you for saying that, Mr. Fuller," cried Miss Grison in a tremulous tearful way. "Why should I murder my darling Baldwin?" "To get me into trouble," quavered Sorley, who had got back into his chair and was nervously plucking at his chin. "I wouldn't have sacrificed him to you," retorted Miss Grison, dropping back again into her seat and taking out her handkerchief. "Perhaps if I tell my story," said Bakche appealing to the inspector, "you may be convinced of the truth." "Go on," said Moon curtly, and took out his pocket-book. "She killed him----" "I never did, I never did," wept Miss Grison, "you did it yourself." "I did it! How dare you say that!" "Because it is true. You admit having been at Rotherhithe on the night and about the time poor Baldwin was murdered. You wanted the peacock, you know you did, and told me so. When I said Baldwin had it----" "I went to try and get it from him," finished Bakche, "that is quite correct, madam. I did, and I tried hard to get him to part with it. But he refused and you urged him not to give it to me, even for money. When you visited your brother----" "I never visited him," snapped Miss Grison, whose strength was coming back, and whose eyes were again beginning to flash ominously. "You did," retorted the Indian, "you went frequently, I disguised myself as a lascar and followed you. I overheard your conversations with him many a time, madam." "Ah!" she flashed out, "you were eavesdropping." "Yes," admitted the man candidly. "I had too much at stake not to take all the means in my power to safeguard my interests. And a few days before the murder you urged your brother to write to Mr. Sorley and make an appointment for the thirteenth of November." "Ah!" murmured Moon, making a note, "the night of the death." "Yes! yes! yes!" cried Sorley, his voice growing stronger; "I got that letter, and wrote an answer saying that I would come." "Jotty found the answer," put in Alan quickly, "and sold it to me for two pounds. Mr. Latimer passed it on to you, Mr. Inspector." Moon nodded. "I have it at my office. Go on, sir." "Miss Grison--as I overheard--urged her brother to make this appointment with Mr. Sorley, and then tell him that the peacock was to be given to me." "Ah!" cried the woman sarcastically, "and yet you say that I urged my brother not to give it you. You contradict yourself." "I am not responsible for your frequent changes of mind," said Bakche in chilly tones, "sometimes you told your brother to make terms with me so that Mr. Sorley--whom you seemed to hate--might be disappointed, and then you tried to prevent him even seeing me, let alone handing over the peacock. But you got him to make the appointment for the night of the murder with Mr. Sorley, that I'll swear to. There was another thing that I overheard. Your brother confessed with tears and terror that he had murdered that gentleman to rob him outside Chin Chow's opium den." "What if he did?" said Miss Grison boldly. "You blamed him for the shame he was bringing on your name." "I did, but that does not say that I should have denounced him." "There was no need for you to do so," said Moon coldly; "sooner or later the truth would have become known. Grison was already suspected." "So he told his sister," said Bakche quickly, "and for that reason she reproached him." "Why not say that I murdered him?" sneered the woman quivering. "You did, but not on the night you advised him to make the appointment with this gentleman." He pointed to Sorley huddled up in his chair. "When then, if you please, liar that you are?" "I am no liar, and you know it, madam. It was on the night that the appointment was kept that you killed your brother. I determined to come on that night, so as to overhear the interview between Mr. Sorley and your brother, and I did. Mr. Sorley wanted the peacock and Grison refused to surrender it. Then Mr. Sorley left." "And Grison was alive? Grison was alive?" cried the man in question. "Yes," said Bakche, answering the question and a look of Moon's. "Grison was alive. Mr. Sorley is perfectly innocent." "Thank God! oh thank God!" wept Sorley hysterically, and sliding from his chair he knelt down covering his face with his grimy hands. Alan nodded to Dick in a somewhat triumphant way, as he had never been sure of Sorley's guilt, and Dick nodded penitently in return, admitting silently his error. "Was Miss Grison at Rotherhithe on that night?" asked Moon rather unnecessarily, seeing that Bakche accused her of committing the crime. "Yes. I was on the watch, and I saw her coming." "Did Mother Slaig see her?" "Not on that night, I fancy. Miss Grison always slipped into the house and out of it like a shadow," said Bakche, after a moment's reflection. "Sometimes Mrs. Slaig saw her and sometimes she did not. The house was always filled with people coming and going, and in that shabby dress"--Bakche referred somewhat superciliously to Miss Grison's worn attire--"no one noticed her." "Everyone knew that I came to comfort mm brother," said the woman sharply. "I am not denying that. But on that night you hovered round the place and saw Sorley come and go. He came at seven and went away by eight. Grison afterwards came down and got a drink, after which he retired to bed at ten o'clock as was stated at the inquest. He did not see you when he was down stairs, as you did not speak to him. But you followed him up and were with him in his room. No one but I saw you, as no one paid any attention to your brother, save I who was on the watch. After ten--I can't state the exact time--you came out of the room and slipped away unnoticed. I followed you to the end of the slum, madam, and then returned to see if you had been urging Grison not to give me the peacock. I looked in and he was on his bed quite dead." "Why didn't you give the alarm?" asked Alan impatiently. "Ask yourself why I did not, Mr. Fuller," said Bakche pitying this denseness. "Here was I, who wanted a valuable object possessed by Grison, disguised as a lascar. Had I given the alarm I should have been arrested for the crime and would have had a great difficulty in clearing myself." "Yes," said Moon, "that is perfectly true. Well?" "Well," echoed Bakche, "what more do you wish me to say, sir. Grison was alive when this lady entered his room, and when she came out he was dead. I knew also that she carried away the peacock." "How do you know?" asked Latimer, while Miss Grison sniffed disdainfully. "Jotty told me." "Yuss," said the boy, brisking up, for he had nodded in a sleepy way during the recital, "he guv me a quid fur tellin' him; he wantin' thet there blessed peacock, somehow." "But how did you know Miss Grison had it Jotty?" questioned Alan. "Sawr it afore him es was good t' me was buried. I wen up t' 'er house in Bloomsbury es I'd orfen gone afore, fur him es was good t' me, and I ses as 'er brother was a deader. Sh' sawr me in 'er room an' I sawr 'er smuggle awaiy thet peacock and thet thing," and Jotty pointed to the stiletto, which was lying on the table where Moon had thrown it. "You liar! oh, you little liar!" shrieked Miss Grison, shaking her fist. "It's trewth, fur sure," insisted Jotty, "an' cos I knowed too much, y' tuck me int' yer bloomin' ouse an' guv me thet button suit. I didn't say nuffin, I didn't, es y' wasn't a bad ole gal, an I oped t' maike quids out of y'. An' when y' come daown 'ere, t' the fun'rel of him es was good t' me, y' tuck awaiy thet peacock an' thet stabbin' thing. Oh, I kep' m' eye peeled, y' bet, fur I wanted thet peacock m'self, wuth plenty of quids it is anyhow. Sawr's y' packin' them in a bag when y' thought es I wasn't lookin'. But I ain't no fool, nohow, tho' y' did git me t' help t' git thet Sorley cove int' trouble." "How was that, Jotty," asked the inspector while Miss Grison ripped her handkerchief to shreds in silent anger. "Why sh' fun' out es I'd got that letter fro' him," he pointed to Sorley "an' she ses, as I'd better taike it t' Mr. Fuller there, who'd give me quids fur it anyhow. An' I did, gettin' two quids fur it. An' then I was 'opin' t' git more quids fro the Sorley cove, and comes daown 'ere t' saiy es the gaim was up, an' show'd him th' noospaiper. She," he indicated Miss Grison with his chin, "made me tell 'er as Mr. Sorley 'ad the peacock, es I'd seen the doring of it on Mr. Fuller's taible and missus she ses as there wasn't no dorin' maid, an' thet Mr. Fuller mus' 'ave got it fro' the Sorley cove. 'An' ses she, 'he's cort naow, so I'll tell the noospaipers es my poor brother was killed for the bloomin' peacock's saik.' An----" "Lies! lies! all lies!" cried Miss Grison, who had been gradually working herself up into a passion "you want to save that beast of a husband of mine, you know you do, you know you do." "He is saved already," said Moon sharply; "the evidence of Mr. Bakche, supported as it is by Jotty, proves that Mr. Sorley is innocent, and that you are guilty." "And what is more," put in Alan severely, "you evidently laid a trap for your husband. That is proved by your telling Jotty to bring me the letter and thus implicate him. And not until you knew that the peacock was in Mr. Sorley's possession--as you guessed from the drawing having been made, knowing that none had been made before--did you make public the fact that your brother had been murdered for the sake of the bird." "Yes, yes," quavered Sorley, who was still kneeling and weeping, wholly broken down by his providential escape; "it was a trap, I always said so. I knew that she placed the peacock in that cupboard; I told you so, Alan. I never knew that she hid the stiletto with my jewels, as I never came across it. But now that I know, I am sure that she put it there to get me into still further trouble. And I admitted that the stiletto was mine, didn't I, Alan I didn't I, Mr. Inspector?" "Yes, yes," said Moon nodding, "the case is clear enough. Miss Grison I arrest you on a charge of murdering your brother." The woman was silent and glared at him fiercely, but made no effort to evade him as he advanced, clinking the handcuffs. "Wait a moment," she said suddenly, "you needn't put those on yet. What motive had I to kill the brother I loved so dearly?" "That I can't tell," said Moon hesitating. "She is mad," cried Sorley, "she was always mad." "You drove me mad," shouted Miss Grison turning on him furiously. "I loved you and you scorned me because you wished to marry a rich woman. But that you could have put Baldwin in jail for that forgery I should have told the truth about my marriage; and much as I hated you I should have taken my true position here as your wife. But you were too strong for me and too strong for Baldwin. He was never wicked, but only weak, and you ruined him as you ruined me. I vowed to be revenged." "And you have failed," said Sorley brokenly, yet with a note of triumph. "Failed. Yes, I know I have failed, and what is more I have fallen into the trap I set for you. That makes me question the justice of the Eternal. He gave me misery all my life, and you happiness. Yet here you get the better of your evil, and I am condemned to the scaffold. Baldwin is better off. At least I saved him from being hanged." "Oh," said Moon, while Alan and Latimer started, "so you admit having murdered your brother." "Yes," said Miss Grison darkly, and throwing back her head. "I did evil that good might come of it. Listen and before you take me away policeman, I am willing to tell the truth." "What you say will be used in evidence against you, remember." "I don't care. I have fought and lost." She moved forward to the table and facing the men adopted quite an oratorical attitude. Beginning her story calmly enough she gradually worked herself up into a furious passion, as a sense of the wrongs she had endured came home to her. And the fact that the man who had inflicted those wrongs was now free, was not the least bitter drop in her cup of sorrow. "Four men against one woman," said Miss Grison scornfully, and drawing up her small figure stiffly; "five, if that brat can be called a man, instead of an ungrateful beast. How brave you all are, how very brave." Moon glanced at his watch. "Time presses," he said coldly, "say what you have to say, for I must take you up to London as soon as possible." "Oh, I shall say my say quick enough," cried Miss Grison savagely, "is that the way to speak to a lady, you low policeman. For I am a lady." She flung back her head haughtily. "I always was a lady, as Baldwin always was a gentleman, bless him." "Yet you murdered him," hinted Moon coldly. "And for why?" she demanded clenching her hands, "because I wished to save him from himself and from the gallows, and from further disgracing the honored name left by our father. I tell you all that I loved Baldwin, but I knew his weakness I knew his faults, knew that unless he had some one stronger than himself to cling to, he was always dropping into the mud. Oh, the poor soul, who can blame him? Not I, though the world may, and the world did. If Sorley had treated Baldwin properly, he might have lived and died here in honor." "I did my best," quavered her husband faintly, "but he drank and----" "Oh, he had all the vices and you all the virtues," interrupted Miss Grison scornfully; "but you might have put up with his weaknesses for my sake. I was your wife, and deserved some consideration. But you drove me away and you drove Baldwin." "I gave you money to set up that boarding-house." "Yes; and I took it as my right, although I could have spat in your wicked face for insulting me by the offer. I only held my peace when you were courting that slut who died, because you could have put Baldwin into jail. He and I went away to try and live out our ruined lives as best we could. Baldwin was too much afraid to think of revenge, but I was not, and I swore that you should pay for your wickedness. He told you that he had the peacock, which I had given him, after I took it from here, as it was a toy to him. You came and came, but I prevented Baldwin giving it to you, although he wanted to, for money that he might go to the colonies." "That would have been a wise move," murmured Alan nodding. "It would not," contradicted Miss Grison, "what do you know about it, Mr. Fuller? although I have no quarrel with you, as you have always treated me like a gentleman. It would not have been a good move, because Baldwin was so weak that unless he was constantly looked after, he was always getting into dangerous trouble. He was a fool; yes, I who loved him, and who sacrificed my life to him, say that he was a weak fool. I did my best to keep him in the straight path, I allowed him a weekly income, and comforted him, I did all that a sister and a woman could do. But it was all of no use, as you may guess, you men who are bullying a poor weak woman. When Baldwin confessed to me that he had murdered that man outside Chin Chow's opium den I knew that the end had come." "What end?" demanded Moon stolidly. "The end of my patience, the end of the sinful years which Baldwin was permitted to live on this miserable earth," cried Miss Grison. "He told me that he was suspected, and implored me to save him. I promised to do so, and I did in the only way that I could. I killed him, I stabbed him to the heart, and that was an easy death compared to being hanged." So fierce and wild did she look as she said these words, that all present shivered, and Sorley moaned, "A terrible woman, a terrible woman." "A merciful woman! a good woman! a bold woman!" cried his wife, overhearing. "A weaker woman would not have acted as I did. But it was the only way, if I wished to save him from being hanged and the honored name of our father, Dr. Theophilus Grison, from being further smirched. I determined to kill Baldwin, and also to use his death as a means to hang you." "You wicked woman!" cried Alan indignantly. "Wicked? Why wicked, since this beast ruined both me and my brother? I was only dealing out justice to him, as I dealt out mercy to Baldwin. And I made my plans cleverly. I knew that Mr. Bakche was haunting Mother Slaig's, and counted on him recognizing my brute of a husband on that night, since he had already seen him here when he came to make inquiries about the peacock. I made Baldwin write to Sorley to appoint the thirteenth of November night as the time to come up. Baldwin showed me the reply, and I knew that he would be there. I took the stiletto which belonged to Sorley as I stole it along with the peacock when I left this house. Since it was his I thought it would make the evidence against him more certain. I went to Rotherhithe and watched. I saw Sorley go, and then I went up to Baldwin's room and stabbed him. It doesn't matter how I cajoled him to lie down and rest, and chose my time. I stabbed him to the heart and that is enough for you to know." Again her listeners shivered, for there seemed to be something terrible about this small frail woman admitting such a dreadful deed so callously and boldly. She smiled as she saw their feeling. "What a lot of cowards you men are," she jeered, "you wouldn't have acted so bravely; no, not you." "Go on, go on," said Moon impatiently, "there's no time to be lost." "I have nearly finished," said Miss Grison tartly, "don't hurry me, as you must admit that my confession is interesting. I killed Baldwin with this," she added, taking up the stiletto which lay on the table, "and I took it away, along with the peacock, intending to hide both in this house. Jotty--ungrateful little reptile that he is--saw me with these when he came to Thimble Square to tell me of the murder. Ha! ha! of the murder which I had committed. I wept and wailed, as I was bound to do, since my dear brother had been murdered by Sorley. Then came the inquest, and I said nothing, for I waited my chance. The funeral took place here, and I stayed at Mrs. Millington's, she has been a good friend to me. I came to this house on the day you know of, Mr. Fuller," she went on, addressing herself to Alan who nodded in answer, "and while you and Marie were in the grounds, and this man--if he can be called a man--was asleep, I placed the peacock in that black-oak cupboard and the stiletto in the place behind that panel marked with a cross, where I knew Sorley kept those bits of glass----" "They are jewels, valuable jewels," cried her husband irrelevantly. "Oh, get on with the confession," said Latimer sharply, for the prolonged scene was getting on his nerves, "you hid the stiletto and peacock." "Yes," said Miss Grison snappishly, "and then I waited, guessing that Sorley would probably seek Mr. Fuller's help to solve the riddle of the bird. That was why I introduced the subject of cryptograms on that day when we were at tea, Mr. Fuller. When I learned that Jotty had Sorley's reply to the request of Baldwin I sent him to you so that it might implicate this beast of a husband of mine. Then when Jotty told me about the drawing of the peacock, I knew that Sorley had consulted you, since no drawing had ever been made of the thing. My trap was set, and by making the matter of the peacock public, I closed it on the man I hate." She shut her mouth with a snap, and idly dug the stiletto into the table as if she had finished. "What else?" questioned Moon imperiously. "Nothing else," said Miss Grison raising her pale eyes; "you know all. The trap caught the bird, and my revenge would have been complete had not this fool learned more than he should have. You, I mean, you," said Miss Grison walking slowly towards the Indian, "why couldn't you let me have my way?" "I wanted the jewels," said Bakche stolidly, and not moving even when she was face to face with him. "You shall never have them," cried Miss Grison unexpectedly, and before anyone could move she raised her arm. In a moment the stiletto was in the Indian's heart, and he fell like a log on the floor. "Great God!" roared the inspector and sprang forward. Miss Grison put out her frail arms. "Go on, put the handcuffs here," she mocked coolly. "I have settled the beast who balked me of my revenge!" "He is quite dead," said Alan lifting a pale face from an examination. "And that beast Sorley lives," snarled Miss Grison viciously, and spat at her husband. CHAPTER XXII CALM AFTER STORM In the month of July the park of The Monastery was in full leafage, and presented a glorious sea of shimmering tremulous green. The gardens glowed with many-colored blossoms, and especially there was a profusion of roses, red and white and yellow, for Marie Inderwick, loving flowers, had planted quantities immediately after her return home from the Brighton school. The whole place was radiant with color under a cloudless and deeply blue sky, and the hot sunshine bathed everything in hues of gold. It was like the Garden of Eden, and neither Adam nor Eve were wanting, since the lovers were walking therein, arm in arm, talking of the past, congratulating themselves on the present, and looking forward to a serene and glorious future. The storm was over, and now a halcyon calm prevailed. "It's like heaven," sighed Miss Inderwick, whose face glowed like one of the roses she wore at her breast, from sheer happiness, "and to think that we shall be married to-morrow, Alan dearest." "Then it will be more like heaven than ever," laughed the young man, who looked the picture of content. "Let us go to St. Peter's Dell, Marie darling; for it was there that we found the jewels." "Rather the papers which led to the finding of the jewels," corrected Miss Inderwick gladly, "and it's a nice place to make love in, Alan, for I have planted it with roses." "The Gardens of Shiraz, where Omar Khayyam sang," said the happy young lover, and quoted the well known lines softly:-- "Here with a loaf of bread, beneath the bough, A flask of wine: a book of verse--and Thou, Beside me singing in the wilderness, And wilderness is Paradise enow." "Oh, we don't want the bread and wine," laughed Marie indolently, as they took their way to the dell along a path riotous with blossom. "Bread and cheese then." "You have left out the best thing, dear." "Kisses, eh? Well then." Alan stopped, took her into his strong arms and kissed her twice, thrice, and again on her rose-leaf lips. "I wish you'd behave yourself," said Marie sedately, "as to bread and cheese we have something better than that now." "_You_ have," said Alan quickly, "the jewels have brought close on one hundred thousand pounds, which all belong to you." "What is mine is yours, darling. You know that." "Yet nasty people will say that I married you for your money, Marie." She pouted. "What a compliment to me, as if I were an ugly girl." "Quite so, instead of being the most perfect woman ever created." "Oh," Marie sighed from sheer pleasure, "say that again." Alan did so with a laugh. "Marie, will you ever have enough flattery." "It's not flattery, it's the truth, and I like you always to tell me the truth," said Marie as they entered the dell. "Come and sit down on the edge of the pool, Alan, and have a talk." "Why not call it the well?" he asked, while they balanced themselves on the circle of stones, and he placed his arm round her waist to support her. "Simon Ferrier called it the pool, and I think it's a very good name." "Darling, he only did so because he was unable to find the name of a gem which began with 'W'." "I'm very glad he did," said Marie quickly, "and that he could not find one which began with 'K'. If he had we should never have solved the riddle." "Oh, don't let us talk any more about the riddle or the sad events connected with it," cried Fuller, a shade passing over his happy face; "let us leave the past alone and live in the present." "I am living in the future when we shall be husband and wife." "That desirable state of things will come into being to-morrow." "I know," Marie nestled in her lover's arms. "But I want to talk of all that has happened Alan. Then we will say no more about it." "But, Marie, we have talked over everything again and again." "I dare say; but I want to ask questions and to be quite satisfied in my own mind that everything disagreeable is at an end." "Very good," said Alan, resigning himself to the inevitable with a good grace, for he knew Marie's obstinacy of yore. "What do you wish to say?" "Well, in the first place, I am still sorry that poor Mr. Bakche did not live to get his share of the jewels. For you know, Alan, they really did belong to him as a descendant of the Rajah of Kam." "My dearest, the jewels were legally assigned to George Inderwick for a very great service. I am sure that the Rajah of Kam in those days would rather have lost his jewels than his wife and only son. As to Bakche, I am sorry that he died in so terrible a way, and had he lived, undoubtedly I should have kept the promise made on your behalf and handed over one third of the treasure. But Bakche did not act well, or honorably." "What do you mean?" asked Marie opening her azure eyes very widely, "If he had not spoken out, poor Uncle Ran might have been hanged." "Quite so, dear. But he only spoke out when bribed to do so. He knew all along that Miss Grison was guilty, and yet held his tongue." "He wouldn't have done so had Uncle Ran been brought to trial?" Alan smiled grimly. "I shouldn't like to have given him the chance," he said in a skeptical tone. "Bakche, like most people, acted in an entirely selfish way, and was ready to sacrifice every one for the sake of gaining his own ends. Had Miss Grison given him the peacock, and had he solved the riddle and secured the jewels, he would not have confessed what he knew." "But Jotty might have done so." "It's not improbable," admitted Fuller musingly. "Jotty was wonderfully greedy, and was willing to sell anyone for quids, as he called them. He certainly sold Miss Grison for the sake of the few gems your uncle gave him. However, let us hope that the reformatory Inspector Moon has placed him in will improve him into a decent member of society. He's sharp enough and clever enough to do well in the world." "But he hasn't had a fair chance, dear." "Perhaps not; but he has one now. Miss Grison gave him one also, but only because he knew too much and the brat was aware that he had her under his thumb. However, Marie, I have told Moon that when Jotty improves you and I will give him enough money to go to America and make a new start. So that disposes of Jotty." "I wonder Miss Grison didn't stick that horrid stiletto into him," said Miss Inderwick with a shudder "seeing how he betrayed her." "He would not have done so had not Bakche told his story, and it was Bakche she hated most. It was truly wonderful how cunningly she managed to get close to the man to stab him. None of us thought when she walked up to him so quietly that she intended murder. And she drove it right into his heart, weak as she was. I expect," added Alan musingly, "that is what Bakche meant when he said that a weak arm could drive a stiletto into a sleeping man as easily as a strong one could. I thought at the time he meant Jotty, but he referred to Miss Grison, little thinking that the very next day she would prove the truth of his words on himself." "But she was mad, Alan, quite mad." "So it was proved at the trial," said Fuller with a shrug, "but I have my suspicion, Marie, that Miss Grison was acting a part. I don't think that her brain was quite properly balanced, but her cunning in planning and plotting to implicate your uncle in the crime very nearly succeeded. She certainly was not mad when she acted in that way." "Mad people are always cunning and clever; Alan," insisted Miss Inderwick. "Well, let us give Miss Grison the benefit of the doubt. She can do no more harm now that she is shut up in that asylum as a criminal lunatic, and your uncle must be relieved to think she is safely out of the way." "All the same he has gone to live in Switzerland in a little mountain hotel, my dear," said Marie nodding wisely. "He told me that he never would be satisfied until he had placed the ocean between him and his unhappy wife, and chose Switzerland as the best place to stay in." "Which means that he has only placed the Channel between him and his bugbear," said Fuller dryly. "Well, Marie, I can't say that I am sorry Mr. Sorley came to that determination, as it leaves us The Monastery to ourselves, and such is his dread lest his wife should escape that he will never come to England again, even for a visit." "I don't think you are quite fair to Uncle Ran, dear." "Marie, you have said that again and again, and there is no truth in it, I assure you. I have every desire to be fair to the miserable man, and so has Dick, let alone my father and mother. But now that his deeds have come to light they all mistrust him. He certainly did not murder Baldwin Grison, but he assuredly ruined his life by driving him away, even though the poor wretch gave certain provocation for his dismissal. And you can't say that he behaved well to his wife. He married her for her good looks, and then grew weary of her, as such a selfish man would. When he had her under his thumb through the love she bore her brother, which impelled her to save him from arrest for forgery by sacrificing herself, your Uncle Ran, whom you think so highly of----" "No I don't. But I'm sorry for him, dear." "I don't think he needs your sorrow, or deserves your pity," said Alan in a grave tone. "He was quite ready to commit bigamy for money because he knew that Mrs. Sorley would not speak of her marriage on account of the hold he had over Baldwin. Luckily the rich girl he wished to marry died, so another complication was avoided. He is selfishly happy in Switzerland with his jewels, and because he knows that the woman he wronged so deeply is shut up. I think we may as well do our best to forget Uncle Ran." "Yes, but Alan, he was very good to me as my guardian." "I don't agree with you, Marie, and if you think so, it shows what a truly sweet nature you have. He sold furniture which belonged to you and took your income, and kept you short in every way. He didn't bully you, I admit, but he didn't look after your welfare in any manner whatsoever. You know that what I say is true." "Yes," sighed Marie. "Well then, we won't talk any more about him. I know that he is quite happy where he is, and I'm sure I don't want him to come and make an inconvenient third in our lives, Alan." "He won't," her lover assured her seriously. "He is far too much afraid of Miss Grison, or rather Mrs. Sorley, escaping from her asylum. He is out of our lives, Marie, and as he is happy in his own selfish way, why there is no more to be said. There are plenty of pleasanter subjects to talk about, my dear. Indeed, I never liked your uncle, and I always mistrusted him, as I had every reason to." "I shan't talk of him any more, as I know you are right. And now that the jewels have sold so well and we have plenty of money we can repair The Monastery and improve the grounds, and you can be country squire." "My dear, I am a solicitor, and I shall always be one. I can't live on my wife, you know." "But Alan, you will be away all the week." "Not at all. I can come down every night. It isn't a long run to town." "I want you all to myself here," pouted Marie, "what's the use of my having this horrid money unless I can have you. And half of it is yours, Alan, for unless you had solved the riddle it would not have come into my possession." The young man was quiet for a few moments revolving what she had said. Much as he liked his profession, he secretly admitted that it would be very pleasant to play the part of a country gentleman. And certainly the discovery of the jewels was due to him. Also it was he who had saved the girl's uncle from a disagreeable death, and thus had prevented her from suffering a life-long shame and regret. Finally there was much to be done in connection with the house and the park and with certain lands which Marie wished to buy back, as having belonged to former spendthrift Inderwicks. Alan thought that he could do a great deal of good as the squire of Belstone, especially as his father was the vicar of the parish. Therefore he began to consider that it would not be a bad thing to give up the dingy office in Chancery Lane and come back to the land. "And of course I could enter Parliament," he muttered, following his line of thought. "Yes I could do good there." "Of course," cried Marie, clapping her hands, and guessing what he had been thinking about, "and perhaps you'll get into the Cabinet and the King may give you a title and----" "And the moon is made of green cheese," laughed Alan, giving her a hug. "I dare say I shall give up the law, Marie, since you wish it, and we can do a lot of good down here on your money." "Yours also, darling, yours also." "Very well, mine also. But we can talk of this on our honeymoon when we are strolling over those glorious Cornish moors. Now, Marie, let us go back to the house. You know Dick is coming to be my best man, and he is bound to walk over here as soon as he arrives at the vicarage." "I asked him to come with your father and mother, who are due here to afternoon tea," said Marie slipping off the circle of stones. "Oh!" Alan looked at his watch. "Four o'clock. Then I expect they have arrived. Come along, my darling." "Only one more question," said Marie as they, walked away from the dell. "What is it?" "You know that Simon Ferrier went back to India after burying the gems." "He didn't bury them, he put them in Yarbury's Bank, dear. You forget." "Well, you know what I mean," said Marie impatiently. "He hid the gems so that Julian Inderwick wouldn't get them." "Yes; that's old history. Well?" "Well," echoed Marie. "Simon Ferrier went back to tell George Inderwick where the jewels were to be found and never anticipated capture." "True, oh queen! But what does all this lead to?" "To this! Simon Ferrier had arranged the enigma of the peacock before he left England, and at a time when he never anticipated that he would have any difficulty in speaking personally to his master." "I see what you mean. Well, my dear, all I can suppose is, that Ferrier was an over-cautious man, and made ready the enigma in case anything should prevent his reaching George Inderwick, as he certainly never did. When in captivity he worked out his scheme with the ring and the peacock exactly as he had planned it in England." "But there was no need to when he was here," insisted Marie. "No. But as I said before Simon Ferrier undoubtedly was an over-cautious man; witness the fact that he made so ingenious a cryptogram--if it can be called so--that even the man he designed to benefit could not solve it. And in its very ease lay its difficulty. I can't answer your question in any other way, dear. Not that it matters. We have the money, and everything is right, so let us enjoy our good fortune, and be thankful that none of those wasteful ancestors of yours solved the riddle. Had they done so I fear you would not be so rich." "I think that is very true," said Marie with a laugh; "but here we are, darling, and there is Mr. Latimer." It was indeed Dick arrayed in white flannels looking big and burly and genial, and more like a good-natured bear than ever. He held out a hand to each at the same time, and walked towards the house between them. "How are the happy pair?" he asked gaily. "We won't be a truly happy pair until to-morrow," said Alan. "Speak for yourself, dear," said Marie lightly. "I am happy enough now." "You deserve to be," said Dick smiling, "for you have come through a lot of trouble, and that always makes hearts grow fonder. But do come and give me some tea, Mrs. Fuller--I beg your pardon, Miss Inderwick, but you and Alan do look just like a married couple." "What's that about marriage?" asked the vicar appearing at the drawing-room door--the trio were in the house by this time, "have Marie and Alan been studying the prayer-book." "Of course," said the girl, running forward to kiss Mrs. Fuller. "I know the ceremony by heart." "It's more than I do," wailed Latimer with a shrug, "and as best man, I am sure to be a dismal failure." "Oh you'll pull through somehow," the future bridegroom assured him. "You must give me hints then. And when you are off for your honeymoon to Cornwall, I shall find it dismal in those Barkers Inn chambers all alone." "Get married yourself then," advised the vicar. "Upon my word I must think seriously about it," said Dick. "What do you say, Mrs. Fuller. Can't you find me a nice girl?" "Not one so nice as Marie," said Mrs. Fuller, looking fondly at the graceful form of Miss Inderwick as her hands hovered over the tea-cups. "No, I agree with you there, mother," said Alan, taking up a plate of bread and butter; "Marie is a rare bird." "A rare bird indeed. Why not a peacock?" Mrs. Fuller shuddered. "Oh don't talk of peacocks!" "Why not?" asked the vicar, "all the happiness of the present is really due to the peacock. Marie, my dear," he observed as he took his tea, "I used to laugh at the idea of your fetish, but really things have come about so strangely that I think there is something in it." "Behold our benefactor," cried Alan, pointing towards the bay-window at the end of the vast room, and there on a pedestal under a glass case was the famous bird, which had to do with so strange a history. And even as the young man spoke, there came a burst of sunshine through the window which bathed the golden bird in radiant light. The gems flashed out into rare beauty, and in the dusky room, the fetish of the Inderwicks shone like a rare and magnificent jewel. So unexpected was the sudden glow and glory that everyone muttered a cry of admiration. "It's an omen!" cried Marie, "the omen of the peacock." "Let us drink its health in tea," said Dick raising his cup. And with laughter they all did so, applauding the beneficence of the peacock, even though the vicar hinted that they were acting heathenishly. The fetish of the Inderwicks radiated glory from its gold and jewels in the burning sunshine until it glowed like a star of happy destiny. And all present accepted the omen as a hint of the future. THE END 
7381	----	and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D. THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS by ANTHONY TROLLOPE First published in serial form in the _Fortnightly Review_ from July, 1871, to February, 1873, and in book form in 1872 CONTENTS I. Lizzie Greystock II. Lady Eustace III. Lucy Morris IV. Frank Greystock V. The Eustace Necklace VI. Lady Linlithgow's Mission VII. Mr. Burke's Speeches VIII. The Conquering Hero Comes IX. Showing What the Miss Fawns Said, and What Mrs. Hittaway Thought X. Lizzie and Her Lover XI. Lord Fawn at His Office XII. "I Only Thought of It" XIII. Showing What Frank Greystock Did XIV. "Doan't Thou Marry for Munny" XV. "I'll Give You a Hundred Guinea Brooch" XVI. Certainly an Heirloom XVII. The Diamonds Are Seen in Public XVIII. "And I Have Nothing to Give" XIX. "As My Brother" XX. The Diamonds Become Troublesome XXI. "Ianthe's Soul" XXII. Lady Eustace Procures a Pony for the Use of Her Cousin XXIII. Frank Greystock's First Visit to Portray XXIV. Showing What Frank Greystock Thought About Marriage XXV. Mr. Dove's Opinion XXVI. Mr. Gowran Is Very Funny XXVII. Lucy Morris Misbehaves XXVIII. Mr. Dove in His Chambers XXIX. "I Had Better Go Away" XXX. Mr. Greystock's Troubles XXXI. Frank Greystock's Second Visit to Portray XXXII. Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway in Scotland XXXIII. "It Won't Be True" XXXIV. Lady Linlithgow at Home XXXV. Too Bad for Sympathy XXXVI. Lizzie's Guests XXXVII. Lizzie's First Day XXXVIII. Nappie's Grey Horse XXXIX. Sir Griffin Takes an Unfair Advantage XL. "You Are Not Angry?" XLI. "Likewise the Bears in Couples Agree" XLII. Sunday Morning XLIII. Life at Portray XLIV. A Midnight Adventure XLV. The Journey to London XLVI. Lucy Morris in Brook Street XLVII. Matching Priory XLVIII. Lizzie's Condition XLIX. Bunfit and Gager L. In Hertford Street LI. Confidence LII. Mrs. Carbuncle Goes to the Theatre LIII. Lizzie's Sick-Room LIV. "I Suppose I May Say a Word" LV. Quints or Semitenths LVI. Job's Comforters LVII. Humpty Dumpty LVIII. "The Fiddle with One String" LIX. Mr. Gowran Up in London LX. "Let It Be As Though It Had Never Been" LXI. Lizzie's Great Friend LXII. "You Know Where My Heart Is" LXIII. The Corsair Is Afraid LXIV. Lizzie's Last Scheme LXV. Tribute LXVI. The Aspirations of Mr. Emilius LXVII. The Eye of the Public LXVIII. The Major LXIX. "I Cannot Do It" LXX. Alas! LXXI. Lizzie Is Threatened with the Treadmill LXXII. Lizzie Triumphs LXXIII. Lizzie's Last Lover LXXIV. Lizzie at the Police-Court LXXV. Lord George Gives His Reasons LXXVI. Lizzie Returns to Scotland LXXVII. The Story of Lucy Morris Is Concluded LXXVIII. The Trial LXXIX. Once More at Portray LXXX. What Was Said About It All at Matching VOLUME I CHAPTER I Lizzie Greystock It was admitted by all her friends, and also by her enemies,--who were in truth the more numerous and active body of the two,--that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself. We will tell the story of Lizzie Greystock from the beginning, but we will not dwell over it at great length, as we might do if we loved her. She was the only child of old Admiral Greystock, who in the latter years of his life was much perplexed by the possession of a daughter. The admiral was a man who liked whist, wine,--and wickedness in general we may perhaps say, and whose ambition it was to live every day of his life up to the end of it. People say that he succeeded, and that the whist, wine, and wickedness were there, at the side even of his dying bed. He had no particular fortune, and yet his daughter, when she was little more than a child, went about everywhere with jewels on her fingers, and red gems hanging round her neck, and yellow gems pendent from her ears, and white gems shining in her black hair. She was hardly nineteen when her father died and she was taken home by that dreadful old termagant, her aunt, Lady Linlithgow. Lizzie would have sooner gone to any other friend or relative, had there been any other friend or relative to take her possessed of a house in town. Her uncle, Dean Greystock, of Bobsborough, would have had her, and a more good-natured old soul than the dean's wife did not exist,--and there were three pleasant, good-tempered girls in the deanery, who had made various little efforts at friendship with their cousin Lizzie; but Lizzie had higher ideas for herself than life in the deanery at Bobsborough. She hated Lady Linlithgow. During her father's lifetime, when she hoped to be able to settle herself before his death, she was not in the habit of concealing her hatred for Lady Linlithgow. Lady Linlithgow was not indeed amiable or easily managed. But when the admiral died, Lizzie did not hesitate for a moment in going to the old "vulturess," as she was in the habit of calling the countess in her occasional correspondence with the girls at Bobsborough. The admiral died greatly in debt;--so much so that it was a marvel how tradesmen had trusted him. There was literally nothing left for anybody,--and Messrs. Harter and Benjamin of Old Bond Street condescended to call at Lady Linlithgow's house in Brook Street, and to beg that the jewels supplied during the last twelve months might be returned. Lizzie protested that there were no jewels,--nothing to signify, nothing worth restoring. Lady Linlithgow had seen the diamonds, and demanded an explanation. They had been "parted with," by the admiral's orders,--so said Lizzie,--for the payment of other debts. Of this Lady Linlithgow did not believe a word, but she could not get at any exact truth. At that moment the jewels were in very truth pawned for money which had been necessary for Lizzie's needs. Certain things must be paid for,--one's own maid for instance; and one must have some money in one's pocket for railway-trains and little knick-knacks which cannot be had on credit. Lizzie when she was nineteen knew how to do without money as well as most girls; but there were calls which she could not withstand, debts which even she must pay. She did not, however, drop her acquaintance with Messrs. Harter and Benjamin. Before her father had been dead eight months, she was closeted with Mr. Benjamin, transacting a little business with him. She had come to him, she told him, the moment she was of age, and was willing to make herself responsible for the debt, signing any bill, note, or document which the firm might demand from her, to that effect. Of course she had nothing of her own, and never would have anything. That Mr. Benjamin knew. As for payment of the debt by Lady Linlithgow, who for a countess was as poor as Job, Mr. Benjamin, she was quite sure, did not expect anything of the kind. But-- Then Lizzie paused, and Mr. Benjamin, with the sweetest and wittiest of smiles, suggested that perhaps Miss Greystock was going to be married. Lizzie, with a pretty maiden blush, admitted that such a catastrophe was probable. She had been asked in marriage by Sir Florian Eustace. Now Mr. Benjamin knew, as all the world knew, that Sir Florian Eustace was a very rich man indeed; a man in no degree embarrassed, and who could pay any amount of jewellers' bills for which claim might be made upon him. Well; what did Miss Greystock want? Mr. Benjamin did not suppose that Miss Greystock was actuated simply by a desire to have her old bills paid by her future husband. Miss Greystock wanted a loan sufficient to take the jewels out of pawn. She would then make herself responsible for the full amount due. Mr. Benjamin said that he would make a few inquiries. "But you won't betray me," said Lizzie, "for the match might be off." Mr. Benjamin promised to be more than cautious. There was not so much of falsehood as might have been expected in the statement which Lizzie Greystock made to the jeweller. It was not true that she was of age, and therefore no future husband would be legally liable for any debt which she might then contract. And it was not true that Sir Florian Eustace had asked her in marriage. Those two little blemishes in her statement must be admitted. But it was true that Sir Florian was at her feet, and that by a proper use of her various charms,--the pawned jewels included,--she might bring him to an offer. Mr. Benjamin made his inquiries, and acceded to the proposal. He did not tell Miss Greystock that she had lied to him in that matter of her age, though he had discovered the lie. Sir Florian would no doubt pay the bill for his wife without any arguments as to the legality of the claim. From such information as Mr. Benjamin could acquire he thought that there would be a marriage, and that the speculation was on the whole in his favour. Lizzie recovered her jewels and Mr. Benjamin was in possession of a promissory note purporting to have been executed by a person who was no longer a minor. The jeweller was ultimately successful in his views,--and so was the lady. Lady Linlithgow saw the jewels come back, one by one, ring added to ring on the little taper fingers, the rubies for the neck, and the pendent yellow earrings. Though Lizzie was in mourning for her father, still these things were allowed to be visible. The countess was not the woman to see them without inquiry, and she inquired vigorously. She threatened, stormed, and protested. She attempted even a raid upon the young lady's jewel-box. But she was not successful. Lizzie snapped and snarled and held her own,--for at that time the match with Sir Florian was near its accomplishment, and the countess understood too well the value of such a disposition of her niece to risk it at the moment by any open rupture. The little house in Brook Street,--for the house was very small and very comfortless,--a house that had been squeezed in, as it were, between two others without any fitting space for it,--did not contain a happy family. One bedroom, and that the biggest, was appropriated to the Earl of Linlithgow, the son of the countess, a young man who passed perhaps five nights in town during the year. Other inmate there was none besides the aunt and the niece and the four servants,--of whom one was Lizzie's own maid. Why should such a countess have troubled herself with the custody of such a niece? Simply because the countess regarded it as a duty. Lady Linlithgow was worldly, stingy, ill-tempered, selfish, and mean. Lady Linlithgow would cheat a butcher out of a mutton-chop, or a cook out of a month's wages, if she could do so with some slant of legal wind in her favour. She would tell any number of lies to carry a point in what she believed to be social success. It was said of her that she cheated at cards. In back-biting, no venomous old woman between Bond Street and Park Lane could beat her,--or, more wonderful still, no venomous old man at the clubs. But nevertheless she recognised certain duties,--and performed them, though she hated them. She went to church, not merely that people might see her there,--as to which in truth she cared nothing,--but because she thought it was right. And she took in Lizzie Greystock, whom she hated almost as much as she did sermons, because the admiral's wife had been her sister, and she recognised a duty. But, having thus bound herself to Lizzie,--who was a beauty,--of course it became the first object of her life to get rid of Lizzie by a marriage. And, though she would have liked to think that Lizzie would be tormented all her days, though she thoroughly believed that Lizzie deserved to be tormented, she set her heart upon a splendid match. She would at any rate be able to throw it daily in her niece's teeth that the splendour was of her doing. Now a marriage with Sir Florian Eustace would be very splendid, and therefore she was unable to go into the matter of the jewels with that rigour which in other circumstances she would certainly have displayed. The match with Sir Florian Eustace,--for a match it came to be,--was certainly very splendid. Sir Florian was a young man about eight-and-twenty, very handsome, of immense wealth, quite unencumbered, moving in the best circles, popular, so far prudent that he never risked his fortune on the turf or in gambling-houses, with the reputation of a gallant soldier, and a most devoted lover. There were two facts concerning him which might, or might not, be taken as objections. He was vicious, and--he was dying. When a friend, intending to be kind, hinted the latter circumstance to Lady Linlithgow, the countess blinked and winked and nodded, and then swore that she had procured medical advice on the subject. Medical advice declared that Sir Florian was not more likely to die than another man,--if only he would get married; all of which statement on her ladyship's part was a lie. When the same friend hinted the same thing to Lizzie herself, Lizzie resolved that she would have her revenge upon that friend. At any rate the courtship went on. We have said that Sir Florian was vicious;--but he was not altogether a bad man, nor was he vicious in the common sense of the word. He was one who denied himself no pleasure, let the cost be what it might in health, pocket, or morals. Of sin or wickedness he had probably no distinct idea. In virtue, as an attribute of the world around him, he had no belief. Of honour he thought very much, and had conceived a somewhat noble idea that because much had been given to him much was demanded of him. He was haughty, polite,--and very generous. There was almost a nobility even about his vices. And he had a special gallantry of which it is hard to say whether it is or is not to be admired. They told him that he was like to die,--very like to die, if he did not change his manner of living. Would he go to Algiers for a period? Certainly not. He would do no such thing. If he died, there was his brother John left to succeed him. And the fear of death never cast a cloud over that grandly beautiful brow. They had all been short-lived,--the Eustaces. Consumption had swept a hecatomb of victims from the family. But still they were grand people, and never were afraid of death. And then Sir Florian fell in love. Discussing this matter with his brother, who was perhaps his only intimate friend, he declared that if the girl he loved would give herself to him, he would make what atonement he could to her for his own early death by a princely settlement. John Eustace, who was somewhat nearly concerned in the matter, raised no objection to this proposal. There was ever something grand about these Eustaces. Sir Florian was a grand gentleman; but surely he must have been dull of intellect, slow of discernment, blear-eyed in his ways about the town, when he took Lizzie Greystock,--of all the women whom he could find in the world,--to be the purest, the truest, and the noblest. It has been said of Sir Florian that he did not believe in virtue. He freely expressed disbelief in the virtue of women around him,--in the virtue of women of all ranks. But he believed in his mother and sisters as though they were heaven-born; and he was one who could believe in his wife as though she were the queen of heaven. He did believe in Lizzie Greystock, thinking that intellect, purity, truth, and beauty, each perfect in its degree, were combined in her. The intellect and beauty were there;--but, for the purity and truth--; how could it have been that such a one as Sir Florian Eustace should have been so blind! Sir Florian was not, indeed, a clever man; but he believed himself to be a fool. And believing himself to be a fool, he desired, nay, painfully longed, for some of those results of cleverness which might, he thought, come to him, from contact with a clever woman. Lizzie read poetry well, and she read verses to him,--sitting very near to him, almost in the dark, with a shaded lamp throwing its light on her book. He was astonished to find how sweet a thing was poetry. By himself he could never read a line, but as it came from her lips it seemed to charm him. It was a new pleasure, and one which, though he had ridiculed it, he had so often coveted! And then she told him of such wondrous thoughts,--such wondrous joys in the world which would come from thinking! He was proud, I have said, and haughty; but he was essentially modest and humble in his self-estimation. How divine was this creature, whose voice to him was as that of a goddess! Then he spoke out to her, with his face a little turned from her. Would she be his wife? But, before she answered him, let her listen to him. They had told him that an early death must probably be his fate. He did not himself feel that it must be so. Sometimes he was ill,--very ill; but often he was well. If she would run the risk with him he would endeavour to make her such recompense as might come from his wealth. The speech he made was somewhat long, and as he made it he hardly looked into her face. But it was necessary to him that he should be made to know by some signal from her how it was going with her feelings. As he spoke of his danger, there came a gurgling little trill of wailing from her throat, a soft, almost musical sound of woe, which seemed to add an unaccustomed eloquence to his words. When he spoke of his own hope the sound was somewhat changed, but it was still continued. When he alluded to the disposition of his fortune, she was at his feet. "Not that," she said, "not that!" He lifted her, and with his arm round her waist he tried to tell her what it would be his duty to do for her. She escaped from his arm and would not listen to him. But,--but--! When he began to talk of love again, she stood with her forehead bowed against his bosom. Of course the engagement was then a thing accomplished. But still the cup might slip from her lips. Her father was now dead but ten months, and what answer could she make when the common pressing petition for an early marriage was poured into her ear? This was in July, and it would never do that he should be left, unmarried, to the rigour of another winter. She looked into his face and knew that she had cause for fear. Oh, heavens! if all these golden hopes should fall to the ground, and she should come to be known only as the girl who had been engaged to the late Sir Florian! But he himself pressed the marriage on the same ground. "They tell me," he said, "that I had better get a little south by the beginning of October. I won't go alone. You know what I mean;--eh, Lizzie?" Of course she married him in September. They spent a honeymoon of six weeks at a place he had in Scotland, and the first blow came upon him as they passed through London, back from Scotland, on their way to Italy. Messrs. Harter and Benjamin sent in their little bill, which amounted to something over £400, and other little bills were sent in. Sir Florian was a man by whom such bills would certainly be paid, but by whom they would not be paid without his understanding much and conceiving more as to their cause and nature. How much he really did understand she was never quite aware;--but she did know that he detected her in a positive falsehood. She might certainly have managed the matter better than she did; and had she admitted everything there might probably have been but few words about it. She did not, however, understand the nature of the note she had signed, and thought that simply new bills would be presented by the jewellers to her husband. She gave a false account of the transaction, and the lie was detected. I do not know that she cared very much. As she was utterly devoid of true tenderness, so also was she devoid of conscience. They went abroad, however; and by the time the winter was half over in Naples, he knew what his wife was;--and before the end of the spring he was dead. She had so far played her game well, and had won her stakes. What regrets, what remorse she suffered when she knew that he was going from her,--and then knew that he was gone, who can say? As man is never strong enough to take unmixed delight in good, so may we presume also that he cannot be quite so weak as to find perfect satisfaction in evil. There must have been qualms as she looked at his dying face, soured with the disappointment she had brought upon him, and listened to the harsh querulous voice that was no longer eager in the expressions of love. There must have been some pang when she reflected that the cruel wrong which she had inflicted on him had probably hurried him to his grave. As a widow, in the first solemnity of her widowhood, she was wretched and would see no one. Then she returned to England and shut herself up in a small house at Brighton. Lady Linlithgow offered to go to her, but she begged that she might be left to herself. For a few short months the awe arising from the rapidity with which it had all occurred did afflict her. Twelve months since she had hardly known the man who was to be her husband. Now she was a widow,--a widow very richly endowed,--and she bore beneath her bosom the fruit of her husband's love. But, even in these early days, friends and enemies did not hesitate to say that Lizzie Greystock had done very well with herself; for it was known by all concerned that in the settlements made she had been treated with unwonted generosity. CHAPTER II Lady Eustace There were circumstances in her position which made it impossible that Lizzie Greystock,--or Lady Eustace, as we must now call her,--should be left altogether to herself in the modest widow's retreat which she had found at Brighton. It was then April, and it was known that if all things went well with her, she would be a mother before the summer was over. On what the Fates might ordain in this matter immense interests were dependent. If a son should be born he would inherit everything, subject, of course, to his mother's settlement. If a daughter, to her would belong the great personal wealth which Sir Florian had owned at the time of his death. Should there be no son, John Eustace, the brother, would inherit the estates in Yorkshire which had been the backbone of the Eustace wealth. Should no child be born, John Eustace would inherit everything that had not been settled upon or left to the widow. Sir Florian had made a settlement immediately before his marriage, and a will immediately afterwards. Of what he had done then, nothing had been altered in those sad Italian days. The settlement had been very generous. The whole property in Scotland was to belong to Lizzie for her life,--and after her death was to go to a second son, if such second son there should be. By the will money was left to her, more than would be needed for any possible temporary emergency. When she knew how it was all arranged,--as far as she did know it,--she was aware that she was a rich woman. For so clever a woman she was infinitely ignorant as to the possession and value of money and land and income,--though, perhaps, not more ignorant than are most young girls under twenty-one. As for the Scotch property,--she thought that it was her own, for ever, because there could not now be a second son,--and yet was not quite sure whether it would be her own at all if she had no son. Concerning that sum of money left to her, she did not know whether it was to come out of the Scotch property or be given to her separately,--and whether it was to come annually or to come only once. She had received, while still in Naples, a letter from the family lawyer, giving her such details of the will as it was necessary that she should know, and now she longed to ask questions, to have her belongings made plain to her, and to realise her wealth. She had brilliant prospects; and yet, through it all, there was a sense of loneliness that nearly killed her. Would it not have been much better if her husband had lived, and still worshipped her, and still allowed her to read poetry to him? But she had read no poetry to him after that affair of Messrs. Harter and Benjamin. The reader has, or will have, but little to do with these days, and may be hurried on through the twelve, or even twenty-four months which followed the death of poor Sir Florian. The question of the heirship, however, was very grave, and early in the month of May Lady Eustace was visited by her husband's uncle, Bishop Eustace, of Bobsborough. The bishop had been the younger brother of Sir Florian's father,--was at this time a man about fifty, very active and very popular,--and was one who stood high in the world, even among bishops. He suggested to his niece-in-law that it was very expedient that, during her coming hour of trial, she should not absent herself from her husband's family, and at last persuaded her to take up her residence at the palace at Bobsborough till such time as the event should be over. Lady Eustace was taken to the palace, and in due time a son was born. John, who was now the uncle of the heir, came down, and, with the frankest good humour, declared that he would devote himself to the little head of the family. He had been left as guardian, and the management of the great family estates was to be in his hands. Lizzie had read no poetry to him, and he had never liked her, and the bishop did not like her, and the ladies of the bishop's family disliked her very much, and it was thought by them that the dean's people,--the Dean of Bobsborough was Lizzie's uncle,--were not very fond of Lizzie since Lizzie had so raised herself in the world as to want no assistance from them. But still they were bound to do their duty by her as the widow of the late and the mother of the present baronet. And they did not find much cause of complaining as to Lizzie's conduct in these days. In that matter of the great family diamond necklace,--which certainly should not have been taken to Naples at all, and as to which the jeweller had told the lawyer and the lawyer had told John Eustace that it certainly should not now be detained among the widow's own private property,--the bishop strongly recommended that nothing should be said at present. The mistake, if there was a mistake, could be remedied at any time. And nothing in those very early days was said about the great Eustace necklace, which afterwards became so famous. Why Lizzie should have been so generally disliked by the Eustaces, it might be hard to explain. While she remained at the palace she was very discreet,--and perhaps demure. It may be said they disliked her expressed determination to cut her aunt, Lady Linlithgow;--for they knew that Lady Linlithgow had been, at any rate, a friend to Lizzie Greystock. There are people who can be wise within a certain margin, but beyond that commit great imprudences. Lady Eustace submitted herself to the palace people for that period of her prostration, but she could not hold her tongue as to her future intentions. She would, too, now and then ask of Mrs. Eustace, and even of her daughter, an eager, anxious question about her own property. "She is dying to handle her money," said Mrs. Eustace to the bishop. "She is only like the rest of the world in that," said the bishop. "If she would be really open, I wouldn't mind it," said Mrs. Eustace. None of them liked her,--and she did not like them. She remained at the palace for six months, and at the end of that time she went to her own place in Scotland. Mrs. Eustace had strongly advised her to ask her aunt, Lady Linlithgow, to accompany her, but in refusing to do this, Lizzie was quite firm. She had endured Lady Linlithgow for that year between her father's death and her marriage; she was now beginning to dare to hope for the enjoyment of the good things which she had won, and the presence of the dowager-countess,--"the vulturess,"--was certainly not one of these good things. In what her enjoyment was to consist, she had not as yet quite formed a definite conclusion. She liked jewels. She liked admiration. She liked the power of being arrogant to those around her. And she liked good things to eat. But there were other matters that were also dear to her. She did like music,--though it may be doubted whether she would ever play it or even listen to it alone. She did like reading, and especially the reading of poetry,--though even in this she was false and pretentious, skipping, pretending to have read, lying about books, and making up her market of literature for outside admiration at the easiest possible cost of trouble. And she had some dream of being in love, and would take delight even in building castles in the air, which she would people with friends and lovers whom she would make happy with the most open-hearted benevolence. She had theoretical ideas of life which were not bad,--but in practice, she had gained her objects, and she was in a hurry to have liberty to enjoy them. There was considerable anxiety in the palace in reference to the future mode of life of Lady Eustace. Had it not been for that baby-heir, of course there would have been no cause for interference; but the rights of that baby were so serious and important that it was almost impossible not to interfere. The mother, however, gave some little signs that she did not intend to submit to much interference, and there was no real reason why she should not be as free as air. But did she really intend to go down to Portray Castle all alone;--that is, with her baby and nurses? This was ended by an arrangement, in accordance with which she was accompanied by her eldest cousin, Ellinor Greystock, a lady who was just ten years her senior. There could hardly be a better woman than Ellinor Greystock,--or a more good-humoured, kindly being. After many debates in the deanery and in the palace,--for there was much friendship between the two ecclesiastical establishments,--the offer was made and the advice given. Ellinor had accepted the martyrdom on the understanding that if the advice were accepted she was to remain at Portray Castle for three months. After a long discussion between Lady Eustace and the bishop's wife the offer was accepted, and the two ladies went to Scotland together. During those three months the widow still bided her time. Of her future ideas of life she said not a word to her companion. Of her infant she said very little. She would talk of books,--choosing such books as her cousin did not read; and she would interlard her conversation with much Italian, because her cousin did not know the language. There was a carriage kept by the widow, and they had themselves driven out together. Of real companionship there was none. Lizzie was biding her time, and at the end of the three months Miss Greystock thankfully, and, indeed, of necessity, returned to Bobsborough. "I've done no good," she said to her mother, "and have been very uncomfortable." "My dear," said her mother, "we have disposed of three months out of a two years' period of danger. In two years from Sir Florian's death she will be married again." When this was said Lizzie had been a widow nearly a year, and had bided her time upon the whole discreetly. Some foolish letters she had written,--chiefly to the lawyer about her money and property; and some foolish things she had said,--as when she told Ellinor Greystock that the Portray property was her own for ever, to do what she liked with it. The sum of money left to her by her husband had by that time been paid into her own hands, and she had opened a banker's account. The revenues from the Scotch estate,--some £4,000 a year,--were clearly her own for life. The family diamond-necklace was still in her possession, and no answer had been given by her to a postscript to a lawyer's letter in which a little advice had been given respecting it. At the end of another year, when she had just reached the age of twenty-two, and had completed her second year of widowhood, she was still Lady Eustace, thus contradicting the prophecy made by the dean's wife. It was then spring, and she had a house of her own in London. She had broken openly with Lady Linlithgow. She had opposed, though not absolutely refused, all overtures of brotherly care from John Eustace. She had declined a further invitation, both for herself and for her child, to the palace. And she had positively asserted her intention of keeping the diamonds. Her late husband, she said, had given the diamonds to her. As they were supposed to be worth £10,000, and were really family diamonds, the matter was felt by all concerned to be one of much importance. And she was oppressed by a heavy load of ignorance, which became serious from the isolation of her position. She had learned to draw cheques, but she had no other correct notion as to business. She knew nothing as to spending money, saving it, or investing it. Though she was clever, sharp, and greedy, she had no idea what her money would do, and what it would not; and there was no one whom she would trust to tell her. She had a young cousin, a barrister,--a son of the dean's, whom she perhaps liked better than any other of her relations,--but she declined advice even from her friend the barrister. She would have no dealings on her own behalf with the old family solicitor of the Eustaces,--the gentleman who had now applied very formally for the restitution of the diamonds; but had appointed other solicitors to act for her. Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus were of opinion that as the diamonds had been given into her hands by her husband without any terms as to their surrender, no one could claim them. Of the manner in which the diamonds had been placed in her hands, no one knew more than she chose to tell. But when she started with her house in town,--a modest little house in Mount Street, near the park,--just two years after her husband's death, she had a large circle of acquaintances. The Eustace people, and the Greystock people, and even the Linlithgow people, did not entirely turn their backs on her. The countess, indeed, was very venomous, as she well might be; but then the countess was known for her venom. The dean and his family were still anxious that she should be encouraged to discreet living, and, though they feared many things, thought that they had no ground for open complaint. The Eustace people were forbearing, and hoped the best. "D---- the necklace!" John Eustace had said, and the bishop unfortunately had heard him say it! "John," said the prelate, "whatever is to become of the bauble, you might express your opinion in more sensible language." "I beg your lordship's pardon," said John, "I only mean to say that I think we shouldn't trouble ourselves about a few stones." But the family lawyer, Mr. Camperdown, would by no means take this view of the matter. It was, however, generally thought that the young widow opened her campaign more prudently than had been expected. And now as so much has been said of the character and fortune and special circumstances of Lizzie Greystock, who became Lady Eustace as a bride, and Lady Eustace as a widow and a mother, all within the space of twelve months, it may be as well to give some description of her person and habits, such as they were at the period in which our story is supposed to have its commencement. It must be understood in the first place that she was very lovely;--much more so, indeed, now than when she had fascinated Sir Florian. She was small, but taller than she looked to be,--for her form was perfectly symmetrical. Her feet and hands might have been taken as models by a sculptor. Her figure was lithe, and soft, and slim, and slender. If it had a fault it was this,--that it had in it too much of movement. There were some who said that she was almost snake-like in her rapid bendings and the almost too easy gestures of her body; for she was much given to action, and to the expression of her thought by the motion of her limbs. She might certainly have made her way as an actress, had fortune called upon her to earn her bread in that fashion. And her voice would have suited the stage. It was powerful when she called upon it for power; but, at the same time, flexible and capable of much pretence at feeling. She could bring it to a whisper that would almost melt your heart with tenderness,--as she had melted Sir Florian's, when she sat near to him reading poetry; and then she could raise it to a pitch of indignant wrath befitting a Lady Macbeth when her husband ventured to rebuke her. And her ear was quite correct in modulating these tones. She knew,--and it must have been by instinct, for her culture in such matters was small,--how to use her voice so that neither its tenderness nor its wrath should be misapplied. There were pieces in verse that she could read,--things not wondrously good in themselves,--so that she would ravish you; and she would so look at you as she did it that you would hardly dare either to avert your eyes or to return her gaze. Sir Florian had not known whether to do the one thing or the other, and had therefore seized her in his arms. Her face was oval,--somewhat longer than an oval,--with little in it, perhaps nothing in it, of that brilliancy of colour which we call complexion. And yet the shades of her countenance were ever changing between the softest and most transparent white, and the richest, mellowest shades of brown. It was only when she simulated anger,--she was almost incapable of real anger,--that she would succeed in calling the thinnest streak of pink from her heart, to show that there was blood running in her veins. Her hair, which was nearly black,--but in truth with more of softness and of lustre than ever belong to hair that is really black,--she wore bound tight round her perfect forehead, with one long love-lock hanging over her shoulder. The form of her head was so good that she could dare to carry it without a chignon, or any adventitious adjuncts from an artiste's shop. Very bitter was she in consequence when speaking of the head-gear of other women. Her chin was perfect in its round, not over long,--as is the case with so many such faces, utterly spoiling the symmetry of the countenance. But it lacked a dimple, and therefore lacked feminine tenderness. Her mouth was perhaps faulty in being too small, or, at least, her lips were too thin. There was wanting from the mouth that expression of eager-speaking truthfulness which full lips will often convey. Her teeth were without flaw or blemish, even, small, white, and delicate; but perhaps they were shown too often. Her nose was small, but struck many as the prettiest feature of her face, so exquisite was the moulding of it, and so eloquent and so graceful the slight inflations of the transparent nostrils. Her eyes, in which she herself thought that the lustre of her beauty lay, were blue and clear, bright as cerulean waters. They were long large eyes,--but very dangerous. To those who knew how to read a face, there was danger plainly written in them. Poor Sir Florian had not known. But, in truth, the charm of her face did not lie in her eyes. This was felt by many even who could not read the book fluently. They were too expressive, too loud in their demands for attention, and they lacked tenderness. How few there are among women, few perhaps also among men, who know that the sweetest, softest, tenderest, truest eyes which a woman can carry in her head are green in colour! Lizzie's eyes were not tender,--neither were they true. But they were surmounted by the most wonderfully pencilled eyebrows that ever nature unassisted planted on a woman's face. We have said that she was clever. We must add that she had in truth studied much. She spoke French, understood Italian, and read German. She played well on the harp, and moderately well on the piano. She sang, at least in good taste and in tune. Of things to be learned by reading she knew much, having really taken diligent trouble with herself. She had learned much poetry by heart, and could apply it. She forgot nothing, listened to everything, understood quickly, and was desirous to show not only as a beauty but as a wit. There were men at this time who declared that she was simply the cleverest and the handsomest woman in England. As an independent young woman she was perhaps one of the richest. CHAPTER III Lucy Morris Although the first two chapters of this new history have been devoted to the fortunes and personal attributes of Lady Eustace, the historian begs his readers not to believe that that opulent and aristocratic Becky Sharp is to assume the dignity of heroine in the forthcoming pages. That there shall be any heroine the historian will not take upon himself to assert; but if there be a heroine, that heroine shall not be Lady Eustace. Poor Lizzie Greystock!--as men double her own age, and who had known her as a forward, capricious, spoilt child in her father's lifetime, would still call her. She did so many things, made so many efforts, caused so much suffering to others, and suffered so much herself throughout the scenes with which we are about to deal, that the story can hardly be told without giving her that prominence of place which has been assigned to her in the last two chapters. Nor does the chronicler dare to put forward Lucy Morris as a heroine. The real heroine, if it be found possible to arrange her drapery for her becomingly, and to put that part which she enacted into properly heroic words, shall stalk in among us at some considerably later period of the narrative, when the writer shall have accustomed himself to the flow of words, and have worked himself up to a state of mind fit for the reception of noble acting and noble speaking. In the meantime, let it be understood that poor little Lucy Morris was a governess in the house of old Lady Fawn, when our beautiful young widow established herself in Mount Street. Lady Eustace and Lucy Morris had known each other for many years,--had indeed been children together,--there having been some old family friendship between the Greystocks and the Morrises. When the admiral's wife was living, Lucy had, as a little girl of eight or nine, been her guest. She had often been a guest at the deanery. When Lady Eustace had gone down to the bishop's palace at Bobsborough, in order that an heir to the Eustaces might be born under an auspicious roof, Lucy Morris was with the Greystocks. Lucy, who was a year younger than Lizzie, had at that time been an orphan for the last four years. She too had been left penniless, but no such brilliant future awaited her as that which Lizzie had earned for herself. There was no countess-aunt to take her into her London house. The dean and the dean's wife and the dean's daughters had been her best friends, but they were not friends on whom she could be dependent. They were in no way connected with her by blood. Therefore, at the age of eighteen, she had gone out to be a child's governess. Then old Lady Fawn had heard of her virtues,--Lady Fawn, who had seven unmarried daughters running down from seven-and-twenty to thirteen, and Lucy Morris had been hired to teach English, French, German, and something of music to the two youngest Miss Fawns. During that visit at the deanery, when the heir of the Eustaces was being born, Lucy was undergoing a sort of probation for the Fawn establishment. The proposed engagement with Lady Fawn was thought to be a great thing for her. Lady Fawn was known as a miracle of Virtue, Benevolence, and Persistency. Every good quality that she possessed was so marked as to be worthy of being expressed with a capital. But her virtues were of that extraordinarily high character that there was no weakness in them,--no getting over them, no perverting them with follies or even exaggerations. When she heard of the excellencies of Miss Morris from the dean's wife, and then, after minutest investigation, learned the exact qualities of the young lady, she expressed herself willing to take Lucy into her house on special conditions. She must be able to teach music up to a certain point. "Then it's all over," said Lucy to the dean with her pretty smile,--that smile which caused all the old and middle-aged men to fall in love with her. "It's not over at all," said the dean. "You've got four months. Our organist is about as good a teacher as there is in England. You are clever and quick, and he shall teach you." So Lucy went to Bobsborough, and was afterwards accepted by Lady Fawn. While she was at the deanery there sprung up a renewed friendship between her and Lizzie. It was, indeed, chiefly a one-sided friendship; for Lucy, who was quick and unconsciously capable of reading that book to which we alluded in a previous chapter, was somewhat afraid of the rich widow. And when Lizzie talked to her of their old childish days, and quoted poetry, and spoke of things romantic,--as she was much given to do,--Lucy felt that the metal did not ring true. And then Lizzie had an ugly habit of abusing all her other friends behind their backs. Now Lucy did not like to hear the Greystocks abused, and would say so. "That's all very well, you little minx," Lizzie would say playfully, "but you know that they are all asses!" Lucy by no means thought that the Greystocks were asses, and was very strongly of opinion that one of them was as far removed from being an ass as any human being she had ever known. This one was Frank Greystock, the barrister. Of Frank Greystock some special--but, let it be hoped, very short--description must be given by-and-by. For the present it will be sufficient to declare that, during that short Easter holiday which he spent at his father's house in Bobsborough, he found Lucy Morris to be a most agreeable companion. "Remember her position," said Mrs. Dean to her son. "Her position! Well;--and what is her position mother?" "You know what I mean, Frank. She is as sweet a girl as ever lived, and a perfect lady. But with a governess, unless you mean to marry her, you should be more careful than with another girl, because you may do her such a world of mischief." "I don't see that at all." "If Lady Fawn knew that she had an admirer, Lady Fawn would not let her come into her house." "Then Lady Fawn is an idiot. If a girl be admirable, of course she will be admired. Who can hinder it?" "You know what I mean, Frank." "Yes--I do; well. I don't suppose I can afford to marry Lucy Morris. At any rate, mother, I will never say a word to raise a hope in her,--if it would be a hope--" "Of course it would be a hope." "I don't know that at all. But I will never say any such word to her,--unless I make up my mind that I can afford to marry her." "Oh, Frank, it would be impossible!" said Mrs. Dean. Mrs. Dean was a very good woman, but she had aspirations in the direction of filthy lucre on behalf of her children, or at least on behalf of this special child, and she did think it would be very nice if Frank would marry an heiress. This, however, was a long time ago, nearly two years ago; and many grave things had got themselves transacted since Lucy's visit to the deanery. She had become quite an old and an accustomed member of Lady Fawn's family. The youngest Fawn girl was not yet fifteen, and it was understood that Lucy was to remain with the Fawns for some quite indefinite time to come. Lady Fawn's eldest daughter, Mrs. Hittaway, had a family of her own, having been married ten or twelve years, and it was quite probable that Lucy might be transferred. Lady Fawn fully appreciated her treasure, and was, and ever had been, conscientiously anxious to make Lucy's life happy. But she thought that a governess should not be desirous of marrying, at any rate till a somewhat advanced period of life. A governess, if she were given to falling in love, could hardly perform her duties in life. No doubt, not to be a governess, but a young lady free from the embarrassing necessity of earning bread, free to have a lover and a husband, would be upon the whole nicer. So it is nicer to be born to £10,000 a year than to have to wish for £500. Lady Fawn could talk excellent sense on this subject by the hour, and always admitted that much was due to a governess who knew her place and did her duty. She was very fond of Lucy Morris, and treated her dependent with affectionate consideration;--but she did not approve of visits from Mr. Frank Greystock. Lucy, blushing up to the eyes, had once declared that she desired to have no personal visitors at Lady Fawn's house; but that, as regarded her own friendships, the matter was one for her own bosom. "Dear Miss Morris," Lady Fawn had said, "we understand each other so perfectly, and you are so good, that I am quite sure everything will be as it ought to be." Lady Fawn lived down at Richmond all the year through, in a large old-fashioned house with a large old-fashioned garden, called Fawn Court. After that speech of hers to Lucy, Frank Greystock did not call again at Fawn Court for many months, and it is possible that her ladyship had said a word also to him. But Lady Eustace, with her pretty little pair of grey ponies, would sometimes drive down to Richmond to see her "dear little old friend" Lucy, and her visits were allowed. Lady Fawn had expressed an opinion among her daughters that she did not see any harm in Lady Eustace. She thought that she rather liked Lady Eustace. But then Lady Fawn hated Lady Linlithgow as only two old women can hate each other;--and she had not heard the story of the diamond necklace. Lucy Morris certainly was a treasure,--a treasure though no heroine. She was a sweetly social, genial little human being whose presence in the house was ever felt to be like sunshine. She was never forward, but never bashful. She was always open to familiar intercourse without ever putting herself forward. There was no man or woman with whom she would not so talk as to make the man or woman feel that the conversation was remarkably pleasant,--and she could do the same with any child. She was an active, mindful, bright, energetic little thing to whom no work ever came amiss. She had catalogued the library,--which had been collected by the late Lord Fawn with peculiar reference to the Christian theology of the third and fourth centuries. She had planned the new flower-garden,--though Lady Fawn thought that she had done that herself. She had been invaluable during Clara Fawn's long illness. She knew every rule at croquet, and could play piquet. When the girls got up charades they had to acknowledge that everything depended on Miss Morris. They were good-natured, plain, unattractive girls, who spoke of her to her face as one who could easily do anything to which she might put her hand. Lady Fawn did really love her. Lord Fawn, the eldest son, a young man of about thirty-five, a Peer of Parliament and an Under-Secretary of State,--very prudent and very diligent,--of whom his mother and sisters stood in great awe, consulted her frequently and made no secret of his friendship. The mother knew her awful son well, and was afraid of nothing wrong in that direction. Lord Fawn had suffered a disappointment in love, but he had consoled himself with blue-books, and mastered his passion by incessant attendance at the India Board. The lady he had loved had been rich, and Lord Fawn was poor; but nevertheless he had mastered his passion. There was no fear that his feelings towards the governess would become too warm;--nor was it likely that Miss Morris should encounter danger in regard to him. It was quite an understood thing in the family that Lord Fawn must marry money. Lucy Morris was indeed a treasure. No brighter face ever looked into another to seek sympathy there, either in mirth or woe. There was a gleam in her eyes that was almost magnetic, so sure was she to obtain by it that community of interest which she desired,--though it were but for a moment. Lord Fawn was pompous, slow, dull, and careful; but even he had given way to it at once. Lady Fawn, too, was very careful, but she had owned to herself long since that she could not bear to look forward to any permanent severance. Of course Lucy would be made over to the Hittaways, whose mother lived in Warwick Square, and whose father was Chairman of the Board of Civil Appeals. The Hittaways were the only grandchildren with whom Lady Fawn had as yet been blessed, and of course Lucy must go to the Hittaways. She was but a little thing;--and it cannot be said of her, as of Lady Eustace, that she was a beauty. The charm of her face consisted in the peculiar, watery brightness of her eyes,--in the corners of which it would always seem that a diamond of a tear was lurking whenever any matter of excitement was afoot. Her light-brown hair was soft and smooth and pretty. As hair it was very well, but it had no speciality. Her mouth was somewhat large, but full of ever-varying expression. Her forehead was low and broad, with prominent temples, on which it was her habit to clasp tightly her little outstretched fingers as she sat listening to you. Of listeners she was the very best, for she would always be saying a word or two, just to help you,--the best word that could be spoken, and then again she would be hanging on your lips. There are listeners who show by their mode of listening that they listen as a duty,--not because they are interested. Lucy Morris was not such a one. She would take up your subject, whatever it was, and make it her own. There was forward just then a question as to whether the Sawab of Mygawb should have twenty millions of rupees paid to him and be placed upon a throne, or whether he should be kept in prison all his life. The British world generally could not be made to interest itself about the Sawab, but Lucy positively mastered the subject, and almost got Lord Fawn into a difficulty by persuading him to stand up against his chief on behalf of the injured prince. What else can be said of her face or personal appearance that will interest a reader? When she smiled, there was the daintiest little dimple on her cheek. And when she laughed, that little nose, which was not as well-shaped a nose as it might have been, would almost change its shape and cock itself up in its mirth. Her hands were very thin and long, and so were her feet,--by no means models as were those of her friend Lady Eustace. She was a little, thin, quick, graceful creature, whom it was impossible that you should see without wishing to have near you. A most unselfish little creature she was, but one who had a well-formed idea of her own identity. She was quite resolved to be somebody among her fellow-creatures,--not somebody in the way of marrying a lord or a rich man, or somebody in the way of being a beauty, or somebody as a wit; but somebody as having a purpose and a use in life. She was the humblest little thing in the world in regard to any possible putting of herself forward or needful putting of herself back; and yet, to herself, nobody was her superior. What she had was her own, whether it was the old grey silk dress which she had bought with the money she had earned, or the wit which nature had given her. And Lord Fawn's title was his own, and Lady Fawn's rank her own. She coveted no man's possessions,--and no woman's; but she was minded to hold by her own. Of present advantages or disadvantages,--whether she had the one or suffered from the other,--she thought not at all. It was her fault that she had nothing of feminine vanity. But no man or woman was ever more anxious to be effective, to persuade, to obtain belief, sympathy, and co-operation;--not for any result personal to herself, but because, by obtaining these things, she could be effective in the object then before her, be it what it might. One other thing may be told of her. She had given her heart,--for good and all, as she owned to herself,--to Frank Greystock. She had owned to herself that it was so, and had owned to herself that nothing could come of it. Frank was becoming a man of mark,--but was becoming a man of mark without much money. Of all men he was the last who could afford to marry a governess. And then, moreover, he had never said a word to make her think that he loved her. He had called on her once or twice at Fawn Court,--as why should he not? Seeing that there had been friendship between the families for so many years, who could complain of that? Lady Fawn, however, had--not complained, but just said a word. A word in season, how good is it? Lucy did not much regard the word spoken to herself; but when she reflected that a word must also have been spoken to Mr. Greystock,--otherwise how should it have been that he never came again?--that she did not like. In herself she regarded this passion of hers as a healthy man regards the loss of a leg or an arm. It is a great nuisance, a loss that maims the whole life,--a misfortune to be much regretted. But because a leg is gone, everything is not gone. A man with a wooden leg may stump about through much action, and may enjoy the keenest pleasures of humanity. He has his eyes left to him, and his ears, and his intellect. He will not break his heart for the loss of that leg. And so it was with Lucy Morris. She would still stump about and be very active. Eyes, ears, and intellect were left to her. Looking at her position, she told herself that a happy love could hardly have been her lot in life. Lady Fawn, she thought, was right. A governess should make up her mind to do without a lover. She had given away her heart, and yet she would do without a lover. When, on one dull, dark afternoon, as she was thinking of all this, Lord Fawn suddenly put into her hands a cruelly long printed document respecting the Sawab, she went to work upon it immediately. As she read it, she could not refrain from thinking how wonderfully Frank Greystock would plead the cause of the Indian prince, if the privilege of pleading it could be given to him. The spring had come round, with May and the London butterflies, at the time at which our story begins, and during six months Frank Greystock had not been at Fawn Court. Then one day Lady Eustace came down with her ponies, and her footman, and a new dear friend of hers, Miss Macnulty. While Miss Macnulty was being honoured by Lady Fawn, Lizzie had retreated to a corner with her old dear friend Lucy Morris. It was pretty to see how so wealthy and fashionable a woman as Lady Eustace could show so much friendship to a governess. "Have you seen Frank, lately?" said Lady Eustace, referring to her cousin the barrister. "Not for ever so long," said Lucy, with her cheeriest smile. "He is not going to prove a false knight?" asked Lady Eustace, in her lowest whisper. "I don't know that Mr. Greystock is much given to knighthood at all," said Lucy,--"unless it is to being made Sir Francis by his party." "Nonsense, my dear; as if I didn't know. I suppose Lady Fawn has been interfering--like an old cat as she is." "She is not an old cat, Lizzie! and I won't hear her called so. If you think so, you shouldn't come here. And she hasn't interfered. That is, she has done nothing that she ought not to have done." "Then she has interfered," said Lady Eustace, as she got up and walked across the room, with a sweet smile to the old cat. CHAPTER IV Frank Greystock Frank Greystock the barrister was the only son of the Dean of Bobsborough. Now the dean had a family of daughters,--not quite so numerous indeed as that of Lady Fawn, for there were only three of them,--and was by no means a rich man. Unless a dean have a private fortune, or has chanced to draw the happy lot of Durham in the lottery of deans, he can hardly be wealthy. At Bobsborough the dean was endowed with a large, rambling, picturesque, uncomfortable house, and with £1,500 a year. In regard to personal property it may be asserted of all the Greystocks that they never had any. They were a family of which the males would surely come to be deans and admirals, and the females would certainly find husbands. And they lived on the good things of the world, and mixed with wealthy people. But they never had any money. The Eustaces always had money, and the Bishop of Bobsborough was wealthy. The dean was a man very different from his brother the admiral, who had never paid anybody anything. The dean did pay; but he was a little slow in his payments, and money with him was never very plentiful. In these circumstances it became very expedient that Frank Greystock should earn his bread early in life. Nevertheless, he had chosen a profession which is not often lucrative at first. He had been called to the Bar, and had gone,--and was still going,--the circuit in which lies the cathedral city of Bobsborough. Bobsborough is not much of a town, and was honoured with the judges' visits only every other circuit. Frank began pretty well, getting some little work in London, and perhaps nearly enough to pay the cost of his circuit out of the county in which the cathedral was situated. But he began life after that impecunious fashion for which the Greystocks have been noted. Tailors, robemakers, and booksellers gave him trust, and did believe that they would get their money. And any persistent tradesman did get it. He did not actually hoist the black flag of impecuniosity, and proclaim his intention of preying generally upon the retail dealers, as his uncle the admiral had done. But he became known as a young man with whom money was "tight." All this had been going on for three or four years before he had met Lucy Morris at the deanery. He was then eight-and-twenty, and had been four years called. He was thirty when old Lady Fawn hinted to him that he had better not pay any more visits at Fawn Court. But things had much altered with him of late. At the time of that visit to the deanery he had made a sudden start in his profession. The Corporation of the City of London had brought an action against the Bank of England with reference to certain alleged encroachments, of which action, considerable as it was in all its interests, no further notice need be taken here than is given by the statement that a great deal of money in this cause had found its way among the lawyers. Some of it penetrated into the pocket of Frank Greystock; but he earned more than money, better than money, out of that affair. It was attributed to him by the attorneys that the Bank of England was saved from the necessity of reconstructing all its bullion-cellars, and he had made his character for industry. In the year after that the Bobsborough people were rather driven into a corner in search of a clever young Conservative candidate for the borough, and Frank Greystock was invited to stand. It was not thought that there was much chance of success, and the dean was against it. But Frank liked the honour and glory of the contest, and so did Frank's mother. Frank Greystock stood, and at the time in which he was warned away from Fawn Court had been nearly a year in Parliament. "Of course it does interfere with one's business," he had said to his father, "but then it brings one business also. A man with a seat in Parliament who shows that he means work will always get nearly as much work as he can do." Such was Frank's exposition to his father. It may perhaps not be found to hold water in all cases. Mrs. Dean was of course delighted with her son's success, and so were the girls. Women like to feel that the young men belonging to them are doing something in the world, so that a reflected glory may be theirs. It was pleasant to talk of Frank as member for the city. Brothers do not always care much for a brother's success, but a sister is generally sympathetic. If Frank would only marry money, there was nothing he might not achieve. That he would live to sit on the woolsack was now almost a certainty to the dear old lady. But in order that he might sit there comfortably it was necessary that he should at least abstain from marrying a poor wife. For there was fear at the deanery also in regard to Lucy Morris. "That notion of marrying money as you call it," Frank said to his second sister Margaret, "is the most disgusting idea in the world." "It is as easy to love a girl who has something as one who has nothing," said Margaret. "No,--it is not; because the girls with money are scarce, and those without it are plentiful,--an argument of which I don't suppose you see the force." Then Margaret for the moment was snubbed and retired. "Indeed, Frank, I think Lady Fawn was right," said the mother. "And I think she was quite wrong. If there be anything in it, it won't be expelled by Lady Fawn's interference. Do you think I should allow Lady Fawn to tell me not to choose such or such a woman for my wife?" "It's the habit of seeing her, my dear. Nobody loves Lucy Morris better than I do. We all like her. But, dear Frank, would it do for you to make her your wife?" Frank Greystock was silent for a moment, and then he answered his mother's question. "I am not quite sure whether it would or would not. But I do think this--that if I were bold enough to marry now, and to trust all to the future, and could get Lucy to be my wife, I should be doing a great thing. I doubt, however, whether I have the courage." All of which made the dean's wife uneasy. The reader, who has read so far, will perhaps think that Frank Greystock was in love with Lucy as Lucy was in love with him. But such was not exactly the case. To be in love, as an absolute, well-marked, acknowledged fact, is the condition of a woman more frequently and more readily than of a man. Such is not the common theory on the matter, as it is the man's business to speak, and the woman's business to be reticent. And the woman is presumed to have kept her heart free from any load of love, till she may accept the burthen with an assurance that it shall become a joy and a comfort to her. But such presumptions, though they may be very useful for the regulation of conduct, may not be always true. It comes more within the scope of a woman's mind, than that of a man's, to think closely and decide sharply on such a matter. With a man it is often chance that settles the question for him. He resolves to propose to a woman, or proposes without resolving, because she is close to him. Frank Greystock ridiculed the idea of Lady Fawn's interference in so high a matter as his love,--or abstinence from love. Nevertheless, had he been made a welcome guest at Fawn Court, he would undoubtedly have told his love to Lucy Morris. He was not a welcome guest, but had been banished; and, as a consequence of that banishment, he had formed no resolution in regard to Lucy, and did not absolutely know whether she was necessary to him or not. But Lucy Morris knew all about it. Moreover, it frequently happens with men that they fail to analyse these things, and do not make out for themselves any clear definition of what their feelings are or what they mean. We hear that a man has behaved badly to a girl, when the behaviour of which he has been guilty has resulted simply from want of thought. He has found a certain companionship to be agreeable to him, and he has accepted the pleasure without inquiry. Some vague idea has floated across his brain that the world is wrong in supposing that such friendship cannot exist without marriage, or question of marriage. It is simply friendship. And yet were his friend to tell him that she intended to give herself in marriage elsewhere, he would suffer all the pangs of jealousy, and would imagine himself to be horribly ill-treated! To have such a friend,--a friend whom he cannot or will not make his wife,--is no injury to him. To him it is simply a delight, an excitement in life, a thing to be known to himself only and not talked of to others, a source of pride and inward exultation. It is a joy to think of when he wakes, and a consolation in his little troubles. It dispels the weariness of life, and makes a green spot of holiday within his daily work. It is, indeed, death to her;--but he does not know it. Frank Greystock did think that he could not marry Lucy Morris without making an imprudent plunge into deep water, and yet he felt that Lady Fawn was an ill-natured old woman for hinting to him that he had better not, for the present, continue his visits to Fawn Court. "Of course you understand me, Mr. Greystock," she had said, meaning to be civil. "When Miss Morris has left us,--should she ever leave us,--I should be most happy to see you." "What on earth would take me to Fawn Court, if Lucy were not there!" he said to himself,--not choosing to appreciate Lady Fawn's civility. Frank Greystock was at this time nearly thirty years old. He was a good-looking, but not strikingly handsome man; thin, of moderate height, with sharp grey eyes, a face clean shorn with the exception of a small whisker, with wiry, strong dark hair, which was already beginning to show a tinge of grey;--the very opposite in appearance to his late friend Sir Florian Eustace. He was quick, ready-witted, self-reliant, and not over scrupulous in the outward things of the world. He was desirous of doing his duty to others, but he was specially desirous that others should do their duty to him. He intended to get on in the world, and believed that happiness was to be achieved by success. He was certainly made for the profession which he had adopted. His father, looking to certain morsels of Church patronage which occasionally came in his way, and to the fact that he and the bishop were on most friendly terms, had wished his son to take orders. But Frank had known himself and his own qualities too well to follow his father's advice. He had chosen to be a barrister, and now, at thirty, he was in Parliament. He had been asked to stand for Bobsborough in the Conservative interest, and as a Conservative he had been returned. Those who invited him knew probably but little of his own political beliefs or feelings,--did not, probably, know whether he had any. His father was a fine old Tory of the ancient school, who thought that things were going from bad to worse, but was able to live happily in spite of his anticipations. The dean was one of those old-world politicians,--we meet them every day, and they are generally pleasant people,--who enjoy the politics of the side to which they belong without any special belief in them. If pressed hard they will almost own that their so-called convictions are prejudices. But not for worlds would they be rid of them. When two or three of them meet together, they are as freemasons, who are bound by a pleasant bond which separates them from the outer world. They feel among themselves that everything that is being done is bad,--even though that everything is done by their own party. It was bad to interfere with Charles, bad to endure Cromwell, bad to banish James, bad to put up with William. The House of Hanover was bad. All interference with prerogative has been bad. The Reform bill was very bad. Encroachment on the estates of the bishops was bad. Emancipation of Roman Catholics was the worst of all. Abolition of corn-laws, church-rates, and oaths and tests were all bad. The meddling with the Universities has been grievous. The treatment of the Irish Church has been Satanic. The overhauling of schools is most injurious to English education. Education bills and Irish land bills were all bad. Every step taken has been bad. And yet to them old England is of all countries in the world the best to live in, and is not at all the less comfortable because of the changes that have been made. These people are ready to grumble at every boon conferred on them, and yet to enjoy every boon. They know, too, their privileges, and, after a fashion, understand their position. It is picturesque, and it pleases them. To have been always in the right and yet always on the losing side; always being ruined, always under persecution from a wild spirit of republican-demagogism,--and yet never to lose anything, not even position or public esteem, is pleasant enough. A huge, living, daily increasing grievance that does one no palpable harm, is the happiest possession that a man can have. There is a large body of such men in England, and, personally, they are the very salt of the nation. He who said that all Conservatives are stupid did not know them. Stupid Conservatives there may be,--and there certainly are very stupid Radicals. The well-educated, widely-read Conservative, who is well assured that all good things are gradually being brought to an end by the voice of the people, is generally the pleasantest man to be met. But he is a Buddhist, possessing a religious creed which is altogether dark and mysterious to the outer world. Those who watch the ways of the advanced Buddhist hardly know whether the man does believe himself in his hidden god, but men perceive that he is respectable, self-satisfied, and a man of note. It is of course from the society of such that Conservative candidates are to be sought; but, alas, it is hard to indoctrinate young minds with the old belief, since new theories of life have become so rife! Nevertheless Frank Greystock, when he was invited to stand for Bobsborough in the Conservative interest, had not for a moment allowed any political heterodoxy on his own part to stand in the way of his advancement. It may, perhaps, be the case that a barrister is less likely to be influenced by personal convictions in taking his side in politics than any other man who devotes himself to public affairs. No slur on the profession is intended by this suggestion. A busy, clever, useful man, who has been at work all his life, finds that his own progress towards success demands from him that he shall become a politician. The highest work of a lawyer can only be reached through political struggle. As a large-minded man of the world, peculiarly conversant with the fact that every question has two sides, and that as much may often be said on one side as on the other, he has probably not become violent in his feelings as a political partisan. Thus he sees that there is an opening here or an opening there, and the offence in either case is not great to him. With Frank Greystock the matter was very easy. There certainly was no apostasy. He had now and again attacked his father's ultra-Toryism, and rebuked his mother and sisters when they spoke of Gladstone as Apollyon, and called John Bright the Abomination of Desolation. But it was easy to him to fancy himself a Conservative, and as such he took his seat in the House without any feeling of discomfort. During the first four months of his first session he had not spoken,--but he had made himself useful. He had sat on one or two Committees, though as a barrister he might have excused himself, and had done his best to learn the forms of the House. But he had already begun to find that the time which he devoted to Parliament was much wanted for his profession. Money was very necessary to him. Then a new idea was presented to him. John Eustace and Greystock were very intimate,--as also had been Sir Florian and Greystock. "I tell you what I wish you'd do, Greystock," Eustace said to him one day, as they were standing idly together in the lobby of the House. For John Eustace was also in Parliament. "Anything to oblige you, my friend." "It's only a trifle," said Eustace. "Just to marry your cousin, my brother's widow." "By Jove,--I wish I had the chance!" "I don't see why you shouldn't. She is sure to marry somebody, and at her age so she ought. She's not twenty-three yet. We could trust you,--with the child and all the rest of it. As it is, she is giving us a deal of trouble." "But, my dear fellow--" "I know she's fond of you. You were dining there last Sunday. "And so was Fawn. Lord Fawn is the man to marry Lizzie. You see if he doesn't. He was uncommonly sweet on her the other night, and really interested her about the Sawab." "She'll never be Lady Fawn," said John Eustace. "And to tell the truth, I shouldn't care to have to deal with Lord Fawn. He would be infinitely troublesome; and I can hardly wash my hands of her affairs. She's worth nearly £5,000 a year as long as she lives, and I really don't think that she's much amiss." "Much amiss! I don't know whether she's not the prettiest woman I ever saw," said Greystock. "Yes;--but I mean in conduct, and all that. She is making herself queer; and Camperdown, our lawyer, means to jump upon her; but it's only because she doesn't know what she ought to be at, and what she ought not. You could tell her." "It wouldn't suit me at all to have to quarrel with Camperdown," said the barrister, laughing. "You and he would settle everything in five minutes, and it would save me a world of trouble," said Eustace. "Fawn is your man;--take my word for it," said Greystock, as he walked back into the House. * * * * * Dramatists, when they write their plays, have a delightful privilege of prefixing a list of their personages;--and the dramatists of old used to tell us who was in love with whom, and what were the blood relationships of all the persons. In such a narrative as this, any proceeding of that kind would be unusual,--and therefore the poor narrator has been driven to expend his first four chapters in the mere task of introducing his characters. He regrets the length of these introductions, and will now begin at once the action of his story. CHAPTER V The Eustace Necklace John Eustace, Lady Eustace's brother-in-law, had told his friend Greystock, the lady's cousin, that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer intended to "jump upon" that lady. Making such allowance and deduction from the force of these words as the slang expression requires, we may say that John Eustace was right. Mr. Camperdown was in earnest, and did intend to obtain the restoration of those jewels. Mr. Camperdown was a gentleman of about sixty, who had been lawyer to Sir Florian's father, and whose father had been lawyer to Sir Florian's grandfather. His connexion with the property and with the family was of a nature to allow him to take almost any liberty with the Eustaces. When therefore John Eustace, in regard to those diamonds, had pleaded that the heir in his long minority would obtain ample means of buying more diamonds, and of suggesting that the plunder for the sake of tranquillity should be allowed, Mr. Camperdown took upon himself to say that he'd "be ---- if he'd put up with it!" "I really don't know what you are to do," said John Eustace. "I'll file a bill in Chancery if it's necessary," said the old lawyer. "Heaven on earth! as trustee how are you to reconcile yourself to such a robbery? They represent £500 a year for ever, and she is to have them simply because she chooses to take them!" "I suppose Florian could have given them away. At any rate he could have sold them." "I don't know that," said Mr. Camperdown. "I have not looked as yet, but I think that this necklace has been made an heirloom. At any rate it represents an amount of property that shouldn't and couldn't be made over legally without some visible evidence of transfer. It's as clear a case of stealing as I ever knew in my life, and as bad a case. She hadn't a farthing, and she has got the whole of the Ayrshire property for her life. She goes about and tells everybody that it's hers to sell to-morrow if she pleases to sell it! No, John;--" Mr. Camperdown had known Eustace when he was a boy, and had watched him become a man, and hadn't yet learned to drop the name by which he had called the boy,--"we mustn't allow it. What do you think of her applying to me for an income to support her child,--a baby not yet two years old?" Mr. Camperdown had been very adverse to all the circumstances of Sir Florian's marriage, and had subjected himself to Sir Florian's displeasure for expressing his opinion. He had tried to explain that as the lady brought no money into the family she was not entitled to such a jointure as Sir Florian was determined to lavish upon her. But Sir Florian had been obstinate,--both in regard to the settlement and the will. It was not till after Sir Florian's death that this terrible matter of the jewels had even suggested itself to Mr. Camperdown. The jewellers in whose custody the things had been since the death of the late Lady Eustace had mentioned the affair to him immediately on the young widow's return from Naples. Sir Florian had withdrawn, not all the jewels, but by far the most valuable of them, from the jewellers' care on his return to London from their marriage tour to Scotland, and this was the result. The jewellers were at that time without any doubt as to the date at which the necklace was taken from them. Mr. Camperdown's first attempt was made by a most courteous and even complimentary note, in which he suggested to Lady Eustace that it would be for the advantage of all parties that the family jewels should be kept together. Lizzie as she read this note smiled, and said to herself that she did not exactly see how her own interests would be best served by such an arrangement. She made no answer to Mr. Camperdown's note. Some months after this, when the heir was born, and as Lady Eustace was passing through London on her journey from Bobsborough to Portray, a meeting had been arranged between her and Mr. Camperdown. She had endeavoured by all the wiles she knew to avoid this meeting, but it had been forced upon her. She had been almost given to understand that unless she submitted to it, she would not be able to draw her income from the Portray property. Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus had advised her to submit. "My husband gave me a necklace, and they want me to give it back," she had said to Mr. Mopus. "Do nothing of the kind," Mr. Mopus had replied. "If you find it necessary, refer Mr. Camperdown to us. We will answer him." The interview had taken place, during which Mr. Camperdown took the trouble to explain very plainly and more than once that the income from the Portray property belonged to Lady Eustace for her life only. It would after her death be rejoined, of necessity, to the rest of the Eustace property. This was repeated to Lady Eustace in the presence of John Eustace; but she made no remark on being so informed. "You understand the nature of the settlement, Lady Eustace?" Mr. Camperdown had said. "I believe I understand everything," she replied. Then, just at the close of the interview, he asked a question about the jewels. Lady Eustace at first made no reply. "They might as well be sent back to Messrs. Garnett's," said Mr. Camperdown. "I don't know that I have any to send back," she answered; and then she escaped before Mr. Camperdown was able to arrange any further attack. "I can manage with her better by letter than I can personally," he said to John Eustace. Lawyers such as Mr. Camperdown are slow, and it was three or four months after that when he wrote a letter in his own name to Lady Eustace, explaining to her, still courteously, that it was his business to see that the property of the Eustace family was placed in fit hands, and that a certain valuable necklace of diamonds, which was an heirloom of the family, and which was undeniably the property of the heir, was believed to be in her custody. As such property was peculiarly subject to risks, would she have the kindness to make arrangements for handing over the necklace to the custody of the Messrs. Garnett? To this letter Lizzie made no answer whatever, nor did she to a second note, calling attention to the first. When John Eustace told Greystock that Camperdown intended to "jump on" Lady Eustace, the following further letter had been written by the firm;--but up to that time Lizzie had not replied to it: 62, New Square, Lincoln's Inn, May 5, 186--. MADAM, It is our duty as attorneys acting on behalf of the estate of your late husband Sir Florian Eustace, and in the interest of your son, his heir, to ask for restitution of a certain valuable diamond necklace which is believed to be now in the possession of your ladyship. Our senior partner, Mr. Camperdown, has written to your ladyship more than once on the subject, but has not been honoured with any reply. Doubtless had there been any mistake as to the necklace being in your hands we should have been so informed. The diamonds were withdrawn from Messrs. Garnett's, the jewellers, by Sir Florian soon after his marriage, and were, no doubt, entrusted to your keeping. They are appanages of the family which should not be in your hands as the widow of the late baronet, and they constitute an amount of property which certainly cannot be alienated from the family without inquiry or right, as might any trifling article either of use or ornament. The jewels are valued at over £10,000. We are reluctantly compelled, by the fact of your having left unanswered three letters from Mr. Camperdown, Senior, on the subject, to explain to you that if attention be not paid to this letter, we shall be obliged, in the performance of our duty, to take legal steps for the restitution of the property. We have the honour to be, Madam, Your ladyship's most obedient servants, CAMPERDOWN & SON. To Lady Eustace. &c. &c. A few days after it was sent old Mr. Camperdown got the letter-book of the office and read the letter to John Eustace. "I don't see how you're to get them," said Eustace. "We'll throw upon her the burthen of showing that they have become legally her property. She can't do it." "Suppose she sold them?" "We'll follow them up. £10,000, my dear John! God bless my soul! it's a magnificent dowry for a daughter,--an ample provision for a younger son. And she is to be allowed to filch it, as other widows filch china cups, and a silver teaspoon or two! It's quite a common thing, but I never heard of such a haul as this." "It will be very unpleasant," said Eustace. "And then she still goes about everywhere declaring that the Portray property is her own. She's a bad lot. I knew it from the first. Of course we shall have trouble." Then Mr. Eustace explained to the lawyer that their best way out of it all would be to get the widow married to some respectable husband. She was sure to marry sooner or later,--so John Eustace said,--and any "decently decent" fellow would be easier to deal with than she herself. "He must be very indecently indecent if he is not," said Mr. Camperdown. But Mr. Eustace did not name Frank Greystock the barrister as the probable future decent husband. When Lizzie first got the letter, which she did on the day after the visit at Fawn Court of which mention has been made, she put it by unread for a couple of days. She opened it, not knowing the clerk's handwriting, but read only the first line and the signature. For two days she went on with the ordinary affairs and amusements of her life, as though no such letter had reached her; but she was thinking of it all the time. The diamonds were in her possession, and she had had them valued by her old friend Mr. Benjamin--of the firm of Harter and Benjamin. Mr. Benjamin had suggested that stones of such a value should not be left to the risk of an ordinary London house; but Lizzie had felt that if Mr. Benjamin got them into his hands, Mr. Benjamin might perhaps not return them. Messrs. Camperdown and Garnett between them might form a league with Mr. Benjamin. Where would she be, should Mr. Benjamin tell her that under some legal sanction he had given the jewels up to Mr. Camperdown? She hinted to Mr. Benjamin that she would perhaps sell them if she got a good offer. Mr. Benjamin, who was very familiar with her, hinted that there might be a little family difficulty. "Oh, none in the least," said Lizzie;--"but I don't think I shall part with them." Then she gave Mr. Benjamin an order for a strong box, which was supplied to her. The strong box, which was so heavy that she could barely lift it herself, was now in her London bedroom. On the morning of the third day she read the letter. Miss Macnulty was staying with her, but she had not said a word to Miss Macnulty about the letter. She read it up in her own bedroom, and then sat down to think about it. Sir Florian, as he had handed to her the stones for the purpose of a special dinner party which had been given to them when passing through London, had told her that they were family jewels. "That setting was done for my mother," he said, "but it is already old. When we are at home again they shall be reset." Then he had added some little husband's joke as to a future daughter-in-law who should wear them. Nevertheless she was not sure whether the fact of their being so handed to her did not make them her own. She had spoken a second time to Mr. Mopus, and Mr. Mopus had asked her whether there existed any family deed as to the diamonds. She had heard of no such deed, nor did Mr. Camperdown mention such a deed. After reading the letter once she read it a dozen times; and then, like a woman, made up her mind that her safest course would be not to answer it. But yet she felt sure that something unpleasant would come of it. Mr. Camperdown was not a man to take up such a question and to let it drop. Legal steps! What did legal steps mean, and what could they do to her? Would Mr. Camperdown be able to put her in prison,--or to take away from her the estate of Portray? She could swear that her husband had given them to her, and could invent any form of words she pleased as accompanying the gift. No one else had been near them then. But she was, and felt herself to be absolutely, alarmingly ignorant, not only of the laws, but of custom in such matters. Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus and Mr. Benjamin were the allies to whom she looked for guidance; but she was wise enough to know that Mowbray and Mopus, and Harter and Benjamin were not trustworthy, whereas Camperdown and Son and the Messrs. Garnett were all as firm as rocks and as respectable as the Bank of England. Circumstances,--unfortunate circumstances,--drove her to Harter and Benjamin and to Mowbray and Mopus, while she would have taken so much delight in feeling the strong honesty of the other people to be on her side! She would have talked to her friends about Mr. Camperdown and the people at Garnett's with so much satisfaction! But ease, security, and even respectability may be bought too dearly. Ten thousand pounds! Was she prepared to surrender such a sum as that? She had, indeed, already realised the fact that it might be very difficult to touch the money. When she had suggested to Mr. Benjamin that he should buy the jewels, that worthy tradesman had by no means jumped at the offer. Of what use to her would be a necklace always locked up in an iron box, which box, for aught she knew, myrmidons from Mr. Camperdown might carry off during her absence from the house? Would it not be better to come to terms and surrender? But then what should the terms be? If only there had been a friend whom she could consult; a friend whom she could consult on a really friendly footing!--not a simply respectable, off-handed, high-minded friend, who would advise her as a matter of course to make restitution. Her uncle the dean, or her cousin Frank, or old Lady Fawn, would be sure to give her such advice as that. There are people who are so very high-minded when they have to deal with the interests of their friends! What if she were to ask Lord Fawn? Thoughts of a second marriage had, of course, crossed Lady Eustace's mind, and they were by no means the worst thoughts that found a place there. She had a grand idea,--this selfish, hard-fisted little woman, who could not bring herself to abandon the plunder on which she had laid her hand,--a grand idea of surrendering herself and all her possessions to a great passion. For Florian Eustace she had never cared. She had sat down by his side, and looked into his handsome face, and read poetry to him,--because of his wealth, and because it had been indispensable to her to settle herself well. And he had been all very well,--a generous, open-hearted, chivalrous, irascible, but rather heavy-minded gentleman; but she had never been in love with him. Now she desired to be so in love that she could surrender everything to her love. There was as yet nothing of such love in her bosom. She had seen no one who had so touched her. But she was alive to the romance of the thing, and was in love with the idea of being in love. "Ah," she would say to herself in her moments of solitude, "if I had a Corsair of my own, how I would sit on watch for my lover's boat by the sea-shore!" And she believed it of herself, that she could do so. But it would also be very nice to be a peeress,--so that she might, without any doubt, be one of the great ladies of London. As a baronet's widow with a large income, she was already almost a great lady; but she was quite alive to a suspicion that she was not altogether strong in her position. The bishop's people and the dean's people did not quite trust her. The Camperdowns and Garnetts utterly distrusted her. The Mopuses and Benjamins were more familiar than they would be with a really great lady. She was sharp enough to understand all this. Should it be Lord Fawn or should it be a Corsair? The worst of Lord Fawn was the undoubted fact that he was not himself a great man. He could, no doubt, make his wife a peeress; but he was poor, encumbered with a host of sisters, dull as a blue-book, and possessed of little beyond his peerage to recommend him. If she could only find a peer, unmarried, with a dash of the Corsair about him! In the meantime, what was she to do about the jewels? There was staying with her at this time a certain Miss Macnulty, who was related, after some distant fashion, to old Lady Linlithgow, and who was as utterly destitute of possessions or means of existence as any unfortunate, well-born, and moderately-educated, middle-aged woman in London. To live upon her friends, such as they might be, was the only mode of life within her reach. It was not that she had chosen such dependence; nor, indeed, had she endeavoured to reject it. It had come to her as a matter of course,--either that or the poor-house. As to earning her bread, except by that attendance which a poor friend gives,--the idea of any possibility that way had never entered her head. She could do nothing,--except dress like a lady with the smallest possible cost, and endeavour to be obliging. Now, at this moment, her condition was terribly precarious. She had quarrelled with Lady Linlithgow, and had been taken in by her old friend Lizzie,--her old enemy might, perhaps, be a truer expression,--because of that quarrel. But a permanent home had not even been promised to her; and poor Miss Macnulty was aware that even a permanent home with Lady Eustace would not be an unmixed blessing. In her way, Miss Macnulty was an honest woman. They were sitting together one May afternoon in the little back drawing-room in Mount Street. They had dined early, were now drinking tea, and intended to go to the opera. It was six o'clock, and was still broad day, but the thick coloured blind was kept across the single window, and the folding doors of the room were nearly closed, and there was a feeling of evening in the room. The necklace during the whole day had been so heavy on Lizzie's heart, that she had been unable to apply her thoughts to the building of that castle in the air in which the Corsair was to reign supreme, but not alone. "My dear," she said,--she generally called Miss Macnulty my dear,--"you know that box I had made by the jewellers." "You mean the safe." "Well,--yes; only it isn't a safe. A safe is a great big thing. I had it made especially for the diamonds Sir Florian gave me." "I supposed it was so." "I wonder whether there's any danger about it?" "If I were you, Lady Eustace, I wouldn't keep them in the house. I should have them kept where Sir Florian kept them. Suppose anybody should come and murder you!" "I'm not a bit afraid of that," said Lizzie. "I should be. And what will you do with it when you go to Scotland?" "I took them with me before;--in my own care. I know that wasn't safe. I wish I knew what to do with them!" "There are people who keep such things," said Miss Macnulty. Then Lizzie paused a moment. She was dying for counsel and for confidence. "I cannot trust them anywhere," she said. "It is just possible there may be a lawsuit about them." "How a lawsuit?" "I cannot explain it all, but I am very unhappy about it. They want me to give them up;--but my husband gave them to me, and for his sake I will not do so. When he threw them round my neck he told me that they were my own;--so he did. How can a woman give up such a present,--from a husband,--who is dead? As to the value, I care nothing. But I won't do it." By this time Lady Eustace was in tears, and had so far succeeded as to have produced some amount of belief in Miss Macnulty's mind. "If they are your own, they can't take them from you," said Miss Macnulty. "They sha'n't. They shall find that I've got some spirit left." Then she reflected that a real Corsair lover would protect her jewels for her;--would guard them against a score of Camperdowns. But she doubted whether Lord Fawn would do much in that way. Then the door was opened, and Lord Fawn was announced. It was not at all unusual with Lord Fawn to call on the widow at this hour. Mount Street is not exactly in the way from the India Office to the House of Lords; but a Hansom cab can make it almost in the way. Of neglect of official duty Lord Fawn was never guilty; but a half hour for private business or for relaxation between one stage of duty and another,--can any Minister grudge so much to an indefatigable follower? Lady Eustace had been in tears as he was announced, but the light of the room was so low that the traces of them could hardly be seen. She was in her Corsair state of mind, divided between her jewels and her poetry, and caring not very much for the increased rank which Lord Fawn could give her. "The Sawab's case is coming on in the House of Commons this very night," he said, in answer to a question from Miss Macnulty. Then he turned to Lady Eustace. "Your cousin, Mr. Greystock, is going to ask a question in the House." "Shall you be there to answer him?" asked Miss Macnulty innocently. "Oh dear, no. But I shall be present. A peer can go, you know." Then Lord Fawn, at considerable length, explained to the two ladies the nature and condition of the British Parliament. Miss Macnulty experienced an innocent pleasure in having such things told to her by a lord. Lady Eustace knew that this was the way in which Lord Fawn made love, and thought that from him it was as good as any other way. If she were to marry a second time simply with the view of being a peeress, of having a respected husband, and making good her footing in the world, she would as lief listen to parliamentary details and the prospects of the Sawab as to any other matters. She knew very well that no Corsair propensities would be forthcoming from Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn had just worked himself round to the Sawab again, when Frank Greystock entered the room. "Now we have both the Houses represented," said Lady Eustace, as she welcomed her cousin. "You intend to ask your question about the Sawab to-night?" asked Lord Fawn, with intense interest, feeling that, had it been his lot to perform that task before he went to his couch, he would at this moment have been preparing his little speech. But Frank Greystock had not come to his cousin's house to talk of the Prince of the Mygawb territory. When his friend Eustace had suggested to him that he should marry the widow, he had ridiculed the idea;--but nevertheless he had thought of it a good deal. He was struggling hard, working diligently, making for himself a character in Parliament, succeeding,--so said all his friends,--as a barrister. He was a rising young man, one of those whose names began to be much in the mouths of other men;--but still he was poor. It seemed to himself that among other good gifts that of economy had not been bestowed upon him. He owed a little money, and though he owed it, he went on spending his earnings. He wanted just such a lift in the world as a wife with an income would give him. As for looking about for a girl whom he could honestly love, and who should have a fortune of her own as well as beauty, birth, and all the other things,--that was out of his reach. If he talked to himself of love, if he were ever to acknowledge to himself that love was to have sway over him, then must Lucy Morris be the mistress of his heart. He had come to know enough about himself to be aware of that;--but he knew also that he had said nothing binding him to walk in that path. It was quite open to him to indulge a discreet ambition without dishonour. Therefore he also had come to call upon the beautiful widow. The courtship with her he knew need not be long. He could ask her to marry him to-morrow,--as for that matter to-day,--without a feeling of hesitation. She might accept him or might reject him; but, as he said to himself, in neither case would any harm be done. An idea of the same kind flitted across Lizzie's mind as she sat and talked to the two gentlemen. She knew that her cousin Frank was poor, but she thought that she could fall in love with him. He was not exactly a Corsair;--but he was a man who had certain Corsair propensities. He was bold and dashing, unscrupulous and clever, a man to make a name for himself, and one to whom a woman could endure to be obedient. There could be no question as to choice between him and Lord Fawn, if she were to allow herself to choose by liking. And she thought that Frank Greystock would keep the necklace, if he himself were made to have an interest in the necklace; whereas Lord Fawn would undoubtedly surrender it at once to Mr. Camperdown. Lord Fawn had some slight idea of waiting to see the cousin go; but as Greystock had a similar idea, and as he was the stronger of the two, of course Lord Fawn went. He perhaps remembered that the Hansom cab was at the door,--costing sixpence every fifteen minutes,--and that he wished to show himself in the House of Lords before the peers rose. Miss Macnulty also left the room, and Frank was alone with the widow. "Lizzie," said he, "you must be very solitary here." "I am solitary." "And hardly happy." "Anything but happy, Frank. I have things that make me very unhappy;--one thing that I will tell you if you will let me." Frank had almost made up his mind to ask her on the spot to give him permission to console all her sorrows, when there came a clattering double-knock at the door. "They know I shall be at home to nobody else now," said Lady Eustace. But Frank Greystock had hardly regained his self-possession when Miss Macnulty hurried into the room, and, with a look almost of horror, declared that Lady Linlithgow was in the parlour. CHAPTER VI Lady Linlithgow's Mission "Lady Linlithgow!"--said Frank Greystock, holding up both his hands. "Yes, indeed!" said Miss Macnulty. "I did not speak to her, but I saw her. She has sent her--love to Lady Eustace, and begs that she will see her." Lady Eustace had been so surprised by the announcement that hitherto she had not spoken a word. The quarrel between her and her aunt had been of such a nature that it had seemed to be impossible that the old countess should come to Mount Street. Lizzie had certainly behaved very badly to her aunt;--about as badly as a young woman could behave to an old woman. She had accepted bread, and shelter, and the very clothes on her back from her aunt's bounty, and had rejected even the hand of her benefactress the first moment that she had bread, and shelter, and clothes of her own. And here was Lady Linlithgow down-stairs in the parlour, and sending up her love to her niece! "I won't see her!" said Lizzie. "You had better see her," said Frank. "I can't see her!" said Lizzie. "Good gracious, my dear--what has she come for?" "She says it's very important," said Miss Macnulty. "Of course you must see her," said Frank. "Let me get out of the house, and then tell the servant to show her up at once. Don't be weak now, Lizzie, and I'll come and find out all about it to-morrow." "Mind you do," said Lizzie. Then Frank took his departure, and Lizzie did as she was bidden. "You remain in here, Julia," she said,--"so as to be near if I want you. She shall come into the front room." Then, absolutely shaking with fear of the approaching evil, she took her seat in the largest drawing-room. There was still a little delay. Time was given to Frank Greystock to get away, and to do so without meeting Lady Linlithgow in the passage. The message was conveyed by Miss Macnulty to the servant, and the same servant opened the front door for Frank before he delivered it. Lady Linlithgow, too, though very strong, was old. She was slow, or perhaps it might more properly be said she was stately in her movements. She was one of those old women who are undoubtedly old women,--who in the remembrance of younger people seem always to have been old women,--but on whom old age appears to have no debilitating effects. If the hand of Lady Linlithgow ever trembled, it trembled from anger;--if her foot ever faltered, it faltered for effect. In her way Lady Linlithgow was a very powerful human being. She knew nothing of fear, nothing of charity, nothing of mercy, and nothing of the softness of love. She had no imagination. She was worldly, covetous, and not unfrequently cruel. But she meant to be true and honest, though she often failed in her meaning;--and she had an idea of her duty in life. She was not self-indulgent. She was as hard as an oak post,--but then she was also as trustworthy. No human being liked her;--but she had the good word of a great many human beings. At great cost to her own comfort she had endeavoured to do her duty to her niece, Lizzie Greystock, when Lizzie was homeless. Undoubtedly Lizzie's bed, while it had been spread under her aunt's roof, had not been one of roses; but such as it had been, she had endured to occupy it while it served her needs. She had constrained herself to bear her aunt;--but from the moment of her escape she had chosen to reject her aunt altogether. Now her aunt's heavy step was heard upon the stairs! Lizzie also was a brave woman after a certain fashion. She could dare to incur a great danger for an adequate object. But she was too young as yet to have become mistress of that persistent courage which was Lady Linlithgow's peculiar possession. When the countess entered the drawing-room Lizzie rose upon her legs, but did not come forward from her chair. The old woman was not tall;--but her face was long, and at the same time large, square at the chin and square at the forehead, and gave her almost an appearance of height. Her nose was very prominent, not beaked, but straight and strong, and broad at the bridge, and of a dark-red colour. Her eyes were sharp and grey. Her mouth was large, and over it there was almost beard enough for a young man's moustache. Her chin was firm, and large, and solid. Her hair was still brown, and was only just grizzled in parts. Nothing becomes an old woman like grey hair, but Lady Linlithgow's hair would never be grey. Her appearance on the whole was not pre-possessing, but it gave one an idea of honest, real strength. What one saw was not buckram, whalebone, paint, and false hair. It was all human,--hardly feminine, certainly not angelic, with perhaps a hint in the other direction,--but a human body, and not a thing of pads and patches. Lizzie, as she saw her aunt, made up her mind for the combat. Who is there that has lived to be a man or woman, and has not experienced a moment in which a combat has impended, and a call for such sudden courage has been necessary? Alas!--sometimes the combat comes, and the courage is not there. Lady Eustace was not at her ease as she saw her aunt enter the room. "Oh, come ye in peace, or come ye in war?" she would have said had she dared. Her aunt had sent up her love,--if the message had been delivered aright; but what of love could there be between the two? The countess dashed at once to the matter in hand, making no allusion to Lizzie's ungrateful conduct to herself. "Lizzie," she said, "I've been asked to come to you by Mr. Camperdown. I'll sit down, if you please." "Oh, certainly, Aunt Penelope. Mr. Camperdown!" "Yes;--Mr. Camperdown. You know who he is. He has been with me because I am your nearest relation. So I am, and therefore I have come. I don't like it, I can tell you." "As for that, Aunt Penelope, you've done it to please yourself," said Lizzie, in a tone of insolence with which Lady Linlithgow had been familiar in former days. "No, I haven't, miss. I haven't come for my own pleasure at all. I have come for the credit of the family, if any good can be done towards saving it. You've got your husband's diamonds locked up somewhere, and you must give them back." "My husband's diamonds were my diamonds," said Lizzie stoutly. "They are family diamonds, Eustace diamonds, heirlooms,--old property belonging to the Eustaces, just like their estates. Sir Florian didn't give 'em away, and couldn't, and wouldn't if he could. Such things ain't given away in that fashion. It's all nonsense, and you must give them up." "Who says so?" "I say so." "That's nothing, Aunt Penelope." "Nothing, is it? You'll see. Mr. Camperdown says so. All the world will say so. If you don't take care, you'll find yourself brought into a court of law, my dear, and a jury will say so. That's what it will come to. What good will they do you? You can't sell them;--and as a widow you can't wear 'em. If you marry again, you wouldn't disgrace your husband by going about showing off the Eustace diamonds! But you don't know anything about 'proper feelings.'" "I know every bit as much as you do, Aunt Penelope, and I don't want you to teach me." "Will you give up the jewels to Mr. Camperdown?" "No--I won't." "Or to the jewellers?" "No; I won't. I mean to--keep them--for--my child." Then there came forth a sob, and a tear, and Lizzie's handkerchief was held to her eyes. "Your child! Wouldn't they be kept properly for him, and for the family, if the jewellers had them? I don't believe you care about your child." "Aunt Penelope, you had better take care." "I shall say just what I think, Lizzie. You can't frighten me. The fact is, you are disgracing the family you have married into, and as you are my niece--" "I'm not disgracing anybody. You are disgracing everybody." "As you are my niece, I have undertaken to come to you and to tell you that if you don't give 'em up within a week from this time, they'll proceed against you for--stealing 'em!" Lady Linlithgow, as she uttered this terrible threat, bobbed her head at her niece in a manner calculated to add very much to the force of her words. The words, and tone, and gesture combined were, in truth, awful. "I didn't steal them. My husband gave them to me with his own hands." "You wouldn't answer Mr. Camperdown's letters, you know. That alone will condemn you. After that there isn't a word to be said about it;--not a word. Mr. Camperdown is the family lawyer, and when he writes to you letter after letter you take no more notice of him than a--dog!" The old woman was certainly very powerful. The way in which she pronounced that last word did make Lady Eustace ashamed of herself. "Why didn't you answer his letters, unless you knew you were in the wrong? Of course you knew you were in the wrong." "No; I didn't. A woman isn't obliged to answer everything that is written to her." "Very well! You just say that before the judge! for you'll have to go before a judge. I tell you, Lizzie Greystock, or Eustace, or whatever your name is, it's downright picking and stealing. I suppose you want to sell them." "I won't stand this, Aunt Penelope!" said Lizzie, rising from her seat. "You must stand it;--and you'll have to stand worse than that. You don't suppose Mr. Camperdown got me to come here for nothing. If you don't want to be made out to be a thief before all the world--" "I won't stand it!" shrieked Lizzie. "You have no business to come here and say such things to me. It's my house." "I shall say just what I please." "Miss Macnulty, come in." And Lizzie threw open the door, hardly knowing how the very weak ally whom she now invoked could help her, but driven by the stress of the combat to seek assistance somewhere. Miss Macnulty, who was seated near the door, and who had necessarily heard every word of the conversation, had no alternative but to appear. Of all human beings Lady Linlithgow was to her the most terrible, and yet, after a fashion, she loved the old woman. Miss Macnulty was humble, cowardly, and subservient; but she was not a fool, and she understood the difference between truth and falsehood. She had endured fearful things from Lady Linlithgow; but she knew that there might be more of sound protection in Lady Linlithgow's real wrath than in Lizzie's pretended affection. "So you are there, are you?" said the countess. "Yes;--I am here, Lady Linlithgow." "Listening, I suppose. Well;--so much the better. You know well enough, and you can tell her. You ain't a fool, though I suppose you'll be afraid to open your mouth." "Julia," said Lady Eustace, "will you have the kindness to see that my aunt is shown to her carriage. I cannot stand her violence, and I will go up-stairs." So saying she made her way very gracefully into the back drawing-room, whence she could escape to her bed-room. But her aunt fired a last shot at her. "Unless you do as you're bid, Lizzie, you'll find yourself in prison as sure as eggs!" Then, when her niece was beyond hearing, she turned to Miss Macnulty. "I suppose you've heard about these diamonds, Macnulty?" "I know she's got them, Lady Linlithgow." "She has no more right to them than you have. I suppose you're afraid to tell her so, lest she should turn you out;--but it's well she should know it. I've done my duty. Never mind about the servant. I'll find my way out of the house." Nevertheless the bell was rung, and the countess was shown to her carriage with proper consideration. The two ladies went to the opera, and it was not till after their return, and just as they were going to bed, that anything further was said about either the necklace or the visit. Miss Macnulty would not begin the subject, and Lizzie purposely postponed it. But not for a moment had it been off Lady Eustace's mind. She did not care much for music, though she professed to do so,--and thought that she did. But on this night, had she at other times been a slave to St. Cecilia, she would have been free from that thraldom. The old woman's threats had gone into her very heart's blood. Theft, and prison, and juries, and judges had been thrown at her head so violently that she was almost stunned. Could it really be the case that they would prosecute her for stealing? She was Lady Eustace, and who but Lady Eustace should have these diamonds or be allowed to wear them? Nobody could say that Sir Florian had not given them to her. It could not, surely, be brought against her as an actual crime that she had not answered Mr. Camperdown's letters? And yet she was not sure. Her ideas about law and judicial proceedings were very vague. Of what was wrong and what was right she had a distinct notion. She knew well enough that she was endeavouring to steal the Eustace diamonds; but she did not in the least know what power there might be in the law to prevent, or to punish her for the intended theft. She knew well that the thing was not really her own; but there were, as she thought, so many points in her favour, that she felt it to be a cruelty that any one should grudge her the plunder. Was not she the only Lady Eustace living? As to these threats from Mr. Camperdown and Lady Linlithgow, she felt certain they would be used against her whether they were true or false. She would break her heart should she abandon her prey and afterwards find that Mr. Camperdown would have been wholly powerless against her had she held on to it. But then who would tell her the truth? She was sharp enough to understand, or at any rate suspicious enough to believe, that Mr. Mopus would be actuated by no other desire in the matter than that of running up a bill against her. "My dear," she said to Miss Macnulty, as they went up-stairs after the opera, "come into my room a moment. You heard all that my aunt said?" "I could not help hearing. You told me to stay there, and the door was ajar." "I wanted you to hear. Of course what she said was the greatest nonsense in the world." "I don't know." "When she talked about my being taken to prison for not answering a lawyer's letter, that must be nonsense?" "I suppose that was." "And then she is such a ferocious old termagant,--such an old vulturess. Now isn't she a ferocious old termagant?" Lizzie paused for an answer, desirous that her companion should join her in her enmity against her aunt, but Miss Macnulty was unwilling to say anything against one who had been her protectress, and might, perhaps, be her protectress again. "You don't mean to say you don't hate her?" said Lizzie. "If you didn't hate her after all she has done to you, I should despise you. Don't you hate her?" "I think she's a very upsetting old woman," said Miss Macnulty. "Oh, you poor creature! Is that all you dare to say about her?" "I'm obliged to be a poor creature," said Miss Macnulty, with a red spot on each of her cheeks. Lady Eustace understood this, and relented. "But you needn't be afraid," she said, "to tell me what you think." "About the diamonds, you mean?" "Yes; about the diamonds." "You have enough without them. I'd give 'em up for peace and quiet." That was Miss Macnulty's advice. "No;--I haven't enough;--or nearly enough. I've had to buy ever so many things since my husband died. They've done all they could to be hard to me. They made me pay for the very furniture at Portray." This wasn't true; but it was true that Lizzie had endeavoured to palm off on the Eustace estate bills for new things which she had ordered for her own country-house. "I haven't near enough. I am in debt already. People talked as though I were the richest woman in the world; but when it comes to be spent, I ain't rich. Why should I give them up if they're my own?" "Not if they're your own." "If I give you a present and then die, people can't come and take it away afterwards because I didn't put it into my will. There'd be no making presents like that at all." This Lizzie said with an evident conviction in the strength of her argument. "But this necklace is so very valuable." "That can't make a difference. If a thing is a man's own he can give it away;--not a house, or a farm, or a wood, or anything like that; but a thing that he can carry about with him,--of course he can give it away." "But perhaps Sir Florian didn't mean to give it for always," suggested Miss Macnulty. "But perhaps he did. He told me that they were mine, and I shall keep them. So that's the end of it. You can go to bed now." And Miss Macnulty went to bed. Lizzie, as she sat thinking of it, owned to herself that no help was to be expected in that quarter. She was not angry with Miss Macnulty, who was, almost of necessity, a poor creature. But she was convinced more strongly than ever that some friend was necessary to her who should not be a poor creature. Lord Fawn, though a peer, was a poor creature. Frank Greystock she believed to be as strong as a house. CHAPTER VII Mr. Burke's Speeches Lucy Morris had been told by Lady Fawn that,--in point of fact that, being a governess, she ought to give over falling in love with Frank Greystock, and she had not liked it. Lady Fawn no doubt had used words less abrupt,--had probably used but few words, and had expressed her meaning chiefly by little winks, and shakings of her head, and small gestures of her hands, and had ended by a kiss,--in all of which she had intended to mingle mercy with justice, and had, in truth, been full of love. Nevertheless, Lucy had not liked it. No girl likes to be warned against falling in love, whether the warning be needed or not needed. In this case Lucy knew very well that the caution was too late. It might be all very well for Lady Fawn to decide that her governess should not receive visits from a lover in her house;--and then the governess might decide whether, in those circumstances, she would remain or go away; but Lady Fawn could have no right to tell her governess not to be in love. All this Lucy said to herself over and over again, and yet she knew that Lady Fawn had treated her well. The old woman had kissed her, and purred over her, and praised her, and had really loved her. As a matter of course, Lucy was not entitled to have a lover. Lucy knew that well enough. As she walked alone among the shrubs she made arguments in defence of Lady Fawn as against herself. And yet at every other minute she would blaze up into a grand wrath, and picture to herself a scene in which she would tell Lady Fawn boldly that as her lover had been banished from Fawn Court, she, Lucy, would remain there no longer. There were but two objections to this course. The first was that Frank Greystock was not her lover; and the second, that on leaving Fawn Court she would not know whither to betake herself. It was understood by everybody that she was never to leave Fawn Court till an unexceptionable home should be found for her, either with the Hittaways or elsewhere. Lady Fawn would no more allow her to go away, depending for her future on the mere chance of some promiscuous engagement, than she would have turned one of her own daughters out of the house in the same forlorn condition. Lady Fawn was a tower of strength to Lucy. But then a tower of strength may at any moment become a dungeon. Frank Greystock was not her lover. Ah,--there was the worst of it all! She had given her heart and had got nothing in return. She conned it all over in her own mind, striving to ascertain whether there was any real cause for shame to her in her own conduct. Had she been unmaidenly? Had she been too forward with her heart? Had it been extracted from her, as women's hearts are extracted, by efforts on the man's part; or had she simply chucked it away from her to the first comer? Then she remembered certain scenes at the deanery, words that had been spoken, looks that had been turned upon her, a pressure of the hand late at night, a little whisper, a ribbon that had been begged, a flower that had been given;--and once, once--; then there came a burning blush upon her cheek that there should have been so much, and yet so little that was of avail. She had no right to say to any one that the man was her lover. She had no right to assure herself that he was her lover. But she knew that some wrong was done her in that he was not her lover. Of the importance of her own self as a living thing with a heart to suffer and a soul to endure, she thought enough. She believed in herself, thinking of herself, that should it ever be her lot to be a man's wife, she would be to him a true, loving friend and companion, living in his joys, and fighting, if it were necessary, down to the stumps of her nails in his interests. But of what she had to give over and above her heart and intellect she never thought at all. Of personal beauty she had very little appreciation even in others. The form and face of Lady Eustace, which indeed were very lovely, were distasteful to her; whereas she delighted to look upon the broad, plain, colourless countenance of Lydia Fawn, who was endeared to her by frank good humour and an unselfish disposition. In regard to men she had never asked herself the question whether this man was handsome or that man ugly. Of Frank Greystock she knew that his face was full of quick intellect; and of Lord Fawn she knew that he bore no outward index of mind. One man she not only loved, but could not help loving; the other man, as regarded that sort of sympathy which marriage should recognise, must always have been worlds asunder from her. She knew that men demand that women shall possess beauty, and she certainly had never thought of herself as beautiful; but it did not occur to her that on that account she was doomed to fail. She was too strong-hearted for any such fear. She did not think much of these things, but felt herself to be so far endowed as to be fit to be the wife of such a man as Frank Greystock. She was a proud, stout, self-confident, but still modest little woman, too fond of truth to tell lies of herself even to herself. She was possessed of a great power of sympathy, genial, very social, greatly given to the mirth of conversation,--though in talking she would listen much and say but little. She was keenly alive to humour, and had at her command a great fund of laughter, which would illumine her whole face without producing a sound from her mouth. She knew herself to be too good to be a governess for life;--and yet how could it be otherwise with her? Lady Linlithgow's visit to her niece had been made on a Thursday, and on that same evening Frank Greystock had asked his question in the House of Commons,--or rather had made his speech about the Sawab of Mygawb. We all know the meaning of such speeches. Had not Frank belonged to the party that was out, and had not the resistance to the Sawab's claim come from the party that was in, Frank would not probably have cared much about the prince. We may be sure that he would not have troubled himself to read a line of that very dull and long pamphlet of which he had to make himself master before he could venture to stir in the matter, had not the road of Opposition been open to him in that direction. But what exertion will not a politician make with the view of getting the point of his lance within the joints of his enemies' harness? Frank made his speech, and made it very well. It was just the case for a lawyer, admitting that kind of advocacy which it is a lawyer's business to practise. The Indian minister of the day, Lord Fawn's chief, had determined, after much anxious consideration, that it was his duty to resist the claim; and then, for resisting it, he was attacked. Had he yielded to the claim, the attack would have been as venomous, and very probably would have come from the same quarter. No blame by such an assertion is cast upon the young Conservative aspirant for party honours. It is thus the war is waged. Frank Greystock took up the Sawab's case, and would have drawn mingled tears and indignation from his hearers, had not his hearers all known the conditions of the contest. On neither side did the hearers care much for the Sawab's claims, but they felt that Greystock was making good his own claims to some future reward from his party. He was very hard upon the minister,--and he was hard also upon Lord Fawn, stating that the cruelty of Government ascendancy had never been put forward as a doctrine in plainer terms than those which had been used in "another place" in reference to the wrongs of this poor ill-used native chieftain. This was very grievous to Lord Fawn, who had personally desired to favour the ill-used chieftain;--and harder again because he and Greystock were intimate with each other. He felt the thing keenly, and was full of his grievance when, in accordance with his custom, he came down to Fawn Court on the Saturday evening. The Fawn family, which consisted entirely of women, dined early. On Saturdays, when his lordship would come down, a dinner was prepared for him alone. On Sundays they all dined together at three o'clock. On Sunday evening Lord Fawn would return to town to prepare himself for his Monday's work. Perhaps, also, he disliked the sermon which Lady Fawn always read to the assembled household at nine o'clock on Sunday evening. On this Saturday he came out into the grounds after dinner, where the oldest unmarried daughter, the present Miss Fawn, was walking with Lucy Morris. It was almost a summer evening;--so much so, that some of the party had been sitting on the garden benches, and four of the girls were still playing croquet on the lawn, though there was hardly light enough to see the balls. Miss Fawn had already told Lucy that her brother was very angry with Mr. Greystock. Now, Lucy's sympathies were all with Frank and the Sawab. She had endeavoured, indeed, and had partially succeeded, in perverting the Under-Secretary. Nor did she now intend to change her opinions, although all the Fawn girls, and Lady Fawn, were against her. When a brother or a son is an Under-Secretary of State, sisters and mothers will constantly be on the side of the Government, so far as that Under-Secretary's office is concerned. "Upon my word, Frederic," said Augusta Fawn, "I do think Mr. Greystock was too bad." "There's nothing these fellows won't say or do," exclaimed Lord Fawn. "I can't understand it myself. When I've been in opposition, I never did that kind of thing." "I wonder whether it was because he is angry with mamma," said Miss Fawn. Everybody who knew the Fawns knew that Augusta Fawn was not clever, and that she would occasionally say the very thing that ought not to be said. "Oh, dear, no," said the Under-Secretary, who could not endure the idea that the weak women-kind of his family should have, in any way, an influence on the august doings of Parliament. "You know mamma did--" "Nothing of that kind at all," said his lordship, putting down his sister with great authority. "Mr. Greystock is simply not an honest politician. That is about the whole of it. He chose to attack me because there was an opportunity. There isn't a man in either House who cares for such things, personally, less than I do;"--had his lordship said "more than he did," he might, perhaps, have been correct;--"but I can't bear the feeling. The fact is, a lawyer never understands what is and what is not fair fighting." Lucy felt her face tingling with heat, and was preparing to say a word in defence of that special lawyer, when Lady Fawn's voice was heard from the drawing-room window. "Come in, girls. It's nine o'clock." In that house Lady Fawn reigned supreme, and no one ever doubted, for a moment, as to obedience. The clicking of the balls ceased, and those who were walking immediately turned their faces to the drawing-room window. But Lord Fawn, who was not one of the girls, took another turn by himself, thinking of the wrongs he had endured. "Frederic is so angry about Mr. Greystock," said Augusta, as soon as they were seated. "I do feel that it was provoking," said the second sister. "And considering that Mr. Greystock has so often been here, I don't think it was kind," said the third. Lydia did not speak, but could not refrain from glancing her eyes at Lucy's face. "I believe everything is considered fair in Parliament," said Lady Fawn. Then Lord Fawn, who had heard the last words, entered through the window. "I don't know about that, mother," said he. "Gentleman-like conduct is the same everywhere. There are things that may be said and there are things which may not. Mr. Greystock has altogether gone beyond the usual limits, and I shall take care that he knows my opinion." "You are not going to quarrel with the man?" asked the mother. "I am not going to fight him, if you mean that; but I shall let him know that I think that he has transgressed." This his lordship said with that haughty superiority which a man may generally display with safety among the women of his own family. Lucy had borne a great deal, knowing well that it was better that she should bear such injury in silence;--but there was a point beyond which she could not endure it. It was intolerable to her that Mr. Greystock's character as a gentleman should be impugned before all the ladies of the family, every one of whom did, in fact, know her liking for the man. And then it seemed to her that she could rush into the battle, giving a side blow at his lordship on behalf of his absent antagonist, but appearing to fight for the Sawab. There had been a time when the poor Sawab was in favour at Fawn Court. "I think Mr. Greystock was right to say all he could for the prince. If he took up the cause, he was bound to make the best of it." She spoke with energy and with a heightened colour; and Lady Fawn, hearing her, shook her head at her. "Did you read Mr. Greystock's speech, Miss Morris?" asked Lord Fawn. "Every word of it, in the _Times_." "And you understood his allusion to what I had been called upon to say in the House of Lords on behalf of the Government?" "I suppose I did. It did not seem to be difficult to understand." "I do think Mr. Greystock should have abstained from attacking Frederic," said Augusta. "It was not--not quite the thing that we are accustomed to," said Lord Fawn. "Of course I don't know about that," said Lucy. "I think the prince is being used very ill,--that he is being deprived of his own property,--that he is kept out of his rights, just because he is weak, and I am very glad that there is some one to speak up for him." "My dear Lucy," said Lady Fawn, "if you discuss politics with Lord Fawn, you'll get the worst of it." "I don't at all object to Miss Morris's views about the Sawab," said the Under-Secretary generously. "There is a great deal to be said on both sides. I know of old that Miss Morris is a great friend of the Sawab." "You used to be his friend too," said Lucy. "I felt for him,--and do feel for him. All that is very well. I ask no one to agree with me on the question itself. I only say that Mr. Greystock's mode of treating it was unbecoming." "I think it was the very best speech I ever read in my life," said Lucy, with headlong energy and heightened colour. "Then, Miss Morris, you and I have very different opinions about speeches," said Lord Fawn, with severity. "You have, probably, never read Burke's speeches." "And I don't want to read them," said Lucy. "That is another question," said Lord Fawn; and his tone and manner were very severe indeed. "We are talking about speeches in Parliament," said Lucy. Poor Lucy! She knew quite as well as did Lord Fawn that Burke had been a House of Commons orator; but in her impatience, and from absence of the habit of argument, she omitted to explain that she was talking about the speeches of the day. Lord Fawn held up his hands, and put his head a little on one side. "My dear Lucy," said Lady Fawn, "you are showing your ignorance. Where do you suppose that Mr. Burke's speeches were made?" "Of course I know they were made in Parliament," said Lucy, almost in tears. "If Miss Morris means that Burke's greatest efforts were not made in Parliament,--that his speech to the electors of Bristol, for instance, and his opening address on the trial of Warren Hastings, were, upon the whole, superior to--" "I didn't mean anything at all," said Lucy. "Lord Fawn is trying to help you, my dear," said Lady Fawn. "I don't want to be helped," said Lucy. "I only mean that I thought Mr. Greystock's speech as good as it could possibly be. There wasn't a word in it that didn't seem to me to be just what it ought to be. I do think that they are ill-treating that poor Indian prince, and I am very glad that somebody has had the courage to get up and say so." No doubt it would have been better that Lucy should have held her tongue. Had she simply been upholding against an opponent a political speaker whose speech she had read with pleasure, she might have held her own in the argument against the whole Fawn family. She was a favourite with them all, and even the Under-Secretary would not have been hard upon her. But there had been more than this for poor Lucy to do. Her heart was so truly concerned in the matter, that she could not refrain herself from resenting an attack on the man she loved. She had allowed herself to be carried into superlatives, and had almost been uncourteous to Lord Fawn. "My dear," said Lady Fawn, "we won't say anything more upon the subject." Lord Fawn took up a book. Lady Fawn busied herself in her knitting. Lydia assumed a look of unhappiness, as though something very sad had occurred. Augusta addressed a question to her brother in a tone which plainly indicated a feeling on her part that her brother had been ill-used and was entitled to special consideration. Lucy sat silent and still, and then left the room with a hurried step. Lydia at once rose to follow her, but was stopped by her mother. "You had better leave her alone just at present, my dear," said Lady Fawn. "I did not know that Miss Morris was so particularly interested in Mr. Greystock," said Lord Fawn. "She has known him since she was a child," said his mother. About an hour afterwards Lady Fawn went up-stairs and found Lucy sitting all alone in the still so-called school-room. She had no candle, and had made no pretence to do anything since she had left the room down-stairs. In the interval family prayers had been read, and Lucy's absence was unusual and contrary to rule. "Lucy, my dear, why are you sitting here?" said Lady Fawn. "Because I am unhappy." "What makes you unhappy, Lucy?" "I don't know. I would rather you didn't ask me. I suppose I behaved badly down-stairs." "My son would forgive you in a moment if you asked him." "No;--certainly not. I can beg your pardon, Lady Fawn, but not his. Of course I had no right to talk about speeches, and politics, and this prince in your drawing-room." "Lucy, you astonish me." "But it is so. Dear Lady Fawn, don't look like that. I know how good you are to me. I know you let me do things which other governesses mayn't do;--and say things; but still I am a governess, and I know I misbehaved--to you." Then Lucy burst into tears. Lady Fawn, in whose bosom there was no stony corner or morsel of hard iron, was softened at once. "My dear, you are more like another daughter to me than anything else." "Dear Lady Fawn!" "But it makes me unhappy when I see your mind engaged about Mr. Greystock. There is the truth, Lucy. You should not think of Mr. Greystock. Mr. Greystock is a man who has his way to make in the world, and could not marry you, even if, under other circumstances, he would wish to do so. You know how frank I am with you, giving you credit for honest, sound good sense. To me and to my girls, who know you as a lady, you are as dear a friend as though you were--were anything you may please to think. Lucy Morris is to us our own dear, dear little friend Lucy. But Mr. Greystock, who is a Member of Parliament, could not marry a governess." "But I love him so dearly," said Lucy, getting up from her chair, "that his slightest word is to me more than all the words of all the world beside! It is no use, Lady Fawn. I do love him, and I don't mean to try to give it up!" Lady Fawn stood silent for a moment, and then suggested that it would be better for them both to go to bed. During that minute she had been unable to decide what she had better say or do in the present emergency. CHAPTER VIII The Conquering Hero Comes The reader will perhaps remember that when Lizzie Eustace was told that her aunt was down-stairs Frank Greystock was with her, and that he promised to return on the following day to hear the result of the interview. Had Lady Linlithgow not come at that very moment Frank would probably have asked his rich cousin to be his wife. She had told him that she was solitary and unhappy; and after that what else could he have done but ask her to be his wife? The old countess, however, arrived, and interrupted him. He went away abruptly, promising to come on the morrow;--but on the morrow he never came. It was a Friday, and Lizzie remained at home for him the whole morning. When four o'clock was passed she knew that he would be at the House. But still she did not stir. And she contrived that Miss Macnulty should be absent the entire day. Miss Macnulty was even made to go to the play by herself in the evening. But her absence was of no service. Frank Greystock came not; and at eleven at night Lizzie swore to herself that should he ever come again, he should come in vain. Nevertheless, through the whole of Saturday she expected him with more or less of confidence, and on the Sunday morning she was still well-inclined towards him. It might be that he would come on that day. She could understand that a man with his hands so full of business, as were those of her cousin Frank, should find himself unable to keep an appointment. Nor would there be fair ground for permanent anger with such a one, even should he forget an appointment. But surely he would come on the Sunday! She had been quite sure that the offer was about to be made when that odious old harridan had come in and disturbed everything. Indeed, the offer had been all but made. She had felt the premonitory flutter, had asked herself the important question,--and had answered it. She had told herself that the thing would do. Frank was not the exact hero that her fancy had painted,--but he was sufficiently heroic. Everybody said that he would work his way up to the top of the tree, and become a rich man. At any rate she had resolved;--and then Lady Linlithgow had come in! Surely he would come on the Sunday. He did not come on the Sunday, but Lord Fawn did come. Immediately after morning church Lord Fawn declared his intention of returning at once from Fawn Court to town. He was very silent at breakfast, and his sisters surmised that he was still angry with poor Lucy. Lucy, too, was unlike herself,--was silent, sad, and oppressed. Lady Fawn was serious, and almost solemn;--so that there was little even of holy mirth at Fawn Court on that Sunday morning. The whole family, however, went to church, and immediately on their return Lord Fawn expressed his intention of returning to town. All the sisters felt that an injury had been done to them by Lucy. It was only on Sundays that their dinner-table was graced by the male member of the family, and now he was driven away. "I am sorry that you are going to desert us, Frederic," said Lady Fawn. Lord Fawn muttered something as to absolute necessity, and went. The afternoon was very dreary at Fawn Court. Nothing was said on the subject; but there was still the feeling that Lucy had offended. At four o'clock on that Sunday afternoon Lord Fawn was closeted with Lady Eustace. The "closeting" consisted simply in the fact that Miss Macnulty was not present. Lizzie fully appreciated the pleasure, and utility, and general convenience of having a companion, but she had no scruple whatever in obtaining absolute freedom for herself when she desired it. "My dear," she would say, "the best friends in the world shouldn't always be together; should they? Wouldn't you like to go to the Horticultural?" Then Miss Macnulty would go to the Horticultural,--or else up into her own bed-room. When Lizzie was beginning to wax wrathful again because Frank Greystock did not come, Lord Fawn made his appearance. "How kind this is," said Lizzie. "I thought you were always at Richmond on Sundays." "I have just come up from my mother's," said Lord Fawn, twiddling his hat. Then Lizzie, with a pretty eagerness, asked after Lady Fawn and the girls, and her dear little friend Lucy Morris. Lizzie could be very prettily eager when she pleased. She leaned forward her face as she asked her questions, and threw back her loose lustrous lock of hair, with her long lithe fingers covered with diamonds,--the diamonds, these, which Sir Florian had really given her, or which she had procured from Mr. Benjamin in the clever manner described in the opening chapter. "They are, all quite well, thank you," said Lord Fawn. "I believe Miss Morris is quite well, though she was a little out of sorts last night." "She is not ill, I hope," said Lizzie, bringing the lustrous lock forward again. "In her temper, I mean," said Lord Fawn. "Indeed! I hope Miss Lucy is not forgetting herself. That would be very sad, after the great kindness she has received." Lord Fawn said that it would be very sad, and then put his hat down upon the floor. It came upon Lizzie at that moment, as by a flash of lightning,--by an electric message delivered to her intellect by that movement of the hat,--that she might be sure of Lord Fawn if she chose to take him. On Friday she might have been sure of Frank,--only that Lady Linlithgow came in the way. But now she did not feel at all sure of Frank. Lord Fawn was at any rate a peer. She had heard that he was a poor peer,--but a peer, she thought, can't be altogether poor. And though he was a stupid owl,--she did not hesitate to acknowledge to herself that he was as stupid as an owl,--he had a position. He was one of the Government, and his wife would, no doubt, be able to go anywhere. It was becoming essential to her that she should marry. Even though her husband should give up the diamonds, she would not in such case incur the disgrace of surrendering them herself. She would have kept them till she had ceased to be a Eustace. Frank had certainly meant it on that Thursday afternoon;--but surely he would have been in Mount Street before this if he had not changed his mind. We all know that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. "I have been at Fawn Court once or twice," said Lizzie, with her sweetest grace, "and I always think it a model of real family happiness." "I hope you may be there very often," said Lord Fawn. "Ah, I have no right to intrude myself often on your mother, Lord Fawn." There could hardly be a better opening than this for him had he chosen to accept it. But it was not thus that he had arranged it,--for he had made his arrangements. "There would be no feeling of that kind, I am sure," he said. And then he was silent. How was he to deploy himself on the ground before him so as to make the strategy which he had prepared answer the occasion of the day? "Lady Eustace," he said, "I don't know what your views of life may be." "I have a child, you know, to bring up." "Ah, yes;--that gives a great interest, of course." "He will inherit a very large fortune, Lord Fawn;--too large, I fear, to be of service to a youth of one-and-twenty; and I must endeavour to fit him for the possession of it. That is,--and always must be, the chief object of my existence." Then she felt that she had said too much. He was just the man who would be fool enough to believe her. "Not but what it is hard to do it. A mother can of course devote herself to her child;--but when a portion of the devotion must be given to the preservation of material interests there is less of tenderness in it. Don't you think so?" "No doubt," said Lord Fawn;--"no doubt." But he had not followed her, and was still thinking of his own strategy. "It's a comfort, of course, to know that one's child is provided for." "Oh, yes;--but they tell me the poor little dear will have forty thousand a year when he's of age; and when I look at him in his little bed, and press him in my arms, and think of all that money, I almost wish that his father had been a poor plain gentleman." Then the handkerchief was put to her eyes, and Lord Fawn had a moment in which to collect himself. "Ah!--I myself am a poor man;--for my rank I mean." "A man with your position, Lord Fawn, and your talents and genius for business, can never be poor." "My father's property was all Irish, you know." "Was it indeed?" "And he was an Irish peer, till Lord Melbourne gave him an English peerage." "An Irish peer, was he?" Lizzie understood nothing of this, but presumed that an Irish peer was a peer who had not sufficient money to live upon. Lord Fawn, however, was endeavouring to describe his own history in as few words as possible. "He was then made Lord Fawn of Richmond, in the peerage of the United Kingdom. Fawn Court, you know, belonged to my mother's father before my mother's marriage. The property in Ireland is still mine, but there's no place on it." "Indeed!" "There was a house, but my father allowed it to tumble down. It's in Tipperary;--not at all a desirable country to live in." "Oh, dear, no! Don't they murder the people?" "It's about five thousand a year, and out of that my mother has half for her life." "What an excellent family arrangement," said Lizzie. There was so long a pause made between each statement that she was forced to make some reply. "You see, for a peer, the fortune is very small indeed." "But then you have a salary;--don't you?" "At present I have;--but no one can tell how long that may last." "I'm sure it's for everybody's good that it should go on for ever so many years," said Lizzie. "Thank you," said Lord Fawn. "I'm afraid, however, there are a great many people who don't think so. Your cousin Greystock would do anything on earth to turn us out." "Luckily, my cousin Frank has not much power," said Lizzie. And in saying it she threw into her tone, and into her countenance, a certain amount of contempt for Frank as a man and as a politician, which was pleasant to Lord Fawn. "Now," said he, "I have told you everything about myself which I was bound, as a man of honour, to tell before--I--I--I--. In short you know what I mean." "Oh, Lord Fawn!" "I have told you everything. I owe no money, but I could not afford to marry a wife without an income. I admire you more than any woman I ever saw. I love you with all my heart." He was now standing upright before her, with the fingers of his right hand touching his left breast, and there was something almost of dignity in his gesture and demeanour. "It may be that you are determined never to marry again. I can only say that if you will trust yourself to me,--yourself and your child,--I will do my duty truly by you both, and will make your happiness the chief object of my existence." When she had listened to him thus far, of course she must accept him; but he was by no means aware of that. She sat silent, with her hands folded on her breast, looking down upon the ground; but he did not as yet attempt to seat himself by her. "Lady Eustace," he continued, "may I venture to entertain a hope?" "May I not have an hour to think of it?" said Lizzie, just venturing to turn a glance of her eye upon his face. "Oh, certainly. I will call again whenever you may bid me." Now she was silent for two or three minutes, during which he still stood over her. But he had dropped his hand from his breast, and had stooped, and picked up his hat ready for his departure. Was he to come again on Monday, or Tuesday, or Wednesday? Let her tell him that and he would go. He doubtless reflected that Wednesday would suit him best, because there would be no House. But Lizzie was too magnanimous for this. "Lord Fawn," she said, rising, "you have paid me the greatest compliment that a man can pay a woman. Coming from you it is doubly precious; first, because of your character; and secondly--" "Why secondly?" "Secondly, because I can love you." This was said in her lowest whisper, and then she moved towards him gently, and almost laid her head upon his breast. Of course he put his arm round her waist,--but it was first necessary that he should once more disembarrass himself of his hat,--and then her head was upon his breast. "Dearest Lizzie!" he said. "Dearest Frederic!" she murmured. "I shall write to my mother to-night," he said. "Do, do;--dear Frederic." "And she will come to you at once, I am sure." "I will receive her and love her as a mother," said Lizzie, with all her energy. Then he kissed her again,--her forehead and her lips,--and took his leave, promising to be with her at any rate on Wednesday. "Lady Fawn!" she said to herself. The name did not sound so well as that of Lady Eustace. But it is much to be a wife; and more to be a peeress. CHAPTER IX Showing What the Miss Fawns Said, and What Mrs. Hittaway Thought In the way of duty Lord Fawn was a Hercules,--not, indeed, "climbing trees in the Hesperides," but achieving enterprises which, to other men, if not impossible, would have been so unpalatable as to have been put aside as impracticable. On the Monday morning, after he was accepted by Lady Eustace, he was with his mother at Fawn Court before he went down to the India Office. He had at least been very honest in the description he had given of his own circumstances to the lady whom he intended to marry. He had told her the exact truth; and though she, with all her cleverness, had not been able to realise the facts when related to her so suddenly, still enough had been said to make it quite clear that, when details of business should hereafter be discussed in a less hurried manner, he would be able to say that he had explained all his circumstances before he had made his offer. And he had been careful, too, as to her affairs. He had ascertained that her late husband had certainly settled upon her for life an estate worth four thousand a year. He knew, also, that eight thousand pounds had been left her, but of that he took no account. It might be probable that she had spent it. If any of it were left, it would be a godsend. Lord Fawn thought a great deal about money. Being a poor man, filling a place fit only for rich men, he had been driven to think of money, and had become self-denying and parsimonious,--perhaps we may say hungry and close-fisted. Such a condition of character is the natural consequence of such a position. There is, probably, no man who becomes naturally so hard in regard to money as he who is bound to live among rich men, who is not rich himself, and who is yet honest. The weight of the work of life in these circumstances is so crushing, requires such continued thought, and makes itself so continually felt, that the mind of the sufferer is never free from the contamination of sixpences. Of such a one it is not fair to judge as of other men with similar incomes. Lord Fawn had declared to his future bride that he had half five thousand a year to spend,--or the half, rather, of such actual income as might be got in from an estate presumed to give five thousand a year,--and it may be said that an unmarried gentleman ought not to be poor with such an income. But Lord Fawn unfortunately was a lord, unfortunately was a landlord, unfortunately was an Irish landlord. Let him be as careful as he might with his sixpences, his pounds would fly from him, or, as might, perhaps, be better said, could not be made to fly to him. He was very careful with his sixpences, and was always thinking, not exactly how he might make two ends meet, but how to reconcile the strictest personal economy with the proper bearing of an English nobleman. Such a man almost naturally looks to marriage as an assistance in the dreary fight. It soon becomes clear to him that he cannot marry without money, and he learns to think that heiresses have been invented exactly to suit his case. He is conscious of having been subjected to hardship by Fortune, and regards female wealth as his legitimate mode of escape from it. He has got himself, his position, and, perhaps, his title to dispose of, and they are surely worth so much per annum. As for giving anything away, that is out of the question. He has not been so placed as to be able to give. But, being an honest man, he will, if possible, make a fair bargain. Lord Fawn was certainly an honest man, and he had been endeavouring for the last six or seven years to make a fair bargain. But then it is so hard to decide what is fair. Who is to tell a Lord Fawn how much per annum he ought to regard himself as worth? He had, on one or two occasions, asked a high price, but no previous bargain had been made. No doubt he had come down a little in his demand in suggesting a matrimonial arrangement to a widow with a child, and with only four thousand a year. Whether or no that income was hers in perpetuity, or only for life, he had not positively known when he made his offer. The will made by Sir Florian Eustace did not refer to the property at all. In the natural course of things, the widow would only have a life-interest in the income. Why should Sir Florian make away, in perpetuity, with his family property? Nevertheless, there had been a rumour abroad that Sir Florian had been very generous; that the Scotch estate was to go to a second son in the event of there being a second son;--but that otherwise it was to be at the widow's own disposal. No doubt, had Lord Fawn been persistent, he might have found out the exact truth. He had, however, calculated that he could afford to accept even the life-income. If more should come of it, so much the better for him. He might, at any rate, so arrange the family matters, that his heir, should he have one, should not at his death be called upon to pay something more than half the proceeds of the family property to his mother,--as was now done by himself. Lord Fawn breakfasted at Fawn Court on the Monday, and his mother sat at the table with him, pouring out his tea. "Oh, Frederic," she said, "it is so important!" "Just so;--very important indeed. I should like you to call and see her either to-day or to-morrow." "That's of course." "And you had better get her down here." "I don't know that she'll come. Ought I to ask the little boy?" "Certainly," said Lord Fawn, as he put a spoonful of egg into his mouth; "certainly." "And Miss Macnulty?" "No; I don't see that at all. I'm not going to marry Miss Macnulty. The child, of course, must be one of us." "And what is the income, Frederic?" "Four thousand a year. Something more, nominally, but four thousand to spend." "You are sure about that?" "Quite sure." "And for ever?" "I believe so. Of that I am not sure." "It makes a great difference, Frederic." "A very great difference indeed. I think it is her own. But, at any rate, she is much younger than I am, and there need be no settlement out of my property. That is the great thing. Don't you think she's--nice?" "She is very lovely." "And clever?" "Certainly very clever. I hope she is not self-willed, Frederic." "If she is, we must try and balance it," said Lord Fawn, with a little smile. But, in truth, he had thought nothing about any such quality as that to which his mother now referred. The lady had an income. That was the first and most indispensable consideration. She was fairly well-born, was a lady, and was beautiful. In doing Lord Fawn justice, we must allow that, in all his attempted matrimonial speculations, some amount of feminine loveliness had been combined with feminine wealth. He had for two years been a suitor of Violet Effingham, who was the acknowledged beauty of the day,--of Violet Effingham who, at the present time, was the wife of Lord Chiltern; and he had offered himself thrice to Madame Max Goesler, who was reputed to be as rich as she was beautiful. In either case, the fortune would have been greater than that which he would now win, and the money would certainly have been for ever. But in these attempts he had failed; and Lord Fawn was not a man to think himself ill-used because he did not get the first good thing for which he asked. "I suppose I may tell the girls?" said Lady Fawn. "Yes;--when I am gone. I must be off now, only I could not bear not to come and see you." "It was so like you, Frederic." "And you'll go to-day?" "Yes; if you wish it,--certainly." "Go up in the carriage, you know, and take one of the girls with you. I would not take more than one. Augusta will be the best. You'll see Clara, I suppose." Clara was the married sister, Mrs. Hittaway. "If you wish it." "She had better call too,--say on Thursday. It's quite as well that it should be known. I sha'n't choose to have more delay than can be avoided. Well;--I believe that's all." "I hope she'll be a good wife to you, Frederic." "I don't see why she shouldn't. Good-bye, mother. Tell the girls I will see them next Saturday." He didn't see why this woman he was about to marry should not be a good wife to him! And yet he knew nothing about her, and had not taken the slightest trouble to make inquiry. That she was pretty he could see; that she was clever he could understand; that she lived in Mount Street was a fact; her parentage was known to him;--that she was the undoubted mistress of a large income was beyond dispute. But, for aught he knew, she might be afflicted by every vice to which a woman can be subject. In truth, she was afflicted by so many, that the addition of all the others could hardly have made her worse than she was. She had never sacrificed her beauty to a lover,--she had never sacrificed anything to anybody,--nor did she drink. It would be difficult, perhaps, to say anything else in her favour; and yet Lord Fawn was quite content to marry her, not having seen any reason why she should not make a good wife! Nor had Sir Florian seen any reason;--but she had broken Sir Florian's heart. When the girls heard the news, they were half frightened and half delighted. Lady Fawn and her daughters lived very much out of the world. They also were poor rich people,--if such a term may be used,--and did not go much into society. There was a butler kept at Fawn Court, and a boy in buttons, and two gardeners, and a man to look after the cows, and a carriage and horses, and a fat coachman. There was a cook and a scullery maid, and two lady's maids,--who had to make the dresses,--and two housemaids and a dairymaid. There was a large old brick house to be kept in order, and handsome grounds with old trees. There was, as we know, a governess, and there were seven unmarried daughters. With such encumbrances, and an income altogether not exceeding three thousand pounds per annum, Lady Fawn could not be rich. And yet who would say that an old lady and her daughters could be poor with three thousand pounds a year to spend? It may be taken almost as a rule by the unennobled ones of this country, that the sudden possession of a title would at once raise the price of every article consumed twenty per cent. Mutton that before cost ninepence would cost tenpence a pound, and the mouths to be fed would demand more meat. The chest of tea would run out quicker. The labourer's work, which for the farmer is ten hours a day, for the squire nine, is for the peer only eight. Miss Jones, when she becomes Lady de Jongh, does not pay less than threepence apiece for each "my lady" with which her ear is tickled. Even the baronet when he becomes a lord has to curtail his purchases, because of increased price, unless he be very wide awake to the affairs of the world. Old Lady Fawn, who would not on any account have owed a shilling which she could not pay, and who, in the midst of her economies, was not close-fisted, knew very well what she could do and what she could not. The old family carriage and the two lady's maids were there,--as necessaries of life; but London society was not within her reach. It was, therefore, the case that they had not heard very much about Lizzie Eustace. But they had heard something. "I hope she won't be too fond of going out," said Amelia, the second girl. "Or extravagant," said Georgina, the third. "There was some story of her being terribly in debt when she married Sir Florian Eustace," said Diana, the fourth. "Frederic will be sure to see to that," said Augusta, the eldest. "She is very beautiful," said Lydia, the fifth. "And clever," said Cecilia, the sixth. "Beauty and cleverness won't make a good wife," said Amelia, who was the wise one of the family. "Frederic will be sure to see that she doesn't go wrong," said Augusta, who was not wise. Then Lucy Morris entered the room with Nina, the cadette of the family. "Oh, Nina, what do you think?" said Lydia. "My dear!" said Lady Fawn, putting up her hand and stopping further indiscreet speech. "Oh, mamma, what is it?" asked the cadette. "Surely Lucy may be told," said Lydia. "Well, yes; Lucy may be told certainly. There can be no reason why Lucy should not know all that concerns our family;--and the more so as she has been for many years intimate with the lady. My dear, my son is going to be married to Lady Eustace." "Lord Fawn going to marry Lizzie!" said Lucy Morris, in a tone which certainly did not express unmingled satisfaction. "Unless you forbid the banns," said Diana. "Is there any reason why he should not?" said Lady Fawn. "Oh, no;--only it seems so odd. I didn't know that they knew each other;--not well, that is. And then--" "Then what, my dear?" "It seems odd;--that's all. It's all very nice, I dare say, and I'm sure I hope they will be happy." Lady Fawn, however, was displeased, and did not speak to Lucy again before she started with Augusta on the journey to London. The carriage first stopped at the door of the married daughter in Warwick Square. Now, Mrs. Hittaway, whose husband was chairman of the Board of Civil Appeals and who was very well known at all Boards and among official men generally, heard much more about things that were going on than did her mother. And, having been emancipated from maternal control for the last ten or twelve years, she could express herself before her mother with more confidence than would have become the other girls. "Mamma," she said, "you don't mean it!" "I do mean it, Clara. Why should I not mean it?" "She is the greatest vixen in all London." "Oh, Clara!" said Augusta. "And such a liar," said Mrs. Hittaway. There came a look of pain across Lady Fawn's face, for Lady Fawn believed in her eldest daughter. But yet she intended to fight her ground on a matter so important to her as was this. "There is no word in the English language," she said, "which conveys to me so little of defined meaning as that word vixen. If you can, tell me what you mean, Clara." "Stop it, mamma." "But why should I stop it,--even if I could?" "You don't know her, mamma." "She has visited at Fawn Court, more than once. She is a friend of Lucy's." "If she is a friend of Lucy Morris, mamma, Lucy Morris shall never come here." "But what has she done? I have never heard that she has behaved improperly. What does it all mean? She goes out everywhere. I don't think she has had any lovers. Frederic would be the last man in the world to throw himself away upon an ill-conditioned young woman." "Frederic can see just as far as some other men, and not a bit farther. Of course she has an income,--for her life." "I believe it is her own altogether, Clara." "She says so, I don't doubt. I believe she is the greatest liar about London. You find out about her jewels before she married poor Sir Florian, and how much he had to pay for her; or rather, I'll find out. If you want to know, mamma, you just ask her own aunt, Lady Linlithgow." "We all know, my dear, that Lady Linlithgow quarrelled with her." "It's my belief that she is over head and ears in debt again. But I'll learn. And when I have found out, I shall not scruple to tell Frederic. Orlando will find out all about it." Orlando was the Christian name of Mrs. Hittaway's husband. "Mr. Camperdown, I have no doubt, knows all the ins and outs of her story. The long and the short of it is this, mamma, that I've heard quite enough about Lady Eustace to feel certain that Frederic would live to repent it." "But what can we do?" said Lady Fawn. "Break it off," said Mrs. Hittaway. Her daughter's violence of speech had a most depressing effect upon poor Lady Fawn. As has been said, she did believe in Mrs. Hittaway. She knew that Mrs. Hittaway was conversant with the things of the world, and heard tidings daily which never found their way down to Fawn Court. And yet her son went about quite as much as did her daughter. If Lady Eustace was such a reprobate as was now represented, why had not Lord Fawn heard the truth? And then she had already given in her own adhesion, and had promised to call. "Do you mean that you won't go to her?" said Lady Fawn. "As Lady Eustace,--certainly not. If Frederic does marry her, of course I must know her. That's a different thing. One has to make the best one can of a bad bargain. I don't doubt they'd be separated before two years were over." "Oh, dear, how dreadful!" exclaimed Augusta. Lady Fawn, after much consideration, was of opinion that she must carry out her intention of calling upon her son's intended bride in spite of all the evil things that had been said. Lord Fawn had undertaken to send a message to Mount Street, informing the lady of the honour intended for her. And in truth Lady Fawn was somewhat curious now to see the household of the woman who might perhaps do her the irreparable injury of ruining the happiness of her only son. Perhaps she might learn something by looking at the woman in her own drawing-room. At any rate she would go. But Mrs. Hittaway's words had the effect of inducing her to leave Augusta where she was. If there were contamination, why should Augusta be contaminated? Poor Augusta! She had looked forward to the delight of embracing her future sister-in-law;--and would not have enjoyed it the less, perhaps, because she had been told that the lady was false, profligate, and a vixen. As, however, her position was that of a girl, she was bound to be obedient,--though over thirty years old,--and she obeyed. Lizzie was of course at home, and Miss Macnulty was of course visiting the Horticultural Gardens or otherwise engaged. On such an occasion Lizzie would certainly be alone. She had taken great pains with her dress, studying not so much her own appearance as the character of her visitor. She was very anxious, at any rate for the present, to win golden opinions from Lady Fawn. She was dressed richly, but very simply. Everything about her room betokened wealth; but she had put away the French novels, and had placed a Bible on a little table, not quite hidden, behind her own seat. The long lustrous lock was tucked up, but the diamonds were still upon her fingers. She fully intended to make a conquest of her future mother-in-law and sister-in-law;--for the note which had come up to her from the India Office had told her that Augusta would accompany Lady Fawn. "Augusta is my favourite sister," said the enamoured lover, "and I hope that you two will always be friends." Lizzie, when she had read this, had declared to herself that of all the female oafs she had ever seen, Augusta Fawn was the greatest oaf. When she found that Lady Fawn was alone, she did not betray herself, or ask for the beloved friend of the future. "Dear, dear Lady Fawn!" she said, throwing herself into the arms and nestling herself against the bosom of the old lady, "this makes my happiness perfect." Then she retreated a little, still holding the hand she had grasped between her own, and looking up into the face of her future mother-in-law. "When he asked me to be his wife, the first thing I thought of was whether you would come to me at once." Her voice as she thus spoke was perfect. Her manner was almost perfect. Perhaps there was a little too much of gesture, too much gliding motion, too violent an appeal with the eyes, too close a pressure of the hand. No suspicion, however, of all this would have touched Lady Fawn had she come to Mount Street without calling in Warwick Square on the way. But those horrible words of her daughter were ringing in her ears, and she did not know how to conduct herself. "Of course I came as soon as he told me," she said. "And you will be a mother to me?" demanded Lizzie. Poor Lady Fawn! There was enough of maternity about her to have enabled her to undertake the duty for a dozen sons' wives,--if the wives were women with whom she could feel sympathy. And she could feel sympathy very easily; and was a woman not at all prone to inquire too curiously as to the merits of a son's wife. But what was she to do after the caution she had received from Mrs. Hittaway? How was she to promise maternal tenderness to a vixen and a liar? By nature she was not a deceitful woman. "My dear," she said, "I hope you will make him a good wife." It was not very encouraging, but Lizzie made the best of it. It was her desire to cheat Lady Fawn into a good opinion, and she was not disappointed when no good opinion was expressed at once. It is seldom that a bad person expects to be accounted good. It is the general desire of such a one to conquer the existing evil impression; but it is generally presumed that the evil impression is there. "Oh, Lady Fawn!" she said, "I will so strive to make him happy. What is it that he likes? What would he wish me to do and to be? You know his noble nature, and I must look to you for guidance." Lady Fawn was embarrassed. She had now seated herself on the sofa, and Lizzie was close to her, almost enveloped within her mantle. "My dear," said Lady Fawn, "if you will endeavour to do your duty by him, I am sure he will do his by you." "I know it. I am sure of it. And I will; I will. You will let me love you, and call you mother?" A peculiar perfume came up from Lizzie's hair which Lady Fawn did not like. Her own girls, perhaps, were not given to the use of much perfumery. She shifted her seat a little, and Lizzie was compelled to sit upright, and without support. Hitherto Lady Fawn had said very little, and Lizzie's part was one difficult to play. She had heard of that sermon read every Sunday evening at Fawn Court, and she believed that Lady Fawn was peculiarly religious. "There," she said, stretching out her hand backwards and clasping the book which lay upon the small table,--"there; that shall be my guide. That will teach me how to do my duty by my noble husband." Lady Fawn in some surprise took the book from Lizzie's hand, and found that it was the Bible. "You certainly can't do better, my dear, than read your Bible," said Lady Fawn,--but there was more of censure than of eulogy in the tone of her voice. She put the Bible down very quietly, and asked Lady Eustace when it would suit her to come down to Fawn Court. Lady Fawn had promised her son to give the invitation, and could not now, she thought, avoid giving it. "Oh, I should like it so much!" said Lizzie. "Whenever it will suit you, I will be there at a minute's notice." It was then arranged that she should be at Fawn Court on that day week, and stay for a fortnight. "Of all things that which I most desire now," said Lizzie, "is to know you and the dear girls,--and to be loved by you all." Lady Eustace, as soon as she was alone in the room, stood in the middle of it, scowling,--for she could scowl. "I'll not go near them," she said to herself,--"nasty, stupid, dull, puritanical drones. If he don't like it, he may lump it. After all it's no such great catch." Then she sat down to reflect whether it was or was not a catch. As soon as ever Lord Fawn had left her after the engagement was made, she had begun to tell herself that he was a poor creature, and that she had done wrong. "Only five thousand a year!" she said to herself;--for she had not perfectly understood that little explanation which he had given respecting his income. "It's nothing for a lord." And now again she murmured to herself, "It's my money he's after. He'll find out that I know how to keep what I've got in my own hands." Now that Lady Fawn had been cold to her, she thought still less of the proposed marriage. But there was this inducement for her to go on with it. If they, the Fawn women, thought that they could break it off, she would let them know that they had no such power. "Well, mamma, you've seen her?" said Mrs. Hittaway. "Yes, my dear; I've seen her. I had seen her two or three times before, you know." "And you are still in love with her?" "I never said that I was in love with her, Clara." "And what has been fixed?" "She is to come down to Fawn Court next week, and stay a fortnight with us. Then we shall find out what she is." "That will be best, mamma," said Augusta. "Mind, mamma; you understand me. I shall tell Frederic plainly just what I think. Of course he will be offended, and if the marriage goes on, the offence will remain,--till he finds out the truth." "I hope he'll find out no such truth," said Lady Fawn. She was, however, quite unable to say a word in behalf of her future daughter-in-law. She said nothing as to that little scene with the Bible, but she never forgot it. CHAPTER X Lizzie and Her Lover During the remainder of that Monday and all the Tuesday, Lizzie's mind was, upon the whole, averse to matrimony. She had told Miss Macnulty of her prospects, with some amount of exultation; and the poor dependant, though she knew that she must be turned out into the street, had congratulated her patroness. "The Vulturess will take you in again, when she knows you've nowhere else to go," Lizzie had said,--displaying, indeed, some accurate discernment of her aunt's character. But after Lady Fawn's visit she spoke of the marriage in a different tone. "Of course, my dear, I shall have to look very close after the settlement." "I suppose the lawyers will do that," said Miss Macnulty. "Yes;--lawyers! That's all very well. I know what lawyers are. I'm not going to trust any lawyer to give away my property. Of course we shall live at Portray, because his place is in Ireland;--and nothing shall take me to Ireland. I told him that from the very first. But I don't mean to give up my own income. I don't suppose he'll venture to suggest such a thing." And then again she grumbled. "It's all very well being in the Cabinet--!" "Is Lord Fawn in the Cabinet?" asked Miss Macnulty, who in such matters was not altogether ignorant. "Of course he is," said Lizzie, with an angry gesture. It may seem unjust to accuse her of being stupidly unacquainted with circumstances, and a liar at the same time; but she was both. She said that Lord Fawn was in the Cabinet because she had heard some one speak of him as not being a Cabinet Minister, and in so speaking appear to slight his political position. Lizzie did not know how much her companion knew, and Miss Macnulty did not comprehend the depth of the ignorance of her patroness. Thus the lies which Lizzie told were amazing to Miss Macnulty. To say that Lord Fawn was in the Cabinet, when all the world knew that he was an Under-Secretary! What good could a woman get from an assertion so plainly, so manifestly false? But Lizzie knew nothing of Under-Secretaries. Lord Fawn was a lord, and even commoners were in the Cabinet. "Of course he is," said Lizzie; "but I sha'n't have my drawing-room made a Cabinet. They sha'n't come here." And then again on the Tuesday evening she displayed her independence. "As for those women down at Richmond, I don't mean to be overrun by them, I can tell you. I said I would go there, and of course I shall keep my word." "I think you had better go," said Miss Macnulty. "Of course, I shall go. I don't want anybody to tell me where I'm to go, my dear, and where I'm not. But it'll be about the first and the last visit. And as for bringing those dowdy girls out in London, it's the last thing I shall think of doing. Indeed, I doubt whether they can afford to dress themselves." As she went up to bed on the Tuesday evening, Miss Macnulty doubted whether the match would go on. She never believed her friend's statements; but if spoken words might be supposed to mean anything, Lady Eustace's words on that Tuesday betokened a strong dislike to everything appertaining to the Fawn family. She had even ridiculed Lord Fawn himself, declaring that he understood nothing about anything beyond his office. And, in truth, Lizzie almost had made up her mind to break it off. All that she would gain did not seem to weigh down with sufficient preponderance all that she would lose. Such were her feelings on the Tuesday night. But on the Wednesday morning she received a note which threw her back violently upon the Fawn interest. The note was as follows: "Messrs. Camperdown and Son present their compliments to Lady Eustace. They have received instructions to proceed by law for the recovery of the Eustace diamonds, now in Lady Eustace's hands, and will feel obliged to Lady Eustace if she will communicate to them the name and address of her attorney. 62, New Square, May 30, 186--." The effect of this note was to drive Lizzie back upon the Fawn interest. She was frightened about the diamonds, and was, nevertheless, almost determined not to surrender them. At any rate, in such a strait she would want assistance, either in keeping them or in giving them up. The lawyer's letter afflicted her with a sense of weakness, and there was strength in the Fawn connexion. As Lord Fawn was so poor, perhaps he would adhere to the jewels. She knew that she could not fight Mr. Camperdown with no other assistance than what Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus might give her, and therefore her heart softened towards her betrothed. "I suppose Frederic will be here to-day," she said to Miss Macnulty, as they sat at breakfast together about noon. Miss Macnulty nodded. "You can have a cab, you know, if you like to go anywhere." Miss Macnulty said she thought she would go to the National Gallery. "And you can walk back, you know," said Lizzie. "I can walk there and back too," said Miss Macnulty,--in regard to whom it may be said that the last ounce would sometimes almost break the horse's back. "Frederic" came and was received very graciously. Lizzie had placed Mr. Camperdown's note on the little table behind her, beneath the Bible, so that she might put her hand upon it at once, if she could make an opportunity of showing it to her future husband. "Frederic" sat himself beside her, and the intercourse for awhile was such as might be looked for between two lovers of whom one was a widow, and the other an Under-Secretary of State from the India Office. They were loving, but discreetly amatory, talking chiefly of things material, each flattering the other, and each hinting now and again at certain little circumstances of which a more accurate knowledge seemed to be desirable. The one was conversant with things in general, but was slow; the other was quick as a lizard in turning hither and thither, but knew almost nothing. When she told Lord Fawn that the Ayrshire estate was "her own, to do what she liked with," she did not know that he would certainly find out the truth from other sources before he married her. Indeed, she was not quite sure herself whether the statement was true or false, though she would not have made it so frequently had her idea of the truth been a fixed idea. It had all been explained to her;--but there had been something about a second son, and there was no second son. Perhaps she might have a second son yet,--a future little Lord Fawn, and he might inherit it. In regard to honesty, the man was superior to the woman, because his purpose was declared, and he told no lies;--but the one was as mercenary as the other. It was not love that had brought Lord Fawn to Mount Street. "What is the name of your place in Ireland?" she asked. "There is no house, you know." "But there was one, Frederic?" "The town-land where the house used to be, is called Killeagent. The old demesne is called Killaud." "What pretty names! and--and--does it go a great many miles?" Lord Fawn explained that it did run a good many miles up into the mountains. "How beautifully romantic!" said Lizzie. "But the people live on the mountain and pay rent?" Lord Fawn asked no such inept questions respecting the Ayrshire property, but he did inquire who was Lizzie's solicitor. "Of course there will be things to be settled," he said, "and my lawyer had better see yours. Mr. Camperdown is a--" "Mr. Camperdown!" almost shrieked Lizzie. Lord Fawn then explained, with some amazement, that Mr. Camperdown was his lawyer. As far as his belief went, there was not a more respectable gentleman in the profession. Then he inquired whether Lizzie had any objection to Mr. Camperdown. "Mr. Camperdown was Sir Florian's lawyer," said Lizzie. "That will make it all the easier, I should think," said Lord Fawn. "I don't know how that may be," said Lizzie, trying to bring her mind to work upon the subject steadily. "Mr. Camperdown has been very uncourteous to me;--I must say that; and, as I think, unfair. He wishes to rob me now of a thing that is quite my own." "What sort of a thing?" asked Lord Fawn slowly. "A very valuable thing. I'll tell you all about it, Frederic. Of course I'll tell you everything now. I never could keep back anything from one that I loved. It's not my nature. There; you might as well read that note." Then she put her hand back and brought Mr. Camperdown's letter from under the Bible. Lord Fawn read it very attentively, and as he read it there came upon him a great doubt. What sort of woman was this to whom he had engaged himself because she was possessed of an income? That Mr. Camperdown should be in the wrong in such a matter was an idea which never occurred to Lord Fawn. There is no form of belief stronger than that which the ordinary English gentleman has in the discretion and honesty of his own family lawyer. What his lawyer tells him to do, he does. What his lawyer tells him to sign, he signs. He buys and sells in obedience to the same direction, and feels perfectly comfortable in the possession of a guide who is responsible and all but divine. "What diamonds are they?" asked Lord Fawn in a very low voice. "They are my own,--altogether my own. Sir Florian gave them to me. When he put them into my hands, he said that they were to be my own for ever and ever. 'There,' said he,--'those are yours to do what you choose with them.' After that they oughtn't to ask me to give them back,--ought they? If you had been married before, and your wife had given you a keepsake,--to keep for ever and ever, would you give it up to a lawyer? You would not like it;--would you, Frederic?" She had put her hand on his, and was looking up into his face as she asked the question. Again, perhaps, the acting was a little overdone; but there were the tears in her eyes, and the tone of her voice was perfect. "Mr. Camperdown calls them Eustace diamonds,--family diamonds," said Lord Fawn. "What do they consist of? What are they worth?" "I'll show them to you," said Lizzie, jumping up and hurrying out of the room. Lord Fawn, when he was alone, rubbed his hands over his eyes and thought about it all. It would be a very harsh measure, on the part of the Eustace family and of Mr. Camperdown, to demand from her the surrender of any trinket which her late husband might have given her in the manner she had described. But it was, to his thinking, most improbable that the Eustace people or the lawyer should be harsh to a widow bearing the Eustace name. The Eustaces were by disposition lavish, and old Mr. Camperdown was not one who would be strict in claiming little things for rich clients. And yet here was his letter, threatening the widow of the late baronet with legal proceedings for the recovery of jewels which had been given by Sir Florian himself to his wife as a keepsake! Perhaps Sir Florian had made some mistake, and had caused to be set in a ring or brooch for his bride some jewel which he had thought to be his own, but which had, in truth, been an heirloom. If so, the jewel should, of course, be surrendered,--or replaced by one of equal value. He was making out some such solution, when Lizzie returned with the morocco case in her hand. "It was the manner in which he gave it to me," said Lizzie, as she opened the clasp, "which makes its value to me." Lord Fawn knew nothing about jewels, but even he knew that if the circle of stones which he saw, with a Maltese cross appended to it, was constituted of real diamonds, the thing must be of great value. And it occurred to him at once that such a necklace is not given by a husband even to a bride in the manner described by Lizzie. A ring, or brooch, or perhaps a bracelet, a lover or a loving lord may bring in his pocket. But such an ornament as this on which Lord Fawn was now looking, is given in another sort of way. He felt sure that it was so, even though he was entirely ignorant of the value of the stones. "Do you know what it is worth?" he asked. Lizzie hesitated a moment, and then remembered that "Frederic," in his present position in regard to herself, might be glad to assist her in maintaining the possession of a substantial property. "I think they say its value is about--ten thousand pounds," she replied. "Ten--thousand--pounds!" Lord Fawn riveted his eyes upon them. "That's what I am told--by a jeweller." "By what jeweller?" "A man had to come and see them,--about some repairs,--or something of that kind. Poor Sir Florian wished it. And he said so." "What was the man's name?" "I forget his name," said Lizzie, who was not quite sure whether her acquaintance with Mr. Benjamin would be considered respectable. "Ten thousand pounds! You don't keep them in the house;--do you?" "I have an iron case up-stairs for them;--ever so heavy." "And did Sir Florian give you the iron case?" Lizzie hesitated for a moment. "Yes," said she. "That is,--no. But he ordered it to be made; and then it came,--after he was--dead." "He knew their value, then?" "Oh, dear, yes. Though he never named any sum. He told me, however, that they were very--very valuable." Lord Fawn did not immediately recognise the falseness of every word that the woman said to him, because he was slow and could not think and hear at the same time. But he was at once involved in a painful maze of doubt and almost of dismay. An action for the recovery of jewels brought against the lady whom he was engaged to marry, on behalf of the family of her late husband, would not suit him at all. To have his hands quite clean, to be above all evil report, to be respectable, as it were, all round, was Lord Fawn's special ambition. He was a poor man, and a greedy man, but he would have abandoned his official salary at a moment's notice, rather than there should have fallen on him a breath of public opinion hinting that it ought to be abandoned. He was especially timid, and lived in a perpetual fear lest the newspapers should say something hard of him. In that matter of the Sawab he had been very wretched, because Frank Greystock had accused him of being an administrator of tyranny. He would have liked his wife to have ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds very well; but he would rather go without a wife for ever,--and without a wife's fortune,--than marry a woman subject to an action for claiming diamonds not her own. "I think," said he, at last, "that if you were to put them into Mr. Camperdown's hands--" "Into Mr. Camperdown's hands!" "And then let the matter be settled by arbitration--" "Arbitration? That means going to law?" "No, dearest,--that means not going to law. The diamonds would be entrusted to Mr. Camperdown. And then some one would be appointed to decide whose property they were." "They're my property," said Lizzie. "But he says they belong to the family." "He'll say anything," said Lizzie. "My dearest girl, there can't be a more respectable man than Mr. Camperdown. You must do something of the kind, you know." "I sha'n't do anything of the kind," said Lizzie. "Sir Florian Eustace gave them to me, and I shall keep them." She did not look at her lover as she spoke; but he looked at her, and did not like the change which he saw on her countenance. And he did not like the circumstances in which he found himself placed. "Why should Mr. Camperdown interfere?" continued Lizzie. "If they don't belong to me, they belong to my son;--and who has so good a right to keep them for him as I have? But they belong to me." "They should not be kept in a private house like this at all, if they are worth all that money." "If I were to let them go, Mr. Camperdown would get them. There's nothing he wouldn't do to get them. Oh, Frederic, I hope you'll stand to me, and not see me injured. Of course I only want them for my darling child." Frederic's face had become very long, and he was much disturbed in his mind. He could only suggest that he himself would go and see Mr. Camperdown, and ascertain what ought to be done. To the last, he adhered to his assurance that Mr. Camperdown could do no evil;--till Lizzie, in her wrath, asked him whether he believed Mr. Camperdown's word before hers. "I think he would understand a matter of business better than you," said the prudent lover. "He wants to rob me," said Lizzie, "and I shall look to you to prevent it." When Lord Fawn took his leave,--which he did not do till he had counselled her again and again to leave the matter in Mr. Camperdown's hands,--the two were not in good accord together. It was his fixed purpose, as he declared to her, to see Mr. Camperdown; and it was her fixed purpose,--so, at least, she declared to him,--to keep the diamonds, in spite of Mr. Camperdown. "But, my dear, if it's decided against you--" said Lord Fawn gravely. "It can't be decided against me, if you stand by me as you ought to do." "I can do nothing," said Lord Fawn, in a tremor. Then Lizzie looked at him,--and her look, which was very eloquent, called him a poltroon as plain as a look could speak. Then they parted, and the signs of affection between them were not satisfactory. The door was hardly closed behind him before Lizzie began to declare to herself that he shouldn't escape her. It was not yet twenty-four hours since she had been telling herself that she did not like the engagement and would break it off; and now she was stamping her little feet, and clenching her little hands, and swearing to herself by all her gods, that this wretched, timid lordling should not get out of her net. She did, in truth, despise him because he would not clutch the jewels. She looked upon him as mean and paltry because he was willing to submit to Mr. Camperdown. But still she was prompted to demand all that could be demanded from her engagement,--because she thought that she perceived a something in him which might produce in him a desire to be relieved from it. No! he should not be relieved. He should marry her. And she would keep the key of that iron box with the diamonds, and he should find what sort of a noise she would make if he attempted to take it from her. She closed the morocco case, ascended with it to her bed-room, locked it up in the iron safe, deposited the little patent key in its usual place round her neck, and then seated herself at her desk, and wrote letters to her various friends, making known to them her engagement. Hitherto she had told no one but Miss Macnulty,--and, in her doubts, had gone so far as to desire Miss Macnulty not to mention it. Now she was resolved to blazon forth her engagement before all the world. The first "friend" to whom she wrote was Lady Linlithgow. The reader shall see two or three of her letters, and that to the countess shall be the first. MY DEAR AUNT, When you came to see me the other day, I cannot say that you were very kind to me, and I don't suppose you care very much what becomes of me. But I think it right to let you know that I am going to be married. I am engaged to Lord Fawn, who, as you know, is a peer, and a member of Her Majesty's Government, and a nobleman of great influence. I do not suppose that even you can say anything against such an alliance. I am, your affectionate niece, ELI. EUSTACE. Then she wrote to Mrs. Eustace, the wife of the Bishop of Bobsborough. Mrs. Eustace had been very kind to her in the first days of her widowhood, and had fully recognised her as the widow of the head of her husband's family. Lizzie had liked none of the Bobsborough people. They were, according to her ideas, slow, respectable, and dull. But they had not found much open fault with her, and she was aware that it was for her interest to remain on good terms with them. Her letter, therefore, to Mrs. Eustace was somewhat less acrid than that written to her aunt Linlithgow. MY DEAR MRS. EUSTACE, I hope you will be glad to hear from me, and will not be sorry to hear my news. I am going to be married again. Of course I am not about to take a step which is in every way so very important without thinking about it a great deal. But I am sure it will be better for my darling little Florian in every way; and as for myself, I have felt for the last two years how unfitted I have been to manage everything myself. I have therefore accepted an offer made to me by Lord Fawn, who is, as you know, a peer of Parliament, and a most distinguished member of Her Majesty's Government; and he is, too, a nobleman of very great influence in every respect, and has a property in Ireland, extending over ever so many miles, and running up into the mountains. His mansion there is called Killmage, but I am not sure that I remember the name quite rightly. I hope I may see you there some day, and the dear bishop. I look forward with delight to doing something to make those dear Irish happier. The idea of rambling up into our own mountains charms me, for nothing suits my disposition so well as that kind of solitude. Of course Lord Fawn is not so rich a man as Sir Florian, but I have never looked to riches for my happiness. Not but what Lord Fawn has a good income from his Irish estates; and then, of course, he is paid for doing Her Majesty's Government;--so there is no fear that he will have to live upon my jointure, which, of course, would not be right. Pray tell the dear bishop and dear Margaretta all this, with my love. You will be happy, I know, to hear that my little Flo is quite well. He is already so fond of his new papa! [Lizzie's turn for lying was exemplified in this last statement, for, as it happened, Lord Fawn had never yet seen the child.] Believe me to be always your most affectionate niece, ELI. EUSTACE. There were two other letters,--one to her uncle, the dean, and the other to her cousin Frank. There was great doubt in her mind as to the expediency of writing to Frank Greystock; but at last she decided that she would do it. The letter to the dean need not be given in full, as it was very similar to that written to the bishop's wife. The same mention was made of her intended husband's peerage, and the same allusion to Her Majesty's Government,--a phrase which she had heard from Lord Fawn himself. She spoke of the Irish property, but in terms less glowing than she had used in writing to the lady, and ended by asking for her uncle's congratulation--and blessing. Her letter to Frank was as follows, and, doubtless, as she wrote it, there was present to her mind a remembrance of the fact that he himself might have offered to her, and have had her if he would. MY DEAR COUSIN, As I would rather that you should hear my news from myself than from any one else, I write to tell you that I am going to be married to Lord Fawn. Of course I know that there are certain matters as to which you and Lord Fawn do not agree,--in politics, I mean; but still I do not doubt but you will think that he is quite able to take care of your poor little cousin. It was only settled a day or two since, but it has been coming on ever so long. You understand all about that;--don't you? Of course you must come to my wedding, and be very good to me,--a kind of brother, you know; for we have always been friends;--haven't we? And if the dean doesn't come up to town, you must give me away. And you must come and see me ever so often; for I have a sort of feeling that I have no one else belonging to me that I can call really my own, except you. And you must be great friends with Lord Fawn, and must give up saying that he doesn't do his work properly. Of course he does everything better than anybody else could possibly do it,--except Cousin Frank. I am going down next week to Richmond. Lady Fawn has insisted on my staying there for a fortnight. Oh, dear, what shall I do all the time? You must positively come down and see me,--and see somebody else too! Only, you naughty coz! you mustn't break a poor girl's heart. Your affectionate cousin, ELI. EUSTACE. Somebody, in speaking on Lady Eustace's behalf, and making the best of her virtues, had declared that she did not have lovers. Hitherto that had been true of her;--but her mind had not the less dwelt on the delight of a lover. She still thought of a possible Corsair who would be willing to give up all but his vices for her love, and for whose sake she would be willing to share even them. It was but a dream, but nevertheless it pervaded her fancy constantly. Lord Fawn,--peer of Parliament, and member of Her Majesty's Government, as he was,--could not have been such a lover to her. Might it not be possible that there should exist something of romance between her and her cousin Frank? She was the last woman in the world to run away with a man, or to endanger her position by a serious indiscretion; but there might, perhaps, be a something between her and her cousin,--a liaison quite correct in its facts, a secret understanding, if nothing more,--a mutual sympathy, which should be chiefly shown in the abuse of all their friends,--and in this she could indulge her passion for romance and poetry. CHAPTER XI Lord Fawn at His Office The news was soon all about London,--as Lizzie had intended. She had made a sudden resolve that Lord Fawn should not escape her, and she had gone to work after the fashion we have seen. Frank Greystock had told John Eustace, and John Eustace had told Mr. Camperdown before Lord Fawn himself, in the slow prosecution of his purpose, had consulted the lawyer about the necklace. "God bless my soul;--Lord Fawn!" the old lawyer had said when the news was communicated to him. "Well,--yes;--he wants money. I don't envy him; that's all. We shall get the diamonds now, John. Lord Fawn isn't the man to let his wife keep what doesn't belong to her." Then, after a day or two, Lord Fawn had himself gone to Mr. Camperdown's chambers. "I believe I am to congratulate you, my lord," said the lawyer. "I'm told you are going to marry--; well, I mustn't really say another of my clients, but the widow of one of them. Lady Eustace is a very beautiful woman, and she has a very pretty income too. She has the whole of the Scotch property for her life." "It's only for her life, I suppose?" said Lord Fawn. "Oh, no, no;--of course not. There's been some mistake on her part;--at least, so I've been told. Women never understand. It's all as clear as daylight. Had there been a second son, the second son would have had it. As it is, it goes with the rest of the property--just as it ought to do, you know. Four thousand a year isn't so bad, you know, considering that she isn't more than a girl yet, and that she hadn't sixpence of her own. When the admiral died, there wasn't sixpence, Lord Fawn." "So I have heard." "Not sixpence. It's all Eustace money. She had six or eight thousand pounds, or something like that, besides. She's as lovely a young widow as I ever saw,--and very clever." "Yes;--she is clever." "By-the-bye, Lord Fawn, as you have done me the honour of calling,--there's a stupid mistake about some family diamonds." "It is in respect to them that I've come," said Lord Fawn. Then Mr. Camperdown, in his easy, off-hand way, imputing no blame to the lady in the hearing of her future husband, and declaring his opinion that she was doubtless unaware of its value, explained the matter of the necklace. Lord Fawn listened, but said very little. He especially did not say that Lady Eustace had had the stones valued. "They're real, I suppose?" he asked. Mr. Camperdown assured him that no diamonds more real had ever come from Golconda, or passed through Mr. Garnett's hands. "They are as well known as any family diamonds in England," said Mr. Camperdown. "She has got into bad hands,"--continued Mr. Camperdown. "Mowbray and Mopus;--horrible people; sharks, that make one blush for one's profession; and I was really afraid there would have been trouble. But, of course, it'll be all right now;--and if she'll only come to me, tell her I'll do everything I can to make things straight and comfortable for her. If she likes to have another lawyer, of course, that's all right. Only make her understand who Mowbray and Mopus are. It's quite out of the question, Lord Fawn, that your wife should have anything to do with Mowbray and Mopus." Every word that Mr. Camperdown said was gospel to Lord Fawn. And yet, as the reader will understand, Mr. Camperdown had by no means expressed his real opinion in this interview. He had spoken of the widow in friendly terms,--declaring that she was simply mistaken in her ideas as to the duration of her interest in the Scotch property, and mistaken again about the diamonds;--whereas in truth he regarded her as a dishonest, lying, evil-minded harpy. Had Lord Fawn consulted him simply as a client, and not have come to him an engaged lover, he would have expressed his opinion quite frankly; but it is not the business of a lawyer to tell his client evil things of the lady whom that client is engaged to marry. In regard to the property he spoke the truth, and he spoke what he believed to be the truth when he said that the whole thing would no doubt now be easily arranged. When Lord Fawn took his leave, Mr. Camperdown again declared to himself that as regarded money the match was very well for his lordship; but that, as regarded the woman, Lizzie was dear at the price. "Perhaps he doesn't mind it," said Mr. Camperdown to himself, "but I wouldn't marry such a woman myself, though she owned all Scotland." There had been much in the interview to make Lord Fawn unhappy. In the first place, that golden hope as to the perpetuity of the property was at an end. He had never believed that it was so; but a man may hope without believing. And he was quite sure that Lizzie was bound to give up the diamonds,--and would ultimately be made to give them up. Of any property in them, as possibly accruing to himself, he had not thought much;--but he could not abstain from thinking of the woman's grasp upon them. Mr. Camperdown's plain statement, which was gospel to him, was directly at variance with Lizzie's story. Sir Florian certainly would not have given such diamonds in such a way. Sir Florian would not have ordered a separate iron safe for them, with a view that they might be secure in his wife's bed-room. And then she had had them valued, and manifestly was always thinking of her treasure. It was very well for a poor, careful peer to be always thinking of his money, but Lord Fawn was well aware that a young woman such as Lady Eustace should have her thoughts elsewhere. As he sat signing letters at the India Board, relieving himself when he was left alone between each batch by standing up with his back to the fire-place, his mind was full of all this. He could not unravel truth quickly, but he could grasp it when it came to him. She was certainly greedy, false, and dishonest. And,--worse than all this,--she had dared to tell him to his face that he was a poor creature because he would not support her in her greed, and falsehoods, and dishonesty! Nevertheless, he was engaged to marry her! Then he thought of one Violet Effingham whom he had loved, and then came over him some suspicion of a fear that he himself was hard and selfish. And yet what was such a one as he to do? It was of course necessary for the maintenance of the very constitution of his country that there should be future Lord Fawns. There could be no future Lord Fawns unless he married;--and how could he marry without money? "A peasant can marry whom he pleases," said Lord Fawn, pressing his hand to his brow, and dropping one flap of his coat, as he thought of his own high and perilous destiny, standing with his back to the fire-place, while a huge pile of letters lay there before him waiting to be signed. It was a Saturday evening, and as there was no House there was nothing to hurry him away from the office. He was the occupier for the time of a large, well-furnished official room, looking out into St. James's Park, and as he glanced round it he told himself that his own happiness must be there, and not in the domesticity of a quiet home. The House of Lords, out of which nobody could turn him, and official life,--as long as he could hold to it,--must be all in all to him. He had engaged himself to this woman, and he must--marry her. He did not think that he could now see any way of avoiding that event. Her income would supply the needs of her home, and then there might probably be a continuation of Lord Fawns. The world might have done better for him,--had he been able to find favour in Violet Effingham's sight. He was a man capable of love,--and very capable of constancy to a woman true to him. Then he wiped away a tear as he sat down to sign the huge batch of letters. As he read some special letter in which instructions were conveyed as to the insufficiency of the Sawab's claims, he thought of Frank Greystock's attack upon him, and of Frank Greystock's cousin. There had been a time in which he had feared that the two cousins would become man and wife. At this moment he uttered a malediction against the member for Bobsborough, which might perhaps have been spared had the member been now willing to take the lady off his hands. Then the door was opened, and the messenger told him that Mrs. Hittaway was in the waiting-room. Mrs. Hittaway was, of course, at once made welcome to the Under-Secretary's own apartment. Mrs. Hittaway was a strong-minded woman,--the strongest-minded probably of the Fawn family,--but she had now come upon a task which taxed all her strength to the utmost. She had told her mother that she would tell "Frederic" what she thought about his proposed bride, and she had now come to carry out her threat. She had asked her brother to come and dine with her, but he had declined. His engagements hardly admitted of his dining with his relatives. She had called upon him at the rooms he occupied in Victoria Street,--but of course she had not found him. She could not very well go to his club;--so now she had hunted him down at his office. From the very commencement of the interview Mrs. Hittaway was strong-minded. She began the subject of the marriage, and did so without a word of congratulation. "Dear Frederic," she said, "you know that we have all got to look up to you." "Well, Clara,--what does that mean?" "It means this,--that you must bear with me, if I am more anxious as to your future career than another sister might be." "Now I know you are going to say something unpleasant." "Yes, I am, Frederic. I have heard so many bad things about Lady Eustace!" The Under-Secretary sat silent for awhile in his great arm-chair. "What sort of evil things do you mean, Clara?" he asked at last. "Evil things are said of a great many people,--as you know. I am sure you would not wish to repeat slanders." Mrs. Hittaway was not to be silenced after this fashion. "Not slanders, certainly, Frederic. But when I hear that you intend to raise this lady to the rank and position of your wife, then of course the truth or falsehood of these reports becomes a matter of great moment to us all. Don't you think you had better see Mr. Camperdown?" "I have seen him." "And what does he say?" "What should he say? Lady Eustace has, I believe, made some mistake about the condition of her property, and people who have heard it have been good-natured enough to say that the error has been wilful. That is what I call slander, Clara." "And have you heard about her jewels?" Mrs. Hittaway was alluding here to the report which had reached her as to Lizzie's debt to Harter and Benjamin when she married Sir Florian; but Lord Fawn of course thought of the diamond necklace. "Yes;" said he, "I have heard all about them. Who told you?" "I have known it ever so long. Sir Florian never got over it." Lord Fawn was again in the dark, but he did not choose to commit himself by asking further questions. "And then her treatment of Lady Linlithgow, who was her only friend before she married, was something quite unnatural. Ask the dean's people what they think of her. I believe even they would tell you." "Frank Greystock desired to marry her himself." "Yes,--for her money, perhaps;--because he has not got a farthing in the world. Dear Frederic, I only wish to put you on your guard. Of course this is very unpleasant, and I shouldn't do it if I didn't think it my duty. I believe she is artful and very false. She certainly deceived Sir Florian Eustace about her debts;--and he never held up his head after he found out what she was. If she has told you falsehoods, of course you can break it off. Dear Frederic, I hope you won't be angry with me." "Is that all?" he asked. "Yes;--that is all." "I'll bear it in mind," he said. "Of course it isn't very pleasant." "No;--I know it is not pleasant," said Mrs. Hittaway, rising, and taking her departure with an offer of affectionate sisterly greeting, which was not accepted with cordiality. It was very unpleasant. That very morning Lord Fawn had received letters from the Dean and the Bishop of Bobsborough congratulating him on his intended marriage,--both those worthy dignitaries of the Church having thought it expedient to verify Lizzie's statements. Lord Fawn was, therefore, well aware that Lady Eustace had published the engagement. It was known to everybody, and could not be broken off without public scandal. CHAPTER XII "I Only Thought of It" There was great perturbation down at Fawn Court. On the day fixed, Monday, June 5, Lizzie arrived. Nothing further had been said by Lady Fawn to urge the invitation; but, in accordance with the arrangement already made, Lady Eustace, with her child, her nurse, and her own maid, was at Fawn Court by four o'clock. A very long letter had been received from Mrs. Hittaway that morning,--the writing of which must have seriously interfered with the tranquillity of her Sunday afternoon. Lord Fawn did not make his appearance at Richmond on the Saturday evening,--nor was he seen on the Sunday. That Sunday was, we may presume, chiefly devoted to reflection. He certainly did not call upon his future wife. His omission to do so no doubt increased Lizzie's urgency in the matter of her visit to Richmond. Frank Greystock had written to congratulate her. "Dear Frank," she had said in reply, "a woman situated as I am has so many things to think of. Lord Fawn's position will be of service to my child. Mind you come and see me at Fawn Court. I count so much on your friendship and assistance." Of course she was expected at Richmond,--although throughout the morning Lady Fawn had entertained almost a hope that she wouldn't come. "He was only lukewarm in defending her," Mrs. Hittaway had said in her letter, "and I still think that there may be an escape." Not even a note had come from Lord Fawn himself,--nor from Lady Eustace. Possibly something violent might have been done, and Lady Eustace would not appear. But Lady Eustace did appear,--and, after a fashion, was made welcome at Fawn Court. The Fawn ladies were not good hypocrites. Lady Fawn had said almost nothing to her daughters of her visit to Mount Street, but Augusta had heard the discussion in Mrs. Hittaway's drawing-room as to the character of the future bride. The coming visit had been spoken of almost with awe, and there was a general conviction in the dovecote that an evil thing had fallen upon them. Consequently, their affection to the new-comer, though spoken in words, was not made evident by signs and manners. Lizzie herself took care that the position in which she was received should be sufficiently declared. "It seems so odd that I am to come among you as a sister," she said. The girls were forced to assent to the claim, but they assented coldly. "He has told me to attach myself especially to you," she whispered to Augusta. The unfortunate chosen one, who had but little strength of her own, accepted the position, and then, as the only means of escaping the embraces of her newly-found sister, pleaded the violence of a headache. "My mother!" said Lizzie to Lady Fawn. "Yes, my dear," said Lady Fawn. "One of the girls had perhaps better go up and show you your room." "I am very much afraid about it," said Lady Fawn to her daughter Amelia. Amelia replied only by shaking her head. On the Tuesday morning there came a note from Lord Fawn to his lady-love. Of course the letter was not shown, but Lizzie received it at the breakfast table, and read it with many little smiles and signs of satisfaction. And then she gave out various little statements as having been made in that letter. He says this, and he says that, and he is coming here, and going there, and he will do one thing, and he won't do the other. We have often seen young ladies crowing over their lovers' letters, and it was pleasant to see Lizzie crowing over hers. And yet there was but very little in the letter. Lord Fawn told her that what with the House and what with the Office, he could not get down to Richmond before Saturday; but that on Saturday he would come. Then he signed himself "yours affectionately, Fawn." Lizzie did her crowing very prettily. The outward show of it was there to perfection,--so that the Fawn girls really believed that their brother had written an affectionate lover's letter. Inwardly, Lizzie swore to herself, as she read the cold words with indignation, that the man should not escape her. The days went by very tediously. On the Wednesday and the Friday Lady Eustace made an excuse of going up to town, and insisted on taking the unfortunate Augusta with her. There was no real reason for these journeys to London,--unless that glance which on each occasion was given to the contents of the iron case was a real reason. The diamonds were safe, and Miss Macnulty was enjoying herself. On the Friday Lizzie proposed to Augusta that they should jointly make a raid upon the member of Her Majesty's Government at his office; but Augusta positively refused to take such a step. "I know he would be angry," pleaded Augusta. "Psha! who cares for his anger?" said Lizzie. But the visit was not made. On the Saturday,--the Saturday which was to bring Lord Fawn down to dinner,--another most unexpected visitor made his appearance. At about three o'clock Frank Greystock was at Fawn Court. Now it was certainly understood that Mr. Greystock had been told not to come to Fawn Court as long as Lucy Morris was there. "Dear Mr. Greystock, I'm sure you will take what I say as I mean it," Lady Fawn had whispered to him. "You know how attached we all are to our dear little Lucy. Perhaps you know--." There had been more of it; but the meaning of it all was undoubtedly this,--that Frank was not to pay visits to Lucy Morris at Fawn Court. Now he had come to see his cousin Lizzie Eustace. On this occasion Lady Fawn, with Amelia and two of the other girls, were out in the carriage. The unfortunate Augusta had been left at home with her bosom friend;--while Cecilia and Nina were supposed to be talking French with Lucy Morris. They were all out in the grounds, sitting upon the benches, and rambling among the shrubberies, when of a sudden Frank Greystock was in the midst of them. Lizzie's expression of joy at seeing her cousin was almost as great as though he had been in fact a brother. She ran up to him and grasped his hand, and hung on his arm, and looked up into his face, and then burst into tears. But the tears were not violent tears. There were just three sobs, and two bright eyes full of water, and a lace handkerchief,--and then a smile. "Oh, Frank," she said, "it does make one think so of old times!" Augusta had by this time been almost persuaded to believe in her,--though the belief by no means made the poor young woman happy. Frank thought that his cousin looked very well, and said something as to Lord Fawn being "the happiest fellow going." "I hope I shall make him happy," said Lizzie, clasping her hands together. Lucy meanwhile was standing in the circle with the others. It never occurred to her that it was her duty to run away from the man she loved. She had shaken hands with him, and felt something of affection in his pressure. She did believe that his visit was made entirely to his cousin, and had no idea at the moment of disobeying Lady Fawn. During the last few days she had been thrown very much with her old friend Lizzie, and had been treated by the future peeress with many signs of almost sisterly affection. "Dear Lucy," Lizzie had said, "you can understand me. These people,--oh, they are so good, but they can't understand me." Lucy had expressed a hope that Lord Fawn understood her. "Oh, Lord Fawn,--well; yes; perhaps;--I don't know. It so often happens that one's husband is the last person to understand one." "If I thought so, I wouldn't marry him," said Lucy. "Frank Greystock will understand you," said Lizzie. It was indeed true that Lucy did understand something of her wealthy friend's character, and was almost ashamed of the friendship. With Lizzie Greystock she had never sympathised, and Lizzie Eustace had always been distasteful to her. She already felt that the less she should see of Lizzie Fawn the better she should like it. Before an hour was over, Frank Greystock was walking round the shrubberies with Lucy,--and was walking with Lucy alone. It was undoubtedly the fact that Lady Eustace had contrived that it should be so. The unfitness of the thing recommended it to her. Frank could hardly marry a wife without a shilling. Lucy would certainly not think at all of shillings. Frank,--as Lizzie knew,--had been almost at her feet within the last fortnight, and might, in some possible emergency, be there again. In the midst of such circumstances nothing could be better than that Frank and Lucy should be thrown together. Lizzie regarded all this as romance. Poor Lady Fawn, had she known it all, would have called it diabolical wickedness and inhuman cruelty. "Well, Lucy;--what do you think of it?" Frank Greystock said to her. "Think of what, Mr. Greystock?" "You know what I mean;--this marriage?" "How should I be able to think? I have never seen them together. I suppose Lord Fawn isn't very rich. She is rich. And then she is very beautiful. Don't you think her very beautiful?" "Sometimes exquisitely lovely." "Everybody says so;--and I am sure it is the fact. Do you know;--but perhaps you'll think I am envious." "If I thought you envious of Lizzie, I should have to think you very foolish at the same time." "I don't know what that means;"--she did know well enough what it meant;--"but sometimes to me she is almost frightful to look at." "In what way?" "Oh, I can't tell you. She looks like a beautiful animal that you are afraid to caress for fear it should bite you;--an animal that would be beautiful if its eyes were not so restless, and its teeth so sharp and so white." "How very odd." "Why odd, Mr. Greystock?" "Because I feel exactly in the same way about her. I am not in the least afraid that she'll bite me; and as for caressing the animal,--that kind of caressing which you mean,--it seems to me to be just what she's made for. But, I do feel sometimes, that she is like a cat." "Something not quite so tame as a cat," said Lucy. "Nevertheless she is very lovely,--and very clever. Sometimes I think her the most beautiful woman I ever saw in the world." "Do you, indeed?" "She will be immensely run after as Lady Fawn. When she pleases she can make her own house quite charming. I never knew a woman who could say pretty things to so many people at once." "You are making her out to be a paragon of perfection, Mr. Greystock." "And when you add to all the rest that she has four thousand a year, you must admit that Lord Fawn is a lucky man." "I have said nothing against it." "Four thousand a year is a very great consideration, Lucy." Lucy for a while said nothing. She was making up her mind that she would say nothing;--that she would make no reply indicative of any feeling on her part. But she was not sufficiently strong to keep her resolution. "I wonder, Mr. Greystock," she said, "that you did not attempt to win the great prize yourself. Cousins do marry." He had thought of attempting it, and at this moment he would not lie to her. "The cousinship had nothing to do with it," he said. "Perhaps you did think of it." "I did, Lucy. Yes, I did. Thank God, I only thought of it." She could not refrain herself from looking up into his face and clasping her hands together. A woman never so dearly loves a man as when he confesses that he has been on the brink of a great crime,--but has refrained, and has not committed it. "I did think of it. I am not telling you that she would have taken me. I have no reason whatever for thinking so." "I am sure she would," said Lucy, who did not in the least know what words she was uttering. "It would have been simply for her money,--her money and her beauty. It would not have been because I love her." "Never--never ask a girl to marry you, unless you love her, Mr. Greystock." "Then there is only one that I can ever ask," said he. There was nothing of course that she could say to this. If he did not choose to go further, she was not bound to understand him. But would he go further? She felt at the moment that an open declaration of his love to herself would make her happy for ever, even though it should be accompanied by an assurance that he could not marry her. If they only knew each other,--that it was so between them,--that, she thought, would be enough for her. And as for him--if a woman could bear such a position, surely he might bear it. "Do you know who that one is?" he asked. "No," she said,--shaking her head. "Lucy, is that true?" "What does it matter?" "Lucy;--look at me, Lucy," and he put his hand upon her arm. "No,--no,--no!" she said. "I love you so well, Lucy, that I never can love another. I have thought of many women, but could never even think of one, as a woman to love, except you. I have sometimes fancied I could marry for money and position,--to help myself on in the world by means of a wife,--but when my mind has run away with me, to revel amidst ideas of feminine sweetness, you have always--always been the heroine of the tale, as the mistress of the happy castle in the air." "Have I?" she asked. "Always,--always. As regards this,"--and he struck himself on the breast,--"no man was ever more constant. Though I don't think much of myself as a man, I know a woman when I see her." But he did not ask her to be his wife;--nor did he wait at Fawn Court till Lady Fawn had come back with the carriage. CHAPTER XIII Showing What Frank Greystock Did Frank Greystock escaped from the dovecote before Lady Fawn had returned. He had not made his visit to Richmond with any purpose of seeing Lucy Morris, or of saying to her when he did see her anything special,--of saying anything that should, or anything that should not, have been said. He had gone there, in truth, simply because his cousin had asked him, and because it was almost a duty on his part to see his cousin on the momentous occasion of this new engagement. But he had declared to himself that old Lady Fawn was a fool, and that to see Lucy again would be very pleasant. "See her;--of course I'll see her," he had said. "Why should I be prevented from seeing her?" Now he had seen her, and as he returned by the train to London, he acknowledged to himself that it was no longer in his power to promote his fortune by marriage. He had at last said that to Lucy which made it impossible for him to offer his hand to any other woman. He had not, in truth, asked her to be his wife; but he had told her that he loved her, and could never love any other woman. He had asked for no answer to this assurance, and then he had left her. In the course of that afternoon he did question himself as to his conduct to this girl, and subjected himself to some of the rigours of a cross-examination. He was not a man who could think of a girl as the one human being whom he loved above all others, and yet look forward with equanimity to the idea of doing her an injury. He could understand that a man unable to marry should be reticent as to his feelings,--supposing him to have been weak enough to have succumbed to a passion which could only mar his own prospects. He was frank enough in owning to himself that he had been thus weak. The weakness had come upon himself early in life,--and was there, an established fact. The girl was to him unlike any other girl;--or any man. There was to him a sweetness in her companionship which he could not analyse. She was not beautiful. She had none of the charms of fashion. He had never seen her well-dressed,--according to the ideas of dress which he found to be prevailing in the world. She was a little thing, who, as a man's wife, could attract no attention by figure, form, or outward manner,--one who had quietly submitted herself to the position of a governess, and who did not seem to think that in doing so she obtained less than her due. But yet he knew her to be better than all the rest. For him, at any rate, she was better than all the rest. Her little hand was cool and sweet to him. Sometimes when he was heated and hard at work, he would fancy how it would be with him if she were by him, and would lay it on his brow. There was a sparkle in her eye that had to him more of sympathy in it than could be conveyed by all the other eyes in the world. There was an expression in her mouth when she smiled, which was more eloquent to him than any sound. There were a reality and a truth about her which came home to him, and made themselves known to him as firm rocks which could not be shaken. He had never declared to himself that deceit or hypocrisy in a woman was especially abominable. As a rule he looked for it in women, and would say that some amount of affectation was necessary to a woman's character. He knew that his cousin Lizzie was a little liar,--that she was, as Lucy had said, a pretty animal that would turn and bite;--and yet he liked his cousin Lizzie. He did not want women to be perfect,--so he would say. But Lucy Morris, in his eyes, was perfect; and when he told her that she was ever the queen who reigned in those castles in the air which he built,--as others build them, he told her no more than the truth. He had fallen into these feelings and could not now avoid them, or be quit of them;--but he could have been silent respecting them. He knew that in former days, down at Bobsborough, he had not been altogether silent. When he had first seen her at Fawn Court he had not been altogether silent. But he had been warned away from Fawn Court, and in that very warning there was conveyed, as it were, an absolution from the effect of words hitherto spoken. Though he had called Lady Fawn an old fool, he had known that it was so,--had, after a fashion, perceived her wisdom,--and had regarded himself as a man free to decide, without disgrace, that he might abandon ideas of ecstatic love and look out for a rich wife. Presuming himself to be reticent for the future in reference to his darling Lucy, he might do as he pleased with himself. Thus there had come a moment in which he had determined that he would ask his rich cousin to marry him. In that little project he had been interrupted, and the reader knows what had come of it. Lord Fawn's success had not in the least annoyed him. He had only half resolved in regard to his cousin. She was very beautiful no doubt, and there was her income;--but he also knew that those teeth would bite and that those claws would scratch. But Lord Fawn's success had given a turn to his thoughts, and had made him think, for a moment, that if a man loved, he should be true to his love. The reader also knows what had come of that,--how at last he had not been reticent. He had not asked Lucy to be his wife; but he had said that which made it impossible that he should marry any other woman without dishonour. As he thought of what he had done himself, he tried to remember whether Lucy had said a word expressive of affection for himself. She had in truth spoken very few words, and he could remember almost every one of them. "Have I?"--she had asked, when he told her that she had ever been the princess reigning in his castles. And there had been a joy in the question which she had not attempted to conceal. She had hesitated not at all. She had not told him that she loved him. But there had been something sweeter than such protestation in the question she had asked him. "Is it indeed true," she had said, "that I have been placed there where all my joy and all my glory lies?" It was not in her to tell a lie to him, even by a tone. She had intended to say nothing of her love, but he knew that it had all been told. "Have I?"--he repeated the words to himself a dozen times, and as he did so, he could hear her voice. Certainly there never was a voice that brought home to the hearer so strong a sense of its own truth! Why should he not at once make up his mind to marry her? He could do it. There was no doubt of that. It was possible for him to alter the whole manner of his life, to give up his clubs,--to give up even Parliament, if the need to do so was there,--and to live as a married man on the earnings of his profession. There was no need why he should regard himself as a poor man. Two things, no doubt, were against his regarding himself as a rich man. Ever since he had commenced life in London he had been more or less in debt; and then, unfortunately, he had acquired a seat in Parliament at a period of his career in which the dangers of such a position were greater than the advantages. Nevertheless he could earn an income on which he and his wife, were he to marry, could live in all comfort; and as to his debts, if he would set his shoulder to the work they might be paid off in a twelvemonth. There was nothing in the prospect which would frighten Lucy, though there might be a question whether he possessed the courage needed for so violent a change. He had chambers in the Temple; he lived in rooms which he hired from month to month in one of the big hotels at the West End; and he dined at his club, or at the House, when he was not dining with a friend. It was an expensive and a luxurious mode of life,--and one from the effects of which a man is prone to drift very quickly into selfishness. He was by no means given to drinking,--but he was already learning to like good wine. Small economies in reference to cab-hire, gloves, umbrellas, and railway fares were unknown to him. Sixpences and shillings were things with which, in his mind, it was grievous to have to burden the thoughts. The Greystocks had all lived after that fashion. Even the dean himself was not free from the charge of extravagance. All this Frank knew, and he did not hesitate to tell himself, that he must make a great change if he meant to marry Lucy Morris. And he was wise enough to know that the change would become more difficult every day that it was postponed. Hitherto the question had been an open question with him. Could it now be an open question any longer? As a man of honour, was he not bound to share his lot with Lucy Morris? That evening,--that Saturday evening,--it so happened that he met John Eustace at a club to which they both belonged, and they dined together. They had long known each other, and had been thrown into closer intimacy by the marriage between Sir Florian and Lizzie. John Eustace had never been fond of Lizzie, and now, in truth, liked her less than ever; but he did like Lizzie's cousin, and felt that possibly Frank might be of use to him in the growing difficulty of managing the heir's property and looking after the heir's interests. "You've let the widow slip through your fingers," he said to Frank, as they sat together at the table. "I told you Lord Fawn was to be the lucky man," said Frank. "I know you did. I hadn't seen it. I can only say I wish it had been the other way." "Why so? Fawn isn't a bad fellow." "No;--not exactly a bad fellow. He isn't, you know, what I call a good fellow. In the first place, he is marrying her altogether for her money." "Which is just what you advised me to do." "I thought you really liked her. And then Fawn will be always afraid of her,--and won't be in the least afraid of us. We shall have to fight him, and he won't fight her. He's a cantankerous fellow,--is Fawn,--when he's not afraid of his adversary." "But why should there be any fighting?" Eustace paused a minute, and rubbed his face and considered the matter before he answered. "She is troublesome, you know," he said. "What; Lizzie?" "Yes;--and I begin to be afraid she'll give us as much as we know how to do. I was with Camperdown to-day. I'm blessed if she hasn't begun to cut down a whole side of a forest at Portray. She has no more right to touch the timber, except for repairs about the place, than you have." "And if she lives for fifty years," asked Greystock, "is none to be cut?" "Yes;--by consent. Of course the regular cutting for the year is done, year by year. That's as regular as the rents, and the produce is sold by the acre. But she is marking the old oaks. What the deuce can she want money for?" "Fawn will put all that right." "He'll have to do it," said Eustace. "Since she has been down with the old Lady Fawn, she has written a note to Camperdown,--after leaving all his letters unanswered for the last twelvemonth,--to tell him that Lord Fawn is to have nothing to do with her property, and that certain people, called Mowbray and Mopus, are her lawyers. Camperdown is in an awful way about it." "Lord Fawn will put it all right," said Frank. "Camperdown is afraid that he won't. They've met twice since the engagement was made, and Camperdown says that, at the last meeting, Fawn gave himself airs, or was, at any rate, unpleasant. There were words about those diamonds." "You don't mean to say that Lord Fawn wants to keep your brother's family jewels?" "Camperdown didn't say that exactly;--but Fawn made no offer of giving them up. I wasn't there, and only heard what Camperdown told me. Camperdown thinks he's afraid of her." "I shouldn't wonder at that in the least," said Frank. "I know there'll be trouble," continued Eustace, "and Fawn won't be able to help us through it. She's a strong-willed, cunning, obstinate, clever little creature. Camperdown swears he'll be too many for her, but I almost doubt it." "And therefore you wish I were going to marry her?" "Yes, I do. You might manage her. The money comes from the Eustace property, and I'd sooner it should go to you than a half-hearted, numb-fingered, cold-blooded Whig, like Fawn." "I don't like cunning women," said Frank. "As bargains go, it wouldn't be a bad one," said Eustace. "She's very young, has a noble jointure, and is as handsome as she can stand. It's too good a thing for Fawn;--too good for any Whig." When Eustace left him, Greystock lit his cigar and walked with it in his mouth from Pall Mall to the Temple. He often worked there at night when he was not bound to be in the House, or when the House was not sitting,--and he was now intent on mastering the mysteries of some much-complicated legal case which had been confided to him, in order that he might present it to a jury enveloped in increased mystery. But, as he went, he thought rather of matrimony than of law;--and he thought especially of matrimony as it was about to affect Lord Fawn. Could a man be justified in marrying for money, or have rational ground for expecting that he might make himself happy by doing so? He kept muttering to himself as he went, the Quaker's advice to the old farmer, "Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa where munny is!" But he muttered it as condemning the advice rather than accepting it. He could look out and see two altogether different kinds of life before him, both of which had their allurements. There was the Belgravia-cum-Pimlico life, the scene of which might extend itself to South Kensington, enveloping the parks and coming round over Park Lane, and through Grosvenor Square and Berkeley Square back to Piccadilly. Within this he might live with lords and countesses and rich folk generally, going out to the very best dinner-parties, avoiding stupid people, having everything the world could give, except a wife and family and home of his own. All this he could achieve by the work which would certainly fall in his way, and by means of that position in the world which he had already attained by his wits. And the wife, with the family and house of his own, might be forthcoming, should it ever come in his way to form an attachment with a wealthy woman. He knew how dangerous were the charms of such a life as this to a man growing old among the flesh-pots, without any one to depend upon him. He had seen what becomes of the man who is always dining out at sixty. But he might avoid that. "Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa where munny is." And then there was that other outlook, the scene of which was laid somewhere north of Oxford Street, and the glory of which consisted in Lucy's smile, and Lucy's hand, and Lucy's kiss, as he returned home weary from his work. There are many men, and some women, who pass their lives without knowing what it is to be or to have been in love. They not improbably marry,--the men do, at least,--and make good average husbands. Their wives are useful to them, and they learn to feel that a woman, being a wife, is entitled to all the respect, protection, and honour which a man can give, or procure for her. Such men, no doubt, often live honest lives, are good Christians, and depart hence with hopes as justifiable as though they had loved as well as Romeo. But yet, as men, they have lacked a something, the want of which has made them small and poor and dry. It has never been felt by such a one that there would be triumph in giving away everything belonging to him for one little whispered, yielding word, in which there should be acknowledgment that he had succeeded in making himself master of a human heart. And there are other men,--very many men,--who have felt this love, and have resisted it, feeling it to be unfit that Love should be Lord of all. Frank Greystock had told himself, a score of times, that it would be unbecoming in him to allow a passion to obtain such mastery of him as to interfere with his ambition. Could it be right that he who, as a young man, had already done so much, who might possibly have before him so high and great a career, should miss that, because he could not resist a feeling which a little chit of a girl had created in his bosom,--a girl without money, without position, without even beauty; a girl as to whom, were he to marry her, the world would say, "Oh, heaven!--there has Frank Greystock gone and married a little governess out of old Lady Fawn's nursery!" And yet he loved her with all his heart, and to-day he had told her of his love. What should he do next? The complicated legal case received neither much ravelling nor unravelling from his brains that night; but before he left his chambers he wrote the following letter:-- Midnight, Saturday, All among my books and papers, 2, Bolt Court, Middle Temple. DEAR, DEAR LUCY, I told you to-day that you had ever been the Queen who reigned in those palaces which I have built in Spain. You did not make me much of an answer; but such as it was,--only just one muttered doubtful-sounding word,--it has made me hope that I may be justified in asking you to share with me a home which will not be palatial. If I am wrong--? But no;--I will not think I am wrong, or that I can be wrong. No sound coming from you is really doubtful. You are truth itself, and the muttered word would have been other than it was, if you had not--! may I say,--had you not already learned to love me? You will feel, perhaps, that I ought to have said all this to you then, and that a letter in such a matter is but a poor substitute for a spoken assurance of affection. You shall have the whole truth. Though I have long loved you, I did not go down to Fawn Court with the purpose of declaring to you my love. What I said to you was God's truth; but it was spoken without thought at the moment. I have thought of it much since;--and now I write to ask you to be my wife. I have lived for the last year or two with this hope before me; and now-- Dear, dear Lucy, I will not write in too great confidence; but I will tell you that all my happiness is in your hands. If your answer is what I hope it may be, tell Lady Fawn at once. I shall immediately write to Bobsborough, as I hate secrets in such matters. And if it is to be so,--then I shall claim the privilege of going to Fawn Court as soon and as often as I please. Yours ever and always,--if you will have me,-- F. G. He sat for an hour at his desk, with his letter lying on the table, before he left his chambers,--looking at it. If he should decide on posting it, then would that life in Belgravia-cum-Pimlico,--of which in truth he was very fond,--be almost closed for him. The lords and countesses, and rich county members, and leading politicians, who were delighted to welcome him, would not care for his wife; nor could he very well take his wife among them. To live with them as a married man, he must live as they lived;--and must have his own house in their precincts. Later in life, he might possibly work up to this;--but for the present he must retire into dim domestic security and the neighbourhood of Regent's Park. He sat looking at the letter, telling himself that he was now, at this moment, deciding his own fate in life. And he again muttered the Quaker's advice, "Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa where munny is!" It may be said, however, that no man ever writes such a letter, and then omits to send it. He walked out of the Temple with it in his hand, and dropped it into a pillar letter-box just outside the gate. As the envelope slipped through his fingers, he felt that he had now bound himself to his fate. CHAPTER XIV "Doan't Thou Marry for Munny" As that Saturday afternoon wore itself away, there was much excitement at Fawn Court. When Lady Fawn returned with the carriage, she heard that Frank Greystock had been at Fawn Court; and she heard also, from Augusta, that he had been rambling about the grounds alone with Lucy Morris. At any exhibition of old ladies, held before a competent jury, Lady Fawn would have taken a prize on the score of good humour. No mother of daughters was ever less addicted to scold and to be fretful. But just now she was a little unhappy. Lizzie's visit had not been a success, and she looked forward to her son's marriage with almost unmixed dismay. Mrs. Hittaway had written daily, and in all Mrs. Hittaway's letters some addition was made to the evil things already known. In her last letter Mrs. Hittaway had expressed her opinion that even yet "Frederic" would escape. All this Lady Fawn had, of course, not told to her daughters generally. To the eldest, Augusta, it was thought expedient to say nothing, because Augusta had been selected as the companion of the, alas! too probable future Lady Fawn. But to Amelia something did leak out, and it became apparent that the household was uneasy. Now,--as an evil added to this,--Frank Greystock had been there in Lady Fawn's absence, walking about the grounds alone with Lucy Morris. Lady Fawn could hardly restrain herself. "How could Lucy be so very wrong?" she said, in the hearing both of Augusta and Amelia. Lizzie Eustace did not hear this; but knowing very well that a governess should not receive a lover in the absence of the lady of the house, she made her little speech about it. "Dear Lady Fawn," she said, "my cousin Frank came to see me while you were out." "So I hear," said Lady Fawn. "Frank and I are more like brother and sister than anything else. I had so much to say to him;--so much to ask him to do! I have no one else, you know, and I had especially told him to come here." "Of course he was welcome to come." "Only I was afraid you might think that there was some little lover's trick,--on dear Lucy's part, you know." "I never suspect anything of that kind," said Lady Fawn, bridling up. "Lucy Morris is above any sort of trick. We don't have any tricks here, Lady Eustace." Lady Fawn herself might say that Lucy was "wrong," but no one else in that house should even suggest evil of Lucy. Lizzie retreated smiling. To have "put Lady Fawn's back up," as she called it, was to her an achievement and a pleasure. But the great excitement of the evening consisted in the expected coming of Lord Fawn. Of what nature would be the meeting between Lord Fawn and his promised bride? Was there anything of truth in the opinion expressed by Mrs. Hittaway that her brother was beginning to become tired of his bargain? That Lady Fawn was tired of it herself,--that she disliked Lizzie, and was afraid of her, and averse to the idea of regarding her as a daughter-in-law,--she did not now attempt to hide from herself. But there was the engagement, known to all the world, and how could its fulfilment now be avoided? The poor dear old woman began to repeat to herself the first half of the Quaker's advice, "Doan't thou marry for munny." Lord Fawn was to come down only in time for a late dinner. An ardent lover, one would have thought, might have left his work somewhat earlier on a Saturday, so as to have enjoyed with his sweetheart something of the sweetness of the Saturday summer afternoon;--but it was seven before he reached Fawn Court, and the ladies were at that time in their rooms dressing. Lizzie had affected to understand all his reasons for being so late, and had expressed herself as perfectly satisfied. "He has more to do than any of the others," she had said to Augusta. "Indeed, the whole of our vast Indian empire may be said to hang upon him, just at present;"--which was not complimentary to Lord Fawn's chief, the Right Honourable Legge Wilson, who at the present time represented the interests of India in the Cabinet. "He is terribly overworked, and it is a shame;--but what can one do?" "I think he likes work," Augusta had replied. "But I don't like it,--not so much of it; and so I shall make him understand, my dear. But I don't complain. As long as he tells me everything, I will never really complain." Perhaps it might some day be as she desired; perhaps as a husband he would be thoroughly confidential and communicative; perhaps when they two were one flesh he would tell her everything about India;--but as yet he certainly had not told her much. "How had they better meet?" Amelia asked her mother. "Oh;--I don't know;--anyhow; just as they like. We can't arrange anything for her. If she had chosen to dress herself early, she might have seen him as he came in; but it was impossible to tell her so." No arrangement was therefore made, and as all the other ladies were in the drawing-room before Lizzie came down, she had to give him his welcome in the midst of the family circle. She did it very well. Perhaps she had thought of it, and made her arrangements. When he came forward to greet her, she put her cheek up, just a little, so that he might see that he was expected to kiss it;--but so little, that should he omit to do so, there might be no visible awkwardness. It must be acknowledged on Lizzie's behalf, that she could always avoid awkwardness. He did touch her cheek with his lips, blushing as he did so. She had her ungloved hand in his, and, still holding him, returned into the circle. She said not a word; and what he said was of no moment;--but they had met as lovers, and any of the family who had allowed themselves to imagine that even yet the match might be broken, now unconsciously abandoned that hope. "Was he always such a truant, Lady Fawn?"--Lizzie asked, when it seemed to her that no one else would speak a word. "I don't know that there is much difference," said Lady Fawn. "Here is dinner. Frederic, will you give--Lady Eustace your arm?" Poor Lady Fawn! It often came to pass that she was awkward. There were no less than ten females sitting round the board, at the bottom of which Lord Fawn took his place. Lady Fawn had especially asked Lucy to come in to dinner, and with Lucy had come the two younger girls. At Lord Fawn's right hand sat Lizzie, and Augusta at his left. Lady Fawn had Amelia on one side and Lucy on the other. "So Mr. Greystock was here to-day," Lady Fawn whispered into Lucy's ear. "Yes; he was here." "Oh, Lucy!" "I did not bid him come, Lady Fawn." "I am sure of that, my dear;--but--but--" Then there was no more to be said on that subject on that occasion. During the whole of the dinner the conversation was kept up at the other end of the table by Lizzie talking to Augusta across her lover. This was done in such a manner as to seem to include Lord Fawn in every topic discussed. Parliament, India, the Sawab, Ireland, the special privileges of the House of Lords, the ease of a bachelor life, and the delight of having at his elbow just such a rural retreat as Fawn Court,--these were the fruitful themes of Lizzie's eloquence. Augusta did her part at any rate with patience; and as for Lizzie herself, she worked with that superhuman energy which women can so often display in making conversation under unfavourable circumstances. The circumstances were unfavourable, for Lord Fawn himself would hardly open his mouth; but Lizzie persevered, and the hour of dinner passed over without any show of ill-humour, or of sullen silence. When the hour was over, Lord Fawn left the room with the ladies, and was soon closeted with his mother, while the girls strolled out upon the lawn. Would Lizzie play croquet? No; Lizzie would not play croquet. She thought it probable that she might catch her lover and force him to walk with her through the shrubberies; but Lord Fawn was not seen upon the lawn that evening, and Lizzie was forced to content herself with Augusta as a companion. In the course of the evening, however, her lover did say a word to her in private. "Give me ten minutes to-morrow between breakfast and church, Lizzie." Lizzie promised that she would do so, smiling sweetly. Then there was a little music, and then Lord Fawn retired to his studies. "What is he going to say to me?" Lizzie asked Augusta the next morning. There existed in her bosom a sort of craving after confidential friendship,--but with it there existed something that was altogether incompatible with confidence. She thoroughly despised Augusta Fawn, and yet would have been willing,--in want of a better friend,--to press Augusta to her bosom, and swear that there should ever be between them the tenderest friendship. She desired to be the possessor of the outward shows of all those things of which the inward facts are valued by the good and steadfast ones of the earth. She knew what were the aspirations,--what the ambition, of an honest woman; and she knew, too, how rich were the probable rewards of such honesty. True love, true friendship, true benevolence, true tenderness, were beautiful to her,--qualities on which she could descant almost with eloquence; and therefore she was always shamming love and friendship and benevolence and tenderness. She could tell you, with words most appropriate to the subject, how horrible were all shams, and in saying so would be not altogether insincere;--yet she knew that she herself was ever shamming, and she satisfied herself with shams. "What is he going to say to me?" she asked Augusta, with her hands clasped, when she went up to put her bonnet on after breakfast. "To fix the day, I suppose," said Augusta. "If I thought so, I would endeavour to please him. But it isn't that. I know his manner so well! I am sure it is not that. Perhaps it is something about my boy. He will not wish to separate a mother from her child." "Oh dear, no," said Augusta. "I am sure Frederic will not want to do that." "In anything else I will obey him," said Lizzie, again clasping her hands. "But I must not keep him waiting,--must I? I fear my future lord is somewhat impatient." Now, if among Lord Fawn's merits one merit was more conspicuous than another, it was that of patience. When Lizzie descended he was waiting for her in the hall without a thought that he was being kept too long. "Now, Frederic! I should have been with you two whole minutes since, if I had not had just a word to say to Augusta. I do so love Augusta." "She is a very good girl," said Lord Fawn. "So true and genuine,--and so full of spirit. I will come on the other side because of my parasol and the sun. There, that will do. We have an hour nearly before going to church;--haven't we? I suppose you will go to church." "I intend it," said Lord Fawn. "It is so nice to go to church," said Lizzie. Since her widowhood had commenced, she had compromised matters with the world. One Sunday she would go to church, and the next she would have a headache and a French novel and stay in bed. But she was prepared for stricter conduct during at least the first months of her newly-married life. "My dear Lizzie," began Lord Fawn, "since I last saw you I have been twice with Mr. Camperdown." "You are not going to talk about Mr. Camperdown to-day?" "Well;--yes. I could not do so last night, and I shall be back in London either to-night or before you are up to-morrow morning." "I hate the very name of Mr. Camperdown," said Lizzie. "I am sorry for that, because I am sure you could not find an honester lawyer to manage your affairs for you. He does everything for me, and so he did for Sir Florian Eustace." "That is just the reason why I employ some one else," she answered. "Very well. I am not going to say a word about that. I may regret it, but I am, just at present, the last person in the world to urge you upon that subject. What I want to say is this. You must restore those diamonds." "To whom shall I restore them?" "To Mr. Garnett, the silversmith, if you please,--or to Mr. Camperdown;--or, if you like it better, to your brother-in-law, Mr. John Eustace." "And why am I to give up my own property?" Lord Fawn paused for some seconds before he replied. "To satisfy my honour," he then said. As she made him no immediate answer, he continued,--"It would not suit my views that my wife should be seen wearing the jewels of the Eustace family." "I don't want to wear them," said Lizzie. "Then why should you desire to keep them?" "Because they are my own. Because I do not choose to be put upon. Because I will not allow such a cunning old snake as Mr. Camperdown to rob me of my property. They are my own, and you should defend my right to them." "Do you mean to say that you will not oblige me by doing what I ask you?" "I will not be robbed of what is my own," said Lizzie. "Then I must declare--" and now Lord Fawn spoke very slowly--"then I must declare that under these circumstances, let the consequences be what they may, I must retreat from the enviable position which your favour has given me." The words were cold and solemn, and were ill-spoken; but they were deliberate, and had been indeed actually learned by heart. "What do you mean?" said Lizzie, flashing round upon him. "I mean what I say,--exactly. But perhaps it may be well that I should explain my motives more clearly." "I don't know anything about motives, and I don't care anything about motives. Do you mean to tell me that you have come here to threaten me with deserting me?" "You had better hear me." "I don't choose to hear a word more after what you have said,--unless it be in the way of an apology, or retracting your most injurious accusation." "I have said nothing to retract," said Lord Fawn solemnly. "Then I will not hear another word from you. I have friends, and you shall see them." Lord Fawn, who had thought a great deal upon the subject, and had well understood that this interview would be for him one of great difficulty, was very anxious to induce her to listen to a few further words of explanation. "Dear Lizzie--" he began. "I will not be addressed, sir, in that way by a man who is treating me as you are doing," she said. "But I want you to understand me." "Understand you! You understand nothing yourself that a man ought to understand. I wonder that you have the courage to be so insolent. If you knew what you were doing, you would not have the spirit to do it." Her words did not quite come home to him, and much of her scorn was lost upon him. He was now chiefly anxious to explain to her that though he must abide by the threat he had made, he was quite willing to go on with his engagement if she would oblige him in the matter of the diamonds. "It was necessary that I should explain to you that I could not allow that necklace to be brought into my house." "No one thought of taking it to your house." "What were you to do with it, then?" "Keep it in my own," said Lizzie stoutly. They were still walking together, and were now altogether out of sight of the house. Lizzie in her excitement had forgotten church, had forgotten the Fawn women,--had forgotten everything except the battle which it was necessary that she should fight for herself. She did not mean to allow the marriage to be broken off,--but she meant to retain the necklace. The manner in which Lord Fawn had demanded its restitution,--in which there had been none of that mock tenderness by which she might have permitted herself to be persuaded,--had made her, at any rate for the moment, as firm as steel on this point. It was inconceivable to her that he should think himself at liberty to go back from his promise, because she would not render up property which was in her possession, and which no one could prove not to be legally her own! She walked on full of fierce courage,--despising him, but determined that she would marry him. "I am afraid we do not understand each other," he said at last. "Certainly I do not understand you, sir." "Will you allow my mother to speak to you on the subject?" "No. If I told your mother to give up her diamonds, what would she say?" "But they are not yours, Lady Eustace, unless you will submit that question to an arbitrator." "I will submit nothing to anybody. You have no right to speak on such a subject till after we are married." "I must have it settled first, Lady Eustace." "Then, Lord Fawn, you won't have it settled first. Or rather it is settled already. I shall keep my own necklace, and Mr. Camperdown may do anything he pleases. As for you,--if you ill-treat me, I shall know where to go to." They had now come out from the shrubbery upon the lawn, and there was the carriage at the door, ready to take the elders of the family to church. Of course in such a condition of affairs it would be understood that Lizzie was one of the elders. "I shall not go to church now," she said, as she advanced across the lawn towards the hall door. "You will be pleased, Lord Fawn, to let your mother know that I am detained. I do not suppose that you will dare to tell her why." Then she sailed round at the back of the carriage and entered the hall, in which several of the girls were standing. Among them was Augusta, waiting to take her seat among the elders;--but Lizzie passed on through them all, without a word, and marched up to her bed-room. "Oh, Frederic, what is the matter?" asked Augusta, as soon as her brother entered the house. "Never mind. Nothing is the matter. You had better go to church. Where is my mother?" At this moment Lady Fawn appeared at the bottom of the stairs, having passed Lizzie as she was coming down. Not a syllable had then been spoken, but Lady Fawn at once knew that much was wrong. Her son went up to her and whispered a word in her ear. "Oh, certainly," she said, desisting from the operation of pulling on her gloves. "Augusta, neither your brother nor I will go to church." "Nor--Lady Eustace?" "It seems not," said Lady Fawn. "Lady Eustace will not go to church," said Lord Fawn. "And where is Lucy?" asked Lydia. "She will not go to church either," said Lady Fawn. "I have just been with her." "Nobody is going to church," said Nina. "All the same, I shall go by myself." "Augusta, my dear, you and the girls had better go. You can take the carriage of course." But Augusta and the girls chose to walk, and the carriage was sent round into the yard. "There's a rumpus already between my lord and the young missus," said the coachman to the groom;--for the coachman had seen the way in which Lady Eustace had returned to the house. And there certainly was a rumpus. During the whole morning Lord Fawn was closeted with his mother, and then he went away to London without saying a word to any one of the family. But he left this note for Lady Eustace:-- DEAREST LIZZIE, Think well of what I have said to you. It is not that I desire to break off our engagement; but that I cannot allow my wife to keep the diamonds which belong of right to her late husband's family. You may be sure that I should not be thus urgent had I not taken steps to ascertain that I am right in my judgment. In the meantime you had better consult my mother. Yours affectionately, FAWN. CHAPTER XV "I'll Give You a Hundred Guinea Brooch" There had been another "affair" in the house that morning, though of a nature very different to the "rumpus" which had occurred between Lord Fawn and Lady Eustace. Lady Fawn had been closeted with Lucy, and had expressed her opinion of the impropriety of Frank Greystock's visit. "I suppose he came to see his cousin," said Lady Fawn, anxious to begin with some apology for such conduct. "I cannot tell," said Lucy. "Perhaps he did. I think he said so. I think he cared more to see me." Then Lady Fawn was obliged to express her opinion, and she did so, uttering many words of wisdom. Frank Greystock, had he intended to sacrifice his prospects by a disinterested marriage, would have spoken out before now. He was old enough to have made up his mind on such a subject, and he had not spoken out. He did not mean marriage. That was quite evident to Lady Fawn;--and her dear Lucy was revelling in hopes which would make her miserable. If Lucy could only have known of the letter, which was already her own property though lying in the pillar letter-box in Fleet Street, and which had not already been sent down and delivered simply because it was Sunday morning! But she was very brave. "He does love me," she said. "He told me so." "Oh, Lucy;--that is worse and worse. A man to tell you that he loves you, and yet not ask you to be his wife!" "I am contented," said Lucy. That assertion, however, could hardly have been true. "Contented! And did you tell him that you returned his love?" "He knew it without my telling him," said Lucy. It was so hard upon her that she should be so interrogated while that letter was lying in the iron box! "Dear Lucy, this must not be," said Lady Fawn. "You are preparing for yourself inexpressible misery." "I have done nothing wrong, Lady Fawn." "No, my dear;--no. I do not say you have been wrong. But I think he is wrong,--so wrong! I call it wicked. I do indeed. For your own sake you should endeavour to forget him." "I will never forget him!" said Lucy. "To think of him is everything to me. He told me I was his Queen, and he shall be my King. I will be loyal to him always." To poor Lady Fawn this was very dreadful. The girl persisted in declaring her love for the man, and yet did not even pretend to think that the man meant to marry her! And this, too, was Lucy Morris,--of whom Lady Fawn was accustomed to say to her intimate friends that she had altogether ceased to look upon her as a governess. "Just one of ourselves, Mrs. Winslow,--and almost as dear as one of my own girls!" Thus, in the warmth of her heart, she had described Lucy to a neighbour within the last week. Many more words of wisdom she spoke, and then she left poor Lucy in no mood for church. Would she have been in a better mood for the morning service had she known of the letter in the iron post? Then Lady Fawn had put on her bonnet and gone down into the hall, and the "rumpus" had come. After that, everybody in the house knew that all things were astray. When the girls came home from church, their brother was gone. Half an hour before dinner Lady Fawn sent the note up to Lizzie, with a message to say that they would dine at three,--it being Sunday. Lizzie sent down word that as she was unwell, she would ask to have just a cup of tea and "something" sent to her own room. If Lady Fawn would allow her, she would remain up-stairs with her child. She always made use of her child when troubles came. The afternoon was very sad and dreary. Lady Fawn had an interview with Lady Eustace, but Lizzie altogether refused to listen to any advice on the subject of the necklace. "It is an affair," she said haughtily, "in which I must judge for myself,--or with the advice of my own particular friends. Had Lord Fawn waited until we were married; then indeed--!" "But that would have been too late," said Lady Fawn severely. "He is, at any rate, premature now in laying his commands upon me," said Lizzie. Lady Fawn, who was perhaps more anxious that the marriage should be broken off than that the jewels should be restored, then withdrew; and as she left the room Lizzie clasped her boy to her bosom. "He, at any rate, is left to me," she said. Lucy and the Fawn girls went to evening church, and afterwards Lizzie came down among them when they were at tea. Before she went to bed Lizzie declared her intention of returning to her own house in Mount Street on the following day. To this Lady Fawn of course made no objection. On the next morning there came an event which robbed Lizzie's departure of some of the importance which might otherwise have been attached to it. The post-office, with that accuracy in the performance of its duties for which it is conspicuous among all offices, caused Lucy's letter to be delivered to her while the members of the family were sitting round the breakfast table. Lizzie, indeed, was not there. She had expressed her intention of breakfasting in her own room, and had requested that a conveyance might be ready to take her to the 11.30 train. Augusta had been with her, asking whether anything could be done for her. "I care for nothing now, except my child," Lizzie had replied. As the nurse and the lady's maid were both in the room, Augusta, of course, could say nothing further. That occurred after prayers, and while the tea was being made. When Augusta reached the breakfast-room, Lucy was cutting up the loaf of bread, and at the same moment the old butler was placing a letter immediately under her eyes. She saw the handwriting and recognised it, but yet she finished cutting the bread. "Lucy, do give me that hunchy bit," said Nina. "Hunchy is not in the dictionary," said Cecilia. "I want it in my plate, and not in the dictionary," said Nina. Lucy did as she was asked, but her hand trembled as she gave the hunch, and Lady Fawn saw that her face was crimson. She took the letter and broke the envelope, and as she drew out the sheet of paper, she looked up at Lady Fawn. The fate of her whole life was in her hands, and there she was standing with all their eyes fixed upon her. She did not even know how to sit down, but, still standing, she read the first words, and at the last, "Dear, dear Lucy,"--"Yours ever and always, if you will have me, F. G." She did not want to read any more of it then. She sat down slowly, put the precious paper back into its envelope, looked round upon them all, and knew that she was crimson to the roots of her hair, blushing like a guilty thing. "Lucy, my dear," said Lady Fawn,--and Lucy at once turned her face full upon her old friend,--"you have got a letter that agitates you." "Yes,--I have," she said. "Go into the book-room. You can come back to breakfast when you have read it, you know." Thereupon Lucy rose from her seat, and retired with her treasure into the book-room. But even when she was there she could not at once read her letter. When the door was closed and she knew that she was alone she looked at it, and then clasped it tight between her hands. She was almost afraid to read it lest the letter itself should contradict the promise which the last words of it had seemed to convey to her. She went up to the window and stood there gazing out upon the gravel road, with her hand containing the letter pressed upon her heart. Lady Fawn had told her that she was preparing for herself inexpressible misery;--and now there had come to her joy so absolutely inexpressible! "A man to tell you that he loves you, and yet not ask you to be his wife!" She repeated to herself Lady Fawn's words,--and then those other words, "Yours ever and always, if you will have me!" Have him, indeed! She threw from her, at once, as vain and wicked and false, all idea of coying her love. She would leap at his neck if he were there, and tell him that for years he had been almost her god. And of course he knew it. "If I will have him! Traitor!" she said to herself, smiling through her tears. Then she reflected that after all it would be well that she should read the letter. There might be conditions;--though what conditions could he propose with which she would not comply? However, she seated herself in a corner of the room and did read the letter. As she read it, she hardly understood it all;--but she understood what she wanted to understand. He asked her to share with him his home. He had spoken to her that day without forethought;--but mustn't such speech be the truest and the sweetest of all speeches? "And now I write to you to ask you to be my wife." Oh, how wrong some people can be in their judgments! How wrong Lady Fawn had been in hers about Frank Greystock! "For the last year or two I have lived with this hope before me." "And so have I," said Lucy. "And so have I;--with that and no other." "Too great confidence! Traitor," she said again, smiling and weeping, "yes, traitor; when of course you knew it." "Is his happiness in my hands? Oh,--then he shall be happy." "Of course I will tell Lady Fawn at once;--instantly. Dear Lady Fawn! But yet she has been so wrong. I suppose she will let him come here. But what does it matter, now that I know it?" "Yours ever and always,--if you will have me.--F. G." "Traitor, traitor, traitor!" Then she got up and walked about the room, not knowing what she did, holding the letter now between her hands, and then pressing it to her lips. She was still walking about the room when there came a low tap at the door, and Lady Fawn entered. "There is nothing the matter, Lucy?" Lucy stood stock still, with her treasure still clasped, smiling, almost laughing, while the tears ran down her cheeks. "Won't you eat your breakfast, my dear?" said Lady Fawn. "Oh, Lady Fawn--oh, Lady Fawn!" said Lucy, rushing into her friend's arms. "What is it, Lucy? I think our little wise one has lost her wits." "Oh, Lady Fawn, he has asked me!" "Is it Mr. Greystock?" "Yes;--Mr. Greystock. He has asked me. He has asked me to be his wife. I thought he loved me. I hoped he did, at least. Oh dear, I did so hope it! And he does!" "Has he proposed to you?" "Yes, Lady Fawn. I told you what he said to me. And then he went and wrote this. Is he not noble and good,--and so kind? You shall read it,--but you'll give it me back, Lady Fawn?" "Certainly I'll give it you back. You don't think I'd rob you of your lover's letter?" "Perhaps you might think it right." "If it is really an offer of marriage--," said Lady Fawn very seriously. "It couldn't be more of an offer if he had sat writing it for ever," said Lucy as she gave up her letter with confidence. Lady Fawn read it with leisurely attention, and smiled as she put the paper back into the envelope. "All the men in the world couldn't say it more plainly," said Lucy, nodding her head forward. "I don't think they could," said Lady Fawn. "I never read anything plainer in my life. I wish you joy with all my heart, Lucy. There is not a word to be said against him." "Against him!" said Lucy, who thought that this was very insufficient praise. "What I mean is, that when I objected to his coming here I was only afraid that he couldn't afford,--or would think, you know, that in his position he couldn't afford to marry a wife without a fortune." "He may come now, Lady Fawn?" "Well,--yes; I think so. I shall be glad just to say a word to him. Of course you are in my hands, and I do love you so dearly, Lucy! I could not bear that anything but good should happen to you." "This is good," said Lucy. "It won't be good, and Mr. Greystock won't think you good, if you don't come and eat your breakfast." So Lucy was led back into the parlour, and sipped her tea and crunched her toast, while Lydia came and stood over her. "Of course it is from him?" whispered Lydia. Lucy again nodded her head while she was crunching her toast. The fact that Mr. Greystock had proposed in form to Lucy Morris was soon known to all the family, and the news certainly did take away something from the importance which would otherwise have been attached to Lizzie's departure. There was not the same awe of the ceremony, the same dread of some scene, which, but for Frank Greystock's letter, would have existed. Of course, Lord Fawn's future matrimonial prospects were to them all an affair of more moment than those of Lucy; but Lord Fawn himself had gone, and had already quarrelled with the lady before he went. There was at present nothing more to be done by them in regard to Lizzie, than just to get rid of her. But Lucy's good fortune, so unexpected, and by her so frankly owned as the very best fortune in the world that could have befallen her, gave an excitement to them all. There could be no lessons that morning for Nina, and the usual studies of the family were altogether interrupted. Lady Fawn purred, and congratulated, and gave good advice, and declared that any other home for Lucy before her marriage would now be quite out of the question. "Of course it wouldn't do for you to go even to Clara," said Lady Fawn,--who seemed to think that there still might be some delay before Frank Greystock would be ready for his wife. "You know, my dear, that he isn't rich;--not for a member of Parliament. I suppose he makes a good income, but I have always heard that he was a little backward when he began. Of course, you know, nobody need be in a hurry." Then Lucy began to think that if Frank should wish to postpone his marriage,--say for three or four years,--she might even yet become a burthen on her friend. "But don't you be frightened," continued Lady Fawn; "you shall never want a home as long as I have one to give you. We shall soon find out what are Mr. Greystock's ideas; and unless he is very unreasonable we'll make things fit." Then there came a message to Lucy from Lady Eustace. "If you please, miss, Lady Eustace will be glad to see you for a minute up in her room before she starts." So Lucy was torn away from the thoughts of her own happiness, and taken up-stairs to Lady Eustace. "You have heard that I am going?" said Lizzie. "Yes;--I heard you were to go this morning." "And you have heard why? I'm sure you will not deceive me, Lucy. Where am I to look for truth, if not to an old, old friend like you?" "Why should I deceive you, Lizzie?" "Why, indeed? only that all people do. The world is so false, so material, so worldly! One gives out one's heart and gets in return nothing but dust and ashes,--nothing but ashes and dust. Oh, I have been so disappointed in Lady Fawn!" "You know she is my dearest friend," said Lucy. "Psha! I know that you have worked for her like a slave, and that she gives you but a bare pittance." "She has been more like a mother to me than anything else," said Lucy angrily. "Because you have been tame. It does not suit me to be tame. It is not my plan to be tame. Have you heard the cause of the disagreement between Lord Fawn and me?" "Well,--no." "Tell the truth, Lucy." "How dare you tell me to tell the truth? Of course I tell the truth. I believe it is something about some property which he wants you to give back to somebody; but I don't know any more." "Yes, my dear husband, Sir Florian, who understood me,--whom I idolized,--who seemed to have been made for me,--gave me a present. Lord Fawn is pleased to say that he does not approve of my keeping any gift from my late lord. Considering that he intends to live upon the wealth which Sir Florian was generous enough to bestow upon me, this does seem to be strange! Of course, I resented such interference. Would not you have resented it?" "I don't know," said Lucy, who thought that she could bring herself to comply with any request made to her by Frank Greystock. "Any woman who had a spark of spirit would resent it, and I have resented it. I have told Lord Fawn that I will, on no account, part with the rich presents which my adored Florian showered upon me in his generosity. It is not for their richness that I keep them, but because they are, for his sake, so inexpressibly dear to me. If Lord Fawn chooses to be jealous of a necklace, he must be jealous." Lucy, who had, in truth, heard but a small fragment of the story,--just so much of it as Lydia had learned from the discreet Amelia, who herself had but a very hazy idea of the facts,--did not quite know how much of the tale, as it was now told to her, might be true and how much false. After a certain fashion she and Lizzie Eustace called themselves friends. But she did not believe her friend to be honest, and was aware that in some matters her friend would condescend--to fib. Lizzie's poetry, and romance, and high feelings, had never had the ring of true soundness in Lucy's ears. But her imagination was not strong enough to soar to the altitude of the lies which Lizzie was now telling. She did believe that the property which Lizzie was called upon to restore was held to be objectionable by Lord Fawn simply because it had reached Lizzie from the hands of her late husband. "What do you think of such conduct as that?" asked Lady Eustace. "Won't it do if you lock them up instead of wearing them?" asked Lucy. "I have never dreamed of wearing them." "I don't understand about such things," said Lucy, determined not to impute any blame to one of the Fawn family. "It is tyranny, sheer tyranny," continued the other, "and he will find that I am not the woman to yield to it. No. For love I could give up everything;--but nothing from fear. He has told me in so many words that he does not intend to go on with his engagement!" "Has he indeed?" "But I intend that he shall. If he thinks that I am going to be thrown over because he takes ideas of that kind into his head, he's mistaken. He shall know that I'm not to be made a plaything of like that. I'll tell you what you can do for me, Lucy." "What can I do for you?" "There is no one in the world I trust more thoroughly than I do you," said Lizzie,--"and hardly any one that I love so well. Think how long we have known each other! And you may be sure of this;--I always have been, and always will be, your friend with my cousin Frank." "I don't want anything of that kind," said Lucy,--"and never did." "Nobody has so much influence with Frank as I. Just do you write to me to-morrow, and the next day,--and the day after,--a mere line, you know, to tell me how the land lies here." "There would be nothing to tell." "Yes, there will; ever so much. They will be talking about me every hour. If you'll be true to me, Lucy, in this business, I'll make you the handsomest present you ever saw in your life. I'll give you a hundred-guinea brooch;--I will, indeed. You shall have the money, and buy it yourself." "A what!" said Lucy. "A hundred guineas to do what you please with!" "You mean thing!" said Lucy. "I didn't think there was a woman so mean as that in the world. I'm not surprised now at Lord Fawn. Pick up what I hear, and send it you in letters,--and then be paid money for it!" "Why not? It's all to do good." "How can you have thought to ask me to do such a thing? How can you bring yourself to think so badly of people? I'd sooner cut my hand off; and as for you, Lizzie--I think you are mean and wicked to conceive such a thing. And now good-bye." So saying, she left the room, giving her dear friend no time for further argument. Lady Eustace got away that morning, not in time, indeed, for the 11.30 train, but at such an hour as to make it unnecessary that she should appear at the early dinner. The saying of farewell was very cold and ceremonious. Of course, there was no word as to any future visit,--no word as to any future events whatever. They all shook hands with her, and special injunctions were given to the coachman to drive her safely to the station. At this ceremony Lucy was not present. Lydia had asked her to come down and say good-bye; but Lucy refused. "I saw her in her own room," said Lucy. "And was it all very affectionate?" Lydia asked. "Well--no; it was not affectionate at all." This was all that Lucy said, and thus Lady Eustace completed her visit to Fawn Court. The letters were taken away for the post at eight o'clock in the evening, and before that time it was necessary that Lucy should write to her lover. "Lady Fawn," she said in a whisper, "may I tell him to come here?" "Certainly, my dear. You had better tell him to call on me. Of course he'll see you, too, when he comes." "I think he'd want to see me," said Lucy, "and I'm sure I should want to see him!" Then she wrote her answer to Frank's letter. She allowed herself an hour for the happy task; but though the letter, when written, was short, the hour hardly sufficed for the writing of it. "DEAR MR. GREYSTOCK;"--there was matter for her of great consideration before she could get even so far as this; but, after biting her pen for ten minutes, during which she pictured to herself how pleasant it would be to call him Frank when he should have told her to do so, and had found, upon repeated whispered trials, that of all names it was the pleasantest to pronounce, she decided upon refraining from writing it now-- Lady Fawn has seen your letter to me,--the dearest letter that ever was written,--and she says that you may call upon _her_. But you mustn't go away without seeing _me too_. Then there was great difficulty as to the words to be used by her for the actual rendering herself up to him as his future wife. At last the somewhat too Spartan simplicity of her nature prevailed, and the words were written, very plain and very short. I love you better than all the world, and I will be your wife. It shall be the happiness of my life to try to deserve you. I am, with all my heart, Most affectionately your own LUCY. When it was written it did not content her. But the hour was over, and the letters must go. "I suppose it'll do," she said to herself. "He'll know what it means." And so the letter was sent. CHAPTER XVI Certainly an Heirloom The burden of his position was so heavy on Lord Fawn's mind that, on the Monday morning after leaving Fawn Court, he was hardly as true to the affairs of India as he himself would have wished. He was resolved to do what was right,--if only he could find out what would be the right thing in his present difficulty. Not to break his word, not to be unjust, not to deviate by a hair's breadth from that line of conduct which would be described as "honourable" in the circle to which he belonged; not to give his political enemies an opportunity for calumny,--this was all in all to him. The young widow was very lovely and very rich, and it would have suited him well to marry her. It would still suit him well to do so, if she would make herself amenable to reason and the laws. He had assured himself that he was very much in love with her, and had already, in his imagination, received the distinguished heads of his party at Portray Castle. But he would give all this up,--love, income, beauty, and castle,--without a doubt, rather than find himself in the mess of having married a wife who had stolen a necklace, and who would not make restitution. He might marry her, and insist on giving it up afterwards; but he foresaw terrible difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. Lady Eustace was self-willed, and had already told him that she did not intend to keep the jewels in his house,--but in her own! What should he do, so that no human being,--not the most bigoted Tory that ever expressed scorn for a Whig lord,--should be able to say that he had done wrong? He was engaged to the lady, and could not simply change his mind and give no reason. He believed in Mr. Camperdown; but he could hardly plead that belief, should he hereafter be accused of heartless misconduct. For aught he knew, Lady Eustace might bring an action against him for breach of promise, and obtain a verdict and damages, and annihilate him as an Under-Secretary. How should he keep his hands quite clean? Frank Greystock was, as far as he knew, Lizzie's nearest relative in London. The dean was her uncle, but then the dean was down at Bobsborough. It might be necessary for him to go down to Bobsborough;--but in the meantime he would see Frank Greystock. Greystock was as bitter a Tory as any in England. Greystock was the very man who had attacked him, Lord Fawn, in the House of Commons respecting the Sawab,--making the attack quite personal,--and that without a shadow of a cause! Within the short straight grooves of Lord Fawn's intellect the remembrance of this supposed wrong was always running up and down, renewing its own soreness. He regarded Greystock as an enemy who would lose no opportunity of injuring him. In his weakness and littleness he was quite unable to judge of other men by himself. He would not go a hair's breadth astray, if he knew it; but because Greystock had, in debate, called him timid and tyrannical, he believed that Greystock would stop short of nothing that might injure him. And yet he must appeal to Greystock. He did appeal, and in answer to his appeal Frank came to him at the India House. But Frank, before he saw Lord Fawn, had, as was fitting, been with his cousin. Nothing was decided at this interview. Lord Fawn became more than ever convinced that the member for Bobsborough was his determined enemy, and Frank was more convinced than ever that Lord Fawn was an empty, stiff-necked, self-sufficient prig. Greystock, of course, took his cousin's part. He was there to do so; and he himself really did not know whether Lizzie was or was not entitled to the diamonds. The lie which she had first fabricated for the benefit of Mr. Benjamin when she had the jewels valued, and which she had since told with different degrees of precision to various people,--to Lady Linlithgow, to Mr. Camperdown, to Lucy, and to Lord Fawn,--she now repeated with increased precision to her cousin. Sir Florian, in putting the trinket into her hands, had explained to her that it was very valuable, and that she was to regard it as her own peculiar property. "If it was an heirloom he couldn't do it," Frank had said, with all the confidence of a practising barrister. "He made it over as an heirloom to me," said Lizzie, with plaintive tenderness. "That's nonsense, dear Lizzie." Then she smiled sweetly on him, and patted the back of his hand with hers. She was very gentle with him, and bore his assumed superiority with pretty meekness. "He could not make it over as an heirloom to you. If it was his to give, he could give it you." "It was his,--certainly." "That is just what I cannot tell as yet, and what must be found out. If the diamonds formed part of an heirloom,--and there is evidence that it is so,--you must give them up. Sir Florian could only give away what was his own to give." "But Lord Fawn had no right to dictate." "Certainly not," said Frank; and then he made a promise, which he knew to be rash, that he would stand by his pretty cousin in this affair. "I don't see why you should assume that Lady Eustace is keeping property that doesn't belong to her," he said to Lord Fawn. "I go by what Camperdown tells me," said Lord Fawn. "Mr. Camperdown is a very excellent attorney, and a most respectable man," said Greystock. "I have nothing on earth to say against Mr. Camperdown. But Mr. Camperdown isn't the law and the prophets, nor yet can we allow him to be judge and jury in such a case as this." "Surely, Mr. Greystock, you wouldn't wish it to go before a jury." "You don't understand me, Lord Fawn. If any claim be really made for these jewels by Mr. John Eustace on the part of the heir, or on behalf of the estate, a statement had better be submitted to counsel. The family deeds must be inspected, and no doubt counsel would agree in telling my cousin, Lady Eustace, what she should, or what she should not do. In the meantime, I understand that you are engaged to marry her?" "I was engaged to her, certainly," said Lord Fawn. "You can hardly mean to assert, my lord, that you intend to be untrue to your promise, and to throw over your own engagement because my cousin has expressed her wish to retain property which she believes to be her own!" This was said in a tone which made Lord Fawn surer than ever that Greystock was his enemy to the knife. Personally, he was not a coward; and he knew enough of the world to be quite sure that Greystock would not attempt any personal encounter. But morally, Lord Fawn was a coward, and he did fear that the man before him would work him some bitter injury. "You cannot mean that," continued Frank, "and you will probably allow me to assure my cousin that she misunderstood you in the matter." "I'd sooner see Mr. Camperdown again before I say anything." "I cannot understand, Lord Fawn, that a gentleman should require an attorney to tell him what to do in such a case as this." They were standing now, and Lord Fawn's countenance was heavy, troubled, and full of doubt. He said nothing, and was probably altogether unaware how eloquent was his face. "My cousin, Lady Eustace," continued Frank, "must not be kept in this suspense. I agree on her behalf that her title to these trinkets must be made the subject of inquiry by persons adequate to form a judgment. Of course, I, as her relative, shall take no part in that inquiry. But, as her relative, I must demand from you an admission that your engagement with her cannot in any way be allowed to depend on the fate of those jewels. She has chosen to accept you as her future husband, and I am bound to see that she is treated with good faith, honour, and fair observance." Frank made his demand very well, while Lord Fawn was looking like a whipped dog. "Of course," said his lordship, "all I want is, that the right thing should be done." "The right thing will be done. My cousin wishes to keep nothing that is not her own. I may tell her, then, that she will receive from you an assurance that you have had no intention of departing from your word?" After this, Lord Fawn made some attempt at a stipulation that this assurance to Lizzie was to be founded on the counter-assurance given to him that the matter of the diamonds should be decided by proper legal authority; but Frank would not submit to this, and at last the Under-Secretary yielded. The engagement was to remain in force. Counsel were to be employed. The two lovers were not to see each other just at present. And when the matter had been decided by the lawyers, Lord Fawn was to express his regret for having suspected his lady-love! That was the verbal agreement, according to Frank Greystock's view of it. Lord Fawn, no doubt, would have declared that he had never consented to the latter stipulation. About a week after this there was a meeting at Mr. Camperdown's chambers. Greystock, as his cousin's friend, attended to hear what Mr. Camperdown had to say in the presence of Lord Fawn and John Eustace. He, Frank, had, in the meantime, been down to Richmond, had taken Lucy to his arms as his future bride, and had been closeted with Lady Fawn. As a man who was doing his duty by Lucy Morris, he was welcomed and made much of by her ladyship; but it had been impossible to leave Lizzie's name altogether unmentioned, and Frank had spoken as the champion of his cousin. Of course there had arisen something of ill-feeling between the two. Lady Fawn had taught herself to hate Lizzie, and was desirous that the match should be over, diamonds or no diamonds. She could not quite say this to her visitor, but she showed her feeling very plainly. Frank was courteous, cold, and resolute in presuming, or pretending to presume, that as a matter of course the marriage would take place. Lady Fawn intended to be civil, but she could not restrain her feeling; and though she did not dare to say that her son would have nothing more to do with Lizzie Eustace, she showed very plainly that she intended to work with that object. Of course, the two did not part as cordial friends, and of course poor Lucy perceived that it was so. Before the meeting took place, Mr. Camperdown had been at work, looking over old deeds. It is undoubtedly the case that things often become complicated which, from the greatness of their importance, should have been kept clear as running water. The diamonds in question had been bought, with other jewels, by Sir Florian's grandfather, on the occasion of his marriage with the daughter of a certain duke,--on which occasion old family jewels, which were said to have been heirlooms, were sold or given in exchange as part value for those then purchased. This grandfather, who had also been Sir Florian in his time, had expressly stated in his will that these jewels were to be regarded as an heirloom in the family, and had as such left them to his eldest son, and to that son's eldest son, should such a child be born. His eldest son had possessed them, but not that son's son. There was such an Eustace born, but he had died before his father. The younger son of that old Sir Florian had then succeeded, as Sir Thomas, and he was the father of that Florian who had married Lizzie Eustace. That last Sir Florian had therefore been the fourth in succession from the old Sir Florian by whom the will had been made, and who had directed that these jewels should be regarded as heirlooms in the family. The two intermediate baronets had made no allusion to the diamonds in any deeds executed by them. Indeed, Sir Florian's father had died without a will. There were other jewels, larger but much less valuable than the diamonds, still in the hands of the Messrs. Garnett, as to which no question was raised. The late Sir Florian had, by his will, left all the property in his house at Portray to his widow, but all property elsewhere to his heir. This was what Mr. Camperdown had at last learned, but he had been forced to admit to himself, while learning this, that there was confusion. He was confident enough, however, that there was no difficulty in the matter. The Messrs. Garnett were able to say that the necklace had been in their keeping, with various other jewels still in their possession, from the time of the death of the late Lady Eustace, up to the marriage of the late Sir Florian, her son. They stated the date on which the jewels were given up to be the 24th of September, which was the day after Sir Florian's return from Scotland with his bride. Lizzie's first statement had coincided with this entry in the Messrs. Garnett's books; but latterly she had asserted that the necklace had been given to her in Scotland. When Mr. Camperdown examined the entry himself in the jewellers' book, he found the figures to be so blotted that they might represent either the 4th or 24th September. Now, the 4th September had been the day preceding Sir Florian's marriage. John Eustace only knew that he had seen the necklace worn in Scotland by his mother. The bishop only knew that he had often seen them on the neck of his sister-in-law when, as was very often the case, she appeared in full-blown society. Mr. Camperdown believed that he had traced two stories to Lizzie,--one, repeated more than once, that the diamonds had been given to her in London, and a second, made to himself, that they had been given to her at Portray. He himself believed that they had never been in Scotland since the death of the former Lady Eustace; but he was quite confident that he could trust altogether to the disposition made of them by the old Sir Florian. There could be no doubt as to these being the diamonds there described, although the setting had been altered. Old Mr. Garnett stated that he would swear to them if he saw the necklace. "You cannot suppose that Lady Eustace wishes to keep anything that is not her own," said Frank Greystock. "Of course not," said John Eustace. "Nobody imagines it," said Mr. Camperdown. Lord Fawn, who felt that he ought not to be there, and who did not know whether he might with a better grace take Lizzie's part or a part against her, said nothing. "But," continued Mr. Camperdown, "there is luckily no doubt as to the facts. The diamonds in question formed a part of a set of most valuable ornaments settled in the family by Sir Florian Eustace in 1799. The deed was drawn up by my grandfather, and is now here. I do not know how we are to have further proof. Will you look at the deed, Mr. Greystock, and at the will?" Frank suggested that, as it might probably be expedient to take advice on the subject professionally, he had rather not look at the deed. Anything which he might say, on looking at the document now, could have no weight. "But why should any advice be necessary," said Mr. Camperdown, "when the matter is so clear?" "My dear sir," said Frank, "my cousin, Lady Eustace, is strong in her confidence that her late husband intended to give them to her as her own, and that he would not have done this without the power of doing so." Now, Mr. Camperdown was quite sure that Lizzie was lying in this, and could therefore make no adequate answer. "Your experience must probably have told you," continued Frank, "that there is considerable difficulty in dealing with the matter of heirlooms." "I never heard of any such difficulty," said Mr. Camperdown. "People generally understand it all so clearly," said Lord Fawn. "The late Sir Florian does not appear to have understood it very clearly," said Frank. "Let her put them into the hands of any indifferent person or firm till the matter is decided," said Mr. Camperdown. "They will be much safer so than in her keeping." "I think they are quite safe," said Frank. And this was all that took place at that meeting. As Mr. Camperdown said to John Eustace, it was manifest enough that she meant "to hang on to them." "I only hope Lord Fawn will not be fool enough to marry her," said Mr. Camperdown. Lord Fawn himself was of the same way of thinking;--but then how was he to clear his character of the charge which would be brought against him; and how was he to stand his ground before Frank Greystock? CHAPTER XVII The Diamonds Are Seen in Public Let it not be supposed that Lady Eustace, during these summer weeks, was living the life of a recluse. The London season was in its full splendour, and she was by no means a recluse. During the first year of her widowhood she had been every inch a widow,--as far as crape would go, and a quiet life either at Bobsborough or Portray Castle. During this year her child was born,--and she was in every way thrown upon her good behaviour, living with bishops' wives and deans' daughters. Two years of retreat from the world is generally thought to be the proper thing for a widow. Lizzie had not quite accomplished her two years before she re-opened the campaign in Mount Street with very small remnants of weeds, and with her crape brought down to a minimum;--but she was young and rich, and the world is aware that a woman of twenty-two can hardly afford to sacrifice two whole years. In the matter of her widowhood Lizzie did not encounter very much reproach. She was not shunned, or so ill spoken of as to have a widely-spread bad name among the streets and squares in which her carriage-wheels rolled. People called her a flirt, held up their hands in surprise at Sir Florian's foolish generosity,--for the accounts of Lizzie's wealth were greatly exaggerated,--and said that of course she would marry again. The general belief which often seizes upon the world in regard to some special falsehood is very surprising. Everybody on a sudden adopts an idea that some particular man is over head and ears in debt, so that he can hardly leave his house for fear of the bailiffs;--or that some ill-fated woman is cruelly ill-used by her husband;--or that some eldest son has ruined his father; whereas the man doesn't owe a shilling, the woman never hears a harsh word from her lord, and the eldest son in question has never succeeded in obtaining a shilling beyond his allowance. One of the lies about London this season was founded on the extent of Lady Eustace's jointure. Indeed, the lie went on to state that the jointure was more than a jointure. It was believed that the property in Ayrshire was her own, to do what she pleased with it. That the property in Ayrshire was taken at double its value was a matter of course. It had been declared, at the time of his marriage, that Sir Florian had been especially generous to his penniless wife, and the generosity was magnified in the ordinary way. No doubt Lizzie's own diligence had done much to propagate the story as to her positive ownership of Portray. Mr. Camperdown had been very busy denying this. John Eustace had denied it whenever occasion offered. The bishop in his quiet way had denied it. Lady Linlithgow had denied it. But the lie had been set on foot and had thriven, and there was hardly a man about town who didn't know that Lady Eustace had eight or nine thousand a year, altogether at her own disposal, down in Scotland. Of course a woman so endowed, so rich, so beautiful, so clever, so young, would marry again, and would marry well. No doubt, added to this there was a feeling that "Lizzie," as she was not uncommonly called by people who had hardly ever seen her, had something amiss with it all. "I don't know where it is she's lame," said that very clever man, Captain Boodle, who had lately reappeared among his military friends at his club, "but she don't go flat all round." "She has the devil of a temper, no doubt," said Lieutenant Griggs. "No mouth, I should say," said Boodle. It was thus that Lizzie was talked about at the clubs; but she was asked to dinners and balls, and gave little dinners herself, and to a certain extent was the fashion. Everybody had declared that of course she would marry again, and now it was known everywhere that she was engaged to Lord Fawn. "Poor dear Lord Fawn!" said Lady Glencora Palliser to her dear friend Madame Max Goesler; "do you remember how violently he was in love with Violet Effingham two years ago?" "Two years is a long time, Lady Glencora; and Violet Effingham has chosen another husband." "But isn't this a fall for him? Violet was the sweetest girl out, and at one time I really thought she meant to take him." "I thought she meant to take another man whom she did not take," said Madame Goesler, who had her own recollections, who was a widow herself, and who, at the period to which Lady Glencora was referring, had thought that perhaps she might cease to be a widow. Not that she had ever suggested to herself that Lord Fawn might be her second husband. "Poor Lord Fawn!" continued Lady Glencora. "I suppose he is terribly in want of money." "But surely Lady Eustace is very pretty." "Yes;--she is very pretty; nay more, she is quite lovely to look at. And she is clever,--very. And she is rich,--very. But--" "Well, Lady Glencora. What does your 'but' mean?" "Who ever explains a 'but'? You're a great deal too clever, Madame Goesler, to want any explanation. And I couldn't explain it. I can only say I'm sorry for poor Lord Fawn,--who is a gentleman, but will never set the Thames on fire." "No, indeed. All the same, I like Lord Fawn extremely," said Madame Goesler, "and I think he's just the man to marry Lady Eustace. He's always at his office or at the House." "A man may be a great deal at his office, and a great deal more at the House than Lord Fawn," said Lady Glencora laughing, "and yet think about his wife, my dear." For of all men known, no man spent more hours at the House or in his office than did Lady Glencora's husband, Mr. Palliser, who at this time, and had now for more than two years, filled the high place of Chancellor of the Exchequer. This conversation took place in Madame Goesler's little drawing-room in Park Lane; but, three days after this, the same two ladies met again at the house then occupied by Lady Chiltern in Portman Square,--Lady Chiltern, with whom, as Violet Effingham, poor Lord Fawn had been much in love. "I think it is the nicest match in the world for him," Lady Chiltern had said to Madame Goesler. "But have you heard of the diamonds?" asked Lady Glencora. "What diamonds?" "Whose diamonds?" Neither of the others had heard of the diamonds, and Lady Glencora was able to tell her story. Lady Eustace had found all the family jewels belonging to the Eustace family in the strong plate room at Portray Castle, and had taken possession of them as property found in her own house. John Eustace and the bishop had combined in demanding them on behalf of the heir, and a lawsuit had then commenced! The diamonds were the most costly belonging to any Commoner in England, and had been valued at twenty-four thousand pounds! Lord Fawn had retreated from his engagement the moment he heard that any doubt was thrown on Lady Eustace's right to their possession! Lady Eustace had declared her intention of bringing an action against Lord Fawn,--and had also secreted the diamonds! The reader will be aware that this statement was by no means an accurate history of the difficulty as far as it had as yet progressed. It was, indeed, absolutely false in every detail; but it sufficed to show that the matter was becoming public. "You don't mean to say that Lord Fawn is off?" asked Madame Goesler. "I do," said Lady Glencora. "Poor Lord Fawn!" exclaimed Lady Chiltern. "It really seems as though he never would be settled." "I don't think he has courage enough for such conduct as that," said Madame Goesler. "And besides, Lady Eustace's income is quite certain," said Lady Chiltern, "and poor dear Lord Fawn does want money so badly." "But it is very disagreeable," said Lady Glencora, "to believe that your wife has got the finest diamonds in England, and then to find that she has only--stolen them. I think Lord Fawn is right. If a man does marry for money he should have the money. I wonder she ever took him. There is no doubt about her beauty, and she might have done better." "I won't hear Lord Fawn be-littled," said Lady Chiltern. "Done better!" said Madame Goesler. "How could she have done better? He is a peer, and her son would be a peer. I don't think she could have done better." Lady Glencora in her time had wished to marry a man who had sought her for her money. Lady Chiltern in her time had refused to be Lady Fawn. Madame Goesler in her time had declined to marry an English peer. There was, therefore, something more of interest in the conversation to each of them than was quite expressed in the words spoken. "Is she to be at your party on Friday, Lady Glencora?" asked Madame Goesler. "She has said she would come,--and so has Lord Fawn; for that matter, Lord Fawn dines with us. She'll find that out, and then she'll stay away." "Not she," said Lady Chiltern. "She'll come for the sake of the bravado. She's not the woman to show the white feather." "If he's ill-using her she's quite right," said Madame Goesler. "And wear the very diamonds in dispute," said Lady Chiltern. It was thus that the matter was discussed among ladies in the town. "Is Fawn's marriage going on?" This question was asked of Mr. Legge Wilson by Barrington Erle. Mr. Legge Wilson was the Secretary of State for India, and Barrington Erle was in the Government. "Upon my word I don't know," said Mr. Wilson. "The work goes on at the office;--that's all I know about Fawn. He hasn't told me of his marriage, and therefore I haven't spoken to him about it." "He hasn't made it official?" "The papers haven't come before me yet," said Mr. Wilson. "When they do they'll be very awkward papers, as far as I hear," said Barrington Erle. "There is no doubt they were engaged, and I believe there is no doubt that he has declared off, and refused to give any reason." "I suppose the money is not all there," suggested Mr. Wilson. "There's a queer story going about as to some diamonds. No one knows whom they belong to, and they say that Fawn has accused her of stealing them. He wants to get hold of them, and she won't give them up. I believe the lawyers are to have a shy at it. I'm sorry for Fawn. It'll do him a deal of mischief." "You'll find he won't come out much amiss," said Mr. Legge Wilson. "He's as cautious a man as there is in London. If there is anything wrong--" "There is a great deal wrong," said Barrington Erle. "You'll find it will be on her side." "And you'll find also that she'll contrive that all the blame shall lie upon him. She's clever enough for anything! Who's to be the new bishop?" "I have not heard Gresham say as yet; Jones, I should think," said Mr. Wilson. "And who is Jones?" "A clergyman, I suppose,--of the safe sort. I don't know that anything else is necessary." From which it will be seen that Mr. Wilson had his own opinion about church matters, and also that people very high up in the world were concerning themselves about poor Lizzie's affairs. Lady Eustace did go to Lady Glencora's evening party, in spite of Mr. Camperdown and all her difficulties. Lady Chiltern had been quite right in saying that Lizzie was not the woman to show the white feather. She went, knowing that she would meet Lord Fawn, and she did wear the diamonds. It was the first time that they had been round her neck since the occasion in respect to which Sir Florian had placed them in her hands, and it had not been without much screwing up of her courage that she had resolved to appear on this occasion with the much-talked-of ornament upon her person. It was now something over a fortnight since she had parted with Lord Fawn at Fawn Court; and, although they were still presumed to be engaged to marry each other, and were both living in London, she had not seen him since. A sort of message had reached her, through Frank Greystock, to the effect that Lord Fawn thought it as well that they should not meet till the matter was settled. Stipulations had been made by Frank on her behalf, and this had been inserted among them. She had received the message with scorn,--with a mixture of scorn and gratitude,--of scorn in regard to the man who had promised to marry her, and of affectionate gratitude to the cousin who had made the arrangement. "Of course I shall not wish to see him while he chooses to entertain such an idea," she had said, "but I shall not keep out of his way. You would not wish me to keep out of his way, Frank?" When she received a card for Lady Glencora's party, very soon after this, she was careful to answer it in such a manner as to impress Lady Glencora with a remembrance of her assent. Lord Fawn would probably be there,--unless he remained away in order to avoid her. Then she had ten days in which to make up her mind as to wearing the diamonds. Her courage was good; but then her ignorance was so great! She did not know whether Mr. Camperdown might not contrive to have them taken by violence from her neck, even on Lady Glencora's stairs. Her best security,--so she thought,--would be in the fact that Mr. Camperdown would not know of her purpose. She told no one,--not even Miss Macnulty; but she appeared before that lady, arrayed in all her glory, just as she was about to descend to her carriage. "You've got the necklace on!" said Miss Macnulty. "Why should I not wear my own necklace?" she asked, with assumed anger. Lady Glencora's rooms were already very full when Lizzie entered them, but she was without a gentleman, and room was made for her to pass quickly up the stairs. The diamonds had been recognised by many before she had reached the drawing-room;--not that these very diamonds were known, or that there was a special memory for that necklace;--but the subject had been so generally discussed, that the blaze of the stones immediately brought it to the minds of men and women. "There she is, with poor Eustace's twenty thousand pounds round her neck," said Laurence Fitzgibbon to his friend Barrington Erle. "And there is Lord Fawn going to look after them," replied the other. Lord Fawn thought it right, at any rate, to look after his bride. Lady Glencora had whispered into his ear before they went down to dinner that Lady Eustace would be there in the evening, so that he might have the option of escaping or remaining. Could he have escaped without any one knowing that he had escaped, he would not have gone up-stairs after dinner; but he knew that he was observed; he knew that people were talking about him; and he did not like it to be said that he had run away. He went up, thinking much of it all, and as soon as he saw Lady Eustace he made his way to her and accosted her. Many eyes were upon them, but no ear probably heard how infinitely unimportant were the words which they spoke to each other. Her manner was excellent. She smiled and gave him her hand,--just her hand without the slightest pressure,--and spoke a half-whispered word, looking into his face, but betraying nothing by her look. Then he asked her whether she would dance. Yes;--she would stand up for a quadrille; and they did stand up for a quadrille. As she danced with no one else, it was clear that she treated Lord Fawn as her lover. As soon as the dance was done she took his arm and moved for a few minutes about the room with him. She was very conscious of the diamonds, but she did not show the feeling in her face. He also was conscious of them, and he did show it. He did not recognise the necklace, but he knew well that this was the very bone of contention. They were very beautiful, and seemed to him to outshine all other jewellery in the room. And Lady Eustace was a woman of whom it might almost be said that she ought to wear diamonds. She was made to sparkle, to be bright with outside garniture,--to shine and glitter, and be rich in apparel. The only doubt might be whether paste diamonds might not better suit her character. But these were not paste, and she did shine and glitter and was very rich. It must not be brought as an accusation against Lady Glencora's guests that they pressed round to look at the necklace. Lady Glencora's guests knew better than to do that. But there was some slight ferment,--slight, but still felt both by Lord Fawn and by Lady Eustace. Eyes were turned upon the diamonds, and there were whispers here and there. Lizzie bore it very well; but Lord Fawn was uncomfortable. "I like her for wearing them," said Lady Glencora to Lady Chiltern. "Yes;--if she means to keep them. I don't pretend, however, to know anything about it. You see the match isn't off." "I suppose not. What do you think I did? He dined here, you know, and, before going down-stairs, I told him that she was coming. I thought it only fair." "And what did he say?" "I took care that he shouldn't have to say anything; but, to tell the truth, I didn't expect him to come up." "There can't be any quarrel at all," said Lady Chiltern. "I'm not sure of that," said Lady Glencora. "They are not so very loving." Lady Eustace made the most of her opportunity. Soon after the quadrille was over she asked Lord Fawn to get her carriage for her. Of course he got it, and of course he put her into it, passing up and down-stairs twice in his efforts on her behalf. And of course all the world saw what he was doing. Up to the last moment not a word had been spoken between them that might not have passed between the most ordinary acquaintance, but, as she took her seat, she put her face forward and did say a word. "You had better come to me soon," she said. "I will," said Lord Fawn. "Yes; you had better come soon. All this is wearing me,--perhaps more than you think." "I will come soon," said Lord Fawn, and then he returned among Lady Glencora's guests, very uncomfortable. Lizzie got home in safety and locked up her diamonds in the iron box. CHAPTER XVIII "And I Have Nothing to Give" It was now the end of June, and Frank Greystock had been as yet but once at Fawn Court since he had written to Lucy Morris asking her to be his wife. That was three weeks since, and as the barrier against him at Fawn Court had been removed by Lady Fawn herself, the Fawn girls thought that as a lover he was very slack; but Lucy was not in the least annoyed. Lucy knew that it was all right; for Frank, as he took his last walk round the shrubbery with her during that visit, had given her to understand that there was a little difference between him and Lady Fawn in regard to Lizzie Eustace. "I am her only relative in London," Frank had said. "Lady Linlithgow," suggested Lucy. "They have quarrelled, and the old woman is as bitter as gall. There is no one else to stand up for her, and I must see that she isn't ill-used. Women do hate each other so virulently, and Lady Fawn hates her future daughter-in-law." Lucy did not in the least grudge her lover's assistance to his cousin. There was nothing of jealousy in her feeling. She thought that Lizzie was unworthy of Frank's goodness, but on such an occasion as this she would not say so. She told him nothing of the bribe that had been offered her, nor on that subject had she said a word to any of the Fawns. She understood, too, that as Frank had declared his purpose of supporting Lizzie, it might be as well that he should see just at present as little of Lady Fawn as possible. Not a word, however, had Lady Fawn said to Lucy disparaging her lover for his conduct. It was quite understood now at Fawn Court, by all the girls, and no doubt by the whole establishment, that Lizzie Eustace was to be regarded as an enemy. It was believed by them all that Lord Fawn had broken off the match--or, at least, that he was resolved to break it; but various stratagems were to be used, and terrible engines of war were to be brought up, if necessary, to prevent an alliance which was now thought to be disreputable. Mrs. Hittaway had been hard at work, and had found out something very like truth in regard to the whole transaction with Mr. Benjamin. Perhaps Mrs. Hittaway had found out more than was quite true as to poor Lizzie's former sins; but what she did find out she used with all her skill, communicating her facts to her mother, to Mr. Camperdown, and to her brother. Her brother had almost quarrelled with her, but still she continued to communicate her facts. At this period Frank Greystock was certainly somewhat unreasonable in regard to his cousin. At one time, as the reader will remember, he had thought of asking her to be his wife;--because she was rich; but even then he had not thought well of her, had hardly believed her to be honest, and had rejoiced when he found that circumstances rather than his own judgment had rescued him from that evil. He had professed to be delighted when Lord Fawn was accepted,--as being happy to think that his somewhat dangerous cousin was provided with so safe a husband; and, when he had first heard of the necklace, he had expressed an opinion that of course it would be given up. In all this then he had shown no strong loyalty to his cousin, no very dear friendship, nothing to make those who knew him feel that he would buckle on armour in her cause. But of late,--and that, too, since his engagement with Lucy,--he had stood up very stoutly as her friend, and the armour was being buckled on. He had not scrupled to say that he meant to see her through this business with Lord Fawn, and had somewhat astonished Mr. Camperdown by raising a doubt on the question of the necklace. "He can't but know that she has no more right to it than I have," Mr. Camperdown had said to his son with indignation. Mr. Camperdown was becoming unhappy about the necklace, not quite knowing how to proceed in the matter. In the meantime Frank had obeyed his better instincts, and had asked Lucy Morris to be his wife. He had gone to Fawn Court in compliance with a promise to Lizzie Eustace, that he would call upon her there. He had walked with Lucy because he was at Fawn Court. And he had written to Lucy because of the words he had spoken during the walk. In all this the matter had arranged itself as such matters do, and there was nothing, in truth, to be regretted. He really did love the girl with all his heart. It may, perhaps, be said that he had never in truth loved any other woman. In the best humours of his mind he would tell himself,--had from old times told himself often,--that unless he married Lucy Morris he could never marry at all. When his mother, knowing that poor Lucy was penniless, had, as mothers will do, begged him to beware, he had spoken up for his love honestly, declaring to her that in his eyes there was no woman living equal to Lucy Morris. The reader has seen him with the words almost on his tongue with which to offer his hand to his cousin, Lizzie Eustace, knowing as he did so that his heart had been given to Lucy,--knowing also that Lucy's heart had been given to him! But he had not done it, and the better humour had prevailed. Within the figure and frame and clothes and cuticle, within the bones and flesh of many of us, there is but one person,--a man or woman, with a preponderance either of good or evil, whose conduct in any emergency may be predicted with some assurance of accuracy by any one knowing the man or woman. Such persons are simple, single, and, perhaps, generally, safe. They walk along lines in accordance with certain fixed instincts or principles, and are to-day as they were yesterday, and will be to-morrow as they are to-day. Lady Eustace was such a person, and so was Lucy Morris. Opposite in their characters as the two poles, they were, each of them, a simple entity; and any doubt or error in judging of the future conduct of either of them would come from insufficient knowledge of the woman. But there are human beings who, though of necessity single in body, are dual in character;--in whose breasts not only is evil always fighting against good,--but to whom evil is sometimes horribly, hideously evil, but is sometimes also not hideous at all. Of such men it may be said that Satan obtains an intermittent grasp, from which, when it is released, the rebound carries them high amidst virtuous resolutions and a thorough love of things good and noble. Such men,--or women,--may hardly, perhaps, debase themselves with the more vulgar vices. They will not be rogues, or thieves, or drunkards,--or, perhaps, liars; but ambition, luxury, self-indulgence, pride, and covetousness will get a hold of them, and in various moods will be to them virtues in lieu of vices. Such a man was Frank Greystock, who could walk along the banks of the quiet, trout-giving Bob, at Bobsborough, whipping the river with his rod, telling himself that the world lost for love would be a bad thing well lost for a fine purpose; and who could also stand, with his hands in his trousers pockets, looking down upon the pavement, in the purlieus of the courts at Westminster, and swear to himself that he would win the game, let the cost to his heart be what it might. What must a man be who would allow some undefined feeling,--some inward ache which he calls a passion and cannot analyse, some desire which has come of instinct and not of judgment,--to interfere with all the projects of his intellect, with all the work which he has laid out for his accomplishment? Circumstances had thrown him into a path of life for which, indeed, his means were insufficient, but which he regarded as, of all paths, the noblest and the manliest. If he could be true to himself,--with such truth as at these moments would seem to him to be the truest truth,--there was nothing in rank, nothing in ambition, which might not be within his reach. He might live with the highest, the best-educated, and the most beautiful; he might assist in directing national councils by his intelligence; and might make a name for himself which should be remembered in his country, and of which men would read the records in the histories written in after ages. But to do this, he must walk warily. He, an embarrassed man, a man already in debt, a man with no realised property coming to him in reversion, was called upon to live, and to live as though at his ease, among those who had been born to wealth. And, indeed, he had so cleverly learned the ways of the wealthy, that he hardly knew any longer how to live at his ease among the poor. But had he walked warily when he went down to Richmond, and afterwards, sitting alone in the obscurity of his chamber, wrote the letter which had made Lucy Morris so happy? It must be acknowledged that he did, in truth, love the girl,--that he was capable of a strong feeling. She was not beautiful,--hardly even pretty, small, in appearance almost insignificant, quite penniless, a governess! He had often asked himself what it was that had so vanquished him. She always wore a pale grey frock,--with, perhaps, a grey ribbon,--never running into any bright form of clothing. She was educated, very well-educated; but she owned no great accomplishment. She had not sung his heart away, or ravished him with the harp. Even of her words she was sparing, seeming to care more to listen than to speak; a humble little thing to look at,--one of whom you might say that she regarded herself as well-placed if left in the background. Yet he had found her out, and knew her. He had recognised the treasure, and had greatly desired to possess it. He had confessed to himself that, could splendour and ambition be laid aside, that little thing would be all the world to him. As he sat in court, or in the House, patient from practice as he half-listened to the ponderous speeches of advocates or politicians, he would think of the sparkle in her eye, of the dimple in her chin, of the lines of the mouth which could plead so eloquently, though with few words. To sit on some high seat among his countrymen, and also to marry Lucy Morris,--that would be a high ambition. He had chosen his way now, and she was engaged to be his wife. As he thought of it after he had done it, it was not all happiness, all contentment, with him. He did feel that he had crippled himself,--impeded himself in running the race, as it were, with a log round his leg. He had offered to marry her, and he must do so at once, or almost at once, because she could now find no other home but his. He knew, as well as did Lady Fawn, that she could not go into another family as governess; and he knew also that she ought not to remain in Lady Fawn's house an hour longer than she would be wanted there. He must alter his plan of living at once, give up the luxury of his rooms at the Grosvenor, take a small house somewhere, probably near the Swiss Cottage, come up and down to his chambers by the underground railway, and, in all probability, abandon Parliament altogether. He was not sure whether, in good faith, he should not at once give notice of his intended acceptance of the Chiltern Hundreds to the electors of Bobsborough. Thus meditating, under the influence of that intermittent evil grasp, almost angry with himself for the open truth which he had spoken,--or rather written, and perhaps thinking more of Lizzie and her beauty than he should have done, in the course of three weeks he had paid but one visit to Fawn Court. Then, of a sudden, finding himself one afternoon relieved from work, he resolved to go there. The days were still almost at their longest, and he did not scruple to present himself before Lady Fawn between eight and nine in the evening. They were all at tea, and he was welcomed kindly. Lucy, when he was announced, at once got up and met him almost at the doorway, sparkling with just a tear of joy in her eye, with a look in her face, and a loving manner, which for the moment made him sure that the little house near the Swiss Cottage would, after all, be the only Elysium upon earth. If she spoke a word he hardly heard it, but her hand was in his, so cool and soft, almost trembling in its grasp, with no attempt to withdraw itself, frank, loving, and honest. There was a perfect satisfaction in her greeting which at once told him that she had no discontented thoughts,--had had no such thought,--because he had been so long without coming. To see him was a great joy. But every hour of her life was a joy to her, knowing, as she did know, that he loved her. Lady Fawn was gracious, the girls were hospitable, and he found himself made very welcome amidst all the women at the tea-table. Not a word was said about Lizzie Eustace. Lady Fawn talked about Parliament, and professed to pity a poor lover who was so bound to his country that he could not see his mistress above once a fortnight. "But there'll be a good time coming next month," she said;--for it was now July. "Though the girls can't make their claims felt, the grouse can." "It isn't the House altogether that rules me with a rod of iron, Lady Fawn," said Frank, "but the necessity of earning daily bread by the sweat of my brow. A man who has to sit in court all day must take the night,--or, indeed, any time that he can get,--to read up his cases." "But the grouse put a stop to all work," said Lady Fawn. "My gardener told me just now that he wanted a day or two in August. I don't doubt but that he is going to the moors. Are you going to the moors, Mr. Greystock?" As it happened, Frank Greystock did not quite know whether he was going to the moors or not. The Ayrshire grouse-shooting is not the best in Scotland;--but there is grouse-shooting in Ayrshire; and the shooting on the Portray mountains is not the worst shooting in the county. The castle at Portray overhangs the sea, but there is a wild district attached to it stretching far back inland, in regard to which Lizzie Eustace was very proud of talking of "her shooting." Early in the spring of the present year she had asked her cousin Frank to accept the shooting for the coming season,--and he had accepted it. "I shall probably be abroad," she said, "but there is the old castle." She had offered it as though he had been her brother, and he had said that he would go down for a couple of weeks,--not to the castle, but to a little lodge some miles up from the sea, of which she told him when he declined the castle. When this invitation was given there was no engagement between her and Lord Fawn. Since that date, within the last day or two, she had reminded him of it. "Won't his lordship be there?" he had said laughingly. "Certainly not," she had answered with serious earnestness. Then she had explained that her plan of going abroad had been set aside by circumstances. She did mean to go down to Portray. "I couldn't have you at the castle," she said, smiling; "but even an Othello couldn't object to a first cousin at a little cottage ever so many miles off." It wasn't for him to suggest what objections might rise to the brain of a modern Othello; but after some hesitation he said that he would be there. He had promised the trip to a friend, and would like to keep his promise. But, nevertheless, he almost thought that he ought to avoid Portray. He intended to support his cousin as far as he might do so honestly; but he was not quite minded to stand by her through good report and evil report. He did not desire to be specially known as her champion, and yet he felt that that position would be almost forced upon him. He foresaw danger,--and consequently he was doubting about his journey to Scotland. "I hardly know whether I am or not," said Frank,--and he almost felt that he was blushing. "I hope you are," said Lucy. "When a man has to work all day and nearly all night he should go where he may get fresh air." "There's very good air without going to Scotland for it," said Lady Fawn, who kept up an excellent house at Richmond, but who, with all her daughters, could not afford autumn trips. The Fawns lived at Fawn Court all the year round, and consequently Lady Fawn thought that air was to be found in England sufficiently good for all purposes of vitality and recreation. "It's not quite the same thing," said Lucy;--"at least, not for a man." After that she was allowed to escape into the grounds with her lover, and was made happy with half-an-hour of unalloyed bliss. To be alone with the girl to whom he is not engaged is a man's delight;--to be alone with the man to whom she is engaged is the woman's. When the thing is settled there is always present to the man something of a feeling of clipped wings; whereas the woman is conscious of a new power of expanding her pinions. The certainty of the thing is to him repressive. He has done his work, and gained his victory,--and by conquering has become a slave. To her the certainty of the thing is the removal of a restraint which has hitherto always been on her. She can tell him everything, and be told everything,--whereas her previous confidences, made with those of her own sex, have been tame, and by comparison valueless. He has no new confidence to make,--unless when he comes to tell her he likes his meat well done, and wants his breakfast to be punctual. Lucy now not only promised herself, but did actually realise a great joy. He seemed to her all that her heart desired. He was a man whose manner was naturally caressing and demonstrative, and she was to him, of all women, the sweetest, the dearest, the most perfect,--and all his own. "But, Frank,"--she had already been taught to call him Frank when they were alone together,--"what will come of all this about Lizzie Eustace?" "They will be married,--of course." "Do you think so? I am sure Lady Fawn doesn't think so." "What Lady Fawn thinks on such a matter cannot be helped. When a man asks a woman to marry him, and she accepts, the natural consequence is that they will be married. Don't you think so?" "I hope so,--sometimes," said Lucy, with her two hands joined upon his arm, and hanging to it with all her little weight. "You really do hope it?" he said. "Oh, I do; you know I do. Hope it! I should die if I didn't hope it." "Then why shouldn't she?" He asked his question with a quick, sharp voice, and then turned upon her for an answer. "I don't know," she said, very softly, and still clinging to him. "I sometimes think there is a difference in people." "There is a difference; but, still, we hardly judge of people sufficiently by our own feelings. As she accepted him, you may be sure that she wishes to marry him. She has more to give than he has." "And I have nothing to give," she said. "If I thought so, I'd go back even now," he answered. "It is because you have so much to give,--so much more than most others,--that I have thought of you, dreamed of you as my wife, almost ever since I first knew you." "I have nothing left to give," she said. "What I ever had is all given. People call it the heart. I think it is heart, and brain, and mind, and body,--and almost soul. But, Frank, though Lizzie Eustace is your cousin, I don't want to be likened to her. She is very clever, and beautiful,--and has a way with her that I know is charming;--but--" "But what, Lucy?" "I don't think she cares so much as some people. I dare say she likes Lord Fawn very well, but I do not believe she loves him as I love you." "They're engaged," said Frank, "and the best thing they can do is to marry each other. I can tell you this, at any rate,"--and his manner again became serious,--"if Lord Fawn behaves ill to her, I, as her cousin, shall take her part." "You don't mean that you'll--fight him!" "No, my darling. Men don't fight each other now-a-days;--not often, at least, and Fawn and I are not of the fighting sort. I can make him understand what I mean and what others will mean without fighting him. He is making a paltry excuse." "But why should he want to excuse himself--without reason?" "Because he is afraid. People have got hold of him and told him lies, and he thinks there will be a scrape about this necklace, and he hates a scrape. He'll marry her at last, without a doubt, and Lady Fawn is only making trouble for herself by trying to prevent it. You can't do anything." "Oh no;--I can't do anything. When she was here it became at last quite disagreeable. She hardly spoke to them, and I'm sure that even the servants understood that there was a quarrel." She did not say a word of Lizzie's offer of the brooch to herself, nor of the stories which by degrees were reaching her ears as to the old debts, and the diamonds, and the young bride's conduct to Lady Linlithgow as soon as she married her grand husband, Sir Florian. She did think badly of Lizzie, and could not but regret that her own noble, generous Frank should have to expend his time and labour on a friend unworthy of his friendship; but there was no shade of jealousy in her feeling, and she uttered no word against Lizzie more bitter than that in which she declared that there was a difference between people. And then there was something said as to their own prospects in life. Lucy at once and with vehemence declared that she did not look for or expect an immediate marriage. She did not scruple to tell him that she knew well how difficult was the task before him, and that it might be essential for his interest that he should remain as he was for a year or two. He was astonished to find how completely she understood his position, and how thoroughly she sympathised with his interests. "There is only one thing I couldn't do for you," she said. "And what is the one thing?" "I couldn't give you up. I almost thought that I ought to refuse you because I can do nothing,--nothing to help you. But there will always come a limit to self-denial. I couldn't do that! Could I?" The reader will know how this question was answered, and will not want to be told of the long, close, clinging, praiseworthy kiss with which the young barrister assured her that would have been on her part an act of self-denial which would to him have been absolutely ruinous. It was agreed, however, between them, that Lady Fawn should be told that they did not propose to marry till some time in the following year, and that she should be formally asked to allow Lucy to have a home at Fawn Court in the interval. CHAPTER XIX "As My Brother" Lord Fawn had promised, as he put Lizzie into her carriage, that he would come to her soon,--but he did not come soon. A fortnight passed and he did not show himself. Nothing further had been done in the matter of the diamonds, except that Mr. Camperdown had written to Frank Greystock, explaining how impossible it was that the question of their possession should be referred to arbitration. According to him they belonged to the heir, as did the estate; and no one would have the power of accepting an arbitration respecting them,--an arbitration which might separate them from the estate of which an infant was the owner for his life,--any more than such arbitration could be accepted as to the property of the estate itself. "Possession is nine points of the law," said Frank to himself, as he put the letter aside,--thinking at the same time that possession in the hands of Lizzie Eustace included certainly every one of those nine points. Lizzie wore her diamonds again and then again. There may be a question whether the possession of the necklace and the publicity of their history,--which, however, like many other histories, was most inaccurately told,--did not add something to her reputation as a lady of fashion. In the meantime, Lord Fawn did not come to see her. So she wrote to him. "My dear Frederic, had you not better come to me? Yours affectionately,--L. I go to the North at the end of this month." But Frank Greystock did visit her,--more than once. On the day after the above letter was written he came to her. It was on Sunday afternoon, when July was more than half over, and he found her alone. Miss Macnulty had gone to church, and Lizzie was lying listlessly on a sofa with a volume of poetry in her hand. She had in truth been reading the book, and in her way enjoying it. It told her the story of certain knights of old, who had gone forth in quest of a sign from heaven, which sign, if verily seen by them, might be taken to signify that they themselves were esteemed holy, and fit for heavenly joy. One would have thought that no theme could have been less palatable to such a one as Lizzie Eustace; but the melody of the lines had pleased her ear, and she was always able to arouse for herself a false enthusiasm on things which were utterly outside herself in life. She thought she too could have travelled in search of that holy sign, and have borne all things, and abandoned all things, and have persevered,--and of a certainty have been rewarded. But as for giving up a string of diamonds, in common honesty,--that was beyond her. "I wonder whether men ever were like that?" she said, as she allowed her cousin to take the book from her hands. "Let us hope not." "Oh, Frank!" "They were, no doubt, as fanatic and foolish as you please. If you will read to the end--" "I have read it all,--every word of it," said Lizzie, enthusiastically. "Then you know that Arthur did not go on the search, because he had a job of work to do, by the doing of which the people around him might perhaps be somewhat benefited." "I like Launcelot better than Arthur," said Lizzie. "So did the Queen," replied Frank. "Your useful, practical man, who attends vestries, and sits at Boards, and measures out his gifts to others by the ounce, never has any heart. Has he, Frank?" "I don't know what heart means. I sometimes fancy that it is a talent for getting into debt, and running away with other men's wives." "You say that on purpose to make me quarrel with you. You don't run away with other men's wives, and you have heart." "But I get into debt, unfortunately; and as for other men's wives, I am not sure that I may not do even that some day. Has Lord Fawn been here?" She shook her head. "Or written?" Again she shook her head. As she did so the long curl waved and was very near to him, for he was sitting close to the sofa, and she had raised herself so that she might look into his face and speak to him almost in a whisper. "Something should be settled, Lizzie, before you leave town." "I wrote to him, yesterday,--one line, and desired him to come. I expected him here to-day, but you have come instead. Shall I say that I am disappointed?" "No doubt you are so." "Oh, Frank, how vain you men are! You want me to swear to you that I would sooner have you with me than him. You are not content with--thinking it, unless I tell you that it is so. You know that it is so. Though he is to be my husband,--I suppose he will be my husband,--his spirit is not congenial to mine, as is yours." "Had you not loved him you would not have accepted him." "What was I to do, Frank? What am I to do? Think how desolate I am, how unfriended, how much in want of some one whom I can call a protector! I cannot have you always with me. You care more for the little finger of that prim piece of propriety down at the old dowager's than you do for me and all my sorrows." This was true, but Frank did not say that it was true. "Lord Fawn is at any rate respectable. At least, I thought he was so when I accepted his offer." "He is respectable enough." "Just that;--isn't it?--and nothing more. You do not blame me for saying that I would be his wife? If you do, I will unsay it, let it cost me what it may. He is treating me so badly that I need not go far for an excuse." Then she looked into his face with all the eagerness of her gaze, clearly implying that she expected a serious answer. "Why do you not answer me, Frank?" "What am I to say? He is a timid, cautious man. They have frightened him about this trumpery necklace, and he is behaving badly. But he will make a good husband. He is not a spendthrift. He has rank. All his people are respectable. As Lady Fawn, any house in England will be open to you. He is not rich, but together you will be rich." "What is all that without love?" "I do not doubt his love. And when you are his own he will love you dearly." "Ah, yes;--as he would a horse or a picture. Is there anything of the rapture of love in that? Is that your idea of love? Is it so you love your Miss Demure?" "Don't call names, Lizzie." "I shall say what I please of her. You and I are to be friends, and I may not speak? No;--I will have no such friendship! She is demure. If you like it, what harm is there in my saying it? I am not demure. I know that. I do not, at least, pretend to be other than I am. When she becomes your wife, I wonder whether you will like her ways?" He had not yet told her that she was to be his wife, nor did he so tell her now. He thought for a moment that he had better tell her, but he did not do so. It would, he said to himself, add an embarrassment to his present position. And as the marriage was to be postponed for a year, it might be better, perhaps, for Lucy that it should not be declared openly. It was thus he argued with himself, but yet, no doubt, he knew well that he did not declare the truth because it would take away something of its sweetness from this friendship with his cousin Lizzie. "If ever I do marry," he said, "I hope I shall like my wife's ways." "Of course you will not tell me anything. I do not expect confidence from you. I do not think a man is ever able to work himself up to the mark of true confidence with his friend. Men together, when they like each other, talk of politics, or perhaps of money; but I doubt whether they ever really tell their thoughts and longings to each other." "Are women more communicative?" "Yes;--certainly. What is there that I would not tell you if you cared to hear it? Every thought I have is open to you if you choose to read it. I have that feeling regarding you that I would keep nothing back from you. Oh, Frank, if you understood me, you could save me,--I was going to say--from all unhappiness." She did it so well that he would have been more than man had he not believed some of it. She was sitting almost upright now, though her feet were still on the sofa, and was leaning over towards him, as though imploring him for his aid, and her eyes were full of tears, and her lips were apart as though still eager with the energy of expression, and her hands were clasped together. She was very lovely, very attractive, almost invincible. For such a one as Frank Greystock opposition to her in her present mood was impossible. There are men by whom a woman, if she have wit, beauty, and no conscience, cannot be withstood. Arms may be used against them, and a sort of battle waged, against which they can raise no shield,--from which they can retire into no fortress,--in which they can parry no blow. A man so weak and so attacked may sometimes run; but even the poor chance of running is often cut off from him. How unlike she was to Lucy! He believed her,--in part; and yet that was the idea that occurred to him. When Lucy was much in earnest, in her eye, too, a tear would sparkle, the smallest drop, a bright liquid diamond that never fell; and all her face would be bright and eloquent with feeling;--but how unlike were the two! He knew that the difference was that between truth and falsehood;--and yet he partly believed the falsehood! "If I knew how to save you from an hour's uneasiness, I would do it," he said. "No;--no;--no;" she murmured. "Would I not? You do not know me then." He had nothing further to say, and it suited her to remain silent for the moment, while she dried her eyes, and recovered her composure, and prepared herself to carry on the battle with a smile. She would carry on the battle, using every wile she knew, straining every nerve to be victorious, encountering any and all dangers, and yet she had no definite aim before her. She herself did not know what she would be at. At this period of her career she did not want to marry her cousin,--having resolved that she would be Lady Fawn. Nor did she intend that her cousin should be her lover,--in the ordinary sense of love. She was far too wary in the pursuit of the world's goods to sacrifice herself to any such wish as that. She did want him to help her about the diamonds,--but such help as that she might have, as she knew well, on much easier terms. There was probably an anxiety in her bosom to cause him to be untrue to Lucy Morris; but the guiding motive of her conduct was the desire to make things seem to be other than they were. To be always acting a part rather than living her own life was to her everything. "After all we must come to facts," he said, after a while. "I suppose it will be better that you should marry Lord Fawn." "If you wish it." "Nay;--I cannot have that said. In this matter you must rule yourself by your own judgment. If you are averse to it--" She shook her head. "Then you will own that it had better be so." Again she shook her head. "Lizzie, for your sake and my own, I must declare, that if you have no opinion in this matter, neither will I have any. You shall never have to say that I pressed you into this marriage or debarred you from marrying. I could not bear such an accusation." "But you might tell me what I ought to do." "No;--certainly not." "Think how young I am, and,--by comparison,--how old you are. You are eight years older than I am. Remember;--after all that I have gone through, I am but twenty-two. At my age other girls have their friends to tell them. I have no one,--unless you will tell me." "You have accepted him?" "Yes." "I suppose he is not altogether indifferent to you?" She paused, and again shook her head. "Indeed, I do not know. If you mean, do I love him, as I could love some man whose heart was quite congenial to my own, certainly I do not." She continued to shake her head very sadly. "I esteemed him,--when he asked me." "Say at once that, having made up your mind, you will go through with it." "You think that I ought?" "You think so,--yourself." "So be it, Frank. I will. But, Frank, I will not give up my property. You do not wish me to do that. It would be weak, now;--would it not? I am sure that it is my own." "His faith to you should not depend on that." "No, of course not; that is just what I mean. He can have no right to interfere. When he asked me to be his wife, he said nothing about that. But if he does not come to me, what shall I do?" "I suppose I had better see him," said Frank slowly. "Will you? That will be so good of you. I feel that I can leave it all so safely in your hands. I shall go out of town, you know, on the thirtieth. I feel that I shall be better away, and I am sick of all the noise, and glitter, and worldliness of London. You will come on the twelfth?" "Not quite so soon as that," he said, after a pause. "But you will come?" "Yes;--about the twentieth." "And, of course, I shall see you?" "Oh, yes." "So that I may have some one to guide me that I can trust. I have no brother, Frank; do you ever think of that?" She put out her hand to him, and he clasped it, and held it tight in his own; and then, after a while, he pulled her towards him. In a moment she was on the ground, kneeling at his feet, and his arm was round her shoulder, and his hand was on her back, and he was embracing her. Her face was turned up to him, and he pressed his lips upon her forehead. "As my brother," she said, stretching back her head and looking up into his face. "Yes;--as your brother." They were sitting, or rather acting their little play together, in the back drawing-room, and the ordinary entrance to the two rooms was from the landing-place into the larger apartment;--of which fact Lizzie was probably aware, when she permitted herself to fall into a position as to which a moment or two might be wanted for recovery. When, therefore, the servant in livery opened the door, which he did, as Frank thought somewhat suddenly, she was able to be standing on her legs before she was caught. The quickness with which she sprung from her position, and the facility with which she composed not her face only, but the loose lock of her hair and all her person, for the reception of the coming visitor, was quite marvellous. About her there was none of the look of having been found out, which is so very disagreeable to the wearer of it; whereas Frank, when Lord Fawn was announced, was aware that his manner was awkward, and his general appearance flurried. Lizzie was no more flurried than if she had stepped that moment from out of the hands of her tirewoman. She greeted Lord Fawn very prettily, holding him by the hand long enough to show that she had more claim to do so than could any other woman, and then she just murmured her cousin's name. The two men shook hands--and looked at each other as men do who know that they are not friends, and think that they may live to be enemies. Lord Fawn, who rarely forgot anything, had certainly not forgotten the Sawab; and Frank was aware that he might soon be called on to address his lordship in anything but friendly terms. They said, however, a few words about Parliament and the weather, and the desirability of escaping from London. "Frank," said Lady Eustace, "is coming down in August to shoot my three annual grouse at Portray. He would keep one for you, my lord, if he thought you would come for it." "I'll promise Lord Fawn a fair third, at any rate," said Frank. "I cannot visit Portray this August, I'm afraid," said his lordship, "much as I might wish to do so. One of us must remain at the India Office--" "Oh, that weary India Office!" exclaimed Lizzie. "I almost think you official men are worse off than we barristers," said Frank. "Well, Lizzie, good-bye. I dare say I shall see you again before you start." "Of course you will," said Lizzie. And then the two lovers were left together. They had met once, at Lady Glencora's ball, since the quarrel at Fawn Court, and there, as though by mutual forbearance, had not alluded to their troubles. Now he had come, especially to speak of the matter that concerned them both so deeply. As long as Frank Greystock was in the room, his work was comparatively easy, but he had known beforehand that he would not find it at all easy should he be left alone with her. Lizzie began. "My lord," she said, "considering all that has passed between us, you have been a truant." "Yes;--I admit it--but--" "With me, my lord, a fault admitted is a fault forgiven." Then she took her old seat on the sofa, and he placed himself on the chair which Frank Greystock had occupied. He had not intended to own a fault, and certainly not to accept forgiveness; but she had been too quick for him; and now he could not find words by which to express himself. "In truth," she continued, "I would always rather remember one kindness than a dozen omissions on the part of a friend." "Lady Eustace, I have not willingly omitted anything." "So be it. I will not give you the slightest excuse for saying that you have heard a reproach from me. You have come at last, and you are welcome. Is that enough for you?" He had much to say to her about the diamonds, and, when he was entering the room, he had not a word to say to her about anything else. Since that, another subject had sprung up before him. Whether he was, or was not, to regard himself as being at this moment engaged to marry Lady Eustace, was a matter to him of much doubt;--but of this he was sure, that if she were engaged to him as his wife, she ought not to be entertaining her cousin Frank Greystock down at Portray Castle, unless she had some old lady, not only respectable in life, but high in rank also, to see that everything was right. It was almost an insult to him that such a visit should have been arranged without his sanction or cognizance. Of course, if he were bound by no engagement,--and he had been persuaded by his mother and sister to wish that he were not bound,--then the matter would be no affair of his. If, however, the diamonds were abandoned, then the engagement was to be continued;--and in that case it was out of the question that his elected bride should entertain another young man,--even though she was a widow and the young man was her cousin. Of course, he should have spoken of the diamonds first; but the other matter had obtruded itself upon him, and he was puzzled. "Is Mr. Greystock to accompany you into Scotland?" he asked. "Oh dear no. I go on the thirtieth of this month. I hardly know when he means to be there." "He follows you to Portray? "Yes;--he follows me, of course. 'The king himself has followed her, When she has gone before.'" Lord Fawn did not remember the quotation, and was more puzzled than ever. "Frank will follow me, just as the other shooting men will follow me." "He goes direct to Portray Castle?" "Neither directly nor indirectly. Just at present, Lord Fawn, I am in no mood to entertain guests,--not even one that I love so well as my cousin Frank. The Portray mountains are somewhat extensive, and at the back of them there is a little shooting-lodge." "Oh, indeed," said Lord Fawn, feeling that he had better dash at once at the diamonds. "If you, my lord, could manage to join us for a day, my cousin and his friend would, I am sure, come over to the castle, so that you should not suffer from being left alone with me and Miss Macnulty." "At present it is impossible," said Lord Fawn;--and then he paused. "Lady Eustace, the position in which you and I stand to each other is one not altogether free from trouble." "You cannot say that it is of my making," she said, with a smile. "You once asked--what men think a favour from me; and I granted it,--perhaps too easily." "I know how greatly I am indebted to your goodness, Lady Eustace--" And then again he paused. "Lord Fawn!" "I trust you will believe that nothing can be further from me than that you should be harassed by any conduct of mine." "I am harassed, my lord." "And so am I. I have learned that you are in possession of certain jewels which I cannot allow to be held by my wife." "I am not your wife, Lord Fawn." As she said this, she rose from her reclining posture and sat erect. "That is true. You are not. But you said you would be." "Go on, sir." "It was the pride of my life to think that I had attained to so much happiness. Then came this matter of the diamonds." "What business have you with my diamonds,--more than any other man?" "Simply that I am told that they are not yours." "Who tells you so?" "Various people. Mr. Camperdown." "If you, my lord, intend to take an attorney's word against mine, and that on a matter as to which no one but myself can know the truth, then you are not fit to be my husband. The diamonds are my own, and should you and I become man and wife, they must remain so by special settlement. While I choose to keep them they will be mine,--to do with them as I please. It will be my pleasure, when my boy marries, to hang them round his bride's neck." She carried herself well, and spoke her words with dignity. "What I have got to say is this," began Lord Fawn;--"I must consider our engagement as at an end unless you will give them up to Mr. Camperdown." "I will not give them up to Mr. Camperdown." "Then,--then,--then,--" "And I make bold to tell you, Lord Fawn, that you are not behaving to me like a man of honour. I shall now leave the matter in the hands of my cousin, Mr. Greystock." Then she sailed out of the room, and Lord Fawn was driven to escape from the house as he might. He stood about the room for five minutes with his hat in his hand, and then walked down and let himself out of the front door. CHAPTER XX The Diamonds Become Troublesome The thirtieth of July came round, and Lizzie was prepared for her journey down to Scotland. She was to be accompanied by Miss Macnulty and her own maid and her own servants, and to travel, of course, like a grand lady. She had not seen Lord Fawn since the meeting recorded in the last chapter, but had seen her cousin Frank nearly every other day. He, after much consideration, had written a long letter to Lord Fawn, in which he had given that nobleman to understand that some explanation was required as to conduct which Frank described as being to him "at present unintelligible." He then went, at considerable length, into the matter of the diamonds, with the object of proving that Lord Fawn could have no possible right to interfere in the matter. And though he had from the first wished that Lizzie would give up the trinket, he made various points in her favour. Not only had they been given to his cousin by her late husband,--but even had they not been so given, they would have been hers by will. Sir Florian had left her everything that was within the walls of Portray Castle, and the diamonds had been at Portray at the time of Sir Florian's death. Such was Frank's statement,--untrue indeed, but believed by him to be true. This was one of Lizzie's lies, forged as soon as she understood that some subsidiary claim might be made upon them on the ground that they formed a portion of property left by will away from her;--some claim subsidiary to the grand claim, that the necklace was a family heirloom. Lord Fawn was not in the least shaken in his conviction that Lizzie had behaved, and was behaving, badly, and that, therefore, he had better get rid of her; but he knew that he must be very wary in the reasons he would give for jilting her. He wrote, therefore, a very short note to Greystock, promising that any explanation needed should be given as soon as circumstances should admit of his forming a decision. In the meantime, the 30th of July came, and Lady Eustace was ready for her journey. There is, or there was, a train leaving London for Carlisle at 11 a.m., by which Lizzie proposed to travel, so that she might sleep in that city and go on through Dumfries to Portray the next morning. This was her scheme; but there was another part of her scheme as to which she had felt much doubt. Should she leave the diamonds, or should she take them with her? The iron box in which they were kept was small, and so far portable that a strong man might carry it without much trouble. Indeed, Lizzie could move it from one part of the room to the other, and she had often done so. But it was so heavy that it could not be taken with her without attracting attention. The servant would know what it was, and the porter would know, and Miss Macnulty would know. That her own maid should know was a matter of course; but even to her own maid the journey of the jewels would be remarkable because of the weight of the box, whereas if they went with her other jewels in her dressing-case, there would be nothing remarkable. She might even have taken them in her pocket,--had she dared. But she did not dare. Though she was intelligent and courageous, she was wonderfully ignorant as to what might and what might not be done for the recovery of the necklace by Mr. Camperdown. She did not dare to take them without the iron box, and at last she decided that the box should go. At a little after ten, her own carriage,--the job-carriage, which was now about to perform its last journey in her service,--was at the door, and a cab was there for the servants. The luggage was brought down, and with the larger boxes was brought the iron case with the necklace. The servant, certainly making more of the weight than he need have done, deposited it as a foot-stool for Lizzie, who then seated herself, and was followed by Miss Macnulty. She would have it placed in the same way beneath her feet in the railway carriage, and again brought into her room at the Carlisle hotel. What though the porter did know! There was nothing illegal in travelling about with a heavy iron box full of diamonds, and the risk would be less this way, she thought, than were she to leave them behind her in London. The house in Mount Street, which she had taken for the season, was to be given up; and whom could she trust in London? Her very bankers, she feared, would have betrayed her, and given up her treasure to Mr. Camperdown. As for Messrs. Harter and Benjamin, she felt sure that they would be bribed by Mr. Camperdown. She once thought of asking her cousin to take the charge of them, but she could not bring herself to let them out of her own hands. Ten thousand pounds! If she could only sell them and get the money, from what a world of trouble would she be relieved. And the sale, for another reason, would have been convenient; for Lady Eustace was already a little in debt. But she could not sell them, and therefore when she got into the carriage there was the box under her feet. At that very moment who should appear on the pavement, standing between the carriage and the house-door, but Mr. Camperdown! And with Mr. Camperdown there was another man,--a very suspicious-looking man,--whom Lizzie at once took to be a detective officer of police. "Lady Eustace!" said Mr. Camperdown, taking off his hat. Lizzie bowed across Miss Macnulty, and endeavoured to restrain the tell-tale blood from flying to her cheeks. "I believe," said Mr. Camperdown, "that you are now starting for Scotland." "We are, Mr. Camperdown;--and we are very late." "Could you allow me two minutes' conversation with you in the house?" "Oh dear, no. We are late, I tell you. What a time you have chosen for coming, Mr. Camperdown!" "It is an awkward hour, Lady Eustace. I only heard this morning that you were going so soon, and it is imperative that I should see you." "Had you not better write, Mr. Camperdown?" "You will never answer my letters, madam." "I--I--I really cannot see you now. William, the coachman must drive on. We cannot allow ourselves to lose the train. I am really very sorry, Mr. Camperdown, but we must not lose the train." "Lady Eustace," said Mr. Camperdown, putting his hand on the carriage-door, and so demeaning himself that the coachman did not dare to drive on, "I must ask you a question." He spoke in a low voice, but he was speaking across Miss Macnulty. That lady, therefore, heard him, and so did William, the servant, who was standing close to the door. "I must insist on knowing where are the Eustace diamonds." Lizzie felt the box beneath her feet, and, without showing that she did so, somewhat widened her drapery. "I can tell you nothing now. William, make the coachman drive on." "If you will not answer me, I must tell you that I shall be driven in the execution of my duty to obtain a search-warrant, in order that they may be placed in proper custody. They are not your property, and must be taken out of your hands." Lizzie looked at the suspicious man with a frightened gaze. The suspicious man was, in fact, a very respectable clerk in Mr. Camperdown's employment, but Lizzie for a moment felt that the search was about to begin at once. She had hardly understood the threat, and thought that the attorney was already armed with the powers of which he spoke. She glanced for a moment at Miss Macnulty, and then at the servant. Would they betray her? If they chose to use force to her, the box certainly might be taken from her. "I know I shall lose the train," she said. "I know I shall. I must insist that you let my servant drive on." There was now a little crowd of a dozen persons on the pavement, and there was nothing to cover her diamonds but the skirt of her travelling-dress. "Are they in this house, Lady Eustace?" "Why doesn't he go on?" shouted Lizzie. "You have no right, sir, to stop me. I won't be stopped." "Or have you got them with you?" "I shall answer no questions. You have no right to treat me in this way." "Then I shall be forced, on behalf of the family, to obtain a search-warrant, both here and in Ayrshire, and proceedings will be taken also against your ladyship personally." So saying, Mr. Camperdown withdrew, and at last the carriage was driven on. As it happened, there was time enough for catching the train,--and to spare. The whole affair in Mount Street had taken less than ten minutes. But the effect upon Lizzie was very severe. For a while she could not speak, and at last she burst out into hysteric tears,--not a sham fit,--but a true convulsive agony of sobbing. All the world of Mount Street, including her own servants, had heard the accusation against her. During the whole morning she had been wishing that she had never seen the diamonds; but now it was almost impossible that she should part with them. And yet they were like a load upon her chest, a load as heavy as though she were compelled to sit with the iron box on her lap day and night. In her sobbing she felt the thing under her feet, and knew that she could not get rid of it. She hated the box, and yet she must cling to it now. She was thoroughly ashamed of the box, and yet she must seem to take a pride in it. She was horribly afraid of the box, and yet she must keep it in her own very bed-room. And what should she say about the box now to Miss Macnulty, who sat by her side, stiff and scornful, offering her smelling-bottles, but not offering her sympathy? "My dear," she said at last, "that horrid man has quite upset me." "I don't wonder that you should be upset," said Miss Macnulty. "And so unjust, too,--so false,--so--so--so--. They are my own as much as that umbrella is yours, Miss Macnulty." "I don't know," said Miss Macnulty. "But I tell you," said Lizzie. "What I mean is, that it is such a pity there should be a doubt." "There is no doubt," said Lizzie;--"how dare you say there is a doubt? My cousin, Mr. Greystock, says that there is not the slightest doubt. He is a barrister, and must know better than an attorney like that Mr. Camperdown." By this time they were at the Euston Square station, and then there was more trouble with the box. The footman struggled with it into the waiting-room, and the porter struggled with it from the waiting-room to the carriage. Lizzie could not but look at the porter as he carried it, and she felt sure that the man had been told of its contents and was struggling with the express view of adding to her annoyance. The same thing happened at Carlisle, where the box was carried up into Lizzie's bedroom by the footman, and where she was convinced that her treasure had become the subject of conversation for the whole house. In the morning people looked at her as she walked down the long platform with the box still struggling before her. She almost wished that she had undertaken its carriage herself, as she thought that even she could have managed with less outward show of effort. Her own servants seemed to be in league against her, and Miss Macnulty had never before been so generally unpleasant. Poor Miss Macnulty, who had a conscientious idea of doing her duty, and who always attempted to give an adequate return for the bread she ate, could not so far overcome the effect of Mr. Camperdown's visit as to speak on any subject without being stiff and hard. And she suffered, too, from the box,--to such a degree that she turned over in her mind the thought of leaving Lizzie, if any other possible home might be found for her. Who would willingly live with a woman who always travelled about with a diamond necklace worth ten thousand pounds, locked up in an iron safe,--and that necklace not her own property. But at last Lady Eustace, and Miss Macnulty, and the servants,--and the iron box,--reached Portray Castle in safety. CHAPTER XXI "Ianthe's Soul" Lady Eustace had been rather cross on the journey down to Scotland, and had almost driven the unfortunate Macnulty to think that Lady Linlithgow or the workhouse would be better than this young tyrant; but on her arrival at her own house she was for awhile all smiles and kindness. During the journey she had been angry without thought, but was almost entitled to be excused for her anger. Could Miss Macnulty have realised the amount of oppression inflicted on her patroness by the box of diamonds she would have forgiven anything. Hitherto there had been some secrecy, or at any rate some privacy attached to the matter; but now that odious lawyer had discussed the matter aloud, in the very streets, in the presence of the servants, and Lady Eustace had felt that it was discussed also by every porter on the railway from London down to Troon, the station in Scotland at which her own carriage met her to take her to her own castle. The night at Carlisle had been terrible to her, and the diamonds had never been for a moment off her mind. Perhaps the worst of it all was that her own man-servant and maid-servant had heard the claim which had been so violently made by Mr. Camperdown. There are people, in that respect very fortunately circumstanced, whose servants, as a matter of course, know all their affairs, have an interest in their concerns, sympathise with their demands, feel their wants, and are absolutely at one with them. But in such cases the servants are really known, and are almost as completely a part of the family as the sons and daughters. There may be disruptions and quarrels; causes may arise for ending the existing condition of things; but while this condition lasts, the servants in such households are, for the most part, only too well inclined to fight the battles of their employers. Mr. Binns, the butler, would almost foam at the mouth if it were suggested to him that the plate at Silvercup Hall was not the undoubted property of the old squire; and Mrs. Pouncebox could not be made to believe, by any amount of human evidence, that the jewels which her lady has worn for the last fifteen years are not her ladyship's very own. Binns would fight for the plate, and so would Pouncebox for the jewels, almost till they were cut to pieces. The preservation of these treasures on behalf of those who paid them their wages and fed them, who occasionally scolded them, but always succoured them, would be their point of honour. No torture would get the key of the cellar from Binns; no threats extract from Pouncebox a secret of the toilet. But poor Lizzie Eustace had no Binns and no Pouncebox. They are plants that grow slowly. There was still too much of the mushroom about Lady Eustace to permit of her possessing such treasures. Her footman was six feet high, was not bad looking, and was called Thomas. She knew no more about him, and was far too wise to expect sympathy from him, or other aid than the work for which she paid him. Her own maid was somewhat nearer to her; but not much nearer. The girl's name was Patience Crabstick, and she could do hair well. Lizzie knew but little more of her than that. Lizzie considered herself still to be engaged to be married to Lord Fawn,--but there was no sympathy to be had in that quarter. Frank Greystock might be induced to sympathise with her;--but hardly after the fashion which Lizzie desired. And then sympathy in that direction would be so dangerous should she decide upon going on with the Fawn marriage. For the present she had quarrelled with Lord Fawn;--but the very bitterness of that quarrel, and the decision with which her betrothed had declared his intention of breaking off the match, made her the more resolute that she would marry him. During her journey to Portray she had again determined that he should be her husband; and, if so, advanced sympathy,--sympathy that would be pleasantly tender with her cousin Frank, would be dangerous. She would be quite willing to accept even Miss Macnulty's sympathy, if that humble lady would give it to her of the kind she wanted. She declared to herself that she could pour herself out on Miss Macnulty's bosom, and mingle her tears even with Miss Macnulty's, if only Miss Macnulty would believe in her. If Miss Macnulty would be enthusiastic about the jewels, enthusiastic as to the wickedness of Lord Fawn, enthusiastic in praising Lizzie herself, Lizzie,--so she told herself,--would have showered all the sweets of female friendship even on Miss Macnulty's head. But Miss Macnulty was as hard as a deal board. She did as she was bidden, thereby earning her bread. But there was no tenderness in her;--no delicacy;--no feeling;--no comprehension. It was thus that Lady Eustace judged her humble companion; and in one respect she judged her rightly. Miss Macnulty did not believe in Lady Eustace, and was not sufficiently gifted to act up to a belief which she did not entertain. Poor Lizzie! The world, in judging of people who are false and bad and selfish and prosperous to outward appearances, is apt to be hard upon them, and to forget the punishments which generally accompany such faults. Lizzie Eustace was very false and bad and selfish,--and, we may say, very prosperous also; but in the midst of all she was thoroughly uncomfortable. She was never at ease. There was no green spot in her life with which she could be contented. And though, after a fashion, she knew herself to be false and bad, she was thoroughly convinced that she was ill-used by everybody about her. She was being very badly treated by Lord Fawn;--but she flattered herself that she would be able to make Lord Fawn know more of her character before she had done with him. Portray Castle was really a castle,--not simply a country mansion so called, but a stone edifice with battlements and a round tower at one corner, and a gate which looked as if it might have had a portcullis, and narrow windows in a portion of it, and a cannon mounted upon a low roof, and an excavation called the moat,--but which was now a fantastic and somewhat picturesque garden,--running round two sides of it. In very truth, though a portion of the castle was undoubtedly old, and had been built when strength was needed for defence and probably for the custody of booty,--the battlements, and the round tower, and the awe-inspiring gateway had all been added by one of the late Sir Florians. But the castle looked like a castle, and was interesting. As a house it was not particularly eligible, the castle form of domestic architecture being exigeant in its nature, and demanding that space, which in less ambitious houses can be applied to comfort, shall be surrendered to magnificence. There was a great hall, and a fine dining-room with plate-glass windows looking out upon the sea; but the other sitting-rooms were insignificant, and the bedrooms were here and there, and were for the most part small and dark. That, however, which Lizzie had appropriated to her own use was a grand chamber, looking also out upon the open sea. The castle stood upon a bluff of land, with a fine prospect of the Firth of Clyde, and with a distant view of the Isle of Arran. When the air was clear, as it often is clear there, the Arran hills could be seen from Lizzie's window, and she was proud of talking of the prospect. In other respects, perhaps, the castle was somewhat desolate. There were a few stunted trees around it, but timber had not prospered there. There was a grand kitchen garden,--or rather a kitchen garden which had been intended to be grand;--but since Lizzie's reign had been commenced, the grandeur had been neglected. Grand kitchen gardens are expensive, and Lizzie had at once been firm in reducing the under-gardeners from five men to one and a boy. The head-gardener had of course left her at once; but that had not broken her heart, and she had hired a modest man at a guinea a week instead of a scientific artist, who was by no means modest, with a hundred and twenty pounds a year and coals, house, milk, and all other horticultural luxuries. Though Lizzie was prosperous and had a fine income, she was already aware that she could not keep up a town and country establishment and be a rich woman on four thousand a year. There was a flower garden and small shrubbery within the so-called moat; but, otherwise, the grounds of Portray Castle were not alluring. The place was sombre, exposed, and, in winter, very cold; and, except that the expanse of sea beneath the hill on which stood the castle was fine and open, it had no great claim to praise on the score of scenery. Behind the castle, and away from the sea, the low mountains belonging to the estate stretched for some eight or ten miles; and towards the further end of them, where stood a shooting-lodge, called always The Cottage, the landscape became rough and grand. It was in this cottage that Frank Greystock was to be sheltered with his friend, when he came down to shoot what Lady Eustace had called her three annual grouse. She ought to have been happy and comfortable. There will, of course, be some to say that a young widow should not be happy and comfortable,--that she should be weeping her lost lord, and subject to the desolation of bereavement. But as the world goes now, young widows are not miserable; and there is, perhaps, a growing tendency in society to claim from them year by year still less of any misery that may be avoidable. Suttee propensities of all sorts, from burning alive down to bombazine and hideous forms of clothing, are becoming less and less popular among the nations, and women are beginning to learn that, let what misfortunes will come upon them, it is well for them to be as happy as their nature will allow them to be. A woman may thoroughly respect her husband, and mourn him truly, honestly, with her whole heart, and yet enjoy thoroughly the good things which he has left behind for her use. It was not, at any rate, sorrow for the lost Sir Florian that made Lady Eustace uncomfortable. She had her child. She had her income. She had her youth and beauty. She had Portray Castle. She had a new lover,--and, if she chose to be quit of him, not liking him well enough for the purpose, she might undoubtedly have another whom she would like better. She had hitherto been thoroughly successful in her life. And yet she was unhappy. What was it that she wanted? She had been a very clever child,--a clever, crafty child; and now she was becoming a clever woman. Her craft remained with her; but so keen was her outlook upon the world, that she was beginning to perceive that craft, let it be never so crafty, will in the long run miss its own object. She actually envied the simplicity of Lucy Morris, for whom she delighted to find evil names, calling her demure, a prig, a sly puss, and so on. But she could see,--or half see,--that Lucy with her simplicity was stronger than was she with her craft. She had nearly captivated Frank Greystock with her wiles, but without any wiles Lucy had captivated him altogether. And a man captivated by wiles was only captivated for a time, whereas a man won by simplicity would be won for ever,--if he himself were worth the winning. And this, too, she felt,--that let her success be what it might, she could not be happy unless she could win a man's heart. She had won Sir Florian's, but that had been but for an hour,--for a month or two. And then Sir Florian had never really won hers. Could not she be simple? Could not she act simplicity so well that the thing acted should be as powerful as the thing itself;--perhaps even more powerful? Poor Lizzie Eustace! In thinking over all this, she saw a great deal. It was wonderful that she should see so much and tell herself so many home truths. But there was one truth she could not see, and therefore could not tell it to herself. She had not a heart to give. It had become petrified during those lessons of early craft in which she had taught herself how to get the better of Messrs. Harter and Benjamin, of Sir Florian Eustace, of Lady Linlithgow, and of Mr. Camperdown. Her ladyship had now come down to her country house, leaving London and all its charms before the end of the season, actuated by various motives. In the first place, the house in Mount Street was taken furnished, by the month, and the servants were hired after the same fashion, and the horses jobbed. Lady Eustace was already sufficiently intimate with her accounts to know that she would save two hundred pounds by not remaining another month or three weeks in London, and sufficiently observant of her own affairs to have perceived that such saving was needed. And then it appeared to her that her battle with Lord Fawn could be better fought from a distance than at close quarters. London, too, was becoming absolutely distasteful to her. There were many things there that tended to make her unhappy, and so few that she could enjoy! She was afraid of Mr. Camperdown, and ever on the rack lest some dreadful thing should come upon her in respect of the necklace,--some horrible paper served upon her from a magistrate, ordering her appearance at Newgate, or perhaps before the Lord Chancellor, or a visit from policemen, who would be empowered to search for and carry off the iron box. And then there was so little in her London life to gratify her! It is pleasant to win in a fight;--but to be always fighting is not pleasant. Except in those moments, few and far between, in which she was alone with her cousin Frank,--and perhaps in those other moments in which she wore her diamonds,--she had but little in London that she enjoyed. She still thought that a time would come when it would be otherwise. Under these influences she had actually made herself believe that she was sighing for the country, and for solitude; for the wide expanse of her own bright waves,--as she had called them,--and for the rocks of dear Portray. She had told Miss Macnulty and Augusta Fawn that she thirsted for the breezes of Ayrshire, so that she might return to her books and her thoughts. Amidst the whirl of London it was impossible either to read or to think. And she believed it too,--herself. She so believed it, that on the first morning of her arrival she took a little volume in her pocket, containing Shelley's "Queen Mab," and essayed to go down upon the rocks. She had actually breakfasted at nine, and was out on the sloping grounds below the castle before ten, having made some boast to Miss Macnulty about the morning air. She scrambled down,--not very far down, but a little way beneath the garden gate, to a spot on which a knob of rock cropped out from the scanty herbage of the incipient cliff. Fifty yards lower the real rocks began; and, though the real rocks were not very rocky, not precipitous or even bold, and were partially covered with salt-fed mosses down almost to the sea, nevertheless they justified her in talking about her rock-bound shore. The shore was hers,--for her life, and it was rock-bound. This knob she had espied from her windows;--and, indeed, had been thinking of it for the last week, as a place appropriate to solitude and Shelley. She had stood on it before, and had stretched her arms with enthusiasm towards the just-visible mountains of Arran. On that occasion the weather, perhaps, had been cool; but now a blazing sun was overhead, and when she had been seated half a minute, and "Queen Mab" had been withdrawn from her pocket, she found that it would not do. It would not do, even with the canopy she could make for herself with her parasol. So she stood up and looked about herself for shade;--for shade in some spot in which she could still look out upon "her dear wide ocean, with its glittering smile." For it was thus that she would talk about the mouth of the Clyde. Shelter near her there was none. The scrubby trees lay nearly half a mile to the right,--and up the hill, too. She had once clambered down to the actual shore, and might do so again. But she doubted that there would be shelter even there; and the clambering up on that former occasion had been a nuisance, and would be a worse nuisance now. Thinking of all this, and feeling the sun keenly, she gradually retraced her steps to the garden within the moat, and seated herself, Shelley in hand, within the summer-house. The bench was narrow, hard, and broken; and there were some snails which discomposed her;--but, nevertheless, she would make the best of it. Her darling "Queen Mab" must be read without the coarse, inappropriate, every-day surroundings of a drawing-room; and it was now manifest to her that, unless she could get up much earlier in the morning, or come out to her reading after sunset, the knob of rock would not avail her. She began her reading, resolved that she would enjoy her poetry in spite of the narrow seat. She had often talked of "Queen Mab," and perhaps she thought she had read it. This, however, was in truth her first attempt at that work. "How wonderful is Death! Death and his brother, Sleep!" Then she half-closed the volume, and thought that she enjoyed the idea. Death,--and his brother Sleep! She did not know why they should be more wonderful than Action, or Life, or Thought;--but the words were of a nature which would enable her to remember them, and they would be good for quoting. "Sudden arose Ianthe's soul; it stood all-beautiful in naked purity." The name of Ianthe suited her exactly. And the antithesis conveyed to her mind by naked purity struck her strongly, and she determined to learn the passage by heart. Eight or nine lines were printed separately, like a stanza, and the labour would not be great, and the task, when done, would be complete. "Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness Had passed away, it reassumed Its native dignity, and stood Immortal amid ruin." Which was instinct with beauty,--the stain or the soul, she did not stop to inquire, and may be excused for not understanding. "Ah,"--she exclaimed to herself, "how true it is; how one feels it; how it comes home to one!--'Sudden arose Ianthe's soul!'" And then she walked about the garden, repeating the words to herself, and almost forgetting the heat. "'Each stain of earthliness had passed away.' Ha;--yes. They will pass away, and become instinct with beauty and grace." A dim idea came upon her that when this happy time should arrive, no one would claim her necklace from her, and that the man at the stables would not be so disagreeably punctual in sending in his bill. "'All-beautiful in naked purity!'" What a tawdry world was this, in which clothes and food and houses are necessary! How perfectly that boy-poet had understood it all! "'Immortal amid ruin!'" She liked the idea of the ruin almost as well as that of the immortality, and the stains quite as well as the purity. As immortality must come, and as stains were instinct with grace, why be afraid of ruin? But then, if people go wrong,--at least women,--they are not asked out any where! "'Sudden arose Ianthe's soul; it stood all-beautiful--'" And so the piece was learned, and Lizzie felt that she had devoted her hour to poetry in a quite rapturous manner. At any rate she had a bit to quote; and though in truth she did not understand the exact bearing of the image, she had so studied her gestures, and so modulated her voice, that she knew that she could be effective. She did not then care to carry her reading further, but returned with the volume into the house. Though the passage about Ianthe's soul comes very early in the work, she was now quite familiar with the poem, and when, in after days, she spoke of it as a thing of beauty that she had made her own by long study, she actually did not know that she was lying. As she grew older, however, she quickly became wiser, and was aware that in learning one passage of a poem it is expedient to select one in the middle, or at the end. The world is so cruelly observant now-a-days, that even men and women who have not themselves read their "Queen Mab" will know from what part of the poem a morsel is extracted, and will not give you credit for a page beyond that from which your passage comes. After lunch Lizzie invited Miss Macnulty to sit at the open window of the drawing-room and look out upon the "glittering waves." In giving Miss Macnulty her due, we must acknowledge that, though she owned no actual cleverness herself, had no cultivated tastes, read but little, and that little of a colourless kind, and thought nothing of her hours but that she might get rid of them and live,--yet she had a certain power of insight, and could see a thing. Lizzie Eustace was utterly powerless to impose upon her. Such as Lizzie was, Miss Macnulty was willing to put up with her and accept her bread. The people whom she had known had been either worthless,--as had been her own father, or cruel,--like Lady Linlithgow, or false,--as was Lady Eustace. Miss Macnulty knew that worthlessness, cruelty, and falseness had to be endured by such as she. And she could bear them without caring much about them;--not condemning them, even within her own heart, very heavily. But she was strangely deficient in this,--that she could not call these qualities by other names, even to the owners of them. She was unable to pretend to believe Lizzie's rhapsodies. It was hardly conscience or a grand spirit of truth that actuated her, as much as a want of the courage needed for lying. She had not had the face to call old Lady Linlithgow kind, and therefore old Lady Linlithgow had turned her out of the house. When Lady Eustace called on her for sympathy, she had not courage enough to dare to attempt the bit of acting which would be necessary for sympathetic expression. She was like a dog or a child, and was unable not to be true. Lizzie was longing for a little mock sympathy,--was longing to show off her Shelley, and was very kind to Miss Macnulty when she got the poor lady into the recess of the window. "This is nice;--is it not?" she said, as she spread her hand out through the open space towards the "wide expanse of glittering waves." "Very nice,--only it glares so," said Miss Macnulty. "Ah, I love the full warmth of the real summer. With me it always seems that the sun is needed to bring to true ripeness the fruit of the heart." Nevertheless she had been much troubled both by the heat and by the midges when she tried to sit on the stone. "I always think of those few glorious days which I passed with my darling Florian at Naples;--days too glorious because they were so few." Now Miss Macnulty knew some of the history of those days and of their glory,--and knew also how the widow had borne her loss. "I suppose the bay of Naples is fine," she said. "It is not only the bay. There are scenes there which ravish you, only it is necessary that there should be some one with you that can understand you. 'Soul of Ianthe!'" she said, meaning to apostrophise that of the deceased Sir Florian. "You have read 'Queen Mab'?" "I don't know that I ever did. If I have, I have forgotten it." "Ah,--you should read it. I know nothing in the English language that brings home to one so often one's own best feelings and aspirations. 'It stands all-beautiful in naked purity,'" she continued, still alluding to poor Sir Florian's soul. "'Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace, Each stain of earthliness had passed away.' I can see him now in all his manly beauty, as we used to sit together by the hour, looking over the waters. Oh, Julia, the thing itself has gone,--the earthly reality; but the memory of it will live for ever!" "He was a very handsome man, certainly," said Miss Macnulty, finding herself forced to say something. "I see him now," she went on, still gazing out upon the shining water. "'It reassumed its native dignity, and stood Primeval amid ruin.' Is not that a glorious idea, gloriously worded?" She had forgotten one word and used a wrong epithet; but it sounded just as well. Primeval seemed to her to be a very poetical word. "To tell the truth," said Miss Macnulty, "I never understand poetry when it is quoted unless I happen to know the passage beforehand. I think I'll go away from this, for the light is too much for my poor old eyes." Certainly Miss Macnulty had fallen into a profession for which she was not suited. CHAPTER XXII Lady Eustace Procures a Pony for the Use of Her Cousin Lady Eustace could make nothing of Miss Macnulty in the way of sympathy, and could not bear her disappointment with patience. It was hardly to be expected that she should do so. She paid a great deal for Miss Macnulty. In a moment of rash generosity, and at a time when she hardly knew what money meant, she had promised Miss Macnulty seventy pounds for the first year, and seventy for the second, should the arrangement last longer than a twelvemonth. The second year had been now commenced, and Lady Eustace was beginning to think that seventy pounds was a great deal of money when so very little was given in return. Lady Linlithgow had paid her dependant no fixed salary. And then there was the lady's "keep," and first-class travelling when they went up and down to Scotland, and cab-fares in London when it was desirable that Miss Macnulty should absent herself. Lizzie, reckoning all up, and thinking that for so much her friend ought to be ready to discuss Ianthe's soul, or any other kindred subject, at a moment's warning, would become angry, and would tell herself that she was being swindled out of her money. She knew how necessary it was that she should have some companion at the present emergency of her life, and therefore could not at once send Miss Macnulty away; but she would sometimes become very cross, and would tell poor Macnulty that she was--a fool. Upon the whole, however, to be called a fool was less objectionable to Miss Macnulty than were demands for sympathy which she did not know how to give. Those first ten days of August went very slowly with Lady Eustace. "Queen Mab" got itself poked away, and was heard of no more. But there were other books. A huge box full of novels had come down, and Miss Macnulty was a great devourer of novels. If Lady Eustace would talk to her about the sorrows of the poorest heroine that ever saw her lover murdered before her eyes, and then come to life again with ten thousand pounds a year,--for a period of three weeks, or till another heroine, who had herself been murdered, obliterated the former horrors from her plastic mind,--Miss Macnulty could discuss the catastrophe with the keenest interest. And Lizzie, finding herself to be, as she told herself, unstrung, fell also into novel-reading. She had intended during this vacant time to master the "Faery Queen;" but the "Faery Queen" fared even worse than "Queen Mab;"--and the studies of Portray Castle were confined to novels. For poor Macnulty, if she could only be left alone, this was well enough. To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods. But it was not so with Lady Eustace. She asked much more than that, and was now thoroughly discontented with her own idleness. She was sure that she could have read Spenser from sunrise to sundown, with no other break than an hour or two given to Shelley,--if only there had been some one to sympathise with her in her readings. But there was no one, and she was very cross. Then there came a letter to her from her cousin,--which for that morning brought some life back to the castle. "I have seen Lord Fawn," said the letter, "and I have also seen Mr. Camperdown. As it would be very hard to explain what took place at these interviews by letter, and as I shall be at Portray Castle on the 20th,--I will not make the attempt. We shall go down by the night train, and I will get over to you as soon as I have dressed and had my breakfast. I suppose I can find some kind of a pony for the journey. The 'we' consists of myself and my friend, Mr. Herriot,--a man whom I think you will like, if you will condescend to see him, though he is a barrister like myself. You need express no immediate condescension in his favour, as I shall of course come over alone on Wednesday morning. Yours always affectionately, F. G." The letter she received on the Sunday morning, and as the Wednesday named for Frank's coming was the next Wednesday, and was close at hand, she was in rather a better humour than she had displayed since the poets had failed her. "What a blessing it will be," she said, "to have somebody to speak to!" This was not complimentary, but Miss Macnulty did not want compliments. "Yes, indeed," she said. "Of course you will be glad to see your cousin." "I shall be glad to see anything in the shape of a man. I declare that I have felt almost inclined to ask the minister from Craigie to elope with me." "He has got seven children," said Miss Macnulty. "Yes, poor man, and a wife, and not more than enough to live upon. I daresay he would have come. By-the-bye, I wonder whether there's a pony about the place." "A pony!" Miss Macnulty of course supposed that it was needed for the purpose of the suggested elopement. "Yes;--I suppose you know what a pony is? Of course there ought to be a shooting pony at the cottage for these men. My poor head has so many things to work upon that I had forgotten it; and you're never any good at thinking of things." "I didn't know that gentlemen wanted ponies for shooting." "I wonder what you do know? Of course there must be a pony." "I suppose you'll want two?" "No, I sha'n't. You don't suppose that men always go riding about. But I want one. What had I better do?" Miss Macnulty suggested that Gowran should be consulted. Now, Gowran was the steward and bailiff and manager and factotum about the place, who bought a cow or sold one if occasion required, and saw that nobody stole anything, and who knew the boundaries of the farms, and all about the tenants, and looked after the pipes when frost came, and was an honest, domineering, hard-working, intelligent Scotchman, who had been brought up to love the Eustaces, and who hated his present mistress with all his heart. He did not leave her service, having an idea in his mind that it was now the great duty of his life to save Portray from her ravages. Lizzie fully returned the compliment of the hatred, and was determined to rid herself of Andy Gowran's services as soon as possible. He had been called Andy by the late Sir Florian, and, though every one else about the place called him Mr. Gowran, Lady Eustace thought it became her, as the man's mistress, to treat him as he had been treated by the late master. So she called him Andy. But she was resolved to get rid of him,--as soon as she should dare. There were things which it was essential that somebody about the place should know, and no one knew them but Mr. Gowran. Every servant in the castle might rob her, were it not for the protection afforded by Mr. Gowran. In that affair of the garden it was Mr. Gowran who had enabled her to conquer the horticultural Leviathan who had oppressed her, and who, in point of wages, had been a much bigger man than Mr. Gowran himself. She trusted Mr. Gowran, and hated him,--whereas Mr. Gowran hated her, and did not trust her. "I believe you think that nothing can be done at Portray except by that man," said Lady Eustace. "He'll know how much you ought to pay for the pony." "Yes,--and get some brute not fit for my cousin to ride, on purpose, perhaps, to break his neck." "Then I should ask Mr. Macallum, the postmaster of Troon, for I have seen three or four very quiet-looking ponies standing in the carts at his door." "Macnulty, if there ever was an idiot you are one!" said Lady Eustace, throwing up her hands. "To think that I should get a pony for my cousin Frank out of one of the mail carts." "I daresay I am an idiot," said Miss Macnulty, resuming her novel. Lady Eustace was, of course, obliged to have recourse to Gowran, to whom she applied on the Monday morning. Not even Lizzie Eustace, on behalf of her cousin Frank, would have dared to disturb Mr. Gowran with considerations respecting a pony on the Sabbath. On the Monday morning she found Mr. Gowran superintending four boys and three old women, who were making a bit of her ladyship's hay on the ground above the castle. The ground about the castle was poor and exposed, and her ladyship's hay was apt to be late. "Andy," she said, "I shall want to get a pony for the gentlemen who are coming to the Cottage. It must be there by Tuesday evening." "A pownie, my leddie?" "Yes;--a pony. I suppose a pony may be purchased in Ayrshire,--though of all places in the world it seems to have the fewest of the comforts of life." "Them as find it like that, my leddie, needn't bide there." "Never mind. You will have the kindness to have a pony purchased and put into the stables of the Cottage on Tuesday afternoon. There are stables, no doubt." "Oh, ay,--there's shelter, nae doot, for mair pownies than they'll ride. When the Cottage was biggit, my leddie, there was nae cause for sparing nowt." Andy Gowran was continually throwing her comparative poverty in poor Lizzie's teeth, and there was nothing he could do which displeased her more. "And I needn't spare my cousin the use of a pony," she said grandiloquently, but feeling as she did so that she was exposing herself before the man. "You'll have the goodness to procure one for him on Tuesday." "But there ain't aits nor yet fother, nor nowt for bedding down. And wha's to tent the pownie? There's mair in keeping a pownie than your leddyship thinks. It'll be a matter of auchteen and saxpence a week,--will a pownie." Mr. Gowran, as he expressed his prudential scruples, put a very strong emphasis indeed on the sixpence. "Very well. Let it be so." "And there'll be the beastie to buy, my leddie. He'll be a lump of money, my leddie. Pownies ain't to be had for nowt in Ayrshire, as was ance, my leddie." "Of course I must pay for him." "He'll be a matter of ten pound, my leddie." "Very well." "Or may be twal; just as likely." And Mr. Gowran shook his head at his mistress in a most uncomfortable way. It was not surprising that she should hate him. "You must give the proper price,--of course." "There ain't no proper prices for pownies,--as there is for jew'ls and sich like." If this was intended for sarcasm upon Lady Eustace in regard to her diamonds, Mr. Gowran ought to have been dismissed on the spot. In such a case no English jury would have given him his current wages. "And he'll be to sell again, my leddie?" "We shall see about that afterwards." "Ye'll never let him eat his head off there a' the winter! He'll be to sell. And the gentles'll ride him, may be, ance across the hillside, out and back. As to the grouse, they can't cotch them with the pownie, for there ain't none to cotch." There had been two keepers on the mountains,--men who were paid five or six shillings a week to look after the game in addition to their other callings, and one of these had been sent away, actually in obedience to Gowran's advice;--so that this blow was cruel and unmanly. He made it, too, as severe as he could by another shake of his head. "Do you mean to tell me that my cousin cannot be supplied with an animal to ride upon?" "My leddie, I've said nowt o' the kind. There ain't no useful animal as I kens the name and nature of as he can't have in Ayrshire,--for paying for it, my leddie;--horse, pownie, or ass, just whichever you please, my leddie. But there'll be a seddle--" "A what?" There can be no doubt that Gowran purposely slurred the word so that his mistress should not understand him. "Seddles don't come for nowt, my leddie, though it be Ayrshire." "I don't understand what it is that you say, Andy." "A seddle, my leddie,"--said he, shouting the word at her at the top of his voice,--"and a briddle. I suppose as your leddyship's cousin don't ride bare-back up in Lunnon?" "Of course there must be the necessary horse-furniture," said Lady Eustace, retiring to the castle. Andy Gowran had certainly ill-used her, and she swore that she would have revenge. Nor when she was informed on the Tuesday that an adequate pony had been hired for eighteen pence a day, saddle, bridle, groom, and all included, was her heart at all softened towards Mr. Gowran. CHAPTER XXIII Frank Greystock's First Visit to Portray Had Frank Greystock known all that his cousin endured for his comfort, would he have been grateful? Women, when they are fond of men, do think much of men's comfort in small matters, and men are apt to take the good things provided almost as a matter of course. When Frank Greystock and Herriot reached the cottage about nine o'clock in the morning, having left London over night by the limited mail train, the pony at once presented itself to them. It was a little shaggy, black beast, with a boy almost as shaggy as itself, but they were both good of their kind. "Oh, you're the laddie with the pownie, are you?" said Frank, in answer to an announcement made to him by the boy. He did at once perceive that Lizzie had taken notice of the word in his note, in which he had suggested that some means of getting over to Portray would be needed, and he learned from the fact that she was thinking of him and anxious to see him. His friend was a man a couple of years younger than himself, who had hitherto achieved no success at the Bar, but who was nevertheless a clever, diligent, well-instructed man. He was what the world calls penniless, having an income from his father just sufficient to keep him like a gentleman. He was not much known as a sportsman, his opportunities for shooting not having been great; but he dearly loved the hills and fresh air, and the few grouse which were,--or were not,--on Lady Eustace's mountains would go as far with him as they would with any man. Before he had consented to come with Frank, he had especially inquired whether there was a game-keeper, and it was not till he had been assured that there was no officer attached to the estate worthy of such a name, that he had consented to come upon his present expedition. "I don't clearly know what a gillie is," he said, in answer to one of Frank's explanations. "If a gillie means a lad without any breeches on, I don't mind; but I couldn't stand a severe man got up in well-made velveteens, who would see through my ignorance in a moment, and make known by comment the fact that he had done so." Greystock had promised that there should be no severity, and Herriot had come. Greystock brought with him two guns, two fishing-rods, a man-servant, and a huge hamper from Fortnum and Mason's. Arthur Herriot, whom the attorneys had not yet loved, brought some very thick boots, a pair of knickerbockers, together with Stone and Toddy's "Digest of the Common Law." The best of the legal profession consists in this;--that when you get fairly at work you may give over working. An aspirant must learn everything; but a man may make his fortune at it, and know almost nothing. He may examine a witness with judgment, see through a case with precision, address a jury with eloquence,--and yet be altogether ignorant of law. But he must be believed to be a very pundit before he will get a chance of exercising his judgment, his precision, or his eloquence. The men whose names are always in the newspapers never look at their Stone and Toddy,--care for it not at all,--have their Stone and Toddy got up for them by their juniors when cases require that reference shall be made to precedents. But till that blessed time has come, a barrister who means success should carry his Stone and Toddy with him everywhere. Greystock never thought of the law now, unless he had some special case in hand; but Herriot could not afford to go out on his holiday without two volumes of Stone and Toddy's Digest in his portmanteau. "You won't mind being left alone for the first morning?" said Frank, as soon as they had finished the contents of one of the pots from Fortnum and Mason. "Not in the least. Stone and Toddy will carry me through." "I'd go on the mountain if I were you, and get into a habit of steady loading." "Perhaps I will take a turn,--just to find out how I feel in the knickerbockers. At what time shall I dine if you don't come back?" "I shall certainly be here to dinner," said Frank, "unless the pony fails me or I get lost on the mountain." Then he started, and Herriot at once went to work on Stone and Toddy, with a pipe in his mouth. He had travelled all night, and it is hardly necessary to say that in five minutes he was fast asleep. So also had Frank travelled all night, but the pony and the fresh air kept him awake. The boy had offered to go with him, but that he had altogether refused;--and, therefore, to his other cares was added that of finding his way. The sweep of the valleys, however, is long and not abrupt, and he could hardly miss his road if he would only make one judicious turn through a gap in a certain wall which lay half way between the cottage and the castle. He was thinking of the work in hand, and he found the gap without difficulty. When through that he ascended the hill for two miles, and then the sea was before him, and Portray Castle, lying, as it seemed to him at that distance, close upon the sea-shore. "Upon my word, Lizzie has not done badly for herself," he said almost aloud, as he looked down upon the fair sight beneath him, and round upon the mountains, and remembered that, for her life at least, it was all hers, and after her death would belong to her son. What more does any human being desire of such a property than that? He rode down to the great doorway,--the mountain track which fell on to the road about half a mile from the castle having been plain enough, and there he gave up the pony into the hands of no less a man than Mr. Gowran himself. Gowran had watched the pony coming down the mountain-side, and had desired to see of what like was "her leddyship's" cousin. In telling the whole truth of Mr. Gowran, it must be acknowledged that he thought that his late master had made a very great mistake in the matter of his marriage. He could not imagine bad things enough of Lady Eustace, and almost believed that she was not now, and hadn't been before her marriage, any better than she should be. The name of Admiral Greystock, as having been the father of his mistress, had indeed reached his ears; but Andy Gowran was a suspicious man, and felt no confidence even in an admiral,--in regard to whom he heard nothing of his having, or having had, a wife. "It's my fer-rm opeenion she's jist naebody--and waur," he had said more than once to his own wife, nodding his head with great emphasis at the last word. He was very anxious, therefore, to see "her leddyship's" cousin. Mr. Gowran thought that he knew a gentleman when he saw one. He thought, also, that he knew a lady, and that he didn't see one when he was engaged with his mistress. Cousin, indeed! "For the matter o' that, ony man that comes the way may be ca'ed a coosin." So Mr. Gowran was on the grand sweep before the garden gate, and took the pony from Frank's hand. "Is Lady Eustace at home?" Frank asked. Mr. Gowran perceived that Frank was a gentleman, and was disappointed. And Frank didn't come as a man comes who calls himself by a false name, and pretends to be an honest cousin when in fact he is something,--oh, ever so wicked! Mr. Gowran, who was a stern moralist, was certainly disappointed at Frank's appearance. Lizzie was in a little sitting-room, reached by a long passage with steps in the middle, at some corner of the castle which seemed a long way from the great door. It was a cheerful little room, with chintz curtains, and a few shelves laden with brightly-bound books, which had been prepared for Lizzie immediately on her marriage. It looked out upon the sea, and she had almost taught herself to think that here she had sat with her adored Florian, gazing in mutual ecstasy upon the "wide expanse of glittering waves." She was lying back in a low arm-chair as her cousin entered, and she did not rise to receive him. Of course she was alone, Miss Macnulty having received a suggestion that it would be well that she should do a little gardening in the moat. "Well, Frank?" she said, with her sweetest smile, as she gave him her hand. She felt and understood the extreme intimacy which would be implied by her not rising to receive him. As she could not rush into his arms there was no device by which she could more clearly show to him how close she regarded his friendship. "So I am at Portray Castle at last," he said, still holding her hand. "Yes,--at the dullest, dreariest, deadliest spot in all Christendom, I think,--if Ayrshire be Christendom. But never mind about that now. Perhaps, as you are at the other side of the mountain at the Cottage, we shall find it less dull here at the castle." "I thought you were to be so happy here." "Sit down and we'll talk it all over by degrees. What will you have,--breakfast or lunch?" "Neither, thank you." "Of course you'll stay to dinner?" "No, indeed. I've a man there at the Cottage with me who would cut his throat in his solitude." "Let him cut his throat;--but never mind now. As for being happy, women are never happy without men. I needn't tell any lies to you, you know. What makes me sure that this fuss about making men and women all the same must be wrong, is just the fact that men can get along without women, and women can't without men. My life has been a burthen to me. But never mind. Tell me about my lord;--my lord and master." "Lord Fawn?" "Who else? What other lord and master? My bosom's own; my heart's best hope; my spot of terra firma; my cool running brook of fresh water; my rock; my love; my lord; my all! Is he always thinking of his absent Lizzie? Does he still toil at Downing Street? Oh, dear; do you remember, Frank, when he told us that 'one of us must remain in town?'" "I have seen him." "So you wrote me word." "And I have seen a very obstinate, pig-headed, but nevertheless honest and truth-speaking gentleman." "Frank, I don't care twopence for his honesty and truth. If he ill-treats me--" Then she paused; looking into his face she had seen at once by the manner in which he had taken her badinage, without a smile, that it was necessary that she should be serious as to her matrimonial prospects. "I suppose I had better let you tell your story," she said, "and I will sit still and listen." "He means to ill-treat you." "And you will let him?" "You had better listen, as you promised, Lizzie. He declares that the marriage must be off at once unless you will send those diamonds to Mr. Camperdown or to the jewellers." "And by what law or rule does he justify himself in a decision so monstrous? Is he prepared to prove that the property is not my own?" "If you ask me my opinion as a lawyer, I doubt whether any such proof can be shown. But as a man and a friend I do advise you to give them up." "Never!" "You must, of course, judge for yourself;--but that is my advice. You had better, however, hear my whole story." "Certainly," said Lizzie. Her whole manner was now changed. She had extricated herself from the crouching position in which her feet, her curl, her arms, her whole body had been so arranged as to combine the charm of her beauty with the charm of proffered intimacy. Her dress was such as a woman would wear to receive her brother, and yet it had been studied. She had no gems about her but what she might well wear in her ordinary life, and yet the very rings on her fingers had not been put on without reference to her cousin Frank. Her position had been one of lounging ease, such as a woman might adopt when all alone, giving herself all the luxuries of solitude;--but she had adopted it in special reference to cousin Frank. Now she was in earnest, with business before her; and though it may be said of her that she could never forget her appearance in presence of a man whom she desired to please, her curl, and rings, and attitude were for the moment in the background. She had seated herself on a common chair, with her hands upon the table, and was looking into Frank's face with eager, eloquent, and combative eyes. She would take his law, because she believed in it; but, as far as she could see as yet, she would not take his advice unless it were backed by his law. "Mr. Camperdown," continued Greystock, "has consented to prepare a case for opinion, though he will not agree that the Eustace estate shall be bound by that opinion." "Then what's the good of it?" "We shall at least know, all of us, what is the opinion of some lawyer qualified to understand the circumstances of the case." "Why isn't your opinion as good as that of any lawyer?" "I couldn't give an opinion;--not otherwise than as a private friend to you, which is worth nothing, unless for your private guidance. Mr. Camperdown--" "I don't care one straw for Mr. Camperdown." "Just let me finish." "Oh, certainly;--and you mustn't be angry with me, Frank. The matter is so much to me; isn't it?" "I won't be angry. Do I look as if I were angry? Mr. Camperdown is right." "I daresay he may be--what you call right. But I don't care about Mr. Camperdown a bit." "He has no power, nor has John Eustace any power, to decide that the property which may belong to a third person shall be jeopardised by any arbitration. The third person could not be made to lose his legal right by any such arbitration, and his claim, if made, would still have to be tried." "Who is the third person, Frank?" "Your own child at present." "And will not he have it any way?" "Camperdown and John Eustace say that it belongs to him at present. It is a point that, no doubt, should be settled." "To whom do you say that it belongs?" "That is a question I am not prepared to answer." "To whom do you think that it belongs?" "I have refused to look at a single paper on the subject, and my opinion is worth nothing. From what I have heard in conversation with Mr. Camperdown and John Eustace, I cannot find that they make their case good." "Nor can I," said Lizzie. "A case is to be prepared for Mr. Dove." "Who is Mr. Dove?" "Mr. Dove is a barrister, and no doubt a very clever fellow. If his opinion be such as Mr. Camperdown expects, he will at once proceed against you at law for the immediate recovery of the necklace." "I shall be ready for him," said Lizzie, and as she spoke all her little feminine softnesses were for the moment laid aside. "If Mr. Dove's opinion be in your favour--" "Well," said Lizzie,--"what then?" "In that case Mr. Camperdown, acting on behalf of John Eustace and young Florian--" "How dreadful it is to hear of my bitterest enemy acting on behalf of my own child!" said Lizzie, holding up her hands piteously. "Well?" "In that case Mr. Camperdown will serve you with some notice that the jewels are not yours,--to part with them as you may please." "But they will be mine." "He says not;--but in such case he will content himself with taking steps which may prevent you from selling them." "Who says that I want to sell them?" demanded Lizzie indignantly. "Or from giving them away,--say to a second husband." "How little they know me!" "Now I have told you all about Mr. Camperdown." "Yes." "And the next thing is to tell you about Lord Fawn." "That is everything. I care nothing for Mr. Camperdown; nor yet for Mr. Dove,--if that is his absurd name. Lord Fawn is of more moment to me,--though, indeed, he has given me but little cause to say so." "In the first place, I must explain to you that Lord Fawn is very unhappy." "He may thank himself for it." "He is pulled this way and that, and is half distraught; but he has stated with as much positive assurance as such a man can assume, that the match must be regarded as broken off unless you will at once restore the necklace." "He does?" "He has commissioned me to give you that message;--and it is my duty, Lizzie, as your friend, to tell you my conviction that he repents his engagement." She now rose from her chair and began to walk about the room. "He shall not go back from it. He shall learn that I am not a creature at his own disposal in that way. He shall find that I have some strength,--if you have none." "What would you have had me do?" "Taken him by the throat," said Lizzie. "Taking by the throat in these days seldom forwards any object,--unless the taken one be known to the police. I think Lord Fawn is behaving very badly, and I have told him so. No doubt he is under the influence of others,--mother and sisters,--who are not friendly to you." "False-faced idiots!" said Lizzie. "He himself is somewhat afraid of me,--is much afraid of you;--is afraid of what people will say of him; and,--to give him his due,--is afraid also of doing what is wrong. He is timid, weak, conscientious, and wretched. If you have set your heart upon marrying him--" "My heart!" said Lizzie scornfully. "Or your mind,--you can have him by simply sending the diamonds to the jewellers. Whatever may be his wishes, in that case he will redeem his word." "Not for him or all that belongs to him! It wouldn't be much. He's just a pauper with a name." "Then your loss will be so much the less." "But what right has he to treat me so? Did you ever before hear of such a thing? Why is he to be allowed to go back,--without punishment,--more than another?" "What punishment would you wish?" "That he should be beaten within an inch of his life;--and if the inch were not there, I should not complain." "And I am to do it,--to my absolute ruin, and to your great injury?" "I think I could almost do it myself." And Lizzie raised her hand as though there were some weapon in it. "But, Frank, there must be something. You wouldn't have me sit down and bear it. All the world has been told of the engagement. There must be some punishment." "You would not wish to have an action brought,--for breach of promise?" "I would wish to do whatever would hurt him most,--without hurting myself," said Lizzie. "You won't give up the necklace?" said Frank. "Certainly not," said Lizzie. "Give it up for his sake,--a man that I have always despised?" "Then you had better let him go." "I will not let him go. What,--to be pointed at as the woman that Lord Fawn had jilted? Never! My necklace should be nothing more to him than this ring." And she drew from her finger a little circlet of gold with a stone, for which she had owed Messrs. Harter and Benjamin five-and-thirty pounds till Sir Florian had settled that account for her. "What cause can he give for such treatment?" "He acknowledges that there is no cause which he can state openly." "And I am to bear it? And it is you that tell me so? Oh, Frank!" "Let us understand each other, Lizzie. I will not fight him,--that is, with pistols; nor will I attempt to thrash him. It would be useless to argue whether public opinion is right or wrong; but public opinion is now so much opposed to that kind of thing, that it is out of the question. I should injure your position and destroy my own. If you mean to quarrel with me on that score, you had better say so." Perhaps at that moment he almost wished that she would quarrel with him, but she was otherwise disposed. "Oh, Frank," she said, "do not desert me." "I will not desert you." "You feel that I am ill-used, Frank?" "I do. I think that his conduct is inexcusable." "And there is to be no punishment?" she asked, with that strong indignation at injustice which the unjust always feel when they are injured. "If you carry yourself well,--quietly and with dignity,--the world will punish him." "I don't believe a bit of it. I am not a Patient Grizel who can content myself with heaping benefits on those who injure me, and then thinking that they are coals of fire. Lucy Morris is one of that sort." Frank ought to have resented the attack, but he did not. "I have no such tame virtues. I'll tell him to his face what he is. I'll lead him such a life that he shall be sick of the very name of necklace." "You cannot ask him to marry you." "I will. What, not ask a man to keep his promise when you are engaged to him? I am not going to be such a girl as that." "Do you love him, then?" "Love him! I hate him. I always despised him, and now I hate him." "And yet you would marry him?" "Not for worlds, Frank. No. Because you advised me, I thought that I would do so. Yes, you did, Frank. But for you I would never have dreamed of taking him. You know, Frank, how it was,--when you told me of him and wouldn't come to me yourself." Now again she was sitting close to him and had her hand upon his arm. "No, Frank; even to please you I could not marry him now. But I'll tell you what I'll do. He shall ask me again. In spite of those idiots at Richmond he shall kneel at my feet,--necklace or no necklace; and then,--then I'll tell him what I think of him. Marry him! I would not touch him with a pair of tongs." As she said this, she was holding her cousin fast by the hand. CHAPTER XXIV Showing What Frank Greystock Thought About Marriage It had not been much after noon when Frank Greystock reached Portray Castle, and it was very nearly five when he left it. Of course he had lunched with the two ladies, and as the conversation before lunch had been long and interesting, they did not sit down till near three. Then Lizzie had taken him out to show him the grounds and garden, and they had clambered together down to the sea-beach. "Leave me here," she had said, when he insisted on going because of his friend at the Cottage. When he suggested that she would want help to climb back up the rocks to the castle, she shook her head, as though her heart was too full to admit of a consideration so trifling. "My thoughts flow more freely here with the surge of the water in my ears, than they will with that old woman droning to me. I come here often, and know every rock and every stone." That was not exactly true, as she had never been down but once before. "You mean to come again?" He told her that of course he should come again. "I will name neither day nor hour. I have nothing to take me away. If I am not at the castle I shall be at this spot. Good-bye, Frank." He took her in his arms and kissed her,--of course as a brother; and then he clambered up, got on his pony, and rode away. "I dinna ken just what to mak' o' him," said Gowran to his wife. "May be he is her coosin; but coosins are nae that sib that a weedow is to be hailed aboot jist ane as though she were ony quean at a fair." From which it may be inferred that Mr. Gowran had watched the pair as they were descending together towards the shore. Frank had so much to think of, riding back to the Cottage, that when he came to the gap, instead of turning round along the wall down the valley, he took the track right on across the mountain and lost his way. He had meant to be back at the Cottage by three or four, and yet had made his visit to the castle so long, that without any losing of his way he could not have been there before seven. As it was, when that hour arrived, he was up on the top of a hill, and could again see Portray Castle clustering down close upon the sea, and the thin belt of trees, and the shining water beyond;--but of the road to the Cottage he knew nothing. For a moment he thought of returning to Portray, till he had taught himself to perceive that the distance was much greater than it had been from the spot at which he had first seen the castle in the morning;--and then he turned his pony round and descended on the other side. His mind was very full of Lizzie Eustace, and full also of Lucy Morris. If it were to be asserted here that a young man may be perfectly true to a first young woman while he is falling in love with a second, the readers of this story would probably be offended. But undoubtedly many men believe themselves to be quite true while undergoing this process, and many young women expect nothing else from their lovers. If only he will come right at last, they are contented. And if he don't come right at all,--it is the way of the world, and the game has to be played over again. Lucy Morris, no doubt, had lived a life too retired for the learning of such useful forbearance, but Frank Greystock was quite a proficient. He still considered himself to be true to Lucy Morris, with a truth seldom found in this degenerate age,--with a truth to which he intended to sacrifice some of the brightest hopes of his life,--with a truth which, after much thought, he had generously preferred to his ambition. Perhaps there was found some shade of regret to tinge the merit which he assumed on this head, in respect of the bright things which it would be necessary that he should abandon; but, if so, the feeling only assisted him in defending his present conduct from any aspersions his conscience might bring against it. He intended to marry Lucy Morris,--without a shilling, without position, a girl who had earned her bread as a governess, simply because he loved her. It was a wonder to himself that he, a lawyer, a man of the world, a member of Parliament, one who had been steeped up to his shoulders in the ways of the world, should still be so pure as to be capable of such a sacrifice. But it was so; and the sacrifice would undoubtedly be made,--some day. It would be absurd in one conscious of such high merit to be afraid of the ordinary social incidents of life. It is the debauched broken drunkard who should become a teetotaller, and not the healthy hard-working father of a family who never drinks a drop of wine till dinner-time. He need not be afraid of a glass of champagne when, on a chance occasion, he goes to a picnic. Frank Greystock was now going to his picnic; and, though he meant to be true to Lucy Morris, he had enjoyed his glass of champagne with Lizzie Eustace under the rocks. He was thinking a good deal of his champagne when he lost his way. What a wonderful woman was his cousin Lizzie;--and so unlike any other girl he had ever seen! How full she was of energy, how courageous, and, then, how beautiful! No doubt her special treatment of him was sheer flattery. He told himself that it was so. But, after all, flattery is agreeable. That she did like him better than anybody else was probable. He could have no feeling of the injustice he might do to the heart of a woman who at the very moment that she was expressing her partiality for him, was also expressing her anger that another man would not consent to marry her. And then women who have had one husband already are not like young girls in respect to their hearts. So at least thought Frank Greystock. Then he remembered the time at which he had intended to ask Lizzie to be his wife,--the very day on which he would have done so had he been able to get away from that early division at the House,--and he asked himself whether he felt any regret on that score. It would have been very nice to come down to Portray Castle as to his own mansion after the work of the courts and of the session. Had Lizzie become his wife, her fortune would have helped him to the very highest steps beneath the throne. At present he was almost nobody;--because he was so poor, and in debt. It was so, undoubtedly; but what did all that matter in comparison with the love of Lucy Morris? A man is bound to be true. And he would be true. Only, as a matter of course, Lucy must wait. When he had first kissed his cousin up in London, she suggested that the kiss was given as by a brother, and asserted that it was accepted as by a sister. He had not demurred, having been allowed the kiss. Nothing of the kind had been said under the rocks to-day;--but then that fraternal arrangement, when once made and accepted, remains, no doubt, in force for a long time. He did like his cousin Lizzie. He liked to feel that he could be her friend, with the power of domineering over her. She, also, was fond of her own way, and loved to domineer herself; but the moment that he suggested to her that there might be a quarrel, she was reduced to a prayer that he would not desert her. Such a friendship has charms for a young man, especially if the lady be pretty. As to Lizzie's prettiness, no man or woman could entertain a doubt. And she had a way of making the most of herself, which it was very hard to resist. Some young women, when they clamber over rocks, are awkward, heavy, unattractive, and troublesome. But Lizzie had at one moment touched him as a fairy might have done; had sprung at another from stone to stone, requiring no help; and then, on a sudden, had become so powerless that he had been forced almost to carry her in his arms. That, probably, must have been the moment which induced Mr. Gowran to liken her to a quean at a fair. But, undoubtedly, there might be trouble. Frank was sufficiently experienced in the ways of the world to know that trouble would sometimes come from young ladies who treat young men like their brothers, when those young men are engaged to other young ladies. The other young ladies are apt to disapprove of brothers who are not brothers by absolute right of birth. He knew also that all the circumstances of his cousin's position would make it expedient that she should marry a second husband. As he could not be that second husband,--that matter was settled, whether for good or bad,--was he not creating trouble, both for her and for himself? Then there arose in his mind a feeling, very strange, but by no means uncommon, that prudence on his part would be mean, because by such prudence he would be securing safety for himself as well as for her. What he was doing was not only imprudent,--but wrong also. He knew that it was so. But Lizzie Eustace was a pretty young woman; and, when a pretty young woman is in the case, a man is bound to think neither of what is prudent, nor of what is right. Such was--perhaps his instinct rather than his theory. For her sake, if not for his own, he should have abstained. She was his cousin, and was so placed in the world as specially to require some strong hand to help her. He knew her to be, in truth, heartless, false, and greedy; but she had so lived that even yet her future life might be successful. He had called himself her friend as well as cousin, and was bound to protect her from evil, if protection were possible. But he was adding to all her difficulties, because she pretended to be in love with him. He knew that it was pretence; and yet, because she was pretty, and because he was a man, he could not save her from herself. "It doesn't do to be wiser than other men," he said to himself as he looked round about on the bare hill-side. In the meantime he had altogether lost his way. It was between nine and ten when he reached the Cottage. "Of course you have dined?" said Herriot. "Not a bit of it. I left before five, being sure that I could get here in an hour and a half. I have been riding up and down these dreary hills for nearly five hours. You have dined?" "There was a neck of mutton and a chicken. She said the neck of mutton would keep hot best, so I took the chicken. I hope you like lukewarm neck of mutton?" "I'm hungry enough to eat anything;--not but what I had a first-rate luncheon. What have you done all day?" "Stone and Toddy," said Herriot. "Stick to that. If anything can pull you through, Stone and Toddy will. I lived upon them for two years." "Stone and Toddy,--with a little tobacco, have been all my comfort. I began, however, by sleeping for a few hours. Then I went upon the mountains." "Did you take a gun?" "I took it out of the case, but it didn't come right, and so I left it. A man came to me and said he was the keeper." "He'd have put the gun right for you." "I was too bashful for that. I persuaded him that I wanted to go out alone and see what birds there were, and at last I induced him to stay here with the old woman. He's to be at the Cottage at nine to-morrow. I hope that is all right." In the evening, as they smoked and drank whiskey and water,--probably supposing that to be correct in Ayrshire,--they were led on by the combined warmth of the spirit, the tobacco, and their friendship, to talk about women. Frank, some month or six weeks since, in a moment of soft confidence, had told his friend of his engagement with Lucy Morris. Of Lizzie Eustace he had spoken only as of a cousin whose interests were dear to him. Her engagement with Lord Fawn was known to all London, and was, therefore, known to Arthur Herriot. Some distant rumour, however, had reached him that the course of true-love was not running quite smooth, and therefore on that subject he would not speak, at any rate till Greystock should first mention it. "How odd it is to find two women living all alone in a great house like that," Frank had said. "Because so few women have the means to live in large houses, unless they live with fathers or husbands." "The truth is," said Frank, "that women don't do well alone. There is always a savour of misfortune,--or, at least, of melancholy,--about a household which has no man to look after it. With us, generally, old maids don't keep houses, and widows marry again. No doubt it was an unconscious appreciation of this feeling which brought about the burning of Indian widows. There is an unfitness in women for solitude. A female Prometheus, even without a vulture, would indicate cruelty worse even than Jove's. A woman should marry,--once, twice, and thrice if necessary." "Women can't marry without men to marry them." Frank Greystock filled his pipe as he went on with his lecture. "That idea as to the greater number of women is all nonsense. Of course we are speaking of our own kind of men and women, and the disproportion of the numbers in so small a division of the population amounts to nothing. We have no statistics to tell us whether there be any such disproportion in classes where men do not die early from overwork." "More females are born than males." "That's more than I know. As one of the legislators of the country I am prepared to state that statistics are always false. What we have to do is to induce men to marry. We can't do it by statute." "No, thank God." "Nor yet by fashion." "Fashion seems to be going the other way," said Herriot. "It can be only done by education and conscience. Take men of forty all round,--men of our own class,--you believe that the married men are happier than the unmarried? I want an answer, you know, just for the sake of the argument." "I think the married men are the happier. But you speak as the fox who had lost his tail;--or, at any rate, as a fox in the act of losing it." "Never mind my tail. If morality in life and enlarged affections are conducive to happiness it must be so." "Short commons and unpaid bills are conducive to misery. That's what I should say if I wanted to oppose you." "I never came across a man willing to speak the truth who did not admit that, in the long run, married men are the happier. As regards women, there isn't even ground for an argument. And yet men don't marry." "They can't." "You mean there isn't food enough in the world." "The man fears that he won't get enough of what there is for his wife and family." "The labourer with twelve shillings a week has no such fear. And if he did marry, the food would come. It isn't that. The man is unconscientious and ignorant as to the sources of true happiness, and won't submit himself to cold mutton and three clean shirts a week,--not because he dislikes mutton and dirty linen himself,--but because the world says they are vulgar. That's the feeling that keeps you from marrying, Herriot." "As for me," said Herriot, "I regard myself as so placed that I do not dare to think of a young woman of my own rank except as a creature that must be foreign to me. I cannot make such a one my friend as I would a man, because I should be in love with her at once. And I do not dare to be in love because I would not see a wife and children starve. I regard my position as one of enforced monasticism, and myself as a monk under the cruellest compulsion. I often wish that I had been brought up as a journeyman hatter." "Why a hatter?" "I'm told it's an active sort of life. You're fast asleep, and I was just now, when you were preaching. We'd better go to bed. Nine o'clock for breakfast, I suppose?" CHAPTER XXV Mr. Dove's Opinion Mr. Thomas Dove, familiarly known among club-men, attorneys' clerks, and, perhaps, even among judges when very far from their seats of judgment, as Turtle Dove, was a counsel learned in the law. He was a counsel so learned in the law, that there was no question within the limits of an attorney's capability of putting to him, that he could not answer with the aid of his books. And when he had once given an opinion, all Westminster could not move him from it,--nor could Chancery Lane and Lincoln's Inn and the Temple added to Westminster. When Mr. Dove had once been positive, no man on earth was more positive. It behoved him, therefore, to be right when he was positive; and though whether wrong or right he was equally stubborn, it must be acknowledged that he was seldom proved to be wrong. Consequently the attorneys believed in him, and he prospered. He was a thin man, over fifty years of age, very full of scorn and wrath, impatient of a fool, and thinking most men to be fools; afraid of nothing on earth,--and, so his enemies said, of nothing elsewhere; eaten up by conceit; fond of law, but fonder, perhaps, of dominion; soft as milk to those who acknowledged his power, but a tyrant to all who contested it; conscientious, thoughtful, sarcastic, bright-witted, and laborious. He was a man who never spared himself. If he had a case in hand, though the interest to himself in it was almost nothing, he would rob himself of rest for a week should a point arise which required such labour. It was the theory of Mr. Dove's life that he would never be beaten. Perhaps it was some fear in this respect that had kept him from Parliament and confined him to the courts and the company of attorneys. He was, in truth, a married man with a family; but they who knew him as the terror of opponents and as the divulger of legal opinions, heard nothing of his wife and children. He kept all such matters quite to himself, and was not given to much social intercourse with those among whom his work lay. Out at Streatham, where he lived, Mrs. Dove probably had her circle of acquaintance;--but Mr. Dove's domestic life and his forensic life were kept quite separate. At the present moment Mr. Dove is interesting to us solely as being the learned counsel in whom Mr. Camperdown trusted,--to whom Mr. Camperdown was willing to trust for an opinion in so grave a matter as that of the Eustace diamonds. A case was made out and submitted to Mr. Dove immediately after that scene on the pavement in Mount Street, at which Mr. Camperdown had endeavoured to induce Lizzie to give up the necklace; and the following is the opinion which Mr. Dove gave:-- There is much error about heirlooms. Many think that any chattel may be made an heirloom by any owner of it. This is not the case. The law, however, does recognise heirlooms;--as to which the Exors. or Admors. are excluded in favour of the Successor; and when there are such heirlooms they go to the heir by special custom. Any devise of an heirloom is necessarily void, for the will takes place after death, and the heirloom is already vested in the heir by custom. We have it from Littleton, that law prefers custom to devise. Brooke says, that the best thing of every sort may be an heirloom,--such as the best bed, the best table, the best pot or pan. Coke says, that heirlooms are so by custom, and not by law. Spelman says, in defining an heirloom, that it may be "Omne utensil robustius;" which would exclude a necklace. In the "Termes de Ley," it is defined as "Ascun parcel des ustensiles." We are told in "Coke upon Littleton," that Crown jewels are heirlooms, which decision,--as far as it goes,--denies the right to other jewels. Certain chattels may undoubtedly be held and claimed as being in the nature of heirlooms,--as swords, pennons of honour, garter and collar of S. S. See case of the Earl of Northumberland; and that of the Pusey horn,--Pusey v. Pusey. The journals of the House of Lords, delivered officially to peers, may be so claimed. See Upton v. Lord Ferrers. A devisor may clearly devise or limit the possession of chattels, making them inalienable by devisees in succession. But in such cases they will become the absolute possession of the first person seized in tail,--even though an infant, and in case of death without will, would go to the Exors. Such arrangement, therefore, can only hold good for lives in existence and for 21 years afterwards. Chattels so secured would not be heirlooms. See Carr v. Lord Errol, 14 Vesey, and Rowland v. Morgan. Lord Eldon remarks, that such chattels held in families are "rather favourites of the court." This was in the Ormonde case. Executors, therefore, even when setting aside any claim as for heirlooms, ought not to apply such property in payment of debts unless obliged. The law allows of claims for paraphernalia for widows, and, having adjusted such claims, seems to show that the claim may be limited. If a man deliver cloth to his wife, and die, she shall have it, though she had not fashioned it into the garment intended. Pearls and jewels, even though only worn on state occasions, may go to the widow as paraphernalia,--but with a limit. In the case of Lady Douglas, she being the daughter of an Irish Earl and widow of the King's Sergeant (temp. Car. I.), it was held that £370 was not too much, and she was allowed a diamond and a pearl chain to that value. In 1674, Lord Keeper Finch declared that he would never allow paraphernalia, except to the widow of a nobleman. But in 1721 Lord Macclesfield gave Mistress Tipping paraphernalia to the value of £200,--whether so persuaded by law and precedent, or otherwise, may be uncertain. Lord Talbot allowed a gold watch as paraphernalia. Lord Hardwicke went much further, and decided that Mrs. Northey was entitled to wear jewels to the value of £3000,--saying that value made no difference; but seems to have limited the nature of her possession in the jewels by declaring her to be entitled to wear them only when full-dressed. It is, I think, clear that the Eustace estate cannot claim the jewels as an heirloom. They are last mentioned, and, as far as I know, only mentioned as an heirloom in the will of the great-grandfather of the present baronet,--if these be the diamonds then named by him. As such, he could not have devised them to the present claimant, as he died in 1820, and the present claimant is not yet two years old. Whether the widow could claim them as paraphernalia is more doubtful. I do not know that Lord Hardwicke's ruling would decide the case; but, if so, she would, I think, be debarred from selling, as he limits the use of jewels of lesser value than these to the wearing of them when full-dressed. The use being limited, possession with power of alienation cannot be intended. The lady's claim to them as a gift from her husband amounts to nothing. If they are not hers by will,--and it seems that they are not so,--she can only hold them as paraphernalia belonging to her station. I presume it to be capable of proof that the diamonds were not in Scotland when Sir Florian made his will or when he died. The former fact might be used as tending to show his intention when the will was made. I understand that he did leave to his widow by will all the chattels in Portray Castle. J. D. 15 August, 18--. When Mr. Camperdown had thrice read this opinion, he sat in his chair an unhappy old man. It was undoubtedly the case that he had been a lawyer for upwards of forty years, and had always believed that any gentleman could make any article of value an heirloom in his family. The title-deeds of vast estates had been confided to his keeping, and he had had much to do with property of every kind; and now he was told that, in reference to property of a certain description,--property which, by its nature, could only belong to such as they who were his clients,--he had been long without any knowledge whatsoever. He had called this necklace an heirloom to John Eustace above a score of times; and now he was told by Mr. Dove not only that the necklace was not an heirloom, but that it couldn't have been an heirloom. He was a man who trusted much in a barrister,--as was natural with an attorney; but he was now almost inclined to doubt Mr. Dove. And he was hardly more at ease in regard to the other clauses of the opinion. Not only could not the estate claim the necklace as an heirloom, but that greedy siren, that heartless snake, that harpy of a widow,--for it was thus that Mr. Camperdown in his solitude spoke to himself of poor Lizzie, perhaps throwing in a harder word or two,--that female swindler could claim it as--paraphernalia! There was a crumb of comfort for him in the thought that he could force her to claim that privilege from a decision of the Court of Queen's Bench, and that her greed would be exposed should she do so. And she could be prevented from selling the diamonds. Mr. Dove seemed to make that quite clear. But then there came that other question, as to the inheritance of the property under the husband's will. That Sir Florian had not intended that she should inherit the necklace, Mr. Camperdown was quite certain. On that point he suffered no doubt. But would he be able to prove that the diamonds had never been in Scotland since Sir Florian's marriage? He had traced their history from that date with all the diligence he could use, and he thought that he knew it. But it might be doubtful whether he could prove it. Lady Eustace had first stated,--had so stated before she had learned the importance of any other statement,--that Sir Florian had given her the diamonds in London, as they passed through London from Scotland to Italy, and that she had carried them thence to Naples, where Sir Florian had died. If this were so, they could not have been at Portray Castle till she took them there as a widow, and they would undoubtedly be regarded as a portion of that property which Sir Florian habitually kept in London. That this was so Mr. Camperdown entertained no doubt. But now the widow alleged that Sir Florian had given the necklace to her in Scotland, whither they had gone immediately after their marriage, and that she herself had brought them up to London. They had been married on the 5th of September; and by the jewellers' books it was hard to tell whether the trinket had been given up to Sir Florian on the 4th or 24th of September. On the 24th Sir Florian and his young bride had undoubtedly been in London. Mr. Camperdown anathematised the carelessness of everybody connected with Messrs. Garnett's establishment. "Those sort of people have no more idea of accuracy than--than--" than he had had of heirlooms, his conscience whispered to him, filling up the blank. Nevertheless he thought he could prove that the necklace was first put into Lizzie's hands in London. The middle-aged and very discreet man at Messrs. Garnett's, who had given up the jewel-case to Sir Florian, was sure that he had known Sir Florian to be a married man when he did so. The lady's maid who had been in Scotland with Lady Eustace, and who was now living in Turin, having married a courier, had given evidence before an Italian man of law, stating that she had never seen the necklace till she came to London. There were, moreover, the probabilities of the case. Was it likely that Sir Florian should take such a thing down in his pocket to Scotland? And there was the statement as first made by Lady Eustace herself to her cousin Frank, repeated by him to John Eustace, and not to be denied by any one. It was all very well for her now to say that she had forgotten; but would any one believe that on such a subject she could forget? But still the whole thing was very uncomfortable. Mr. Dove's opinion, if seen by Lady Eustace and her friends, would rather fortify them than frighten them. Were she once to get hold of that word paraphernalia, it would be as a tower of strength to her. Mr. Camperdown specially felt this,--that whereas he had hitherto believed that no respectable attorney would take up such a case as that of Lady Eustace, he could not now but confess to himself that any lawyer seeing Mr. Dove's opinion would be justified in taking it up. And yet he was as certain as ever that the woman was robbing the estate which it was his duty to guard, and that should he cease to be active in the matter, the necklace would be broken up and the property sold and scattered before a year was out, and then the woman would have got the better of him! "She shall find that we have not done with her yet," he said to himself, as he wrote a line to John Eustace. But John Eustace was out of town, as a matter of course;--and on the next day Mr. Camperdown himself went down and joined his wife and family at a little cottage which he had at Dawlish. The necklace, however, interfered much with his holiday. CHAPTER XXVI Mr. Gowran Is Very Funny Frank Greystock certainly went over to Portray too often,--so often that the pony was proved to be quite necessary. Miss Macnulty held her tongue and was gloomy,--believing that Lady Eustace was still engaged to Lord Fawn, and feeling that in that case there should not be so many visits to the rocks. Mr. Gowran was very attentive, and could tell on any day, to five minutes, how long the two cousins were sitting together on the sea-shore. Arthur Herriot, who cared nothing for Lady Eustace, but who knew that his friend had promised to marry Lucy Morris, was inclined to be serious on the subject; but,--as is always the case with men,--was not willing to speak about it. Once, and once only, the two men dined together at the castle,--for the doing of which it was necessary that a gig should be hired all the way from Prestwick. Herriot had not been anxious to go over, alleging various excuses,--the absence of dress clothes, the calls of Stone and Toddy, his bashfulness, and the absurdity of paying fifteen shillings for a gig. But he went at last, constrained by his friend, and a very dull evening he passed. Lizzie was quite unlike her usual self,--was silent, grave, and solemnly courteous; Miss Macnulty had not a word to say for herself; and even Frank was dull. Arthur Herriot had not tried to exert himself, and the dinner had been a failure. "You don't think much of my cousin, I daresay," said Frank, as they were driving back. "She is a very pretty woman." "And I should say that she does not think much of you." "Probably not." "Why on earth wouldn't you speak to her? I went on making speeches to Miss Macnulty on purpose to give you a chance. Lizzie generally talks about as well as any young woman I know; but you had not a word to say to her, nor she to you." "Because you devoted yourself to Miss Mac--whatever her name is." "That's nonsense," said Frank; "Lizzie and I are more like brother and sister than anything else. She has no one else belonging to her, and she has to come to me for advice, and all that sort of thing. I wanted you to like her." "I never like people, and people never like me. There is an old saying that you should know a man seven years before you poke his fire. I want to know persons seven years before I can ask them how they do. To take me out to dine in this way was of all things the most hopeless." "But you do dine out,--in London." "That's different. There's a certain routine of conversation going, and one falls into it. At such affairs as that this evening one has to be intimate, or it is a bore. I don't mean to say anything against Lady Eustace. Her beauty is undeniable, and I don't doubt her cleverness." "She is sometimes too clever," said Frank. "I hope she is not becoming too clever for you. You've got to remember that you're due elsewhere;--eh, old fellow?" This was the first word that Herriot had said on the subject, and to that word Frank Greystock made no answer. But it had its effect, as also did the gloomy looks of Miss Macnulty, and the not unobserved presence of Mr. Andy Gowran on various occasions. Between them they shot more grouse,--so the keeper swore,--than had ever been shot on these mountains before. Herriot absolutely killed one or two himself, to his own great delight, and Frank, who was fairly skilful, would get four or five in a day. There were excursions to be made, and the air of the hills was in itself a treat to both of them. Though Greystock was so often away at the castle, Herriot did not find the time hang heavily on his hands, and was sorry when his fortnight was over. "I think I shall stay a couple of days longer," Frank said, when Herriot spoke of their return. "The truth is I must see Lizzie again. She is bothered by business, and I have to see her about a letter that came this morning. You needn't pull such a long face. There's nothing of the kind you're thinking of." "I thought so much of what you once said to me about another girl that I hope she at any rate may never be in trouble." "I hope she never may,--on my account," said Frank. "And what troubles she may have,--as life will be troublesome, I trust that I may share and lessen." On that evening Herriot went, and on the next morning Frank Greystock again rode over to Portray Castle; but when he was alone after Herriot's departure, he wrote a letter to Lucy Morris. He had expressed a hope that he might never be a cause of trouble to Lucy Morris, and he knew that his silence would trouble her. There could be no human being less inclined to be suspicious than Lucy Morris. Of that Frank was sure. But there had been an express stipulation with Lady Fawn that she should be allowed to receive letters from him, and she would naturally be vexed when he did not write to her. So he wrote. Portray Cottage, 3 Sept., 18--. DEAREST LUCY, We have been here for a fortnight, shooting grouse, wandering about the mountains, and going to sleep on the hill-sides. You will say that there never was a time so fit for the writing of letters, but that will be because you have not learned yet that the idler people are, the more inclined they are to be idle. We hear of Lord Chancellors writing letters to their mothers every day of their lives; but men who have nothing on earth to do cannot bring themselves to face a sheet of paper. I would promise that when I am Lord Chancellor I would write to you every day, were it not that when that time comes I shall hope to be always with you. And, in truth, I have had to pay constant visits to my cousin, who lives in a big castle on the sea-side, ten miles from here, over the mountains, and who is in a peck of troubles;--in spite of her prosperity one of the unhappiest women, I should say, that you could meet anywhere. You know so much of her affairs that, without breach of trust, I may say so much. I wish she had a father or a brother to manage her matters for her; but she has none, and I cannot desert her. Your Lord Fawn is behaving badly to her; and so, as far as I can see, are the people who manage the Eustace property. Lizzie, as you know, is not the most tractable of women, and altogether I have more to do in the matter than I like. Riding ten miles backwards and forwards so often over the same route on a little pony is not good fun, but I am almost glad the distance is not less. Otherwise I might have been always there. I know you don't quite like Lizzie, but she is to be pitied. I go up to London on Friday, but shall only be there for one or two days,--that is, for one night. I go almost entirely on her business, and must, I fear, be here again, or at the castle, before I can settle myself either for work or happiness. On Sunday night I go down to Bobsborough,--where, indeed, I ought to have been earlier. I fear I cannot go to Richmond on the Saturday, and on the Sunday Lady Fawn would hardly make me welcome. I shall be at Bobsborough for about three weeks, and there, if you have commands to give, I will obey them. I may, however, tell you the truth at once,--though it is a truth you must keep very much to yourself. In the position in which I now stand as to Lord Fawn,--being absolutely forced to quarrel with him on Lizzie's behalf,--Lady Fawn could hardly receive me with comfort to herself. She is the best of women; and, as she is your dear friend, nothing is further from me than any idea of quarrelling with her; but of course she takes her son's part, and I hardly know how all allusion to the subject could be avoided. This, however, dearest, need ruffle no feather between you and me, who love each other better than we love either the Fawns or the Lizzies. Let me find a line at my chambers to say that it is so, and always shall be so. God bless my own darling, Ever and always your own, F. G. On the following day he rode over to the castle. He had received a letter from John Eustace, who had found himself forced to run up to London to meet Mr. Camperdown. The lawyer had thought to postpone further consideration of the whole matter till he and everybody else would be naturally in London,--till November that might be, or, perhaps, even till after Christmas. But his mind was ill at ease; and he knew that so much might be done with the diamonds in four months! They might even now be in the hands of some Benjamin or of some Harter, and it might soon be beyond the power either of lawyers or of policemen to trace them. He therefore went up from Dawlish and persuaded John Eustace to come from Yorkshire. It was a great nuisance, and Eustace freely anathematised the necklace. "If only some one would steal it, so that we might hear no more of the thing!" he said. But, as Mr. Camperdown had frequently remarked, the value was too great for trifling, and Eustace went up to London. Mr. Camperdown put into his hands the Turtle Dove's opinion, explaining that it was by no means expedient that it should be shown to the other party. Eustace thought that the opinion should be common to them all. "We pay for it," said Mr. Camperdown, "and they can get their opinion from any other barrister if they please." But what was to be done? Eustace declared that as to the present whereabouts of the necklace, he did not in the least doubt that he could get the truth from Frank Greystock. He therefore wrote to Greystock, and with that letter in his pocket, Frank rode over to the castle for the last time. He, too, was heartily sick of the necklace;--but unfortunately he was not equally sick of her who held it in possession. And he was, too, better alive to the importance of the value of the trinket than John Eustace, though not so keenly as was Mr. Camperdown. Lady Eustace was out somewhere among the cliffs, the servant said. He regretted this as he followed her, but he was obliged to follow her. Half way down to the sea-shore, much below the knob on which she had attempted to sit with her Shelley, but yet not below the need of assistance, he found her seated in a little ravine. "I knew you would come," she said. Of course she had known that he would come. She did not rise, or even give him her hand, but there was a spot close beside her on which it was to be presumed that he would seat himself. She had a volume of Byron in her hand,--the Corsair, Lara, and the Giaour,--a kind of poetry which was in truth more intelligible to her than Queen Mab. "You go to-morrow?" "Yes;--I go to-morrow." "And Lubin has gone?" Arthur Herriot was Lubin. "Lubin has gone. Though why Lubin, I cannot guess. The normal Lubin to me is a stupid fellow always in love. Herriot is not stupid and is never in love." "Nevertheless, he is Lubin if I choose to call him so. Why did he twiddle his thumbs instead of talking? Have you heard anything of Lord Fawn?" "I have had a letter from your brother-in-law." "And what is John the Just pleased to say?" "John the Just, which is a better name for the man than the other, has been called up to London, much against his will, by Mr. Camperdown." "Who is Samuel the Unjust." Mr. Camperdown's name was Samuel. "And now wants to know where this terrible necklace is at this present moment." He paused a moment, but Lizzie did not answer him. "I suppose you have no objection to telling me where it is." "None in the least:--or to giving it you to keep for me, only that I would not so far trouble you. But I have an objection to telling them. They are my enemies. Let them find out." "You are wrong, Lizzie. You do not want, or at any rate should not want, to have any secret in the matter." "They are here,--in the castle; in the very place in which Sir Florian kept them when he gave them to me. Where should my own jewels be but in my own house? What does that Mr. Dove say, who was to be asked about them? No doubt they can pay a barrister to say anything." "Lizzie, you think too hardly of people." "And do not people think too hardly of me? Does not all this amount to an accusation against me that I am a thief? Am I not persecuted among them? Did not this impudent attorney stop me in the public street and accuse me of theft before my very servants? Have they not so far succeeded in misrepresenting me, that the very man who is engaged to be my husband betrays me? And now you are turning against me? Can you wonder that I am hard?" "I am not turning against you." "Yes; you are. You take their part, and not mine, in everything. I tell you what, Frank;--I would go out in that boat that you see yonder, and drop the bauble into the sea, did I not know that they'd drag it up again with their devilish ingenuity. If the stones would burn, I would burn them. But the worst of it all is, that you are becoming my enemy!" Then she burst into violent and almost hysteric tears. "It will be better that you should give them into the keeping of some one whom you can both trust, till the law has decided to whom they belong." "I will never give them up. What does Mr. Dove say?" "I have not seen what Mr. Dove says. It is clear that the necklace is not an heirloom." "Then how dare Mr. Camperdown say so often that it was?" "He said what he thought," pleaded Frank. "And he is a lawyer!" "I am a lawyer, and I did not know what is or what is not an heirloom. But Mr. Dove is clearly of opinion that such a property could not have been given away simply by word of mouth." John Eustace in his letter had made no allusion to that complicated question of paraphernalia. "But it was," said Lizzie. "Who can know but myself, when no one else was present?" "The jewels are here now?" "Not in my pocket. I do not carry them about with me. They are in the castle." "And will they go back with you to London?" "Was ever lady so interrogated? I do not know yet that I shall go back to London. Why am I asked such questions? As to you, Frank, I would tell you everything,--my whole heart, if only you cared to know it. But why is John Eustace to make inquiry as to personal ornaments which are my own property? If I go to London, I will take them there, and wear them at every house I enter. I will do so in defiance of Mr. Camperdown and Lord Fawn. I think, Frank, that no woman was ever so ill-treated as I am." He himself thought that she was ill-treated. She had so pleaded her case, and had been so lovely in her tears and her indignation, that he began to feel something like true sympathy for her cause. What right had he, or had Mr. Camperdown, or any one, to say that the jewels did not belong to her? And if her claim to them was just, why should she be persuaded to give up the possession of them? He knew well that were she to surrender them with the idea that they should be restored to her if her claim were found to be just, she would not get them back very soon. If once the jewels were safe, locked up in Mr. Garnett's strong box, Mr. Camperdown would not care how long it might be before a jury or a judge should have decided on the case. The burthen of proof would then be thrown upon Lady Eustace. In order that she might recover her own property she would have to thrust herself forward as a witness, and appear before the world a claimant, greedy for rich ornaments. Why should he advise her to give them up? "I am only thinking," said he, "what may be the best for your own peace." "Peace!"--she exclaimed. "How am I to have peace? Remember the condition in which I find myself! Remember the manner in which that man is treating me, when all the world has been told of my engagement to him! When I think of it my heart is so bitter that I am inclined to throw, not the diamonds, but myself from off the rocks. All that remains to me is the triumph of getting the better of my enemies. Mr. Camperdown shall never have the diamonds. Even if they could prove that they did not belong to me, they should find them--gone." "I don't think they can prove it." "I'll flaunt them in the eyes of all of them till they do; and then--they shall be gone. And I'll have such revenge on Lord Fawn before I have done with him, that he shall know that it may be worse to have to fight a woman than a man. Oh, Frank, I do not think that I am hard by nature, but these things make a woman hard." As she spoke she took his hand in hers, and looked up into his eyes through her tears. "I know that you do not care for me, and you know how much I care for you." "Not care for you, Lizzie?" "No;--that little thing at Richmond is everything to you. She is tame and quiet,--a cat that will sleep on the rug before the fire, and you think that she will never scratch. Do not suppose that I mean to abuse her. She was my dear friend before you had ever seen her. And men, I know, have tastes which we women do not understand. You want what you call--repose." "We seldom know what we want, I fancy. We take what the gods send us." Frank's words were perhaps more true than wise. At the present moment the gods had clearly sent Lizzie Eustace to him, and unless he could call up some increased strength of his own, quite independent of the gods,--or of what we may perhaps call chance,--he would have to put up with the article sent. Lizzie had declared that she would not touch Lord Fawn with a pair of tongs, and in saying so had resolved that she could not and would not now marry his lordship even were his lordship in her power. It had been decided by her as quickly as thoughts flash, but it was decided. She would torture the unfortunate lord, but not torture him by becoming his wife. And, so much being fixed as the stars in heaven, might it be possible that she should even yet induce her cousin to take the place that had been intended for Lord Fawn? After all that had passed between them she need hardly hesitate to tell him of her love. And with the same flashing thoughts she declared to herself that she did love him, and that therefore this arrangement would be so much better than that other one which she had proposed to herself. The reader, perhaps, by this time, has not a high opinion of Lady Eustace, and may believe that among other drawbacks on her character there is especially this,--that she was heartless. But that was by no means her own opinion of herself. She would have described herself,--and would have meant to do so with truth,--as being all heart. She probably thought that an over-amount of heart was the malady under which she specially suffered. Her heart was overflowing now towards the man who was sitting by her side. And then it would be so pleasant to punish that little chit who had spurned her gift and had dared to call her mean! This man, too, was needy, and she was wealthy. Surely, were she to offer herself to him, the generosity of the thing would make it noble. She was still dissolved in tears and was still hysteric. "Oh, Frank!" she said, and threw herself upon his breast. Frank Greystock felt his position to be one of intense difficulty, but whether his difficulty was increased or diminished by the appearance of Mr. Andy Gowran's head over a rock at the entrance of the little cave in which they were sitting, it might be difficult to determine. But there was the head. And it was not a head that just popped itself up and then retreated, as a head would do that was discovered doing that which made it ashamed of itself. The head, with its eyes wide open, held its own, and seemed to say,--"Ay,--I've caught you, have I?" And the head did speak, though not exactly in those words. "Coosins!" said the head; and then the head was wagged. In the meantime Lizzie Eustace, whose back was turned to the head, raised her own, and looked up into Greystock's eyes for love. She perceived at once that something was amiss, and, starting to her feet, turned quickly round. "How dare you intrude here?" she said to the head. "Coosins!" replied the head, wagging itself. It was clearly necessary that Greystock should take some steps, if only with the object of proving to the impudent factotum that he was not altogether overcome by the awkwardness of his position. That he was a good deal annoyed, and that he felt not altogether quite equal to the occasion, must be acknowledged. "What is it that the man wants?" he said, glaring at the head. "Coosins!" said the head, wagging itself again. "If you don't take yourself off, I shall have to thrash you," said Frank. "Coosins!" said Andy Gowran, stepping from behind the rock and showing his full figure. Andy was a man on the wrong side of fifty, and therefore, on the score of age, hardly fit for thrashing. And he was compact, short, broad, and as hard as flint;--a man bad to thrash, look at it from what side you would. "Coosins!" he said yet again. "Ye're mair couthie than coosinly, I'm thinking." "Andy Gowran, I dismiss you from my service for your impertinence," said Lady Eustace. "It's ae ane to Andy Gowran for that, my leddie. There's timber and a warld o' things aboot the place as wants proteection on behalf o' the heir. If your leddieship is minded to be quit o' my sarvices, I'll find a maister in Mr. Camperdoon, as'll nae alloo me to be thrown out o' employ. Coosins!" "Walk off from this!" said Frank Greystock, coming forward and putting his hand upon the man's breast. Mr. Gowran repeated the objectionable word yet once again, and then retired. Frank Greystock immediately felt how very bad for him was his position. For the lady, if only she could succeed in her object, the annoyance of the interruption would not matter much after its first absurdity had been endured. When she had become the wife of Frank Greystock there would be nothing remarkable in the fact that she had been found sitting with him in a cavern by the sea-shore. But for Frank the difficulty of extricating himself from his dilemma was great, not in regard to Mr. Gowran, but in reference to his cousin Lizzie. He might, it was true, tell her that he was engaged to Lucy Morris;--but then why had he not told her so before? He had not told her so;--nor did he tell her on this occasion. When he attempted to lead her away up the cliff, she insisted on being left where she was. "I can find my way alone," she said, endeavouring to smile through her tears. "The man has annoyed me by his impudence,--that is all. Go,--if you are going." Of course he was going; but he could not go without a word of tenderness. "Dear, dear Lizzie," he said, embracing her. "Frank, you'll be true to me?" "I will be true to you." "Then go now," she said. And he went his way up the cliff, and got his pony, and rode back to the cottage, very uneasy in his mind. CHAPTER XXVII Lucy Morris Misbehaves Lucy Morris got her letter and was contented. She wanted some demonstration of love from her lover, but very little sufficed for her comfort. With her it was almost impossible that a man should be loved and suspected at the same time. She could not have loved the man, or at any rate confessed her love, without thinking well of him; and she could not think good and evil at the same time. She had longed for some word from him since she last saw him; and now she had got a word. She had known that he was close to his fair cousin,--the cousin whom she despised, and whom, with womanly instinct, she had almost regarded as a rival. But to her the man had spoken out; and though he was far away from her, living close to the fair cousin, she would not allow a thought of trouble on that score to annoy her. He was her own, and let Lizzie Eustace do her worst, he would remain her own. But she had longed to be told that he was thinking of her, and at last the letter had come. She answered it that same night with the sweetest, prettiest little letter, very short, full of love and full of confidence. Lady Fawn, she said, was the dearest of women;--but what was Lady Fawn to her, or all the Fawns, compared with her lover? If he could come to Richmond without disturbance to himself, let him come; but if he felt that, in the present unhappy condition of affairs between him and Lord Fawn, it was better that he should stay away, she had not a word to say in the way of urging him. To see him would be a great delight. But had she not the greater delight of knowing that he loved her? That was quite enough to make her happy. Then there was a little prayer that God might bless him, and an assurance that she was in all things his own, own Lucy. When she was writing her letter she was in all respects a happy girl. But on the very next day there came a cloud upon her happiness,--not in the least, however, affecting her full confidence in her lover. It was a Saturday, and Lord Fawn came down to Richmond. Lord Fawn had seen Mr. Greystock in London on that day, and the interview had been by no means pleasant to him. The Under-Secretary of State for India was as dark as a November day when he reached his mother's house, and there fell upon every one the unintermittent cold drizzling shower of his displeasure from the moment in which he entered the house. There was never much reticence among the ladies at Richmond in Lucy's presence, and since the completion of Lizzie's unfortunate visit to Fawn Court, they had not hesitated to express open opinions adverse to the prospects of the proposed bride. Lucy herself could say but little in defence of her old friend, who had lost all claim upon that friendship since the offer of the bribe had been made,--so that it was understood among them all that Lizzie was to be regarded as a black sheep;--but hitherto Lord Fawn himself had concealed his feelings before Lucy. Now unfortunately he spoke out, and in speaking was especially bitter against Frank. "Mr. Greystock has been most insolent," he said as they were all sitting together in the library after dinner. Lady Fawn made a sign to him and shook her head. Lucy felt the hot blood fly into both her cheeks, but at the moment she did not speak. Lydia Fawn put out her hand beneath the table and took hold of Lucy's. "We must all remember that he is her cousin," said Augusta. "His relationship to Lady Eustace cannot justify ungentlemanlike impertinence to me," said Lord Fawn. "He has dared to use words to me which would make it necessary that I should call him out, only--" "Frederic, you shall do nothing of the kind!" said Lady Fawn, jumping up from her chair. "Oh, Frederic, pray, pray don't!" said Augusta, springing on to her brother's shoulder. "I am sure Frederic does not mean that," said Amelia. "Only that nobody does call any body out now," added the pacific lord. "But nothing on earth shall ever induce me to speak again to a man who is so little like a gentleman." Lydia now held Lucy's hand still tighter, as though to prevent her rising. "He has never forgiven me," continued Lord Fawn, "because he was so ridiculously wrong about the Sawab." "I am sure that had nothing to do with it," said Lucy. "Miss Morris, I shall venture to hold my own opinion," said Lord Fawn. "And I shall hold mine," said Lucy bravely. "The Sawab of Mygawb had nothing to do with what Mr. Greystock may have said or done about his cousin. I am quite sure of it." "Lucy, you are forgetting yourself," said Lady Fawn. "Lucy, dear, you shouldn't contradict my brother," said Augusta. "Take my advice, Lucy, and let it pass by," said Amelia. "How can I hear such things said and not notice them?" demanded Lucy. "Why does Lord Fawn say them when I am by?" Lord Fawn had now condescended to be full of wrath against his mother's governess. "I suppose I may express my own opinion, Miss Morris, in my mother's house." "And I shall express mine," said Lucy. "Mr. Greystock is a gentleman. If you say that he is not a gentleman, it is not true." Upon hearing these terrible words spoken, Lord Fawn rose from his seat and slowly left the room. Augusta followed him with both her arms stretched out. Lady Fawn covered her face with her hands, and even Amelia was dismayed. "Oh, Lucy! why could you not hold your tongue?" said Lydia. "I won't hold my tongue!" said Lucy, bursting out into tears. "He is a gentleman." Then there was great commotion at Fawn Court. After a few moments Lady Fawn followed her son without having said a word to Lucy, and Amelia went with her. Poor Lucy was left with the younger girls, and was no doubt very unhappy. But she was still indignant, and would yield nothing. When Georgina, the fourth daughter, pointed out to her that, in accordance with all rules of good breeding, she should have abstained from asserting that her brother had spoken an untruth, she blazed up again. "It was untrue," she said. "But, Lucy, people never accuse each other of untruth. No lady should use such a word to a gentleman." "He should not have said so. He knows that Mr. Greystock is more to me than all the world." "If I had a lover," said Nina, "and anybody were to say a word against him, I know I'd fly at them. I don't know why Frederic is to have it all his own way." "Nina, you're a fool," said Diana. "I do think it was very hard for Lucy to bear," said Lydia. "And I won't bear it!" exclaimed Lucy. "To think that Mr. Greystock should be so mean as to bear malice about a thing like that wild Indian because he takes his own cousin's part! Of course I'd better go away. You all think that Mr. Greystock is an enemy now; but he never can be an enemy to me." "We think that Lady Eustace is an enemy," said Cecilia, "and a very nasty enemy, too." "I did not say a word about Lady Eustace," said Lucy. "But Mr. Greystock is a gentleman." About an hour after this Lady Fawn sent for Lucy, and the two were closeted together for a long time. Lord Fawn was very angry, and had hitherto altogether declined to overlook the insult offered. "I am bound to tell you," declared Lady Fawn, with much emphasis, "that nothing can justify you in having accused Lord Fawn of telling an untruth. Of course, I was sorry that Mr. Greystock's name should have been mentioned in your presence; but as it was mentioned, you should have borne what was said with patience." "I couldn't be patient, Lady Fawn." "That is what wicked people say when they commit murder, and then they are hung for it." "I'll go away, Lady Fawn--" "That is ungrateful, my dear. You know that I don't wish you to go away. But if you behave badly, of course I must tell you of it." "I'd sooner go away. Everybody here thinks ill of Mr. Greystock. But I don't think ill of Mr. Greystock, and I never shall. Why did Lord Fawn say such very hard things about him?" It was suggested to her that she should be down-stairs early the next morning, and apologise to Lord Fawn for her rudeness; but she would not, on that night, undertake to do any such thing. Let Lady Fawn say what she might, Lucy thought that the injury had been done to her, and not to his lordship. And so they parted hardly friends. Lady Fawn gave her no kiss as she went, and Lucy, with obstinate pride, altogether refused to own her fault. She would only say that she had better go, and when Lady Fawn over and over again pointed out to her that the last thing that such a one as Lord Fawn could bear was to be accused of an untruth, she would continue to say that in that case he should be careful to say nothing that was untrue. All this was very dreadful, and created great confusion and unhappiness at Fawn Court. Lydia came into her room that night, and the two girls talked the matter over for hours. In the morning Lucy was up early, and found Lord Fawn walking in the grounds. She had been told that he would probably be found walking in the grounds, if she were willing to tender to him any apology. Her mind had been very full of the subject,--not only in reference to her lover, but as it regarded her own conduct. One of the elder Fawn girls had assured her that under no circumstances could a lady be justified in telling a gentleman that he had spoken an untruth, and she was not quite sure but that the law so laid down was right. And then she could not but remember that the gentleman in question was Lord Fawn, and that she was Lady Fawn's governess. But Mr. Greystock was her affianced lover, and her first duty was to him. And then, granting that she herself had been wrong in accusing Lord Fawn of untruth, she could not refrain from asking herself whether he had not been much more wrong in saying in her hearing that Mr. Greystock was not a gentleman? And his offence had preceded her offence, and had caused it! She hardly knew whether she did or did not owe an apology to Lord Fawn, but she was quite sure that Lord Fawn owed an apology to her. She walked straight up to Lord Fawn, and met him beneath the trees. He was still black and solemn, and was evidently brooding over his grievance; but he bowed to her, and stood still as she approached him. "My lord," said she, "I am very sorry for what happened last night." "And so was I,--very sorry, Miss Morris." "I think you know that I am engaged to marry Mr. Greystock?" "I cannot allow that that has anything to do with it." "When you think that he must be dearer to me than all the world, you will acknowledge that I couldn't hear hard things said of him without speaking." His face became blacker than ever, but he made no reply. He wanted an abject begging of unconditional pardon from the little girl who loved his enemy. If that were done, he would vouchsafe his forgiveness; but he was too small by nature to grant it on other terms. "Of course," continued Lucy, "I am bound to treat you with special respect in Lady Fawn's house." She looked almost beseechingly into his face as she paused for a moment. "But you treated me with especial disrespect," said Lord Fawn. "And how did you treat me, Lord Fawn?" "Miss Morris, I must be allowed, in discussing matters with my mother, to express my own opinions in such language as I may think fit to use. Mr. Greystock's conduct to me was--was--was altogether most ungentlemanlike." "Mr. Greystock is a gentleman." "His conduct was most offensive, and most--most ungentlemanlike. Mr. Greystock disgraced himself." "It isn't true!" said Lucy. Lord Fawn gave one start, and then walked off to the house as quick as his legs could carry him. CHAPTER XXVIII Mr. Dove in His Chambers The scene between Lord Fawn and Greystock had taken place in Mr. Camperdown's chambers, and John Eustace had also been present. The lawyer had suffered considerable annoyance, before the arrival of the two first-named gentlemen, from reiterated assertions made by Eustace that he would take no further trouble whatsoever about the jewels. Mr. Camperdown had in vain pointed out to him that a plain duty lay upon him as executor and guardian to protect the property on behalf of his nephew; but Eustace had asserted that, though he himself was comparatively a poor man, he would sooner replace the necklace out of his own property, than be subject to the nuisance of such a continued quarrel. "My dear John; ten thousand pounds!" Mr. Camperdown had said. "It is a fortune for a younger son." "The boy is only two years old, and will have time enough to make fortunes for his own younger sons, if he does not squander everything. If he does, the ten thousand pounds will make no difference." "But the justice of the thing, John!" "Justice may be purchased too dearly." "Such a harpy as she is, too!" pleaded the lawyer. Then Lord Fawn had come in, and Greystock had followed immediately afterwards. "I may as well say at once," said Greystock, "that Lady Eustace is determined to maintain her right to the property; and that she will not give up the diamonds till some adequate court of law shall have decided that she is mistaken in her views. Stop one moment, Mr. Camperdown. I feel myself bound to go further than that, and express my own opinion that she is right." "I can hardly understand such an opinion as coming from you," said Mr. Camperdown. "You have changed your mind, at any rate," said John Eustace. "Not so, Eustace. Mr. Camperdown, you'll be good enough to understand that my opinion expressed here is that of a friend, and not that of a lawyer. And you must understand, Eustace," continued Greystock, "that I am speaking now of my cousin's right to the property. Though the value be great, I have advised her to give up the custody of it for a while, till the matter shall be clearly decided. That has still been my advice to her, and I have in no respect changed my mind. But she feels that she is being cruelly used, and with a woman's spirit will not, in such circumstances, yield anything. Mr. Camperdown actually stopped her carriage in the street." "She would not answer a line that anybody wrote to her," said the lawyer. "And I may say plainly,--for all here know the circumstances,--that Lady Eustace feels the strongest possible indignation at the manner in which she is being treated by Lord Fawn." "I have only asked her to give up the diamonds till the question should be settled," said Lord Fawn. "And you backed your request, my lord, by a threat! My cousin is naturally most indignant; and, my lord, you must allow me to tell you that I fully share the feeling." "There is no use in making a quarrel about it," said Eustace. "The quarrel is already made," replied Greystock. "I am here to tell Lord Fawn in your presence, and in the presence of Mr. Camperdown, that he is behaving to a lady with ill-usage, which he would not dare to exercise did he not know that her position saves him from legal punishment, as do the present usages of society from other consequences." "I have behaved to her with every possible consideration," said Lord Fawn. "That is a simple assertion," said the other. "I have made one assertion, and you have made another. The world will have to judge between us. What right have you to take upon yourself to decide whether this thing or that belongs to Lady Eustace or to any one else?" "When the thing was talked about I was obliged to have an opinion," said Lord Fawn, who was still thinking of words in which to reply to the insult offered him by Greystock without injury to his dignity as an Under-Secretary of State. "Your conduct, sir, has been altogether inexcusable." Then Frank turned to the attorney. "I have been given to understand that you are desirous of knowing where this diamond necklace is at present. It is at Lady Eustace's house in Scotland;--at Portray Castle." Then he shook hands with John Eustace, bowed to Mr. Camperdown, and succeeded in leaving the room before Lord Fawn had so far collected his senses as to be able to frame his anger into definite words. "I will never willingly speak to that man again," said Lord Fawn. But as it was not probable that Greystock would greatly desire any further conversation with Lord Fawn, this threat did not carry with it any powerful feeling of severity. Mr. Camperdown groaned over the matter with thorough vexation of spirit. It seemed to him as though the harpy, as he called her, would really make good her case against him,--at any rate, would make it seem to be good for so long a time that all the triumph of success would be hers. He knew that she was already in debt, and gave her credit for a propensity to fast living which almost did her an injustice. Of course, the jewels would be sold for half their value, and the harpy would triumph. Of what use to him or to the estate would be a decision of the courts in his favour when the diamonds should have been broken up and scattered to the winds of heaven? Ten thousand pounds! It was, to Mr. Camperdown's mind, a thing quite terrible that, in a country which boasts of its laws and of the execution of its laws, such an impostor as was this widow should be able to lay her dirty, grasping fingers on so great an amount of property, and that there should be no means of punishing her. That Lizzie Eustace had stolen the diamonds, as a pickpocket steals a watch, was a fact as to which Mr. Camperdown had in his mind no shadow of a doubt. And, as the reader knows, he was right. She had stolen them. Mr. Camperdown knew that she had stolen them, and was a wretched man. From the first moment of the late Sir Florian's infatuation about this woman, she had worked woe for Mr. Camperdown. Mr. Camperdown had striven hard,--to the great and almost permanent offence of Sir Florian,--to save Portray from its present condition of degradation; but he had striven in vain. Portray belonged to the harpy for her life; and moreover, he himself had been forced to be instrumental in paying over to the harpy a large sum of Eustace money almost immediately on her becoming a widow. Then had come the affair of the diamonds;--an affair of ten thousand pounds!--as Mr. Camperdown would exclaim to himself, throwing his eyes up to the ceiling. And now it seemed that she was to get the better of him even in that, although there could not be a shadow of doubt as to her falsehood and fraudulent dishonesty! His luck in the matter was so bad! John Eustace had no backbone, no spirit, no proper feeling as to his own family. Lord Fawn was as weak as water, and almost disgraced the cause by the accident of his adherence to it. Greystock, who would have been a tower of strength, had turned against him, and was now prepared to maintain that the harpy was right. Mr. Camperdown knew that the harpy was wrong,--that she was a harpy, and he would not abandon the cause; but the difficulties in his way were great, and the annoyance to which he was subjected was excessive. His wife and daughters were still at Dawlish, and he was up in town in September, simply because the harpy had the present possession of these diamonds. Mr. Camperdown was a man turned sixty, handsome, grey-haired, healthy, somewhat florid, and carrying in his face and person external signs of prosperity and that kind of self-assertion which prosperity always produces. But they who knew him best were aware that he did not bear trouble well. In any trouble, such as was this about the necklace, there would come over his face a look of weakness which betrayed the want of real inner strength. How many faces one sees which, in ordinary circumstances, are comfortable, self-asserting, sufficient, and even bold; the lines of which, under difficulties, collapse and become mean, spiritless, and insignificant. There are faces which, in their usual form, seem to bluster with prosperity, but which the loss of a dozen points at whist will reduce to that currish aspect which reminds one of a dog-whip. Mr. Camperdown's countenance, when Lord Fawn and Mr. Eustace left him, had fallen away into this meanness of appearance. He no longer carried himself as a man owning a dog-whip, but rather as the hound that feared it. A better attorney, for the purposes to which his life was devoted, did not exist in London than Mr. Camperdown. To say that he was honest, is nothing. To describe him simply as zealous, would be to fall very short of his merits. The interests of his clients were his own interests, and the legal rights of the properties of which he had the legal charge, were as dear to him as his own blood. But it could not be said of him that he was a learned lawyer. Perhaps in that branch of a solicitor's profession in which he had been called upon to work, experience goes further than learning. It may be doubted, indeed, whether it is not so in every branch of every profession. But it might, perhaps, have been better for Mr. Camperdown had he devoted more hours of his youth to reading books on conveyancing. He was now too old for such studies, and could trust only to the reading of other people. The reading, however, of other people was always at his command, and his clients were rich men who did not mind paying for an opinion. To have an opinion from Mr. Dove, or some other learned gentleman, was the every-day practice of his life; and when he obtained, as he often did, little coigns of legal vantage and subtle definitions as to property which were comfortable to him, he would rejoice to think that he could always have a Dove at his hand to tell him exactly how far he was justified in going in defence of his clients' interests. But now there had come to him no comfort from his corner of legal knowledge. Mr. Dove had taken extraordinary pains in the matter, and had simply succeeded in throwing over his employer. "A necklace can't be an heirloom!" said Mr. Camperdown to himself, telling off on his fingers half-a-dozen instances in which he had either known or had heard that the head of a family had so arranged the future possession of the family jewels. Then he again read Mr. Dove's opinion, and actually took a law-book off his shelves with the view of testing the correctness of the barrister in reference to some special assertion. A pot or a pan might be an heirloom, but not a necklace! Mr. Camperdown could hardly bring himself to believe that this was law. And then as to paraphernalia! Up to this moment, though he had been called upon to arrange great dealings in reference to widows, he had never as yet heard of a claim made by a widow for paraphernalia. But then the widows with whom he had been called upon to deal, had been ladies quite content to accept the good things settled upon them by the liberal prudence of their friends and husbands,--not greedy, blood-sucking harpies such as this Lady Eustace. It was quite terrible to Mr. Camperdown that one of his clients should have fallen into such a pit. Mors omnibus est communis. But to have left such a widow behind one! "John," he said, opening his door. John was his son and partner, and John came to him, having been summoned by a clerk from another room. "Just shut the door. I've had such a scene here;--Lord Fawn and Mr. Greystock almost coming to blows about that horrid woman." "The Upper House would have got the worst of it, as it usually does," said the younger attorney. "And there is John Eustace cares no more what becomes of the property than if he had nothing to do with it;--absolutely talks of replacing the diamonds out of his own pocket; a man whose personal interest in the estate is by no means equal to her own." "He wouldn't do it, you know," said Camperdown Junior, who did not know the family. "It's just what he would do," said the father, who did. "There's nothing they wouldn't give away when once the idea takes them. Think of that woman having the whole Portray estate, perhaps for the next sixty years,--nearly the fee-simple of the property,--just because she made eyes to Sir Florian!" "That's done and gone, father." "And here's Dove tells us that a necklace can't be an heirloom, unless it belongs to the Crown." "Whatever he says, you'd better take his word for it." "I'm not so sure of that. It can't be. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll go over and see him. We can file a bill in Chancery, I don't doubt, and prove that the property belongs to the family and must go by the will. But she'll sell them before we can get the custody of them." "Perhaps she has done that already." "Greystock says they are at Portray, and I believe they are. She was wearing them in London only in July,--a day or two before I saw her as she was leaving town. If anybody like a jeweller had been down at the castle, I should have heard of it. She hasn't sold 'em yet, but she will." "She could do that just the same if they were an heirloom." "No, John. I think not. We could have acted much more quickly, and have frightened her." "If I were you, father, I'd drop the matter altogether, and let John Eustace replace them if he pleases. We all know that he would never be called on to do anything of the kind. It isn't our sort of business." "Not ten thousand pounds!" said Camperdown Senior, to whom the magnitude of the larceny almost ennobled the otherwise mean duty of catching the thief. Then Mr. Camperdown rose, and slowly walked across the New Square, Lincoln's Inn, under the low archway, by the entrance to the old court in which Lord Eldon used to sit, to the Old Square, in which the Turtle Dove had built his legal nest on a first floor, close to the old gateway. Mr. Dove was a gentleman who spent a very great portion of his life in this somewhat gloomy abode of learning. It was not now term time, and most of his brethren were absent from London, recruiting their strength among the Alps, or drinking in vigours for fresh campaigns with the salt sea breezes of Kent and Sussex, or perhaps shooting deer in Scotland, or catching fish in Connemara. But Mr. Dove was a man of iron, who wanted no such recreation. To be absent from his law-books and the black, littered, ink-stained old table on which he was wont to write his opinions, was, to him, to be wretched. The only exercise necessary to him was that of putting on his wig and going into one of the courts that were close to his chambers;--but even that was almost distasteful to him. He preferred sitting in his old arm-chair, turning over his old books in search of old cases, and producing opinions which he would be prepared to back against all the world of Lincoln's Inn. He and Mr. Camperdown had known each other intimately for many years, and though the rank of the two men in their profession differed much, they were able to discuss questions of law without any appreciation of that difference among themselves. The one man knew much, and the other little; the one was not only learned, but possessed also of great gifts, while the other was simply an ordinary clear-headed man of business; but they had sympathies in common which made them friends; they were both honest and unwilling to sell their services to dishonest customers; and they equally entertained a deep-rooted contempt for that portion of mankind who thought that property could be managed and protected without the intervention of lawyers. The outside world to them was a world of pretty, laughing, ignorant children; and lawyers were the parents, guardians, pastors, and masters by whom the children should be protected from the evils incident to their childishness. "Yes, sir; he's here," said the Turtle Dove's clerk. "He is talking of going away, but he won't go. He's told me I can have a week, but I don't know that I like to leave him. Mrs. Dove and the children are down at Ramsgate, and he's here all night. He hadn't been out for so long that when he wanted to go as far as the Temple yesterday, we couldn't find his hat." Then the clerk opened the door, and ushered Mr. Camperdown into the room. Mr. Dove was the younger man by five or six years, and his hair was still black. Mr. Camperdown's was nearer white than grey; but, nevertheless, Mr. Camperdown looked as though he were the younger man. Mr. Dove was a long, thin man, with a stoop in his shoulders, with deep-set, hollow eyes, and lanthorn cheeks, and sallow complexion, with long, thin hands, who seemed to acknowledge by every movement of his body and every tone of his voice that old age was creeping on him,--whereas the attorney's step was still elastic, and his speech brisk. Mr. Camperdown wore a blue frock-coat, and a coloured cravat, and a light waistcoat. With Mr. Dove every visible article of his raiment was black, except his shirt, and he had that peculiar blackness which a man achieves when he wears a dress-coat over a high black waistcoat in the morning. "You didn't make much, I fear, of what I sent you about heirlooms," said Mr. Dove, divining the purport of Mr. Camperdown's visit. "A great deal more than I wanted, I can assure you, Mr. Dove." "There is a common error about heirlooms." "Very common, indeed, I should say. God bless my soul! when one knows how often the word occurs in family deeds, it does startle one to be told that there isn't any such thing." "I don't think I said quite so much as that. Indeed, I was careful to point out that the law does acknowledge heirlooms." "But not diamonds," said the attorney. "I doubt whether I went quite so far as that." "Only the Crown diamonds." "I don't think I ever debarred all other diamonds. A diamond in a star of honour might form a part of an heirloom; but I do not think that a diamond itself could be an heirloom." "If in a star of honour, why not in a necklace?" argued Mr. Camperdown almost triumphantly. "Because a star of honour, unless tampered with by fraud, would naturally be maintained in its original form. The setting of a necklace will probably be altered from generation to generation. The one, like a picture or a precious piece of furniture,--" "Or a pot or a pan," said Mr. Camperdown, with sarcasm. "Pots and pans may be precious, too," replied Mr. Dove. "Such things can be traced, and can be held as heirlooms without imposing too great difficulties on their guardians. The Law is generally very wise and prudent, Mr. Camperdown;--much more so often than are they who attempt to improve it." "I quite agree with you there, Mr. Dove." "Would the Law do a service, do you think, if it lent its authority to the special preservation in special hands of trinkets only to be used for vanity and ornament? Is that a kind of property over which an owner should have a power of disposition more lasting, more autocratic, than is given him even in regard to land? The land, at any rate, can be traced. It is a thing fixed and known. A string of pearls is not only alterable, but constantly altered, and cannot easily be traced." "Property of such enormous value should, at any rate, be protected," said Mr. Camperdown indignantly. "All property is protected, Mr. Camperdown;--although, as we know too well, such protection can never be perfect. But the system of heirlooms, if there can be said to be such a system, was not devised for what you and I mean when we talk of protection of property." "I should have said that that was just what it was devised for." "I think not. It was devised with the more picturesque idea of maintaining chivalric associations. Heirlooms have become so, not that the future owners of them may be assured of so much wealth, whatever the value of the thing so settled may be,--but that the son or grandson or descendant may enjoy the satisfaction which is derived from saying, my father or my grandfather or my ancestor sat in that chair, or looked as he now looks in that picture, or was graced by wearing on his breast that very ornament which you now see lying beneath the glass. Crown jewels are heirlooms in the same way, as representing not the possession of the sovereign, but the time-honoured dignity of the Crown. The Law, which, in general, concerns itself with our property or lives and our liberties, has in this matter bowed gracefully to the spirit of chivalry and has lent its aid to romance;--but it certainly did not do so to enable the discordant heirs of a rich man to settle a simple dirty question of money, which, with ordinary prudence, the rich man should himself have settled before he died." The Turtle Dove had spoken with emphasis and had spoken well, and Mr. Camperdown had not ventured to interrupt him while he was speaking. He was sitting far back on his chair, but with his neck bent and with his head forward, rubbing his long thin hands slowly over each other, and with his deep bright eyes firmly fixed on his companion's face. Mr. Camperdown had not unfrequently heard him speak in the same fashion before, and was accustomed to his manner of unravelling the mysteries and searching into the causes of Law with a spirit which almost lent poetry to the subject. When Mr. Dove would do so, Mr. Camperdown would not quite understand the words spoken, but he would listen to them with an undoubting reverence. And he did understand them in part, and was conscious of an infusion of a certain amount of poetic spirit into his own bosom. He would think of these speeches afterwards, and would entertain high but somewhat cloudy ideas of the beauty and the majesty of Law. Mr. Dove's speeches did Mr. Camperdown good, and helped to preserve him from that worst of all diseases,--a low idea of humanity. "You think, then, we had better not claim them as heirlooms?" he asked. "I think you had better not." "And you think that she could claim them--as paraphernalia?" "That question has hardly been put to me,--though I allowed myself to wander into it. But for my intimacy with you, I should hardly have ventured to stray so far." "I need hardly say how much obliged we are. But we will submit one or two other cases to you." "I am inclined to think the court would not allow them to her as paraphernalia, seeing that their value is excessive as compared with her income and degree; but if it did, it would do so in a fashion that would guard them from alienation." "She would sell them--under the rose." "Then she would be guilty of stealing them,--which she would hardly attempt, even if not restrained by honesty, knowing, as she would know, that the greatness of the value would almost assuredly lead to detection. The same feeling would prevent buyers from purchasing." "She says, you know, that they were given to her, absolutely." "I should like to know the circumstances." "Yes;--of course." "But I should be disposed to think that in equity no allegation by the receiver of such a gift, unsubstantiated either by evidence or by deed, would be allowed to stand. The gentleman left behind him a will, and regular settlements. I should think that the possession of these diamonds,--not, I presume, touched on in the settlements--" "Oh dear no;--not a word about them." "I should think, then, that, subject to any claim for paraphernalia, the possession of the diamonds would be ruled by the will." Mr. Camperdown was rushing into the further difficulty of the chattels in Scotland and those in England, when the Turtle Dove stopped him, declaring that he could not venture to discuss matters as to which he knew none of the facts. "Of course not;--of course not," said Mr. Camperdown. "We'll have cases prepared. I'd apologise for coming at all, only that I get so much from a few words." "I'm always delighted to see you, Mr. Camperdown," said the Turtle Dove, bowing. CHAPTER XXIX "I Had Better Go Away" When Lord Fawn gave a sudden jump and stalked away towards the house on that Sunday morning before breakfast, Lucy Morris was a very unhappy girl. She had a second time accused Lord Fawn of speaking an untruth. She did not quite understand the usages of the world in the matter; but she did know that the one offence which a gentleman is supposed never to commit is that of speaking an untruth. The offence may be one committed oftener than any other by gentlemen,--as also by all other people; but, nevertheless, it is regarded by the usages of society as being the one thing which a gentleman never does. Of all this Lucy understood something. The word "lie" she knew to be utterly abominable. That Lizzie Eustace was a little liar had been acknowledged between herself and the Fawn girls very often,--but to have told Lady Eustace that any word spoken by her was a lie, would have been a worse crime than the lie itself. To have brought such an accusation, in that term, against Lord Fawn, would have been to degrade herself for ever. Was there any difference between a lie and an untruth? That one must be, and that the other need not be, intentional, she did feel; but she felt also that the less offensive word had come to mean a lie,--the world having been driven so to use it because the world did not dare to talk about lies; and this word, bearing such a meaning in common parlance, she had twice applied to Lord Fawn. And yet, as she was well aware, Lord Fawn had told no lie. He had himself believed every word that he had spoken against Frank Greystock. That he had been guilty of unmanly cruelty in so speaking of her lover in her presence, Lucy still thought, but she should not therefore have accused him of falsehood. "It was untrue all the same," she said to herself, as she stood still on the gravel walk, watching the rapid disappearance of Lord Fawn, and endeavouring to think what she had better now do with herself. Of course Lord Fawn, like a great child, would at once go and tell his mother what that wicked governess had said to him. In the hall she met her friend Lydia. "Oh, Lucy, what is the matter with Frederic?" she asked. "Lord Fawn is very angry indeed." "With you?" "Yes;--with me. He is so angry that I am sure he would not sit down to breakfast with me. So I won't come down. Will you tell your mamma? If she likes to send to me, of course I'll go to her at once." "What have you done, Lucy?" "I've told him again that what he said wasn't true." "But why?" "Because--Oh, how can I say why? Why does any person do everything that she ought not to do? It's the fall of Adam, I suppose." "You shouldn't make a joke of it, Lucy." "You can have no conception how unhappy I am about it. Of course Lady Fawn will tell me to go away. I went out on purpose to beg his pardon for what I said last night, and I just said the very same thing again." "But why did you say it?" "And I should say it again and again and again, if he were to go on telling me that Mr. Greystock isn't a gentleman. I don't think he ought to have done it. Of course, I have been very wrong; I know that. But I think he has been wrong too. But I must own it, and he needn't. I'll go up now and stay in my own room till your mamma sends for me." "And I'll get Jane to bring you some breakfast." "I don't care a bit about breakfast," said Lucy. Lord Fawn did tell his mother, and Lady Fawn was perplexed in the extreme. She was divided in her judgment and feelings between the privilege due to Lucy as a girl possessed of an authorised lover,--a privilege which no doubt existed, but which was not extensive,--and the very much greater privilege which attached to Lord Fawn as a man, as a peer, as an Under-Secretary of State,--but which attached to him especially as the head and only man belonging to the Fawn family. Such a one, when, moved by filial duty, he condescends to come once a week to his mother's house, is entitled to say whatever he pleases, and should on no account be contradicted by any one. Lucy no doubt had a lover,--an authorised lover; but perhaps that fact could not be taken as more than a balancing weight against the inferiority of her position as a governess. Lady Fawn was of course obliged to take her son's part, and would scold Lucy. Lucy must be scolded very seriously. But it would be a thing so desirable if Lucy could be induced to accept her scolding and have done with it, and not to make matters worse by talking of going away! "You don't mean that she came out into the shrubbery, having made up her mind to be rude to you?" said Lady Fawn to her son. "No;--I do not think that. But her temper is so ungovernable, and she has, if I may say so, been so spoilt among you here,--I mean by the girls, of course,--that she does not know how to restrain herself." "She is as good as gold, you know, Frederic." He shrugged his shoulders, and declared that he had not a word more to say about it. He could, of course, remain in London till it should suit Mr. Greystock to take his bride. "You'll break my heart if you say that!" exclaimed the unhappy mother. "Of course, she shall leave the house if you wish it." "I wish nothing," said Lord Fawn. "But I peculiarly object to be told that I am a--liar." Then he stalked away along the corridor and went down to breakfast, as black as a thunder-cloud. Lady Fawn and Lucy sat opposite to each other in church, but they did not speak till the afternoon. Lady Fawn went to church in the carriage and Lucy walked, and as Lucy retired to her room immediately on her return to the house, there had not been an opportunity even for a word. After lunch Amelia came up to her, and sat down for a long discussion. "Now, Lucy, something must be done, you know," said Amelia. "I suppose so." "Of course, mamma must see you. She can't allow things to go on in this way. Mamma is very unhappy, and didn't eat a morsel of breakfast." By this latter assertion Amelia simply intended to imply that her mother had refused to be helped a second time to fried bacon, as was customary. "Of course, I shall go to her the moment she sends for me. Oh,--I am so unhappy!" "I don't wonder at that, Lucy. So is my brother unhappy. These things make people unhappy. It is what the world calls--temper, you know, Lucy." "Why did he tell me that Mr. Greystock isn't a gentleman? Mr. Greystock is a gentleman. I meant to say nothing more than that." "But you did say more, Lucy." "When he said that Mr. Greystock wasn't a gentleman, I told him it wasn't true. Why did he say it? He knows all about it. Everybody knows. Would you think it wise to come and abuse him to me, when you know what he is to me? I can't bear it, and I won't. I'll go away to-morrow, if your mamma wishes it." But that going away was just what Lady Fawn did not wish. "I think you know, Lucy, you should express your deep sorrow at what has passed." "To your brother?" "Yes." "Then he would abuse Mr. Greystock again, and it would all be as bad as ever. I'll beg Lord Fawn's pardon if he'll promise beforehand not to say a word about Mr. Greystock." "You can't expect him to make a bargain like that, Lucy." "I suppose not. I daresay I'm very wicked, and I must be left wicked. I'm too wicked to stay here. That's the long and the short of it." "I'm afraid you're proud, Lucy." "I suppose I am. If it wasn't for all that I owe to everybody here, and that I love you all so much, I should be proud of being proud;--because of Mr. Greystock. Only it kills me to make Lady Fawn unhappy." Amelia left the culprit, feeling that no good had been done, and Lady Fawn did not see the delinquent till late in the afternoon. Lord Fawn had, in the meantime, wandered out along the river all alone to brood over the condition of his affairs. It had been an evil day for him in which he had first seen Lady Eustace. From the first moment of his engagement to her he had been an unhappy man. Her treatment of him, the stories which reached his ears from Mrs. Hittaway and others, Mr. Camperdown's threats of law in regard to the diamonds, and Frank Greystock's insults, altogether made him aware that he could not possibly marry Lady Eustace. But yet he had no proper and becoming way of escaping from the bonds of his engagement. He was a man with a conscience, and was made miserable by the idea of behaving badly to a woman. Perhaps it might have been difficult to analyse his misery, and to decide how much arose from the feeling that he was behaving badly, and how much from the conviction that the world would accuse him of doing so; but, between the two, he was wretched enough. The punishment of the offence had been commenced by Greystock's unavenged insults;--and it now seemed to him that this girl's conduct was a continuation of it. The world was already beginning to treat him with that want of respect which he so greatly dreaded. He knew that he was too weak to stand up against a widely-spread expression of opinion that he had behaved badly. There are men who can walk about the streets with composed countenances, take their seats in Parliament if they happen to have seats, work in their offices, or their chambers, or their counting-houses with diligence, and go about the world serenely, even though everybody be saying evil of them behind their backs. Such men can live down temporary calumny, and almost take a delight in the isolation which it will produce. Lord Fawn knew well that he was not such a man. He would have described his own weakness as caused, perhaps, by a too thin-skinned sensitiveness. Those who knew him were inclined to say that he lacked strength of character, and, perhaps, courage. He had certainly engaged himself to marry this widow, and he was most desirous to do what was right. He had said that he would not marry her unless she would give up the necklace, and he was most desirous to be true to his word. He had been twice insulted, and he was anxious to support these injuries with dignity. Poor Lucy's little offence against him rankled in his mind with the other great offences. That this humble friend of his mother's should have been so insolent was a terrible thing to him. He was not sure even whether his own sisters did not treat him with scantier reverence than of yore. And yet he was so anxious to do right, and do his duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him! As to much he was in doubt; but of two things he was quite sure,--that Frank Greystock was a scoundrel, and that Lucy Morris was the most impertinent young woman in England. "What would you wish to have done, Frederic?" his mother said to him on his return. "In what respect, mother?" "About Lucy Morris? I have not seen her yet. I have thought it better that she should be left to herself for a while before I did so. I suppose she must come down to dinner. She always does." "I do not wish to interfere with the young lady's meals." "No;--but about meeting her? If there is to be no talking it will be so very unpleasant. It will be unpleasant to us all, but I am thinking chiefly of you." "I do not wish anybody to be disturbed for my comfort." A young woman coming down to dinner as though in disgrace, and not being spoken to by any one, would, in truth, have had rather a soothing effect upon Lord Fawn, who would have felt that the general silence and dulness had been produced as a sacrifice in his honour. "I can, of course, insist that she should apologise; but if she refuses, what shall I do then?" "Let there be no more apologies, if you please, mother." "What shall I do then, Frederic?" "Miss Morris's idea of an apology is a repetition of her offence with increased rudeness. It is not for me to say what you should do. If it be true that she is engaged to that man--" "It is true, certainly." "No doubt that will make her quite independent of you, and I can understand that her presence here in such circumstances must be very uncomfortable to you all. No doubt she feels her power." "Indeed, Frederic, you do not know her." "I can hardly say that I desire to know her better. You cannot suppose that I can be anxious for further intimacy with a young lady who has twice given me the lie in your house. Such conduct is, at least, very unusual; and as no absolute punishment can be inflicted, the offender can only be avoided. It is thus, and thus only, that such offences can be punished. I shall be satisfied if you will give her to understand that I should prefer that she should not address me again." Poor Lady Fawn was beginning to think that Lucy was right in saying that there was no remedy for all these evils but that she should go away. But whither was she to go? She had no home but such home as she could earn for herself by her services as a governess, and in her present position it was almost out of the question that she should seek another place. Lady Fawn, too, felt that she had pledged herself to Mr. Greystock that till next year Lucy should have a home at Fawn Court. Mr. Greystock, indeed, was now an enemy to the family; but Lucy was not an enemy, and it was out of the question that she should be treated with real enmity. She might be scolded, and scowled at, and put into a kind of drawing-room Coventry for a time,--so that all kindly intercourse with her should be confined to school-room work and bed-room conferences. She could be generally "sat upon," as Nina would call it. But as for quarrelling with her,--making a real enemy of one whom they all loved, one whom Lady Fawn knew to be "as good as gold," one who had become so dear to the old lady that actual extrusion from their family affections would be like the cutting off of a limb,--that was simply impossible. "I suppose I had better go and see her," said Lady Fawn,--"and I have got such a headache." "Do not see her on my account," said Lord Fawn. The duty, however, was obligatory, and Lady Fawn with slow steps sought Lucy in the school-room. "Lucy," she said, seating herself, "what is to be the end of all this?" Lucy came up to her and knelt at her feet. "If you knew how unhappy I am because I have vexed you!" "I am unhappy, my dear, because I think you have been betrayed by warm temper into misbehaviour." "I know I have." "Then why do you not control your temper?" "If anybody were to come to you, Lady Fawn, and make horrible accusations against Lord Fawn, or against Augusta, would not you be angry? Would you be able to stand it?" Lady Fawn was not clear-headed; she was not clever; nor was she even always rational. But she was essentially honest. She knew that she would fly at anybody who should in her presence say such bitter things of any of her children as Lord Fawn had said of Mr. Greystock in Lucy's hearing;--and she knew also that Lucy was entitled to hold Mr. Greystock as dearly as she held her own sons and daughters. Lord Fawn, at Fawn Court, could not do wrong. That was a tenet by which she was obliged to hold fast. And yet Lucy had been subjected to great cruelty. She thought awhile for a valid argument. "My dear," she said, "your youth should make a difference." "Of course it should." "And though to me and to the girls you are as dear as any friend can be, and may say just what you please-- Indeed, we all live here in such a way that we all do say just what we please,--young and old together. But you ought to know that Lord Fawn is different." "Ought he to say that Mr. Greystock is not a gentleman to me?" "We are, of course, very sorry that there should be any quarrel. It is all the fault of that--nasty, false young woman." "So it is, Lady Fawn. Lady Fawn, I have been thinking about it all the day, and I am quite sure that I had better not stay here while you and the girls think badly of Mr. Greystock. It is not only about Lord Fawn, but because of the whole thing. I am always wanting to say something good about Mr. Greystock, and you are always thinking something bad about him. You have been to me,--oh, the very best friend that a girl ever had. Why you should have treated me so generously I never could know." "Because we have loved you." "But when a girl has got a man whom she loves, and has promised to marry, he must be her best friend of all. Is it not so, Lady Fawn?" The old woman stooped down and kissed the girl who had got the man. "It is not ingratitude to you that makes me think most of him; is it?" "Certainly not, dear." "Then I had better go away." "But where will you go, Lucy?" "I will consult Mr. Greystock." "But what can he do, Lucy? It will only be a trouble to him. He can't find a home for you." "Perhaps they would have me at the deanery," said Lucy slowly. She had evidently been thinking much of it all. "And, Lady Fawn, I will not go down-stairs while Lord Fawn is here; and when he comes,--if he does come again while I am here,--he shall not be troubled by seeing me. He may be sure of that. And you may tell him that I don't defend myself, only I shall always think that he ought not to have said that Mr. Greystock wasn't a gentleman before me." When Lady Fawn left Lucy the matter was so far settled that Lucy had neither been asked to come down to dinner, nor had she been forbidden to seek another home. CHAPTER XXX Mr. Greystock's Troubles Frank Greystock stayed the Sunday in London and went down to Bobsborough on the Monday. His father and mother and sister all knew of his engagement to Lucy, and they had heard also that Lady Eustace was to become Lady Fawn. Of the necklace they had hitherto heard very little, and of the quarrel between the two lovers they had heard nothing. There had been many misgivings at the deanery, and some regrets, about these marriages. Mrs. Greystock, Frank's mother, was, as we are so wont to say of many women, the best woman in the world. She was unselfish, affectionate, charitable, and thoroughly feminine. But she did think that her son Frank, with all his advantages,--good looks, cleverness, general popularity, and seat in Parliament,--might just as well marry an heiress as a little girl without twopence in the world. As for herself, who had been born a Jackson, she could do with very little; but the Greystocks were all people who wanted money. For them there was never more than ninepence in a shilling, if so much. They were a race who could not pay their way with moderate incomes. Even the dear dean, who really had a conscience about money, and who hardly ever left Bobsborough, could not be kept quite clear of debt, let her do what she would. As for the admiral, the dean's elder brother, he had been notorious for insolvency; and Frank was a Greystock all over. He was the very man to whom money with a wife was almost a necessity of existence. And his pretty cousin, the widow, who was devoted to him, and would have married him at a word, had ever so many thousands a year! Of course, Lizzie Eustace was not just all that she should be;--but then who is? In one respect, at any rate, her conduct had always been proper. There was no rumour against her as to lovers or flirtations. She was very young, and Frank might have moulded her as he pleased. Of course there were regrets. Poor dear little Lucy Morris was as good as gold. Mrs. Greystock was quite willing to admit that. She was not good-looking;--so at least Mrs. Greystock said. She never would allow that Lucy was good-looking. And she didn't see much in Lucy, who, according to her idea, was a little chit of a thing. Her position was simply that of a governess. Mrs. Greystock declared to her daughter that no one in the whole world had a higher respect for governesses than had she. But a governess is a governess;--and for a man in Frank's position such a marriage would be simply suicide. "You shouldn't say that, mamma, now; for it's fixed," said Ellinor Greystock. "But I do say it, my dear. Things sometimes are fixed which must be unfixed. You know your brother." "Frank is earning a large income, mamma." "Did you ever know a Greystock who didn't want more than his income?" "I hope I don't, mamma, and mine is very small." "You're a Jackson. Frank is Greystock to the very backbone. If he marries Lucy Morris he must give up Parliament. That's all." The dean himself was more reticent and less given to interference than his wife; but he felt it also. He would not for the world have hinted to his son that it might be well to marry money; but he thought that it was a good thing that his son should go where money was. He knew that Frank was apt to spend his guineas faster than he got them. All his life long the dean had seen what came of such spending. Frank had gone out into the world and had prospered,--but he could hardly continue to prosper unless he married money. Of course, there had been regrets when the news came of that fatal engagement with Lucy Morris. "It can't be for the next ten years, at any rate," said Mrs. Greystock. "I thought at one time that he would have made a match with his cousin," said the dean. "Of course;--so did everybody," replied Mrs. Dean. Then Frank came among them. He had intended staying some weeks,--perhaps for a month, and great preparations were made for him; but immediately on his arrival he announced the necessity that was incumbent on him of going down again to Scotland in ten days. "You've heard about Lizzie, of course?" he said. They had heard that Lizzie was to become Lady Fawn, but beyond that they had heard nothing. "You know about the necklace?" asked Frank. Something of a tale of a necklace had made its way even down to quiet Bobsborough. They had been informed that there was a dispute between the widow and the executors of the late Sir Florian about some diamonds. "Lord Fawn is behaving about it in the most atrocious manner," continued Frank, "and the long and the short of it is that there will be no marriage!" "No marriage!" exclaimed Mrs. Greystock. "And what is the truth about the diamonds?" asked the dean. "Ah;--it will give the lawyers a job before they decide that. They're very valuable;--worth about ten thousand pounds, I'm told; but the most of it will go among some of my friends at the Chancery bar. It's a pity that I should be out of the scramble myself." "But why should you be out?" asked his mother with tender regrets,--not thinking of the matter as her son was thinking of it, but feeling that when there was so much wealth so very near him, he ought not to let it all go past him. "As far as I can see," continued Frank, "she has a fair claim to them. I suppose they'll file a bill in Chancery, and then it will be out of my line altogether. She says her husband gave them to her,--absolutely put them on her neck himself, and told her that they were hers. As to their being an heirloom, that turns out to be impossible. I didn't know it, but it seems you can't make diamonds an heirloom. What astonishes me is, that Fawn should object to the necklace. However, he has objected, and has simply told her that he won't marry her unless she gives them up." "And what does she say?" "Storms and raves,--as of course any woman would. I don't think she is behaving badly. What she wants is, to reduce him to obedience, and then to dismiss him. I think that is no more than fair. Nothing on earth would make her marry him now." "Did she ever care for him?" "I don't think she ever did. She found her position to be troublesome, and she thought she had better marry. And then he's a lord,--which always goes for something." "I am sorry you should have so much trouble," said Mrs. Greystock. But in truth the mother was not sorry. She did not declare to herself that it would be a good thing that her son should be false to Lucy Morris in order that he might marry his rich cousin; but she did feel it to be an advantage that he should be on terms of intimacy with so large an income as that belonging to Lady Eustace. "Doan't thou marry for munny, but goa where munny is." Mrs. Greystock would have repudiated the idea of mercenary marriages in any ordinary conversation, and would have been severe on any gentleman who was false to a young lady. But it is so hard to bring one's general principles to bear on one's own conduct or in one's own family;--and then the Greystocks were so peculiar a people! When her son told her that he must go down to Scotland again very shortly, she reconciled herself to his loss. Had he left Bobsborough for the sake of being near Lucy at Richmond, she would have felt it very keenly. Days passed by, and nothing was said about poor Lucy. Mrs. Greystock had made up her mind that she would say nothing on the subject. Lucy had behaved badly in allowing herself to be loved by a man who ought to have loved money, and Mrs. Greystock had resolved that she would show her feelings by silence. The dean had formed no fixed determination, but he had thought that it might be, perhaps, as well to drop the subject. Frank himself was unhappy about it; but from morning to evening, and from day to day, he allowed it to pass by without a word. He knew that it should not be so, that such silence was in truth treachery to Lucy;--but he was silent. What had he meant when, as he left Lizzie Eustace among the rocks at Portray,--in that last moment,--he had assured her that he would be true to her? And what had been Lizzie's meaning? He was more sure of Lizzie's meaning than he was of his own. "It's a very rough world to live in," he said to himself in these days as he thought of his difficulties. But when he had been nearly a week at the deanery, and when the day of his going was so near as to be a matter of concern, his sister did at last venture to say a word about Lucy. "I suppose there is nothing settled about your own marriage, Frank?" "Nothing at all." "Nor will be for some while?" "Nor will be,--for some while." This he said in a tone which he himself felt to be ill-humoured and almost petulant. And he felt also that such ill-humour on such a subject was unkind, not to his sister, but to Lucy. It seemed to imply that the matter of his marriage was distasteful to him. "The truth is," he said, "that nothing can be fixed. Lucy understands that as well as I do. I am not in a position at once to marry a girl who has nothing. It's a pity, perhaps, that one can't train one's self to like some girl best that has got money; but as I haven't, there must be some delay. She is to stay where she is,--at any rate, for a twelvemonth." "But you mean to see her?" "Well, yes; I hardly know how I can see her, as I have quarrelled to the knife with Lord Fawn; and Lord Fawn is recognised by his mother and sisters as the one living Jupiter upon earth." "I like them for that," said Ellinor. "Only it prevents my going to Richmond;--and poor Fawn himself is such an indifferent Jupiter." That was all that was said about Lucy at Bobsborough, till there came a letter from Lucy to her lover acquainting him with the circumstances of her unfortunate position at Richmond. She did not tell him quite all the circumstances. She did not repeat the strong expressions which Lord Fawn had used, nor did she clearly explain how wrathful she had been herself. "Lord Fawn has been here," she said, "and there has been ever so much unpleasantness. He is very angry with you about Lady Eustace, and of course Lady Fawn takes his part. I need not tell you whose part I take. And so there have been what the servants call--'just a few words.' It is very dreadful, isn't it? And, after all, Lady Fawn has been as kind as possible. But the upshot of it is, that I am not to stay here. You mustn't suppose that I'm to be turned out at twelve hours' notice. I am to stay till arrangements have been made, and everybody will be kind to me. But what had I better do? I'll try and get another situation at once if you think it best, only I suppose I should have to explain how long I could stay. Lady Fawn knows that I am writing to you to ask you what you think best." On receipt of this, Greystock was very much puzzled. What a little fool Lucy had been, and yet what a dear little fool! Who cared for Lord Fawn and his hard words? Of course, Lord Fawn would say all manner of evil things of him, and would crow valiantly in his own farm-yard; but it would have been so much wiser on Lucy's part to have put up with the crowing, and to have disregarded altogether the words of a man so weak and insignificant! But the evil was done, and he must make some arrangement for poor Lucy's comfort. Had he known exactly how matters stood, that the proposition as to Lucy's departure had come wholly from herself, and that at the present time all the ladies at Fawn Court,--of course, in the absence of Lord Fawn,--were quite disposed to forgive Lucy if Lucy would only be forgiven, and hide herself when Lord Fawn should come;--had Frank known all this, he might, perhaps, have counselled her to remain at Richmond. But he believed that Lady Fawn had insisted on Lucy's departure; and of course, in such a case, Lucy must depart. He showed the letter to his sister, and asked for advice. "How very unfortunate!" said Ellinor. "Yes; is it not?" "I wonder what she said to Lord Fawn?" "She would speak out very plainly." "I suppose she has spoken out plainly, or otherwise they would never have told her to go away. It seems so unlike what I have always heard of Lady Fawn." "Lucy can be very headstrong if she pleases," said Lucy's lover. "What on earth had I better do for her? I don't suppose she can get another place that would suit." "If she is to be your wife, I don't think she should go into another place. If it is quite fixed,--" she said, and then she looked into her brother's face. "Well; what then?" "If you are sure you mean it--" "Of course I mean it." "Then she had better come here. As for her going out as a governess, and telling the people that she is to be your wife in a few months, that is out of the question. And it would, I think, be equally so that she should go into any house and not tell the truth. Of course, this would be the place for her." It was at last decided that Ellinor should discuss the matter with her mother. When the whole matter was unfolded to Mrs. Greystock, that lady was more troubled than ever. If Lucy were to come to the deanery, she must come as Frank's affianced bride, and must be treated as such by all Bobsborough. The dean would be giving his express sanction to the marriage, and so would Mrs. Greystock herself. She knew well that she had no power of refusing her sanction. Frank must do as he pleased about marrying. Were Lucy once his wife, of course she would be made welcome to the best the deanery could give her. There was no doubt about Lucy being as good as gold;--only that real gold, vile as it is, was the one thing that Frank so much needed. The mother thought that she had discovered in her son something which seemed to indicate a possibility that this very imprudent match might at last be abandoned; and if there were such possibility, surely Lucy ought not now to be brought to the deanery. Nevertheless, if Frank were to insist upon her coming,--she must come. But Mrs. Greystock had a plan. "Oh, mamma," said Ellinor, when the plan was proposed to her, "do not you think that would be cruel?" "Cruel, my dear! no; certainly not cruel." "She is such a virago." "You think that because Lizzie Eustace has said so. I don't know that she's a virago at all. I believe her to be a very good sort of woman." "Do you remember, mamma, what the admiral used to say of her?" "The admiral, my dear, tried to borrow her money, as he did everybody's, and when she wouldn't give him any, then he said severe things. The poor admiral was never to be trusted in such matters." "I don't think Frank would like it," said Ellinor. The plan was this. Lady Linlithgow, who, through her brother-in-law, the late Admiral Greystock, was connected with the dean's family, had made known her desire to have a new companion for six months. The lady was to be treated like a lady, but was to have no salary. Her travelling expenses were to be paid for her, and no duties were to be expected from her, except that of talking and listening to the countess. "I really think it's the very thing for her," said Mrs. Greystock. "It's not like being a governess. She's not to have any salary." "I don't know whether that makes it better, mamma." "It would just be a visit to Lady Linlithgow. It is that which makes the difference, my dear." Ellinor felt sure that her brother would not hear of such an engagement,--but he did hear of it, and, after various objections, gave a sort of sanction to it. It was not to be pressed upon Lucy if Lucy disliked it. Lady Linlithgow was to be made to understand that Lucy might leave whenever she pleased. It was to be an invitation, which Lucy might accept if she were so minded. Lucy's position as an honourable guest was to be assured to her. It was thought better that Lady Linlithgow should not be told of Lucy's engagement unless she asked questions;--or unless Lucy should choose to tell her. Every precaution was to be taken, and then Frank gave his sanction. He could understand, he said, that it might be inexpedient that Lucy should come at once to the deanery, as,--were she to do so,--she must remain there till her marriage, let the time be ever so long. "It might be two years," said the mother. "Hardly so long as that," said the son. "I don't think it would be--quite fair--to papa," said the mother. It was well that the argument was used behind the dean's back, as, had it been made in his hearing, the dean would have upset it at once. The dean was so short-sighted and imprudent, that he would have professed delight at the idea of having Lucy Morris as a resident at the deanery. Frank acceded to the argument,--and was ashamed of himself for acceding. Ellinor did not accede, nor did her sisters, but it was necessary that they should yield. Mrs. Greystock at once wrote to Lady Linlithgow, and Frank wrote by the same post to Lucy Morris. "As there must be a year's delay," he wrote, "we all here think it best that your visit to us should be postponed for a while. But if you object to the Linlithgow plan, say so at once. You shall be asked to do nothing disagreeable." He found the letter very difficult to write. He knew that she ought to have been welcomed at once to Bobsborough. And he knew, too, the reason on which his mother's objection was founded. But it might be two years before he could possibly marry Lucy Morris;--or it might be three. Would it be proper that she should be desired to make the deanery her home for so long and so indefinite a time? And when an engagement was for so long, could it be well that everybody should know it,--as everybody would if Lucy were to take up her residence permanently at the deanery? Some consideration, certainly, was due to his father. And, moreover, it was absolutely necessary that he and Lizzie Eustace should understand each other as to that mutual pledge of truth which had passed between them. In the meantime he received the following letter from Messrs. Camperdown:-- 62, New Square, Lincoln's Inn, 15 September, 18-- DEAR SIR, After what passed in our chambers the other day, we think it best to let you know that we have been instructed by the executor of the late Sir Florian Eustace to file a bill in Chancery against the widow, Lady Eustace, for the recovery of valuable diamonds. You will oblige us by making the necessary communication to her ladyship, and will perhaps tell us the names of her ladyship's solicitors. We are, dear sir, Your very obedient servants, CAMPERDOWN & SON. F. Greystock, Esq., M.P. A few days after the receipt of this letter Frank started for Scotland. CHAPTER XXXI Frank Greystock's Second Visit to Portray On this occasion Frank Greystock went down to Portray Castle with the intention of staying at the house during the very short time that he would remain in Scotland. He was going there solely on his cousin's business,--with no view to grouse-shooting or other pleasure, and he purposed remaining but a very short time,--perhaps only one night. His cousin, moreover, had spoken of having guests with her, in which case there could be no tinge of impropriety in his doing so. And whether she had guests, or whether she had not, what difference could it really make? Mr. Andrew Gowran had already seen what there was to see, and could do all the evil that could be done. He could, if he were so minded, spread reports in the neighbourhood, and might, perhaps, have the power of communicating what he had discovered to the Eustace faction,--John Eustace, Mr. Camperdown, and Lord Fawn. That evil, if it were an evil, must be encountered with absolute indifference. So he went direct to the castle, and was received quietly, but very graciously, by his cousin Lizzie. There were no guests then staying at Portray; but that very distinguished lady, Mrs. Carbuncle, with her niece, Miss Roanoke, had been there; as had also that very well-known nobleman, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle were in the habit of seeing a good deal of each other, though, as all the world knew, there was nothing between them but the simplest friendship. And Sir Griffin Tewett had also been there, a young baronet who was supposed to be enamoured of that most gorgeous of beauties, Lucinda Roanoke. Of all these grand friends,--friends with whom Lizzie had become acquainted in London,--nothing further need be said here, as they were not at the castle when Frank arrived. When he came, whether by premeditated plan or by the chance of circumstances, Lizzie had no one with her at Portray,--except the faithful Macnulty. "I thought to have found you with all the world here," said Frank,--the faithful Macnulty being then present. "Well,--we have had people, but only for a couple of days. They are all coming again, but not till November. You hunt;--don't you, Frank?" "I have no time for hunting. Why do you ask?" "I'm going to hunt. It's a long way to go,--ten or twelve miles generally; but almost everybody hunts here. Mrs. Carbuncle is coming again, and she is about the best lady in England after hounds;--so they tell me. And Lord George is coming again." "Who is Lord George?" "You remember Lord George Carruthers, whom we all knew in London?" "What,--the tall man with the hollow eyes and the big whiskers, whose life is a mystery to every one? Is he coming?" "I like him, just because he isn't a ditto to every man one meets. And Sir Griffin Tewett is coming." "Who is a ditto to everybody." "Well;--yes; poor Sir Griffin! The truth is, he is awfully smitten with Mrs. Carbuncle's niece." "Don't you go match-making, Lizzie," said Frank. "That Sir Griffin is a fool, we will all allow; but it's my belief he has wit enough to make himself pass off as a man of fortune, with very little to back it. He's at law with his mother, at law with his sisters, and at law with his younger brother." "If he were at law with his great-grandmother, it would be nothing to me, Frank. She has her aunt to take care of her, and Sir Griffin is coming with Lord George." "You don't mean to put up all their horses, Lizzie?" "Well, not all. Lord George and Sir Griffin are to keep theirs at Troon, or Kilmarnock, or somewhere. The ladies will bring two apiece, and I shall have two of my own." "And carriage-horses and hacks?" "The carriage-horses are here,--of course." "It will cost you a great deal of money, Lizzie." "That's just what I tell her," said Miss Macnulty. "I've been living here, not spending one shilling, for the last two months," said Lizzie, "and all for the sake of economy; yet people think that no woman was ever left so rich. Surely I can afford to see a few friends for one month in the year. If I find I can't afford so much as that, I shall let the place, and go and live abroad somewhere. It's too much to suppose that a woman should shut herself up here for six or eight months and see nobody all the time." On that, the day of Frank's arrival, not a word was said about the necklace, nor of Lord Fawn, nor of that mutual pledge which had been taken and given down among the rocks. Frank, before dinner, went out about the place, that he might see how things were going on, and observe whether the widow was being ill-treated and unfairly eaten up by her dependants. He was, too, a little curious as to a matter as to which his curiosity was soon relieved. He had hardly reached the out-buildings which lay behind the kitchen-gardens on his way to the Portray woods, before he encountered Andy Gowran. That faithful adherent of the family raised his hand to his cap and bobbed his head, and then silently, and with renewed diligence, applied himself to the job which he had in hand. The gate of the little yard in which the cow-shed stood was off its hinges, and Andy was resetting the post and making the fence tight and tidy. Frank stood a moment watching him, and then asked after his health. "'Deed am I nae that to boost about in the way of bodily heelth, Muster Greystock. I've just o'er mony things to tent to, to tent to my ain sell as a prudent mon ought. It's airly an' late wi' me, Muster Greystock; and the lumbagy just a' o'er a mon isn't the pleasantest freend in the warld." Frank said that he was sorry to hear so bad an account of Mr. Gowran's health, and passed on. It was not for him to refer to the little scene in which Mr. Gowran had behaved so badly and had shaken his head. If the misbehaviour had been condoned by Lady Eustace, the less that he said about it the better. Then he went on through the woods, and was well aware that Mr. Gowran's fostering care had not been abated by his disapproval of his mistress. The fences had been repaired since Frank was there, and stones had been laid on the road or track over which was to be carried away the under-wood which it would be Lady Eustace's privilege to cut during the coming winter. Frank was not alone for one moment with his cousin during that evening, but in the presence of Miss Macnulty all the circumstances of the necklace were discussed. "Of course it is my own," said Lady Eustace, standing up,--"my own to do just what I please with. If they go on like this with me, they will almost tempt me to sell it for what it will fetch,--just to prove to them that I can do so. I have half a mind to sell it, and then send them the money, and tell them to put it by for my little Flory. Would not that serve them right, Frank?" "I don't think I'd do that, Lizzie." "Why not? You always tell me what not to do, but you never say what I ought!" "That is because I am so wise and prudent. If you were to attempt to sell the diamonds they would stop you, and would not give you credit for the generous purpose afterwards." "They wouldn't stop you if you sold the ring you wear." The ring had been given to him by Lucy after their engagement, and was the only present she had ever made him. It had been purchased out of her own earnings, and had been put on his finger by her own hand. Either from accident or craft he had not worn it when he had been before at Portray, and Lizzie had at once observed it as a thing she had never seen before. She knew well that he would not buy such a ring. Who had given him the ring? Frank almost blushed as he looked down at the trinket, and Lizzie was sure that it had been given by that sly little creeping thing, Lucy. "Let me look at the ring," she said. "Nobody could stop you if you chose to sell this to me." "Little things are always less troublesome than big things," he said. "What is the price?" she asked. "It is not in the market, Lizzie. Nor should your diamonds be there. You must be content to let them take what legal steps they may think fit, and defend your property. After that you can do as you please; but keep them safe till the thing is settled. If I were you I would have them at the bankers." "Yes;--and then when I asked for them be told that they couldn't be given up to me, because of Mr. Camperdown or the Lord Chancellor. And what's the good of a thing locked up? You wear your ring;--why shouldn't I wear my necklace?" "I have nothing to say against it." "It isn't that I care for such things. Do I, Julia?" "All ladies like them, I suppose," said that stupidest and most stubborn of all humble friends, Miss Macnulty. "I don't like them at all, and you know I don't. I hate them. They have been the misery of my life. Oh, how they have tormented me! Even when I am asleep I dream about them, and think that people steal them. They have never given me one moment's happiness. When I have them on I am always fearing that Camperdown and Son are behind me and are going to clutch them. And I think too well of myself to believe that anybody will care more for me because of a necklace. The only good they have ever done me has been to save me from a man who I now know never cared for me. But they are mine;--and therefore I choose to keep them. Though I am only a woman I have an idea of my own rights, and will defend them as far as they go. If you say I ought not to sell them, Frank, I'll keep them; but I'll wear them as commonly as you do that gage d'amour which you carry on your finger. Nobody shall ever see me without them. I won't go to any old dowager's tea-party without them. Mr. John Eustace has chosen to accuse me of stealing them." "I don't think John Eustace has ever said a word about them," said Frank. "Mr. Camperdown, then;--the people who choose to call themselves the guardians and protectors of my boy, as if I were not his best guardian and protector! I'll show them at any rate that I'm not ashamed of my booty. I don't see why I should lock them up in a musty old bank. Why don't you send your ring to the bank?" Frank could not but feel that she did it all very well. In the first place she was very pretty in the display of her half-mock indignation. Though she used some strong words, she used them with an air that carried them off and left no impression that she had been either vulgar or violent. And then, though the indignation was half mock, it was also half real, and her courage and spirit were attractive. Greystock had at last taught himself to think that Mr. Camperdown was not justified in the claim which he made, and that in consequence of that unjust claim Lizzie Eustace had been subjected to ill-usage. "Did you ever see this bone of contention," she asked;--"this fair Helen for which Greeks and Romans are to fight?" "I never saw the necklace, if you mean that." "I'll fetch it. You ought to see it, as you have to talk about it so often." "Can I get it?" asked Miss Macnulty. "Heaven and earth! To suppose that I should ever keep them under less than seven keys, and that there should be any of the locks that anybody should be able to open except myself!" "And where are the seven keys?" asked Frank. "Next to my heart," said Lizzie, putting her hand on her left side. "And when I sleep they are always tied round my neck in a bag, and the bag never escapes from my grasp. And I have such a knife under my pillow, ready for Mr. Camperdown should he come to seize them!" Then she ran out of the room, and in a couple of minutes returned with the necklace hanging loose in her hand. It was part of her little play to show by her speed that the close locking of the jewels was a joke, and that the ornament, precious as it was, received at her hands no other treatment than might any indifferent feminine bauble. Nevertheless within those two minutes she had contrived to unlock the heavy iron case which always stood beneath the foot of her bed. "There," she said, chucking the necklace across the table to Frank, so that he was barely able to catch it. "There is ten thousand pounds' worth, as they tell me. Perhaps you will not believe me when I say that I should have the greatest satisfaction in the world in throwing them out among those blue waves yonder, did I not think that Camperdown and Son would fish them up again." Frank spread the necklace on the table, and stood up to look at it, while Miss Macnulty came and gazed at the jewels over his shoulder. "And that is worth ten thousand pounds," said he. "So people say." "And your husband gave it you just as another man gives a trinket that costs ten shillings!" "Just as Lucy Morris gave you that ring." He smiled, but took no other notice of the accusation. "I am so poor a man," said he, "that this string of stones, which you throw about the room like a child's toy, would be the making of me." "Take it and be made," said Lizzie. "It seems an awful thing to me to have so much value in my hands," said Miss Macnulty, who had lifted the necklace off the table. "It would buy an estate; wouldn't it?" "It would buy the honourable estate of matrimony if it belonged to many women," said Lizzie,--"but it hasn't had just that effect with me;--has it, Frank?" "You haven't used it with that view yet." "Will you have it, Frank?" she said. "Take it with all its encumbrances and weight of cares. Take it with all the burthen of Messrs. Camperdown's lawsuits upon it. You shall be as welcome to it as flowers were ever welcomed in May." "The encumbrances are too heavy," said Frank. "You prefer a little ring." "Very much." "I don't doubt but you're right," said Lizzie. "Who fears to rise will hardly get a fall. But there they are for you to look at, and there they shall remain for the rest of the evening." So saying, she clasped the string round Miss Macnulty's throat. "How do you feel, Julia, with an estate upon your neck? Five hundred acres at twenty pounds an acre. Let us call it five hundred pounds a year. That's about it." Miss Macnulty looked as though she did not like it, but she stood for a time bearing the precious burthen, while Frank explained to his cousin that she could hardly buy land to pay her five per cent. They were then taken off and left lying on the table till Lady Eustace took them with her as she went to bed. "I do feel so like some naughty person in the 'Arabian Nights,'" she said, "who has got some great treasure that always brings him into trouble; but he can't get rid of it, because some spirit has given it to him. At last some morning it turns into slate stones, and then he has to be a water-carrier, and is happy ever afterwards, and marries the king's daughter. What sort of a king's son will there be for me when this turns into slate stones? Good night, Frank." Then she went off with her diamonds and her bed-candle. On the following day Frank suggested that there should be a business conversation. "That means that I am to sit silent and obedient while you lecture me," she said. But she submitted, and they went together into the little sitting-room which looked out over the sea,--the room where she kept her Shelley and her Byron, and practised her music and did water-colours, and sat, sometimes, dreaming of a Corsair. "And now, my gravest of Mentors, what must a poor ignorant female Telemachus do, so that the world may not trample on her too heavily?" He began by telling her what had happened between himself and Lord Fawn, and recommended her to write to that unhappy nobleman, returning any present that she might have received from him, and expressing, with some mild but intelligible sarcasm, her regret that their paths should have crossed each other. "I've worse in store for his lordship than that," said Lizzie. "Do you mean by any personal interview?" "Certainly." "I think you are wrong, Lizzie." "Of course you do. Men have become so soft themselves, that they no longer dare to think even of punishing those who behave badly, and they expect women to be softer and more fainéant than themselves. I have been ill-used." "Certainly you have." "And I will be revenged. Look here, Frank; if your view of these things is altogether different from mine, let us drop the subject. Of all living human beings you are the one that is most to me now. Perhaps you are more than any other ever was. But, even for you, I cannot alter my nature. Even for you I would not alter it if I could. That man has injured me, and all the world knows it. I will have my revenge, and all the world shall know that. I did wrong;--I am sensible enough of that." "What wrong do you mean?" "I told a man whom I never loved that I would marry him. God knows that I have been punished." "Perhaps, Lizzie, it is better as it is." "A great deal better. I will tell you now that I could never induce myself to go into church with that man as his bride. With a man I didn't love I might have done so, but not with a man I despised." "You have been saved, then, from a greater evil." "Yes;--but not the less is his injury to me. It is not because he despises me that he rejects me;--nor is it because he thought that I had taken property that was not my own." "Why then?" "Because he was afraid the world would say that I had done so. Poor shallow creature! But he shall be punished." "I do not know how you can punish him." "Leave that to me. I have another thing to do much more difficult." She paused, looking for a moment up into his face, and then turning her eyes upon the ground. As he said nothing, she went on. "I have to excuse myself to you for having accepted him." "I have never blamed you." "Not in words. How should you? But if you have not blamed me in your heart, I despise you. I know you have. I have seen it in your eyes when you have counselled me, either to take the poor creature or to leave him. Speak out, now, like a man. Is it not so?" "I never thought you loved him." "Loved him! Is there anything in him or about him that a woman could love? Is he not a poor social stick;--a bit of half-dead wood, good to make a post of, if one wants a post? I did want a post so sorely then!" "I don't see why." "You don't?" "No, indeed. It was natural that you should be inclined to marry again." "Natural that I should be inclined to marry again! And is that all? It is hard sometimes to see whether men are thick-witted, or hypocrites so perfect that they seem to be so. I cannot bring myself to think you thick-witted, Frank." "Then I must be the perfect hypocrite,--of course." "You believed I accepted Lord Fawn because it was natural that I should wish to marry again! Frank, you believed nothing of the kind. I accepted him in my anger, in my misery, in my despair, because I had expected you to come to me,--and you had not come!" She had thrown herself now into a chair, and sat looking at him. "You had told me that you would come, and you had stayed away. It was you, Frank, that I wanted to punish then;--but there was no punishment in it for you. When is it to be, Frank?" "When is what to be?" he asked, in a low voice, all but dumb-founded. How was he to put an end to this conversation, and what was he to say to her? "Your marriage with that little wizened thing who gave you the ring--that prim morsel of feminine propriety who has been clever enough to make you believe that her morality would suffice to make you happy." "I will not hear Lucy Morris abused, Lizzie." "Is that abuse? Is it abuse to say that she is moral and proper? But, sir, I shall abuse her. I know her for what she is, while your eyes are sealed. She is wise and moral, and decorous and prim; but she is a hypocrite, and has no touch of real heart in her composition. Not abuse her when she has robbed me of all--all--all that I have in the world! Go to her. You had better go at once. I did not mean to say all this, but it has been said, and you must leave me. I, at any rate, cannot play the hypocrite;--I wish I could." He rose and came to her, and attempted to take her hand, but she flung away from him. "No!" she said--"never again; never, unless you will tell me that the promise you made me when we were down on the sea-shore was a true promise. Was that truth, sir, or was it a--lie?" "Lizzie, do not use such a word as that to me." "I cannot stand picking my words when the whole world is going round with me, and my very brain is on fire. What is it to me what my words are? Say one syllable to me, and every word I utter again while breath is mine shall be spoken to do you pleasure. If you cannot say it, it is nothing to me what you or any one may think of my words. You know my secret, and I care not who else knows it. At any rate, I can die!" Then she paused a moment, and after that stalked steadily out of the room. That afternoon Frank took a long walk by himself over the mountains, nearly to the Cottage and back again; and on his return was informed that Lady Eustace was ill, and had gone to bed. At any rate, she was too unwell to come down to dinner. He, therefore, and Miss Macnulty sat down to dine, and passed the evening together without other companionship. Frank had resolved during his walk that he would leave Portray the next day; but had hardly resolved upon anything else. One thing, however, seemed certain to him. He was engaged to marry Lucy Morris, and to that engagement he must be true. His cousin was very charming,--and had never looked so lovely in his eyes as when she had been confessing her love for him. And he had wondered at and admired her courage, her power of language, and her force. He could not quite forget how useful would be her income to him. And, added to this, there was present to him an unwholesome feeling,--ideas absolutely at variance with those better ideas which had prompted him when he was writing his offer to Lucy Morris in his chambers,--that a woman such as was his cousin Lizzie was fitter to be the wife of a man thrown, as he must be, into the world, than a dear, quiet, domestic little girl such as Lucy Morris. But to Lucy Morris he was engaged, and therefore there was an end of it. The next morning he sent his love to his cousin, asking whether he should see her before he went. It was still necessary that he should know what attorneys to employ on her behalf if the threatened bill were filed by Messrs. Camperdown. Then he suggested a firm in his note. Might he put the case into the hands of Mr. Townsend, who was a friend of his own? There came back to him a scrap of paper, an old envelope, on which were written the names of Mowbray and Mopus;--Mowbray and Mopus in a large scrawling hand, and with pencil. He put the scrap of paper into his pocket, feeling that he could not remonstrate with her at this moment, and was prepared to depart, when there came a message to him. Lady Eustace was still unwell, but had risen; and if it were not giving him too much trouble, would see him before he went. He followed the messenger to the same little room, looking out upon the sea, and then found her, dressed indeed, but with a white morning wrapper on, and with hair loose over her shoulders. Her eyes were red with weeping, and her face was pale, and thin, and woe-begone. "I am so sorry that you are ill, Lizzie," he said. "Yes, I am ill;--sometimes very ill; but what does it matter? I did not send for you, Frank, to speak of aught so trivial as that. I have a favour to ask." "Of course I will grant it." "It is your forgiveness for my conduct yesterday." "Oh, Lizzie!" "Say that you forgive me. Say it!" "How can I forgive where there has been no fault?" "There has been fault. Say that you forgive me." And she stamped her foot as she demanded his pardon. "I do forgive you," he said. "And now, one farewell." She then threw herself upon his breast and kissed him. "Now, go," she said; "go, and come no more to me, unless you would see me mad. May God Almighty bless you, and make you happy!" As she uttered this prayer she held the door in her hand, and there was nothing for him but to leave her. CHAPTER XXXII Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway in Scotland A great many people go to Scotland in the autumn. When you have your autumn holiday in hand to dispose of it, there is nothing more aristocratic that you can do than go to Scotland. Dukes are more plentiful there than in Pall Mall, and you will meet an earl or at least a lord on every mountain. Of course, if you merely travel about from inn to inn, and neither have a moor of your own nor stay with any great friend, you don't quite enjoy the cream of it; but to go to Scotland in August and stay there, perhaps, till the end of September, is about the most certain step you can take towards autumnal fashion. Switzerland and the Tyrol, and even Italy, are all redolent of Mr. Cook, and in those beautiful lands you become subject at least to suspicion. By no persons was the duty of adhering to the best side of society more clearly appreciated than by Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway of Warwick Square. Mr. Hittaway was Chairman of the Board of Civil Appeals, and was a man who quite understood that there are chairmen--and chairmen. He could name to you three or four men holding responsible permanent official positions quite as good as that he filled in regard to salary,--which, as he often said of his own, was a mere nothing, just a poor two thousand pounds a year, not as much as a grocer would make in a decent business,--but they were simply head clerks and nothing more. Nobody knew anything of them. They had no names. You did not meet them anywhere. Cabinet ministers never heard of them; and nobody out of their own offices ever consulted them. But there are others, and Mr. Hittaway felt greatly conscious that he was one of them, who move altogether in a different sphere. One minister of State would ask another whether Hittaway had been consulted on this or on that measure;--so at least the Hittawayites were in the habit of reporting. The names of Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway were constantly in the papers. They were invited to evening gatherings at the houses of both the alternate Prime Ministers. They were to be seen at fashionable gatherings up the river. They attended concerts at Buckingham Palace. Once a year they gave a dinner-party which was inserted in the "Morning Post." On such occasions at least one Cabinet Minister always graced the board. In fact, Mr. Hittaway, as Chairman of the Board of Civil Appeals, was somebody; and Mrs. Hittaway, as his wife and as sister to a peer, was somebody also. The reader will remember that Mrs. Hittaway had been a Fawn before she married. There is this drawback upon the happy condition which Mr. Hittaway had achieved,--that it demands a certain expenditure. Let nobody dream that he can be somebody without having to pay for that honour;--unless, indeed, he be a clergyman. When you go to a concert at Buckingham Palace you pay nothing, it is true, for your ticket; and a Cabinet Minister dining with you does not eat or drink more than your old friend Jones the attorney. But in some insidious, unforeseen manner,--in a way that can only be understood after much experience,--these luxuries of fashion do make a heavy pull on a modest income. Mrs. Hittaway knew this thoroughly, having much experience, and did make her fight bravely. For Mr. Hittaway's income was no more than modest. A few thousand pounds he had of his own when he married, and his Clara had brought to him the unpretending sum of fifteen hundred. But, beyond that, the poor official salary,--which was less than what a decent grocer would make,--was their all. The house in Warwick Square they had prudently purchased on their marriage,--when houses in Warwick Square were cheaper than they are now,--and there they carried on their battle, certainly with success. But two thousand a year does not go very far in Warwick Square, even though you sit rent free, if you have a family and absolutely must keep a carriage. It therefore resulted that when Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway went to Scotland, which they would endeavour to do every year, it was very important that they should accomplish their aristocratic holiday as visitors at the house of some aristocratic friend. So well had they played their cards in this respect, that they seldom failed altogether. In one year they had been the guests of a great marquis quite in the north, and that had been a very glorious year. To talk of Stackallan was, indeed, a thing of beauty. But in that year Mr. Hittaway had made himself very useful in London. Since that they had been at delicious shooting lodges in Ross and Inverness-shire, had visited a millionaire at his palace amidst the Argyle mountains, had been fêted in a western island, had been bored by a Dundee dowager, and put up with a Lothian laird. But the thing had been almost always done, and the Hittaways were known as people that went to Scotland. He could handle a gun, and was clever enough never to shoot a keeper. She could read aloud, could act a little, could talk or hold her tongue; and let her hosts be who they would and as mighty as you please, never caused them trouble by seeming to be out of their circle, and on that account requiring peculiar attention. On this occasion Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway were the guests of old Lady Pierrepoint, in Dumfries. There was nothing special to recommend Lady Pierrepoint except that she had a large house and a good income, and that she liked to have people with her of whom everybody knew something. So far was Lady Pierrepoint from being high in the Hittaway world, that Mrs. Hittaway felt herself called upon to explain to her friends that she was forced to go to Dumdum House by the duties of old friendship. Dear old Lady Pierrepoint had been insisting on it for the last ten years. And there was this advantage, that Dumfriesshire is next to Ayrshire, that Dumdum was not very far,--some twenty or thirty miles,--from Portray, and that she might learn something about Lizzie Eustace in her country house. It was nearly the end of August when the Hittaways left London to stay an entire month with Lady Pierrepoint. Mr. Hittaway had very frequently explained his defalcation as to fashion,--in that he was remaining in London for three weeks after Parliament had broken up,--by the peculiar exigencies of the Board of Appeals in that year. To one or two very intimate friends Mrs. Hittaway had hinted that everything must be made to give way to this horrid business of Fawn's marriage. "Whatever happens, and at whatever cost, that must be stopped," she had ventured to say to Lady Glencora Palliser,--who, however, could hardly be called one of her very intimate friends. "I don't see it at all," said Lady Glencora. "I think Lady Eustace is very nice. And why shouldn't she marry Lord Fawn if she's engaged to him?" "But you have heard of the necklace, Lady Glencora?" "Yes, I've heard of it. I wish anybody would come to me and try and get my diamonds! They should hear what I would say." Mrs. Hittaway greatly admired Lady Glencora, but not the less was she determined to persevere. Had Lord Fawn been altogether candid and open with his family at this time, some trouble might have been saved; for he had almost altogether resolved that, let the consequences be what they might, he would not marry Lizzie Eustace. But he was afraid to say this even to his own sister. He had promised to marry the woman, and he must walk very warily, or the objurgations of the world would be too many for him. "It must depend altogether on her conduct, Clara," he had said when last his sister had persecuted him on the subject. She was not, however, sorry to have an opportunity of learning something of the lady's doings. Mr. Hittaway had more than once called on Mr. Camperdown. "Yes," Mr. Camperdown had said in answer to a question from Lord Fawn's brother-in-law; "she would play old gooseberry with the property if we hadn't some one to look after it. There's a fellow named Gowran who has lived there all his life, and we depend very much upon him." It is certainly true, that as to many points of conduct, women are less nice than men. Mr. Hittaway would not probably have condescended himself to employ espionage, but Mrs. Hittaway was less scrupulous. She actually went down to Troon and had an interview with Mr. Gowran, using freely the names of Mr. Camperdown and of Lord Fawn; and some ten days afterwards Mr. Gowran travelled as far as Dumfries, and Dumdum, and had an interview with Mrs. Hittaway. The result of all this, and of further inquiries, will be shown by the following letter from Mrs. Hittaway to her sister Amelia:-- Dumdum, 9th September, 18--. MY DEAR AMELIA, Here we are, and here we have to remain to the end of the month. Of course it suits, and all that; but it is awfully dull. Richmond for this time of the year is a paradise to it; and as for coming to Scotland every autumn, I am sick of it. Only what is one to do if one lives in London? If it wasn't for Orlando and the children, I'd brazen it out, and let people say what they pleased. As for health, I'm never so well as at home, and I do like having my own things about me. Orlando has literally nothing to do here. There is no shooting, except pheasants, and that doesn't begin till October. But I'm very glad I've come as to Frederic, and the more so, as I have learned the truth as to that Mr. Greystock. She, Lady Eustace, is a bad creature in every way. She still pretends that she is engaged to Frederic, and tells everybody that the marriage is not broken off, and yet she has her cousin with her, making love to him in the most indecent way. People used to say in her favour that at any rate she never flirted. I never quite know what people mean when they talk of flirting. But you may take my word for it that she allows her cousin to embrace her, and _embraces him_. I would not say it if I could not prove it. It is horrible to think of it, when one remembers that she is almost justified in saying that Frederic is engaged to her. No doubt he was engaged to her. It was a great misfortune, but, thank God, is not yet past remedy. He has some foolish feeling of what he calls honour; as if a man can be bound in honour to marry a woman who has deceived him in every point! She still sticks to the diamonds,--if she has not sold them, as I believe she has; and Mr. Camperdown is going to bring an action against her in the High Court of Chancery. But still Frederic will not absolutely declare the thing off. I feel, therefore, that it is my duty to let him know what I have learned. I should be the last to stir in such a matter unless I was sure I could prove it. But I don't quite like to write to Frederic. Will mamma see him, and tell him what I say? Of course you will show this letter to mamma. If not, I must postpone it till I am in town;--but I think it would come better from mamma. Mamma may be sure that she is a bad woman. And now what do you think of your Mr. Greystock? As sure as I am here he was seen with his arm round his cousin's waist, sitting out of doors,--_kissing her!_ I was never taken in by that story of his marrying Lucy Morris. He is the last man in the world to marry a governess. He is over head and ears in debt, and if he marries at all, he must marry some one with money. I really think that mamma, and you, and all of you have been soft about that girl. I believe she has been a good governess,--that is, good after mamma's easy fashion; and I don't for a moment suppose that she is doing anything underhand. But a governess with a lover never does suit, and I'm sure it won't suit in this case. If I were you I would tell her. I think it would be the best charity. Whether they mean to marry I can't tell,--Mr. Greystock, that is, and this woman; _but they ought to mean it_;--that's all. Let me know at once whether mamma will see Frederic, and speak to him openly. She is quite at liberty to use my name; only nobody but mamma should see this letter. Love to them all, Your most affectionate sister, CLARA HITTAWAY. In writing to Amelia instead of to her mother, Mrs. Hittaway was sure that she was communicating her ideas to at least two persons at Fawn Court, and that therefore there would be discussion. Had she written to her mother, her mother might probably have held her peace, and done nothing. CHAPTER XXXIII "It Won't Be True" Mrs. Greystock, in making her proposition respecting Lady Linlithgow, wrote to Lady Fawn, and by the same post Frank wrote to Lucy. But before those letters reached Fawn Court there had come that other dreadful letter from Mrs. Hittaway. The consternation caused at Fawn Court in respect to Mr. Greystock's treachery almost robbed of its importance the suggestion made as to Lord Fawn. Could it be possible that this man, who had so openly and in so manly a manner engaged himself to Lucy Morris, should now be proposing to himself a marriage with his rich cousin? Lady Fawn did not believe that it was possible. Clara had not seen those horrid things with her own eyes, and other people might be liars. But Amelia shook her head. Amelia evidently believed that all manner of iniquities were possible to man. "You see, mamma, the sacrifice he was making was so very great!" "But he made it!" pleaded Lady Fawn. "No, mamma, he said he would make it. Men do these things. It is very horrid, but I think they do them more now than they used to. It seems to me that nobody cares now what he does, if he's not to be put into prison." It was resolved between these two wise ones that nothing at the present should be said to Lucy or to any one of the family. They would wait awhile, and in the meantime they attempted,--as far as it was possible to make the attempt without express words,--to let Lucy understand that she might remain at Fawn Court if she pleased. While this was going on, Lord Fawn did come down once again, and on that occasion Lucy simply absented herself from the dinner-table and from the family circle for that evening. "He's coming in, and you've got to go to prison again," Nina said to her, with a kiss. The matter to which Mrs. Hittaway's letter more specially alluded was debated between the mother and daughter at great length. They, indeed, were less brave and less energetic than was the married daughter of the family; but as they saw Lord Fawn more frequently, they knew better than Mrs. Hittaway the real state of the case. They felt sure that he was already sufficiently embittered against Lady Eustace, and thought that therefore the peculiarly unpleasant task assigned to Lady Fawn need not be performed. Lady Fawn had not the advantage of living so much in the world as her daughter, and was oppressed by, perhaps, a squeamish delicacy. "I really could not tell him about her sitting and--and kissing the man. Could I, my dear?" "I couldn't," said Amelia;--"but Clara would." "And to tell the truth," continued Lady Fawn, "I shouldn't care a bit about it if it was not for poor Lucy. What will become of her if that man is untrue to her?" "Nothing on earth would make her believe it, unless it came from himself," said Amelia,--who really did know something of Lucy's character. "Till he tells her, or till she knows that he's married, she'll never believe it." Then, after a few days, there came those other letters from Bobsborough,--one from the dean's wife and the other from Frank. The matter there proposed it was necessary that they should discuss with Lucy, as the suggestion had reached Lucy as well as themselves. She at once came to Lady Fawn with her lover's letter, and with a gentle merry laughing face declared that the thing would do very well. "I am sure I should get on with her, and I should know that it wouldn't be for long," said Lucy. "The truth is, we don't want you to go at all," said Lady Fawn. "Oh, but I must," said Lucy in her sharp, decided tone. "I must go. I was bound to wait till I heard from Mr. Greystock, because it is my first duty to obey him. But of course I cannot stay here after what has passed. As Nina says, it is simply going to prison when Lord Fawn comes here." "Nina is an impertinent little chit," said Amelia. "She is the dearest little friend in all the world," said Lucy, "and always tells the exact truth. I do go to prison, and when he comes I feel that I ought to go to prison. Of course, I must go away. What does it matter? Lady Linlithgow won't be exactly like you,"--and she put her little hand upon Lady Fawn's fat arm caressingly, "and I sha'n't have you all to spoil me; but I shall be simply waiting till he comes. Everything now must be no more than waiting till he comes." If it was to be that "he" would never come, this was very dreadful. Amelia clearly thought that "he" would never come, and Lady Fawn was apt to think her daughter wiser than herself. And if Mr. Greystock were such as Mrs. Hittaway had described him to be,--if there were to be no such coming as that for which Lucy fondly waited,--then there would be reason ten-fold strong why she should not leave Fawn Court and go to Lady Linlithgow. In such case,--when that blow should fall,--Lucy would require very different treatment than might be expected for her from the hands of Lady Linlithgow. She would fade and fall to the earth like a flower with an insect at its root. She would be like a wounded branch, into which no sap would run. With such misfortune and wretchedness possibly before her, Lady Fawn could not endure the idea that Lucy should be turned out to encounter it all beneath the cold shade of Lady Linlithgow's indifference. "My dear," she said, "let bygones be bygones. Come down and meet Lord Fawn. Nobody will say anything. After all, you were provoked very much, and there has been quite enough about it." This, from Lady Fawn, was almost miraculous,--from Lady Fawn, to whom her son had ever been the highest of human beings! But Lucy had told the tale to her lover, and her lover approved of her going. Perhaps there was acting upon her mind some feeling, of which she was hardly conscious, that as long as she remained at Fawn Court she would not see her lover. She had told him that she could make herself supremely happy in the simple knowledge that he loved her. But we all know how far such declarations should be taken as true. Of course, she was longing to see him. "If he would only pass by the road," she would say to herself, "so that I might peep at him through the gate!" She had no formed idea in her own mind that she would be able to see him should she go to Lady Linlithgow, but still there would be the chances of her altered life! She would tell Lady Linlithgow the truth, and why should Lady Linlithgow refuse her so rational a pleasure? There was, of course, a reason why Frank should not come to Fawn Court; but the house in Bruton Street need not be closed to him. "I hardly know how to love you enough," she said to Lady Fawn, "but indeed I must go. I do so hope the time may come when you and Mr. Greystock may be friends. Of course, it will come. Shall it not?" "Who can look into the future?" said the wise Amelia. "Of course, if he is your husband, we shall love him," said the less wise Lady Fawn. "He is to be my husband," said Lucy, springing up. "What do you mean? Do you mean anything?" Lady Fawn, who was not at all wise, protested that she meant nothing. What were they to do? On that special day they merely stipulated that there should be a day's delay before Lady Fawn answered Mrs. Greystock's letter,--so that she might sleep upon it. The sleeping on it meant that further discussion which was to take place between Lady Fawn and her second daughter in her ladyship's bed-room that night. During all this period the general discomfort of Fawn Court was increased by a certain sullenness on the part of Augusta, the elder daughter, who knew that letters had come and that consultations were being held,--but who was not admitted to those consultations. Since the day on which poor Augusta had been handed over to Lizzie Eustace as her peculiar friend in the family, there had always existed a feeling that she, by her position, was debarred from sympathising in the general desire to be quit of Lizzie; and then, too, poor Augusta was never thoroughly trusted by that great guide of the family, Mrs. Hittaway. "She couldn't keep it to herself if you'd give her gold to do it," Mrs. Hittaway would say. Consequently Augusta was sullen and conscious of ill-usage. "Have you fixed upon anything?" she said to Lucy that evening. "Not quite;--only I am to go away." "I don't see why you should go away at all. Frederic doesn't come here so very often, and when he does come he doesn't say much to any one. I suppose it's all Amelia's doing." "Nobody wants me to go, only I feel that I ought. Mr. Greystock thinks it best." "I suppose he's going to quarrel with us all." "No, dear. I don't think he wants to quarrel with any one;--but above all he must not quarrel with me. Lord Fawn has quarrelled with him, and that's a misfortune,--just for the present." "And where are you going?" "Nothing has been settled yet; but we are talking of Lady Linlithgow,--if she will take me." "Lady Linlithgow! Oh dear!" "Won't it do?" "They say she is the most dreadful old woman in London. Lady Eustace told such stories about her." "Do you know, I think I shall rather like it." But things were very different with Lucy the next morning. That discussion in Lady Fawn's room was protracted till midnight, and then it was decided that just a word should be said to Lucy, so that, if possible, she might be induced to remain at Fawn Court. Lady Fawn was to say the word, and on the following morning she was closeted with Lucy. "My dear," she began, "we all want you to do us a particular favour." As she said this, she held Lucy by the hand, and no one looking at them would have thought that Lucy was a governess and that Lady Fawn was her employer. "Dear Lady Fawn, indeed it is better that I should go." "Stay just one month." "I couldn't do that, because then this chance of a home would be gone. Of course, we can't wait a month before we let Mrs. Greystock know." "We must write to her, of course." "And then, you see, Mr. Greystock wishes it." Lady Fawn knew that Lucy could be very firm, and had hardly hoped that anything could be done by simple persuasion. They had long been accustomed among themselves to call her obstinate, and knew that even in her acts of obedience she had a way of obeying after her own fashion. It was as well, therefore, that the thing to be said should be said at once. "My dear Lucy, has it ever occurred to you that there may be a slip between the cup and the lip?" "What do you mean, Lady Fawn?" "That sometimes engagements take place which never become more than engagements. Look at Lord Fawn and Lady Eustace." "Mr. Greystock and I are not like that," said Lucy, proudly. "Such things are very dreadful, Lucy, but they do happen." "Do you mean anything;--anything real, Lady Fawn?" "I have so strong a reliance on your good sense, that I will tell you just what I do mean. A rumour has reached me that Mr. Greystock is--paying more attention than he ought to do to Lady Eustace." "His own cousin!" "But people marry their cousins, Lucy." "To whom he has always been just like a brother! I do think that is the cruellest thing. Because he sacrifices his time and his money and all his holidays to go and look after her affairs, this is to be said of him! She hasn't another human being to look after her, and, therefore, he is obliged to do it. Of course he has told me all about it. I do think, Lady Fawn,--I do think that is the greatest shame I ever heard!" "But if it should be true--?" "It isn't true." "But just for the sake of showing you, Lucy--; if it was to be true." "It won't be true." "Surely I may speak to you as your friend, Lucy. You needn't be so abrupt with me. Will you listen to me, Lucy?" "Of course I will listen;--only nothing that anybody on earth could say about that would make me believe a word of it." "Very well! Now just let me go on. If it were to be so--" "Oh-h, Lady Fawn!" "Don't be foolish, Lucy. I will say what I've got to say. If--if-- Let me see. Where was I? I mean just this. You had better remain here till things are a little more settled. Even if it be only a rumour,--and I'm sure I don't believe it's anything more,--you had better hear about it with us,--with friends round you, than with a perfect stranger like Lady Linlithgow. If anything were to go wrong there, you wouldn't know where to go for comfort. If anything were wrong with you here, you could come to me as though I were your mother.--Couldn't you, now?" "Indeed, indeed I could! And I will;--I always will. Lady Fawn, I love you and the dear darling girls better than all the world--except Mr. Greystock. If anything like that were to happen, I think I should creep here and ask to die in your house. But it won't. And just now it will be better that I should go away." It was found at last that Lucy must have her way, and letters were written both to Mrs. Greystock and to Frank, requesting that the suggested overtures might at once be made to Lady Linlithgow. Lucy, in her letter to her lover, was more than ordinarily cheerful and jocose. She had a good deal to say about Lady Linlithgow that was really droll, and not a word to say indicative of the slightest fear in the direction of Lady Eustace. She spoke of poor Lizzie, and declared her conviction that that marriage never could come off now. "You mustn't be angry when I say that I can't break my heart for them, for I never did think that they were very much in love. As for Lord Fawn, of course he is my--ENEMY!" And she wrote the word in big letters. "And as for Lizzie,--she's your cousin, and all that. And she's ever so pretty, and all that. And she's as rich as Croesus, and all that. But I don't think she'll break her own heart. I would break mine; only--only--only-- You will understand the rest. If it should come to pass, I wonder whether 'the duchess' would ever let a poor creature see a friend of hers in Bruton Street?" Frank had once called Lady Linlithgow the duchess, after a certain popular picture in a certain popular book, and Lucy never forgot anything that Frank had said. It did come to pass. Mrs. Greystock at once corresponded with Lady Linlithgow, and Lady Linlithgow, who was at Ramsgate for her autumn vacation, requested that Lucy Morris might be brought to see her at her house in London on the 2nd of October. Lady Linlithgow's autumn holiday always ended on the last day of September. On the 2nd of October Lady Fawn herself took Lucy up to Bruton Street, and Lady Linlithgow appeared. "Miss Morris," said Lady Fawn, "thinks it right that you should be told that she's engaged to be married." "Who to?" demanded the countess. Lucy was as red as fire, although she had especially made up her mind that she would not blush when the communication was made. "I don't know that she wishes me to mention the gentleman's name, just at present; but I can assure you that he is all that he ought to be." "I hate mysteries," said the countess. "If Lady Linlithgow--" began Lucy. "Oh, it's nothing to me," continued the old woman. "It won't come off for six months, I suppose?" Lucy gave a mute assurance that there would be no such difficulty as that. "And he can't come here, Miss Morris." To this Lucy said nothing. Perhaps she might win over even the countess, and if not, she must bear her six months of prolonged exclusion from the light of day. And so the matter was settled. Lucy was to be taken back to Richmond, and to come again on the following Monday. "I don't like this parting at all, Lucy," Lady Fawn said on her way home. "It is better so, Lady Fawn." "I hate people going away; but, somehow, you don't feel it as we do." "You wouldn't say that if you really knew what I do feel." "There was no reason why you should go. Frederic was getting not to care for it at all. What's Nina to do now? I can't get another governess after you. I hate all these sudden breaks up. And all for such a trumpery thing. If Frederic hasn't forgotten all about it, he ought." "It hasn't come altogether from him, Lady Fawn." "How has it come, then?" "I suppose it is because of Mr. Greystock. I suppose when a girl has engaged herself to marry a man she must think more of him than of anything else." "Why couldn't you think of him at Fawn Court?" "Because--because things have been unfortunate. He isn't your friend,--not as yet. Can't you understand, Lady Fawn, that, dear as you all must be to me, I must live in his friendships, and take his part when there is a part?" "Then I suppose that you mean to hate all of us?" Lucy could only cry at hearing this;--whereupon Lady Fawn also burst into tears. On the Sunday before Lucy took her departure, Lord Fawn was again at Richmond. "Of course, you'll come down,--just as if nothing had happened," said Lydia. "We'll see," said Lucy. "Mamma will be very angry if you don't," said Lydia. But Lucy had a little plot in her head, and her appearance at the dinner-table on that Sunday must depend on the manner in which her plot was executed. After church, Lord Fawn would always hang about the grounds for awhile before going into the house; and on this morning Lucy also remained outside. She soon found her opportunity, and walked straight up to him, following him on the path. "Lord Fawn," she said, "I have come to beg your pardon." He had turned round hearing footsteps behind him, but still was startled and unready. "It does not matter at all," he said. "It matters to me, because I behaved badly." "What I said about Mr. Greystock wasn't intended to be said to you, you know." "Even if it was it would make no matter. I don't mean to think of that now. I beg your pardon because I said what I ought not to have said." "You see, Miss Morris, that as the head of this family--" "If I had said it to Juniper, I would have begged his pardon." Now Juniper was the gardener, and Lord Fawn did not quite like the way in which the thing was put to him. The cloud came across his brow, and he began to fear that she would again insult him. "I oughtn't to accuse anybody of an untruth,--not in that way; and I am very sorry for what I did, and I beg your pardon." Then she turned as though she were going back to the house. But he stopped her. "Miss Morris, if it will suit you to stay with my mother, I will never say a word against it." "It is quite settled that I am to go to-morrow, Lord Fawn. Only for that I would not have troubled you again." Then she did turn towards the house, but he recalled her. "We will shake hands, at any rate," he said, "and not part as enemies." So they shook hands, and Lucy came down and sat in his company at the dinner-table. CHAPTER XXXIV Lady Linlithgow at Home Lucy, in her letter to her lover, had distinctly asked whether she might tell Lady Linlithgow the name of her future husband, but had received no reply when she was taken to Bruton Street. The parting at Richmond was very painful, and Lady Fawn had declared herself quite unable to make another journey up to London with the ungrateful runagate. Though there was no diminution of affection among the Fawns, there was a general feeling that Lucy was behaving badly. That obstinacy of hers was getting the better of her. Why should she have gone? Even Lord Fawn had expressed his desire that she should remain. And then, in the breasts of the wise ones, all faith in the Greystock engagement had nearly vanished. Another letter had come from Mrs. Hittaway, who now declared that it was already understood about Portray that Lady Eustace intended to marry her cousin. This was described as a terrible crime on the part of Lizzie, though the antagonistic crime of a remaining desire to marry Lord Fawn was still imputed to her. And, of course, the one crime heightened the other. So that words from the eloquent pen of Mrs. Hittaway failed to make dark enough the blackness of poor Lizzie's character. As for Mr. Greystock, he was simply a heartless man of the world, wishing to feather his nest. Mrs. Hittaway did not for a moment believe that he had ever dreamed of marrying Lucy Morris. Men always have three or four little excitements of that kind going on for the amusement of their leisure hours,--so, at least, said Mrs. Hittaway. "The girl had better be told at once." Such was her decision about poor Lucy. "I can't do more than I have done," said Lady Fawn to Augusta. "She'll never get over it, mamma; never," said Augusta. Nothing more was said, and Lucy was sent off in the family carriage. Lydia and Nina were sent with her, and though there was some weeping on the journey, there was also much laughing. The character of the "duchess" was discussed very much at large, and many promises were made as to long letters. Lucy, in truth, was not unhappy. She would be nearer to Frank; and then it had been almost promised her that she should go to the deanery, after a residence of six months with Lady Linlithgow. At the deanery of course she would see Frank; and she also understood that a long visit to the deanery would be the surest prelude to that home of her own of which she was always dreaming. "Dear me;--sent you up in the carriage, has she? Why shouldn't you have come by the railway?" "Lady Fawn thought the carriage best. She is so very kind." "It's what I call twaddle, you know. I hope you ain't afraid of going in a cab." "Not in the least, Lady Linlithgow." "You can't have the carriage to go about here. Indeed, I never have a pair of horses till after Christmas. I hope you know that I'm as poor as Job." "I didn't know." "I am, then. You'll get nothing beyond wholesome food with me. And I'm not sure it is wholesome always. The butchers are scoundrels, and the bakers are worse. What used you to do at Lady Fawn's?" "I still did lessons with the two youngest girls." "You won't have any lessons to do here, unless you do 'em with me. You had a salary there?" "Oh yes." "Fifty pounds a year, I suppose." "I had eighty." "Had you, indeed; eighty pounds;--and a coach to ride in!" "I had a great deal more than that, Lady Linlithgow." "How do you mean?" "I had downright love and affection. They were just so many dear friends. I don't suppose any governess was ever so treated before. It was just like being at home. The more I laughed, the better every one liked it." "You won't find anything to laugh at here; at least, I don't. If you want to laugh, you can laugh up-stairs, or down in the parlour." "I can do without laughing for a while." "That's lucky, Miss Morris. If they were all so good to you, what made you come away? They sent you away, didn't they?" "Well;--I don't know that I can explain it just all. There were a great many things together. No;--they didn't send me away. I came away because it suited." "It was something to do with your having a lover, I suppose." To this Lucy thought it best to make no answer, and the conversation for a while was dropped. Lucy had arrived at about half-past three, and Lady Linlithgow was then sitting in the drawing-room. After the first series of questions and answers, Lucy was allowed to go up to her room, and on her return to the drawing-room, found the countess still sitting upright in her chair. She was now busy with accounts, and at first took no notice of Lucy's return. What were to be the companion's duties? What tasks in the house were to be assigned to her? What hours were to be her own; and what was to be done in those of which the countess would demand the use? Up to the present moment nothing had been said of all this. She had simply been told that she was to be Lady Linlithgow's companion,--without salary, indeed,--but receiving shelter, guardianship, and bread and meat in return for her services. She took up a book from the table and sat with it for ten minutes. It was Tupper's great poem, and she attempted to read it. Lady Linlithgow sat, totting up her figures, but said nothing. She had not spoken a word since Lucy's return to the room; and as the great poem did not at first fascinate the new companion,--whose mind not unnaturally was somewhat disturbed,--Lucy ventured upon a question. "Is there anything I can do for you, Lady Linlithgow?" "Do you know about figures?" "Oh, yes. I consider myself quite a ready-reckoner." "Can you make two and two come to five on one side of the sheet, and only come to three on the other?" "I'm afraid I can't do that, and prove it afterwards." "Then you ain't worth anything to me." Having so declared, Lady Linlithgow went on with her accounts and Lucy relapsed into her great poem. "No, my dear," said the countess, when she had completed her work. "There isn't anything for you to do. I hope you haven't come here with that mistaken idea. There won't be any sort of work of any kind expected from you. I poke my own fires, and I carve my own bit of mutton. And I haven't got a nasty little dog to be washed. And I don't care twopence about worsted work. I have a maid to darn my stockings, and because she has to work, I pay her wages. I don't like being alone, so I get you to come and live with me. I breakfast at nine, and if you don't manage to be down by that time, I shall be cross." "I'm always up long before that." "There's lunch at two,--just bread and butter and cheese, and perhaps a bit of cold meat. There's dinner at seven;--and very bad it is, because they don't have any good meat in London. Down in Fifeshire the meat's a deal better than it is here, only I never go there now. At half-past ten I go to bed. It's a pity you're so young, because I don't know what you'll do about going out. Perhaps, as you ain't pretty, it won't signify." "Not at all, I should think," said Lucy. "Perhaps you consider yourself pretty. It's all altered now since I was young. Girls make monsters of themselves, and I'm told the men like it;--going about with unclean, frowsy structures on their heads, enough to make a dog sick. They used to be clean and sweet and nice,--what one would like to kiss. How a man can like to kiss a face with a dirty horse's tail all whizzing about it, is what I can't at all understand. I don't think they do like it, but they have to do it." "I haven't even a pony's tail," said Lucy. "They do like to kiss you, I daresay." "No, they don't," ejaculated Lucy, not knowing what answer to make. "I haven't hardly looked at you, but you didn't seem to me to be a beauty." "You're quite right about that, Lady Linlithgow." "I hate beauties. My niece, Lizzie Eustace, is a beauty; and I think that, of all the heartless creatures in the world, she is the most heartless." "I know Lady Eustace very well." "Of course you do. She was a Greystock, and you know the Greystocks. And she was down staying with old Lady Fawn at Richmond. I should think old Lady Fawn had a time with her;--hadn't she?" "It didn't go off very well." "Lizzie would be too much for the Fawns, I should think. She was too much for me, I know. She's about as bad as anybody ever was. She's false, dishonest, heartless, cruel, irreligious, ungrateful, mean, ignorant, greedy, and vile!" "Good gracious, Lady Linlithgow!" "She's all that, and a great deal worse. But she is handsome. I don't know that I ever saw a prettier woman. I generally go out in a cab at three o'clock, but I sha'n't want you to go with me. I don't know what you can do. Macnulty used to walk round Grosvenor Square and think that people mistook her for a lady of quality. You mustn't go and walk round Grosvenor Square by yourself, you know. Not that I care." "I'm not a bit afraid of anybody," said Lucy. "Now you know all about it. There isn't anything for you to do. There are Miss Edgeworth's novels down-stairs, and 'Pride and Prejudice' in my bed-room. I don't subscribe to Mudie's, because when I asked for 'Adam Bede,' they always sent me the 'Bandit Chief.' Perhaps you can borrow books from your friends at Richmond. I daresay Mrs. Greystock has told you that I'm very cross." "I haven't seen Mrs. Greystock for ever so long." "Then Lady Fawn has told you,--or somebody. When the wind is east, or north-east, or even north, I am cross, for I have the lumbago. It's all very well talking about being good-humoured. You can't be good-humoured with the lumbago. And I have the gout sometimes in my knee. I'm cross enough then, and so you'd be. And, among 'em all, I don't get much above half what I ought to have out of my jointure. That makes me very cross. My teeth are bad, and I like to have the meat tender. But it's always tough, and that makes me cross. And when people go against the grain with me, as Lizzie Eustace always did, then I'm very cross." "I hope you won't be very bad with me," said Lucy. "I don't bite, if you mean that," said her ladyship. "I'd sooner be bitten than barked at,--sometimes," said Lucy. "Humph!" said the old woman, and then she went back to her accounts. Lucy had a few books of her own, and she determined to ask Frank to send her some. Books are cheap things, and she would not mind asking him for magazines, and numbers, and perhaps for the loan of a few volumes. In the meantime she did read Tupper's poem, and "Pride and Prejudice," and one of Miss Edgeworth's novels,--probably for the third time. During the first week in Bruton Street she would have been comfortable enough, only that she had not received a line from Frank. That Frank was not specially good at writing letters she had already taught herself to understand. She was inclined to believe that but few men of business do write letters willingly, and that, of all men, lawyers are the least willing to do so. How reasonable it was that a man who had to perform a great part of his daily work with a pen in his hand, should loathe a pen when not at work. To her the writing of letters was perhaps the most delightful occupation of her life, and the writing of letters to her lover was a foretaste of heaven; but then men, as she knew, are very different from women. And she knew this also,--that of all her immediate duties, no duty could be clearer than that of abstaining from all jealousy, petulance, and impatient expectation of little attentions. He loved her, and had told her so, and had promised her that she should be his wife, and that ought to be enough for her. She was longing for a letter, because she was very anxious to know whether she might mention his name to Lady Linlithgow;--but she would abstain from any idea of blaming him because the letter did not come. On various occasions the countess showed some little curiosity about the lover; and at last, after about ten days, when she found herself beginning to be intimate with her new companion, she put the question point-blank. "I hate mysteries," she said. "Who is the young man you are to marry?" "He is a gentleman I've known a long time." "That's no answer." "I don't want to tell his name quite yet, Lady Linlithgow." "Why shouldn't you tell his name, unless it's something improper? Is he a gentleman?" "Yes;--he is a gentleman." "And how old?" "Oh, I don't know;--perhaps thirty-two." "And has he any money?" "He has his profession." "I don't like these kind of secrets, Miss Morris. If you won't say who he is, what was the good of telling me that you were engaged at all? How is a person to believe it?" "I don't want you to believe it." "Highty, tighty!" "I told you my own part of the affair, because I thought you ought to know it as I was coming into your house. But I don't see that you ought to know his part of it. As for not believing, I suppose you believed Lady Fawn?" "Not a bit better than I believe you. People don't always tell truth because they have titles, nor yet because they've grown old. He don't live in London;--does he?" "He generally lives in London. He is a barrister." "Oh,--oh; a barrister is he. They're always making a heap of money, or else none at all. Which is it with him?" "He makes something." "As much as you could put in your eye and see none the worse." To see the old lady, as she made this suggestion, turn sharp round upon Lucy, was as good as a play. "My sister's nephew, the dean's son, is one of the best of the rising ones, I'm told." Lucy blushed up to her hair, but the dowager's back was turned, and she did not see the blushes. "But he's in Parliament, and they tell me he spends his money faster than he makes it. I suppose you know him?" "Yes;--I knew him at Bobsborough." "It's my belief that after all this fuss about Lord Fawn, he'll marry his cousin, Lizzie Eustace. If he's a lawyer, and as sharp as they say, I suppose he could manage her. I wish he would." "And she so bad as you say she is!" "She'll be sure to get somebody, and why shouldn't he have her money as well as another? There never was a Greystock who didn't want money. That's what it will come to;--you'll see." "Never," said Lucy decidedly. "And why not?" "What I mean is that Mr. Greystock is,--at least, I should think so from what I hear,--the very last man in the world to marry for money." "What do you know of what a man would do?" "It would be a very mean thing;--particularly if he does not love her." "Bother!" said the countess. "They were very near it in town last year before Lord Fawn came up at all. I knew as much as that. And it's what they'll come to before they've done." "They'll never come to it," said Lucy. Then a sudden light flashed across the astute mind of the countess. She turned round in her chair, and sat for awhile silent, looking at Lucy. Then she slowly asked another question. "He isn't your young man;--is he?" To this Lucy made no reply. "So that's it, is it?" said the dowager. "You've done me the honour of making my house your home till my own sister's nephew shall be ready to marry you?" "And why not?" said Lucy, rather roughly. "And dame Greystock, from Bobsborough, has sent you here to keep you out of her son's way. I see it all. And that old frump at Richmond has passed you over to me because she did not choose to have such goings on under her own eye." "There have been no goings on," said Lucy. "And he's to come here, I suppose, when my back's turned?" "He is not thinking of coming here. I don't know what you mean. Nobody has done anything wrong to you. I don't know why you say such cruel things." "He can't afford to marry you, you know." "I don't know anything about it. Perhaps we must wait ever so long;--five years. That's nobody's business but my own." "I found it all out;--didn't I?" "Yes;--you found it out." "I'm thinking of that sly old dame Greystock at Bobsborough,--sending you here!" Neither on that nor on the two following days did Lady Linlithgow say a word further to Lucy about her engagement. CHAPTER XXXV Too Bad for Sympathy When Frank Greystock left Bobsborough to go to Scotland, he had not said that he would return, nor had he at that time made up his mind whether he would do so or no. He had promised to go and shoot in Norfolk, and had half undertaken to be up in London with Herriot, working. Though it was holiday-time, still there was plenty of work for him to do,--various heavy cases to get up, and papers to be read, if only he could settle himself down to the doing of it. But the scenes down in Scotland had been of a nature to make him unfit for steady labour. How was he to sail his bark through the rocks by which his present voyage was rendered so dangerous? Of course, to the reader, the way to do so seems to be clear enough. To work hard at his profession; to explain to his cousin that she had altogether mistaken his feelings; and to be true to Lucy Morris was so manifestly his duty, that to no reader will it appear possible that to any gentleman there could be a doubt. Instead of the existence of a difficulty, there was a flood of light upon his path,--so the reader will think;--a flood so clear that not to see his way was impossible. A man carried away by abnormal appetites, and wickedness, and the devil, may of course commit murder, or forge bills, or become a fraudulent director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,--and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love. This Frank Greystock must be little better than a mean villain, if he allows himself to be turned from his allegiance to Lucy Morris for an hour by the seductions and money of such a one as Lizzie Eustace. We know the dear old rhyme:-- "It is good to be merry and wise, It is good to be honest and true, It is good to be off with the old love Before you are on with the new." There was never better truth spoken than this, and if all men and women could follow the advice here given, there would be very little sorrow in the world. But men and women do not follow it. They are no more able to do so than they are to use a spear, the staff of which is like a weaver's beam, or to fight with the sword Excalibur. The more they exercise their arms, the nearer will they get to using the giant's weapon,--or even the weapon that is divine. But as things are at present, their limbs are limp and their muscles soft, and over-feeding impedes their breath. They attempt to be merry without being wise, and have theories about truth and honesty with which they desire to shackle others, thinking that freedom from such trammels may be good for themselves. And in that matter of love,--though love is very potent,--treachery will sometimes seem to be prudence, and a hankering after new delights will often interfere with real devotion. It is very easy to depict a hero,--a man absolutely stainless, perfect as an Arthur,--a man honest in all his dealings, equal to all trials, true in all his speech, indifferent to his own prosperity, struggling for the general good, and, above all, faithful in love. At any rate, it is as easy to do that as to tell of the man who is one hour good and the next bad, who aspires greatly but fails in practice, who sees the higher but too often follows the lower course. There arose at one time a school of art, which delighted to paint the human face as perfect in beauty; and from that time to this we are discontented unless every woman is drawn for us as a Venus, or, at least, a Madonna. I do not know that we have gained much by this untrue portraiture, either in beauty or in art. There may be made for us a pretty thing to look at, no doubt;--but we know that that pretty thing is not really visaged as the mistress whom we serve, and whose lineaments we desire to perpetuate on the canvas. The winds of heaven, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, or the midnight gas,--passions, pains, and, perhaps, rouge and powder, have made her something different. But there still is the fire of her eye, and the eager eloquence of her mouth, and something, too, perhaps, left of the departing innocence of youth, which the painter might give us without the Venus or the Madonna touches. But the painter does not dare to do it. Indeed, he has painted so long after the other fashion that he would hate the canvas before him, were he to give way to the rouge-begotten roughness or to the flesh-pots,--or even to the winds. And how, my lord, would you, who are giving hundreds, more than hundreds, for this portrait of your dear one, like to see it in print from the art critic of the day, that she is a brazen-faced hoyden who seems to have had a glass of wine too much, or to have been making hay? And so also has the reading world taught itself to like best the characters of all but divine men and women. Let the man who paints with pen and ink give the gas-light, and the flesh-pots, the passions and pains, the prurient prudence and the rouge-pots and pounce-boxes of the world as it is, and he will be told that no one can care a straw for his creations. With whom are we to sympathise? says the reader, who not unnaturally imagines that a hero should be heroic. Oh, thou, my reader, whose sympathies are in truth the great and only aim of my work, when you have called the dearest of your friends round you to your hospitable table, how many heroes are there sitting at the board? Your bosom friend,--even if he be a knight without fear, is he a knight without reproach? The Ivanhoe that you know, did he not press Rebecca's hand? Your Lord Evandale,--did he not bring his coronet into play when he strove to win his Edith Bellenden? Was your Tresilian still true and still forbearing when truth and forbearance could avail him nothing? And those sweet girls whom you know, do they never doubt between the poor man they think they love, and the rich man whose riches they know they covet? Go into the market, either to buy or sell, and name the thing you desire to part with or to get, as it is, and the market is closed against you. Middling oats are the sweepings of the granaries. A useful horse is a jade gone at every point. Good sound port is sloe juice. No assurance short of A 1 betokens even a pretence to merit. And yet in real life we are content with oats that are really middling, are very glad to have a useful horse, and know that if we drink port at all we must drink some that is neither good nor sound. In those delineations of life and character which we call novels a similarly superlative vein is desired. Our own friends around us are not always merry and wise, nor, alas! always honest and true. They are often cross and foolish, and sometimes treacherous and false. They are so, and we are angry. Then we forgive them, not without a consciousness of imperfection on our own part. And we know--or, at least, believe,--that though they be sometimes treacherous and false, there is a balance of good. We cannot have heroes to dine with us. There are none. And were these heroes to be had, we should not like them. But neither are our friends villains,--whose every aspiration is for evil, and whose every moment is a struggle for some achievement worthy of the devil. The persons whom you cannot care for in a novel, because they are so bad, are the very same that you so dearly love in your life, because they are so good. To make them and ourselves somewhat better,--not by one spring heavenwards to perfection, because we cannot so use our legs,--but by slow climbing, is, we may presume, the object of all teachers, leaders, legislators, spiritual pastors, and masters. He who writes tales such as this, probably also has, very humbly, some such object distantly before him. A picture of surpassing godlike nobleness,--a picture of a King Arthur among men, may perhaps do much. But such pictures cannot do all. When such a picture is painted, as intending to show what a man should be, it is true. If painted to show what men are, it is false. The true picture of life as it is, if it could be adequately painted, would show men what they are, and how they might rise, not, indeed, to perfection, but one step first, and then another, on the ladder. Our hero, Frank Greystock, falling lamentably short in his heroism, was not in a happy state of mind when he reached Bobsborough. It may be that he returned to his own borough and to his mother's arms because he felt, that were he to determine to be false to Lucy, he would there receive sympathy in his treachery. His mother would, at any rate, think that it was well, and his father would acknowledge that the fault committed was in the original engagement with poor Lucy, and not in the treachery. He had written that letter to her in his chambers one night in a fit of ecstasy; and could it be right that the ruin of a whole life should be the consequence? It can hardly be too strongly asserted that Lizzie Greystock did not appear to Frank as she has been made to appear to the reader. In all this affair of the necklace he was beginning to believe that she was really an ill-used woman; and as to other traits in Lizzie's character,--traits which he had seen, and which were not of a nature to attract,--it must be remembered that beauty reclining in a man's arms does go far towards washing white the lovely blackamoor. Lady Linlithgow, upon whom Lizzie's beauty could have no effect of that kind, had nevertheless declared her to be very beautiful. And this loveliness was of a nature that was altogether pleasing, if once the beholder of it could get over the idea of falseness which certainly Lizzie's eye was apt to convey to the beholder. There was no unclean horse's tail. There was no get-up of flounces, and padding, and paint, and hair, with a dorsal excrescence appended with the object surely of showing in triumph how much absurd ugliness women can force men to endure. She was lithe, and active, and bright,--and was at this moment of her life at her best. Her growing charms had as yet hardly reached the limits of full feminine loveliness,--which, when reached, have been surpassed. Luxuriant beauty had with her not as yet become comeliness; nor had age or the good things of the world added a pound to the fairy lightness of her footstep. All this had been tendered to Frank,--and with it that worldly wealth which was so absolutely necessary to his career. For though Greystock would not have said to any man or woman that nature had intended him to be a spender of much money and a consumer of many good things, he did undoubtedly so think of himself. He was a Greystock, and to what miseries would he not reduce his Lucy if, burthened by such propensities, he were to marry her and then become an aristocratic pauper! The offer of herself by a woman to a man is, to us all, a thing so distasteful that we at once declare that the woman must be abominable. There shall be no whitewashing of Lizzie Eustace. She was abominable. But the man to whom the offer is made hardly sees the thing in the same light. He is disposed to believe that, in his peculiar case, there are circumstances by which the woman is, if not justified, at least excused. Frank did put faith in his cousin's love for himself. He did credit her when she told him that she had accepted Lord Fawn's offer in pique, because he had not come to her when he had promised that he would come. It did seem natural to him that she should have desired to adhere to her engagement when he would not advise her to depart from it. And then her jealousy about Lucy's ring, and her abuse of Lucy, were proofs to him of her love. Unless she loved him, why should she care to marry him? What was his position that she should desire to share it;--unless she so desired because he was dearer to her than aught beside? He had not eyes clear enough to perceive that his cousin was a witch whistling for a wind, and ready to take the first blast that would carry her and her broomstick somewhere into the sky. And then, in that matter of the offer, which in ordinary circumstances certainly should not have come from her to him, did not the fact of her wealth and of his comparative poverty cleanse her from such stain as would, in usual circumstances, attach to a woman who is so forward? He had not acceded to her proposition. He had not denied his engagement to Lucy. He had left her presence without a word of encouragement, because of that engagement. But he believed that Lizzie was sincere. He believed, now, that she was genuine; though he had previously been all but sure that falsehood and artifice were second nature to her. At Bobsborough he met his constituents, and made them the normal autumn speech. The men of Bobsborough were well pleased and gave him a vote of confidence. As none but those of his own party attended the meeting, it was not wonderful that the vote was unanimous. His father, mother, and sister all heard his speech, and there was a strong family feeling that Frank was born to set the Greystocks once more upon their legs. When a man can say what he likes with the certainty that every word will be reported, and can speak to those around him as one manifestly their superior, he always looms large. When the Conservatives should return to their proper place at the head of affairs, there could be no doubt that Frank Greystock would be made Solicitor-General. There were not wanting even ardent admirers who conceived that, with such claims and such talents as his, the ordinary steps in political promotion would not be needed, and that he would become Attorney-General at once. All men began to say all good things to the dean, and to Mrs. Greystock it seemed that the woolsack, or at least the Queen's Bench with a peerage, was hardly an uncertainty. But then,--there must be no marriage with a penniless governess. If he would only marry his cousin one might say that the woolsack was won. Then came Lucy's letter; the pretty, dear, joking letter about the "duchess," and broken hearts. "I would break my heart, only--only--only--" Yes, he knew very well what she meant. I shall never be called upon to break my heart, because you are not a false scoundrel. If you were a false scoundrel,--instead of being, as you are, a pearl among men,--then I should break my heart. That was what Lucy meant. She could not have been much clearer, and he understood it perfectly. It is very nice to walk about one's own borough and be voted unanimously worthy of confidence, and be a great man; but if you are a scoundrel, and not used to being a scoundrel, black care is apt to sit very close behind you as you go caracoling along the streets. Lucy's letter required an answer, and how should he answer it? He certainly did not wish her to tell Lady Linlithgow of her engagement, but Lucy clearly wished to be allowed to tell, and on what ground could he enjoin her to be silent? He knew, or he thought he knew, that till he answered the letter, she would not tell his secret,--and therefore from day to day he put off the answer. A man does not write a love-letter easily when he is in doubt himself whether he does or does not mean to be a scoundrel. Then there came a letter to "Dame" Greystock from Lady Linlithgow, which filled them all with amazement. MY DEAR MADAM,--[began the letter] Seeing that your son is engaged to marry Miss Morris,--at least she says so,--you ought not to have sent her here without telling me all about it. She says you know of the match, and she says that I can write to you if I please. Of course, I can do that without her leave. But it seems to me that if you know all about it, and approve the marriage, your house and not mine would be the proper place for her. I'm told that Mr. Greystock is a great man. Any lady being with me as my companion can't be a great woman. But perhaps you wanted to break it off;--else you would have told me. She shall stay here six months, but then she must go. Yours truly, SUSANNA LINLITHGOW. It was considered absolutely necessary that this letter should be shown to Frank. "You see," said his mother, "she told the old lady at once." "I don't see why she shouldn't." Nevertheless Frank was annoyed. Having asked for permission, Lucy should at least have waited for a reply. "Well, I don't know," said Mrs. Greystock. "It is generally considered that young ladies are more reticent about such things. She has blurted it out and boasted about it at once." "I thought girls always told of their engagements," said Frank, "and I can't for the life of me see that there was any boasting in it." Then he was silent for a moment. "The truth is, we are, all of us, treating Lucy very badly." "I cannot say that I see it," said his mother. "We ought to have had her here." "For how long, Frank?" "For as long as a home was needed by her." "Had you demanded it, Frank, she should have come, of course. But neither I nor your father could have had pleasure in receiving her as your future wife. You, yourself, say that it cannot be for two years at least." "I said one year." "I think, Frank, you said two. And we all know that such a marriage would be ruinous to you. How could we make her welcome? Can you see your way to having a house for her to live in within twelve months?" "Why not a house? I could have a house to-morrow." "Such a house as would suit you in your position? And, Frank, would it be a kindness to marry her and then let her find that you were in debt?" "I don't believe she'd care if she had nothing but a crust to eat." "She ought to care, Frank." "I think," said the dean to his son, on the next day, "that in our class of life an imprudent marriage is the one thing that should be avoided. My marriage has been very happy, God knows; but I have always been a poor man, and feel it now when I am quite unable to help you. And yet your mother had some fortune. Nobody, I think, cares less for wealth than I do. I am content almost with nothing."--The nothing with which the dean had hitherto been contented had always included every comfort of life, a well-kept table, good wine, new books, and canonical habiliments with the gloss still on; but as the Bobsborough tradesmen had, through the agency of Mrs. Greystock, always supplied him with these things as though they came from the clouds, he really did believe that he had never asked for anything.--"I am content almost with nothing. But I do feel that marriage cannot be adopted as the ordinary form of life by men in our class as it can be by the rich or by the poor. You, for instance, are called upon to live with the rich, but are not rich. That can only be done by wary walking, and is hardly consistent with a wife and children." "But men in my position do marry, sir." "After a certain age,--or else they marry ladies with money. You see, Frank, there are not many men who go into Parliament with means so moderate as yours; and they who do perhaps have stricter ideas of economy." The dean did not say a word about Lucy Morris, and dealt entirely with generalities. In compliance with her son's advice,--or almost command,--Mrs. Greystock did not answer Lady Linlithgow's letter. He was going back to London, and would give personally, or by letter written there, what answer might be necessary. "You will then see Miss Morris?" asked his mother. "I shall certainly see Lucy. Something must be settled." There was a tone in his voice as he said this which gave some comfort to his mother. CHAPTER XXXVI Lizzie's Guests True to their words, at the end of October, Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, and Sir Griffin Tewett, arrived at Portray Castle. And for a couple of days there was a visitor whom Lizzie was very glad to welcome, but of whose good nature on the occasion Mr. Camperdown thought very ill indeed. This was John Eustace. His sister-in-law wrote to him in very pressing language; and as,--so he said to Mr. Camperdown,--he did not wish to seem to quarrel with his brother's widow as long as such seeming might be avoided, he accepted the invitation. If there was to be a lawsuit about the diamonds, that must be Mr. Camperdown's affair. Lizzie had never entertained her friends in style before. She had had a few people to dine with her in London, and once or twice had received company on an evening. But in all her London doings there had been the trepidation of fear,--to be accounted for by her youth and widowhood; and it was at Portray,--her own house at Portray,--that it would best become her to exercise hospitality. She had bided her time even there, but now she meant to show her friends that she had got a house of her own. She wrote even to her husband's uncle, the bishop, asking him down to Portray. He could not come, but sent an affectionate answer, and thanked her for thinking of him. Many people she asked who, she felt sure, would not come,--and one or two of them accepted her invitation. John Eustace promised to be with her for two days. When Frank had left her, going out of her presence in the manner that has been described, she actually wrote to him, begging him to join her party. This was her note: "Come to me, just for a week," she said, "when my people are here, so that I may not seem to be deserted. Sit at the bottom of my table, and be to me as a brother might. I shall expect you to do so much for me." To this he had replied that he would come during the first week in November. And she got a clergyman down from London, the Rev. Joseph Emilius, of whom it was said that he was born a Jew in Hungary, and that his name in his own country had been Mealyus. At the present time he was among the most eloquent of London preachers, and was reputed by some to have reached such a standard of pulpit-oratory as to have had no equal within the memory of living hearers. In regard to his reading it was acknowledged that no one since Mrs. Siddons had touched him. But he did not get on very well with any particular bishop, and there was doubt in the minds of some people whether there was or was not any--Mrs. Emilius. He had come up quite suddenly within the last season, and had made church-going quite a pleasant occupation to Lizzie Eustace. On the last day of October, Mr. Emilius and Mr. John Eustace came, each alone. Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke came over with post-horses from Ayr,--as also did Lord George and Sir Griffin about an hour after them. Frank was not yet expected. He had promised to name a day and had not yet named it. "Varra weel; varra weel," Gowran had said when he was told of what was about to occur, and was desired to make preparations necessary in regard to the outside plenishing of the house; "nae doobt she'll do with her ain what pleases her ainself. The mair ye poor out, the less there'll be left in. Mr. Jo-ohn coming? I'll be glad then to see Mr. Jo-ohn. Oo, ay; aits,--there'll be aits eneuch. And anither coo? You'll want twa ither coos. I'll see to the coos." And Andy Gowran, in spite of the internecine warfare which existed between him and his mistress, did see to the hay, and the cows, and the oats, and the extra servants that were wanted both inside and outside the house. There was enmity between him and Lady Eustace, and he didn't care who knew it;--but he took her wages and he did her work. Mrs. Carbuncle was a wonderful woman. She was the wife of a man with whom she was very rarely seen, whom nobody knew, who was something in the City, but somebody who never succeeded in making money; and yet she went everywhere. She had at least the reputation of going everywhere, and did go to a great many places. Carbuncle had no money,--so it was said; and she had none. She was the daughter of a man who had gone to New York and had failed there. Of her own parentage no more was known. She had a small house in one of the very small Mayfair streets, to which she was wont to invite her friends for five o'clock tea. Other receptions she never attempted. During the London seasons she always kept a carriage, and during the winters she always had hunters. Who paid for them no one knew or cared. Her dress was always perfect,--as far as fit and performance went. As to approving Mrs. Carbuncle's manner of dress,--that was a question of taste. Audacity may, perhaps, be said to have been the ruling principle of her toilet;--not the audacity of indecency, which, let the satirists say what they may, is not efficacious in England, but audacity in colour, audacity in design, and audacity in construction. She would ride in the park in a black and yellow habit, and appear at the opera in white velvet without a speck of colour. Though certainly turned thirty, and probably nearer to forty, she would wear her jet-black hair streaming down her back, and when June came would drive about London in a straw hat. But yet it was always admitted that she was well dressed. And then would arise that question, who paid the bills? Mrs. Carbuncle was certainly a handsome woman. She was full-faced,--with bold eyes, rather far apart, perfect black eyebrows, a well-formed broad nose, thick lips, and regular teeth. Her chin was round and short, with, perhaps, a little bearing towards a double chin. But though her face was plump and round, there was a power in it, and a look of command, of which it was, perhaps, difficult to say in what features was the seat. But in truth the mind will lend a tone to every feature, and it was the desire of Mrs. Carbuncle's heart to command. But perhaps the wonder of her face was its complexion. People said,--before they knew her, that, as a matter of course, she had been made beautiful for ever. But, though that too brilliant colour was almost always there, covering the cheeks but never touching the forehead or the neck, it would at certain moments shift, change, and even depart. When she was angry, it would vanish for a moment and then return intensified. There was no chemistry on Mrs. Carbuncle's cheek; and yet it was a tint so brilliant and so little transparent, as almost to justify a conviction that it could not be genuine. There were those who declared that nothing in the way of complexion so beautiful as that of Mrs. Carbuncle's had been seen on the face of any other woman in this age, and there were others who called her an exaggerated milkmaid. She was tall, too, and had learned so to walk as though half the world belonged to her. Her niece, Miss Roanoke, was a lady of the same stamp, and of similar beauty, with those additions and also with those drawbacks which belong to youth. She looked as though she were four-and-twenty, but in truth she was no more than eighteen. When seen beside her aunt, she seemed to be no more than half the elder lady's size; and yet her proportions were not insignificant. She, too, was tall, and was as one used to command, and walked as though she were a young Juno. Her hair was very dark,--almost black,--and very plentiful. Her eyes were large and bright, though too bold for a girl so young. Her nose and mouth were exactly as her aunt's, but her chin was somewhat longer, so as to divest her face of that plump roundness which, perhaps, took something from the majesty of Mrs. Carbuncle's appearance. Miss Roanoke's complexion was certainly marvellous. No one thought that she had been made beautiful for ever, for the colour would go and come and shift and change with every word and every thought;--but still it was there, as deep on her cheeks as on her aunt's, though somewhat more transparent, and with more delicacy of tint as the bright hues faded away and became merged in the almost marble whiteness of her skin. With Mrs. Carbuncle there was no merging and fading. The red and white bordered one another on her cheek without any merging, as they do on a flag. Lucinda Roanoke was undoubtedly a very handsome woman. It probably never occurred to man or woman to say that she was lovely. She had sat for her portrait during the last winter, and her picture had caused much remark in the Exhibition. Some said that she might be a Brinvilliers, others a Cleopatra, and others again a Queen of Sheba. In her eyes as they were limned there had been nothing certainly of love, but they who likened her to the Egyptian queen believed that Cleopatra's love had always been used simply to assist her ambition. They who took the Brinvilliers side of the controversy were men so used to softness and flattery from women as to have learned to think that a woman silent, arrogant, and hard of approach, must be always meditating murder. The disciples of the Queen of Sheba school, who formed, perhaps, the more numerous party, were led to their opinion by the majesty of Lucinda's demeanour rather than by any clear idea in their own minds of the lady who visited Solomon. All men, however, agreed in this, that Lucinda Roanoke was very handsome, but that she was not the sort of girl with whom a man would wish to stray away through the distant beech-trees at a picnic. In truth she was silent, grave, and, if not really haughty, subject to all the signs of haughtiness. She went everywhere with her aunt, and allowed herself to be walked out at dances, and to be accosted when on horseback, and to be spoken to at parties; but she seemed hardly to trouble herself to talk;--and as for laughing, flirting, or giggling, one might as well expect such levity from a marble Minerva. During the last winter she had taken to hunting with her aunt, and already could ride well to hounds. If assistance were wanted at a gate, or in the management of a fence, and the servant who attended the two ladies were not near enough to give it, she would accept it as her due from the man nearest to her; but she rarely did more than bow her thanks, and, even by young lords, or hard-riding handsome colonels, or squires of undoubted thousands, she could hardly ever be brought to what might be called a proper hunting-field conversation. All of which things were noted, and spoken of, and admired. It must be presumed that Lucinda Roanoke was in want of a husband, and yet no girl seemed to take less pains to get one. A girl ought not to be always busying herself to bring down a man, but a girl ought to give herself some charm. A girl so handsome as Lucinda Roanoke, with pluck enough to ride like a bird, dignity enough for a duchess, and who was undoubtedly clever, ought to put herself in the way of taking such good things as her charms and merits would bring her;--but Lucinda Roanoke stood aloof and despised everybody. So it was that Lucinda was spoken of when her name was mentioned; and her name was mentioned a good deal after the opening of the exhibition of pictures. There was some difficulty about her,--as to who she was. That she was an American was the received opinion. Her mother, as well as Mrs. Carbuncle, had certainly been in New York. Carbuncle was a London man; but it was supposed that Mr. Roanoke was, or had been, an American. The received opinion was correct. Lucinda had been born in New York, had been educated there till she was sixteen, had then been taken to Paris for nine months, and from Paris had been brought to London by her aunt. Mrs. Carbuncle always spoke of Lucinda's education as having been thoroughly Parisian. Of her own education and antecedents, Lucinda never spoke at all. "I'll tell you what it is," said a young scamp from Eton to his elder sister, when her character and position were once being discussed. "She's a heroine, and would shoot a fellow as soon as look at him." In that scamp's family, Lucinda was ever afterwards called the heroine. The manner in which Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had attached himself to these ladies was a mystery;--but then Lord George was always mysterious. He was a young man,--so considered,--about forty-five years of age, who had never done anything in the manner of other people. He hunted a great deal, but he did not fraternise with hunting men, and would appear now in this county and now in that, with an utter disregard of grass, fences, friendships, or foxes. Leicester, Essex, Ayrshire, or the Baron had equal delights for him; and in all counties he was quite at home. He had never owned a fortune, and had never been known to earn a shilling. It was said that early in life he had been apprenticed to an attorney at Aberdeen as George Carruthers. His third cousin, the Marquis of Killiecrankie, had been killed out hunting; the second scion of the noble family had fallen at Balaclava; a third had perished in the Indian Mutiny; and a fourth, who did reign for a few months, died suddenly, leaving a large family of daughters. Within three years the four brothers vanished, leaving among them no male heir, and George's elder brother, who was then in a West India Regiment, was called home from Demerara to be Marquis of Killiecrankie. By a usual exercise of the courtesy of the Crown, all the brothers were made lords, and some twelve years before the date of our story George Carruthers, who had long since left the attorney's office at Aberdeen, became Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. How he lived no one knew. That his brother did much for him was presumed to be impossible, as the property entailed on the Killiecrankie title certainly was not large. He sometimes went into the City, and was supposed to know something about shares. Perhaps he played a little, and made a few bets. He generally lived with men of means;--or perhaps with one man of means at a time; but they who knew him well declared that he never borrowed a shilling from a friend, and never owed a guinea to a tradesman. He always had horses, but never had a home. When in London he lodged in a single room, and dined at his club. He was a Colonel of Volunteers, having got up the regiment known as the Long Shore Riflemen,--the roughest regiment of Volunteers in all England,--and was reputed to be a bitter Radical. He was suspected even of republican sentiments, and ignorant young men about London hinted that he was the grand centre of the British Fenians. He had been invited to stand for the Tower Hamlets, but had told the deputation which waited upon him that he knew a thing worth two of that. Would they guarantee his expenses, and then give him a salary? The deputation doubted its ability to promise so much. "I more than doubt it," said Lord George; and then the deputation went away. In person he was a long-legged, long-bodied, long-faced man, with rough whiskers and a rough beard on his upper lip, but with a shorn chin. His eyes were very deep set in his head, and his cheeks were hollow and sallow, and yet he looked to be and was a powerful, healthy man. He had large hands, which seemed to be all bone, and long arms, and a neck which looked to be long because he so wore his shirt that much of his throat was always bare. It was manifest enough that he liked to have good-looking women about him, and yet nobody presumed it probable that he would marry. For the last two or three years there had been friendship between him and Mrs. Carbuncle; and during the last season he had become almost intimate with our Lizzie. Lizzie thought that perhaps he might be the Corsair whom, sooner or later in her life, she must certainly encounter. Sir Griffin Tewett, who at the present period of his existence was being led about by Lord George, was not exactly an amiable young baronet. Nor were his circumstances such as make a man amiable. He was nominally, not only the heir to, but actually the possessor of, a large property;--but he could not touch the principal, and of the income only so much as certain legal curmudgeons would allow him. As Greystock had said, everybody was at law with him,--so successful had been his father in mismanaging, and miscontrolling, and misappropriating the property. Tewett Hall had gone to rack and ruin for four years, and was now let almost for nothing. He was a fair, frail young man, with a bad eye, and a weak mouth, and a thin hand, who was fond of liqueurs, and hated to the death any acquaintance who won a five-pound note of him, or any tradesman who wished to have his bill paid. But he had this redeeming quality,--that having found Lucinda Roanoke to be the handsomest woman he had ever seen, he did desire to make her his wife. Such were the friends whom Lizzie Eustace received at Portray Castle on the first day of her grand hospitality,--together with John Eustace and Mr. Joseph Emilius, the fashionable preacher from Mayfair. CHAPTER XXXVII Lizzie's First Day The coming of John Eustace was certainly a great thing for Lizzie, though it was only for two days. It saved her from that feeling of desertion before her friends,--desertion by those who might naturally belong to her,--which would otherwise have afflicted her. His presence there for two days gave her a start. She could call him John, and bring down her boy to him, and remind him, with the sweetest smile,--with almost a tear in her eye,--that he was the boy's guardian. "Little fellow! So much depends on that little life,--does it not, John?" she said, whispering the words into his ear. "Lucky little dog!" said John, patting the boy's head. "Let me see! of course he'll go to Eton." "Not yet," said Lizzie with a shudder. "Well; no; hardly;--when he's twelve." And then the boy was done with and was carried away. She had played that card and had turned her trick. John Eustace was a thoroughly good-natured man of the world, who could forgive many faults, not expecting people to be perfect. He did not like Mrs. Carbuncle;--was indifferent to Lucinda's beauty;--was afraid of that Tartar, Lord George;--and thoroughly despised Sir Griffin. In his heart he believed Mr. Emilius to be an impostor, who might, for aught he knew, pick his pocket; and Miss Macnulty had no attraction for him. But he smiled, and was gay, and called Lady Eustace by her Christian name, and was content to be of use to her in showing her friends that she had not been altogether dropped by the Eustace people. "I got such a nice affectionate letter from the dear bishop," said Lizzie, "but he couldn't come. He could not escape a previous engagement." "It's a long way," said John, "and he's not so young as he was once;--and then there are the Bobsborough parsons to look after." "I don't suppose anything of that kind stops him," said Lizzie, who did not think it possible that a bishop's bliss should be alloyed by work. John was so very nice that she almost made up her mind to talk to him about the necklace; but she was cautious, and thought of it, and found that it would be better that she should abstain. John Eustace was certainly very good-natured, but perhaps he might say an ugly word to her if she were rash. She refrained, therefore, and after breakfast on the second day he took his departure without an allusion to things that were unpleasant. "I call my brother-in-law a perfect gentleman," said Lizzie with enthusiasm, when his back was turned. "Certainly," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "He seems to me to be very quiet." "He didn't quite like his party," said Lord George. "I am sure he did," said Lizzie. "I mean as to politics. To him we are all turbulent demagogues and Bohemians. Eustace is an old-world Tory, if there's one left anywhere. But you're right, Lady Eustace; he is a gentleman." "He knows on which side his bread is buttered as well as any man," said Sir Griffin. "Am I a demagogue," said Lizzie, appealing to the Corsair, "or a Bohemian? I didn't know it." "A little in that way, I think, Lady Eustace;--not a demagogue, but demagognical;--not a Bohemian, but that way given." "And is Miss Roanoke demagognical?" "Certainly," said Lord George. "I hardly wrong you there, Miss Roanoke?" "Lucinda is a democrat, but hardly a demagogue, Lord George," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Those are distinctions which we hardly understand on this thick-headed side of the water. But demagogues, democrats, demonstrations, and Demosthenic oratory are all equally odious to John Eustace. For a young man he's about the best Tory I know." "He is true to his colours," said Mr. Emilius, who had been endeavouring to awake the attention of Miss Roanoke on the subject of Shakespeare's dramatic action, "and I like men who are true to their colours." Mr. Emilius spoke with the slightest possible tone of a foreign accent,--a tone so slight that it simply served to attract attention to him. While Eustace was still in the house, there had come a letter from Frank Greystock, saying that he would reach Portray, by way of Glasgow, on Wednesday, the 5th of November. He must sleep in Glasgow on that night, having business, or friends, or pleasure demanding his attention in that prosperous mart of commerce. It had been impressed upon him that he should hunt, and he had consented. There was to be a meet out on the Kilmarnock side of the county on that Wednesday, and he would bring a horse with him from Glasgow. Even in Glasgow a hunter was to be hired, and could be sent forty or fifty miles out of the town in the morning and brought back in the evening. Lizzie had learned all about that, and had told him. If he would call at MacFarlane's stables in Buchanan Street, or even write to Mr. MacFarlane, he would be sure to get a horse that would carry him. MacFarlane was sending horses down into the Ayrshire country every day of his life. It was simply an affair of money. Three guineas for the horse, and then just the expense of the railway. Frank, who knew quite as much about it as did his cousin, and who never thought much of guineas or of railway tickets, promised to meet the party at the meet ready equipped. His things would go on by train, and Lizzie must send for them to Troon. He presumed a beneficent Providence would take the horse back to the bosom of Mr. MacFarlane. Such was the tenour of his letter. "If he don't mind, he'll find himself astray," said Sir Griffin. "He'll have to go one way by rail and his horse another." "We can manage better for our cousin than that," said Lizzie, with a rebuking nod. But there was hunting from Portray before Frank Greystock came. It was specially a hunting party, and Lizzie was to be introduced to the glories of the field. In giving her her due, it must be acknowledged that she was fit for the work. She rode well, though she had not ridden to hounds, and her courage was cool. She looked well on horseback, and had that presence of mind which should never desert a lady when she is hunting. A couple of horses had been purchased for her, under Lord George's superintendence,--his conjointly with Mrs. Carbuncle's,--and had been at the castle for the last ten days--"eating their varra heeds off," as Andy Gowran had said in sorrow. There had been practising even while John Eustace was there, and before her preceptors had slept three nights at the castle, she had ridden backwards and forwards half-a-dozen times over a stone wall. "Oh, yes," Lucinda had said, in answer to a remark from Sir Griffin, "It's easy enough,--till you come across something difficult." "Nothing difficult stops you," said Sir Griffin;--to which compliment Lucinda vouchsafed no reply. On the Monday Lizzie went out hunting for the first time in her life. It must be owned that, as she put her habit on, and afterwards breakfasted with all her guests in hunting gear around her, and then was driven with them in her own carriage to the meet, there was something of trepidation at her heart. And her feeling of cautious fear in regard to money had received a shock. Mrs. Carbuncle had told her that a couple of horses fit to carry her might perhaps cost her about £180. Lord George had received the commission, and the cheque required from her had been for £320. Of course she had written the cheque without a word, but it did begin to occur to her that hunting was an expensive amusement. Gowran had informed her that he had bought a rick of hay from a neighbour for £75 15s. 9d. "God forgie me," said Andy, "but I b'lieve I've been o'er hard on the puir man in your leddyship's service." £75 15s. 9d. did seem a great deal of money to pay; and could it be necessary that she should buy a whole rick? There were to be eight horses in the stable. To what friend could she apply to learn how much of a rick of hay one horse ought to eat in a month of hunting? In such a matter she might have trusted Andy Gowran implicitly; but how was she to know that? And then, what if at some desperate fence she were to be thrown off and break her nose and knock out her front teeth! Was the game worth the candle? She was by no means sure that she liked Mrs. Carbuncle very much. And though she liked Lord George very well, could it be possible that he bought the horses for £90 each and charged her £160? Corsairs do do these sort of things. The horses themselves were two sweet dears, with stars on their foreheads, and shining coats, and a delicious aptitude for jumping over everything at a moment's notice. Lord George had not, in truth, made a penny by them, and they were good hunters, worth the money;--but how was Lizzie to know that? But though she doubted, and was full of fears, she could smile and look as though she liked it. If the worst should come she could certainly get money for the diamonds. On that Monday the meet was comparatively near to them,--distant only twelve miles. On the following Wednesday it would be sixteen, and they would use the railway,--having the carriage sent to meet them in the evening. The three ladies and Lord George filled the carriage, and Sir Griffin was perched upon the box. The ladies' horses had gone on with two grooms, and those for Lord George and Sir Griffin were to come to the meet. Lizzie felt somewhat proud of her establishment and her equipage;--but at the same time somewhat fearful. Hitherto she knew but very little of the county people, and was not sure how she might be received;--and then how would it be with her if the fox should at once start away across country, and she should lack either the pluck or the power to follow? There was Sir Griffin to look after Miss Roanoke, and Lord George to attend to Mrs. Carbuncle. At last an idea so horrible struck her that she could not keep it down. "What am I to do," she said, "if I find myself all alone in a field, and everybody else gone away!" "We won't treat you quite in that fashion," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "The only possible way in which you can be alone in a field is that you will have cut everybody else down," said Lord George. "I suppose it will all come right," said Lizzie, plucking up her courage, and telling herself that a woman can die but once. Everything was right,--as it usually is. The horses were there,--quite a throng of horses, as the two gentlemen had two each; and there was, moreover, a mounted groom to look after the three ladies. Lizzie had desired to have a groom to herself, but had been told that the expenditure in horseflesh was more than the stable could stand. "All I ever want of a man is to carry for me my flask, and waterproof, and luncheon," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I don't care if I never see a groom, except for that." "It's convenient to have a gate opened sometimes," said Lucinda, slowly. "Will no one but a groom do that for you?" asked Sir Griffin. "Gentlemen can't open gates," said Lucinda. Now, as Sir Griffin thought that he had opened many gates during the last season for Miss Roanoke, he felt this to be hard. But there were eight horses, and eight horses with three servants and a carriage made quite a throng. Among the crowd of Ayrshire hunting men,--a lord or two, a dozen lairds, two dozen farmers, and as many men of business out of Ayr, Kilmarnock, and away from Glasgow,--it was soon told that Lady Eustace and her party were among them. A good deal had been already heard of Lizzie, and it was at least known of her that she had, for her life, the Portray estate in her hands. So there was an undercurrent of whispering, and that sort of commotion which the appearance of new-comers does produce at a hunt-meet. Lord George knew one or two men, who were surprised to find him in Ayrshire, and Mrs. Carbuncle was soon quite at home with a young nobleman whom she had met in the vale with the Baron. Sir Griffin did not leave Lucinda's side, and for a while poor Lizzie felt herself alone in a crowd. Who does not know that terrible feeling, and the all but necessity that exists for the sufferer to pretend that he is not suffering,--which again is aggravated by the conviction that the pretence is utterly vain? This may be bad with a man, but with a woman, who never looks to be alone in a crowd, it is terrible. For five minutes, during which everybody else was speaking to everybody,--for five minutes, which seemed to her to be an hour, Lizzie spoke to no one, and no one spoke to her. Was it for such misery as this that she was spending hundreds upon hundreds, and running herself into debt? For she was sure that there would be debt before she had parted with Mrs. Carbuncle. There are people, very many people, to whom an act of hospitality is in itself a good thing; but there are others who are always making calculations, and endeavouring to count up the thing purchased against the cost. Lizzie had been told that she was a rich woman,--as women go, very rich. Surely she was entitled to entertain a few friends; and if Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke could hunt, it could not be that hunting was beyond her own means. And yet she was spending a great deal of money. She had seen a large waggon loaded with sacks of corn coming up the hill to the Portray stables, and she knew that there would be a long bill at the corn-chandler's. There had been found a supply of wine in the cellars at Portray,--which at her request had been inspected by her cousin Frank;--but it had been necessary, so he had told her, to have much more sent down from London,--champagne, and liqueurs, and other nice things that cost money. "You won't like not to have them if these people are coming?" "Oh, no; certainly not," said Lizzie, with enthusiasm. What other rich people did, she would do. But now, in her five minutes of misery, she counted it all up, and was at a loss to find what was to be her return for her expenditure. And then, if on this her first day she should have a fall, with no tender hand to help her, and then find that she had knocked out her front teeth! But the cavalcade began to move, and then Lord George was by her side. "You mustn't be angry if I seem to stick too close to you," he said. She gave him her sweetest smile as she told him that that would be impossible. "Because, you know, though it's the easiest thing in the world to get along out hunting, and women never come to grief, a person is a little astray at first." "I shall be so much astray," said Lizzie. "I don't at all know how we are going to begin. Are we hunting a fox now?" At this moment they were trotting across a field or two, through a run of gates up to the first covert. "Not quite yet. The hounds haven't been put in yet. You see that wood there? I suppose they'll draw that." "What is drawing, Lord George? I want to know all about it, and I am so ignorant. Nobody else will tell me." Then Lord George gave his lesson, and explained the theory and system of fox-hunting. "We're to wait here, then, till the fox runs away? But it's ever so large, and if he runs away, and nobody sees him? I hope he will, because it will be nice to go on easily." "A great many people hope that, and a great many think it nice to go on easily. Only you must not confess to it." Then he went on with his lecture, and explained the meaning of scent, was great on the difficulty of getting away, described the iniquity of heading the fox, spoke of up wind and down wind, got as far as the trouble of "carrying," and told her that a good ear was everything in a big wood,--when there came upon them the thrice-repeated note of an old hound's voice, and the quick scampering, and low, timid, anxious, trustful whinnying of a dozen comrade younger hounds, who recognised the sagacity of their well-known and highly-appreciated elder,--"That's a fox," said Lord George. "What shall I do now?" said Lizzie, all in a twitter. "Sit just where you are and light a cigar, if you're given to smoking." "Pray don't joke with me. You know I want to do it properly." "And therefore you must sit just where you are, and not gallop about. There's a matter of a hundred and twenty acres here, I should say, and a fox doesn't always choose to be evicted at the first notice. It's a chance whether he goes at all from a wood like this. I like woods myself, because, as you say, we can take it easy; but if you want to ride, you should-- By George, they've killed him!" "Killed the fox?" "Yes; he's dead. Didn't you hear?" "And is that a hunt?" "Well;--as far as it goes, it is." "Why didn't he run away? What a stupid beast! I don't see so very much in that. Who killed him? That man that was blowing the horn?" "The hounds chopped him." "Chopped him!" Lord George was very patient, and explained to Lizzie, who was now indignant and disappointed, the misfortune of chopping. "And are we to go home now? Is it all over?" "They say the country is full of foxes," said Lord George. "Perhaps we shall chop half-a-dozen." "Dear me! Chop half-a-dozen foxes! Do they like to be chopped? I thought they always ran away." Lord George was constant and patient, and rode at Lizzie's side from covert to covert. A second fox they did kill in the same fashion as the first; a third they couldn't hunt a yard; a fourth got to ground after five minutes, and was dug out ingloriously;--during which process a drizzling rain commenced. "Where is the man with my waterproof?" demanded Mrs. Carbuncle. Lord George had sent the man to see whether there was shelter to be had in a neighbouring yard. And Mrs. Carbuncle was angry. "It's my own fault," she said, "for not having my own man. Lucinda, you'll be wet." "I don't mind the wet," said Lucinda. Lucinda never did mind anything. "If you'll come with me, we'll get into a barn," said Sir Griffin. "I like the wet," said Lucinda. All the while seven men were at work with picks and shovels, and the master and four or five of the more ardent sportsmen were deeply engaged in what seemed to be a mining operation on a small scale. The huntsman stood over giving his orders. One enthusiastic man, who had been lying on his belly, grovelling in the mud for five minutes, with a long stick in his hand, was now applying the point of it scientifically to his nose. An ordinary observer with a magnifying-glass might have seen a hair at the end of the stick. "He's there," said the enthusiastic man, covered with mud, after a long-drawn, eager sniff at the stick. The huntsman deigned to give one glance. "That's rabbit," said the huntsman. A conclave was immediately formed over the one visible hair that stuck to the stick, and three experienced farmers decided that it was rabbit. The muddy enthusiastic man, silenced but not convinced, retired from the crowd, leaving his stick behind him, and comforted himself with his brandy-flask. "He's here, my lord," said the huntsman to his noble master, "only we ain't got nigh him yet." He spoke almost in a whisper, so that the ignorant crowd should not hear the words of wisdom, which they wouldn't understand or perhaps believe. "It's that full of rabbits that the holes is all hairs. They ain't got no terrier here, I suppose. They never has aught that is wanted in these parts. Work round to the right, there;--that's his line." The men did work round to the right, and in something under an hour the fox was dragged out by his brush and hind legs, while the experienced whip who dragged him held the poor brute tight by the back of his neck. "An old dog, my lord. There's such a many of 'em here, that they'll be a deal better for a little killing." Then the hounds ate their third fox for that day. Lady Eustace, in the meantime, and Mrs. Carbuncle, with Lord George, had found their way to the shelter of a cattle-shed. Lucinda had slowly followed, and Sir Griffin had followed her. The gentlemen smoked cigars, and the ladies, when they had eaten their luncheons and drank their sherry, were cold and cross. "If this is hunting," said Lizzie, "I really don't think so much about it." "It's Scotch hunting," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I have seen foxes dug out south of the Tweed," suggested Lord George. "I suppose everything is slow after the Baron," said Mrs. Carbuncle, who had distinguished herself with the Baron's stag-hounds last March. "Are we to go home now?" asked Lizzie, who would have been well-pleased to have received an answer in the affirmative. "I presume they'll draw again," exclaimed Mrs. Carbuncle, with an angry frown on her brow. "It's hardly two o'clock." "They always draw till seven, in Scotland," said Lord George. "That's nonsense," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "It's dark at four." "They have torches in Scotland," said Lord George. "They have a great many things in Scotland that are very far from agreeable," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Lucinda, did you ever see three foxes killed without five minutes' running, before? I never did." "I've been out all day without finding at all," said Lucinda, who loved the truth. "And so have I," said Sir Griffin;--"often. Don't you remember that day when we went down from London to Bringher Wood, and they pretended to find at half-past four? That's what I call a sell." "They're going on, Lady Eustace," said Lord George. "If you're not tired, we might as well see it out." Lizzie was tired, but said that she was not, and she did see it out. They found a fifth fox, but again there was no scent. "Who the ---- is to hunt a fox with people scurrying about like that!" said the huntsman, very angrily, dashing forward at a couple of riders. "The hounds is behind you, only you ain't a-looking. Some people never do look!" The two peccant riders unfortunately were Sir Griffin and Lucinda. The day was one of those from which all the men and women return home cross, and which induce some half-hearted folk to declare to themselves that they never will hunt again. When the master decided a little after three that he would draw no more, because there wasn't a yard of scent, our party had nine or ten miles to ride back to their carriages. Lizzie was very tired, and, when Lord George took her from her horse, could almost have cried from fatigue. Mrs. Carbuncle was never fatigued, but she had become damp,--soaking wet through, as she herself said,--during the four minutes that the man was absent with her waterproof jacket, and could not bring herself to forget the ill-usage she had suffered. Lucinda had become absolutely dumb, and any observer would have fancied that the two gentlemen had quarrelled with each other. "You ought to go on the box now," said Sir Griffin, grumbling. "When you're my age, and I'm yours, I will," said Lord George, taking his seat in the carriage. Then he appealed to Lizzie. "You'll let me smoke, won't you?" She simply bowed her head. And so they went home,--Lord George smoking, and the ladies dumb. Lizzie, as she dressed for dinner, almost cried with vexation and disappointment. There was a little conversation up-stairs between Mrs. Carbuncle and Lucinda, when they were free from the attendance of their joint maid. "It seems to me," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "that you won't make up your mind about anything." "There is nothing to make up my mind about." "I think there is;--a great deal. Do you mean to take this man who is dangling after you?" "He isn't worth taking." "Carruthers says that the property must come right, sooner or later. You might do better, perhaps, but you won't trouble yourself. We can't go on like this for ever, you know." "If you hated it as much as I do, you wouldn't want to go on." "Why don't you talk to him? I don't think he's at all a bad fellow." "I've nothing to say." "He'll offer to-morrow, if you'll accept him." "Don't let him do that, Aunt Jane. I couldn't say Yes. As for loving him;--oh, laws!" "It won't do to go on like this, you know." "I'm only eighteen;--and it's my money, aunt." "And how long will it last? If you can't accept him, refuse him, and let somebody else come." "It seems to me," said Lucinda, "that one is as bad as another. I'd a deal sooner marry a shoemaker and help him to make shoes." "That's downright wickedness," said Mrs. Carbuncle. And then they went down to dinner. CHAPTER XXXVIII Nappie's Grey Horse During the leisure of Tuesday, our friends regained their good humour, and on the Wednesday morning they again started for the hunting-field. Mrs. Carbuncle, who probably felt that she had behaved ill about the groom and in regard to Scotland, almost made an apology, and explained that a cold shower always did make her cross. "My dear Lady Eustace, I hope I wasn't very savage." "My dear Mrs. Carbuncle, I hope I wasn't very stupid," said Lizzie with a smile. "My dear Lady Eustace, and my dear Mrs. Carbuncle, and my dear Miss Roanoke, I hope I wasn't very selfish," said Lord George. "I thought you were," said Sir Griffin. "Yes, Griff; and so were you;--but I succeeded." "I am almost glad that I wasn't of the party," said Mr. Emilius, with that musical foreign tone of his. "Miss Macnulty and I did not quarrel; did we?" "No, indeed," said Miss Macnulty, who had liked the society of Mr. Emilius. But on this morning there was an attraction for Lizzie which the Monday had wanted. She was to meet her cousin, Frank Greystock. The journey was long, and the horses had gone on over night. They went by railway to Kilmarnock, and there a carriage from the inn had been ordered to meet them. Lizzie, as she heard the order given, wondered whether she would have to pay for that, or whether Lord George and Sir Griffin would take so much off her shoulders. Young women generally pay for nothing; and it was very hard that she, who was quite a young woman, should have to pay for all. But she smiled, and accepted the proposition. "Oh, yes; of course a carriage at the station. It is so nice to have some one to think of things, like Lord George." The carriage met them, and everything went prosperously. Almost the first person they saw was Frank Greystock, in a black coat, indeed, but riding a superb grey horse, and looking quite as though he knew what he was about. He was introduced to Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke and Sir Griffin. With Lord George he had some slight previous acquaintance. "You've had no difficulty about a horse?" said Lizzie. "Not the slightest. But I was in an awful fright this morning. I wrote to MacFarlane from London, and absolutely hadn't a moment to go to his place yesterday or this morning. I was staying over at Glenshiels, and had not a moment to spare in catching the train. But I found a horse-box on, and a lad from MacFarlane's just leaving as I came up." "Didn't he send a boy down with the horse?" asked Lord George. "I believe there is a boy, and the boy'll be awfully bothered. I told him to book the horse for Kilmarnock." "They always do book for Kilmarnock for this meet," said a gentleman who had made acquaintance with some of Lizzie's party on the previous hunting-day;--"but Stewarton is ever so much nearer." "So somebody told me in the carriage," continued Frank, "and I contrived to get my box off at Stewarton. The guard was uncommon civil, and so was the porter. But I hadn't a moment to look for the boy." "I always make my fellow stick to his horses," said Sir Griffin. "But you see, Sir Griffin, I haven't got a fellow, and I've only hired a horse. But I shall hire a good many horses from Mr. MacFarlane if he'll always put me up like this." "I'm so glad you're here," said Lizzie. "So am I. I hunt about twice in three years, and no man likes it so much. I've still got to find out whether the beast can jump." "Any mortal thing alive, sir," said one of those horsey-looking men who are to be found in all hunting-fields, who wear old brown breeches, old black coats, old hunting-caps, who ride screws, and never get thrown out. "You know him, do you?" said Frank. "I know him. I didn't know as Muster MacFarlane owned him. No more he don't," said the horsey man, turning aside to one of his friends. "That's Nappie's horse, from Jamaica Street." "Not possible," said the friend. "You'll tell me I don't know my own horse next." "I don't believe you ever owned one," said the friend. Lizzie was in truth delighted to have her cousin beside her. He had, at any rate, forgiven what she had said to him at his last visit, or he would not have been there. And then, too, there was a feeling of reality in her connexion with him, which was sadly wanting to her,--unreal as she was herself,--in her acquaintance with the other people around her. And on this occasion three or four people spoke or bowed to her, who had only stared at her before; and the huntsman took off his cap, and hoped that he would do something better for her than on the previous Monday. And the huntsman was very courteous also to Miss Roanoke, expressing the same hope, cap in hand, and smiling graciously. A huntsman at the beginning of any day or at the end of a good day is so different from a huntsman at the end of a bad day! A huntsman often has a very bad time out hunting, and it is sometimes a marvel that he does not take the advice which Job got from his wife. But now all things were smiling, and it was soon known that his lordship intended to draw Craigattan Gorse. Now in those parts there is no surer find, and no better chance of a run, than Craigattan Gorse affords. "There is one thing I want to ask, Mr. Greystock," said Lord George, in Lizzie's hearing. "You shall ask two," said Frank. "Who is to coach Lady Eustace to-day;--you or I?" "Oh, do let me have somebody to coach me," said Lizzie. "For devotion in coachmanship," said Frank,--"devotion, that is, to my cousin,--I defy the world. In point of skill I yield to Lord George." "My pretensions are precisely the same," said Lord George. "I glow with devotion; my skill is naught." "I like you best, Lord George," said Lizzie, laughing. "That settles the question," said Lord George. "Altogether," said Frank, taking off his hat. "I mean as a coach," said Lizzie. "I quite understand the extent of the preference," said Lord George. Lizzie was delighted, and thought the game was worth the candle. The noble master had told her that they were sure of a run from Craigattan, and she wasn't in the least tired, and they were not called upon to stand still in a big wood, and it didn't rain, and, in every respect, the day was very different from Monday. Mounted on a bright-skinned, lively steed, with her cousin on one side and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers on the other, with all the hunting world of her own county civil around her, and a fox just found in Craigattan Gorse, what could the heart of woman desire more? This was to live. There was, however, just enough of fear to make the blood run quickly to her heart. "We'll be away at once now," said Lord George with utmost earnestness; "follow me close, but not too close. When the men see that I am giving you a lead, they won't come between. If you hang back, I'll not go ahead. Just check your horse as he comes to his fences, and, if you can, see me over before you go at them. Now then, down the hill;--there's a gate at the corner, and a bridge over the water. We couldn't be better. By George! there they are,--all together. If they don't pull him down in the first two minutes, we shall have a run." Lizzie understood most of it,--more at least than would nine out of ten young women who had never ridden a hunt before. She was to go wherever Lord George led her, and she was not to ride upon his heels. So much at least she understood,--and so much she was resolved to do. That dread about her front teeth which had perplexed her on Monday was altogether gone now. She would ride as fast as Lucinda Roanoke. That was her prevailing idea. Lucinda, with Mrs. Carbuncle, Sir Griffin, and the ladies' groom, was at the other side of the covert. Frank had been with his cousin and Lord George, but had crept down the hill while the hounds were in the gorse. A man who likes hunting but hunts only once a year is desirous of doing the best he can with his day. When the hounds came out and crossed the brook at the end of the gorse, perhaps he was a little too forward. But, indeed, the state of affairs did not leave much time for waiting, or for the etiquette of the hunting-field. Along the opposite margin of the brook there ran a low paling, which made the water a rather nasty thing to face. A circuit of thirty or forty yards gave the easy riding of a little bridge, and to that all the crowd hurried. But one or two men with good eyes, and hearts as good, had seen the leading hounds across the brook turning up the hill away from the bridge, and knew that two most necessary minutes might be lost in the crowd. Frank did as they did, having seen nothing of any hounds, but with instinctive knowledge that they were men likely to be right in a hunting-field. "If that ain't Nappie's horse, I'll eat him," said one of the leading men to the other, as all the three were breasting the hill together. Frank only knew that he had been carried over water and timber without a mistake, and felt a glow of gratitude towards Mr. MacFarlane. Up the hill they went, and, not waiting to inquire into the circumstances of a little gate, jumped a four-foot wall and were away. "How the mischief did he get atop of Nappie's horse?" said the horsey man to his friend. "We're about right for it now," said the huntsman, as he came up alongside of Frank. He had crossed the bridge, but had been the first across it, and knew how to get over his ground quickly. On they went, the horsey man leading on his thoroughbred screw, the huntsman second, and Frank third. The pace had already been too good for the other horsey man. When Lord George and Lizzie had mounted the hill, there was a rush of horses at the little gate. As they topped the hill Lucinda and Mrs. Carbuncle were jumping the wall. Lord George looked back and asked a question without a word. Lizzie answered it as mutely, Jump it! She was already a little short of breath, but she was ready to jump anything that Lucinda Roanoke had jumped. Over went Lord George, and she followed him almost without losing the stride of her horse. Surely in all the world there was nothing equal to this! There was a large grass field before them, and for a moment she came up alongside of Lord George. "Just steady him before he leaps," said Lord George. She nodded her assent, and smiled her gratitude. She had plenty of breath for riding, but none for speaking. They were now very near to Lucinda, and Sir Griffin, and Mrs. Carbuncle. "The pace is too good for Mrs. Carbuncle's horse," said Lord George. Oh, if she could only pass them, and get up to those men whom she saw before her! She knew that one of them was her cousin Frank. She had no wish to pass them, but she did wish that he should see her. In the next fence Lord George spied a rail, which he thought safer than a blind hedge, and he made for it. His horse took it well, and so did Lizzie's; but Lizzie jumped it a little too near him, as he had paused an instant to look at the ground. "Indeed, I won't do it again," she said, collecting all her breath for an apology. "You are going admirably," he said, "and your horse is worth double the money." She was so glad now that he had not spared for price in mounting her. Looking to the right she could see that Mrs. Carbuncle had only just floundered through the hedge. Lucinda was still ahead, but Sir Griffin was falling behind, as though divided in duty between the niece and the aunt. Then they passed through a gate, and Lord George stayed his horse to hold it for her. She tried to thank him but he stopped her. "Don't mind talking, but come along; and take it easy." She smiled again, and he told himself that she was wondrous pretty. And then her pluck was so good! And then she had four thousand a year! "Now for the gap!--don't be in a hurry. You first, and I'll follow you to keep off these two men. Keep to the left, where the other horses have been." On they went, and Lizzie was in heaven. She could not quite understand her feelings, because it had come to that with her that to save her life she could not have spoken a word. And yet she was not only happy but comfortable. The leaping was delightful, and her horse galloped with her as though his pleasure was as great as her own. She thought that she was getting nearer to Lucinda. For her, in her heart, Lucinda was the quarry. If she could only pass Lucinda! That there were any hounds she had altogether forgotten. She only knew that two or three men were leading the way, of whom her cousin Frank was one, that Lucinda Roanoke was following them closely, and that she was gaining upon Lucinda Roanoke. She knew she was gaining a little, because she could see now how well and squarely Lucinda sat upon her horse. As for herself, she feared that she was rolling;--but she need not have feared. She was so small, and lithe, and light, that her body adapted itself naturally to the pace of her horse. Lucinda was of a different build, and it behoved her to make for herself a perfect seat. "We must have the wall," said Lord George, who was again at her side for a moment. She would have "had" a castle wall, moat included, turrets and all, if he would only have shown her the way. The huntsman and Frank had taken the wall. The horsey man's bit of blood, knowing his own powers to an inch, had declined,--not roughly, with a sudden stop and a jerk, but with a swerve to the left which the horsey man at once understood. What the brute lacked in jumping he could make up in pace, and the horsey man was along the wall and over a broken bank at the head of it, with the loss of not more than a minute. Lucinda's horse, following the ill example, balked the jump. She turned him round with a savage gleam in her eye which Lizzie was just near enough to see, struck him rapidly over the shoulders with her whip, and the animal flew with her into the next field. "Oh, if I could do it like that!" thought Lizzie. But in that very minute she was doing it, not only as well but better. Not following Lord George, but close at his side, the little animal changed his pace, trotted for a yard or two, hopped up as though the wall were nothing, knocked off a top stone with his hind feet, and dropped onto the ground so softly that Lizzie hardly believed that she had gone over the big obstruction that had cost Lucinda such an effort. Lucinda's horse came down on all four legs, with a grunt and a groan, and she knew that she had bustled him. At that moment Lucinda was very full of wrath against the horsey man with the screw who had been in her way. "He touched it," gasped Lizzie, thinking that her horse had disgraced himself. "He's worth his weight in gold," said Lord George. "Come along. There's a brook with a ford. Morgan is in it." Morgan was the huntsman. "Don't let them get before you." Oh, no. She would let no one get before her. She did her very best, and just got her horse's nose on the broken track leading down into the brook before Lucinda. "Pretty good, isn't it?" said Lucinda. Lizzie smiled sweetly. She could smile, though she could not speak. "Only they do balk one so at one's fences!" said Lucinda. The horsey man had all but regained his place, and was immediately behind Lucinda, within hearing--as Lucinda knew. On the further side of the field, beyond the brook, there was a little spinny, and for half a minute the hounds came to a check. "Give 'em time, sir, give 'em time," said Morgan to Frank, speaking in full good humour, with no touch of Monday's savagery. "Wind him, Bolton; Beaver's got it. Very good thing, my lady, isn't it? Now, Carstairs, if you're a-going to 'unt the fox, you'd better 'unt him." Carstairs was the horsey man,--and one with whom Morgan very often quarrelled. "That's it, my hearties," and Morgan was across a broken wall in a moment, after the leading hounds. "Are we to go on?" said Lizzie, who feared much that Lucinda would get ahead of her. There was a matter of three dozen horsemen up now, and, as far as Lizzie saw, the whole thing might have to be done again. In hunting, to have ridden is the pleasure;--and not simply to have ridden well, but to have ridden better than others. "I call it very awkward ground," said Mrs. Carbuncle, coming up. "It can't be compared to the Baron's country." "Stone walls four feet and a half high, and well built, are awkward," said the noble master. But the hounds were away again, and Lizzie had got across the gap before Lucinda, who, indeed, made way for her hostess with a haughty politeness which was not lost upon Lizzie. Lizzie could not stop to beg pardon, but she would remember to do it in her prettiest way on their journey home. They were now on a track of open country, and the pace was quicker even than before. The same three men were still leading, Morgan, Greystock, and Carstairs. Carstairs had slightly the best of it; and of course Morgan swore afterwards that he was among the hounds the whole run. "The scent was that good, there wasn't no putting of 'em off;--no thanks to him," said Morgan. "I 'ate to see 'em galloping, galloping, galloping, with no more eye to the 'ounds than a pig. Any idiot can gallop, if he's got it under 'im." All which only signified that Jack Morgan didn't like to see any of his field before him. There was need, indeed, now for galloping, and it may be doubted whether Morgan himself was not doing his best. There were about five or six in the second flight, and among these Lord George and Lizzie were well placed. But Lucinda had pressed again ahead. "Miss Roanoke had better have a care, or she'll blow her horse," Lord George said. Lizzie didn't mind what happened to Miss Roanoke's horse, so that it could be made to go a little slower and fall behind. But Lucinda still pressed on, and her animal went with a longer stride than Lizzie's horse. They now crossed a road, descending a hill, and were again in a close country. A few low hedges seemed as nothing to Lizzie. She could see her cousin gallop over them ahead of her, as though they were nothing; and her own horse, as he came to them, seemed to do exactly the same. On a sudden they found themselves abreast with the huntsman. "There's a biggish brook below there, my lord," said he. Lizzie was charmed to hear it. Hitherto she had jumped all the big things so easily, that it was a pleasure to hear of them. "How are we to manage it?" asked Lord George. "It is rideable, my lord; but there's a place about half a mile down. Let's see how'll they head. Drat it, my lord, they've turned up, and we must have it or go back to the road." Morgan hurried on, showing that he meant to "have" it, as did also Lucinda. "Shall we go to the road?" said Lord George. "No, no!" said Lizzie. Lord George looked at her and at her horse, and then galloped after the huntsman and Lucinda. The horsey man with the well-bred screw was first over the brook. The little animal could take almost any amount of water, and his rider knew the spot. "He'll do it like a bird," he had said to Greystock, and Greystock had followed him. Mr. MacFarlane's hired horse did do it like a bird. "I know him, sir," said Carstairs. "Mr. Nappie gave £250 for him down in Northamptonshire last February;--bought him of Mr. Percival. You know Mr. Percival, sir?" Frank knew neither Mr. Percival nor Mr. Nappie, and at this moment cared nothing for either of them. To him, at this moment, Mr. MacFarlane, of Buchanan Street, Glasgow, was the best friend he ever had. Morgan, knowing well the horse he rode, dropped him into the brook, floundered and half swam through the mud and water, and scrambled out safely on the other side. "He wouldn't have jumped it with me, if I'd asked him ever so," he said afterwards. Lucinda rode at it, straight as an arrow, but her brute came to a dead balk, and, but that she sat well, would have thrown her into the stream. Lord George let Lizzie take the leap before he took it, knowing that, if there were misfortune, he might so best render help. To Lizzie it seemed as though the river were the blackest, and the deepest, and the broadest that ever ran. For a moment her heart quailed;--but it was but for a moment. She shut her eyes, and gave the little horse his head. For a moment she thought that she was in the water. Her horse was almost upright on the bank, with his hind-feet down among the broken ground, and she was clinging to his neck. But she was light, and the beast made good his footing, and then she knew that she had done it. In that moment of the scramble her heart had been so near her mouth that she was almost choked. When she looked round, Lord George was already by her side. "You hardly gave him powder enough," he said, "but still he did it beautifully. Good heavens! Miss Roanoke is in the river." Lizzie looked back, and there, in truth, was Lucinda struggling with her horse in the water. They paused a moment, and then there were three or four men assisting her. "Come on," said Lord George;--"there are plenty to take her out, and we couldn't get to her if we stayed." "I ought to stop," said Lizzie. "You couldn't get back if you gave your eyes for it," said Lord George. "She's all right." So instigated, Lizzie followed her leader up the hill, and in a minute was close upon Morgan's heels. The worst of doing a big thing out hunting is the fact that in nine cases out of ten they who don't do it are as well off as they who do. If there were any penalty for riding round, or any mark given to those who had ridden straight,--so that justice might in some sort be done,--it would perhaps be better. When you have nearly broken your neck to get to hounds, or made your horse exert himself beyond his proper power, and then find yourself, within three minutes, overtaking the hindmost ruck of horsemen on a road because of some iniquitous turn that the fox has taken, the feeling is not pleasant. And some man who has not ridden at all, who never did ride at all, will ask you where you have been; and his smile will give you the lie in your teeth if you make any attempt to explain the facts. Let it be sufficient for you at such a moment to feel that you are not ashamed of yourself. Self-respect will support a man even in such misery as this. The fox on this occasion, having crossed the river, had not left its bank, but had turned from his course up the stream, so that the leading spirits who had followed the hounds over the water came upon a crowd of riders on the road in a space something short of a mile. Mrs. Carbuncle, among others, was there, and had heard of Lucinda's mishap. She said a word to Lord George in anger, and Lord George answered her. "We were over the river before it happened, and if we had given our eyes we couldn't have got to her. Don't you make a fool of yourself!" The last words were spoken in a whisper, but Lizzie's sharp ears caught them. "I was obliged to do what I was told," said Lizzie apologetically. "It will be all right, dear Lady Eustace. Sir Griffin is with her. I am so glad you are going so well." They were off again now, and the stupid fox absolutely went back across the river. But, whether on one side or on the other, his struggle for life was now in vain. Two years of happy, free existence amidst the wilds of Craigattan had been allowed him. Twice previously had he been "found," and the kindly storm or not less beneficent brightness of the sun had enabled him to baffle his pursuers. Now there had come one glorious day, and the common lot of mortals must be his. A little spurt there was, back towards his own home,--just enough to give something of selectness to the few who saw him fall,--and then he fell. Among the few were Frank, and Lord George, and our Lizzie. Morgan was there, of course, and one of his whips. Of Ayrshire folk, perhaps five or six, and among them our friend Mr. Carstairs. They had run him down close to the outbuildings of a farm-yard, and they broke him up in the home paddock. "What do you think of hunting?" said Frank to his cousin. "It's divine!" "My cousin went pretty well, I think," he said to Lord George. "Like a celestial bird of Paradise. No one ever went better;--or I believe so well. You've been carried rather nicely yourself." "Indeed I have," said Frank, patting his still palpitating horse, "and he's not to say tired now." "You've taken it pretty well out of him, sir," said Carstairs. "There was a little bit of hill that told when we got over the brook. I know'd you'd find he'd jump a bit." "I wonder whether he's to be bought?" asked Frank in his enthusiasm. "I don't know the horse that isn't," said Mr. Carstairs,--"so long as you don't stand at the figure." They were collected on the farm road, and now, as they were speaking, there was a commotion among the horses. A man, driving a little buggy, was forcing his way along the road, and there was a sound of voices, as though the man in the buggy were angry. And he was very angry. Frank, who was on foot by his horse's head, could see that the man was dressed for hunting, with a bright red coat and a flat hat, and that he was driving the pony with a hunting-whip. The man was talking as he approached, but what he said did not much matter to Frank. It did not much matter to Frank till his new friend, Mr. Carstairs, whispered a word in his ear. "It's Nappie, by gum!" Then there crept across Frank's mind an idea that there might be trouble coming. "There he is," said Nappie, bringing his pony to a dead stop with a chuck, and jumping out of the buggy. "I say, you, sir; you've stole my 'orse!" Frank said not a word, but stood his ground with his hand on the nag's bridle. "You've stole my 'orse; you've stole him off the rail. And you've been a-riding him all day. Yes, you 'ave. Did ever anybody see the like of this? Why, the poor beast can't a'most stand!" "I got him from Mr. MacFarlane." "MacFarlane be blowed! You didn't do nothing of the kind. You stole him off the rail at Stewarton. Yes, you did;--and him booked to Kilmarnock. Where's a police? Who's to stand the like o' this? I say, my lord,--just look at this." A crowd had now been formed round poor Frank, and the master had come up. Mr. Nappie was a Huddersfield man, who had come to Glasgow in the course of the last winter, and whose popularity in the hunting-field was not as yet quite so great as it perhaps might have been. "There's been a mistake, I suppose," said the master. "Mistake, my lord! Take a man's 'orse off the rail at Stewarton, and him booked to Kilmarnock, and ride him to a standstill! It's no mistake at all. It's 'orse-nobbling; that's what it is. Is there any police here, sir?" This he said, turning round to a farmer. The farmer didn't deign any reply. "Perhaps you'll tell me your name, sir? if you've got a name. No gen'leman ever took a gen'leman's 'orse off the rail like that." "Oh, Frank, do come away," said Lizzie, who was standing by. "We shall be all right in two minutes," said Frank. "No, we sha'n't," said Mr. Nappie,--"nor yet in two hours. I've asked what's your name?" "My name is--Greystock." "Greystockings," said Mr. Nappie more angrily than ever. "I don't believe in no such name. Where do you live?" Then somebody whispered a word to him. "Member of Parliament,--is he? I don't care a ----. A member of Parliament isn't to steal my 'orse off the rail, and him booked to Kilmarnock. Now, my lord, what'd you do if you was served like that?" This was another appeal to the noble master. "I should express a hope that my horse had carried the gentleman as he liked to be carried," said the master. "And he has,--carried me remarkably well," said Frank;--whereupon there was a loud laugh among the crowd. "I wish he'd broken the infernal neck of you, you scoundrel, you,--that's what I do!" said Mr. Nappie. "There was my man, and my 'orse, and myself all booked from Glasgow to Kilmarnock;--and when I got there what did the guard say to me?--why, just that a man in a black coat had taken my horse off at Stewarton; and now I've been driving all about the country in that gig there for three hours!" When Mr. Nappie had got so far as this in his explanation he was almost in tears. "I'll make 'im pay, that I will. Take your hand off my horse's bridle, sir. Is there any gentleman here as would like to give two hundred and eighty guineas for a horse, and then have him rid to a standstill by a fellow like that down from London? If you're in Parliament, why don't you stick to Parliament? I don't suppose he's worth fifty pound this moment." Frank had all the while been endeavouring to explain the accident; how he had ordered a horse from Mr. MacFarlane, and the rest of it,--as the reader will understand; but quite in vain. Mr. Nappie in his wrath would not hear a word. But now that he spoke about money, Frank thought that he saw an opening. "Mr. Nappie," he said, "I'll buy the horse for the price you gave for him." "I'll see you ----; extremely well ---- first," said Mr. Nappie. The horse had now been surrendered to Mr. Nappie, and Frank suggested that he might as well return to Kilmarnock in the gig, and pay for the hire of it. But Mr. Nappie would not allow him to set a foot upon the gig. "It's my gig for the day," said he, "and you don't touch it. You shall foot it all the way back to Kilmarnock, Mr. Greystockings." But Mr. Nappie, in making this threat, forgot that there were gentlemen there with second horses. Frank was soon mounted on one belonging to Lord George, and Lord George's servant, at the corner of the farm-yard, got into the buggy, and was driven back to Kilmarnock by the man who had accompanied poor Mr. Nappie in their morning's hunt on wheels after the hounds. "Upon my word, I was very sorry," said Frank as he rode back with his friends to Kilmarnock; "and when I first really understood what had happened, I would have done anything. But what could I say? It was impossible not to laugh, he was so unreasonable." "I should have put my whip over his shoulder," said a stout farmer, meaning to be civil to Frank Greystock. "Not after using it so often over his horse," said Lord George. "I never had to touch him once," said Frank. "And are you to have it all for nothing?" asked the thoughtful Lizzie. "He'll send a bill in, you'll find," said a bystander. "Not he," said Lord George. "His grievance is worth more to him than his money." No bill did come to Frank, and he got his mount for nothing. When Mr. MacFarlane was applied to, he declared that no letter ordering a horse had been delivered in his establishment. From that day to this Mr. Nappie's grey horse has had a great character in Ayrshire; but all the world there says that its owner never rides him as Frank Greystock rode him that day. VOLUME II CHAPTER XXXIX Sir Griffin Takes an Unfair Advantage We must return to the unfortunate Lucinda, whom we last saw struggling with her steed in the black waters of the brook which she attempted to jump. A couple of men were soon in after her, and she was rescued and brought back to the side from which she had taken off without any great difficulty. She was neither hurt nor frightened, but she was wet through; and for a while she was very unhappy, because it was not found quite easy to extricate her horse. During the ten minutes of her agony, while the poor brute was floundering in the mud, she had been quite disregardful of herself, and had almost seemed to think that Sir Griffin, who was with her, should go into the water after her steed. But there were already two men in the water, and three on the bank, and Sir Griffin thought that duty required him to stay by the young lady's side. "I don't care a bit about myself," said Lucinda, "but if anything can be done for poor Warrior!" Sir Griffin assured her that "poor Warrior" was receiving the very best attention; and then he pressed upon her the dangerous condition in which she herself was standing,--quite wet through, covered, as to her feet and legs, with mud, growing colder and colder every minute. She touched her lips with a little brandy that somebody gave her, and then declared again that she cared for nothing but poor Warrior. At last poor Warrior was on his legs, with the water dripping from his black flanks, with his nose stained with mud, with one of his legs a little cut,--and, alas! with the saddle wet through. Nevertheless, there was nothing to be done better than to ride into Kilmarnock. The whole party must return to Kilmarnock, and, perhaps, if they hurried, she might be able to get her clothes dry before they would start by the train. Sir Griffin, of course, accompanied her, and they two rode into the town alone. Mrs. Carbuncle did hear of the accident soon after the occurrence, but had not seen her niece; nor when she heard of it, could she have joined Lucinda. If anything would make a girl talk to a man, such a ducking as Lucinda had had would do so. Such sudden events, when they come in the shape of misfortune, or the reverse, generally have the effect of abolishing shyness for the time. Let a girl be upset with you in a railway train, and she will talk like a Rosalind, though before the accident she was as mute as death. But with Lucinda Roanoke the accustomed change did not seem to take place. When Sir Griffin had placed her on her saddle, she would have trotted all the way into Kilmarnock without a word if he would have allowed her. But he, at least, understood that such a joint misfortune should create confidence,--for he, too, had lost the run, and he did not intend to lose his opportunity also. "I am so glad that I was near you," he said. "Oh, thank you, yes; it would have been bad to be alone." "I mean that I am glad that it was I," said Sir Griffin. "It's very hard even to get a moment to speak to you." They were now trotting along on the road, and there were still three miles before them. "I don't know," said she. "I'm always with the other people." "Just so." And then he paused. "But I want to find you when you're not with the other people. Perhaps, however, you don't like me." As he paused for a reply, she felt herself bound to say something. "Oh, yes, I do," she said,--"as well as anybody else." "And is that all?" "I suppose so." After that he rode on for the best part of another mile before he spoke to her again. He had made up his mind that he would do it. He hardly knew why it was that he wanted her. He had not determined that he was desirous of the charms or comfort of domestic life. He had not even thought where he would live were he married. He had not suggested to himself that Lucinda was a desirable companion, that her temper would suit his, that her ways and his were sympathetic, or that she would be a good mother to the future Sir Griffin Trewett. He had seen that she was a very handsome girl, and therefore he had thought that he would like to possess her. Had she fallen like a ripe plum into his mouth, or shown herself ready so to fall, he would probably have closed his lips and backed out of the affair. But the difficulty no doubt added something to the desire. "I had hoped," he said, "that after knowing each other so long there might have been more than that." She was again driven to speak because he paused. "I don't know that that makes much difference." "Miss Roanoke, you can't but understand what I mean." "I'm sure I don't," said she. "Then I'll speak plainer." "Not now, Sir Griffin, because I'm so wet." "You can listen to me even if you will not answer me. I am sure that you know that I love you better than all the world. Will you be mine?" Then he moved on a little forward so that he might look back into her face. "Will you allow me to think of you as my future wife?" Miss Roanoke was able to ride at a stone wall or at a river, and to ride at either the second time when her horse balked the first. Her heart was big enough for that. But her heart was not big enough to enable her to give Sir Griffin an answer. Perhaps it was that, in regard to the river and the stone wall, she knew what she wanted; but that, as to Sir Griffin, she did not. "I don't think this is a proper time to ask," she said. "Why not?" "Because I am wet through and cold. It is taking an unfair advantage." "I didn't mean to take any unfair advantage," said Sir Griffin scowling--"I thought we were alone--" "Oh, Sir Griffin, I am so tired!" As they were now entering Kilmarnock, it was quite clear he could press her no further. They clattered up, therefore, to the hotel, and he busied himself in getting a bedroom fire lighted, and in obtaining the services of the landlady. A cup of tea was ordered, and toast, and in two minutes Lucinda Roanoke was relieved from the presence of the baronet. "It's a kind of thing a fellow doesn't quite understand," said Sir Griffin to himself. "Of course she means it, and why the devil can't she say so?" He had no idea of giving up the chase, but he thought that perhaps he would take it out of her when she became Lady Tewett. They were an hour at the inn before Mrs. Carbuncle and Lady Eustace arrived, and during that hour Sir Griffin did not see Miss Roanoke. For this there was, of course, ample reason. Under the custody of the landlady, Miss Roanoke was being made dry and clean, and was by no means in a condition to receive a lover's vows. The baronet sent up half-a-dozen messages as he sauntered about the yard of the inn, but he got no message in return. Lucinda, as she sat drinking her tea and drying her clothes, did no doubt think about him,--but she thought about him as little as she could. Of course, he would come again, and she could make up her mind then. It was no doubt necessary that she should do something. Her fortune, such as it was, would soon be spent in the adventure of finding a husband. She also had her ideas about love, and had enough of sincerity about her to love a man thoroughly; but it had seemed to her that all the men who came near her were men whom she could not fail to dislike. She was hurried here and hurried there, and knew nothing of real social intimacies. As she told her aunt in her wickedness, she would almost have preferred a shoemaker,--if she could have become acquainted with a shoemaker in a manner that should be unforced and genuine. There was a savageness of antipathy in her to the mode of life which her circumstances had produced for her. It was that very savageness which made her ride so hard, and which forbade her to smile and be pleasant to people whom she could not like. And yet she knew that something must be done. She could not afford to wait as other girls might do. Why not Sir Griffin as well as any other fool? It may be doubted whether she knew how obstinate, how hard, how cruel to a woman a fool can be. Her stockings had been washed and dried, and her boots and trousers were nearly dry, when Mrs. Carbuncle, followed by Lizzie, rushed into the room. "Oh, my darling, how are you?" said the aunt, seizing her niece in her arms. "I'm only dirty now," said Lucinda. "We've got off the biggest of the muck, my lady," said the landlady. "Oh, Miss Roanoke," said Lizzie, "I hope you don't think I behaved badly in going on." "Everybody always goes on, of course," said Lucinda. "I did so pray Lord George to let me try and jump back to you. We were over, you know, before it happened. But he said it was quite impossible. We did wait till we saw you were out." "It didn't signify at all, Lady Eustace." "And I was so sorry when I went through the wall at the corner of the wood before you. But I was so excited I hardly knew what I was doing." Lucinda, who was quite used to these affairs in the hunting-field, simply nodded her acceptance of this apology. "But it was a glorious run; wasn't it?" "Pretty well," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Oh, it was glorious,--but then I got over the river. And oh, if you had been there afterwards. There was such an adventure between a man in a gig and my cousin Frank." Then they all went to the train, and were carried home to Portray. CHAPTER XL "You Are Not Angry?" On their journey back to Portray, the ladies were almost too tired for talking; and Sir Griffin was sulky. Sir Griffin had as yet heard nothing about Greystock's adventure, and did not care to be told. But when once they were at the castle, and had taken warm baths, and glasses of sherry, and got themselves dressed and had come down to dinner, they were all very happy. To Lizzie it had certainly been the most triumphant day of her life. Her marriage with Sir Florian had been triumphant, but that was only a step to something good that was to come after. She then had at her own disposal her little wits and her prettiness, and a world before her in which, as it then seemed to her, there was a deal of pleasure if she could only reach it. Up to this period of her career she had hardly reached any pleasure; but this day had been very pleasant. Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had in truth been her Corsair, and she had found the thing which she liked to do, and would soon know how to do. How glorious it was to jump over that black, yawning stream, and then to see Lucinda fall into it! And she could remember every jump, and her feeling of ecstasy as she landed on the right side. And she had by heart every kind word that Lord George had said to her,--and she loved the sweet, pleasant, Corsair-like intimacy that had sprung up between them. She wondered whether Frank was at all jealous. It wouldn't be amiss that he should be a little jealous. And then somebody had brought home in his pocket the fox's brush, which the master of the hounds had told the huntsman to give her. It was all delightful;--and so much more delightful because Mrs. Carbuncle had not gone quite so well as she liked to go, and because Lucinda had fallen into the water. They did not dine till past eight, and the ladies and gentlemen all left the room together. Coffee and liqueurs were to be brought into the drawing-room, and they were all to be intimate, comfortable, and at their ease;--all except Sir Griffin Tewett, who was still very sulky. "Did he say anything?" Mrs. Carbuncle had asked. "Yes." "Well?" "He proposed; but of course I could not answer him when I was wet through." There had been but a moment, and in that moment this was all that Lucinda would say. "Now I don't mean to stir again," said Lizzie, throwing herself into a corner of a sofa, "till somebody carries me to bed. I never was so tired in all my life." She was tired, but there is a fatigue which is delightful as long as all the surroundings are pleasant and comfortable. "I didn't call it a very hard day," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "You only killed one fox," said Mr. Emilius, pretending a delightfully clerical ignorance, "and on Monday you killed four. Why should you be tired?" "I suppose it was nearly twenty miles," said Frank, who was also ignorant. "About ten, perhaps," said Lord George. "It was an hour and forty minutes, and there was a good bit of slow hunting after we had come back over the river." "I'm sure it was thirty," said Lizzie, forgetting her fatigue in her energy. "Ten is always better than twenty," said Lord George, "and five generally better than ten." "It was just whatever is best," said Lizzie. "I know Frank's friend, Mr. Nappie, said it was twenty. By-the-bye, Frank, oughtn't we to have asked Mr. Nappie home to dinner?" "I thought so," said Frank; "but I couldn't take the liberty myself." "I really think poor Mr. Nappie was very badly used," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Of course he was," said Lord George;--"no man ever worse since hunting was invented. He was entitled to a dozen dinners and no end of patronage; but you see he took it out in calling your cousin Mr. Greystockings." "I felt that blow," said Frank. "I shall always call you Cousin Greystockings," said Lizzie. "It was hard," continued Lord George, "and I understood it all so well when he got into a mess in his wrath about booking the horse to Kilmarnock. If the horse had been on the roadside, he or his men could have protected him. He is put under the protection of a whole railway company, and the company gives him up to the first fellow that comes and asks for him." "It was cruel," said Frank. "If it had happened to me, I should have been very angry," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "But Frank wouldn't have had a horse at all," said Lizzie, "unless he had taken Mr. Nappie's." Lord George still continued his plea for Mr. Nappie. "There's something in that, certainly; but, still, I agree with Mrs. Carbuncle. If it had happened to me, I should--just have committed murder and suicide. I can't conceive anything so terrible. It's all very well for your noble master to talk of being civil, and hoping that the horse had carried him well, and all that. There are circumstances in which a man can't be civil. And then everybody laughed at him! It's the way of the world. The lower you fall, the more you're kicked." "What can I do for him?" asked Frank. "Put him down at your club, and order thirty dozen of grey shirtings from Nappie and Co., without naming the price." "He'd send you grey stockings instead," said Lizzie. But though Lizzie was in heaven, it behoved her to be careful. The Corsair was a very fine specimen of the Corsair breed;--about the best Corsair she had ever seen, and had been devoted to her for the day. But these Corsairs are known to be dangerous, and it would not be wise that she should sacrifice any future prospect of importance on behalf of a feeling, which, no doubt, was founded on poetry, but which might too probably have no possible beneficial result. As far as she knew, the Corsair had not even an island of his own in the �gean Sea. And, if he had, might not the island too probably have a Medora or two of its own? In a ride across the country the Corsair was all that a Corsair should be; but knowing, as she did, but very little of the Corsair, she could not afford to throw over her cousin for his sake. As she was leaving the drawing-room, she managed to say one word to her cousin. "You were not angry with me because I got Lord George to ride with me instead of you?" "Angry with you?" "I knew I should only be a hindrance to you." "It was a matter of course. He knows all about it, and I know nothing. I am very glad that you liked it so much." "I did like it;--and so did you. I was so glad you got that poor man's horse. You were not angry then?" They had now passed across the hall, and were on the bottom stair. "Certainly not." "And you are not angry for what happened before?" She did not look into his face as she asked this question, but stood with her eyes fixed on the stair-carpet. "Indeed no." "Good night, Frank." "Good night, Lizzie." Then she went, and he returned to a room below which had been prepared for purposes of tobacco and soda-water and brandy. "Why, Griff, you're rather out of sorts to-night," said Lord George to his friend, before Frank had joined them. "So would you be out of sorts if you'd lost your run and had to pick a young woman out of the water. I don't like young women when they're damp and smell of mud." "You mean to marry her, I suppose?" "How would you like me to ask you questions? Do you mean to marry the widow? And, if you do, what'll Mrs. Carbuncle say? And if you don't, what do you mean to do; and all the rest of it?" "As for marrying the widow, I should like to know the facts first. As to Mrs. C., she wouldn't object in the least. I generally have my horses so bitted that they can't very well object. And as to the other question, I mean to stay here for the next fortnight, and I advise you to make it square with Miss Roanoke. Here's my lady's cousin; for a man who doesn't ride often, he went very well to-day." "I wonder if he'd take a twenty-pound note if I sent it to him," said Frank, when they broke up for the night. "I don't like the idea of riding such a fellow's horse for nothing." "He'll bring an action against the railway, and then you can offer to pay if you like." Mr. Nappie did bring an action against the railway, claiming exorbitant damages;--but with what result, we need not trouble ourselves to inquire. CHAPTER XLI "Likewise the Bears in Couples Agree" Frank Greystock stayed till the following Monday at Portray, but could not be induced to hunt on the Saturday,--on which day the other sporting men and women went to the meet. He could not, he said, trust to that traitor MacFarlane, and he feared that his friend Mr. Nappie would not give him another mount on the grey horse. Lizzie offered him one of her two darlings,--an offer which he, of course, refused; and Lord George also proposed to put him up. But Frank averred that he had ridden his hunt for that season, and would not jeopardise the laurels he had gained. "And, moreover," said he, "I should not dare to meet Mr. Nappie in the field." So he remained at the castle and took a walk with Mr. Emilius. Mr. Emilius asked a good many questions about Portray, and exhibited the warmest sympathy with Lizzie's widowed condition. He called her a "sweet, gay, unsophisticated, light-hearted young thing." "She is very young," replied her cousin. "Yes," he continued, in answer to further questions; "Portray is certainly very nice. I don't know what the income is. Well; yes. I should think it is over a thousand. Eight! No, I never heard it said that it was as much as that." When Mr. Emilius put it down in his mind as five, he was not void of acuteness, as very little information had been given to him. There was a joke throughout the castle that Mr. Emilius had fallen in love with Miss Macnulty. They had been a great deal together on those hunting days; and Miss Macnulty was unusually enthusiastic in praise of his manner and conversation. To her, also, had been addressed questions as to Portray and its income, all of which she had answered to the best of her ability;--not intending to betray any secret, for she had no secret to betray; but giving ordinary information on that commonest of all subjects, our friends' incomes. Then there had risen a question whether there was a vacancy for such promotion to Miss Macnulty. Mrs. Carbuncle had certainly heard that there was a Mrs. Emilius. Lucinda was sure that there was not,--an assurance which might have been derived from a certain eagerness in the reverend gentleman's demeanour to herself on a former occasion. To Lizzie, who at present was very good-natured, the idea of Miss Macnulty having a lover, whether he were a married man or not, was very delightful. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean," said Miss Macnulty. "I don't suppose Mr. Emilius had any idea of the kind." Upon the whole, however, Miss Macnulty liked it. On the Saturday nothing especial happened. Mr. Nappie was out on his grey horse, and condescended to a little conversation with Lord George. He wouldn't have minded, he said, if Mr. Greystock had come forward; but he did think Mr. Greystock hadn't come forward as he ought to have done. Lord George professed that he had observed the same thing; but then, as he whispered into Mr. Nappie's ear, Mr. Greystock was particularly known as a bashful man. "He didn't ride my 'orse anyway bashful," said Mr. Nappie;--all of which was told at dinner in the evening, amidst a great deal of laughter. There had been nothing special in the way of sport, and Lizzie's enthusiasm for hunting, though still high, had gone down a few degrees below fever heat. Lord George had again coached her; but there had been no great need for coaching, no losing of her breath, no cutting down of Lucinda, no river, no big wall,--nothing, in short, very fast. They had been much in a big wood; but Lizzie, in giving an account of the day to her cousin, had acknowledged that she had not quite understood what they were doing at any time. "It was a blowing of horns and a galloping up and down all the day," she said; "and then Morgan got cross again and scolded all the people. But there was one nice paling, and Dandy flew over it beautifully. Two men tumbled down, and one of them was a good deal hurt. It was very jolly;--but not at all like Wednesday." Nor had it been like Wednesday to Lucinda Roanoke, who did not fall into the water, and who did accept Sir Griffin when he again proposed to her in Sarkie wood. A great deal had been said to Lucinda on the Thursday and the Friday by Mrs. Carbuncle,--which had not been taken at all in good part by Lucinda. On those days Lucinda kept as much as she could out of Sir Griffin's way, and almost snapped at the baronet when he spoke to her. Sir Griffin swore to himself that he wasn't going to be treated that way. He'd have her, by George! There are men in whose love a good deal of hatred is mixed;--who love as the huntsman loves the fox, towards the killing of which he intends to use all his energies and intellects. Mrs. Carbuncle, who did not quite understand the sort of persistency by which a Sir Griffin can be possessed, feared greatly that Lucinda was about to lose her prize, and spoke out accordingly. "Will you, then, just have the kindness to tell me what it is you propose to yourself?" asked Mrs. Carbuncle. "I don't propose anything." "And where will you go when your money's done?" "Just where I am going now!" said Lucinda. By which it may be feared that she indicated a place to which she should not on such an occasion have made an allusion. "You don't like anybody else?" suggested Mrs. Carbuncle. "I don't like anybody or anything," said Lucinda. "Yes, you do;--you like horses to ride, and dresses to wear." "No, I don't. I like hunting because, perhaps, some day I may break my neck. It's no use your looking like that, Aunt Jane. I know what it all means. If I could break my neck it would be the best thing for me." "You'll break my heart, Lucinda." "Mine's broken long ago." "If you'll accept Sir Griffin, and just get a home round yourself, you'll find that everything will be happy. It all comes from the dreadful uncertainty. Do you think I have suffered nothing? Carbuncle is always threatening that he'll go back to New York, and as for Lord George, he treats me that way I'm sometimes afraid to show my face." "Why should you care for Lord George?" "It's all very well to say, why should I care for him. I don't care for him, only one doesn't want to quarrel with one's friends. Carbuncle says he owes him money." "I don't believe it," said Lucinda. "And he says Carbuncle owes him money." "I do believe that," said Lucinda. "Between it all, I don't know which way to be turning. And now, when there's this great opening for you, you won't know your own mind." "I know my mind well enough." "I tell you you'll never have such another chance. Good looks isn't everything. You've never a word to say to anybody; and when a man does come near you, you're as savage and cross as a bear." "Go on, Aunt Jane." "What with your hatings and dislikings, one would suppose you didn't think God Almighty made men at all." "He made some of 'em very bad," said Lucinda. "As for some others, they're only half made. What can Sir Griffin do, do you suppose?" "He's a gentleman." "Then if I were a man, I should wish not to be a gentleman; that's all. I'd a deal sooner marry a man like that huntsman, who has something to do and knows how to do it." Again she said, "Don't worry any more, Aunt Jane. It doesn't do any good. It seems to me that to make myself Sir Griffin's wife would be impossible; but I'm sure your talking won't do it." Then her aunt left her, and, having met Lord George, at his bidding went and made civil speeches to Lizzie Eustace. That was on the Friday afternoon. On the Saturday afternoon Sir Griffin, biding his time, found himself, in a ride with Lucinda, sufficiently far from other horsemen for his purpose. He wasn't going to stand any more nonsense. He was entitled to an answer, and he knew that he was entitled, by his rank and position, to a favourable answer. Here was a girl who, as far as he knew, was without a shilling, of whose birth and parentage nobody knew anything, who had nothing but her beauty to recommend her,--nothing but that and a certain capacity for carrying herself in the world as he thought ladies should carry themselves,--and she was to give herself airs with him, and expect him to propose to her half a dozen times! By George!--he had a very good mind to go away and let her find out her mistake. And he would have done so,--only that he was a man who always liked to have all that he wanted. It was intolerable to him that anybody should refuse him anything. "Miss Roanoke," he said; and then he paused. "Sir Griffin," said Lucinda, bowing her head. "Perhaps you will condescend to remember what I had the honour of saying to you as we rode into Kilmarnock last Wednesday." "I had just been dragged out of a river, Sir Griffin, and I don't think any girl ought to be asked to remember what was said to her in that condition." "If I say it again now, will you remember?" "I cannot promise, Sir Griffin." "Will you give me an answer?" "That must depend." "Come;--I will have an answer. When a man tells a lady that he admires her, and asks her to be his wife, he has a right to an answer. Don't you think that in such circumstances a man has a right to expect an answer?" Lucinda hesitated for a moment, and he was beginning again to remonstrate impatiently, when she altered her tone, and replied to him seriously, "In such circumstances a gentleman has a right to expect an answer." "Then give me one. I admire you above all the world, and I ask you to be my wife. I'm quite in earnest." "I know that you are in earnest, Sir Griffin. I would do neither you nor myself the wrong of supposing that it could be otherwise." "Very well then. Will you accept the offer that I make you?" Again she paused. "You have a right to an answer,--of course; but it may be so difficult to give it. It seems to me that you have hardly realised how serious a question it is." "Haven't I, though! By George, it is serious!" "Will it not be better for you to think it over again?" He now hesitated for a moment. Perhaps it might be better. Should she take him at his word there would be no going back from it. But Lord George knew that he had proposed before. Lord George had learned this from Mrs. Carbuncle, and had shown that he knew it. And then, too,--he had made up his mind about it. He wanted her, and he meant to have her. "It requires no more thinking with me, Lucinda. I'm not a man who does things without thinking; and when I have thought I don't want to think again. There's my hand;--will you have it?" "I will," said Lucinda, putting her hand into his. He no sooner felt her assurance than his mind misgave him that he had been precipitate, that he had been rash, and that she had taken advantage of him. After all, how many things are there in the world more precious than a handsome girl. And she had never told him that she loved him. "I suppose you love me?" he asked. "H'sh!--here they all are." The hand was withdrawn, but not before both Mrs. Carbuncle and Lady Eustace had seen it. Mrs. Carbuncle, in her great anxiety, bided her time, keeping close to her niece. Perhaps she felt that if the two were engaged, it might be well to keep the lovers separated for awhile, lest they should quarrel before the engagement should have been so confirmed by the authority of friends as to be beyond the power of easy annihilation. Lucinda rode quite demurely with the crowd. Sir Griffin remained near her, but without speaking. Lizzie whispered to Lord George that there had been a proposal. Mrs. Carbuncle sat in stately dignity on her horse, as though there were nothing which at that moment especially engaged her attention. An hour almost had passed before she was able to ask the important question, "Well;--what have you said to him?" "Oh;--just what you would have me." "You have accepted him?" "I suppose I was obliged. At any rate I did. You shall know one thing, Aunt Jane, at any rate, and I hope it will make you comfortable. I hate a good many people; but of all the people in the world I hate Sir Griffin Tewett the worst." "Nonsense, Lucinda." "It shall be nonsense, if you please; but it's true. I shall have to lie to him,--but there shall be no lying to you, however much you may wish it. I hate him!" This was very grim, but Mrs. Carbuncle quite understood that to persons situated in great difficulty things might be grim. A certain amount of grimness must be endured. And she knew, too, that Lucinda was not a girl to be driven without showing something of an intractable spirit in harness. Mrs. Carbuncle had undertaken the driving of Lucinda, and had been not altogether unsuccessful. The thing so necessary to be done was now effected. Her niece was engaged to a man with a title, to a man reported to have a fortune, to a man of family, and a man of the world. Now that the engagement was made, the girl could not go back from it, and it was for Mrs. Carbuncle to see that neither should Sir Griffin go back. Her first steps must be taken at once. The engagement should be made known to all the party, and should be recognised by some word spoken between herself and the lover. The word between herself and the lover must be the first thing. She herself, personally, was not very fond of Sir Griffin; but on such an occasion as this she could smile and endure the bear. Sir Griffin was a bear,--but so also was Lucinda. "The rabbits and hares All go in pairs; And likewise the bears In couples agree." Mrs. Carbuncle consoled herself with the song, and assured herself that it would all come right. No doubt the she-bears were not as civil to the he-bears as the turtle doves are to each other. It was, perhaps, her misfortune that her niece was not a turtle dove; but, such as she was, the best had been done for her. "Dear Sir Griffin," she said on the first available opportunity, not caring much for the crowd, and almost desirous that her very words should be overheard, "my darling girl has made me so happy by what she has told me." "She hasn't lost any time," said Sir Griffin. "Of course she would lose no time. She is the same to me as a daughter. I have no child of my own, and she is everything to me. May I tell you that you are the luckiest man in Europe?" "It isn't every girl that would suit me, Mrs. Carbuncle." "I am sure of that. I have noticed how particular you are. I won't say a word of Lucinda's beauty. Men are better judges of that than women; but for high, chivalrous spirit, for true principle and nobility, and what I call downright worth, I don't think you will easily find her superior. And she is as true as steel." "And about as hard, I was beginning to think." "A girl like that, Sir Griffin, does not give herself away easily. You will not like her the less for that now that you are the possessor. She is very young, and has known my wish that she should not engage herself to any one quite yet. But, as it is, I cannot regret anything." "I daresay not," said Sir Griffin. That the man was a bear was a matter of course, and bears probably do not themselves know how bearish they are. Sir Griffin, no doubt, was unaware of the extent of his own rudeness. And his rudeness mattered but little to Mrs. Carbuncle, so long as he acknowledged the engagement. She had not expected a lover's raptures from the one more than from the other. And was not there enough in the engagement to satisfy her? She allowed, therefore, no cloud to cross her brow as she rode up alongside of Lord George. "Sir Griffin has proposed, and she has accepted him," she said in a whisper. She was not now desirous that any one should hear her but he to whom she spoke. "Of course she has," said Lord George. "I don't know about that, George. Sometimes I thought she would, and sometimes that she wouldn't. You have never understood Lucinda." "I hope Griff will understand her,--that's all. And now that the thing is settled, you'll not trouble me about it any more. Their woes be on their own head. If they come to blows Lucinda will thrash him, I don't doubt. But while it's simply a matter of temper and words, she won't find Tewett so easy-going as he looks." "I believe they'll do very well together." "Perhaps they will. There's no saying who may do well together. You and Carbuncle get on à merveille. When is it to be?" "Of course nothing is settled yet." "Don't be too hard about settlements, or, maybe, he'll find a way of wriggling out. When a girl without a shilling asks very much, the world supports a man for breaking his engagement. Let her pretend to be indifferent about it;--that will be the way to keep him firm." "What is his income, George?" "I haven't an idea. There never was a closer man about money. I believe he must have the bulk of the Tewett property some day. He can't spend above a couple of thousand now." "He's not in debt, is he?" "He owes me a little money,--twelve hundred or so, and I mean to have it. I suppose he is in debt, but not much, I think. He makes stupid bets, and the devil won't break him of it." "Lucinda has two or three thousand pounds, you know." "That's a flea-bite. Let her keep it. You're in for it now, and you'd better say nothing about money. He has a decent solicitor, and let him arrange about the settlements. And look here, Jane;--get it done as soon as you can." "You'll help me?" "If you don't bother me, I will." On their way home Mrs. Carbuncle was able to tell Lady Eustace. "You know what has occurred?" "Oh, dear, yes," said Lizzie, laughing. "Has Lucinda told you?" "Do you think I've got no eyes? Of course it was going to be. I knew that from the very moment Sir Griffin reached Portray. I am so glad that Portray has been useful." "Oh, so useful, dear Lady Eustace! Not but what it must have come off anywhere, for there never was a man so much in love as Sir Griffin. The difficulty has been with Lucinda." "She likes him, I suppose?" "Oh, yes, of course," said Mrs. Carbuncle with energy. "Not that girls ever really care about men now. They've got to be married, and they make the best of it. She's very handsome, and I suppose he's pretty well off." "He will be very rich indeed. And they say he's such an excellent young man when you know him." "I dare say most young men are excellent,--when you come to know them. What does Lord George say?" "He's in raptures. He is very much attached to Lucinda, you know." And so that affair was managed. They hadn't been home a quarter of an hour before Frank Greystock was told. He asked Mrs. Carbuncle about the sport, and then she whispered to him, "An engagement has been made." "Sir Griffin?" suggested Frank. Mrs. Carbuncle smiled and nodded her head. It was well that everybody should know it. CHAPTER XLII Sunday Morning "So, miss, you've took him?" said the joint Abigail of the Carbuncle establishment that evening to the younger of her two mistresses. Mrs. Carbuncle had resolved that the thing should be quite public. "Just remember this," replied Lucinda, "I don't want to have a word said to me on the subject." "Only just to wish you joy, miss." Lucinda turned round with a flash of anger at the girl. "I don't want your wishing. That'll do. I can manage by myself. I won't have you come near me if you can't hold your tongue when you're told." "I can hold my tongue as well as anybody," said the Abigail with a toss of her head. This happened after the party had separated for the evening. At dinner Sir Griffin had, of course, given Lucinda his arm; but so he had always done since they had been at Portray. Lucinda hardly opened her mouth at table, and had retreated to bed with a headache when the men, who on that day lingered a few minutes after the ladies, went into the drawing-room. This Sir Griffin felt to be almost an affront, as there was a certain process of farewell for the night which he had anticipated. If she was going to treat him like that, he would cut up rough, and she should know it. "Well, Griff, so it's all settled," said Lord George in the smoking-room. Frank Greystock was there, and Sir Griffin did not like it. "What do you mean by settled? I don't know that anything is settled." "I thought it was. Weren't you told so?"--and Lord George turned to Greystock. "I thought I heard a hint," said Frank. "I'm ---- if I ever knew such people in my life!" said Sir Griffin. "They don't seem to have an idea that a man's own affairs may be private." "Such an affair as that never is private," said Lord George. "The women take care of that. You don't suppose they're going to run down their game, and let nobody know it." "If they take me for game--" "Of course you're game. Every man's game. Only some men are such bad game that they ain't worth following. Take it easy, Griff; you're caught." "No; I ain't." "And enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that she's about the handsomest girl out. As for me, I'd sooner have the widow. I beg your pardon, Mr. Greystock." Frank merely bowed. "Simply, I mean, because she rides about two stone lighter. It'll cost you something to mount Lady Tewett." "I don't mean that she shall hunt," said Sir Griffin. It will be seen, therefore, that the baronet made no real attempt to deny his engagement. On the following day, which was a Sunday, Sir Griffin, having ascertained that Miss Roanoke did not intend to go to church, stayed at home also. Mr. Emilius had been engaged to preach at the nearest episcopal place of worship, and the remainder of the party all went to hear him. Lizzie was very particular about her Bible and Prayer-book, and Miss Macnulty wore a brighter ribbon on her bonnet than she had ever been known to carry before. Lucinda, when she had heard of the arrangement, had protested to her aunt that she would not go down-stairs till they had all returned; but Mrs. Carbuncle, fearing the anger of Sir Griffin, doubting whether, in his anger, he might not escape them altogether, said a word or two which even Lucinda found to be rational. "As you have accepted him, you shouldn't avoid him, my dear. That is only making things worse for the future. And then it's cowardly, is it not?" No word that could have been spoken was more likely to be efficacious. At any rate, she would not be cowardly. As soon then as the wheels of the carriage were no longer heard grating upon the road, Lucinda, who had been very careful in her dress,--so careful as to avoid all appearance of care,--with slow majestic step descended to a drawing-room which they were accustomed to use on mornings. It was probable that Sir Griffin was smoking somewhere about the grounds, but it could not be her duty to go after him out of doors. She would remain there, and, if he chose, he might come to her. There could be no ground of complaint on his side if she allowed herself to be found in one of the ordinary sitting-rooms of the house. In about half an hour he sauntered upon the terrace, and flattened his nose against the window. She bowed and smiled to him,--hating herself for smiling. It was perhaps the first time that she had endeavoured to put on a pleasant face wherewithal to greet him. He said nothing then, but passed round the house, threw away the end of his cigar, and entered the room. Whatever happened, she would not be a coward. The thing had to be done. Seeing that she had accepted him on the previous day, had not run away in the night or taken poison, and had come down to undergo the interview, she would undergo it at least with courage. What did it matter, even though he should embrace her? It was her lot to undergo misery, and as she had not chosen to take poison, the misery must be endured. She rose as he entered and gave him her hand. She had thought what she would do, and was collected and dignified. He had not, and was very awkward. "So you haven't gone to church, Sir Griffin,--as you ought," she said, with another smile. "Come; I've gone as much as you." "But I had a headache. You stayed away to smoke cigars." "I stayed to see you, my girl." A lover may call his lady love his girl, and do so very prettily. He may so use the word that she will like it, and be grateful in her heart for the sweetness of the sound. But Sir Griffin did not do it nicely. "I've got ever so much to say to you." "I won't flatter you by saying that I stayed to hear it." "But you did;--didn't you now?" She shook her head, but there was something almost of playfulness in her manner of doing it. "Ah, but I know you did. And why shouldn't you speak out, now that we are to be man and wife? I like a girl to speak out. I suppose if I want to be with you, you want as much to be with me; eh?" "I don't see that that follows." "By ----, if it doesn't, I'll be off!" "You must please yourself about that, Sir Griffin." "Come; do you love me? You have never said you loved me." Luckily perhaps for her he thought that the best assurance of love was a kiss. She did not revolt, or attempt to struggle with him; but the hot blood flew over her entire face, and her lips were very cold to his, and she almost trembled in his grasp. Sir Griffin was not a man who could ever have been the adored of many women, but the instincts of his kind were strong enough within him to make him feel that she did not return his embrace with passion. He had found her to be very beautiful;--but it seemed to him that she had never been so little beautiful as when thus pressed close to his bosom. "Come," he said, still holding her; "you'll give me a kiss?" "I did do it," she said. "No;--nothing like it. Oh, if you won't, you know--" On a sudden she made up her mind, and absolutely did kiss him. She would sooner have leaped at the blackest, darkest, dirtiest river in the county. "There," she said, "that will do," gently extricating herself from his arms. "Some girls are different, I know; but you must take me as I am, Sir Griffin;--that is, if you do take me." "Why can't you drop the Sir?" "Oh yes;--I can do that." "And you do love me?" There was a pause, while she tried to swallow the lie. "Come;--I'm not going to marry any girl who is ashamed to say that she loves me. I like a little flesh and blood. You do love me?" "Yes," she said. The lie was told; and for the moment he had to be satisfied. But in his heart he didn't believe her. It was all very well for her to say that she wasn't like other girls. Why shouldn't she be like other girls? It might, no doubt, suit her to be made Lady Tewett;--but he wouldn't make her Lady Tewett if she gave herself airs with him. She should lie on his breast and swear that she loved him beyond all the world;--or else she should never be Lady Tewett. Different from other girls indeed! She should know that he was different from other men. Then he asked her to come and take a walk about the grounds. To that she made no objection. She would get her hat and be with him in a minute. But she was absent more than ten minutes. When she was alone she stood before her glass looking at herself, and then she burst into tears. Never before had she been thus polluted. The embrace had disgusted her. It made her odious to herself. And if this, the beginning of it, were so bad, how was she to drink the cup to the bitter dregs? Other girls, she knew, were fond of their lovers,--some so fond of them that all moments of absence were moments, if not of pain, at any rate of regret. To her, as she stood there ready to tear herself because of the vileness of her own condition, it now seemed as though no such love as that were possible to her. For the sake of this man who was to be her husband, she hated all men. Was not everything around her base, and mean, and sordid? She had understood thoroughly the quick divulgings of Mrs. Carbuncle's tidings, the working of her aunt's anxious mind. The man, now that he had been caught, was not to be allowed to escape. But how great would be the boon if he would escape. How should she escape? And yet she knew that she meant to go on and bear it all. Perhaps by study and due practice she might become,--as were some others,--a beast of prey, and nothing more. The feeling that had made these few minutes so inexpressibly loathsome to her might, perhaps, be driven from her heart. She washed the tears from her eyes with savage energy and descended to her lover with a veil fastened closely under her hat. "I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said. "Women always do," he replied laughing. "It gives them importance." "It is not so with me, I can assure you. I will tell you the truth. I was agitated,--and I cried." "Oh, ay; I dare say." He rather liked the idea of having reduced the haughty Lucinda to tears. "But you needn't have been ashamed of my seeing it. As it is, I can see nothing. You must take that off presently." "Not now, Griffin." Oh, what a name it was! It seemed to blister her tongue as she used it without the usual prefix. "I never saw you tied up in that way before. You don't do it out hunting. I've seen you when the snow has been driving in your face, and you didn't mind it,--not so much as I did." "You can't be surprised that I should be agitated now." "But you're happy;--ain't you?" "Yes," she said. The lie once told must of course be continued. "Upon my word, I don't quite understand you," said Sir Griffin. "Look here, Lucinda; if you want to back out of it, you can, you know." "If you ask me again, I will." This was said with the old savage voice, and it at once reduced Sir Griffin to thraldom. To be rejected now would be the death of him. And should there come a quarrel he was sure that it would seem to be that he had been rejected. "I suppose it's all right," he said; "only when a man is only thinking how he can make you happy, he doesn't like to find nothing but crying." After this there was but little more said between them before they returned to the castle. CHAPTER XLIII Life at Portray On the Monday Frank took his departure. Everybody at the castle had liked him except Sir Griffin, who, when he had gone, remarked to Lucinda that he was an insufferable legal prig, and one of those chaps who think themselves somebody because they are in Parliament. Lucinda had liked Frank, and said so very boldly. "I see what it is," replied Sir Griffin; "you always like the people I don't." When he was going, Lizzie left her hand in his for a moment, and gave one look up into his eyes. "When is Lucy to be made blessed?" she asked. "I don't know that Lucy will ever be made blessed," he replied, "but I am sure I hope she will." Not a word more was said, and he returned to London. After that Mrs. Carbuncle and Lucinda remained at Portray Castle till after Christmas, greatly overstaying the original time fixed for their visit. Lord George and Sir Griffin went and returned, and went again and returned again. There was much hunting and a great many love passages, which need not be recorded here. More than once during these six or seven weeks there arose a quarrel, bitter, loud, and pronounced, between Sir Griffin and Lucinda; but Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle between them managed to throw oil upon the waters, and when Christmas came the engagement was still an engagement. The absolute suggestion that it should be broken, and abandoned, and thrown to the winds, always came from Lucinda; and Sir Griffin, when he found that Lucinda was in earnest, would again be moved by his old desires, and would determine that he would have the thing he wanted. Once he behaved with such coarse brutality that nothing but an abject apology would serve the turn. He made the abject apology, and after that became conscious that his wings were clipped, and that he must do as he was bidden. Lord George took him away, and brought him back again, and blew him up;--and at last, under pressure from Mrs. Carbuncle, made him consent to the fixing of a day. The marriage was to take place during the first week in April. When the party moved from Portray, he was to go up to London and see his lawyer. Settlements were to be arranged, and something was to be fixed as to future residence. In the midst of all this Lucinda was passive as regarded the making of the arrangements, but very troublesome to those around her as to her immediate mode of life. Even to Lady Eustace she was curt and uncivil. To her aunt she was at times ferocious. She told Lord George more than once to his face that he was hurrying her to perdition. "What the d---- is it you want?" Lord George said to her. "Not to be married to this man." "But you have accepted him. I didn't ask you to take him. You don't want to go into a workhouse, I suppose?" Then she rode so hard that all the Ayrshire lairds were startled out of their propriety, and there was a general fear that she would meet some terrible accident. And Lizzie, instigated by jealousy, learned to ride as hard, and as they rode against each other every day, there was a turmoil in the hunt. Morgan, scratching his head, declared that he had known "drunken rampaging men," but had never seen ladies so wicked. Lizzie did come down rather badly at one wall, and Lucinda got herself jammed against a gate-post. But when Christmas was come and gone, and Portray Castle had been left empty, no very bad accident had occurred. A great friendship had sprung up between Mrs. Carbuncle and Lizzie, so that both had become very communicative. Whether both or either had been candid may, perhaps, be doubted. Mrs. Carbuncle had been quite confidential in discussing with her friend the dangerous varieties of Lucinda's humours, and the dreadful aversion which she still seemed to entertain for Sir Griffin. But then these humours and this aversion were so visible, that they could not well be concealed;--and what can be the use of confidential communications if things are kept back which the confidante would see even if they were not told? "She would be just like that whoever the man was," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I suppose so," said Lizzie, wondering at such a phenomenon in female nature. But, with this fact understood between them to be a fact,--namely, that Lucinda would be sure to hate any man whom she might accept,--they both agreed that the marriage had better go on. "She must take a husband, some day, you know," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Of course," said Lizzie. "With her good looks, it would be out of the question that she shouldn't be married." "Quite out of the question," repeated Lizzie. "And I really don't see how she's to do better. It's her nature, you know. I have had enough of it, I can tell you. And at the pension, near Paris, they couldn't break her in at all. Nobody ever could break her in. You see it in the way she rides." "I suppose Sir Griffin must do it," said Lizzie laughing. "Well;--that, or the other thing, you know." But there was no doubt about this;--whoever might break or be broken, the marriage must go on. "If you don't persevere with one like her, Lady Eustace, nothing can be done." Lizzie quite concurred. What did it matter to her who should break, or who be broken, if she could only sail her own little bark without dashing it on the rocks? Rocks there were. She didn't quite know what to make of Lord George, who certainly was a Corsair,--who had said some very pretty things to her, quite à la Corsair. But in the meantime, from certain rumours that she heard, she believed that Frank had given up, or at least was intending to give up, the little chit who was living with Lady Linlithgow. There had been something of a quarrel,--so, at least, she had heard through Miss Macnulty, with whom Lady Linlithgow still occasionally corresponded in spite of their former breaches. From Frank, Lizzie heard repeatedly, but Frank in his letters never mentioned the name of Lucy Morris. Now, if there should be a division between Frank and Lucy, then, she thought, Frank would return to her. And if so, for a permanent holding rock of protection in the world, her cousin Frank would be at any rate safer than the Corsair. Lizzie and Mrs. Carbuncle had quite come to understand each other comfortably about money. It suited Mrs. Carbuncle very well to remain at Portray. It was no longer necessary that she should carry Lucinda about in search of game to be run down. The one head of game needed had been run down, such as it was,--not, indeed, a very noble stag; but the stag had been accepted; and a home for herself and her niece, which should have about it a sufficient air of fashion to satisfy public opinion,--out of London,--better still, in Scotland, belonging to a person with a title, enjoying the appurtenances of wealth, and one to which Lord George and Sir Griffin could have access,--was very desirable. But it was out of the question that Lady Eustace should bear all the expense. Mrs. Carbuncle undertook to find the stables, and did pay for that rick of hay and for the cart-load of forage which had made Lizzie's heart quake as she saw it dragged up the hill towards her own granaries. It is very comfortable when all these things are clearly understood. Early in January they were all to go back to London. Then for a while,--up to the period of Lucinda's marriage,--Lizzie was to be Mrs. Carbuncle's guest at the small house in Mayfair;--but Lizzie was to keep the carriage. There came at last to be some little attempt, perhaps, at a hard bargain at the hand of each lady, in which Mrs. Carbuncle, as the elder, probably got the advantage. There was a question about the liveries in London. The footman there must appertain to Mrs. Carbuncle, whereas the coachman would as necessarily be one of Lizzie's retainers. Mrs. Carbuncle assented at last to finding the double livery,--but, like a prudent woman, arranged to get her quid pro quo. "You can add something, you know, to the present you'll have to give Lucinda. Lucinda shall choose something up to forty pounds." "We'll say thirty," said Lizzie, who was beginning to know the value of money. "Split the difference," said Mrs. Carbuncle, with a pleasant little burst of laughter,--and the difference was split. That the very neat and even dandified appearance of the groom who rode out hunting with them should be provided at the expense of Mrs. Carbuncle was quite understood; but it was equally well understood that Lizzie was to provide the horse on which he rode, on every third day. It adds greatly to the comfort of friends living together when these things are accurately settled. Mr. Emilius remained longer than had been anticipated, and did not go till Lord George and Sir Griffin took their departure. It was observed that he never spoke of his wife; and yet Mrs. Carbuncle was almost sure that she had heard of such a lady. He had made himself very agreeable, and was, either by art or nature, a courteous man,--one who paid compliments to ladies. It was true, however, that he sometimes startled his hearers by things which might have been considered to border on coarseness if they had not been said by a clergyman. Lizzie had an idea that he intended to marry Miss Macnulty. And Miss Macnulty certainly received his attentions with pleasure. In these circumstances his prolonged stay at the castle was not questioned;--but when towards the end of November Lord George and Sir Griffin took their departure, he was obliged to return to his flock. On the great subject of the diamonds Lizzie had spoken her mind freely to Mrs. Carbuncle early in the days of their friendship,--immediately, that is, after the bargainings had been completed. "Ten thousand pounds!" ejaculated Mrs. Carbuncle, opening wide her eyes. Lizzie nodded her head thrice, in token of reiterated assurance. "Do you mean that you really know their value?" The ladies at this time were closeted together, and were discussing many things in the closest confidence. "They were valued for me by jewellers." "Ten thousand pounds! And Sir Florian gave them to you?" "Put them round my neck, and told me they were to be mine,--always." "Generous man!" "Ah, if you had but known him!" said Lizzie, just touching her eye with her handkerchief. "I daresay. And now the people claim them. I'm not a bit surprised at that, my dear. I should have thought a man couldn't give away so much as that,--not just as one makes a present that costs forty or fifty pounds." Mrs. Carbuncle could not resist the opportunity of showing that she did not think so very much of that coming thirty-five-pound "gift" for which the bargain had been made. "That's what they say. And they say ever so many other things besides. They mean to prove that it's an--heirloom." "Perhaps it is." "But it isn't. My cousin Frank, who knows more about law than any other man in London, says that they can't make a necklace an heirloom. If it was a brooch or a ring it would be different. I don't quite understand it, but it is so." "It's a pity Sir Florian didn't say something about it in his will," suggested Mrs. Carbuncle. "But he did;--at least, not just about the necklace." Then Lady Eustace explained the nature of her late husband's will, as far as it regarded chattels to be found in the Castle of Portray at the time of his death; and added the fiction, which had now become common to her, as to the necklace having been given to her in Scotland. "I shouldn't let them have it," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I don't mean," said Lizzie. "I should--sell them," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "But why?" "Because there are so many accidents. A woman should be very rich indeed before she allows herself to walk about with ten thousand pounds upon her shoulders. Suppose somebody broke into the house and stole them. And if they were sold, my dear, so that some got to Paris, and others to St. Petersburg, and others to New York, they'd have to give it up then." Before the discussion was over, Lizzie tripped up-stairs and brought the necklace down, and put it on Mrs. Carbuncle's neck. "I shouldn't like to have such property in my house, my dear," continued Mrs. Carbuncle. "Of course, diamonds are very nice. Nothing is so nice. And if a person had a proper place to keep them, and all that--" "I've a very strong iron case," said Lizzie. "But they should be at the bank, or at the jewellers, or somewhere quite--quite safe. People might steal the case and all. If I were you, I should sell them." It was explained to Mrs. Carbuncle on that occasion that Lizzie had brought them down with her in the train from London, and that she intended to take them back in the same way. "There's nothing the thieves would find easier than to steal them on the way," said Mrs. Carbuncle. It was some days after this that there came down to her by post some terribly frightful documents, which were the first results, as far as she was concerned, of the filing of a bill in Chancery;--which hostile proceeding was, in truth, effected by the unaided energy of Mr. Camperdown, although Mr. Camperdown put himself forward simply as an instrument used by the trustees of the Eustace property. Within eight days she was to enter an appearance, or go through some preliminary ceremony towards showing why she should not surrender her diamonds to the Lord Chancellor, or to one of those satraps of his, the Vice-Chancellors, or to some other terrible myrmidon. Mr. Camperdown in his letter explained that the service of this document upon her in Scotland would amount to nothing,--even were he to send it down by a messenger; but that, no doubt, she would send it to her attorney, who would see the expedience of avoiding exposure by accepting the service. Of all which explanation Lizzie did not understand one word. Messrs. Camperdowns' letter and the document which it contained did frighten her considerably, although the matter had been discussed so often that she had accustomed herself to declare that no such bugbears as that should have any influence on her. She had asked Frank whether, in the event of such missiles reaching her, she might send them to him. He had told her that they should be at once placed in the hands of her attorney;--and consequently she now sent them to Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus, with a very short note from herself. "Lady Eustace presents her compliments to Messrs. Mowbray and Mopus, and encloses some papers she has received about her diamonds. They are her own diamonds, given to her by her late husband. Please do what is proper, but Mr. Camperdown ought to be made to pay all the expenses." She had, no doubt, allowed herself to hope that no further steps would be taken in the matter; and the very name of the Vice-Chancellor did for a few hours chill the blood at her heart. In those few hours she almost longed to throw the necklace into the sea, feeling sure that, if the diamonds were absolutely lost, there must be altogether an end of the matter. But, by degrees, her courage returned to her, as she remembered that her cousin had told her that, as far as he could see, the necklace was legally her own. Her cousin had, of course, been deceived by the lies which she had repeated to him; but lies which had been efficacious with him might be efficacious with others. Who could prove that Sir Florian had not taken the diamonds to Scotland, and given them to her there, in that very house which was now her own? She told Mrs. Carbuncle of the missiles which had been hurled at her from the London courts of law, and Mrs. Carbuncle evidently thought that the diamonds were as good as gone. "Then I suppose you can't sell them?" said she. "Yes, I could;--I could sell them to-morrow. What is to hinder me? Suppose I took them to jewellers in Paris?" "The jewellers would think you had stolen them." "I didn't steal them," said Lizzie; "they're my very own. Frank says that nobody can take them away from me. Why shouldn't a man give his wife a diamond necklace as well as a diamond ring? That's what I can't understand. What may he give her so that men sha'n't come and worry her life out of her in this way? As for an heirloom, anybody who knows anything, knows that it can't be an heirloom. A pot or a pan may be an heirloom;--but a diamond necklace cannot be an heirloom. Everybody knows that, that knows anything." "I daresay it will all come right," said Mrs. Carbuncle, who did not in the least believe Lizzie's law about the pot and pan. In the first week in January Lord George and Sir Griffin returned to the castle with the view of travelling up to London with the three ladies. This arrangement was partly thrown over by circumstances, as Sir Griffin was pleased to leave Portray two days before the others and to travel by himself. There was a bitter quarrel between Lucinda and her lover, and it was understood afterwards by Lady Eustace that Sir Griffin had had a few words with Lord George;--but what those few words were, she never quite knew. There was no open rupture between the two gentlemen, but Sir Griffin showed his displeasure to the ladies, who were more likely to bear patiently his ill-humour in the present circumstances than was Lord George. When a man has shown himself to be so far amenable to feminine authority as to have put himself in the way of matrimony, ladies will bear a great deal from him. There was nothing which Mrs. Carbuncle would not endure from Sir Griffin,--just at present; and, on behalf of Mrs. Carbuncle, even Lizzie was long-suffering. It cannot, however, be said that this Petruchio had as yet tamed his own peculiar shrew. Lucinda was as savage as ever, and would snap and snarl, and almost bite. Sir Griffin would snarl too, and say very bearish things. But when it came to the point of actual quarrelling, he would become sullen, and in his sullenness would yield. "I don't see why Carruthers should have it all his own way," he said, one hunting morning, to Lucinda. "I don't care twopence who have their way," said Lucinda, "I mean to have mine;--that's all." "I'm not speaking about you. I call it downright interference on his part. And I do think you give way to him. You never do anything that I suggest." "You never suggest anything that I like to do," said Lucinda. "That's a pity," said Sir Griffin, "considering that I shall have to suggest so many things that you will have to do." "I don't know that at all," said Lucinda. Mrs. Carbuncle came up during the quarrel, meaning to throw oil upon the waters. "What children you are!" she said laughing. "As if each of you won't have to do what the other suggests." "Mrs. Carbuncle," began Sir Griffin, "if you will have the great kindness not to endeavour to teach me what my conduct should be now or at any future time, I shall take it as a kindness." "Sir Griffin, pray don't quarrel with Mrs. Carbuncle," said Lizzie. "Lady Eustace, if Mrs. Carbuncle interferes with me, I shall quarrel with her. I have borne a great deal more of this kind of thing than I like. I'm not going to be told this and told that because Mrs. Carbuncle happens to be the aunt of the future Lady Tewett,--if it should come to that. I'm not going to marry a whole family; and the less I have of this kind of thing the more likely it is that I shall come up to scratch when the time is up." Then Lucinda rose and spoke. "Sir Griffin Tewett," she said, "there is not the slightest necessity that you should come up--'to scratch.' I wonder that I have not as yet been able to make you understand that if it will suit your convenience to break off our match, it will not in the least interfere with mine. And let me tell you this, Sir Griffin,--that any repetition of your unkindness to my aunt will make me utterly refuse to see you again." "Of course, you like her better than you do me." "A great deal better," said Lucinda. "If I stand that I'll be ----," said Sir Griffin, leaving the room. And he left the castle, sleeping that night at the inn at Kilmarnock. The day, however, was passed in hunting; and though he said nothing to either of the three ladies, it was understood by them as they returned to Portray that there was to be no quarrel. Lord George and Sir Griffin had discussed the matter, and Lord George took upon himself to say that there was no quarrel. On the morning but one following, there came a note from Sir Griffin to Lucinda,--just as they were leaving home for their journey up to London,--in which Sir Griffin expressed his regret if he had said anything displeasing to Mrs. Carbuncle. CHAPTER XLIV A Midnight Adventure Something as to the jewels had been told to Lord George;--and this was quite necessary, as Lord George intended to travel with the ladies from Portray to London. Of course, he had heard of the diamonds,--as who had not? He had heard too of Lord Fawn, and knew why it was that Lord Fawn had peremptorily refused to carry out his engagement. But, till he was told by Mrs. Carbuncle, he did not know that the diamonds were then kept within the castle, nor did he understand that it would be part of his duty to guard them on their way back to London. "They are worth ever so much; ain't they?" he said to Mrs. Carbuncle, when she first gave him the information. "Ten thousand pounds," said Mrs. Carbuncle, almost with awe. "I don't believe a word of it," said Lord George. "She says that they've been valued at that, since she's had them." Lord George owned to himself that such a necklace was worth having,--as also, no doubt, were Portray Castle and the income arising from the estate, even though they could be held in possession only for a single life. Hitherto in his very chequered career he had escaped the trammels of matrimony, and among his many modes of life had hardly even suggested to himself the expediency of taking a wife with a fortune, and then settling down for the future, if submissively, still comfortably. To say that he had never looked forward to such a marriage as a possible future arrangement would probably be incorrect. To men such as Lord George it is too easy a result of a career to be altogether banished from the mind. But no attempt had ever yet been made, nor had any special lady ever been so far honoured in his thoughts as to be connected in them with any vague ideas which he might have formed on the subject. But now it did occur to him that Portray Castle was a place in which he could pass two or three months annually without ennui; and that if he were to marry, little Lizzie Eustace would do as well as any other woman with money whom he might chance to meet. He did not say all this to anybody, and therefore cannot be accused of vanity. He was the last man in the world to speak on such a subject to any one. And as our Lizzie certainly bestowed upon him many of her smiles, much of her poetry, and some of her confidence, it cannot be said that he was not justified in his views. But then she was such "an infernal little liar." Lord George was quite able to discover so much of her. "She does lie, certainly," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "but then who doesn't?" On the morning of their departure the box with the diamonds was brought down into the hall just as they were about to depart. The tall London footman again brought it down, and deposited it on one of the oak hall-chairs, as though it were a thing so heavy that he could hardly stagger along with it. How Lizzie did hate the man as she watched him, and regret that she had not attempted to carry it down herself. She had been with her diamonds that morning, and had seen them out of the box and into it. Few days passed on which she did not handle them and gaze at them. Mrs. Carbuncle had suggested that the box, with all her diamonds in it, might be stolen from her,--and as she thought of this her heart almost sank within her. When she had them once again in London she would take some steps to relieve herself from this embarrassment of carrying about with her so great a burthen of care. The man, with a vehement show of exertion, deposited the box on a chair, and then groaned aloud. Lizzie knew very well that she could lift the box by her own unaided exertions, and that the groan was at any rate unnecessary. "Supposing somebody were to steal that on the way," said Lord George to her, not in his pleasantest tone. "Do not suggest anything so horrible," said Lizzie, trying to laugh. "I shouldn't like it at all," said Lord George. "I don't think it would make me a bit unhappy. You've heard about it all. There never was such a persecution. I often say that I should be well pleased to take the bauble and fling it into the ocean waves." "I should like to be a mermaid and catch it," said Lord George. "And what better would you be? Such things are all vanity and vexation of spirit. I hate the shining thing." And she hit the box with the whip she held in her hand. It had been arranged that the party should sleep at Carlisle. It consisted of Lord George, the three ladies, the tall man servant, Lord George's own man, and the two maids. Miss Macnulty, with the heir and the nurses, were to remain at Portray for yet a while longer. The iron box was again put into the carriage, and was used by Lizzie as a footstool. This might have been very well, had there been no necessity for changing their train. At Troon the porter behaved well, and did not struggle much as he carried it from the carriage on to the platform. But at Kilmarnock, where they met the train from Glasgow, the big footman interfered again, and the scene was performed under the eyes of a crowd of people. It seemed to Lizzie that Lord George almost encouraged the struggling, as though he were in league with the footman to annoy her. But there was no further change between Kilmarnock and Carlisle, and they managed to make themselves very comfortable. Lunch had been provided;--for Mrs. Carbuncle was a woman who cared for such things, and Lord George also liked a glass of champagne in the middle of the day. Lizzie professed to be perfectly indifferent on such matters; but nevertheless she enjoyed her lunch, and allowed Lord George to press upon her a second, and perhaps a portion of a third glass of wine. Even Lucinda was roused up from her general state of apathy, and permitted herself to forget Sir Griffin for a while. During this journey to Carlisle Lizzie Eustace almost made up her mind that Lord George was the very Corsair she had been expecting ever since she had mastered Lord Byron's great poem. He had a way of doing things and of saying things, of proclaiming himself to be master, and at the same time of making himself thoroughly agreeable to his dependants,--and especially to the one dependant whom he most honoured at the time,--which exactly suited Lizzie's ideas of what a man should be. And then he possessed that utter indifference to all conventions and laws, which is the great prerogative of Corsairs. He had no reverence for aught divine or human,--which is a great thing. The Queen and Parliament, the bench of bishops, and even the police, were to him just so many fungi and parasites, and noxious vapours, and false hypocrites. Such were the names by which he ventured to call these bugbears of the world. It was so delightful to live with a man who himself had a title of his own, but who could speak of dukes and marquises as being quite despicable by reason of their absurd position. And as they became gay and free after their luncheon he expressed almost as much contempt for honesty as for dukes, and showed clearly that he regarded matrimony and marquises to be equally vain and useless. "How dare you say such things in our hearing!" exclaimed Mrs. Carbuncle. "I assert that if men and women were really true, no vows would be needed;--and if no vows, then no marriage vows. Do you believe such vows are kept?" "Yes," said Mrs. Carbuncle enthusiastically. "I don't," said Lucinda. "Nor I," said the Corsair. "Who can believe that a woman will always love her husband because she swears she will? The oath is false on the face of it." "But women must marry," said Lizzie. The Corsair declared freely that he did not see any such necessity. And then, though it could hardly be said that this Corsair was a handsome man, still he had fine Corsair's eyes, full of expression and determination, eyes that could look love and bloodshed almost at the same time; and then he had those manly properties,--power, bigness, and apparent boldness,--which belong to a Corsair. To be hurried about the world by such a man, treated sometimes with crushing severity, and at others with the tenderest love, not to be spoken to for one fortnight, and then to be embraced perpetually for another, to be cast every now and then into some abyss of despair by his rashness, and then raised to a pinnacle of human joy by his courage,--that, thought Lizzie, would be the kind of life which would suit her poetical temperament. But then, how would it be with her, if the Corsair were to take to hurrying about the world without carrying her with him;--and were to do so always at her expense! Perhaps he might hurry about the world and take somebody else with him. Medora, if Lizzie remembered rightly, had had no jointure or private fortune. But yet a woman must risk something if the spirit of poetry is to be allowed any play at all! "And now these weary diamonds again," said Lord George, as the carriage was stopped against the Carlisle platform. "I suppose they must go into your bedroom, Lady Eustace?" "I wish you'd let the man put the box in yours;--just for this night," said Lizzie. "No;--not if I know it," said Lord George. And then he explained. Such property would be quite as liable to be stolen when in his custody as it would in hers;--but if stolen while in his would entail upon him a grievous vexation which would by no means lessen the effect of her loss. She did not understand him, but finding that he was quite in earnest she directed that the box should be again taken to her own chamber. Lord George suggested that it should be entrusted to the landlord; and for a moment or two Lizzie submitted to the idea. But she stood for that moment thinking of it, and then decided that the box should go to her own room. "There's no knowing what that Mr. Camperdown mightn't do," she whispered to Lord George. The porter and the tall footman, between them, staggered along under their load, and the iron box was again deposited in the bedroom of the Carlisle inn. The evening at Carlisle was spent very pleasantly. The ladies agreed that they would not dress,--but of course they did so with more or less of care. Lizzie made herself to look very pretty, though the skirt of the gown in which she came down was that which she had worn during the journey. Pointing this out with much triumph, she accused Mrs. Carbuncle and Lucinda of great treachery, in that they had not adhered to any vestige of their travelling raiment. But the rancour was not vehement, and the evening was passed pleasantly. Lord George was infinitely petted by the three Houris around him, and Lizzie called him a Corsair to his face. "And you are the Medora," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Oh no. That is your place,--certainly," said Lizzie. "What a pity Sir Griffin isn't here," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "that we might call him the Giaour." Lucinda shuddered, without any attempt at concealing her shudder. "That's all very well, Lucinda, but I think Sir Griffin would make a very good Giaour." "Pray don't, aunt. Let one forget it all just for a moment." "I wonder what Sir Griffin would say if he was to hear this!" said Lord George. Late in the evening Lord George strolled out, and of course the ladies discussed his character in his absence. Mrs. Carbuncle declared that he was the soul of honour. In regard to her own feeling for him, she averred that no woman had ever had a truer friend. Any other sentiment was of course out of the question,--for was she not a married woman? Had it not been for that accident, Mrs. Carbuncle really thought that she could have given her heart to Lord George. Lucinda declared that she always regarded him as a kind of supplementary father. "I suppose he is a year or two older than Sir Griffin," said Lizzie. "Lady Eustace, why should you make me unhappy?" said Lucinda. Then Mrs. Carbuncle explained, that whereas Sir Griffin was not yet thirty, Lord George was over forty. "All I can say is, he doesn't look it," urged Lady Eustace enthusiastically. "Those sort of men never do," said Mrs. Carbuncle. Lord George, when he returned, was greeted with an allusion to angels' wings,--and would have been a good deal spoilt among them were it in the nature of such an article to receive injury. As soon as the clock had struck ten the ladies all went away to their beds. Lizzie, when she was in her own room, of course found her maid waiting for her. It was necessarily part of the religion of such a woman as Lizzie Eustace that she could not go to bed, or change her clothes, or get up in the morning, without the assistance of her own young woman. She would not like to have it thought that she could stick a pin into her own belongings without such assistance. Nevertheless it was often the case with her, that she was anxious to get rid of her girl's attendance. It had been so on this morning, and before dinner, and was so now again. She was secret in her movements, and always had some recess in her boxes and bags and dressing apparatuses to which she did not choose that Miss Patience Crabstick should have access. She was careful about her letters, and very careful about her money. And then as to that iron box in which the diamonds were kept! Patience Crabstick had never yet seen the inside of it. Moreover, it may be said,--either on Lizzie's behalf or to her discredit, as the reader may be pleased to take it,--that she was quite able to dress herself, to brush her own hair, to take off her own clothes; and that she was not, either by nature or education, an incapable young woman. But that honour and glory demanded it, she would almost as lief have had no Patience Crabstick to pry into her most private matters. All which Crabstick knew, and would often declare her missus to be "of all missuses the most slyest and least come-at-able." On this present night she was very soon despatched to her own chamber. Lizzie, however, took one careful look at the iron box before the girl was sent away. Crabstick, on this occasion, had not far to go to seek her own couch. Alongside of Lizzie's larger chamber there was a small room,--a dressing-room with a bed in it, which, for this night, was devoted to Crabstick's accommodation. Of course, she departed from attendance on her mistress by the door which opened from the one room to the other; but this had no sooner been closed than Crabstick descended to complete the amusements of the evening. Lizzie, when she was alone, bolted both the doors on the inside, and then quickly retired to rest. Some short prayer she said, with her knees close to the iron box. Then she put certain articles of property under her pillow,--her watch and chain, and the rings from her fingers, and a packet which she had drawn from her travelling-desk,--and was soon in bed, thinking that, as she fell away to sleep, she would revolve in her mind that question of the Corsair;--would it be good to trust herself and all her belongings to one who might perhaps take her belongings away, but leave herself behind? The subject was not unpleasant, and while she was considering it, she fell asleep. It was, perhaps, about two in the morning when a man, very efficient at the trade which he was then following, knelt outside Lady Eustace's door, and, with a delicately-made saw, aided, probably, by some other equally well-finished tools, absolutely cut out that portion of the bedroom door on which the bolt was fastened. He must have known the spot exactly, for he did not doubt a moment as he commenced his work; and yet there was nothing on the exterior of the door to show where the bolt was placed. The bit was cut out without the slightest noise, and then, when the door was opened, was placed, just inside, upon the floor. The man then with perfectly noiseless step entered the room, knelt again,--just where poor Lizzie had knelt as she said her prayers,--so that he might the more easily raise the iron box without a struggle, and left the room with it in his arms without disturbing the lovely sleeper. He then descended the stairs, passed into the coffee-room at the bottom of them, and handed the box through an open window to a man who was crouching on the outside in the dark. He then followed the box, pulled down the window, put on a pair of boots which his friend had ready for him; and the two, after lingering a few moments in the shade of the dark wall, retreated with their prize round a corner. The night itself was almost pitch-dark, and very wet. It was as nearly black with darkness as a night can be. So far, the enterprising adventurers had been successful, and we will now leave them in their chosen retreat, engaged on the longer operation of forcing open the iron safe. For it had been arranged between them that the iron safe should be opened then and there. Though the weight to him who had taken it out of Lizzie's room had not been oppressive, as it had oppressed the tall serving-man, it might still have been an encumbrance to gentlemen intending to travel by railway with as little observation as possible. They were, however, well supplied with tools, and we will leave them at their work. On the next morning Lizzie was awakened earlier than she had expected, and found, not only Patience Crabstick in her bedroom, but also a chambermaid, and the wife of the manager of the hotel. The story was soon told to her. Her room had been broken open, and her treasure was gone. The party had intended to breakfast at their leisure, and proceed to London by a train leaving Carlisle in the middle of the day; but they were soon disturbed from their rest. Lady Eustace had hardly time to get her slippers on her feet, and to wrap herself in her dressing-gown, to get rid of her dishevelled nightcap, and make herself just fit for public view, before the manager of the hotel, and Lord George, and the tall footman, and the boots were in her bedroom. It was too plainly manifest to them all that the diamonds were gone. The superintendent of the Carlisle police was there almost as soon as the others;--and following him very quickly came the important gentleman who was the head of the constabulary of the county. Lizzie, when she first heard the news, was awe-struck, rather than outwardly demonstrative of grief. "There has been a regular plot," said Lord George. Captain Fitzmaurice, the gallant chief, nodded his head. "Plot enough," said the superintendent,--who did not mean to confide his thoughts to any man, or to exempt any human being from his suspicion. The manager of the hotel was very angry, and at first did not restrain his anger. Did not everybody know that if articles of value were brought into an hotel they should be handed over to the safe-keeping of the manager? He almost seemed to think that Lizzie had stolen her own box of diamonds. "My dear fellow," said Lord George, "nobody is saying a word against you, or your house." "No, my lord;--but--" "Lady Eustace is not blaming you, and do not you blame anybody else," said Lord George. "Let the police do what is right." At last the men retreated, and Lizzie was left with Patience and Mrs. Carbuncle. But even then she did not give way to her grief, but sat upon the bed awe-struck and mute. "Perhaps I had better get dressed," she said at last. "I feared how it might be," said Mrs. Carbuncle, holding Lizzie's hand affectionately. "Yes;--you said so." "The prize was so great." "I always was a-telling my lady--" began Crabstick. "Hold your tongue!" said Lizzie angrily. "I suppose the police will do the best they can, Mrs. Carbuncle?" "Oh yes;--and so will Lord George." "I think I'll lie down again for a little while," said Lizzie. "I feel so sick I hardly know what to do. If I were to lie down for a little I should be better." With much difficulty she got them to leave her. Then, before she again undressed herself, she bolted the door that still had a bolt, and turned the lock in the other. Having done this, she took out from under her pillow the little parcel which had been in her desk,--and, untying it, perceived that her dear diamond necklace was perfect, and quite safe. The enterprising adventurers had, indeed, stolen the iron case, but they had stolen nothing else. The reader must not suppose that because Lizzie had preserved her jewels, she was therefore a consenting party to the abstraction of the box. The theft had been a genuine theft, planned with great skill, carried out with much ingenuity, one in the perpetration of which money had been spent,--a theft which for a while baffled the police of England, and which was supposed to be very creditable to those who had been engaged in it. But the box, and nothing but the box, had fallen into the hands of the thieves. Lizzie's silence when the abstraction of the box was made known to her,--her silence as to the fact that the necklace was at that moment within the grasp of her own fingers,--was not at first the effect of deliberate fraud. She was ashamed to tell them that she brought the box empty from Portray, having the diamonds in her own keeping because she had feared that the box might be stolen. And then it occurred to her, quick as thought could flash, that it might be well that Mr. Camperdown should be made to believe that they had been stolen. And so she kept her secret. The reflections of the next half-hour told her how very great would now be her difficulties. But, as she had not disclosed the truth at first, she could hardly disclose it now. CHAPTER XLV The Journey to London When we left Lady Eustace alone in her bedroom at the Carlisle hotel after the discovery of the robbery, she had very many cares upon her mind. The necklace was, indeed, safe under her pillow in the bed; but when all the people were around her,--her own friends, and the police, and they who were concerned with the inn,--she had not told them that it was so, but had allowed them to leave her with the belief that the diamonds had gone with the box. Even at this moment, as she knew well, steps were being taken to discover the thieves, and to make public the circumstances of the robbery. Already, no doubt, the fact that her chamber had been entered in the night, and her jewel-box withdrawn, was known to the London police officers. In such circumstances how could she now tell the truth? But it might be that already had the thieves been taken. In that case would not the truth be known, even though she should not tell it? Then she thought for a while that she would get rid of the diamonds altogether, so that no one should know aught of them. If she could only think of a place fit for such purpose she would so hide them that no human ingenuity could discover them. Let the thieves say what they might, her word would, in such case, be better than that of the thieves. She would declare that the jewels had been in the box when the box was taken. The thieves would swear that the box had been empty. She would appeal to the absence of the diamonds, and the thieves,--who would be known as thieves,--would be supposed, even by their own friends and associates, to have disposed of the diamonds before they had been taken. There would be a mystery in all this, and a cunning cleverness, the idea of which had in itself a certain charm for Lizzie Eustace. She would have all the world at a loss. Mr. Camperdown could do nothing further to harass her; and would have been, so far, overcome. She would be saved from the feeling of public defeat in the affair of the necklace, which would be very dreadful to her. Lord Fawn might probably be again at her feet. And in all the fuss and rumour which such an affair would make in London, there would be nothing of which she need be ashamed. She liked the idea, and she had grown to be very sick of the necklace. But what should she do with it? It was, at this moment, between her fingers beneath the pillow. If she were minded,--and she thought she was so minded,--to get rid of it altogether, the sea would be the place. Could she make up her mind absolutely to destroy so large a property, it would be best for her to have recourse to "her own broad waves," as she called them even to herself. It was within the "friendly depths of her own rock-girt ocean" that she should find a grave for her great trouble. But now her back was to the sea, and she could hardly insist on returning to Portray without exciting a suspicion that might be fatal to her. And then might it not be possible to get altogether quit of the diamonds and yet to retain the power of future possession? She knew that she was running into debt, and that money would, some day, be much needed. Her acquaintance with Mr. Benjamin, the jeweller, was a fact often present to her mind. She might not be able to get ten thousand pounds from Mr. Benjamin;--but if she could get eight, or six, or even five, how pleasant would it be! If she could put away the diamonds for three or four years,--if she could so hide them that no human eyes could see them till she should again produce them to the light,--surely, after so long an interval, they might be made available! But where should be found such hiding-place? She understood well how great was the peril while the necklace was in her own immediate keeping. Any accident might discover it, and if the slightest suspicion were aroused, the police would come upon her with violence and discover it. But surely there must be some such hiding-place,--if only she could think of it! Then her mind reverted to all the stories she had ever heard of mysterious villanies. There must be some way of accomplishing this thing, if she could only bring her mind to work upon it exclusively. A hole dug deep into the ground;--would not that be the place? But then, where should the hole be dug? In what spot should she trust the earth? If anywhere, it must be at Portray. But now she was going from Portray to London. It seemed to her to be certain that she could dig no hole in London that would be secret to herself. Nor could she trust herself, during the hour or two that remained to her, to find such a hole in Carlisle. What she wanted was a friend;--some one that she could trust. But she had no such friend. She could not dare to give the jewels up to Lord George. So tempted, would not any Corsair appropriate the treasure? And if, as might be possible, she were mistaken about him and he was no Corsair, then would he betray her to the police? She thought of all her dearest friends,--Frank Greystock, Mrs. Carbuncle, Lucinda, Miss Macnulty,--even of Patience Crabstick,--but there was no friend whom she could trust. Whatever she did she must do alone! She began to fear that the load of thought required would be more than she could bear. One thing, however, was certain to her;--she could not now venture to tell them all that the necklace was in her possession, and that the stolen box had been empty. Thinking of all this, she went to sleep,--still holding the packet tight between her fingers,--and in this position was awakened at about ten by a knock at the door from her friend Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie jumped out of bed, and admitted her friend, admitting also Patience Crabstick. "You had better get up now, dear," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "We are all going to breakfast." Lizzie declared herself to be so fluttered, that she must have her breakfast up-stairs. No one was to wait for her. Crabstick would go down and fetch for her a cup of tea,--and just a morsel of something to eat. "You can't be surprised that I shouldn't be quite myself," said Lizzie. Mrs. Carbuncle's surprise did not run at all in that direction. Both Mrs. Carbuncle and Lord George had been astonished to find how well she bore her loss. Lord George gave her credit for real bravery. Mrs. Carbuncle suggested, in a whisper, that perhaps she regarded the theft as an easy way out of a lawsuit. "I suppose you know, George, they would have got it from her." Then Lord George whistled, and, in another whisper, declared that, if the little adventure had all been arranged by Lady Eustace herself with the view of getting the better of Mr. Camperdown, his respect for that lady would be very greatly raised. "If," said Lord George, "it turns out that she has had a couple of bravos in her pay, like an old Italian marquis, I shall think very highly of her indeed." This had occurred before Mrs. Carbuncle came up to Lizzie's room;--but neither of them for a moment suspected that the necklace was still within the hotel. The box had been found, and a portion of the fragments were brought into the room while the party were still at breakfast. Lizzie was not in the room, but the news was at once taken up to her by Crabstick, together with a pheasant's wing and some buttered toast. In a recess beneath an archway running under the railroad, not distant from the hotel above a hundred and fifty yards, the iron box had been found. It had been forced open, so said the sergeant of police, with tools of the finest steel, peculiarly made for such purpose. The sergeant of police was quite sure that the thing had been done by London men who were at the very top of their trade. It was manifest that nothing had been spared. Every motion of the party must have been known to them, and probably one of the adventurers had travelled in the same train with them. And the very doors of the bedroom in the hotel had been measured by the man who had cut out the bolt. The sergeant of police was almost lost in admiration;--but the superintendent of police, whom Lord George saw more than once, was discreet and silent. To the superintendent of police it was by no means sure that Lord George himself might not be fond of diamonds. Of a suspicion flying so delightfully high as this, he breathed no word to any one; but simply suggested that he should like to retain the companionship of one of the party. If Lady Eustace could dispense with the services of the tall footman, the tall footman might be found useful at Carlisle. It was arranged, therefore, that the tall footman should remain;--and the tall footman did remain, though not with his own consent. The whole party, including Lady Eustace herself and Patience Crabstick, were called upon to give their evidence to the Carlisle magistrates before they could proceed to London. This Lizzie did, having the necklace at that moment locked up in her desk at the inn. The diamonds were supposed to be worth ten thousand pounds. There was to be a lawsuit about them. She did not for a moment doubt that they were her property. She had been very careful about the diamonds because of the lawsuit. Fearing that Mr. Camperdown might wrest them from her possession, she had caused the iron box to be made. She had last seen the diamonds on the evening before her departure from Portray. She had then herself locked them up, and she now produced the key. The lock was still so far uninjured that the key would turn it. That was her evidence. Crabstick, with a good deal of reticence, supported her mistress. She had seen the diamonds, no doubt, but had not seen them often. She had seen them down at Portray, but not for ever so long. Crabstick had very little to say about them; but the clever superintendent was by no means sure that Crabstick did not know more than she said. Mrs. Carbuncle and Lord George had also seen the diamonds at Portray. There was no doubt whatever as to the diamonds having been in the iron box;--nor was there, said Lord George, any doubt but that this special necklace had acquired so much public notice from the fact of the threatened lawsuit, as might make its circumstances and value known to London thieves. The tall footman was not examined, but was detained by the police under a remand given by the magistrates. Much information as to what had been done oozed out in spite of the precautions of the discreet superintendent. The wires had been put into operation in every direction, and it had been discovered that one man whom nobody knew had left the down mail train at Annan, and another at Dumfries. These men had taken tickets by the train leaving Carlisle between four and five a.m., and were supposed to have been the two thieves. It had been nearly seven before the theft had been discovered, and by that time not only had the men reached the towns named, but had had time to make their way back again or farther on into Scotland. At any rate, for the present, all trace of them was lost. The sergeant of police did not doubt but that one of these men was making his way up to London with the necklace in his pocket. This was told to Lizzie by Lord George; and though she was awe-struck by the danger of her situation, she nevertheless did feel some satisfaction in remembering that she and she only held the key of the mystery. And then as to those poor thieves! What must have been their consternation when they found, after all the labour and perils of the night, that the box contained no diamonds,--that the treasure was not there, and that they were nevertheless bound to save themselves by flight and stratagem from the hands of the police! Lizzie, as she thought of this, almost pitied the poor thieves. What a consternation there would be among the Camperdowns and Garnetts, among the Mopuses and Benjamins, when the news was heard in London! Lizzie almost enjoyed it. As her mind went on making fresh schemes on the subject, a morbid desire of increasing the mystery took possession of her. She was quite sure that nobody knew her secret, and that nobody as yet could even guess it. There was great danger, but there might be delight and even profit if she could safely dispose of the jewels before suspicion against herself should be aroused. She could understand that a rumour should get to the police that the box had been empty, even if the thieves were not taken;--but such rumour would avail nothing if she could only dispose of the diamonds. As she first thought of all this, the only plan hitherto suggested to herself would require her immediate return to Portray. If she were at Portray she could find a spot in which she could bury the necklace. But she was obliged to allow herself now to be hurried up to London. When she got into the train the little parcel was in her desk, and the key of her desk was fastened round her neck. They had secured a compartment for themselves from Carlisle to London, and of course filled four seats. "As I am alive," said Lord George as soon as the train had left the station, "that head policeman thinks that I am the thief!" Mrs. Carbuncle laughed. Lizzie protested that this was absurd. Lucinda declared that such a suspicion would be vastly amusing. "It's a fact," continued Lord George. "I can see it in the fellow's eye, and I feel it to be a compliment. They are so very 'cute that they delight in suspicions. I remember, when the altar-plate was stolen from Barchester Cathedral some years ago, a splendid idea occurred to one of the police, that the Bishop had taken it!" "Really?" asked Lizzie. "Oh, yes;--really. I don't doubt but that there is already a belief in some of their minds that you have stolen your own diamonds for the sake of getting the better of Mr. Camperdown." "But what could I do with them if I had?" asked Lizzie. "Sell them, of course. There is always a market for such goods." "But who would buy them?" "If you have been so clever, Lady Eustace, I'll find a purchaser for them. One would have to go a good distance to do it,--and there would be some expense. But the thing could be done. Vienna, I should think, would be about the place." "Very well, then," said Lizzie. "You won't be surprised if I ask you to take the journey for me." Then they all laughed, and were very much amused. It was quite agreed among them that Lizzie bore her loss very well. "I shouldn't care the least for losing them," said Lizzie,--"only that Florian gave them to me. They have been such a vexation to me that to be without them will be a comfort." Her desk had been brought into the carriage and was now used as a foot-stool in place of the box which was gone. They arrived at Mrs. Carbuncle's house in Hertford Street quite late, between ten and eleven;--but a note had been sent from Lizzie to her cousin Frank's address from the Euston Square station by a commissionaire. Indeed, two notes were sent,--one to the House of Commons, and the other to the Grosvenor Hotel. "My necklace has been stolen. Come to me early to-morrow at Mrs. Carbuncle's house, No. --, Hertford Street." And he did come,--before Lizzie was up. Crabstick brought her mistress word that Mr. Greystock was in the parlour soon after nine o'clock. Lizzie again hurried on her clothes so that she might see her cousin, taking care as she did so that though her toilet might betray haste, it should not be other than charming. And as she dressed she endeavoured to come to some conclusion. Would it not be best for her that she should tell everything to her cousin, and throw herself upon his mercy, trusting to his ingenuity to extricate her from her difficulties? She had been thinking of her position almost through the entire night, and had remembered that at Carlisle she had committed perjury. She had sworn that the diamonds had been left by her in the box. And should they be found with her it might be that they would put her in gaol for stealing them. Little mercy could she expect from Mr. Camperdown should she fall into that gentleman's hands! But Frank, if she would even yet tell him everything honestly, might probably save her. "What is this about the diamonds?" he asked as soon as he saw her. She had flown almost into his arms as though carried there by the excitement of the moment. "You don't really mean that they have been stolen?" "I do, Frank." "On the journey?" "Yes, Frank;--at the inn at Carlisle." "Box and all?" Then she told him the whole story;--not the true story, but the story as it was believed by all the world. She found it to be impossible to tell him the true story. "And the box was broken open, and left in the street?" "Under an archway," said Lizzie. "And what do the police think?" "I don't know what they think. Lord George says that they believe he is the thief." "He knew of them," said Frank, as though he imagined that the suggestion was not altogether absurd. "Oh, yes;--he knew of them." "And what is to be done?" "I don't know. I've sent for you to tell me." Then Frank averred that information should be immediately given to Mr. Camperdown. He would himself call on Mr. Camperdown, and would also see the head of the London police. He did not doubt but that all the circumstances were already known in London at the police office;--but it might be well that he should see the officer. He was acquainted with the gentleman, and might perhaps learn something. Lizzie at once acceded, and Frank went direct to Mr. Camperdown's offices. "If I had lost ten thousand pounds in that way," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "I think I should have broken my heart." Lizzie felt that her heart was bursting rather than being broken, because the ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds was not really lost. CHAPTER XLVI Lucy Morris in Brook Street Lucy Morris went to Lady Linlithgow early in October, and was still with Lady Linlithgow when Lizzie Eustace returned to London in January. During these three months she certainly had not been happy. In the first place, she had not once seen her lover. This had aroused no anger or suspicion in her bosom against him, because the old countess had told her that she would have no lover come to the house, and that, above all, she would not allow a young man with whom she herself was connected to come in that guise to her companion. "From all I hear," said Lady Linlithgow, "it's not at all likely to be a match;--and at any rate it can't go on here." Lucy thought that she would be doing no more than standing up properly for her lover by asserting her conviction that it would be a match;--and she did assert it bravely; but she made no petition for his presence, and bore that trouble bravely. In the next place, Frank was not a satisfactory correspondent. He did write to her occasionally;--and he wrote also to the old countess immediately on his return to town from Bobsborough a letter which was intended as an answer to that which she had written to Mrs. Greystock. What was said in that letter Lucy never knew;--but she did know that Frank's few letters to herself were not full and hearty,--were not such thorough-going love-letters as lovers write to each other when they feel unlimited satisfaction in the work. She excused him,--telling herself that he was overworked, that with his double trade of legislator and lawyer he could hardly be expected to write letters,--that men, in respect of letter-writing, are not as women are, and the like; but still there grew at her heart a little weed of care, which from week to week spread its noxious, heavy-scented leaves, and robbed her of her joyousness. To be loved by her lover, and to feel that she was his,--to have a lover of her own to whom she could thoroughly devote herself,--to be conscious that she was one of those happy women in the world who find a mate worthy of worship as well as love,--this to her was so great a joy that even the sadness of her present position could not utterly depress her. From day to day she assured herself that she did not doubt and would not doubt,--that there was no cause for doubt;--that she would herself be base were she to admit any shadow of suspicion. But yet his absence,--and the shortness of those little notes, which came perhaps once a fortnight, did tell upon her in opposition to her own convictions. Each note as it came was answered,--instantly; but she would not write except when the notes came. She would not seem to reproach him by writing oftener than he wrote. When he had given her so much, and she had nothing but her confidence to give in return, would she stint him in that? There can be no love, she said, without confidence, and it was the pride of her heart to love him. The circumstances of her present life were desperately weary to her. She could hardly understand why it was that Lady Linlithgow should desire her presence. She was required to do nothing. She had no duties to perform, and, as it seemed to her, was of no use to any one. The countess would not even allow her to be of ordinary service in the house. Lady Linlithgow, as she had said of herself, poked her own fires, carved her own meat, lit her own candles, opened and shut the doors for herself, wrote her own letters,--and did not even like to have books read to her. She simply chose to have some one sitting with her to whom she could speak and make little cross-grained, sarcastic, and ill-natured remarks. There was no company at the house in Brook Street, and when the countess herself went out, she went out alone. Even when she had a cab to go shopping, or to make calls, she rarely asked Lucy to go with her,--and was benevolent chiefly in this,--that if Lucy chose to walk round the square, or as far as the park, her ladyship's maid was allowed to accompany her for protection. Poor Lucy often told herself that such a life would be unbearable,--were it not for the supreme satisfaction she had in remembering her lover. And then the arrangement had been made only for six months. She did not feel quite assured of her fate at the end of those six months, but she believed that there would come to her a residence in a sort of outer garden to that sweet Elysium in which she was to pass her life. The Elysium would be Frank's house; and the outer garden was the deanery at Bobsborough. Twice during the three months Lady Fawn, with two of the girls, came to call upon her. On the first occasion she was unluckily out, taking advantage of the protection of her ladyship's maid in getting a little air. Lady Linlithgow had also been away, and Lady Fawn had seen no one. Afterwards, both Lucy and her ladyship were found at home, and Lady Fawn was full of graciousness and affection. "I daresay you've got something to say to each other," said Lady Linlithgow, "and I'll go away." "Pray don't let us disturb you," said Lady Fawn. "You'd only abuse me if I didn't," said Lady Linlithgow. As soon as she was gone Lucy rushed into her friend's arms. "It is so nice to see you again." "Yes, my dear, isn't it? I did come before, you know." "You have been so good to me! To see you again is like the violets and primroses." She was crouching close to Lady Fawn, with her hand in that of her friend Lydia. "I haven't a word to say against Lady Linlithgow, but it is like winter here, after dear Richmond." "Well;--we think we're prettier at Richmond," said Lady Fawn. "There were such hundreds of things to do there," said Lucy. "After all, what a comfort it is to have things to do." "Why did you come away?" said Lydia. "Oh, I was obliged. You mustn't scold me now that you have come to see me." There were a hundred things to be said about Fawn Court and the children, and a hundred more things about Lady Linlithgow and Bruton Street. Then, at last, Lady Fawn asked the one important question. "And now, my dear, what about Mr. Greystock?" "Oh,--I don't know;--nothing particular, Lady Fawn. It's just as it was, and I am--quite satisfied." "You see him sometimes?" "No, never. I have not seen him since the last time he came down to Richmond. Lady Linlithgow doesn't allow--followers." There was a pleasant little spark of laughter in Lucy's eye as she said this, which would have told to any bystander the whole story of the affection which existed between her and Lady Fawn. "That's very ill-natured," said Lydia. "And he's a sort of cousin, too," said Lady Fawn. "That's just the reason why," said Lucy, explaining. "Of course, Lady Linlithgow thinks that her sister's nephew can do better than marry her companion. It's a matter of course she should think so. What I am most afraid of is that the dean and Mrs. Greystock should think so too." No doubt the dean and Mrs. Greystock would think so;--Lady Fawn was very sure of that. Lady Fawn was one of the best women breathing,--unselfish, motherly, affectionate, appreciative, and never happy unless she was doing good to somebody. It was her nature to be soft, and kind, and beneficent. But she knew very well that if she had had a son,--a second son,--situated as was Frank Greystock, she would not wish him to marry a girl without a penny, who was forced to earn her bread by being a governess. The sacrifice on Mr. Greystock's part would, in her estimation, be so great, that she did not believe that it would be made. Woman-like, she regarded the man as being so much more important than the woman, that she could not think that Frank Greystock would devote himself simply to such a one as Lucy Morris. Had Lady Fawn been asked which was the better creature of the two, her late governess or the rising barrister who had declared himself to be that governess's lover, she would have said that no man could be better than Lucy. She knew Lucy's worth and goodness so well that she was ready herself to do any act of friendship on behalf of one so sweet and excellent. For herself and her girls Lucy was a companion and friend in every way satisfactory. But was it probable that a man of the world, such as was Frank Greystock, a rising man, a member of Parliament, one who, as everybody knew, was especially in want of money,--was it probable that such a man as this would make her his wife just because she was good, and worthy, and sweet-natured? No doubt the man had said that he would do so,--and Lady Fawn's fears betrayed on her ladyship's part a very bad opinion of men in general. It may seem to be a paradox to assert that such bad opinion sprung from the high idea which she entertained of the importance of men in general;--but it was so. She had but one son, and of all her children he was the least worthy; but he was more important to her than all her daughters. Between her own girls and Lucy she hardly made any difference;--but when her son had chosen to quarrel with Lucy it had been necessary to send Lucy to eat her meals up-stairs. She could not believe that Mr. Greystock should think so much of such a little girl as to marry her. Mr. Greystock would no doubt behave very badly in not doing so;--but then men do so often behave very badly! And at the bottom of her heart she almost thought that they might be excused for doing so. According to her view of things, a man out in the world had so many things to think of, and was so very important, that he could hardly be expected to act at all times with truth and sincerity. Lucy had suggested that the dean and Mrs. Greystock would dislike the marriage, and upon that hint Lady Fawn spoke. "Nothing is settled, I suppose, as to where you are to go when the six months are over?" "Nothing as yet, Lady Fawn." "They haven't asked you to go to Bobsborough?" Lucy would have given the world not to blush as she answered, but she did blush. "Nothing is fixed, Lady Fawn." "Something should be fixed, Lucy. It should be settled by this time;--shouldn't it, dear? What will you do without a home, if at the end of the six months Lady Linlithgow should say that she doesn't want you any more?" Lucy certainly did not look forward to a condition in which Lady Linlithgow should be the arbitress of her destiny. The idea of staying with the countess was almost as bad to her as that of finding herself altogether homeless. She was still blushing, feeling herself to be hot and embarrassed. But Lady Fawn sat, waiting for an answer. To Lucy there was only one answer possible. "I will ask Mr. Greystock what I am to do." Lady Fawn shook her head. "You don't believe in Mr. Greystock, Lady Fawn; but I do." "My darling girl," said her ladyship, making the special speech for the sake of making which she had travelled up from Richmond,--"it is not exactly a question of belief, but one of common prudence. No girl should allow herself to depend on a man before she is married to him. By doing so she will be apt to lose even his respect." "I didn't mean for money," said Lucy, hotter than ever, with her eyes full of tears. "She should not be in any respect at his disposal till he has bound himself to her at the altar. You may believe me, Lucy, when I tell you so. It is only because I love you so that I say so." "I know that, Lady Fawn." "When your time here is over, just put up your things and come back to Richmond. You need fear nothing with us. Frederic quite liked your way of parting with him at last, and all that little affair is forgotten. At Fawn Court you'll be safe;--and you shall be happy, too, if we can make you happy. It's the proper place for you." "Of course you'll come," said Diana Fawn. "You'll be the worst little thing in the world if you don't," said Lydia. "We don't know what to do without you. Do we, mamma?" "Lucy will please us all by coming back to her old home," said Lady Fawn. The tears were now streaming down Lucy's face, so that she was hardly able to say a word in answer to all this kindness. And she did not know what word to say. Were she to accept the offer made to her, and acknowledge that she could do nothing better than creep back under her old friend's wing,--would she not thereby be showing that she doubted her lover? And yet she could not go to the dean's house unless the dean and his wife were pleased to take her; and, suspecting as she did, that they would not be pleased, would it become her to throw upon her lover the burthen of finding for her a home with people who did not want her? Had she been welcome at Bobsborough, Mrs. Greystock would surely have so told her before this. "You needn't say a word, my dear," said Lady Fawn. "You'll come, and there's an end of it." "But you don't want me any more," said Lucy, from amidst her sobs. "That's just all that you know about it," said Lydia. "We do want you,--more than anything." "I wonder whether I may come in now," said Lady Linlithgow, entering the room. As it was the countess's own drawing-room, as it was now mid-winter, and as the fire in the dining-room had been allowed, as was usual, to sink almost to two hot coals, the request was not unreasonable. Lady Fawn was profuse in her thanks, and immediately began to account for Lucy's tears, pleading their dear friendship and their long absence, and poor Lucy's emotional state of mind. Then she took her leave, and Lucy, as soon as she had been kissed by her friends outside the drawing-room door, took herself to her bedroom, and finished her tears in the cold. "Have you heard the news?" said Lady Linlithgow to her companion about a month after this. Lady Linlithgow had been out, and asked the question immediately on her return. Lucy, of course, had heard no news. "Lizzie Eustace has just come back to London, and has had all her jewels stolen on the road." "The diamonds?" asked Lucy, with amaze. "Yes,--the Eustace diamonds! And they didn't belong to her any more than they did to you. They've been taken, anyway; and from what I hear I shouldn't be at all surprised if she had arranged the whole matter herself." "Arranged that they should be stolen?" "Just that, my dear. It would be the very thing for Lizzie Eustace to do. She's clever enough for anything." "But, Lady Linlithgow--" "I know all about that. Of course, it would be very wicked, and if it were found out she'd be put in the dock and tried for her life. It is just what I expect she'll come to some of these days. She has gone and got up a friendship with some disreputable people, and was travelling with them. There was a man who calls himself Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. I know him, and can remember when he was errand-boy to a disreputable lawyer at Aberdeen." This assertion was a falsehood on the part of the countess; Lord George had never been an errand-boy, and the Aberdeen lawyer,--as provincial Scotch lawyers go,--had been by no means disreputable. "I'm told that the police think that he has got them." "How very dreadful!" "Yes;--it's dreadful enough. At any rate, men got into Lizzie's room at night and took away the iron box and diamonds and all. It may be she was asleep at the time;--but she's one of those who pretty nearly always sleep with one eye open." "She can't be so bad as that, Lady Linlithgow." "Perhaps not. We shall see. They had just begun a lawsuit about the diamonds,--to get them back. And then all at once,--they're stolen. It looks what the men call--fishy. I'm told that all the police in London are up about it." On the very next day who should come to Brook Street, but Lizzie Eustace herself. She and her aunt had quarrelled, and they hated each other;--but the old woman had called upon Lizzie, advising her, as the reader will perhaps remember, to give up the diamonds, and now Lizzie returned the visit. "So you're here, installed in poor Macnulty's place," began Lizzie to her old friend, the countess at the moment being out of the room. "I am staying with your aunt for a few months,--as her companion. Is it true, Lizzie, that all your diamonds have been stolen?" Lizzie gave an account of the robbery, true in every respect, except in regard to the contents of the box. Poor Lizzie had been wronged in that matter by the countess, for the robbery had been quite genuine. The man had opened her room and taken her box, and she had slept through it all. And then the broken box had been found, and was in the hands of the police, and was evidence of the fact. "People seem to think it possible," said Lizzie, "that Mr. Camperdown the lawyer arranged it all." As this suggestion was being made Lady Linlithgow came in, and then Lizzie repeated the whole story of the robbery. Though the aunt and niece were open and declared enemies, the present circumstances were so peculiar and full of interest that conversation, for a time almost amicable, took place between them. "As the diamonds were so valuable, I thought it right, Aunt Susanna, to come and tell you myself." "It's very good of you, but I'd heard it already. I was telling Miss Morris yesterday what very odd things there are being said about it." "Weren't you very much frightened?" asked Lucy. "You see, my child, I knew nothing about it till it was all over. The man cut the bit out of the door in the most beautiful way, without my ever hearing the least sound of the saw." "And you that sleep so light," said the countess. "They say that perhaps something was put into the wine at dinner to make me sleep." "Ah!" ejaculated the countess, who did not for a moment give up her own erroneous suspicion;--"very likely." "And they do say these people can do things without making the slightest tittle of noise. At any rate, the box was gone." "And the diamonds?" asked Lucy. "Oh yes;--of course. And now there is such a fuss about it! The police keep on coming to me almost every day." "And what do the police think?" asked Lady Linlithgow. "I'm told that they have their suspicions." "No doubt they have their suspicions," said Lizzie. "You travelled up with friends, I suppose." "Oh yes,--with Lord George de Bruce Carruthers; and with Mrs. Carbuncle,--who is my particular friend, and with Lucinda Roanoke, who is just going to be married to Sir Griffin Tewett. We were quite a large party." "And Macnulty?" "No. I left Miss Macnulty at Portray with my darling. They thought he had better remain a little longer in Scotland." "Ah, yes;--perhaps Lord George de Bruce Carruthers does not care for babies. I can easily believe that. I wish Macnulty had been with you." "Why do you wish that?" said Lizzie, who already was beginning to feel that the countess intended, as usual, to make herself disagreeable. "She's a stupid, dull, pig-headed creature; but one can believe what she says." "And don't you believe what I say?" demanded Lizzie. "It's all true, no doubt, that the diamonds are gone." "Indeed it is." "But I don't know much about Lord George de Bruce Carruthers." "He's the brother of a marquis, anyway," said Lizzie, who thought that she might thus best answer the mother of a Scotch Earl. "I remember when he was plain George Carruthers, running about the streets of Aberdeen, and it was well with him when his shoes weren't broken at the toes and down at heel. He earned his bread then, such as it was;--nobody knows how he gets it now. Why does he call himself de Bruce, I wonder?" "Because his godfathers and godmothers gave him that name when he was made a child of Christ, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven," said Lizzie, ever so pertly. "I don't believe a bit of it." "I wasn't there to see, Aunt Susanna; and therefore I can't swear to it. That's his name in all the peerages, and I suppose they ought to know." "And what does Lord George de Bruce say about the diamonds?" Now it had come to pass that Lady Eustace herself did not feel altogether sure that Lord George had not had a hand in this robbery. It would have been a trick worthy of a genuine Corsair to arrange and carry out such a scheme for the appropriation of so rich a spoil. A watch or a brooch would, of course, be beneath the notice of a good genuine Corsair,--of a Corsair who was written down in the peerage as a marquis's brother;--but diamonds worth ten thousand pounds are not to be had every day. A Corsair must live, and if not by plunder rich as that,--how then? If Lord George had concocted this little scheme, he would naturally be ignorant of the true event of the robbery till he should meet the humble executors of his design, and would, as Lizzie thought, have remained unaware of the truth till his arrival in London. That he had been ignorant of the truth during the journey was evident to her. But they had now been three days in London, during which she had seen him once. At that interview he had been sullen and almost cross,--and had said next to nothing about the robbery. He made but one remark about it. "I have told the chief man here," he said, "that I shall be ready to give any evidence in my power when called upon. Till then I shall take no further steps in the matter. I have been asked questions that should not have been asked." In saying this he had used a tone which prevented further conversation on the subject, but Lizzie, as she thought of it all, remembered his jocular remark, made in the railway carriage, as to the suspicion which had already been expressed on the matter in regard to himself. If he had been the perpetrator, and had then found that he had only stolen the box, how wonderful would be the mystery! "He hasn't got anything to say," replied Lizzie to the question of the countess. "And who is your Mrs. Carbuncle?" asked the old woman. "A particular friend of mine with whom I am staying at present. You don't go about a great deal, Aunt Linlithgow, but surely you must have met Mrs. Carbuncle." "I'm an ignorant old woman, no doubt. My dear, I'm not at all surprised at your losing your diamonds. The pity is that they weren't your own." "They were my own." "The loss will fall on you, no doubt, because the Eustace people will make you pay for them. You'll have to give up half your jointure for your life. That's what it will come to. To think of your travelling about with those things in a box!" "They were my own, and I had a right to do what I liked with them. Nobody accuses you of taking them." "That's quite true. Nobody will accuse me. I suppose Lord George has left England for the benefit of his health. It would not at all surprise me if I were to hear that Mrs. Carbuncle had followed him;--not in the least." "You're just like yourself, Aunt Susanna," said Lizzie, getting up and taking her leave. "Good-bye, Lucy,--I hope you're happy and comfortable here. Do you ever see a certain friend of ours now?" "If you mean Mr. Greystock, I haven't seen him since I left Fawn Court," said Lucy, with dignity. When Lizzie was gone, Lady Linlithgow spoke her mind freely about her niece. "Lizzie Eustace won't come to any good. When I heard that she was engaged to that prig, Lord Fawn, I had some hopes that she might be kept out of harm. That's all over, of course. When he heard about the necklace he wasn't going to put his neck into that scrape. But now she's getting among such a set that nothing can save her. She has taken to hunting, and rides about the country like a madwoman." "A great many ladies hunt," said Lucy. "And she's got hold of this Lord George, and of that horrid American woman that nobody knows anything about. They've got the diamonds between them, I don't doubt. I'll bet you sixpence that the police find out all about it, and that there is some terrible scandal. The diamonds were no more hers than they were mine, and she'll be made to pay for them." The necklace, the meanwhile, was still locked up in Lizzie's desk,--with a patent Bramah key,--in Mrs. Carbuncle's house, and was a terrible trouble to our unhappy friend. CHAPTER XLVII Matching Priory Before the end of January everybody in London had heard of the great robbery at Carlisle,--and most people had heard also that there was something very peculiar in the matter,--something more than a robbery. Various rumours were afloat. It had become widely known that the diamonds were to be the subject of litigation between the young widow and the trustees of the Eustace estate; and it was known also that Lord Fawn had engaged himself to marry the widow, and had then retreated from his engagement simply on account of this litigation. There were strong parties formed in the matter,--whom we may call Lizzieites and anti-Lizzieites. The Lizzieites were of opinion that poor Lady Eustace was being very ill-treated;--that the diamonds did probably belong to her, and that Lord Fawn, at any rate, clearly ought to be her own. It was worthy of remark that these Lizzieites were all of them Conservatives. Frank Greystock had probably set the party on foot;--and it was natural that political opponents should believe that a noble young Under-Secretary of State on the Liberal side,--such as Lord Fawn,--had misbehaved himself. When the matter at last became of such importance as to demand leading articles in the newspapers, those journals which had devoted themselves to upholding the Conservative politicians of the day were very heavy indeed upon Lord Fawn. The whole force of the Government, however, was anti-Lizzieite; and as the controversy advanced, every good Liberal became aware that there was nothing so wicked, so rapacious, so bold, or so cunning but that Lady Eustace might have done it, or caused it to be done, without delay, without difficulty, and without scruple. Lady Glencora Palliser for a while endeavoured to defend Lizzie in Liberal circles,--from generosity rather than from any real belief, and instigated, perhaps, by a feeling that any woman in society who was capable of doing anything extraordinary ought to be defended. But even Lady Glencora was forced to abandon her generosity, and to confess, on behalf of her party, that Lizzie Eustace was--a very wicked young woman, indeed. All this, no doubt, grew out of the diamonds, and chiefly arose from the robbery; but there had been enough of notoriety attached to Lizzie before the affair at Carlisle to make people fancy that they had understood her character long before that. The party assembled at Matching Priory, a country house belonging to Mr. Palliser, in which Lady Glencora took much delight, was not large, because Mr. Palliser's uncle, the Duke of Omnium, who was with them, was now a very old man, and one who did not like very large gatherings of people. Lord and Lady Chiltern were there,--that Lord Chiltern who had been known so long and so well in the hunting counties of England, and that Lady Chiltern who had been so popular in London as the beautiful Violet Effingham; and Mr. and Mrs. Grey were there, very particular friends of Mr. Palliser's. Mr. Grey was now sitting for the borough of Silverbridge, in which the Duke of Omnium was still presumed to have a controlling influence, in spite of all Reform bills, and Mrs. Grey was in some distant way connected with Lady Glencora. And Madame Max Goesler was there,--a lady whose society was still much affected by the old duke; and Mr. and Mrs. Bonteen,--who had been brought there, not, perhaps altogether because they were greatly loved, but in order that the gentleman's services might be made available by Mr. Palliser in reference to some great reform about to be introduced in monetary matters. Mr. Palliser, who was now Chancellor of the Exchequer, was intending to alter the value of the penny. Unless the work should be too much for him, and he should die before he had accomplished the self-imposed task, the future penny was to be made, under his auspices, to contain five farthings, and the shilling ten pennies. It was thought that if this could be accomplished, the arithmetic of the whole world would be so simplified that henceforward the name of Palliser would be blessed by all schoolboys, clerks, shopkeepers, and financiers. But the difficulties were so great that Mr. Palliser's hair was already grey from toil, and his shoulders bent by the burthen imposed upon them. Mr. Bonteen, with two private secretaries from the Treasury, was now at Matching to assist Mr. Palliser;--and it was thought that both Mr. and Mrs. Bonteen were near to madness under the pressure of the five-farthing penny. Mr. Bonteen had remarked to many of his political friends that those two extra farthings that could not be made to go into the shilling would put him into his cold grave before the world would know what he had done,--or had rewarded him for it with a handle to his name, and a pension. Lord Fawn was also at Matching,--a suggestion having been made to Lady Glencora by some leading Liberals that he should be supported in his difficulties by her hospitality. The mind of Mr. Palliser himself was too deeply engaged to admit of its being interested in the great necklace affair; but, of all the others assembled, there was not one who did not listen anxiously for news on the subject. As regarded the old duke, it had been found to be quite a godsend; and from post to post as the facts reached Matching they were communicated to him. And, indeed, there were some there who would not wait for the post, but had the news about poor Lizzie's diamonds down by the wires. The matter was of the greatest moment to Lord Fawn, and Lady Glencora was, perhaps, justified, on his behalf, in demanding a preference for her affairs over the messages which were continually passing between Matching and the Treasury respecting those two ill-conditioned farthings. "Duke," she said, entering rather abruptly the small, warm, luxurious room in which her husband's uncle was passing his morning, "duke, they say now that after all the diamonds were not in the box when it was taken out of the room at Carlisle." The duke was reclining in an easy-chair, with his head leaning forward on his breast, and Madame Goesler was reading to him. It was now three o'clock, and the old man had been brought down to this room after his breakfast. Madame Goesler was reading the last famous new novel, and the duke was dozing. That, probably, was the fault neither of the reader nor of the novelist, as the duke was wont to doze in these days. But Lady Glencora's tidings awakened him completely. She had the telegram in her hand,--so that he could perceive that the very latest news was brought to him. "The diamonds not in the box!" he said,--pushing his head a little more forward in his eagerness, and sitting with the extended fingers of his two hands touching each other. "Barrington Erle says that Major Mackintosh is almost sure the diamonds were not there." Major Mackintosh was an officer very high in the police force, whom everybody trusted implicitly, and as to whom the outward world believed that he could discover the perpetrators of any iniquity, if he would only take the trouble to look into it. Such was the pressing nature of his duties that he found himself compelled in one way or another to give up about sixteen hours a day to them;--but the outer world accused him of idleness. There was nothing he couldn't find out;--only he would not give himself the trouble to find out all the things that happened. Two or three newspapers had already been very hard upon him in regard to the Eustace diamonds. Such a mystery as that, they said, he ought to have unravelled long ago. That he had not unravelled it yet was quite certain. "The diamonds not in the box!" said the duke. "Then she must have known it," said Madame Goesler. "That doesn't quite follow, Madame Max," said Lady Glencora. "But why shouldn't the diamonds have been in the box?" asked the duke. As this was the first intimation given to Lady Glencora of any suspicion that the diamonds had not been taken with the box, and as this had been received by telegraph, she could not answer the duke's question with any clear exposition of her own. She put up her hands and shook her head. "What does Plantagenet think about it?" asked the duke. Plantagenet Palliser was the full name of the duke's nephew and heir. The duke's mind was evidently much disturbed. "He doesn't think that either the box or the diamonds were ever worth five farthings," said Lady Glencora. "The diamonds not in the box!" repeated the duke. "Madame Max, do you believe that the diamonds were not in the box?" Madame Goesler shrugged her shoulders and made no answer; but the shrugging of her shoulders was quite satisfactory to the duke, who always thought that Madame Goesler did everything better than anybody else. Lady Glencora stayed with her uncle for the best part of an hour, and every word spoken was devoted to Lizzie and her necklace; but as this new idea had been broached, and as they had no other information than that conveyed in the telegram, very little light could be thrown upon it. But on the next morning there came a letter from Barrington Erle to Lady Glencora, which told so much, and hinted so much more, that it will be well to give it to the reader. Travellers', 29 Jan., 186-- MY DEAR LADY GLENCORA, I hope you got my telegram yesterday. I had just seen Mackintosh,--on whose behalf, however, I must say that he told me as little as he possibly could. It is leaking out, however, on every side, that the police believe that when the box was taken out of the room at Carlisle, the diamonds were not in it. As far as I can learn, they ground this suspicion on the fact that they cannot trace the stones. They say that, if such a lot of diamonds had been through the thieves' market in London, they would have left some track behind them. As far as I can judge, Mackintosh thinks that Lord George has them, but that her ladyship gave them to him; and that this little game of the robbery at Carlisle was planned to put John Eustace and the lawyers off the scent. If it should turn out that the box was opened before it left Portray, that the door of her ladyship's room was cut by her ladyship's self, or by his lordship with her ladyship's aid, and that the fragments of the box were carried out of the hotel by his lordship in person, it will altogether have been so delightful a plot, that all concerned in it ought to be canonised,--or at least allowed to keep their plunder. One of the old detectives told me that the opening of the box under the arch of the railway, in an exposed place, could hardly have been executed so neatly as was done;--that no thief so situated would have given the time necessary to it; and that, if there had been thieves at all at work, they would have been traced. Against this, there is the certain fact,--as I have heard from various men engaged in the inquiry,--that certain persons among the community of thieves are very much at loggerheads with each other,--the higher, or creative department in thiefdom, accusing the lower or mechanical department of gross treachery in having appropriated to its own sole profit plunder, for the taking of which it had undertaken to receive a certain stipulated price. But then it may be the case that his lordship and her ladyship have set such a rumour abroad for the sake of putting the police off the scent. Upon the whole, the little mystery is quite delightful; and has put the ballot, and poor Mr. Palliser's five-farthinged penny, quite out of joint. Nobody now cares for anything except the Eustace diamonds. Lord George, I am told, has offered to fight everybody or anybody, beginning with Lord Fawn and ending with Major Mackintosh. Should he be innocent, which, of course, is possible, the thing must be annoying. I should not at all wonder myself, if it should turn out that her ladyship left them in Scotland. The place there, however, has been searched, in compliance with an order from the police and by her ladyship's consent. Don't let Mr. Palliser quite kill himself. I hope the Bonteen plan answers. I never knew a man who could find more farthings in a shilling than Mr. Bonteen. Remember me very kindly to the duke, and pray enable poor Fawn to keep up his spirits. If he likes to arrange a meeting with Lord George, I shall be only too happy to be his friend. You remember our last duel. Chiltern is with you, and can put Fawn up to the proper way of getting over to Flanders,--and of returning, should he chance to escape. Yours always most faithfully, BARRINGTON ERLE. Of course, I'll keep you posted in everything respecting the necklace till you come to town yourself. The whole of this letter Lady Glencora read to the duke, to Lady Chiltern, and to Madame Goesler;--and the principal contents of it she repeated to the entire company. It was certainly the general belief at Matching that Lord George had the diamonds in his possession,--either with or without the assistance of their late fair possessor. The duke was struck with awe when he thought of all the circumstances. "The brother of a marquis!" he said to his nephew's wife. "It's such a disgrace to the peerage!" "As for that, duke," said Lady Glencora, "the peerage is used to it by this time." "I never heard of such an affair as this before." "I don't see why the brother of a marquis shouldn't turn thief as well as anybody else. They say he hasn't got anything of his own;--and I suppose that is what makes men steal other people's property. Peers go into trade, and peeresses gamble on the Stock Exchange. Peers become bankrupt, and the sons of peers run away;--just like other men. I don't see why all enterprises should not be open to them. But to think of that little purring cat, Lady Eustace, having been so very--very clever! It makes me quite envious." All this took place in the morning;--that is, about two o'clock; but after dinner the subject became general. There might be some little reticence in regard to Lord Fawn's feelings,--but it was not sufficient to banish a subject so interesting from the minds and lips of the company. "The Tewett marriage is to come off, after all," said Mrs. Bonteen. "I've a letter from dear Mrs. Rutter, telling me so as a fact." "I wonder whether Miss Roanoke will be allowed to wear one or two of the diamonds at the wedding," suggested one of the private secretaries. "Nobody will dare to wear a diamond at all next season," said Lady Glencora. "As for my own, I sha'n't think of having them out. I should always feel that I was being inspected." "Unless they unravel the mystery," said Madame Goesler. "I hope they won't do that," said Lady Glencora. "The play is too good to come to an end so soon. If we hear that Lord George is engaged to Lady Eustace, nothing, I suppose, can be done to stop the marriage." "Why shouldn't she marry if she pleases?" asked Mr. Palliser. "I've not the slightest objection to her being married. I hope she will, with all my heart. I certainly think she should have her husband after buying him at such a price. I suppose Lord Fawn won't forbid the banns." These last words were only whispered to her next neighbour, Lord Chiltern; but poor Lord Fawn saw the whisper, and was aware that it must have had reference to his condition. On the next morning there came further news. The police had asked permission from their occupants to search the rooms in which lived Lady Eustace and Lord George, and in each case the permission had been refused. So said Barrington Erle in his letter to Lady Glencora. Lord George had told the applicant, very roughly, that nobody should touch any article belonging to him without a search-warrant. If any magistrate would dare to give such a warrant, let him do it. "I'm told that Lord George acts the indignant madman uncommonly well," said Barrington Erle in his letter. As for poor Lizzie, she had fainted when the proposition was made to her. The request was renewed as soon as she had been brought to herself; and then she refused,--on the advice, as she said, of her cousin, Mr. Greystock. Barrington Erle went on to say that the police were very much blamed. It was believed that no information could be laid before a magistrate sufficient to justify a search-warrant;--and, in such circumstances, no search should have been attempted. Such was the public verdict, as declared in Barrington Erle's last letter to Lady Glencora. Mr. Palliser was of opinion that the attempt to search the lady's house was iniquitous. Mr. Bonteen shook his head, and rather thought that, if he were Home Secretary, he would have had the search made. Lady Chiltern said that if policemen came to her, they might search everything she had in the world. Mrs. Grey reminded them that all they really knew of the unfortunate woman was, that her jewel-box had been stolen out of her bedroom at her hotel. Madame Goesler was of opinion that a lady who could carry such a box about the country with her deserved to have it stolen. Lord Fawn felt himself obliged to confess that he agreed altogether with Madame Goesler. Unfortunately, he had been acquainted with the lady, and now was constrained to say that her conduct had been such as to justify the suspicions of the police. "Of course, we all suspect her," said Lady Glencora; "and, of course, we suspect Lord George too, and Mrs. Carbuncle and Miss Roanoke. But then, you know, if I were to lose my diamonds, people would suspect me just the same,--or perhaps Plantagenet. It is so delightful to think that a woman has stolen her own property, and put all the police into a state of ferment." Lord Chiltern declared himself to be heartily sick of the whole subject; and Mr. Grey, who was a very just man, suggested that the evidence, as yet, against anybody, was very slight. "Of course, it's slight," said Lady Glencora. "If it were more than slight, it would be just like any other robbery, and there would be nothing in it." On the same morning Mrs. Bonteen received a second letter from her friend Mrs. Rutter. The Tewett marriage had been certainly broken off. Sir Griffin had been very violent, misbehaving himself grossly in Mrs. Carbuncle's house, and Miss Roanoke had declared that under no circumstances would she ever speak to him again. It was Mrs. Rutter's opinion, however, that this violence had been "put on" by Sir Griffin, who was desirous of escaping from the marriage because of the affair of the diamonds. "He's very much bound up with Lord George," said Mrs. Rutter, "and is afraid that he may be implicated." "In my opinion he's quite right," said Lord Fawn. All these matters were told to the duke by Lady Glencora and Madame Goesler in the recesses of his grace's private room; for the duke was now infirm, and did not dine in company unless the day was very auspicious to him. But in the evening he would creep into the drawing-room, and on this occasion he had a word to say about the Eustace diamonds to every one in the room. It was admitted by them all that the robbery had been a godsend in the way of amusing the duke. "Wouldn't have her boxes searched, you know," said the duke; "that looks uncommonly suspicious. Perhaps, Lady Chiltern, we shall hear to-morrow morning something more about it." "Poor dear duke," said Lady Chiltern to her husband. "Doting old idiot!" he replied. CHAPTER XLVIII Lizzie's Condition When such a man as Barrington Erle undertakes to send information to such a correspondent as Lady Glencora in reference to such a matter as Lady Eustace's diamonds, he is bound to be full rather than accurate. We may say, indeed, that perfect accuracy would be detrimental rather than otherwise, and would tend to disperse that feeling of mystery which is so gratifying. No suggestion had in truth been made to Lord George de Bruce Carruthers as to the searching of his lordship's boxes and desks. That very eminent detective officer, Mr. Bunfit, had, however, called upon Lord George more than once, and Lord George had declared very plainly that he did not like it. "If you'll have the kindness to explain to me what it is you want, I'll be much obliged to you," Lord George had said to Mr. Bunfit. "Well, my lord," said Bunfit, "what we want is these diamonds." "Do you believe that I've got them?" "A man in my situation, my lord, never believes anything. We has to suspect, but we never believes." "You suspect that I stole them?" "No, my lord;--I didn't say that. But things are very queer; aren't they?" The immediate object of Mr. Bunfit's visit on this morning had been to ascertain from Lord George whether it was true that his lordship had been with Messrs. Harter and Benjamin, the jewellers, on the morning after his arrival in town. No one from the police had as yet seen either Harter or Benjamin in connexion with this robbery; but it may not be too much to say that the argus eyes of Major Mackintosh were upon Messrs. Harter and Benjamin's whole establishment, and it was believed that, if the jewels were in London, they were locked up in some box within that house. It was thought more than probable by Major Mackintosh and his myrmidons that the jewels were already at Hamburg; and by this time, as the major had explained to Mr. Camperdown, every one of them might have been reset,--or even recut. But it was known that Lord George had been at the house of Messrs. Harter and Benjamin early on the morning after his return to town, and the ingenuous Mr. Bunfit, who, by reason of his situation, never believed anything and only suspected, had expressed a very strong opinion to Major Mackintosh that the necklace had in truth been transferred to the Jews on that morning. That there was nothing "too hot or too heavy" for Messrs. Harter and Benjamin was quite a creed with the police of the west end of London. Might it not be well to ask Lord George what he had to say about the visit? Should Lord George deny the visit, such denial would go far to confirm Mr. Bunfit. The question was asked, and Lord George did not deny the visit. "Unfortunately, they hold acceptances of mine," said Lord George, "and I am often there." "We know as they have your lordship's name to paper," said Mr. Bunfit,--thanking Lord George, however, for his courtesy. It may be understood that all this would be unpleasant to Lord George, and that he should be indignant almost to madness. But Mr. Erle's information, though certainly defective in regard to Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, had been more correct when he spoke of the lady. An interview that was very terrible to poor Lizzie did take place between her and Mr. Bunfit in Mrs. Carbuncle's house on Tuesday, the 30th of January. There had been many interviews between Lizzie and various members of the police force in reference to the diamonds, but the questions put to her had always been asked on the supposition that she might have mislaid the necklace. Was it not possible that she might have thought that she locked it up, but have omitted to place it in the box? As long as these questions had reference to a possible oversight in Scotland,--to some carelessness which she might have committed on the night before she left her home,--Lizzie upon the whole seemed rather to like the idea. It certainly was possible. She believed thoroughly that the diamonds had been locked by her in the box,--but she acknowledged that it might be the case that they had been left on one side. This had happened when the police first began to suspect that the necklace had not been in the box when it was carried out of the Carlisle hotel, but before it had occurred to them that Lord George had been concerned in the robbery, and possibly Lady Eustace herself. Men had been sent down from London, of course at considerable expense, and Portray Castle had been searched, with the consent of its owner, from the weathercock to the foundation-stone,--much to the consternation of Miss Macnulty, and to the delight of Andy Gowran. No trace of the diamonds was found, and Lizzie had so far fraternised with the police. But when Mr. Bunfit called upon her, perhaps for the fifth or sixth time, and suggested that he should be allowed, with the assistance of the female whom he had left behind him in the hall, to search all her ladyship's boxes, drawers, presses, and receptacles in London, the thing took a very different aspect. "You see, my lady," said Mr. Bunfit, excusing the peculiar nature of his request, "it may have got anywhere among your ladyship's things, unbeknownst." Lady Eustace and Mrs. Carbuncle were at the time sitting together, and Mrs. Carbuncle was the first to protest. If Mr. Bunfit thought that he was going to search her things, Mr. Bunfit was very much mistaken. What she had suffered about this necklace no man or woman knew,--and she meant that there should be an end of it. It was her opinion that the police should have discovered every stone of it days and days ago. At any rate, her house was her own, and she gave Mr. Bunfit to understand that his repeated visits were not agreeable to her. But when Mr. Bunfit, without showing the slightest displeasure at the evil things said of him, suggested that the search should be confined to the rooms used exclusively by Lady Eustace, Mrs. Carbuncle absolutely changed her views, and recommended that he should be allowed to have his way. At that moment the condition of poor Lizzie Eustace was very sad. He who recounts these details has scorned to have a secret between himself and his readers. The diamonds were at this moment locked up within Lizzie's desk. For the last three weeks they had been there,--if it may not be more truly said that they were lying heavily on her heart. For three weeks had her mind with constant stretch been working on that point,--whither should she take the diamonds, and what should she do with them? A certain very wonderful strength she did possess, or she could not have endured the weight of so terrible an anxiety; but from day to day the thing became worse and worse with her, as gradually she perceived that suspicion was attached to herself. Should she confide the secret to Lord George, or to Mrs. Carbuncle, or to Frank Greystock? She thought she could have borne it all if only some one would have borne it with her. But when the moments came in which such confidence might be made, her courage failed her. Lord George she saw frequently; but he was unsympathetic and almost rough with her. She knew that he also was suspected, and she was almost disposed to think that he had planned the robbery. If it were so, if the robbery had been his handiwork, it was not singular that he should be unsympathetic with the owner and probable holder of the prey which he had missed. Nevertheless Lizzie thought that if he would have been soft with her, like a dear, good, genuine Corsair, for half an hour, she would have told him all, and placed the necklace in his hands. And there were moments in which she almost resolved to tell her secret to Mrs. Carbuncle. She had stolen nothing;--so she averred to herself. She had intended only to defend and save her own property. Even the lie that she had told, and the telling of which was continued from day to day, had in a measure been forced upon her by circumstances. She thought that Mrs. Carbuncle would sympathise with her in that feeling which had prevented her from speaking the truth when first the fact of the robbery was made known to herself in her own bedroom. Mrs. Carbuncle was a lady who told many lies, as Lizzie knew well,--and surely could not be horrified at a lie told in such circumstances. But it was not in Lizzie's nature to trust a woman. Mrs. Carbuncle would tell Lord George,--and that would destroy everything. When she thought of confiding everything to her cousin, it was always in his absence. The idea became dreadful to her as soon as he was present. She could not dare to own to him that she had sworn falsely to the magistrate at Carlisle. And so the burthen had to be borne, increasing every hour in weight, and the poor creature's back was not broad enough to bear it. She thought of the necklace every waking minute, and dreamed of it when she slept. She could not keep herself from unlocking her desk and looking at it twenty times a day, although she knew the peril of such nervous solicitude. If she could only rid herself of it altogether, she was sure now that she would do so. She would throw it into the ocean fathoms deep, if only she could find herself alone upon the ocean. But she felt that, let her go where she might, she would be watched. She might declare to-morrow her intention of going to Ireland,--or, for that matter, to America. But, were she to do so, some horrid policeman would be on her track. The iron box had been a terrible nuisance to her;--but the iron box had been as nothing compared to the necklace locked up in her desk. From day to day she meditated a plan of taking the thing out into the streets, and dropping it in the dark; but she was sure that, were she to do so, some one would have watched her while she dropped it. She was unwilling to trust her old friend Mr. Benjamin; but in these days her favourite scheme was to offer the diamonds for sale to him at some very low price. If he would help her they might surely be got out of their present hiding-place into his hands. Any man would be powerful to help, if there were any man whom she could trust. In furtherance of this scheme she went so far as to break a brooch,--a favourite brooch of her own,--in order that she might have an excuse for calling at the jewellers'. But even this she postponed from day to day. Circumstances, as they had occurred, had taught her to believe that the police could not insist on breaking open her desk unless some evidence could be brought against her. There was no evidence, and her desk was so far safe. But the same circumstances had made her understand that she was already suspected of some intrigue with reference to the diamonds,--though of what she was suspected she did not clearly perceive. As far as she could divine the thoughts of her enemies, they did not seem to suppose that the diamonds were in her possession. It seemed to be believed by those enemies that they had passed into the hands of Lord George. As long as her enemies were on a scent so false, might it not be best that she should remain quiet? But all the ingenuity, the concentrated force, and trained experience of the police of London would surely be too great and powerful for her in the long run. She could not hope to keep her secret and the diamonds till they should acknowledge themselves to be baffled. And then she was aware of a morbid desire on her own part to tell the secret,--of a desire that amounted almost to a disease. It would soon burst her bosom open, unless she could share her knowledge with some one. And yet, as she thought of it all, she told herself that she had no friend so fast and true as to justify such confidence. She was ill with anxiety, and,--worse than that,--Mrs. Carbuncle knew that she was ill. It was acknowledged between them that this affair of the necklace was so terrible as to make a woman ill. Mrs. Carbuncle at present had been gracious enough to admit so much as that. But might it not be probable that Mrs. Carbuncle would come to suspect that she did not know the whole secret? Mrs. Carbuncle had already, on more than one occasion, said a little word or two which had been unpleasant. Such was Lizzie's condition when Mr. Bunfit came, with his authoritative request to be allowed to inspect Lizzie's boxes,--and when Mrs. Carbuncle, having secured her own privacy, expressed her opinion that Mr. Bunfit should be allowed to do as he desired. CHAPTER XLIX Bunfit and Gager As soon as the words were out of Mrs. Carbuncle's mouth,--those ill-natured words in which she expressed her assent to Mr. Bunfit's proposition that a search should be made after the diamonds among all the possessions of Lady Eustace which were now lodged in her own house,--poor Lizzie's courage deserted her entirely. She had been very courageous; for, though her powers of endurance had sometimes nearly deserted her, though her heart had often failed her, still she had gone on and had endured and been silent. To endure and to be silent in her position did require great courage. She was all alone in her misery, and could see no way out of it. The diamonds were heavy as a load of lead within her bosom. And yet she had persevered. Now, as she heard Mrs. Carbuncle's words, her courage failed her. There came some obstruction in her throat, so that she could not speak. She felt as though her heart were breaking. She put out both her hands and could not draw them back again. She knew that she was betraying herself by her weakness. She could just hear the man explaining that the search was merely a thing of ceremony,--just to satisfy everybody that there was no mistake;--and then she fainted. So far, Barrington Erle was correct in the information given by him to Lady Glencora. She pressed one hand against her heart, gasped for breath, and then fell back upon the sofa. Perhaps she could have done nothing better. Had the fainting been counterfeit, the measure would have shown ability. But the fainting was altogether true. Mrs. Carbuncle first, and then Mr. Bunfit, hurried from their seats to help her. To neither of them did it occur for a moment that the fit was false. "The whole thing has been too much for her," said Mrs. Carbuncle severely, ringing the bell at the same time for further aid. "No doubt,--mum; no doubt. We has to see a deal of this sort of thing. Just a little air, if you please, mum,--and as much water as'd go to christen a babby. That's always best, mum." "If you'll have the kindness to stand on one side," said Mrs. Carbuncle, as she stretched Lizzie on the sofa. "Certainly, mum," said Bunfit, standing erect by the wall, but not showing the slightest disposition to leave the room. "You had better go," said Mrs. Carbuncle,--loudly and very severely. "I'll just stay and see her come to, mum. I won't do her a morsel of harm, mum. Sometimes they faints at the very fust sight of such as we; but we has to bear it. A little more air, if you could, mum;--and just dash the water on in drops like. They feels a drop more than they would a bucketful,--and then when they comes to they hasn't to change theirselves." Bunfit's advice, founded on much experience, was good, and Lizzie gradually came to herself and opened her eyes. She immediately clutched at her breast, feeling for her key. She found it unmoved, but before her finger had recognised the touch, her quick mind had told her how wrong the movement had been. It had been lost upon Mrs. Carbuncle, but not on Mr. Bunfit. He did not at once think that she had the diamonds in her desk; but he felt almost sure that there was something in her possession,--probably some document,--which, if found, would place him on the track of the diamonds. But he could not compel a search. "Your ladyship'll soon be better," said Bunfit graciously. Lizzie endeavoured to smile as she expressed her assent to this proposition. "As I was a saying to the elder lady--" "Saying to who, sir?" exclaimed Mrs. Carbuncle, rising up in wrath. "Elder, indeed!" "As I was a venturing to explain, these fits of fainting come often in our way. Thieves, mum,--that is, the regulars,--don't mind us a bit, and the women is more hardeneder than the men; but when we has to speak to a lady, it is so often that she goes off like that! I've known 'em do it just at being looked at." "Don't you think, sir, that you'd better leave us now?" said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Indeed you had," said Lizzie. "I'm fit for nothing just at present." "We won't disturb your ladyship the least in life," said Mr. Bunfit, "if you'll only just let us have your keys. Your servant can be with us, and we won't move one tittle of anything." But Lizzie, though she was still suffering that ineffable sickness which always accompanies and follows a real fainting-fit, would not surrender her keys. Already had an excuse for not doing so occurred to her. But for a while she seemed to hesitate. "I don't demand it, Lady Eustace," said Mr. Bunfit, "but if you'll allow me to say so, I do think it will look better for your ladyship." "I can take no step without consulting my cousin, Mr. Greystock," said Lizzie; and having thought of this she adhered to it. The detective supplied her with many reasons for giving up her keys, alleging that it would do no harm, and that her refusal would create infinite suspicions. But Lizzie had formed her answer and stuck to it. She always consulted her cousin, and always acted upon his advice. He had already cautioned her not to take any steps without his sanction. She would do nothing till he consented. If Mr. Bunfit would see Mr. Greystock, and if Mr. Greystock would come to her and tell her to submit,--she would submit. Ill as she was, she could be obstinate, and Bunfit left the house without having been able to finger that key which he felt sure that Lady Eustace carried somewhere on her person. As he walked back to his own quarters in Scotland Yard, Bunfit was by no means dissatisfied with his morning's work. He had not expected to find anything with Lady Eustace, and, when she fainted, had not hoped to be allowed to search. But he was now sure that her ladyship was possessed, at any rate, of some guilty knowledge. Bunfit was one of those who, almost from the first, had believed that the box was empty when taken out of the hotel. "Stones like them must turn up more or less," was Bunfit's great argument. That the police should already have found the stones themselves was not perhaps probable; but had any ordinary thieves had them in their hands, they could not have been passed on without leaving a trace behind them. It was his opinion that the box had been opened and the door cut by the instrumentality and concurrence of Lord George de Bruce Carruthers,--with the assistance of some well-skilled mechanical thief. Nothing could be made out of the tall footman;--indeed, the tall footman had already been set at liberty, although he was known to have evil associates; and the tall footman was now loud in demanding compensation for the injury done to him. Many believed that the tall footman had been concerned in the matter,--many, that is, among the experienced craftsmen of the police force. Bunfit thought otherwise. Bunfit believed that the diamonds were now either in the possession of Lord George or of Harter and Benjamin, that they had been handed over to Lord George to save them from Messrs. Camperdown and the lawsuit, and that Lord George and the lady were lovers. The lady's conduct at their last interview, her fit of fainting, and her clutching for the key, all confirmed Bunfit in his opinion. But unfortunately for Bunfit he was almost alone in his opinion. There were men in the force,--high in their profession as detectives,--who avowed that certainly two very experienced and well-known thieves had been concerned in the business. That a certain Mr. Smiler had been there,--a gentleman for whom the whole police of London entertained a feeling which approached to veneration, and that most diminutive of full-grown thieves, Billy Cann,--most diminutive but at the same time most expert,--was not doubted by some minds which were apt to doubt till conviction had become certainty. The traveller who had left the Scotch train at Dumfries had been a very small man, and it was a known fact that Mr. Smiler had left London by train, from the Euston Square station, on the day before that on which Lizzie and her party had reached Carlisle. If it were so, if Mr. Smiler and Billy Cann had both been at work at the hotel, then,--so argued they who opposed the Bunfit theory,--it was hardly conceivable that the robbery should have been arranged by Lord George. According to the Bunfit theory, the only thing needed by the conspirators had been that the diamonds should be handed over by Lady Eustace to Lord George in such a way as to escape suspicion that such transfer had been made. This might have been done with very little trouble,--by simply leaving the box empty, with the key in it. The door of the bedroom had been opened by skilful professional men, and the box had been forced by the use of tools which none but professional gentlemen would possess. Was it probable that Lord George would have committed himself with such men, and incurred the very heavy expense of paying for their services, when he was,--according to the Bunfit theory,--able to get at the diamonds without any such trouble, danger, and expenditure? There was a young detective in the force, very clever,--almost too clever, and certainly a little too fast,--Gager by name, who declared that the Bunfit theory "warn't on the cards." According to Gager's information, Smiler was at this moment a broken-hearted man,--ranging between mad indignation and suicidal despondency, because he had been treated with treachery in some direction. Mr. Gager was as fully convinced as Bunfit that the diamonds had not been in the box. There was bitter, raging, heart-breaking disappointment about the diamonds in more quarters than one. That there had been a double robbery Gager was quite sure;--or rather a robbery in which two sets of thieves had been concerned, and in which one set had been duped by the other set. In this affair Mr. Smiler and poor little Billy Cann had been the dupes. So far Gager's mind had arrived at certainty. But then how had they been duped, and who had duped them? And who had employed them? Such a robbery would hardly have been arranged and executed except on commission. Even Mr. Smiler would not have burthened himself with such diamonds without knowing what to do with them, and what he should get for them. That they were intended ultimately for the hands of Messrs. Harter and Benjamin, Gager almost believed. And Gager was inclined to think that Messrs. Harter and Benjamin,--or rather Mr. Benjamin, for Mr. Harter himself was almost too old for work requiring so very great mental activity,--that Mr. Benjamin, fearing the honesty of his executive officer Mr. Smiler, had been splendidly treacherous to his subordinate. Gager had not quite completed his theory; but he was very firm on one great point,--that the thieves at Carlisle had been genuine thieves, thinking that they were stealing the diamonds, and finding their mistake out when the box had been opened by them under the bridge. "Who have 'em, then?" asked Bunfit of his younger brother, in a disparaging whisper. "Well; yes; who 'ave 'em? It's easy to say, who 'ave 'em? Suppose 'e 'ave 'em." The "he" alluded to by Gager was Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. "But laws, Bunfit, they're gone--weeks ago. You know that, Bunfit." This had occurred before the intended search among poor Lizzie's boxes, but Bunfit's theory had not been shaken. Bunfit could see all round his own theory. It was whole, and the motives as well as the operations of the persons concerned were explained by it. But the Gager theory only went to show what had not been done, and offered no explanation of the accomplished scheme. Then Bunfit went a little further in his theory, not disdaining to accept something from Gager. Perhaps Lord George had engaged these men, and had afterwards found it practicable to get the diamonds without their assistance. On one great point all concerned in the inquiry were in unison,--that the diamonds had not been in the box when it was carried out of the bedroom at Carlisle. The great point of difference consisted in this, that whereas Gager was sure that the robbery when committed had been genuine, Bunfit was of opinion that the box had been first opened, and then taken out of the hotel in order that the police might be put on a wrong track. The matter was becoming very important. Two or three of the leading newspapers had first hinted at and then openly condemned the incompetence and slowness of the police. Such censure, as we all know, is very common, and in nine cases out of ten it is unjust. They who write it probably know but little of the circumstances;--and, in speaking of a failure here and a failure there, make no reference to the numerous successes, which are so customary as to partake of the nature of routine. It is the same in regard to all public matters,--army matters, navy matters, poor-law matters, and post-office matters. Day after day, and almost every day, one meets censure which is felt to be unjust;--but the general result of all this injustice is increased efficiency. The coach does go the faster because of the whip in the coachman's hand, though the horses driven may never have deserved the thong. In this matter of the Eustace diamonds the police had been very active; but they had been unsuccessful, and had consequently been abused. The robbery was now more than three weeks old. Property to the amount of ten thousand pounds had been abstracted, and as yet the police had not even formed an assured opinion on the subject! Had the same thing occurred in New York or Paris every diamond would by this time have been traced. Such were the assertions made, and the police were instigated to new exertions. Bunfit would have jeopardised his right hand, and Gager his life, to get at the secret. Even Major Mackintosh was anxious. The facts of the claim made by Mr. Camperdown, and of the bill which had been filed in Chancery for the recovery of the diamonds, were of course widely known, and added much to the general interest and complexity. It was averred that Mr. Camperdown's determination to get the diamonds had been very energetic, and Lady Eustace's determination to keep them equally so. Wonderful stories were told of Lizzie's courage, energy, and resolution. There was hardly a lawyer of repute but took up the question, and had an opinion as to Lizzie's right to the necklace. The Attorney and Solicitor-General were dead against her, asserting that the diamonds certainly did not pass to her under the will, and could not have become hers by gift. But they were members of a Liberal government, and of course anti-Lizzieite. Gentlemen who were equal to them in learning, who had held offices equally high, were distinctly of a different opinion. Lady Eustace might probably claim the jewels as paraphernalia properly appertaining to her rank;--in which claim the bestowal of them by her husband would no doubt assist her. And to these gentlemen,--who were Lizzieites and of course Conservatives in politics,--it was by no means clear that the diamonds did not pass to her by will. If it could be shown that the diamonds had been lately kept in Scotland, the ex-Attorney-General thought that they would so pass. All which questions, now that the jewels had been lost, were discussed openly, and added greatly to the anxiety of the police. Both Lizzieites and anti-Lizzieites were disposed to think that Lizzie was very clever. Frank Greystock in these days took up his cousin's part altogether in good faith. He entertained not the slightest suspicion that she was deceiving him in regard to the diamonds. That the robbery had been a bona-fide robbery, and that Lizzie had lost her treasure, was to him beyond doubt. He had gradually convinced himself that Mr. Camperdown was wrong in his claim, and was strongly of opinion that Lord Fawn had disgraced himself by his conduct to the lady. When he now heard, as he did hear, that some undefined suspicion was attached to his cousin,--and when he heard also, as unfortunately he did hear,--that Lord Fawn had encouraged that suspicion, he was very irate, and said grievous things of Lord Fawn. It seemed to him to be the extremity of cruelty that suspicion should be attached to his cousin because she had been robbed of her jewels. He was among those who were most severe in their denunciation of the police,--and was the more so, because he had heard it asserted that the necklace had not in truth been stolen. He busied himself very much in the matter, and even interrogated John Eustace as to his intentions. "My dear fellow," said Eustace, "if you hated those diamonds as much as I do, you would never mention them again." Greystock declared that this expression of aversion to the subject might be all very well for Mr. Eustace, but that he found himself bound to defend his cousin. "You cannot defend her against me," said Eustace, "for I do not attack her. I have never said a word against her. I went down to Portray when she asked me. As far as I am concerned she is perfectly welcome to wear the necklace, if she can get it back again. I will not make or meddle in the matter one way or the other." Frank, after that, went to Mr. Camperdown, but he could get no satisfaction from the attorney. Mr. Camperdown would only say that he had a duty to do, and that he must do it. On the matter of the robbery he refused to give an opinion. That was in the hands of the police. Should the diamonds be recovered, he would, of course, claim them on behalf of the estate. In his opinion, whether the diamonds were recovered or not, Lady Eustace was responsible to the estate for their value. In opposition, first to the entreaties, and then to the demands of her late husband's family, she had insisted on absurdly carrying about with her an enormous amount of property which did not belong to her. Mr. Camperdown opined that she must pay for the lost diamonds out of her jointure. Frank, in a huff, declared that, as far as he could see, the diamonds belonged to his cousin;--in answer to which Mr. Camperdown suggested that the question was one for the decision of the Vice-Chancellor. Frank Greystock found that he could do nothing with Mr. Camperdown, and felt that he could wreak his vengeance only on Lord Fawn. Bunfit, when he returned from Mrs. Carbuncle's house to Scotland Yard, had an interview with Major Mackintosh. "Well, Bunfit, have you seen the lady?" "Yes,--I did see her, sir." "And what came of it?" "She fainted away, sir--just as they always do." "There was no search, I suppose?" "No, sir;--no search. She wouldn't have it, unless her cousin, Mr. Greystock, permitted." "I didn't think she would." "Nor yet didn't I, sir. But I'll tell you what it is, major. She knows all about it." "You think she does, Bunfit?" "She does, sir; and she's got something locked up somewhere in that house as'd elucidate the whole of this aggravating mystery, if only we could get at it. Major,--" "Well, Bunfit?" "I ain't noways sure as she ain't got them very diamonds themselves locked up, or, perhaps, tied round her person." "Neither am I sure that she has not," said the major. "The robbery at Carlisle was no robbery," continued Bunfit. "It was a got-up plant, and about the best as I ever knowed. It's my mind that it was a got-up plant between her ladyship and his lordship; and either the one or the other is just keeping the diamonds till it's safe to take 'em into the market." CHAPTER L In Hertford Street During all this time Lucinda Roanoke was engaged to marry Sir Griffin Tewett, and the lover was an occasional visitor in Hertford Street. Mrs. Carbuncle was as anxious as ever that the marriage should be celebrated on the appointed day, and though there had been repeated quarrels, nothing had as yet taken place to make her despond. Sir Griffin would make some offensive speech; Lucinda would tell him that she had no desire ever to see him again; and then the baronet, usually under the instigation of Lord George, would make some awkward apology. Mrs. Carbuncle,--whose life at this period was not a pleasant one,--would behave on such occasions with great patience, and sometimes with great courage. Lizzie, who in her present emergency could not bear the idea of losing the assistance of any friend, was soft and graceful, and even gracious, to the bear. The bear himself certainly seemed to desire the marriage, though he would so often give offence which made any prospect of a marriage almost impossible. But with Sir Griffin, when the prize seemed to be lost, it again became valuable. He would talk about his passionate love to Mrs. Carbuncle, and to Lizzie,--and then, when things had been made straight for him, he would insult them, and neglect Lucinda. To Lucinda herself, however, he would rarely dare to say such words as he used daily to the other two ladies in the house. What could have been the man's own idea of his future married life, how can any reader be made to understand, or any writer adequately describe! He must have known that the woman despised him, and hated him. In the very bottom of his heart he feared her. He had no idea of other pleasure from her society than what might arise to him from the pride of having married a beautiful woman. Had she shown the slightest fondness for him, the slightest fear that she might lose him, the slightest feeling that she had won a valuable prize in getting him, he would have scorned her, and jilted her without the slightest remorse. But the scorn came from her, and it beat him down. "Yes;--you hate me, and would fain be rid of me; but you have said that you will be my wife, and you cannot now escape me." Sir Griffin did not exactly speak such words as these, but he acted them. Lucinda would bear his presence,--sitting apart from him, silent, imperious, but very beautiful. People said that she became more handsome from day to day, and she did so, in spite of her agony. Hers was a face which could stand such condition of the heart without fading or sinking under it. She did not weep, or lose her colour, or become thin. The pretty softness of a girl,--delicate feminine weakness, or laughing eyes and pouting lips, no one expected from her. Sir Griffin, in the early days of their acquaintance, had found her to be a woman with a character for beauty,--and she was now more beautiful than ever. He probably thought that he loved her; but, at any rate, he was determined that he would marry her. He had expressed himself more than once as very angry about this affair of the jewels. He had told Mrs. Carbuncle that her inmate, Lady Eustace, was suspected by the police, and that it might be well that Lady Eustace should be--be made to go, in fact. But it did not suit Mrs. Carbuncle that Lady Eustace should be made to go;--nor did it suit Lord George de Bruce Carruthers. Lord George, at Mrs. Carbuncle's instance, had snubbed Sir Griffin more than once, and then it came to pass that he was snubbed yet again more violently than before. He was at the house in Hertford Street on the day of Mr. Bunfit's visit, some hours after Mr. Bunfit was gone, when Lizzie was still lying on her bed up-stairs, nearly beaten by the great danger which had oppressed her. He was told of Mr. Bunfit's visit, and then again said that he thought that the continued residence of Lady Eustace beneath that roof was a misfortune. "Would you wish us to turn her out because her necklace has been stolen?" asked Mrs. Carbuncle. "People say very queer things," said Sir Griffin. "So they do, Sir Griffin," continued Mrs. Carbuncle. "They say such queer things that I can hardly understand that they should be allowed to say them. I am told that the police absolutely suggest that Lord George stole the diamonds." "That's nonsense." "No doubt, Sir Griffin. And so is the other nonsense. Do you mean to tell us that you believe that Lady Eustace stole her own diamonds?" "I don't see the use of having her here. Situated as I am, I have a right to object to it." "Situated as you are, Sir Griffin!" said Lucinda. "Well;--yes, of course; if we are to be married, I cannot but think a good deal of the persons you stay with." "You were very glad to stay yourself with Lady Eustace at Portray," said Lucinda. "I went there to follow you," said Sir Griffin gallantly. "I wish with all my heart you had stayed away," said Lucinda. At that moment Lord George was shown into the room, and Miss Roanoke continued speaking, determined that Lord George should know how the bear was conducting himself. "Sir Griffin is saying that my aunt ought to turn Lady Eustace out of the house." "Not quite that," said Sir Griffin with an attempt at laughter. "Quite that," said Lucinda. "I don't suppose that he suspects poor Lady Eustace, but he thinks that my aunt's friend should be like Caesar's wife, above the suspicion of others." "If you would mind your own business, Tewett," said Lord George, "it would be a deal better for us all. I wonder Mrs. Carbuncle does not turn you out of the room for making such a proposition here. If it were my room, I would." "I suppose I can say what I please to Mrs. Carbuncle? Miss Roanoke is not going to be your wife." "It is my belief that Miss Roanoke will be nobody's wife,--at any rate, for the present," said that young lady;--upon which Sir Griffin left the room, muttering some words which might have been, perhaps, intended for an adieu. Immediately after this, Lizzie came in, moving slowly, but without a sound, like a ghost, with pale cheeks and dishevelled hair, and that weary, worn look of illness which was become customary with her. She greeted Lord George with a faint attempt at a smile, and seated herself in a corner of a sofa. She asked whether he had been told the story of the proposed search, and then bade her friend Mrs. Carbuncle describe the scene. "If it goes on like this it will kill me," said Lizzie. "They are treating me in precisely the same way," said Lord George. "But think of your strength and of my weakness, Lord George." "By heavens, I don't know!" said Lord George. "In this matter your weakness is stronger than any strength of mine. I never was so cut up in my life. It was a good joke when we talked of the suspicions of that fellow at Carlisle as we came up by the railway,--but it is no joke now. I've had men with me, almost asking to search among my things." "They have quite asked me!" said Lizzie piteously. "You;--yes. But there's some reason in that. These infernal diamonds did belong to you, or, at any rate, you had them. You are the last person known to have seen them. Even if you had them still, you'd only have what you call your own." Lizzie looked at him with all her eyes and listened to him with all her ears. "But what the mischief can I have had to do with them?" "It's very hard upon you," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Unless I stole them," continued Lord George. "Which is so absurd, you know," said Lizzie. "That a pig-headed provincial fool should have taken me for a midnight thief, did not disturb me much. I don't think I am very easily annoyed by what other people think of me. But these fellows, I suppose, were sent here by the head of the metropolitan police; and everybody knows that they have been sent. Because I was civil enough to you women to look after you coming up to town, and because one of you was careless enough to lose her jewels, I--I am to be talked about all over London as the man who took them!" This was not spoken with much courtesy to the ladies present. Lord George had dropped that customary chivalry of manner which, in ordinary life, makes it to be quite out of the question that a man shall be uncivil to a woman. He had escaped from conventional usage into rough, truthful speech, under stress from the extremity of the hardship to which he had been subjected. And the women understood it and appreciated it, and liked it rather than otherwise. To Lizzie it seemed fitting that a Corsair so circumstanced should be as uncivil as he pleased; and Mrs. Carbuncle had long been accustomed to her friend's moods. "They can't really think it," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Somebody thinks it. I am told that your particular friend, Lord Fawn,"--this he said, specially addressing Lizzie,--"has expressed a strong opinion that I carry about the necklace always in my pocket. I trust to have the opportunity of wringing his neck some day." "I do so wish you would," said Lizzie. "I shall not lose a chance if I can get it. Before all this occurred I should have said of myself that nothing of the kind could put me out. I don't think there is a man in the world cares less what people say of him than I do. I am as indifferent to ordinary tittle-tattle as a rhinoceros. But, by George,--when it comes to stealing ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds, and the delicate attentions of all the metropolitan police, one begins to feel that one is vulnerable. When I get up in the morning, I half feel that I shall be locked up before night, and I can see in the eyes of every man I meet that he takes me for the prince of burglars!" "And it is all my fault," said Lizzie. "I wish the diamonds had been thrown into the sea," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "What do you think about them yourself?" asked Lucinda. "I don't know what to think. I'm at a dead loss. You know that man Mr. Benjamin, Lady Eustace?" Lizzie, with a little start, answered that she did,--that she had had dealings with him before her marriage, and had once owed him two or three hundred pounds. As the man's name had been mentioned, she thought it better to own as much. "So he tells me. Now, in all London, I don't suppose there is a greater rascal than Benjamin." "I didn't know that," said Lizzie. "But I did; and with that rascal I have had money dealings for the last six or seven years. He has cashed bills for me, and has my name to bills now,--and Sir Griffin's too. I'm half inclined to think that he has got the diamonds." "Do you indeed?" said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Mr. Benjamin!" said Lizzie. "And he returns the compliment." "How does he return it?" asked Mrs. Carbuncle. "He either thinks that I've got 'em, or he wants to make me believe that he thinks so. He hasn't dared to say it;--but that's his intention. Such an opinion from such a man on such a subject would be quite a compliment. And I feel it. But yet it troubles me. You know that greasy, Israelitish smile of his, Lady Eustace." Lizzie nodded her head and tried to smile. "When I asked him yesterday about the diamonds, he leered at me and rubbed his hands. 'It's a pretty little game;--ain't it, Lord George?' he said. I told him that I thought it a very bad game, and that I hoped the police would have the thief and the necklace soon. 'It's been managed a deal too well for that, Lord George;--don't you think so?'" Lord George mimicked the Jew as he repeated the words, and the ladies, of course, laughed. But poor Lizzie's attempt at laughter was very sorry. "I told him to his face that I thought he had them among his treasures. 'No, no, no, Lord George,' he said, and seemed quite to enjoy the joke. If he's got them himself, he can't think that I have them;--but if he has not, I don't doubt but he believes that I have. And I'll tell you another person who suspects me." "What fools they are," said Lizzie. "I don't know how that may be. Sir Griffin, Lucinda, isn't at all sure but what I have them in my pocket." "I can believe anything of him," said Lucinda. "And it seems he can believe anything of me. I shall begin to think soon that I did take them, myself,--or, at any rate, that I ought to have done so. I wonder what you three women think of it. If you do think I've got 'em, don't scruple to say so. I'm quite used to it, and it won't hurt me any further." The ladies again laughed. "You must have your suspicions," continued he. "I suppose some of the London thieves did get them," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "The police say the box was empty," said Lord George. "How can the police know?" asked Lucinda. "They weren't there to see. Of course, the thieves would say that they didn't take them." "What do you think, Lady Eustace?" "I don't know what to think. Perhaps Mr. Camperdown did it." "Or the Lord Chancellor," said Lord George. "One is just as likely as the other. I wish I could get at what you really think. The whole thing would be so complete if all you three suspected me. I can't get out of it all by going to Paris or Kamschatka, as I should have half a dozen detectives on my heels wherever I went. I must brazen it out here; and the worst of it is, that I feel that a look of guilt is creeping over me. I have a sort of conviction growing upon me that I shall be taken up and tried, and that a jury will find me guilty. I dream about it; and if,--as is probable,--it drives me mad, I'm sure that I shall accuse myself in my madness. There's a fascination about it that I can't explain or escape. I go on thinking how I would have done it if I did do it. I spend hours in calculating how much I would have realised, and where I would have found my market. I couldn't keep myself from asking Benjamin the other day how much they would be worth to him." "What did he say?" asked Lizzie, who sat gazing upon the Corsair, and who was now herself fascinated. Lord George was walking about the room, then sitting for a moment in one chair and again in another, and after a while leaning on the mantelpiece. In his speaking he addressed himself almost exclusively to Lizzie, who could not keep her eyes from his. "He grinned greasily," said the Corsair, "and told me they had already been offered to him once before by you." "That's false," said Lizzie. "Very likely. And then he said that no doubt they'd fall into his hands some day. 'Wouldn't it be a game, Lord George,' he said, 'if, after all, they should be no more than paste?' That made me think he had got them, and that he'd get paste diamonds put into the same setting,--and then give them up with some story of his own making. 'You'd know whether they were paste or not; wouldn't you, Lord George?' he asked." The Corsair, as he repeated Mr. Benjamin's words, imitated the Jew's manner so well, that he made Lizzie shudder. "While I was there, a detective named Gager came in." "The same man who came here, perhaps," suggested Mrs. Carbuncle. "I think not. He seemed to be quite intimate with Mr. Benjamin, and went on at once about the diamonds. Benjamin said that they'd made their way over to Paris, and that he'd heard of them. I found myself getting quite intimate with Mr. Gager, who seemed hardly to scruple at showing that he thought that Benjamin and I were confederates. Mr. Camperdown has offered four hundred pounds reward for the jewels,--to be paid on their surrender to the hands of Mr. Garnett, the jeweller. Gager declared that, if any ordinary thief had them, they would be given up at once for that sum." "That's true, I suppose," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "How would the ordinary thief get his money without being detected? Who would dare to walk into Garnett's shop with the diamonds in his hands and ask for the four hundred pounds? Besides, they have been sold to some one,--and, as I believe, to my dear friend, Mr. Benjamin. 'I suppose you ain't a-going anywhere just at present, Lord George?' said that fellow Gager. 'What the devil's that to you?' I asked him. He just laughed and shook his head. I don't doubt but that there's a policeman about waiting till I leave this house;--or looking at me now with a magnifying glass from the windows at the other side. They've photographed me while I'm going about, and published a list of every hair on my face in the 'Hue and Cry.' I dined at the club yesterday, and found a strange waiter. I feel certain that he was a policeman done up in livery all for my sake. I turned sharp round in the street yesterday, and found a man at a corner. I am sure that man was watching me, and was looking at my pockets to see whether the jewel case was there. As for myself, I can think of nothing else. I wish I had got them. I should have something then to pay me for all this nuisance." "I do wish you had," said Lizzie. "What I should do with them I cannot even imagine. I am always thinking of that, too,--making plans for getting rid of them, supposing I had stolen them. My belief is, that I should be so sick of them that I should chuck them over the bridge into the river,--only that I should fear that some policeman's eye would be on me as I did it. My present position is not comfortable,--but if I had got them, I think that the weight of them would crush me altogether. Having a handle to my name, and being a lord, or, at least, called a lord, makes it all the worse. People are so pleased to think that a lord should have stolen a necklace." Lizzie listened to it all with a strange fascination. If this strong man were so much upset by the bare suspicion, what must be her condition? The jewels were in her desk up-stairs, and the police had been with her also,--were even now probably looking after her and watching her. How much more difficult must it be for her to deal with the diamonds than it would have been for this man. Presently Mrs. Carbuncle left the room, and Lucinda followed her. Lizzie saw them go, and did not dare to go with them. She felt as though her limbs would not have carried her to the door. She was now alone with her Corsair; and she looked up timidly into his deep-set eyes, as he came and stood over her. "Tell me all that you know about it," he said, in that deep, low voice which, from her first acquaintance with him, had filled her with interest, and almost with awe. CHAPTER LI Confidence Lizzie Eustace was speechless as she continued to look up into the Corsair's face. She ought to have answered him briskly, either with indignation or with a touch of humour. But she could not answer him at all. She was desired to tell him all that she knew about the robbery, and she was unable to declare that she knew nothing. How much did he suspect? What did he believe? Had she been watched by Mrs. Carbuncle, and had something of the truth been told to him? And then would it not be better for her that he should know it all? Unsupported and alone she could not bear the trouble which was on her. If she were driven to tell her secret to any one, had she not better tell it to him? She knew that if she did so, she would be a creature in his hands to be dealt with as he pleased;--but would there not be a certain charm in being so mastered? He was but a pinchbeck lord. She had wit enough to know that; but then she had wit enough also to feel that she herself was but a pinchbeck lady. He would be fit for her, and she for him,--if only he would take her. Since her daydreams first began, she had been longing for a Corsair; and here he was, not kneeling at her feet, but standing over her,--as became a Corsair. At any rate he had mastered her now, and she could not speak to him. He waited perhaps a minute, looking at her, before he renewed his question; and the minute seemed to her to be an age. During every second her power beneath his gaze sank lower and lower. There gradually came a grim smile over his face, and she was sure that he could read her very heart. Then he called her by her Christian name,--as he had never called her before. "Come, Lizzie," he said, "you might as well tell me all about it. You know." "Know what?" The words were audible to him, though they were uttered in the lowest whisper. "About this d---- necklace. What is it all? Where are they? And how did you manage it?" "I didn't manage anything!" "But you know where they are?" He paused again, still gazing at her. Gradually there came across his face, or she fancied that it was so, a look of ferocity which thoroughly frightened her. If he should turn against her, and be leagued with the police against her, what chance would she have? "You know where they are," he said, repeating his words. Then at last she nodded her head, assenting to his assertion. "And where are they? Come;--out with it! If you won't tell me, you must tell some one else. There has been a deal too much of this already." "You won't betray me?" "Not if you deal openly with me." "I will; indeed I will. And it was all an accident. When I took them out of the box, I only did it for safety." "You did take them out of the box then?" Again she nodded her head. "And have got them now?" There was another nod. "And where are they? Come; with such a spirit of enterprise as yours you ought to be able to speak. Has Benjamin got them?" "Oh, no." "And he knows nothing about them?" "Nothing." "Then I have wronged in my thoughts that son of Abraham?" "Nobody knows anything," said Lizzie. "Not even Jane or Lucinda?" "Nothing at all." "Then you have kept your secret marvellously. And where are they?" "Up-stairs." "In your bed-room?" "In my desk in the little sitting-room." "The Lord be good to us!" ejaculated Lord George. "All the police in London, from the chief downwards, are agog about this necklace. Every well-known thief in the town is envied by every other thief because he is thought to have had a finger in the pie. I am suspected, and Mr. Benjamin is suspected; Sir Griffin is suspected, and half the jewellers in London and Paris are supposed to have the stones in their keeping. Every man and woman is talking about it, and people are quarrelling about it till they almost cut each other's throats; and all the while you have got them locked up in your desk! How on earth did you get the box broken open and then conveyed out of your room at Carlisle?" Then Lizzie, in a frightened whisper, with her eyes often turned on the floor, told the whole story. "If I'd had a minute to think of it," she said, "I would have confessed the truth at Carlisle. Why should I want to steal what was my own? But they came to me all so quickly, and I didn't like to say that I had them under my pillow." "I daresay not." "And then I couldn't tell anybody afterwards. I always meant to tell you,--from the very first; because I knew you would be good to me. They are my own. Surely I might do what I liked with my own?" "Well,--yes; in one way. But you see there was a lawsuit in Chancery going on about them; and then you committed perjury at Carlisle. And altogether,--it's not quite straight sailing, you know." "I suppose not." "Hardly. Major Mackintosh, and the magistrates, and Messrs. Bunfit and Gager won't settle down, peaceable and satisfied, when they hear the end of the story. And I think Messrs. Camperdown will have a bill against you. It's been uncommonly clever, but I don't see the use of it." "I've been very foolish," said Lizzie,--"but you won't desert me!" "Upon my word I don't know what I'm to do." "Will you have them,--as a present?" "Certainly not." "They're worth ever so much;--ten thousand pounds! And they are my own, to do just what I please with them." "You are very good;--but what should I do with them?" "Sell them." "Who'd buy them? And before a week was over I should be in prison, and in a couple of months should be standing at the Old Bailey at my trial. I couldn't just do that, my dear." "What will you do for me? You are my friend;--ain't you?" The diamond necklace was not a desirable possession in the eyes of Lord George de Bruce Carruthers;--but Portray Castle, with its income, and the fact that Lizzie Eustace was still a very young woman, was desirable. Her prettiness too was not altogether thrown away on Lord George,--though, as he was wont to say to himself, he was too old now to sacrifice much for such a toy as that. Something he must do,--if only because of the knowledge which had come to him. He could not go away and leave her, and neither say nor do anything in the matter. And he could not betray her to the police. "You will not desert me!" she said, taking hold of his hand, and kissing it as a suppliant. He passed his arm round her waist, but more as though she were a child than a woman, as he stood thinking. Of all the affairs in which he had ever been engaged, it was the most difficult. She submitted to his embrace, and leaned upon his shoulder, and looked up into his face. If he would only tell her that he loved her, then he would be bound to her,--then must he share with her the burthen of the diamonds,--then must he be true to her. "George!" she said, and burst into a low suppressed wailing, with her face hidden upon his arm. "That's all very well," said he, still holding her,--for she was pleasant to hold,--"but what the d---- is a fellow to do? I don't see my way out of it. I think you'd better go to Camperdown, and give them up to him, and tell him the truth." Then she sobbed more violently than before, till her quick ear caught the sound of a footstep on the stairs, and in a moment she was out of his arms and seated on the sofa, with hardly a trace of tears in her eyes. It was the footman, who desired to know whether Lady Eustace would want the carriage that afternoon. Lady Eustace, with her cheeriest voice, sent her love to Mrs. Carbuncle, and her assurance that she would not want the carriage before the evening. "I don't know that you can do anything else," continued Lord George, "except just give them up and brazen it out. I don't suppose they'd prosecute you." "Prosecute me!" ejaculated Lizzie. "For perjury, I mean." "And what could they do to me?" "Oh, I don't know. Lock you up for five years, perhaps." "Because I had my own necklace under the pillow in my own room?" "Think of all the trouble you've given." "I'll never give them up to Mr. Camperdown. They are mine;--my very own. My cousin, Mr. Greystock, who is much more of a lawyer than Mr. Camperdown, says so. Oh, George, do think of something! Don't tell me that I must give them up! Wouldn't Mr. Benjamin buy them?" "Yes;--for half nothing; and then go and tell the whole story and get money from the other side. You can't trust Benjamin." "But I can trust you." She clung to him and implored him, and did get from him a renewed promise that he would not reveal her secret. She wanted him to take the terrible packet from her there and then, and use his own judgment in disposing of it. But this he positively refused to do. He protested that they were safer with her than they could be with him. He explained to her that if they were found in his hands, his offence in having them in his possession would be much greater than hers. They were her own,--as she was ever so ready to assert; or if not her own, the ownership was so doubtful that she could not be accused of having stolen them. And then he needed to consider it all,--to sleep upon it,--before he could make up his mind what he would do. But there was one other trouble on her mind as to which he was called upon to give her counsel before he was allowed to leave her. She had told the detective officer that she would submit her boxes and desks to be searched if her cousin Frank should advise it. If the policeman were to return with her cousin while the diamonds were still in her desk, what should she do? He might come at any time; and then she would be bound to obey him. "And he thinks that they were stolen at Carlisle?" asked Lord George. "Of course he thinks so," said Lizzie, almost indignantly. "They would never ask to search your person," suggested Lord George. Lizzie could not say. She had simply declared that she would be guided by her cousin. "Have them about you when he comes. Don't take them out with you; but keep them in your pocket while you are in the house during the day. They will hardly bring a woman with them to search you." "But there was a woman with the man when he came before." "Then you must refuse in spite of your cousin. Show yourself angry with him and with everybody. Swear that you did not intend to submit yourself to such indignity as that. They can't do it without a magistrate's order, unless you permit it. I don't suppose they will come at all; and if they do they will only look at your clothes and your boxes. If they ask to do more, be stout with them and refuse. Of course they'll suspect you, but they do that already. And your cousin will suspect you;--but you must put up with that. It will be very bad;--but I see nothing better. But, of all things, say nothing of me." "Oh, no," said Lizzie, promising to be obedient to him. And then he took his leave of her. "You will be true to me;--will you not?" she said, still clinging to his arm. He promised her that he would. "Oh, George," she said, "I have no friend now but you. You will care for me?" He took her in his arms and kissed her, and promised her that he would care for her. How was he to save himself from doing so? When he was gone, Lizzie sat down to think of it all, and felt sure that at last she had found her Corsair. CHAPTER LII Mrs. Carbuncle Goes to the Theatre Mrs. Carbuncle and Lizzie Eustace did not, in these days, shut themselves up because there was trouble in the household. It would not have suited the creed of Mrs. Carbuncle on social matters to be shut up from the amusements of life. She had sacrificed too much in seeking them for that, and was too conscious of the price she paid for them. It was still mid-winter, but nevertheless there was generally some amusement arranged for every evening. Mrs. Carbuncle was very fond of the play, and made herself acquainted with every new piece as it came out. Every actor and actress of note on the stage was known to her, and she dealt freely in criticisms on their respective merits. The three ladies had a box at the Haymarket taken for this very evening, at which a new piece, "The Noble Jilt," from the hand of a very eminent author, was to be produced. Mrs. Carbuncle had talked a great deal about "The Noble Jilt," and could boast that she had discussed the merits of the two chief characters with the actor and actress who were to undertake them. Miss Talbot had assured her that the Margaret was altogether impracticable, and Mrs. Carbuncle was quite of the same opinion. And as for the hero, Steinmark,--it was a part that no man could play so as to obtain the sympathy of an audience. There was a second hero,--a Flemish Count,--tame as rain-water, Mrs. Carbuncle said. She was very anxious for the success of the piece, which, as she said, had its merits; but she was sure that it wouldn't do. She had talked about it a great deal, and now, when the evening came, she was not going to be deterred from seeing it by any trouble in reference to a diamond necklace. Lizzie, when she was left by Lord George, had many doubts on the subject,--whether she would go or stay at home. If he would have come to her, or her cousin Frank, or if, had it been possible, Lord Fawn would have come, she would have given up the play very willingly. But to be alone,--with her necklace in the desk up-stairs, or in her pocket, was terrible to her. And then, they could not search her or her boxes while she was at the theatre. She must not take the necklace with her there. He had told her to leave it in her desk, when she went from home. Lucinda, also, was quite determined that she would see the new piece. She declared to her aunt, in Lizzie's presence, without a vestige of a smile, that it might be well to see how a jilt could behave herself, so as to do her work of jilting in any noble fashion. "My dear," said her aunt, "you let things weigh upon your heart a great deal too much." "Not upon my heart, Aunt Jane," the young lady had answered. She also intended to go, and when she had made up her mind to anything, nothing would deter her. She had no desire to stay at home in order that she might see Sir Griffin. "I daresay the play may be very bad," she said, "but it can hardly be so bad as real life." Lizzie, when Lord George had left her, crept up-stairs, and sat for awhile thinking of her condition, with the key of her desk in her hand. Should there come a knock at the door, the case of diamonds would be in her pocket in a moment. Her own room door was bolted on the inside, so that she might have an instant for her preparation. She was quite resolved that she would carry out Lord George's recommendation, and that no policeman or woman should examine her person, unless it were done by violence. There she sat, almost expecting that at every moment her cousin would be there with Bunfit and the woman. But nobody came, and at six she went down to dinner. After much consideration she then left the diamonds in the desk. Surely no one would come to search at such an hour as that. No one had come when the carriage was announced, and the three ladies went off together. During the whole way Mrs. Carbuncle talked of the terrible situation in which poor Lord George was placed by the robbery, and of all that Lizzie owed him on account of his trouble. "My dear," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "the least you can do for him is to give him all that you've got to give." "I don't know that he wants me to give him anything," said Lizzie. "I think that's quite plain," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "and I'm sure I wish it may be so. He and I have been dear friends,--very dear friends, and there is nothing I wish so much as to see him properly settled. Ill-natured people like to say all manner of things because everybody does not choose to live in their own heartless, conventional form. But I can assure you there is nothing between me and Lord George which need prevent him from giving his whole heart to you." "I don't suppose there is," said Lizzie, who loved an opportunity of giving Mrs. Carbuncle a little rap. The play, as a play, was a failure; at least so said Mrs. Carbuncle. The critics, on the next morning, were somewhat divided,--not only in judgment, but as to facts. To say how a play has been received is of more moment than to speak of its own merits or of the merits of the actors. Three or four of the papers declared that the audience was not only eulogistic, but enthusiastic. One or two others averred that the piece fell very flatly. As it was not acted above four or five dozen times consecutively, it must be regarded as a failure. On their way home Mrs. Carbuncle declared that Minnie Talbot had done her very best with such a part as Margaret, but that the character afforded no scope for sympathy. "A noble jilt, my dears," said Mrs. Carbuncle eloquently, "is a contradiction in terms. There can be no such thing. A woman, when she has once said the word, is bound to stick to it. The delicacy of the female character should not admit of hesitation between two men. The idea is quite revolting." "But may not one have an idea of no man at all?"--asked Lucinda. "Must that be revolting also?" "Of course a young woman may entertain such an idea; though for my part I look upon it as unnatural. But when she has once given herself there can be no taking back without the loss of that aroma which should be the apple of a young woman's eye." "If she finds that she has made a mistake--?" said Lucinda fiercely. "Why shouldn't a young woman make a mistake as well as an old woman? Her aroma won't prevent her from having been wrong and finding it out." "My dear, such mistakes, as you call them, always arise from fantastic notions. Look at this piece. Why does the lady jilt her lover? Not because she doesn't like him. She's just as fond of him as ever." "He's a stupid sort of a fellow, and I think she was quite right," said Lizzie. "I'd never marry a man merely because I said I would. If I found I didn't like him, I'd leave him at the altar. If I found I didn't like him, I'd leave him even after the altar. I'd leave him any time I found I didn't like him. It's all very well to talk of aroma, but to live with a man you don't like--is the devil!" "My dear, those whom God has joined together shouldn't be separated,--for any mere likings or dislikings." This Mrs. Carbuncle said in a high tone of moral feeling, just as the carriage stopped at the door in Hertford Street. They at once perceived that the hall-door was open, and Mrs. Carbuncle, as she crossed the pavement, saw that there were two policemen in the hall. The footman had been with them to the theatre, but the cook and housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle's own maid, were with the policemen in the passage. She gave a little scream, and then Lizzie, who had followed her, seized her by the arm. She turned round and saw by the gas-light that Lizzie's face was white as a sheet, and that all the lines of her countenance were rigid and almost distorted. "Then she does know all about it!" said Mrs. Carbuncle to herself. Lizzie didn't speak, but still hung on to Mrs. Carbuncle's arm, and Lucinda, having seen how it was, was also supporting her. A policeman stepped forward and touched his hat. He was not Bunfit;--neither was he Gager. Indeed, though the ladies had not perceived the difference, he was not at all like Bunfit or Gager. This man was dressed in a policeman's uniform, whereas Bunfit and Gager always wore plain clothes. "My lady," said the policeman, addressing Mrs. Carbuncle, "there's been a robbery here." "A robbery!" ejaculated Mrs. Carbuncle. "Yes, my lady. The servants all out,--all to one; and she's off. They've taken jewels, and, no doubt, money, if there was any. They don't mostly come unless they know what they comes for." With a horrid spasm across her heart, which seemed ready to kill her, so sharp was the pain, Lizzie recovered the use of her legs and followed Mrs. Carbuncle into the dining-room. She had been hardly conscious of hearing; but she had heard, and it had seemed to her that the robbery spoken of was something distinct from her own affair. The policemen did not speak of having found the diamonds. It was of something lost that they spoke. She seated herself in a chair against the wall, but did not utter a word. "We've been up-stairs, my lady, and they've been in most of the rooms. There's a desk broke open,"--Lizzie gave an involuntary little scream;--"Yes, mum, a desk," continued the policeman turning to Lizzie, "and a bureau, and a dressing-case. What's gone your ladyship can tell when you sees. And one of the young women is off. It's she as done it." Then the cook explained. She and the housemaid, and Mrs. Carbuncle's lady's maid, had just stepped out, only round the corner, to get a little air, leaving Patience Crabstick in charge of the house; and when they came back, the area gate was locked against them, the front door was locked, and finding themselves unable to get in after many knockings, they had at last obtained the assistance of a policeman. He had got into the place over the area gate, had opened the front door from within, and then the robbery had been discovered. It was afterwards found that the servants had all gone out to what they called a tea-party, at a public-house in the neighbourhood, and that by previous agreement Patience Crabstick had remained in charge. When they came back Patience Crabstick was gone, and the desk, and bureau, and dressing-case, were found to have been opened. "She had a reg'lar thief along with her, my lady," said the policeman, still addressing himself to Mrs. Carbuncle,--"'cause of the way the things was opened." "I always knew that young woman was downright bad," said Mrs. Carbuncle in her first expression of wrath. But Lizzie sat in her chair without saying a word, still pale, with that almost awful look of agony in her face. Within ten minutes of their entering the house, Mrs. Carbuncle was making her way up-stairs, with the two policemen following her. That her bureau and her dressing-case should have been opened was dreadful to her, though the value that she could thus lose was very small. She also possessed diamonds,--but her diamonds were paste; and whatever jewellery she had of any value,--a few rings, and a brooch, and such like,--had been on her person in the theatre. What little money she had by her was in the drawing-room, and the drawing-room, as it seemed, had not been entered. In truth, all Mrs. Carbuncle's possessions in the house were not sufficient to have tempted a well-bred, well-instructed thief. But it behoved her to be indignant; and she could be indignant with grace, as the thief was discovered to be, not her maid, but Patience Crabstick. The policemen followed Mrs. Carbuncle, and the maids followed the policemen; but Lizzie Eustace kept her seat in the chair by the wall. "Do you think they have taken much of yours?" said Lucinda, coming up to her and speaking very gently. Lizzie made a motion with her two hands upon her heart, and struggled, and gasped,--as though she wished to speak but could not. "I suppose it is that girl who has done it all," said Lucinda. Lizzie nodded her head, and tried to smile. The attempt was so ghastly that Lucinda, though not timid by nature, was frightened. She sat down and took Lizzie's hand, and tried to comfort her. "It is very hard upon you," she said, "to be twice robbed." Lizzie again nodded her head. "I hope it is not much now. Shall we go up and see?" The poor creature did get upon her legs, but she gasped so terribly that Lucinda feared that she was dying. "Shall I send for some one?" she said. Lizzie made an effort to speak, was shaken convulsively while the other supported her, and then burst into a flood of tears. When that had come she was relieved, and could again act her part. "Yes," she said, "we will go with them. It is so dreadful;--is it not?" "Very dreadful;--but how much better that we weren't at home! Shall we go now?" Then together they followed the others, and on the stairs Lizzie explained that in her desk, of which she always carried the key round her neck, there was what money she had by her;--two ten-pound notes, and four five-pound notes, and three sovereigns;--in all, forty-three pounds. Her other jewels,--the jewels which she had possessed over and above the fatal diamond necklace,--were in her dressing-case. Patience, she did not doubt, had known that the money was there, and certainly knew of her jewels. So they went up-stairs. The desk was open and the money gone. Five or six rings and a bracelet had been taken also from Lizzie's dressing-case, which she had left open. Of Mrs. Carbuncle's property sufficient had been stolen to make a long list in that lady's handwriting. Lucinda Roanoke's room had not been entered,--as far as they could judge. The girl had taken the best of her own clothes, and a pair of strong boots belonging to the cook. A superintendent of police was there before they went to bed, and a list was made out. The superintendent was of opinion that the thing had been done very cleverly, but was of opinion that the thieves had expected to find more plunder. "They don't care so much about banknotes, my lady, because they fetches such a low price with them as they deal with. The three sovereigns is more to them than all the forty pounds in notes." The superintendent had heard of the diamond necklace, and expressed an opinion that poor Lady Eustace was especially marked out for misfortune. "It all comes of having such a girl as that about her," said Mrs. Carbuncle. The superintendent, who intended to be consolatory to Lizzie, expressed his opinion that it was very hard to know what a young woman was. "They looks as soft as butter, and they're as sly as foxes, and as quick, as quick--as quick as greased lightning, my lady." Such a piece of business as this which had just occurred, will make people intimate at a very short notice. And so the diamond necklace, known to be worth ten thousand pounds, had at last been stolen in earnest! Lizzie, when the policemen were gone, and the noise was over, and the house was closed, slunk away to her bedroom, refusing any aid in lieu of that of the wicked Patience. She herself had examined the desk beneath the eyes of her two friends and of the policemen, and had seen at once that the case was gone. The money was gone too, as she was rejoiced to find. She perceived at once that had the money been left,--the very leaving of it would have gone to prove that other prize had been there. But the money was gone,--money of which she had given a correct account;--and she could now honestly allege that she had been robbed. But she had at last really lost her great treasure;--and if the treasure should be found, then would she infallibly be exposed. She had talked twice of giving away her necklace, and had seriously thought of getting rid of it by burying it deep in the sea. But now that it was in very truth gone from her, the loss of it was horrible to her. Ten thousand pounds, for which she had struggled so much and borne so many things, which had come to be the prevailing fact of her life, gone from her for ever! Nevertheless it was not that sorrow, that regret, which had so nearly overpowered her in the dining-parlour. At that moment she hardly knew, had hardly thought, whether the diamonds had or had not been taken. But the feeling came upon her at once that her own disgrace was every hour being brought nearer to her. Her secret was no longer quite her own. One man knew it, and he had talked to her of perjury and of five years' imprisonment. Patience must have known it, too; and now some one else also knew it. The police, of course, would find it out, and then horrid words would be used against her. She hardly knew what perjury was. It sounded like forgery and burglary. To stand up before a judge and be tried,--and then to be locked up for five years in prison--! What an end would this be to all her glorious success? And what evil had she done to merit all this terrible punishment? When they came to her in her bedroom at Carlisle she had simply been too much frightened to tell them all that the necklace was at that moment under her pillow. She tried to think of it all, and to form some idea in her mind of what might be the truth. Of course, Patience Crabstick had known her secret, but how long had the girl known it? And how had the girl discovered it? She was almost certain, from certain circumstances, from words which the girl had spoken, and from signs which she had observed, that Patience had not even suspected that the necklace had been brought with them from Carlisle to London. Of course, the coming of Bunfit and the woman would have set the girl's mind to work in that direction; but then Bunfit and the woman had only been there on that morning. The Corsair knew the facts, and no one but the Corsair. That the Corsair was a Corsair, the suspicions of the police had proved to her. She had offered the necklace to the Corsair; but when so offered, he had refused to take it. She could understand that he should see the danger of accepting the diamonds from her hand, and yet should be desirous of having them. And might not he have thought that he could best relieve her from the burthen of their custody in this manner? She felt no anger against the Corsair as she weighed the probability of his having taken them in this fashion. A Corsair must be a Corsair. Were he to come to her and confess the deed, she would almost like him the better for it,--admiring his skill and enterprise. But how very clever he must have been, and how brave! He had known, no doubt, that the three ladies were all going to the theatre; but in how short a time had he got rid of the other women and availed himself of the services of Patience Crabstick! But in what way would she conduct herself when the police should come to her on the following morning,--the police and all the other people who would crowd to the house? How should she receive her cousin Frank? How should she look when the coincidence of the double robbery should be spoken of in her hearing? How should she bear herself when, as of course would be the case, she should again be taken before the magistrates, and made to swear as to the loss of her property? Must she commit more perjury, with the certainty that various people must know that her oath was false? All the world would suspect her. All the world would soon know the truth. Might it not be possible that the diamonds were at this moment in the hands of Messrs. Camperdown, and that they would be produced before her eyes, as soon as her second false oath had been registered against her? And yet how could she tell the truth? And what would the Corsair think of her,--the Corsair, who would know everything? She made one resolution during the night. She would not be taken into court. The magistrates and the people might come to her, but she would not go before them. When the morning came she said that she was ill, and refused to leave her bed. Policemen, she knew, were in the house early. At about nine Mrs. Carbuncle and Lucinda were up and in her room. The excitement of the affair had taken them from their beds,--but she would not stir. If it were absolutely necessary, she said, the men must come into her room. She had been so overset by what had occurred on the previous night, that she could not leave her room. She appealed to Lucinda as to the fact of her illness. The trouble of these robberies was so great upon her that her heart was almost broken. If her deposition must be taken, she would make it in bed. In the course of the day the magistrate did come into her room and the deposition was taken. Forty-three pounds had been taken from her desk, and certain jewels, which she described, from her dressing-case. As far as she was aware, no other property of hers was missing. This she said in answer to a direct question from the magistrate, which, as she thought, was asked with a stern voice and searching eye. And so, a second time, she had sworn falsely. But this at least was gained,--that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers was not looking at her as she swore. Lord George was in the house for a great part of the day, but he did not ask to be admitted to Lizzie's room;--nor did she ask to see him. Frank Greystock was there late in the afternoon, and went up at once to his cousin. The moment that she saw him she stretched out her arms to him, and burst into tears. "My poor girl," said he, "what is the meaning of it all?" "I don't know. I think they will kill me. They want to kill me. How can I bear it all? The robbers were here last night, and magistrates and policemen and people have been here all day." Then she fell into a fit of sobbing and wailing, which was, in truth, hysterical. For,--if the readers think of it,--the poor woman had a great deal to bear. Frank, into whose mind no glimmer of suspicion against his cousin had yet entered, and who firmly believed that she had been made a victim because of the value of her diamonds,--and who had a theory of his own about the robbery at Carlisle, to the circumstances of which he was now at some pains to make these latter circumstances adhere,--was very tender with his cousin, and remained in the house for more than an hour. "Oh, Frank, what had I better do?" she asked him. "I would leave London, if I were you." "Yes;--of course. I will. Oh yes, I will!" "If you don't fear the cold of Scotland--" "I fear nothing,--nothing but being where these policemen can come to me. Oh!"--and then she shuddered and was again hysterical. Nor was she acting the condition. As she remembered the magistrates, and the detectives, and the policemen in their uniforms,--and reflected that she might probably see much more of them before the game was played out, the thoughts that crowded on her were almost more than she could bear. "Your child is there, and it is your own house. Go there till all this passes by." Whereupon she promised him that, as soon as she was well enough, she would at once go to Scotland. In the meantime, the Eustace diamonds were locked up in a small safe fixed into the wall at the back of a small cellar beneath the establishment of Messrs. Harter and Benjamin, in Minto Lane, in the City. Messrs. Harter and Benjamin always kept a second place of business. Their great shop was at the West-end; but they had accommodation in the City. The chronicler states this at once, as he scorns to keep from his reader any secret that is known to himself. CHAPTER LIII Lizzie's Sick-Room When the Hertford Street robbery was three days old, and was still the talk of all the town, Lizzie Eustace was really ill. She had promised to go down to Scotland in compliance with the advice given to her by her cousin Frank, and at the moment of promising would have been willing enough to be transported at once to Portray, had that been possible--so as to be beyond the visits of policemen and the authority of lawyers and magistrates; but as the hours passed over her head, and as her presence of mind returned to her, she remembered that even at Portray she would not be out of danger, and that she could do nothing in furtherance of her plans if once immured there. Lord George was in London, Frank Greystock was in London, and Lord Fawn was in London. It was more than ever necessary to her that she should find a husband among them,--a husband who would not be less her husband when the truth of that business at Carlisle should be known to all the world. She had, in fact, stolen nothing. She endeavoured to comfort herself by repeating to herself over and over again that assurance. She had stolen nothing; and she still thought that if she could obtain the support of some strong arm on which to lean, she might escape punishment for those false oaths which she had sworn. Her husband might take her abroad, and the whole thing would die away. If she should succeed with Lord George, of course he would take her abroad, and there would be no need for any speedy return. They might roam among islands in pleasant warm suns, and the dreams of her youth might be realised. Her income was still her own. They could not touch that. So she thought, at least,--oppressed by some slight want of assurance in that respect. Were she to go at once to Scotland, she must for the present give up that game altogether. If Frank would pledge himself to become her husband in three or four, or even in six months, she would go at once. She had more confidence in Frank than even in Lord George. As for love,--she would sometimes tell herself that she was violently in love; but she hardly knew with which. Lord George was certainly the best representative of that perfect Corsair which her dreams had represented to her; but, in regard to working life, she thought that she liked her cousin Frank better than she had ever yet liked any other human being. But, in truth, she was now in that condition, as she acknowledged to herself, that she was hardly entitled to choose. Lord Fawn had promised to marry her, and to him as a husband she conceived that she still had a right. Nothing had as yet been proved against her which could justify him in repudiating his engagement. She had, no doubt, asserted with all vehemence to her cousin that no consideration would now induce her to give her hand to Lord Fawn;--and when making that assurance she had been, after her nature, sincere. But circumstances were changed since that. She had not much hope that Lord Fawn might be made to succumb,--though evidence had reached her before the last robbery which induced her to believe that he did not consider himself to be quite secure. In these circumstances she was unwilling to leave London though she had promised, and was hardly sorry to find an excuse in her recognised illness. And she was ill. Though her mind was again at work with schemes on which she would not have busied herself without hope, yet she had not recovered from the actual bodily prostration to which she had been compelled to give way when first told of the robbery on her return from the theatre. There had been moments then in which she thought that her heart would have broken,--moments in which, but that the power of speech was wanting, she would have told everything to Lucinda Roanoke. When Mrs. Carbuncle was marching up-stairs with the policemen at her heels she would have willingly sold all her hopes, Portray Castle, her lovers, her necklace, her income, her beauty, for any assurance of the humblest security. With that quickness of intellect which was her peculiar gift, she had soon understood, in the midst of her sufferings, that her necklace had been taken by thieves whose robbery might assist her for a while in keeping her secret, rather than lead to the immediate divulging of it. Neither Camperdown nor Bunfit had been at work among the boxes. Her secret had been discovered, no doubt, by Patience Crabstick, and the diamonds were gone. But money also was taken, and the world need not know that the diamonds had been there. But Lord George knew. And then there arose to her that question: Had the diamonds been taken in consequence of that revelation to Lord George? It was not surprising that in the midst of all this Lizzie should be really ill. She was most anxious to see Lord George; but, if what Mrs. Carbuncle said to her was true, Lord George refused to see her. She did not believe Mrs. Carbuncle, and was, therefore, quite in the dark about her Corsair. As she could only communicate with him through Mrs. Carbuncle, it might well be the case that he should have been told that he could not have access to her. Of course there were difficulties. That her cousin Frank should see her in her bedroom,--her cousin Frank, with whom it was essentially necessary that she should hold counsel as to her present great difficulties,--was a matter of course. There was no hesitation about that. A fresh nightcap, and a clean pocket-handkerchief with a bit of lace round it, and, perhaps, some pretty covering to her shoulders if she were to be required to sit up in bed, and the thing was arranged. He might have spent the best part of his days in her bedroom if he could have spared the time. But the Corsair was not a cousin,--nor as yet an acknowledged lover. There was difficulty even in framing a reason for her request, when she made it to Mrs. Carbuncle; and the very reason which she gave was handed back to her as the Corsair's reason for not coming to her. She desired to see him because he had been so much mixed up in the matter of these terrible robberies. But Mrs. Carbuncle declared to her that Lord George would not come to her because his name had been so frequently mentioned in connexion with the diamonds. "You see, my dear," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "there can be no real reason for his seeing you up in your bedroom. If there had been anything between you, as I once thought there would--" There was something in the tone of Mrs. Carbuncle's voice which grated on Lizzie's ear,--something which seemed to imply that all that prospect was over. "Of course," said Lizzie querulously, "I am very anxious to know what he thinks. I care more about his opinion than anybody else's. As to his name being mixed up in it,--that is all a joke." "It has been no joke to him, I can assure you," said Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie could not press her request. Of course, she knew more about it than did Mrs. Carbuncle. The secret was in her own bosom,--the secret as to the midnight robbery at Carlisle, and that secret she had told to Lord George. As to the robbery in London she knew nothing,--except that it had been perpetrated through the treachery of Patience Crabstick. Did Lord George know more about it than she knew?--and if so, was he now deterred by that knowledge from visiting her? "You see, my dear," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "that a gentleman visiting a lady with whom he has no connexion, in her bedroom, is in itself something very peculiar." Lizzie made a motion of impatience under the bedclothes. Any such argument was trash to her, and she knew that it was trash to Mrs. Carbuncle also. What was one man in her bedroom more than another? She could see a dozen doctors if she pleased, and if so, why not this man, whose real powers of doctoring her would be so much more efficacious? "You would want to see him alone, too," continued Mrs. Carbuncle, "and, of course, the police would hear of it. I am not at all surprised that he should stay away." Lizzie's condition did not admit of much argument on her side, and she only showed her opposition to Mrs. Carbuncle by being cross and querulous. Frank Greystock came to her with great constancy almost every day, and from him she did hear about the robbery all that he knew or heard. When three days had passed,--when six days, and even when ten days were gone, nobody had been as yet arrested. The police, according to Frank, were much on the alert, but were very secret. They either would not, or could not, tell anything. To him the two robberies, that at Carlisle and the last affair in Hertford Street, were of course distinct. There were those who believed that the Hertford Street thieves and the Carlisle thieves were not only the same, but that they had been in quest of the same plunder,--and had at last succeeded. But Frank was not one of these. He never for a moment doubted that the diamonds had been taken at Carlisle, and explained the second robbery by the supposition that Patience Crabstick had been emboldened by success. The iron box had no doubt been taken by her assistance, and her familiarity with the thieves, then established, had led to the second robbery. Lizzie's loss in that second robbery had amounted to some hundred pounds. This was Frank Greystock's theory, and of course it was one very comfortable to Lizzie. "They all seem to think that the diamonds are at Paris," he said to her one day. "If you only knew how little I care about them. It seems as though I had almost forgotten them in these after troubles." "Mr. Camperdown cares about them. I'm told he says that he can make you pay for them out of your jointure." "That would be very terrible, of course," said Lizzie, to whose mind there was something consolatory in the idea that the whole affair of the robbery might perhaps remain so mysterious as to remove her from the danger of other punishment than this. "I feel sure that he couldn't do it," said Frank, "and I don't think he'll try it. John Eustace would not let him. It would be persecution." "Mr. Camperdown has always chosen to persecute me," said Lizzie. "I can understand that he shouldn't like the loss of the diamonds. I don't think, Lizzie, you ever realised their true value." "I suppose not. After all, a necklace is only a necklace. I cared nothing for it,--except that I could not bear the idea that that man should dictate to me. I would have given it up at once, at the slightest word from you." He did not care to remind her then, as she lay in bed, that he had been very urgent in his advice to her to abandon the diamonds,--and not the less urgent because he had thought that the demand for them was unjust. "I told you often," she continued, "that I was tempted to throw them among the waves. It was true;--quite true. I offered to give them to you, and should have been delighted to have been relieved from them." "That was, of course, simply impossible." "I know it was;--impossible on your part; but I would have been delighted. Of what use were they to me? I wore them twice because that man,"--meaning Lord Fawn,--"disputed my right to them. Before that I never even looked at them. Do you think I had pleasure in wearing them, or pleasure in looking at them? Never. They were only a trouble to me. It was a point of honour with me to keep them, because I was attacked. But I am glad they are gone,--thoroughly glad." This was all very well, and was not without its effect on Frank Greystock. It is hardly expected of a woman in such a condition, with so many troubles on her mind, who had been so persecuted, that every word uttered by her should be strictly true. Lizzie, with her fresh nightcap, and her laced handkerchief, pale, and with her eyes just glittering with tears, was very pretty. "Didn't somebody once give some one a garment which scorched him up when he wore it,--some woman who sent it because she loved the man so much?" "The shirt, you mean, which Dejanira sent to Hercules. Yes;--Hercules was a good deal scorched." "And that necklace, which my husband gave me because he loved me so well, has scorched me horribly. It has nearly killed me. It has been like the white elephant which the Eastern king gives to his subject when he means to ruin him. Only poor Florian didn't mean to hurt me. He gave it all in love. If these people bring a lawsuit against me, Frank, you must manage it for me." "There will be no lawsuit. Your brother-in-law will stop it." "I wonder who will really get the diamonds after all, Frank? They were very valuable. Only think that the ten thousand pounds should disappear in such a way!" The subject was a very dangerous one, but there was a fascination about it which made it impossible for her to refrain from it. "A dishonest dealer in diamonds will probably realise the plunder,--after some years. There would be something very alluring in the theft of articles of great value, were it not that, when got, they at once become almost valueless by the difficulty of dealing with them. Supposing I had the necklace!" "I wish you had, Frank." "I could do nothing with it. Ten sovereigns would go further with me,--or ten shillings. The burthen of possessing it would in itself be almost more than I could bear. The knowledge that I had the thing, and might be discovered in having it, would drive me mad. By my own weakness I should be compelled to tell my secret to some one. And then I should never sleep for fear my partner in the matter should turn against me." How well she understood it all! How probable it was that Lord George should turn against her! How exact was Frank's description of that burthen of a secret so heavy that it cannot be borne alone! "A little reflection," continued Frank, "soon convinces a man that rough downright stealing is an awkward, foolish trade; and it therefore falls into the hands of those who want education for the higher efforts of dishonesty. To get into a bank at midnight and steal what little there may be in the till, or even an armful of bank-notes, with the probability of a policeman catching you as you creep out of the chimney and through a hole, is clumsy work; but to walk in amidst the smiles and bows of admiring managers and draw out money over the counter by thousands and tens of thousands, which you have never put in and which you can never repay, and which, when all is done, you have only borrowed;--that is a great feat." "Do you really think so?" "The courage, the ingenuity, and the self-confidence needed are certainly admirable. And then there is a cringing and almost contemptible littleness about honesty, which hardly allows it to assert itself. The really honest man can never say a word to make those who don't know of his honesty believe that it is there. He has one foot in the grave before his neighbours have learned that he is possessed of an article for the use of which they would so willingly have paid, could they have been made to see that it was there. The dishonest man almost doubts whether in him dishonesty is dishonest, let it be practised ever so widely. The honest man almost doubts whether his honesty be honest, unless it be kept hidden. Let two unknown men be competitors for any place, with nothing to guide the judges but their own words and their own looks, and who can doubt but the dishonest man would be chosen rather than the honest? Honesty goes about with a hang-dog look about him, as though knowing that he cannot be trusted till he be proved. Dishonesty carries his eyes high, and assumes that any question respecting him must be considered to be unnecessary." "Oh, Frank, what a philosopher you are." "Well, yes; meditating about your diamonds has brought my philosophy out. When do you think you will go to Scotland?" "I am hardly strong enough for the journey yet. I fear the cold so much." "You would not find it cold there by the sea-side. To tell you the truth, Lizzie, I want to get you out of this house. I don't mean to say a word against Mrs. Carbuncle; but after all that has occurred, it would be better that you should be away. People talk about you and Lord George." "How can I help it, Frank?" "By going away;--that is, if I may presume one thing. I don't want to pry into your secrets." "I have none from you." "Unless there be truth in the assertion that you are engaged to marry Lord George Carruthers." "There is no truth in it." "And you do not wish to stay here in order that there may be an engagement? I am obliged to ask you home questions, Lizzie, as I could not otherwise advise you." "You do, indeed, ask home questions." "I will desist at once, if they be disagreeable." "Frank, you are false to me!" As she said this she rose in her bed, and sat with her eyes fixed upon his, and her thin hands stretched out upon the bedclothes. "You know that I cannot wish to be engaged to him or to any other man. You know, better almost than I can know myself, how my heart stands. There has, at any rate, been no hypocrisy with me in regard to you. Everything has been told to you;--at what cost I will not now say. The honest woman, I fear, fares worse even than the honest man of whom you spoke. I think you admitted that he would be appreciated at last. She to her dying day must pay the penalty of her transgressions. Honesty in a woman the world never forgives." When she had done speaking, he sat silent by her bedside, but, almost unconsciously, he stretched out his left hand and took her right hand in his. For a few seconds she admitted this, and she lay there with their hands clasped. Then with a start she drew back her arm, and retreated as it were from his touch. "How dare you," she said, "press my hand, when you know that such pressure from you is treacherous and damnable!" "Damnable, Lizzie!" "Yes;--damnable. I will not pick my words for you. Coming from you, what does such pressure mean?" "Affection." "Yes;--and of what sort? You are wicked enough to feed my love by such tokens, when you know that you do not mean to return it. Oh, Frank, Frank, will you give me back my heart? What was it that you promised me when we sat together upon the rocks at Portray?" It is inexpressibly difficult for a man to refuse the tender of a woman's love. We may almost say that a man should do so as a matter of course,--that the thing so offered becomes absolutely valueless by the offer,--that the woman who can make it has put herself out of court by her own abandonment of the privileges due to her as a woman,--that stern rebuke and even expressed contempt are justified by such conduct,--and that the fairest beauty and most alluring charms of feminine grace should lose their attraction when thus tendered openly in the market. No doubt such is our theory as to love and love-making. But the action to be taken by us in matters as to which the plainest theory prevails for the guidance of our practice, depends so frequently on accompanying circumstances and correlative issues, that the theory, as often as not, falls to the ground. Frank could not despise this woman, and could not be stern to her. He could not bring himself to tell her boldly that he would have nothing to say to her in the way of love. He made excuses for her, and persuaded himself that there were peculiar circumstances in her position justifying unwomanly conduct, although, had he examined himself on the subject, he would have found it difficult to say what those circumstances were. She was rich, beautiful, clever,--and he was flattered. Nevertheless he knew that he could not marry her;--and he knew also that much as he liked her he did not love her. "Lizzie," he said, "I think you hardly understand my position." "Yes, I do. That little girl has cozened you out of a promise." "If it be so, you would not have me break it." "Yes, I would, if you think she is not fit to be your wife. Is a man such as you are, to be tied by the leg for life, have all his ambition clipped, and his high hopes shipwrecked, because a girl has been clever enough to extract a word from him? Is it not true that you are in debt?" "What of that? At any rate, Lizzie, I do not want help from you." "That is so like a man's pride! Do we not all know that in such a career as you have marked out for yourself, wealth, or at any rate an easy income, is necessary? Do you think that I cannot put two and two together? Do you believe so meanly of me as to imagine that I should have said to you what I have said, if I did not know that I could help you? A man, I believe, cannot understand that love which induces a woman to sacrifice her pride simply for his advantage. I want to see you prosper. I want to see you a great man and a lord, and I know that you cannot become so without an income. Ah, I wish I could give you all that I have got, and save you from the encumbrance that is attached to it!" It might be that he would then have told her of his engagement to Lucy, and of his resolution to adhere to that promise, had not Mrs. Carbuncle at that moment entered the room. Frank had been there for above an hour, and as Lizzie was still an invalid, and to some extent under the care of Mrs. Carbuncle, it was natural that that lady should interfere. "You know, my dear, you should not exhaust yourself altogether. Mr. Emilius is to come to you this afternoon." "Mr. Emilius!" said Greystock. "Yes;--the clergyman. Don't you remember him at Portray? A dark man with eyes close together! You used to be very wicked, and say that he was once a Jew-boy in the streets." Lizzie, as she spoke of her spiritual guide, was evidently not desirous of doing him much honour. "I remember him well enough. He made sheep's eyes at Miss Macnulty, and drank a great deal of wine at dinner." "Poor Macnulty! I don't believe a word about the wine; and as for Macnulty, I don't see why she should not be converted as well as another. He is coming here to read to me. I hope you don't object." "Not in the least;--if you like it." "One does have solemn thoughts sometimes, Frank,--especially when one is ill." "Oh, yes. Well or ill, one does have solemn thoughts;--ghosts, as it were, which will appear. But is Mr. Emilius good at laying such apparitions?" "He is a clergyman, Mr. Greystock," said Mrs. Carbuncle, with something of rebuke in her voice. "So they tell me. I was not present at his ordination, but I daresay it was done according to rule. When one reflects what a deal of harm a bishop may do, one wishes that there was some surer way of getting bishops." "Do you know anything against Mr. Emilius?" asked Lizzie. "Nothing at all but his looks, and manners, and voice,--unless it be that he preaches popular sermons, and drinks too much wine, and makes sheep's eyes at Miss Macnulty. Look after your silver spoons, Mrs. Carbuncle,--if the last thieves have left you any. You were asking after the fate of your diamonds, Lizzie. Perhaps they will endow a Protestant church in Mr. Emilius's native land." Mr. Emilius did come and read to Lady Eustace that afternoon. A clergyman is as privileged to enter the bedroom of a sick lady as is a doctor or a cousin. There was another clean cap, and another laced handkerchief, and on this occasion a little shawl over Lizzie's shoulders. Mr. Emilius first said a prayer, kneeling at Lizzie's bedside; then he read a chapter in the Bible;--and after that he read the first half of the fourth canto of Childe Harold so well, that Lizzie felt for the moment that after all, poetry was life and life was poetry. CHAPTER LIV "I Suppose I May Say a Word" The second robbery to which Lady Eustace had been subjected by no means decreased the interest which was attached to her and her concerns in the fashionable world. Parliament had now met, and the party at Matching Priory,--Lady Glencora Palliser's party in the country,--had been to some extent broken up. All those gentlemen who were engaged in the service of Her Majesty's Government had necessarily gone to London, and they who had wives at Matching had taken their wives with them. Mr. and Mrs. Bonteen had seen the last of their holiday; Mr. Palliser himself was, of course, at his post; and all the private secretaries were with the public secretaries on the scene of action. On the 13th of February Mr. Palliser made his first great statement in Parliament on the matter of the five-farthinged penny, and pledged himself to do his very best to carry that stupendous measure through Parliament in the present session. The City men who were in the House that night,--and all the Directors of the Bank of England were in the gallery, and every chairman of a great banking company, and every Baring and every Rothschild, if there be Barings and Rothschilds who have not been returned by constituencies, and have not seats in the House by right,--agreed in declaring that the job in hand was too much for any one member or any one session. Some said that such a measure never could be passed, because the unfinished work of one session could not be used in lessening the labours of the next. Everything must be recommenced; and therefore,--so said these hopeless ones,--the penny with five farthings, the penny of which a hundred would make ten shillings, the halcyon penny, which would make all future pecuniary calculations easy to the meanest British capacity, could never become the law of the land. Others, more hopeful, were willing to believe that gradually the thing would so sink into the minds of members of Parliament, of writers of leading articles, and of the active public generally, as to admit of certain established axioms being taken as established, and placed, as it were, beyond the procrastinating power of debate. It might, for instance, at last be taken for granted that a decimal system was desirable,--so that a month or two of the spring need not be consumed on that preliminary question. But this period had not as yet been reached, and it was thought by the entire City that Mr. Palliser was much too sanguine. It was so probable, many said, that he might kill himself by labour which would be Herculean in all but success, and that no financier after him would venture to face the task. It behoved Lady Glencora to see that her Hercules did not kill himself. In this state of affairs Lady Glencora,--into whose hands the custody of Mr. Palliser's uncle, the duke, had now altogether fallen,--had a divided duty between Matching and London. When the members of Parliament went up to London, she went there also, leaving some half-dozen friends whom she could trust to amuse the duke; but she soon returned, knowing that there might be danger in a long absence. The duke, though old, was his own master; he much affected the company of Madame Goesler, and that lady's kindness to him was considerate and incessant; but there might still be danger, and Lady Glencora felt that she was responsible that the old nobleman should do nothing, in the feebleness of age, to derogate from the splendour of his past life. What if some day his grace should be off to Paris and insist on making Madame Goesler a duchess in the chapel of the Embassy! Madame Goesler had hitherto behaved very well;--would probably continue to behave well. Lady Glencora really loved Madame Goesler. But then the interests at stake were very great! So circumstanced, Lady Glencora found herself compelled to be often on the road between Matching and London. But though she was burthened with great care, Lady Glencora by no means dropped her interest in the Eustace diamonds; and when she learned that on the top of the great Carlisle robbery a second robbery had been superadded, and that this had been achieved while all the London police were yet astray about the former operation, her solicitude was of course enhanced. The duke himself, too, took the matter up so strongly, that he almost wanted to be carried up to London, with some view, as it was supposed by the ladies who were so good to him, of seeing Lady Eustace personally. "It's out of the question, my dear," Lady Glencora said to Madame Goesler, when the duke's fancy was first mentioned to her by that lady. "I told him that the trouble would be too much for him." "Of course it would be too much," said Lady Glencora. "It is quite out of the question." Then, after a moment, she added in a whisper, "Who knows but what he'd insist on marrying her! It isn't every woman that can resist temptation." Madame Goesler smiled, and shook her head, but made no answer to Lady Glencora's suggestion. Lady Glencora assured her uncle that everything should be told to him. She would write about it daily, and send him the latest news by the wires if the post should be too slow. "Ah;--yes," said the duke; "I like telegrams best. I think, you know, that that Lord George Carruthers has had something to do with it. Don't you, Madame Goesler?" It had long been evident that the duke was anxious that one of his own order should be proved to have been the thief, as the plunder taken was so lordly. In regard to Lizzie herself, Lady Glencora, on her return to London, took it into her head to make a diversion in our heroine's favour. It had hitherto been a matter of faith with all the Liberal party that Lady Eustace had had something to do with stealing her own diamonds. That esprit de corps which is the glorious characteristic of English statesmen had caused the whole Government to support Lord Fawn, and Lord Fawn could only be supported on the supposition that Lizzie Eustace had been a wicked culprit. But Lady Glencora, though very true as a politician, was apt to have opinions of her own, and to take certain flights in which she chose that others of the party should follow her. She now expressed an opinion that Lady Eustace was a victim, and all the Mrs. Bonteens, with some even of the Mr. Bonteens, found themselves compelled to agree with her. She stood too high among her set to be subject to that obedience which restrained others,--too high, also, for others to resist her leading. As a member of a party she was erratic and dangerous, but from her position and peculiar temperament she was powerful. When she declared that poor Lady Eustace was a victim, others were obliged to say so too. This was particularly hard upon Lord Fawn, and the more so as Lady Glencora took upon her to assert that Lord Fawn had no right to jilt the young woman. And Lady Glencora had this to support her views,--that, for the last week past, indeed ever since the depositions which had been taken after the robbery in Hertford Street, the police had expressed no fresh suspicions in regard to Lizzie Eustace. She heard daily from Barrington Erle that Major Mackintosh and Bunfit and Gager were as active as ever in their inquiries, that all Scotland Yard was determined to unravel the mystery, and that there were emissaries at work tracking the diamonds at Hamburg, Paris, Vienna, and New York. It had been whispered to Mr. Erle that the whereabouts of Patience Crabstick had been discovered, and that many of the leading thieves in London were assisting the police;--but nothing more was done in the way of fixing any guilt upon Lizzie Eustace. "Upon my word, I am beginning to think that she has been more sinned against than sinning." This was said to Lady Glencora on the morning after Mr. Palliser's great speech about the five farthings, by Barrington Erle, who, as it seemed, had been specially told off by the party to watch this investigation. "I am sure she has had nothing to do with it. I have thought so ever since the last robbery. Sir Simon Slope told me yesterday afternoon that Mr. Camperdown has given it up altogether." Sir Simon Slope was the Solicitor-General of that day. "It would be absurd for him to go on with his bill in Chancery now that the diamonds are gone,--unless he meant to make her pay for them." "That would be rank persecution. Indeed, she has been persecuted. I shall call upon her." Then she wrote the following letter to the duke:-- February 14, 18--. MY DEAR DUKE, Plantagenet was on his legs last night for three hours and three quarters, and I sat through it all. As far as I could observe through the bars I was the only person in the House who listened to him. I'm sure Mr. Gresham was fast asleep. It was quite piteous to see some of them yawning. Plantagenet did it very well, and I almost think I understood him. They seem to say that nobody on the other side will take trouble enough to make a regular opposition, but that there are men in the City who will write letters to the newspapers, and get up a sort of Bank clamour. Plantagenet says nothing about it, but there is a do-or-die manner with him which is quite tragical. The House was up at eleven, when he came home and eat three oysters, drank a glass of beer, and slept well. They say the real work will come when it's in Committee;--that is, if it gets there. The bill is to be brought in, and will be read the first time next Monday week. As to the robberies, I believe there is no doubt that the police have got hold of the young woman. They don't arrest her, but deal with her in a friendly sort of way. Barrington Erle says that a sergeant is to marry her in order to make quite sure of her. I suppose they know their business; but that wouldn't strike me as being the safest way. They seem to think the diamonds went to Paris but have since been sent on to New York. As to the little widow, I do believe she has been made a victim. She first lost her diamonds, and now her other jewels and her money have gone. I cannot see what she was to gain by treachery, and I think she has been ill-used. She is staying at the house of that Mrs. Carbuncle, but all the same I shall go and call on her. I wish you could see her, because she is such a little beauty;--just what you would like; not so much colour as our friend, but perfect features, with infinite play,--not perhaps always in the very best taste; but then we can't have everything; can we, dear duke? As to the real thief;--of course you must burn this at once, and keep it strictly private as coming from me;--I fancy that delightful Scotch lord managed it entirely. The idea is, that he did it on commission for the Jew jewellers. I don't suppose he had money enough to carry it out himself. As to the second robbery, whether he had or had not a hand in that, I can't make up my mind. I don't see why he shouldn't. If a man does go into a business, he ought to make the best of it. Of course, it was a poor thing after the diamonds; but still it was worth having. There is some story about a Sir Griffin Tewett. He's a real Sir Griffin, as you'll find by the peerage. He was to marry a young woman, and our Lord George insists that he shall marry her. I don't understand all about it, but the girl lives in the same house with Lady Eustace, and if I call I shall find out. They say that Sir Griffin knows all about the necklace, and threatens to tell unless he is let off marrying. I rather think the girl is Lord George's daughter, so that there is a thorough complication. I shall go down to Matching on Saturday. If anything turns up before that, I'll write again, or send a message. I don't know whether Plantagenet will be able to leave London. He says he must be back on Monday, and that he loses too much time on the road. Kiss my little darlings for me,--[the darlings were Lady Glencora's children, and the duke's playthings]--and give my love to Madame Max. I suppose you don't see much of the others. Most affectionately yours, GLENCORA. On the next day Lady Glencora actually did call in Hertford Street, and saw our friend Lizzie. She was told by the servant that Lady Eustace was in bed; but, with her usual persistence, she asked questions, and when she found that Lizzie did receive visitors in her room, she sent up her card. The compliment was one much too great to be refused. Lady Glencora stood so high in the world, that her countenance would be almost as valuable as another lover. If Lord George would keep her secret, and Lady Glencora would be her friend, might she not still be a successful woman? So Lady Glencora Palliser was shown up to Lizzie's chamber. Lizzie was found with her nicest nightcap and prettiest handkerchief, with a volume of Tennyson's poetry, and a scent-bottle. She knew that it behoved her to be very clever at this interview. Her instinct told her that her first greeting should show more of surprise than of gratification. Accordingly, in a pretty, feminine, almost childish way, she was very much surprised. "I'm doing the strangest thing in the world, I know, Lady Eustace," said Lady Glencora with a smile. "I'm sure you mean to do a kind thing." "Well;--yes, I do. I think we have not met since you were at my house near the end of last season." "No, indeed. I have been in London six weeks, but have not been out much. For the last fortnight I have been in bed. I have had things to trouble me so much that they have made me ill." "So I have heard, Lady Eustace, and I have just come to offer you my sympathy. When I was told that you did see people, I thought that perhaps you would admit me." "So willingly, Lady Glencora!" "I have heard, of course, of your terrible losses." "The loss has been as nothing to the vexation that has accompanied it. I don't know how to speak of it. Ladies have lost their jewels before now, but I don't know that any lady before me has ever been accused of stealing them herself." "There has been no accusation, surely?" "I haven't exactly been put in prison, Lady Glencora, but I have had policemen here wanting to search my things;--and then you know yourself what reports have been spread." "Oh, yes; I do. Only for that, to tell you plainly, I should hardly have been here now." Then Lady Glencora poured out her sympathy,--perhaps with more eloquence and grace than discretion. She was, at any rate, both graceful and eloquent. "As for the loss of the diamonds, I think you bear it wonderfully," said Lady Glencora. "If you could imagine how little I care about it!" said Lizzie with enthusiasm. "They had lost the delight which I used to feel in them as a present from my husband. People had talked about them, and I had been threatened because I chose to keep what I knew to be my own. Of course, I would not give them up. Would you have given them up, Lady Glencora?" "Certainly not." "Nor would I. But when once all that had begun, they became an irrepressible burthen to me. I often used to say that I would throw them into the sea." "I don't think I would have done that," said Lady Glencora. "Ah,--you have never suffered as I have suffered." "We never know where each other's shoes pinch each other's toes." "You have never been left desolate. You have a husband and friends." "A husband that wants to put five farthings into a penny! All is not gold that glistens, Lady Eustace." "You can never have known trials such as mine," continued Lizzie, not understanding in the least her new friend's allusion to the great currency question. "Perhaps you may have heard that in the course of last summer I became engaged to marry a nobleman, with whom I am aware that you are acquainted." This she said in her softest whisper. "Oh, yes;--Lord Fawn. I know him very well. Of course I heard of it. We all heard of it." "And you have heard how he has treated me?" "Yes,--indeed." "I will say nothing about him--to you, Lady Glencora. It would not be proper that I should do so. But all that came of this wretched necklace. After that, can you wonder that I should say that I wish these stones had been thrown into the sea?" "I suppose Lord Fawn will--will come all right again now?" said Lady Glencora. "All right!" exclaimed Lizzie in astonishment. "His objection to the marriage will now be over." "I'm sure I do not in the least know what are his lordship's views," said Lizzie in scorn, "and, to tell the truth, I do not very much care." "What I mean is, that he didn't like you to have the Eustace diamonds--" "They were not Eustace diamonds. They were my diamonds." "But he did not like you to have them; and as they are now gone--for ever--" "Oh, yes;--they are gone for ever." "His objection is gone too. Why don't you write to him, and make him come and see you? That's what I should do." Lizzie, of course, repudiated vehemently any idea of forcing Lord Fawn into a marriage which had become distasteful to him,--let the reason be what it might. "His lordship is perfectly free, as far as I am concerned," said Lizzie with a little show of anger. But all this Lady Glencora took at its worth. Lizzie Eustace had been a good deal knocked about, and Lady Glencora did not doubt but that she would be very glad to get back her betrothed husband. The little woman had suffered hardships,--so thought Lady Glencora,--and a good thing would be done by bringing her into fashion, and setting the marriage up again. As to Lord Fawn,--the fortune was there, as good now as it had been when he first sought it; and the lady was very pretty, a baronet's widow too!--and in all respects good enough for Lord Fawn. A very pretty little baronet's widow she was, with four thousand a year, and a house in Scotland, and a history. Lady Glencora determined that she would remake the match. "I think, you know, friends who have been friends should be brought together. I suppose I may say a word to Lord Fawn?" Lizzie hesitated for a moment before she answered, and then remembered that revenge, at least, would be sweet to her. She had sworn that she would be revenged upon Lord Fawn. After all, might it not suit her best to carry out her oath by marrying him? But whether so or otherwise, it would not but be well for her that he should be again at her feet. "Yes,--if you think good will come of it." The acquiescence was given with much hesitation;--but the circumstances required that it should be so, and Lady Glencora fully understood the circumstances. When she took her leave, Lizzie was profuse in her gratitude. "Oh, Lady Glencora, it has been so good of you to come. Pray come again, if you can spare me another moment." Lady Glencora said that she would come again. During the visit she had asked some question concerning Lucinda and Sir Griffin, and had been informed that that marriage was to go on. A hint had been thrown out as to Lucinda's parentage;--but Lizzie had not understood the hint, and the question had not been pressed. CHAPTER LV Quints or Semitenths The task which Lady Glencora had taken upon herself was not a very easy one. No doubt Lord Fawn was a man subservient to the leaders of his party, much afraid of the hard judgment of those with whom he was concerned, painfully open to impression from what he would have called public opinion, to a certain extent a coward, most anxious to do right so that he might not be accused of being in the wrong,--and at the same time gifted with but little of that insight into things which teaches men to know what is right and what is wrong. Lady Glencora, having perceived all this, felt that he was a man upon whom a few words from her might have an effect. But even Lady Glencora might hesitate to tell a gentleman that he ought to marry a lady, when the gentleman had already declared his intention of not marrying, and had attempted to justify his decision almost publicly by a reference to the lady's conduct. Lady Glencora almost felt that she had undertaken too much as she turned over in her mind the means she had of performing her promise to Lady Eustace. The five-farthing bill had been laid upon the table on a Tuesday, and was to be read the first time on the following Monday week. On the Wednesday Lady Glencora had written to the duke, and had called in Hertford Street. On the following Sunday she was at Matching, looking after the duke;--but she returned to London on the Tuesday, and on the Wednesday there was a little dinner at Mr. Palliser's house, given avowedly with the object of further friendly discussion respecting the new Palliser penny. The prime minister was to be there, and Mr. Bonteen, and Barrington Erle, and those special members of the Government who would be available for giving special help to the financial Hercules of the day. A question, perhaps of no great practical importance, had occurred to Mr. Palliser,--but one which, if overlooked, might be fatal to the ultimate success of the measure. There is so much in a name,--and then an ounce of ridicule is often more potent than a hundredweight of argument. By what denomination should the fifth part of a penny be hereafter known? Some one had, ill-naturedly, whispered to Mr. Palliser that a farthing meant a fourth, and at once there arose a new trouble, which for a time bore very heavily on him. Should he boldly disregard the original meaning of the useful old word; or should he venture on the dangers of new nomenclature? October, as he said to himself, is still the tenth month of the year, November the eleventh, and so on, though by these names they are so plainly called the eighth and ninth. All France tried to rid itself of this absurdity, and failed. Should he stick by the farthing; or should he call it a fifthing, a quint, or a semitenth? "There's the 'Fortnightly Review' comes out but once a month," he said to his friend Mr. Bonteen, "and I'm told that it does very well." Mr. Bonteen, who was a rational man, thought the "Review" would do better if it were called by a more rational name, and was very much in favour of "a quint." Mr. Gresham had expressed an opinion, somewhat off-hand, that English people would never be got to talk about quints, and so there was a difficulty. A little dinner was therefore arranged, and Mr. Palliser, as was his custom in such matters, put the affair of the dinner into his wife's hands. When he was told that she had included Lord Fawn among the guests he opened his eyes. Lord Fawn, who might be good enough at the India Office, knew literally nothing about the penny. "He'll take it as the greatest compliment in the world," said Lady Glencora. "I don't want to pay Lord Fawn a compliment," said Mr. Palliser. "But I do," said Lady Glencora. And so the matter was arranged. It was a very nice little dinner. Mrs. Gresham and Mrs. Bonteen were there, and the great question of the day was settled in two minutes, before the guests went out of the drawing-room. "Stick to your farthing," said Mr. Gresham. "I think so," said Mr. Palliser. "Quint's a very easy word," said Mr. Bonteen. "But squint is an easier," said Mr. Gresham, with all a prime minister's jocose authority. "They'd certainly be called cock-eyes," said Barrington Erle. "There's nothing of the sound of a quarter in farthing," said Mr. Palliser. "Stick to the old word," said Mr. Gresham. And so the matter was decided while Lady Glencora was flattering Lord Fawn as to the manner in which he had finally arranged the affair of the Sawab of Mygawb. Then they went down to dinner, and not a word more was said that evening about the new penny by Mr. Palliser. Before dinner Lady Glencora had exacted a promise from Lord Fawn that he would return to the drawing-room. Lady Glencora was very clever at such work, and said nothing then of her purpose. She did not want her guests to run away, and therefore Lord Fawn,--Lord Fawn especially,--must stay. If he were to go there would be nothing spoken of all the evening, but that weary new penny. To oblige her he must remain;--and, of course, he did remain. "Whom do you think I saw the other day?" said Lady Glencora, when she got her victim into a corner. Of course, Lord Fawn had no idea whom she might have seen. Up to that moment no suspicion of what was coming upon him had crossed his mind. "I called upon poor Lady Eustace, and found her in bed." Then did Lord Fawn blush up to the roots of his hair, and for a moment he was stricken dumb. "I do feel for her so much! I think she has been so hardly used!" He was obliged to say something. "My name has, of course, been much mixed up with hers." "Yes, Lord Fawn, I know it has. And it is because I am so sure of your high-minded generosity and--and thorough devotion, that I have ventured to speak to you. I am sure there is nothing you would wish so much as to get at the truth." "Certainly, Lady Glencora." "All manner of stories have been told about her, and, as I believe, without the slightest foundation. They tell me now that she had an undoubted right to keep the diamonds;--that even if Sir Florian did not give them to her, they were hers under his will. Those lawyers have given up all idea of proceeding against her." "Because the necklace has been stolen." "Altogether independently of that. Do you see Mr. Eustace, and ask him if what I say is not true. If it had not been her own she would have been responsible for the value, even though it were stolen; and with such a fortune as hers they would never have allowed her to escape. They were as bitter against her as they could be;--weren't they?" "Mr. Camperdown thought that the property should be given up." "Oh yes;--that's the man's name; a horrid man. I am told that he was really most cruel to her. And then, because a lot of thieves had got about her,--after the diamonds, you know, like flies round a honey-pot,--and took first her necklace and then her money, they were impudent enough to say that she had stolen her own things!" "I don't think they quite said that, Lady Glencora." "Something very much like it, Lord Fawn. I have no doubt in my own mind who did steal all the things." "Who was it?" "Oh,--one mustn't mention names in such an affair without evidence. At any rate, she has been very badly treated, and I shall take her up. If I were you I would go and call upon her;--I would indeed. I think you owe it to her. Well, duke, what do you think of Plantagenet's penny now? Will it ever be worth two halfpence?" This question was asked of the Duke of St. Bungay, a great nobleman whom all Liberals loved, and a member of the Cabinet. He had come in since dinner, and had been asking a question or two as to what had been decided. "Well, yes; if properly invested I think it will. I'm glad that it is not to contain five semitenths. A semitenth would never have been a popular form of money in England. We hate new names so much that we have not yet got beyond talking of fourpenny bits." "There's a great deal in a name;--isn't there? You don't think they'll call them Pallisers, or Palls, or anything of that sort;--do you? I shouldn't like to hear that under the new régime two lollypops were to cost three Palls. But they say it never can be carried this session,--and we sha'n't be in, in the next year." "Who says so? Don't be such a prophetess of evil, Lady Glencora. I mean to be in for the next three sessions, and I mean to see Palliser's measure carried through the House of Lords next session. I shall be paying for my mutton-chops at the club at so many quints a chop yet. Don't you think so, Fawn?" "I don't know what to think," said Lord Fawn, whose mind was intent on other matters. After that he left the room as quickly as he could, and escaped out into the street. His mind was very much disturbed. If Lady Glencora was determined to take up the cudgels for the woman he had rejected, the comfort and peace of his life would be over. He knew well enough how strong was Lady Glencora. CHAPTER LVI Job's Comforters Mrs. Carbuncle and Lady Eustace had now been up in town between six and seven weeks, and the record of their doings has necessarily dealt chiefly with robberies and the rumours of robberies. But at intervals the minds of the two ladies had been intent on other things. The former was still intent on marrying her niece, Lucinda Roanoke, to Sir Griffin, and the latter had never for a moment forgotten the imperative duty which lay upon her of revenging herself upon Lord Fawn. The match between Sir Griffin and Lucinda was still to be a match. Mrs. Carbuncle persevered in the teeth both of the gentleman and of the lady, and still promised herself success. And our Lizzie, in the midst of all her troubles, had not been idle. In doing her justice we must acknowledge that she had almost abandoned the hope of becoming Lady Fawn. Other hopes and other ambitions had come upon her. Latterly the Corsair had been all in all to her,--with exceptional moments in which she told herself that her heart belonged exclusively to her cousin Frank. But Lord Fawn's offences were not to be forgotten, and she continually urged upon her cousin the depth of the wrongs which she had suffered. On the part of Frank Greystock there was certainly no desire to let the Under-Secretary escape. It is hoped that the reader, to whom every tittle of this story has been told without reserve, and every secret unfolded, will remember that others were not treated with so much open candour. The reader knows much more of Lizzie Eustace than did her cousin Frank. He, indeed, was not quite in love with Lizzie; but to him she was a pretty, graceful young woman, to whom he was bound by many ties, and who had been cruelly injured. Dangerous she was doubtless, and perhaps a little artificial. To have had her married to Lord Fawn would have been a good thing,--and would still be a good thing. According to all the rules known in such matters Lord Fawn was bound to marry her. He had become engaged to her, and Lizzie had done nothing to forfeit her engagement. As to the necklace,--the plea made for jilting her on that ground was a disgraceful pretext. Everybody was beginning to perceive that Mr. Camperdown would never have succeeded in getting the diamonds from her, even if they had not been stolen. It was "preposterous," as Frank said over and over again to his friend Herriot, that a man when he was engaged to a lady, should take upon himself to judge her conduct as Lord Fawn had done,--and then ride out of his engagement on a verdict found by himself. Frank had therefore willingly displayed alacrity in persecuting his lordship, and had not been altogether without hope that he might drive the two into a marriage yet,--in spite of the protestations made by Lizzie at Portray. Lord Fawn had certainly not spent a happy winter. Between Mrs. Hittaway on one side and Frank Greystock on the other, his life had been a burthen to him. It had been suggested to him by various people that he was behaving badly to the lady,--who was represented as having been cruelly misused by fortune and by himself. On the other hand it had been hinted to him, that nothing was too bad to believe of Lizzie Eustace, and that no calamity could be so great as that by which he would be overwhelmed were he still to allow himself to be forced into that marriage. "It would be better," Mrs. Hittaway had said, "to retire to Ireland at once, and cultivate your demesne in Tipperary." This was a grievous sentence, and one which had greatly excited the brother's wrath;--but it had shown how very strong was his sister's opinion against the lady to whom he had unfortunately offered his hand. Then there came to him a letter from Mr. Greystock, in which he was asked for his "written explanation." If there be a proceeding which an official man dislikes worse than another, it is a demand for a written explanation. "It is impossible," Frank had said, "that your conduct to my cousin should be allowed to drop without further notice. Hers has been without reproach. Your engagement with her has been made public,--chiefly by you, and it is out of the question that she should be treated as you are treating her, and that your lordship should escape without punishment." What the punishment was to be he did not say; but there did come a punishment on Lord Fawn from the eyes of every man whose eyes met his own, and in the tones of every voice that addressed him. The looks of the very clerks in the India Office accused him of behaving badly to a young woman, and the doorkeeper at the House of Lords seemed to glance askance at him. And now Lady Glencora, who was the social leader of his own party, the feminine pole-star of the Liberal heavens, the most popular and the most daring woman in London, had attacked him personally, and told him that he ought to call on Lady Eustace! Let it not for a moment be supposed that Lord Fawn was without conscience in the matter, or indifferent to moral obligations. There was not a man in London less willing to behave badly to a young woman than Lord Fawn; or one who would more diligently struggle to get back to the right path, if convinced that he was astray. But he was one who detested interference in his private matters, and who was nearly driven mad between his sister and Frank Greystock. When he left Lady Glencora's house he walked towards his own abode with a dark cloud upon his brow. He was at first very angry with Lady Glencora. Even her position gave her no right to meddle with his most private affairs as she had done. He would resent it, and would quarrel with Lady Glencora. What right could she have to advise him to call upon any woman? But by degrees this wrath died away, and gave place to fears, and qualms, and inward questions. He, too, had found a change in general opinion about the diamonds. When he had taken upon himself with a high hand to dissolve his own engagement, everybody had, as he thought, acknowledged that Lizzie Eustace was keeping property which did not belong to her. Now people talked of her losses as though the diamonds had been undoubtedly her own. On the next morning Lord Fawn took an opportunity of seeing Mr. Camperdown. "My dear lord," said Mr. Camperdown, "I shall wash my hands of the matter altogether. The diamonds are gone, and the questions now are, who stole them, and where are they? In our business we can't meddle with such questions as those." "You will drop the bill in Chancery then?" "What good can the bill do us when the diamonds are gone? If Lady Eustace had anything to do with the robbery--" "You suspect her, then?" "No, my lord; no. I cannot say that. I have no right to say that. Indeed it is not Lady Eustace that I suspect. She has got into bad hands, perhaps; but I do not think that she is a thief." "You were suggesting that,--if she had anything to do with the robbery--" "Well;--yes;--if she had, it would not be for us to take steps against her in the matter. In fact, the trustees have decided that they will do nothing more, and my hands are tied. If the minor, when he comes of age, claims the property from them, they will prefer to replace it. It isn't very likely; but that's what they say." "But if it was an heirloom--" suggested Lord Fawn, going back to the old claim. "That's exploded," said Mr. Camperdown. "Mr. Dove was quite clear about that." This was the end of the filing of that bill in Chancery as to which Mr. Camperdown had been so very enthusiastic! Now it certainly was the case that poor Lord Fawn in his conduct towards Lizzie had trusted greatly to the support of Mr. Camperdown's legal proceeding. The world could hardly have expected him to marry a woman against whom a bill in Chancery was being carried on for the recovery of diamonds which did not belong to her. But that support was now altogether withdrawn from him. It was acknowledged that the necklace was not an heirloom,--clearly acknowledged by Mr. Camperdown! And even Mr. Camperdown would not express an opinion that the lady had stolen her own diamonds. How would it go with him, if after all, he were to marry her? The bone of contention between them had at any rate been made to vanish. The income was still there, and Lady Glencora Palliser had all but promised her friendship. As he entered the India Office on his return from Mr. Camperdown's chambers, he almost thought that that would be the best way out of his difficulty. In his room he found his brother-in-law, Mr. Hittaway, waiting for him. It is always necessary that a man should have some friend whom he can trust in delicate affairs, and Mr. Hittaway was selected as Lord Fawn's friend. He was not at all points the man whom Lord Fawn would have chosen, but for their close connexion. Mr. Hittaway was talkative, perhaps a little loud, and too apt to make capital out of every incident of his life. But confidential friends are not easily found, and one does not wish to increase the circle to whom one's family secrets must become known. Mr. Hittaway was at any rate zealous for the Fawn family, and then his character as an official man stood high. He had been asked on the previous evening to step across from the Civil Appeal Office to give his opinion respecting that letter from Frank Greystock demanding a written explanation. The letter had been sent to him; and Mr. Hittaway had carried it home and shown it to his wife. "He's a cantankerous Tory, and determined to make himself disagreeable," said Mr. Hittaway, taking the letter from his pocket and beginning the conversation. Lord Fawn seated himself in his great arm-chair, and buried his face in his hands. "I am disposed, after much consideration, to advise you to take no notice of the letter," said Mr. Hittaway, giving his counsel in accordance with instructions received from his wife. Lord Fawn still buried his face. "Of course the thing is painful,--very painful. But out of two evils one should choose the least. The writer of this letter is altogether unable to carry out his threat." "What can the man do to him?" Mrs. Hittaway had asked, almost snapping at her husband as she did so. "And then," continued Mr. Hittaway, "we all know that public opinion is with you altogether. The conduct of Lady Eustace is notorious." "Everybody is taking her part," said Lord Fawn, almost crying. "Surely not." "Yes;--they are. The bill in Chancery has been withdrawn, and it's my belief that if the necklace were found to-morrow, there would be nothing to prevent her keeping it,--just as she did before." "But it was an heirloom?" "No, it wasn't. The lawyers were all wrong about it. As far as I can see, lawyers always are wrong. About those nine lacs of rupees for the Sawab, Finlay was all wrong. Camperdown owns that he was wrong. If, after all, the diamonds were hers, I'm sure I don't know what I am to do. Thank you, Hittaway, for coming over. That'll do for the present. Just leave that ruffian's letter, and I'll think about it." This was considered by Mrs. Hittaway to be a very bad state of things, and there was great consternation in Warwick Square when Mr. Hittaway told his wife this new story of her brother's weakness. She was not going to be weak. She did not intend to withdraw her opposition to the marriage. She was not going to be frightened by Lizzie Eustace and Frank Greystock,--knowing as she did that they were lovers, and very improper lovers, too. "Of course she stole them herself," said Mrs. Hittaway; "and I don't doubt but she stole her own money afterwards. There's nothing she wouldn't do. I'd sooner see Frederic in his grave than married to such a woman as that. Men don't know how sly women can be;--that's the truth. And Frederic has been so spoilt among them down at Richmond, that he has no real judgment left. I don't suppose he means to marry her." "Upon my word I don't know," said Mr. Hittaway. Then Mrs. Hittaway made up her mind that she would at once write a letter to Scotland. There was an old lord about London in those days,--or, rather, one who was an old Liberal but a young lord,--one Lord Mount Thistle, who had sat in the Cabinet, and had lately been made a peer when his place in the Cabinet was wanted. He was a pompous, would-be important, silly old man, well acquainted with all the traditions of his party, and perhaps, on that account, useful,--but a bore, and very apt to meddle when he was not wanted. Lady Glencora, on the day after her dinner-party, whispered into his ear that Lord Fawn was getting himself into trouble, and that a few words of caution, coming to him from one whom he respected so much as he did Lord Mount Thistle, would be of service to him. Lord Mount Thistle had known Lord Fawn's father, and declared himself at once to be quite entitled to interfere. "He is really behaving badly to Lady Eustace," said Lady Glencora, "and I don't think that he knows it." Lord Mount Thistle, proud of a commission from the hands of Lady Glencora, went almost at once to his old friend's son. He found him at the House that night, and whispered his few words of caution in one of the lobbies. "I know you will excuse me, Fawn," Lord Mount Thistle said, "but people seem to think that you are not behaving quite well to Lady Eustace." "What people?" demanded Lord Fawn. "My dear fellow, that is a question that cannot be answered. You know that I am the last man to interfere if I didn't think it my duty as a friend. You were engaged to her?"--Lord Fawn only frowned. "If so," continued the late cabinet minister, "and if you have broken it off, you ought to give your reasons. She has a right to demand as much as that." On the next morning, Friday, there came to him the note which Lady Glencora had recommended Lizzie to write. It was very short. "Had you not better come and see me? You can hardly think that things should be left as they are now. L. E.--Hertford Street, Thursday." He had hoped,--he had ventured to hope,--that things might be left, and that they would arrange themselves; that he could throw aside his engagement without further trouble, and that the subject would drop. But it was not so. His enemy, Frank Greystock, had demanded from him a "written explanation" of his conduct. Mr. Camperdown had deserted him. Lady Glencora Palliser, with whom he had not the honour of any intimate acquaintance, had taken upon herself to give him advice. Lord Mount Thistle had found fault with him. And now there had come a note from Lizzie Eustace herself, which he could hardly venture to leave altogether unnoticed. On that Friday he dined at his club, and then went to his sister's house in Warwick Square. If assistance might be had anywhere, it would be from his sister;--she, at any rate, would not want courage in carrying on the battle on his behalf. "Ill-used!" she said, as soon as they were closeted together. "Who dares to say so?" "That old fool, Mount Thistle, has been with me." "I hope, Frederic, you don't mind what such a man as that says. He has probably been prompted by some friend of hers. And who else?" "Camperdown turns round now and says that they don't mean to do anything more about the necklace. Lady Glencora Palliser told me the other day that all the world believes that the thing was her own." "What does Lady Glencora Palliser know about it? If Lady Glencora Palliser would mind her own affairs it would be much better for her. I remember when she had troubles enough of her own, without meddling with other people's." "And now I've got this note." Lord Fawn had already shown Lizzie's few scrawled words to his sister. "I think I must go and see her." "Do no such thing, Frederic." "Why not? I must answer it, and what can I say?" "If you go there, that woman will be your wife, and you'll never have a happy day again as long as you live. The match is broken off, and she knows it. I shouldn't take the slightest notice of her, or of her cousin, or of any of them. If she chooses to bring an action against you, that is another thing." Lord Fawn paused for a few moments before he answered. "I think I ought to go," he said. "And I am sure that you ought not. It is not only about the diamonds,--though that was quite enough to break off any engagement. Have you forgotten what I told you that the man saw at Portray?" "I don't know that the man spoke the truth." "But he did." "And I hate that kind of espionage. It is so very likely that mistakes should be made." "When she was sitting in his arms,--and kissing him! If you choose to do it, Frederic, of course you must. We can't prevent it. You are free to marry any one you please." "I'm not talking of marrying her." "What do you suppose she wants you to go there for? As for political life, I am quite sure it would be the death of you. If I were you I wouldn't go near her. You have got out of the scrape, and I would remain out." "But I haven't got out," said Lord Fawn. On the next day, Saturday, he did nothing in the matter. He went down, as was his custom, to Richmond, and did not once mention Lizzie's name. Lady Fawn and her daughters never spoke of her now,--neither of her, nor, in his presence, of poor Lucy Morris. But on his return to London on the Sunday evening he found another note from Lizzie. "You will hardly have the hardihood to leave my note unanswered. Pray let me know when you will come to me." Some answer must, as he felt, be made to her. For a moment he thought of asking his mother to call;--but he at once saw that by doing so he might lay himself open to terrible ridicule. Could he induce Lord Mount Thistle to be his Mercury? It would, he felt, be quite impossible to make Lord Mount Thistle understand all the facts of his position. His sister, Mrs. Hittaway, might have gone, were it not that she herself was violently opposed to any visit. The more he thought of it the more convinced he became that, should it be known that he had received two such notes from a lady and that he had not answered or noticed them, the world would judge him to have behaved badly. So, at last, he wrote,--on that Sunday evening,--fixing a somewhat distant day for his visit to Hertford Street. His note was as follows:-- Lord Fawn presents his compliments to Lady Eustace. In accordance with the wish expressed in Lady Eustace's two notes of the 23rd instant and this date, Lord Fawn will do himself the honour of waiting upon Lady Eustace on Saturday next, March 3rd, at 12, noon. Lord Fawn had thought that under circumstances as they now exist, no further personal interview could lead to the happiness of either party; but as Lady Eustace thinks otherwise, he feels himself constrained to comply with her desire. Sunday evening, 25 February, 18--. "I am going to see her in the course of this week," he said, in answer to a further question from Lady Glencora, who, chancing to meet him in society, had again addressed him on the subject. He lacked the courage to tell Lady Glencora to mind her own business and to allow him to do the same. Had she been a little less great than she was,--either as regarded herself or her husband,--he would have done so. But Lady Glencora was the social queen of the party to which he belonged, and Mr. Palliser was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and would some day be Duke of Omnium. "As you are great, be merciful, Lord Fawn," said Lady Glencora. "You men, I believe, never realise what it is that women feel when they love. It is my belief that she will die unless you are re-united to her. And then she is so beautiful!" "It is a subject that I cannot discuss, Lady Glencora." "I daresay not. And I'm sure I am the last person to wish to give you pain. But you see,--if the poor lady has done nothing to merit your anger, it does seem rather a strong measure to throw her off and give her no reason whatever. How would you defend yourself, suppose she published it all?" Lady Glencora's courage was very great,--and perhaps we may say her impudence also. This last question Lord Fawn left unanswered, walking away in great dudgeon. In the course of the week he told his sister of the interview which he had promised, and she endeavoured to induce him to postpone it till a certain man should arrive from Scotland. She had written for Mr. Andrew Gowran,--sending down funds for Mr. Gowran's journey,--so that her brother might hear Mr. Gowran's evidence out of Mr. Gowran's own mouth. Would not Frederic postpone the interview till he should have seen Mr. Gowran? But to this request Frederic declined to accede. He had fixed a day and an hour. He had made an appointment;--of course he must keep it. CHAPTER LVII Humpty Dumpty The robbery at the house in Hertford Street took place on the 30th of January, and on the morning of the 28th of February Bunfit and Gager were sitting together in a melancholy, dark little room in Scotland Yard, discussing the circumstances of that nefarious act. A month had gone by, and nobody was yet in custody. A month had passed since that second robbery; but nearly eight weeks had passed since the robbery at Carlisle, and even that was still a mystery. The newspapers had been loud in their condemnation of the police. It had been asserted over and over again that in no other civilised country in the world could so great an amount of property have passed through the hands of thieves without leaving some clue by which the police would have made their way to the truth. Major Mackintosh had been declared to be altogether incompetent, and all the Bunfits and Gagers of the force had been spoken of as drones and moles and ostriches. They were idle and blind, and so stupid as to think that, when they saw nothing, others saw less. The major, who was a broad-shouldered, philosophical man, bore all this as though it were, of necessity, a part of the burthen of his profession;--but the Bunfits and Gagers were very angry, and at their wits' ends. It did not occur to them to feel animosity against the newspapers which abused them. The thieves who would not be caught were their great enemies; and there was common to them a conviction that men so obstinate as these thieves,--men to whom a large amount of grace and liberty for indulgence had accrued,--should be treated with uncommon severity when they were caught. There was this excuse always on their lips,--that had it been an affair simply of thieves, such as thieves ordinarily are, everything would have been discovered long since;--but when lords and ladies with titles come to be mixed up with such an affair,--folk in whose house a policeman can't have his will at searching and brow-beating,--how is a detective to detect anything? Bunfit and Gager had both been driven to recast their theories as to the great Carlisle affair by the circumstances of the later affair in Hertford Street. They both thought that Lord George had been concerned in the robbery;--that, indeed, had now become the general opinion of the world at large. He was a man of doubtful character, with large expenses, and with no recognised means of living. He had formed a great intimacy with Lady Eustace at a period in which she was known to be carrying these diamonds about with her, had been staying with her at Portray Castle when the diamonds were there, and had been her companion on the journey during which the diamonds were stolen. The only men in London supposed to be capable of dealing advantageously with such a property were Harter and Benjamin,--as to whom it was known that they were conversant with the existence of the diamonds, and known, also, that they were in the habit of having dealings with Lord George. It was, moreover, known that Lord George had been closeted with Mr. Benjamin on the morning after his arrival in London. These things put together made it almost a certainty that Lord George had been concerned in the matter. Bunfit had always been sure of it. Gager, though differing much from Bunfit as to details, had never been unwilling to suspect Lord George. But the facts known could not be got to dovetail themselves pleasantly. If Lord George had possessed himself of the diamonds at Carlisle,--or with Lizzie's connivance before they reached Carlisle,--then, why had there been a second robbery? Bunfit, who was very profound in his theory, suggested that the second robbery was an additional plant, got up with the view of throwing more dust into the eyes of the police. Patience Crabstick had, of course, been one of the gang throughout, and she had now been allowed to go off with her mistress's money and lesser trinkets,--so that the world of Scotland Yard might be thrown more and more into the mire of ignorance and darkness of doubt. To this view Gager was altogether opposed. He was inclined to think that Lord George had taken the diamonds at Carlisle with Lizzie's connivance;--that he had restored them in London to her keeping, finding the suspicion against him too heavy to admit of his dealing with them,--and that now he had stolen them a second time, again with Lizzie's connivance; but in this latter point Gager did not pretend to the assurance of any conviction. But Gager at the present moment had achieved a triumph in the matter which he was not at all disposed to share with his elder officer. Perhaps, on the whole, more power is lost than gained by habits of secrecy. To be discreet is a fine thing,--especially for a policeman; but when discretion is carried to such a length in the direction of self-confidence as to produce a belief that no aid is wanted for the achievement of great results, it will often militate against all achievement. Had Scotland Yard been less discreet and more confidential, the mystery might, perhaps, have been sooner unravelled. Gager at this very moment had reason to believe that a man whom he knew could,--and would, if operated upon duly,--communicate to him, Gager, the secret of the present whereabouts of Patience Crabstick! That belief was a great possession, and much too important, as Gager thought, to be shared lightly with such an one as Mr. Bunfit,--a thick-headed sort of man, in Gager's opinion, although, no doubt, he had by means of industry been successful in some difficult cases. "'Is lordship ain't stirred," said Bunfit. "How do you mean,--stirred, Mr. Bunfit?" "Ain't moved nowheres out of London." "What should he move out of London for? What could he get by cutting? There ain't nothing so bad when anything's up against one as letting on that one wants to bolt. He knows all that. He'll stand his ground. He won't bolt." "I don't suppose as he will, Gager. It's a rum go; ain't it?--the rummest as I ever see." This remark had been made so often by Mr. Bunfit, that Gager had become almost weary of hearing it. "Oh,--rum; rum be b---- What's the use of all that? From what the governor told me this morning, there isn't a shadow of doubt where the diamonds are." "In Paris,--of course," said Bunfit. "They never went to Paris. They were taken from here to Hamburg in a commercial man's kit,--a fellow as travels in knives and scissors. Then they was recut. They say the cutting was the quickest bit of work ever done by one man in Hamburg. And now they're in New York. That's what has come of the diamonds." "Benjamin, in course," said Bunfit, in a low whisper, just taking the pipe from between his lips. "Well;--yes. No doubt it was Benjamin. But how did Benjamin get 'em?" "Lord George,--in course," said Bunfit. "And how did he get 'em?" "Well;--that's where it is; isn't it?" Then there was a pause, during which Bunfit continued to smoke. "As sure as your name's Gager, he got 'em at Carlisle." "And what took Smiler down to Carlisle?" "Just to put a face on it," said Bunfit. "And who cut the door?" "Billy Cann did," said Bunfit. "And who forced the box?" "Them two did," said Bunfit. "And all to put a face on it?" "Yes;--just that. And an uncommon good face they did put on it between 'em;--the best as I ever see." "All right," said Gager. "So far, so good. I don't agree with you, Mr. Bunfit; because the thing, when it was done, wouldn't be worth the money. Lord love you, what would all that have cost? And what was to prevent the lady and Lord George together taking the diamonds to Benjamin and getting their price? It never does to be too clever, Mr. Bunfit. And when that was all done, why did the lady go and get herself robbed again? No;--I don't say but what you're a clever man, in your way, Mr. Bunfit; but you've not got a hold of the thing here. Why was Smiler going about like a mad dog,--only that he found himself took in?" "Maybe he expected something else in the box,--more than the necklace,--as was to come to him," suggested Bunfit. "Gammon." "I don't see why you say gammon, Gager. It ain't polite." "It is gammon,--running away with ideas like them, just as if you was one of the public. When they two opened that box at Carlisle, which they did as certain as you sit there, they believed as the diamonds were there. They were not there." "I don't think as they was," said Bunfit. "Very well;--where were they? Just walk up to it, Mr. Bunfit, making your ground good as you go. They two men cut the door, and took the box, and opened it,--and when they'd opened it, they didn't get the swag. Where was the swag?" "Lord George," said Bunfit again. "Very well,--Lord George. Like enough. But it comes to this. Benjamin, and they two men of his, had laid themselves out for the robbery. Now, Mr. Bunfit, whether Lord George and Benjamin were together in that first affair, or whether they weren't, I can't see my way just at present, and I don't know as you can see yours;--not saying but what you're as quick as most men, Mr. Bunfit. If he was,--and I rayther think that's about it,--then he and Benjamin must have had a few words, and he must have got the jewels from the lady over night." "Of course he did,--and Smiler and Billy Cann knew as they weren't there." "There you are, all back again, Mr. Bunfit, not making your ground good as you go. Smiler and Cann did their job according to order,--and precious sore hearts they had when they'd got the box open. Those fellows at Carlisle,--just like all the provincials,--went to work open-mouthed, and before the party had left Carlisle it was known that Lord George was suspected." "You can't trust them fellows any way," said Mr. Bunfit. "Well;--what happens next? Lord George, he goes to Benjamin, but he isn't goin' to take the diamonds with him. He has had words with Benjamin or he has not. Any ways he isn't goin' to take the necklace with him on that morning. He hasn't been goin' to keep the diamonds about him, not since what was up at Carlisle. So he gives the diamonds back to the lady." "And she had 'em all along?" "I don't say it was so,--but I can see my way upon that hypothesis." "There was something as she had to conceal, Gager. I've said that all through. I knew it in a moment when I see'd her faint." "She's had a deal to conceal, I don't doubt. Well, there they are,--with her still,--and the box is gone, and the people as is bringing the lawsuit, Mr. Camperdown and the rest of 'em, is off their tack. What's she to do with 'em?" "Take 'em to Benjamin," said Bunfit, with confidence. "That's all very well, Mr. Bunfit. But there's a quarrel up already with Benjamin. Benjamin was to have had 'em before. Benjamin has spent a goodish bit of money, and has been thrown over rather. I daresay Benjamin was as bad as Smiler, or worse. No doubt Benjamin let on to Smiler, and thought as Smiler was too many for him. I daresay there was a few words between him and Smiler. I wouldn't wonder if Smiler didn't threaten to punch Benjamin's head,--which well he could do it,--and if there wasn't a few playful remarks between 'em about penal servitude for life. You see, Mr. Bunfit, it couldn't have been pleasant for any of 'em." "They'd've split," said Bunfit. "But they didn't,--not downright. Well,--there we are. The diamonds is with the lady. Lord George has done it all. Lord George and Lady Eustace,--they're keeping company, no doubt, after their own fashion. He's a-robbing of her, and she has to do pretty much as she's bid. The diamonds is with the lady, and Lord George is pretty well afraid to look at 'em. After all that's being done, there isn't much to wonder at in that. Then comes the second robbery." "And Lord George planned that too?" asked Bunfit. "I don't pretend to say I know, but just put it this way, Mr. Bunfit. Of course the thieves were let in by the woman Crabstick." "Not a doubt." "Of course they was Smiler and Billy Cann." "I suppose they was." "She was always about the lady,--a-doing for her in everything. Say she goes to Benjamin and tells him as how her lady still has the necklace,--and then he puts up the second robbery. Then you'd have it all round." "And Lord George would have lost 'em. It can't be. Lord George and he are thick as thieves up to this day." "Very well. I don't say anything against that. Lord George knows as she has 'em;--indeed he'd given 'em back to her to keep. We've got as far as that, Mr. Bunfit." "I think she did 'ave 'em." "Very well. What does Lord George do then? He can't make money of 'em. They're too hot for his fingers, and so he finds when he thinks of taking 'em into the market. So he puts Benjamin up to the second robbery." "Who's drawing it fine, now, Gager;--eh?" "Mr. Bunfit, I'm not saying as I've got the truth beyond this,--that Benjamin and his two men were clean done at Carlisle, that Lord George and his lady brought the jewels up to town between 'em, and that the party who didn't get 'em at Carlisle tried their hand again and did get 'em in Hertford Street." In all of which the ingenious Gager would have been right, if he could have kept his mind clear from the alluring conviction that a lord had been the chief of the thieves. "We shall never make a case of it now," said Bunfit despondently. "I mean to try it on all the same. There's Smiler about town as bold as brass, and dressed to the nines. He had the cheek to tell me he was going down to the Newmarket Spring to look after a horse he's got a share in." "I was talking to Billy only yesterday," added Bunfit. "I've got it on my mind that they didn't treat Billy quite on the square. He didn't let on anything about Benjamin; but he told me out plain, as how he was very much disgusted. 'Mr. Bunfit,' said he, 'there's that roguery about, that a plain man like me can't touch it. There's them as'd pick my eyes out while I was sleeping, and then swear it against my very self.' Them were his words, and I knew as how Benjamin hadn't been on the square with him." "You didn't let on anything, Mr. Bunfit?" "Well,--I just reminded him as how there was five hundred pounds going a-begging from Mr. Camperdown." "And what did he say to that, Mr. Bunfit?" "Well, he said a good deal. He's a sharp little fellow, is Billy, as has read a deal. You've heard of 'Umpty Dumpty, Gager? 'Umpty Dumpty was a hegg." "All right." "As had a fall, and was smashed,--and there's a little poem about him." "I know." "Well;--Billy says to me: 'Mr. Camperdown don't want no hinformation; he wants the diamonds. Them diamonds is like 'Umpty Dumpty, Mr. Bunfit. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put 'Umpty Dumpty up again.'" "Billy was about right there," said the younger officer, rising from his seat. Late on the afternoon of the same day, when London had already been given over to the gaslights, Mr. Gager, having dressed himself especially for the occasion of the friendly visit which he intended to make, sauntered into a small public-house at the corner of Meek Street and Pineapple Court, which locality,--as all men well versed with London are aware,--lies within one minute's walk of the top of Gray's Inn Lane. Gager, during his conference with his colleague Bunfit, had been dressed in plain black clothes; but in spite of his plain clothes he looked every inch a policeman. There was a stiffness about his limbs, and, at the same time, a sharpness in his eyes, which, in the conjunction with the locality in which he was placed, declared his profession beyond the possibility of mistake. Nor, in that locality, would he have desired to be taken for anything else. But as he entered the "Rising Sun" in Meek Street, there was nothing of the policeman about him. He might probably have been taken for a betting man, with whom the world had latterly gone well enough to enable him to maintain that sleek, easy, greasy appearance which seems to be the beau-ideal of a betting man's personal ambition. "Well, Mr. Howard," said the lady at the bar, "a sight of you is good for sore eyes." "Six penn'orth of brandy,--warm, if you please, my dear," said the pseudo-Howard, as he strolled easily into an inner room, with which he seemed to be quite familiar. He seated himself in an old-fashioned wooden arm-chair, gazed up at the gas lamp, and stirred his liquor slowly. Occasionally he raised the glass to his lips, but he did not seem to be at all intent upon his drinking. When he entered the room, there had been a gentleman and a lady there, whose festive moments seemed to be disturbed by some slight disagreement; but Howard, as he gazed at the lamp, paid no attention to them whatever. They soon left the room, their quarrel and their drink finished together, and others dropped in and out. Mr. Howard's "warm" must almost have become cold, so long did he sit there, gazing at the gas lamps rather than attending to his brandy and water. Not a word did he speak to any one for more than an hour, and not a sign did he show of impatience. At last he was alone;--but had not been so for above a minute when in stepped a jaunty little man, certainly not more than five feet high, about three or four and twenty years of age, dressed with great care, with his trousers sticking to his legs, with a French chimney-pot hat on his head, very much peaked fore and aft and closely turned up at the sides. He had a bright-coloured silk handkerchief round his neck, and a white shirt, of which the collar and wristbands were rather larger and longer than suited the small dimensions of the man. He wore a white greatcoat tight buttoned round his waist, but so arranged as to show the glories of the coloured handkerchief; and in his hand he carried a diminutive cane with a little silver knob. He stepped airily into the room, and as he did so he addressed our friend the policeman with much cordiality. "My dear Mr. 'Oward," he said, "this is a pleasure. This is a pleasure. This is a pleasure." "What is it to be?" asked Gager. "Well;--ay, what? Shall I say a little port wine negus, with the nutmeg in it rayther strong?" This suggestion he made to a young lady from the bar, who had followed him into the room. The negus was brought and paid for by Gager, who then requested that they might be left there undisturbed for five minutes. The young lady promised to do her best, and then closed the door. "And now, Mr. 'Oward, what can I do for you?" said Mr. Cann, the burglar. Gager, before he answered, took a pipe-case out of his pocket, and lit the pipe. "Will you smoke, Billy?" said he. "Well;--no, I don't know that I will smoke. A very little tobacco goes a long way with me, Mr. 'Oward. One cigar before I turn in;--that's about the outside of it. You see, Mr. 'Oward, pleasures should never be made necessities, when the circumstances of a gentleman's life may perhaps require that they shall be abandoned for prolonged periods. In your line of life, Mr. 'Oward,--which has its objections,--smoking may be pretty well a certainty." Mr. Cann, as he made these remarks, skipped about the room, and gave point to his argument by touching Mr. Howard's waistcoat with the end of his cane. "And now, Billy, how about the young woman?" "I haven't set eyes on her these six weeks, Mr. 'Oward. I never see her but once in my life, Mr. 'Oward;--or, maybe, twice, for one's memory is deceitful; and I don't know that I ever wish to see her again. She ain't one of my sort, Mr. 'Oward. I likes 'em soft, and sweet, and coming. This one,--she has her good p'ints about her,--as clean a foot and ankle as I'd wish to see;--but, laws, what a nose, Mr. 'Oward! And then for manner;--she's no more manner than a stable dog." "She's in London, Billy?" "How am I to know, Mr. 'Oward?" "What's the good, then, of your coming here?" asked Gager, with no little severity in his voice. "I don't know as it is good. I 'aven't said nothing about any good, Mr. 'Oward. What you wants to find is them diamonds?" "Of course I do." "Well;--you won't find 'em. I knows nothing about 'em, in course, except just what I'm told. You know my line of life, Mr. 'Oward?" "Not a doubt about it." "And I know yours. I'm in the way of hearing about these things,--and for the matter of that, so are you too. It may be, my ears are the longer. I 'ave 'eard. You don't expect me to tell you more than just that. I 'ave 'eard. It was a pretty thing, wasn't it? But I wasn't in it myself, more's the pity. You can't expect fairer than that, Mr. 'Oward?" "And what have you heard?" "Them diamonds is gone where none of you can get at 'em. That five hundred pounds as the lawyers 'ave offered is just nowhere. If you want information, Mr. 'Oward, you should say information." "And you could give it;--eh, Billy?" "No--; no--" He uttered these two negatives in a low voice, and with much deliberation. "I couldn't give it. A man can't give what he hasn't got;--but perhaps I could get it." "What an ass you are, Billy. Don't you know that I know all about it?" "What an ass you are, Mr. 'Oward. Don't I know that you don't know;--or you wouldn't come to me. You guess. You're always a-guessing. And because you know how to guess, they pays you for guessing. But guessing ain't knowing. You don't know;--nor yet don't I. What is it to be, if I find out where that young woman is?" "A tenner, Billy." "Five quid now, and five when you've seen her." "All right, Billy." "She's a-going to be married to Smiler next Sunday as ever is down at Ramsgate;--and at Ramsgate she is now. You'll find her, Mr. 'Oward, if you'll keep your eyes open, somewhere about the 'Fiddle with One String.'" This information was so far recognised by Mr. Howard as correct, that he paid Mr. Cann five sovereigns down for it at once. CHAPTER LVIII "The Fiddle with One String" Mr. Gager reached Ramsgate by the earliest train on the following morning, and was not long in finding out the "Fiddle with One String." The "Fiddle with One String" was a public-house, very humble in appearance, in the outskirts of the town, on the road leading to Pegwell Bay. On this occasion Mr. Gager was dressed in his ordinary plain clothes, and though the policeman's calling might not be so manifestly declared by his appearance at Ramsgate as it was in Scotland Yard,--still, let a hint in that direction have ever been given, and the ordinary citizens of Ramsgate would at once be convinced that the man was what he was. Gager had doubtless considered all the circumstances of his day's work carefully, and had determined that success would more probably attend him with this than with any other line of action. He walked at once into the house, and asked whether a young woman was not lodging there. The man of the house was behind the bar, with his wife, and to him Gager whispered a few words. The man stood dumb for a moment, and then his wife spoke. "What's up now?" said she. "There's no young women here. We don't have no young women." Then the man whispered a word to his wife, during which Gager stood among the customers before the bar with an easy, unembarrassed air. "Well, what's the odds?" said the wife. "There ain't anything wrong with us." "Never thought there was, ma'am," said Gager. "And there's nothing wrong as I know of with the young woman." Then the husband and wife consulted together, and Mr. Gager was asked to take a seat in a little parlour, while the woman ran up-stairs for half an instant. Gager looked about him quickly, and took in at a glance the system of the construction of the "Fiddle with One String." He did sit down in the little parlour, with the door open, and remained there for perhaps a couple of minutes. Then he went to the front door, and glanced up at the roof. "It's all right," said the keeper of the house, following him. "She ain't a-going to get away. She ain't just very well, and she's a-lying down." "You tell her, with my regards," said Gager, "that she needn't be a bit the worse because of me." The man looked at him suspiciously. "You tell her what I say. And tell her, too, the quicker the better. She has a gentleman a-looking after her, I daresay. Perhaps I'd better be off before he comes." The message was taken up to the lady, and Gager again seated himself in the little parlour. We are often told that all is fair in love and war, and, perhaps, the operation on which Mr. Gager was now intent may be regarded as warlike. But he now took advantage of a certain softness in the character of the lady whom he wished to meet, which hardly seems to be justifiable even in a policeman. When Lizzie's tall footman had been in trouble about the necklace, a photograph had been taken from him which had not been restored to him. This was a portrait of Patience Crabstick, which she, poor girl, in a tender moment, had given to him who, had not things gone roughly with them, was to have been her lover. The little picture had fallen into Gager's hands, and he now pulled it from his pocket. He himself had never visited the house in Hertford Street till after the second robbery, and, in the flesh, had not as yet seen Miss Crabstick; but he had studied her face carefully, expecting, or, at any rate, hoping, that he might some day enjoy the pleasure of personal acquaintance. That pleasure was now about to come to him, and he prepared himself for it by making himself intimate with the lines of the lady's face as the sun had portrayed them. There was even yet some delay, and Mr. Gager more than once testified uneasiness. "She ain't a-going to get away," said the mistress of the house, "but a lady as is going to see a gentleman can't jump into her things as a man does." Gager intimated his acquiescence in all this, and again waited. "The sooner she comes the less trouble for her," said Gager to the woman; "if you'll only make her believe that." At last, when he had been somewhat over an hour in the house, he was asked to walk up-stairs, and then, in a little sitting-room over the bar, he had the opportunity, so much desired, of making personal acquaintance with Patience Crabstick. It may be imagined that the poor waiting-woman had not been in a happy state of mind since she had been told that a gentleman was waiting to see her down-stairs, who had declared himself to be a policeman immediately on entering the shop. To escape was of course her first idea, but she was soon made to understand that this was impracticable. In the first place there was but one staircase, at the bottom of which was the open door of the room in which the policeman was sitting; and then, the woman of the house was very firm in declaring that she would connive at nothing which might cost her and her husband their licence. "You've got to face it," said the woman. "I suppose they can't make me get out of bed unless I pleases," said Patience firmly. But she knew that even that resource would fail her, and that a policeman, when aggravated, can take upon him all the duties of a lady's maid. She had to face it,--and she did face it. "I've just got to have a few words with you, my dear," said Gager. "I suppose, then, we'd better be alone," said Patience; whereupon the woman of the house discreetly left the room. The interview was so long that the reader would be fatigued were he asked to study a record of all that was said on the occasion. The gentleman and lady were closeted together for more than an hour, and so amicably was the conversation carried on that when the time was half over Gager stepped down-stairs and interested himself in procuring Miss Crabstick's breakfast. He even condescended himself to pick a few shrimps and drink a glass of beer in her company. A great deal was said, and something was even settled, as may be learned from a few concluding words of that very memorable conversation. "Just don't you say anything about it, my dear, but leave word for him that you've gone up to town on business." "Lord love you, Mr. Gager, he'll know all about it." "Let him know. Of course he'll know,--if he comes down. It's my belief he'll never show himself at Ramsgate again." "But, Mr. Gager--" "Well, my dear?" "You aren't a perjuring of yourself?" "What;--about making you my wife? That I ain't. I'm upright, and always was. There's no mistake about me when you've got my word. As soon as this work is off my mind, you shall be Mrs. Gager, my dear. And you'll be all right. You've been took in, that's what you have." "That I have, Mr. Gager," said Patience, wiping her eyes. "You've been took in, and you must be forgiven." "I didn't get--not nothing out of the necklace; and as for the other things, they've frighted me so, that I let 'em all go for just what I tell you. And as for Mr. Smiler,--I never didn't care for him; that I didn't. He ain't the man to touch my heart,--not at all; and it was not likely either. A plain fellow,--very, Mr. Gager." "He'll be plainer before long, my dear." "But I've been that worrited among 'em, Mr. Gager, since first they made their wicked prepositions, that I've been jest-- I don't know how I've been. And though my lady was not a lady as any girl could like, and did deserve to have her things took if anybody's things ever should be took, still, Mr. Gager, I knows I did wrong. I do know it,--and I'm a-repenting of it in sackcloth and ashes;--so I am. But you'll be as good as your word, Mr. Gager?" It must be acknowledged that Mr. Gager had bidden high for success, and had allowed himself to be carried away by his zeal almost to the verge of imprudence. It was essential to him that he should take Patience Crabstick back with him to London,--and that he should take her as a witness and not as a criminal. Mr. Benjamin was the game at which he was flying,--Mr. Benjamin, and, if possible, Lord George; and he conceived that his net might be big enough to hold Smiler as well as the other two greater fishes, if he could induce Patience Crabstick and Billy Cann to co-operate with him cordially in his fishing. But his mind was still disturbed on one point. Let him press his beloved Patience as closely as he might with questions, there was one point on which he could not get from her what he believed to be the truth. She persisted that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had had no hand in either robbery, and Gager had so firmly committed himself to a belief on this matter, that he could not throw the idea away from him, even on the testimony of Patience Crabstick. On that evening he returned triumphant to Scotland Yard with Patience Crabstick under his wing; and that lady was housed there with every comfort she could desire, except that of personal liberty. CHAPTER LIX Mr. Gowran Up in London In the meantime Mrs. Hittaway was diligently spreading a report that Lizzie Eustace either was engaged to marry her cousin Frank,--or ought to be so engaged. This she did, no doubt, with the sole object of saving her brother; but she did it with a zeal that dealt as freely with Frank's name as with Lizzie's. They, with all their friends, were her enemies, and she was quite sure that they were, altogether, a wicked, degraded set of people. Of Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle, of Miss Roanoke and Sir Griffin Tewett, she believed all manner of evil. She had theories of her own about the jewels, stories,--probably of her own manufacture in part, although no doubt she believed them to be true,--as to the manner of living at Portray, little histories of Lizzie's debts, and the great fact of the scene which Mr. Gowran had seen with his own eyes. Lizzie Eustace was an abomination to her, and this abominable woman her brother was again in danger of marrying! She was very loud in her denunciations, and took care that they should reach even Lady Linlithgow, so that poor Lucy Morris might know of what sort was the lover in whom she trusted. Andy Gowran had been sent for to town, and was on his journey while Mr. Gager was engaged at Ramsgate. It was at present the great object of Mrs. Hittaway's life to induce her brother to see Mr. Gowran before he kept his appointment with Lady Eustace. Poor Lucy received the wound which was intended for her. The enemy's weapons had repeatedly struck her, but hitherto they had alighted on the strong shield of her faith. But let a shield be never so strong, it may at last be battered out of all form and service. On Lucy's shield there had been much of such batterings, and the blows which had come from him in whom she most trusted had not been the lightest. She had not seen him for months, and his letters were short, unsatisfactory, and rare. She had declared to herself and to her friend Lady Fawn, that no concurrence of circumstances, no absence, however long, no rumours that might reach her ears, would make her doubt the man she loved. She was still steadfast in the same resolution; but in spite of her resolution her heart began to fail her. She became weary, unhappy, and ill at ease, and though she would never acknowledge to herself that she doubted, she did doubt. "So, after all, your Mr. Greystock is to marry my niece, Lizzie Greystock." This good-natured speech was made one morning to poor Lucy by her present patroness, Lady Linlithgow. "I rather think not," said Lucy plucking up her spirits and smiling as she spoke. "Everybody says so. As for Lizzie, she has become quite a heroine. What with her necklace, and her two robberies, and her hunting, and her various lovers,--two lords and a member of Parliament, my dear,--there is nothing to equal her. Lady Glencora Palliser has been calling on her. She took care to let me know that. And I'm now told that she certainly is engaged to her cousin." "According to your own showing, Lady Linlithgow, she has got two other lovers. Couldn't you oblige me by letting her marry one of the lords?" "I'm afraid, my dear, that Mr. Greystock is to be the chosen one." Then after a pause the old woman became serious. "What is the use, Miss Morris, of not looking the truth in the face? Mr. Greystock is neglecting you." "He is not neglecting me. You won't let him come to see me." "Certainly not;--but if he were not neglecting you, you would not be here. And there he is with Lizzie Eustace every day of his life. He can't afford to marry you, and he can afford to marry her. It's a deal better that you should look it all in the face and know what it must all come to." "I shall just wait,--and never believe a word till he speaks it." "You hardly know what men are, my dear." "Very likely not, Lady Linlithgow. It may be that I shall have to pay dear for learning. Of course, I may be mistaken as well as another,--only I don't believe I am mistaken." When this little scene took place, only a month remained of the time for which Lucy's services were engaged to Lady Linlithgow, and no definite arrangement had been made as to her future residence. Lady Fawn was prepared to give her a home, and to Lady Fawn, as it seemed, she must go. Lady Linlithgow had declared herself unwilling to continue the existing arrangement because, as she said, it did not suit her that her companion should be engaged to marry her late sister's nephew. Not a word had been said about the deanery for the last month or two, and Lucy, though her hopes in that direction had once been good, was far too high-spirited to make any suggestion herself as to her reception by her lover's family. In the ordinary course of things she would have to look out for another situation, like any other governess in want of a place; but she could do this only by consulting Lady Fawn; and Lady Fawn when consulted would always settle the whole matter by simply bidding her young friend to come to Fawn Court. There must be some end of her living at Fawn Court. So much Lucy told herself over and over again. It could be but a temporary measure. If--if it was to be her fate to be taken away from Fawn Court a happy, glorious, triumphant bride, then the additional obligation put upon her by her dear friends would not be more than she could bear. But to go to Fawn Court, and, by degrees, to have it acknowledged that another place must be found for her, would be very bad. She would infinitely prefer any intermediate hardship. How, then, should she know? As soon as she was able to escape from the countess, she went up to her own room, and wrote the following letter. She studied the words with great care as she wrote them,--sitting and thinking before she allowed her pen to run on the paper. MY DEAR FRANK, It is a long time since we met;--is it not? I do not write this as a reproach; but because my friends tell me that I should not continue to think myself engaged to you. They say that, situated as you are, you cannot afford to marry a penniless girl, and that I ought not to wish you to sacrifice yourself. I do understand enough of your affairs to know that an imprudent marriage may ruin you, and I certainly do not wish to be the cause of injury to you. All I ask is that you should tell me the truth. It is not that I am impatient; but that I must decide what to do with myself when I leave Lady Linlithgow. Your most affectionate friend, LUCY MORRIS. March 2, 18--. She read this letter over and over again, thinking of all that it said and of all that it omitted to say. She was at first half disposed to make protestations of forgiveness,--to assure him that not even within her own heart would she reproach him, should he feel himself bound to retract the promise he had made her. She longed to break out into love, but so to express her love that her lover should know that it was strong enough even to sacrifice itself for his sake. But though her heart longed to speak freely, her judgment told her that it would be better that she should be reticent and tranquil in her language. Any warmth on her part would be in itself a reproach to him. If she really wished to assist him in extricating himself from a difficulty into which he had fallen in her behalf, she would best do so by offering him his freedom in the fewest and plainest words which she could select. But even when the letter was written she doubted as to the wisdom of sending it. She kept it that she might sleep upon it. She did sleep upon it,--and when the morning came she would not send it. Had not absolute faith in her lover been the rock on which she had declared to herself that she would build the house of her future hopes? Had not she protested again and again that no caution from others should induce her to waver in her belief? Was it not her great doctrine to trust,--to trust implicitly, even though all should be lost if her trust should be misplaced? And was it well that she should depart from all this, merely because it might be convenient for her to make arrangements as to the coming months? If it were to be her fate to be rejected, thrown over, and deceived, of what use to her could be any future arrangements? All to her would be ruin, and it would matter to her nothing whither she should be taken. And then, why should she lie to him as she would lie in sending such a letter? If he did throw her over he would be a traitor, and her heart would be full of reproaches. Whatever might be his future lot in life, he owed it to her to share it with her, and if he evaded his debt he would be a traitor and a miscreant. She would never tell him so. She would be far too proud to condescend to spoken or written reproaches. But she would know that it would be so, and why should she lie to him by saying that it would not be so? Thinking of all this, when the morning came, she left the letter lying within her desk. Lord Fawn was to call upon Lady Eustace on the Saturday, and on Friday afternoon Mr. Andrew Gowran was in Mrs. Hittaway's back parlour in Warwick Square. After many efforts, and with much persuasion, the brother had agreed to see his sister's great witness. Lord Fawn had felt that he would lower himself by any intercourse with such a one as Andy Gowran in regard to the conduct of the woman whom he had proposed to make his wife, and had endeavoured to avoid the meeting. He had been angry, piteous, haughty, and sullen by turns; but Mrs. Hittaway had overcome him by dogged perseverance; and poor Lord Fawn had at last consented. He was to come to Warwick Square as soon as the House was up on Friday evening, and dine there. Before dinner he was to be introduced to Mr. Gowran. Andy arrived at the house at half-past five, and after some conversation with Mrs. Hittaway, was left there all alone to await the coming of Lord Fawn. He was in appearance and manners very different from the Andy Gowran familiarly known among the braes and crofts of Portray. He had a heavy stiff hat, which he carried in his hand. He wore a black swallow-tail coat and black trousers, and a heavy red waistcoat buttoned up nearly to his throat, round which was tightly tied a dingy black silk handkerchief. At Portray no man was more voluble, no man more self-confident, no man more equal to his daily occupations than Andy Gowran; but the unaccustomed clothes, and the journey to London, and the town houses overcame him, and for a while almost silenced him. Mrs. Hittaway found him silent, cautious, and timid. Not knowing what to do with him, fearing to ask him to go and eat in the kitchen, and not liking to have meat and unlimited drink brought for him into the parlour, she directed the servant to supply him with a glass of sherry and a couple of biscuits. He had come an hour before the time named, and there, with nothing to cheer him beyond these slight creature-comforts, he was left to wait all alone till Lord Fawn should be ready to see him. Andy had seen lords before. Lords are not rarer in Ayrshire than in other Scotch counties; and then, had not Lord George de Bruce Carruthers been staying at Portray half the winter? But Lord George was not to Andy a real lord,--and then a lord down in his own county was so much less to him than a lord up in London. And this lord was a lord of Parliament, and a government lord, and might probably have the power of hanging such a one as Andy Gowran were he to commit perjury, or say anything which the lord might choose to call perjury. What it was that Lord Fawn wished him to say, he could not make himself sure. That the lord's sister wished him to prove Lady Eustace to be all that was bad, he knew very well. But he thought that he was able to perceive that the brother and sister were not at one, and more than once during his journey up to London he had almost made up his mind that he would turn tail and go back to Portray. No doubt there was enmity between him and his mistress; but then his mistress did not attempt to hurt him even though he had insulted her grossly; and were she to tell him to leave her service, it would be from Mr. John Eustace, and not from Mrs. Hittaway, that he must look for the continuation of his employment. Nevertheless he had taken Mrs. Hittaway's money and there he was. At half-past seven Lord Fawn was brought into the room by his sister, and Andy Gowran, rising from his chair, three times ducked his head. "Mr. Gowran," said Mrs. Hittaway, "my brother is desirous that you should tell him exactly what you have seen of Lady Eustace's conduct down at Portray. You may speak quite freely, and I know you will speak truly." Andy again ducked his head. "Frederic," continued the lady, "I am sure that you may implicitly believe all that Mr. Gowran will say to you." Then Mrs. Hittaway left the room,--as her brother had expressly stipulated that she should do. Lord Fawn was quite at a loss how to begin, and Andy was by no means prepared to help him. "If I am rightly informed," said the lord, "you have been for many years employed on the Portray property?" "A' my life,--so please your lairdship." "Just so;--just so. And, of course, interested in the welfare of the Eustace family?" "Nae doobt, my laird,--nae doobt; vera interasted indeed." "And being an honest man, have felt sorrow that the Portray property should--should--should--; that anything bad should happen to it." Andy nodded his head, and Lord Fawn perceived that he was nowhere near the beginning of his matter. "Lady Eustace is at present your mistress?" "Just in a fawshion, my laird,--as a mon may say. That is she is,--and she is nae. There's a mony things at Portray as ha' to be lookit after." "She pays you your wages?" said Lord Fawn shortly. "Eh;--wages! Yes, my laird; she does a' that." "Then she's your mistress." Andy again nodded his head, and Lord Fawn again struggled to find some way in which he might approach his subject. "Her cousin, Mr. Greystock, has been staying at Portray lately?" "More coothie than coosinly," said Andy, winking his eye. It was dreadful to Lord Fawn that the man should wink his eye at him. He did not quite understand what Andy had last said, but he did understand that some accusation as to indecent familiarity with her cousin was intended to be brought by this Scotch steward against the woman to whom he had engaged himself. Every feeling of his nature revolted against the task before him, and he found that on trial it became absolutely impracticable. He could not bring himself to inquire minutely as to poor Lizzie's flirting down among the rocks. He was weak, and foolish, and in many respects ignorant,--but he was a gentleman. As he got nearer to the point which it had been intended that he should reach, the more he hated Andy Gowran,--and the more he hated himself for having submitted to such contact. He paused a moment, and then he declared that the conversation was at an end. "I think that will do, Mr. Gowran," he said. "I don't know that you can tell me anything I want to hear. I think you had better go back to Scotland." So saying, he left Andy alone and stalked up to the drawing-room. When he entered it, both Mr. Hittaway and his sister were there. "Clara," he said very sternly, "you had better send some one to dismiss that man. I shall not speak to him again." Lord Fawn did not speak to Andy Gowran again, but Mrs. Hittaway did. After a faint and futile endeavour made by her to ascertain what had taken place in the parlour down-stairs, she descended and found Andy seated in his chair, still holding his hat in his hand, as stiff as a wax figure. He had been afraid of the lord, but as soon as the lord had left him he was very angry with the lord. He had been brought up all that way to tell his story to the lord, and the lord had gone away without hearing a word of it,--had gone away and had absolutely insulted him, had asked him who paid him his wages, and had then told him that Lady Eustace was his mistress. Andy Gowran felt strongly that this was not that kind of confidential usage which he had had a right to expect. And after his experience of the last hour and a half, he did not at all relish his renewed solitude in that room. "A drap of puir thin liquor,--poored out, too, in a weeny glass nae deeper than an egg-shell,--and twa cookies; that's what she ca'ed--rafrashment!" It was thus that Andy afterwards spoke to his wife of the hospitalities offered to him in Warwick Square, regarding which his anger was especially hot, in that he had been treated like a child or a common labourer, instead of having the decanter left with him to be used at his own discretion. When, therefore, Mrs. Hittaway returned to him, the awe with which new circumstances and the lord had filled him was fast vanishing, and giving place to that stubborn indignation against people in general which was his normal, condition. "I suppose I'm jist to gang bock again to Portray, Mrs. Heetaway, and that'll be a' you'll want o' me?" This he said the moment the lady entered the room. But Mrs. Hittaway did not want to lose his services quite so soon. She expressed regret that her brother should have found himself unable to discuss a subject that was naturally so very distasteful to him, and begged Mr. Gowran to come to her again the next morning. "What I saw wi' my ain twa e'es, Mrs. Heetaway, I saw,--and nane the less because his lairdship may nae find it jist tastefu', as your leddyship was saying. There were them twa, a' colloguing, and a-seetting ilk in ither's laps a' o'er, and a-keessing,--yes, my leddy, a-keessing as females, not to say males, ought nae to keess, unless they be mon and wife,--and then not amang the rocks, my leddy; and if his lairdship does nae care to hear tell o' it, and finds it nae tastefu', as your leddyship was saying, he should nae ha' sent for Andy Gowran a' the way from Portray, jist to tell him what he wanna hear, now I'm come to tell't to him!" All this was said with so much unction that even Mrs. Hittaway herself found it to be not "tasteful." She shrunk and shivered under Mr. Gowran's eloquence, and almost repented of her zeal. But women, perhaps, feel less repugnance than do men at using ignoble assistance in the achievement of good purposes. Though Mrs. Hittaway shrunk and shivered under the strong action with which Mr. Gowran garnished his strong words, still she was sure of the excellence of her purpose; and, believing that useful aid might still be obtained from Andy Gowran, and, perhaps, prudently anxious to get value in return for the cost of the journey up from Ayrshire, she made the man promise to return to her on the following morning. CHAPTER LX "Let It Be As Though It Had Never Been" Between her son, and her married daughter, and Lucy Morris, poor Lady Fawn's life had become a burthen to her. Everything was astray, and there was no happiness or tranquillity at Fawn Court. Of all simply human creeds the strongest existing creed for the present in the minds of the Fawn ladies was that which had reference to the general iniquity of Lizzie Eustace. She had been the cause of all these sorrows, and she was hated so much the more because she had not been proved to be iniquitous before all the world. There had been a time when it seemed to be admitted that she was so wicked in keeping the diamonds in opposition to the continued demands made for them by Mr. Camperdown, that all people would be justified in dropping her, and Lord Fawn among the number. But since the two robberies, public opinion had veered round three or four points in Lizzie's favour, and people were beginning to say that she had been ill-used. Then had come Mrs. Hittaway's evidence as to Lizzie's wicked doings down in Scotland,--the wicked doings which Andy Gowran had described with a vehemence so terribly moral; and that which had been at first, as it were, added to the diamonds, as a supplementary weight thrown into the scale, so that Lizzie's iniquities might bring her absolutely to the ground, had gradually assumed the position of being the first charge against her. Lady Fawn had felt no aversion to discussing the diamonds. When Lizzie was called a "thief," and a "robber," and a "swindler" by one or another of the ladies of the family,--who, in using those strong terms, whispered the words as ladies are wont to do when they desire to lessen the impropriety of the strength of their language by the gentleness of the tone in which the words are spoken,--when Lizzie was thus described in Lady Fawn's hearing in her own house, she had felt no repugnance to it. It was well that the fact should be known, so that everybody might be aware that her son was doing right in refusing to marry so wicked a lady. But when the other thing was added to it; when the story was told of what Mr. Gowran had seen among the rocks, and when gradually that became the special crime which was to justify her son in dropping the lady's acquaintance, then Lady Fawn became very unhappy, and found the subject to be, as Mrs. Hittaway had described it, very distasteful. And this trouble hit Lucy Morris as hard as it did Lord Fawn. If Lizzie Eustace was unfit to marry Lord Fawn because of these things, then was Frank Greystock not only unfit to marry Lucy, but most unlikely to do so, whether fit or unfit. For a week or two Lady Fawn had allowed herself to share Lucy's joy, and to believe that Mr. Greystock would prove himself true to the girl whose heart he had made all his own;--but she had soon learned to distrust the young member of Parliament who was always behaving insolently to her son, who spent his holidays down with Lizzie Eustace, who never visited and rarely wrote to the girl he had promised to marry, and as to whom all the world agreed in saying that he was far too much in debt to marry any woman who had not means to help him. It was all sorrow and vexation together; and yet when her married daughter would press the subject upon her, and demand her co-operation, she had no power of escaping. "Mamma," Mrs. Hittaway had said, "Lady Glencora Palliser has been with her, and everybody is taking her up, and if her conduct down in Scotland isn't proved, Frederic will be made to marry her." "But what can I do, my dear?" Lady Fawn had asked, almost in tears. "Insist that Frederic shall know the whole truth," replied Mrs. Hittaway with energy. "Of course, it is very disagreeable. Nobody can feel it more than I do. It is horrible to have to talk about such things,--and to think of them." "Indeed it is, Clara,--very horrible." "But anything, mamma, is better than that Frederic should be allowed to marry such a woman as that. It must be proved to him--how unfit she is to be his wife." With the view of carrying out this intention, Mrs. Hittaway had, as we have seen, received Andy Gowran at her own house; and with the same view she took Andy Gowran the following morning down to Richmond. Mrs. Hittaway, and her mother, and Andy were closeted together for half an hour, and Lady Fawn suffered grievously. Lord Fawn had found that he couldn't hear the story, and he had not heard it. He had been strong enough to escape, and had, upon the whole, got the best of it in the slight skirmish which had taken place between him and the Scotchman; but poor old Lady Fawn could not escape. Andy was allowed to be eloquent, and the whole story was told to her, though she would almost sooner have been flogged at a cart's tail than have heard it. Then "rafrashments" were administered to Andy of a nature which made him prefer Fawn Court to Warwick Square, and he was told that he might go back to Portray as soon as he pleased. When he was gone, Mrs. Hittaway opened her mind to her mother altogether. "The truth is, mamma, that Frederic will marry her." "But why? I thought that he had declared that he would give it up. I thought that he had said so to herself." "What of that, if he retracts what he said? He is so weak. Lady Glencora Palliser has made him promise to go and see her; and he is to go to-day. He is there now, probably,--at this very moment. If he had been firm, the thing was done. After all that has taken place, nobody would ever have supposed that his engagement need go for anything. But what can he say to her now that he is with her, except just do the mischief all over again? I call it quite wicked in that woman's interfering. I do, indeed! She's a nasty, insolent, impertinent creature;--that's what she is! After all the trouble I've taken, she comes and undoes it all with one word." "What can we do, Clara?" "Well;--I do believe that if Frederic could be made to act as he ought to do, just for a while, she would marry her cousin, Mr. Greystock, and then there would be an end of it altogether. I really think that she likes him best, and from all that I can hear, she would take him now, if Frederic would only keep out of the way. As for him, of course he is doing his very best to get her. He has not one shilling to rub against another, and is over head and ears in debt." "Poor Lucy!" ejaculated Lady Fawn. "Well;--yes; but really that is a matter of course. I always thought, mamma, that you and Amelia were a little wrong to coax her up in that belief." "But, my dear, the man proposed for her in the plainest possible manner. I saw his letter." "No doubt;--men do propose. We all know that. I'm sure I don't know what they get by it, but I suppose it amuses them. There used to be a sort of feeling that if a man behaved badly something would be done to him; but that's all over now. A man may propose to whom he likes, and if he chooses to say afterwards that it doesn't mean anything, there's nothing in the world to bring him to book." "That's very hard," said the elder lady, of whom everybody said that she did not understand the world as well as her daughter. "The girls,--they all know that it is so, and I suppose it comes to the same thing in the long run. The men have to marry, and what one girl loses another girl gets." "It will kill Lucy." "Girls ain't killed so easy, mamma;--not now-a-days. Saying that it will kill her won't change the man's nature. It wasn't to be expected that such a man as Frank Greystock, in debt, and in Parliament, and going to all the best houses, should marry your governess. What was he to get by it? That's what I want to know." "I suppose he loved her." "Laws, mamma, how antediluvian you are! No doubt he did like her,--after his fashion; though what he saw in her, I never could tell. I think Miss Morris would make a very nice wife for a country clergyman who didn't care how poor things were. But she has no style;--and as far as I can see, she has no beauty. Why should such a man as Frank Greystock tie himself by the leg for ever to such a girl as that? But, mamma, he doesn't mean to marry Lucy Morris. Would he have been going on in that way with his cousin down in Scotland had he meant it? He means nothing of the kind. He means to marry Lady Eustace's income if he can get it;--and she would marry him before the summer if only we could keep Frederic away from her." Mrs. Hittaway demanded from her mother that in season and out of season she should be urgent with Lord Fawn, impressing upon him the necessity of waiting, in order that he might see how false Lady Eustace was to him; and also that she should teach Lucy Morris how vain were all her hopes. If Lucy Morris would withdraw her claims altogether the thing might probably be more quickly and more surely managed. If Lucy could be induced to tell Frank that she withdrew her claim, and that she saw how impossible it was that they should ever be man and wife, then,--so argued Mrs. Hittaway,--Frank would at once throw himself at his cousin's feet, and all the difficulty would be over. The abominable, unjustifiable, and insolent interference of Lady Glencora just at the present moment would be the means of undoing all the good that had been done, unless it could be neutralised by some such activity as this. The necklace had absolutely faded away into nothing. The sly creature was almost becoming a heroine on the strength of the necklace. The very mystery with which the robberies were pervaded was acting in her favour. Lord Fawn would absolutely be made to marry her,--forced into it by Lady Glencora and that set,--unless the love affair between her and her cousin, of which Andy Gowran was able to give such sufficient testimony, could in some way be made available to prevent it. The theory of life and system on which social matters should be managed, as displayed by her married daughter, was very painful to poor old Lady Fawn. When she was told that under the new order of things promises from gentlemen were not to be looked upon as binding, that love was to go for nothing, that girls were to be made contented by being told that when one lover was lost another could be found, she was very unhappy. She could not disbelieve it all, and throw herself back upon her faith in virtue, constancy, and honesty. She rather thought that things had changed for the worse since she was young, and that promises were not now as binding as they used to be. She herself had married into a Liberal family, had a Liberal son, and would have called herself a Liberal; but she could not fail to hear from others, her neighbours, that the English manners, and English principles, and English society were all going to destruction in consequence of the so-called liberality of the age. Gentlemen, she thought, certainly did do things which gentlemen would not have done forty years ago; and as for ladies,--they, doubtless, were changed altogether. Most assuredly she could not have brought an Andy Gowran to her mother to tell such tales in their joint presence as this man had told! Mrs. Hittaway had ridiculed her for saying that poor Lucy would die when forced to give up her lover. Mrs. Hittaway had spoken of the necessity of breaking up that engagement without a word of anger against Frank Greystock. According to Mrs. Hittaway's views Frank Greystock had amused himself in the most natural way in the world when he asked Lucy to be his wife. A governess like Lucy had been quite foolish to expect that such a man as Greystock was in earnest. Of course she must give up her lover; and if there must be blame, she must blame herself for her folly! Nevertheless, Lady Fawn was so soft-hearted that she believed that the sorrow would crush Lucy, even if it did not kill her. But not the less was it her duty to tell Lucy what she thought to be the truth. The story of what had occurred among the rocks at Portray was very disagreeable, but she believed it to be true. The man had been making love to his cousin after his engagement to Lucy. And then, was it not quite manifest that he was neglecting poor Lucy in every way? He had not seen her for nearly six months. Had he intended to marry her, would he not have found a home for her at the deanery? Did he in any respect treat her as he would treat the girl whom he intended to marry? Putting all these things together, Lady Fawn thought that she saw that Lucy's case was hopeless;--and, so thinking, wrote to her the following letter:-- Fawn Court, 3rd March, 18--. DEAREST LUCY, I have so much to say to you that I did think of getting Lady Linlithgow to let you come to us here for a day, but I believe it will perhaps be better that I should write. I think you leave Lady Linlithgow after the first week in April, and it is quite necessary that you should come to some fixed arrangement as to the future. If that were all, there need not be any trouble, as you will come here, of course. Indeed, this is your natural home, as we all feel; and I must say that we have missed you most terribly since you went,--not only for Cecilia and Nina, but for all of us. And I don't know that I should write at all if it wasn't for something else, that must be said sooner or later;--because, as to your coming here in April, that is so much a matter of course. The only mistake was, that you should ever have gone away. So we shall expect you here on whatever day you may arrange with Lady Linlithgow as to leaving her. The poor, dear lady went on repeating her affectionate invitation, because of the difficulty she encountered in finding words with which to give the cruel counsel which she thought that it was her duty to offer. And now, dearest Lucy, I must say what I believe to be the truth about Mr. Greystock. I think that you should teach yourself to forget him,--or, at any rate, that you should teach yourself to forget the offer which he made to you last autumn. Whether he was or was not in earnest then, I think that he has now determined to forget it. I fear there is no doubt that he has been making love to his cousin, Lady Eustace. You well know that I should not mention such a thing, if I had not the strongest possible grounds to convince me that I ought to do so. But, independent of this, his conduct to you during the last six months has been such as to make us all feel sure that the engagement is distasteful to him. He has probably found himself so placed that he cannot marry without money, and has wanted the firmness, or perhaps you will say the hardness of heart, to say so openly. I am sure of this, and so is Amelia, that it will be better for you to give the matter up altogether, and to come here and recover the blow among friends who will be as kind to you as possible. I know all that you will feel, and you have my fullest sympathy; but even such sorrows as that are cured by time, and by the mercy of God, which is not only infinite, but all-powerful. Your most affectionate friend, C. FAWN. Lady Fawn, when she had written her letter, discussed it with Amelia, and the two together agreed that Lucy would never surmount the ill effects of the blow which was thus prophesied. "As to saying it will kill her, mamma," said Amelia, "I don't believe in that. If I were to break my leg, the accident might shorten my life, and this may shorten hers. It won't kill her in any other way. But it will alter her altogether. Nobody ever used to make herself happy so easily as Lucy Morris; but all that will be gone now." When Lucy received the letter, the immediate effect upon her, the effect which came from the first reading of it, was not very great. She succeeded for some half-hour in putting it aside, as referring to a subject on which she had quite made up her mind in a direction contrary to that indicated by her correspondent's advice. Lady Fawn told her that her lover intended to be false to her. She had thought the matter over very carefully within the last day or two, and had altogether made up her mind that she would continue to trust her lover. She had abstained from sending to him the letter which she had written, and had abstained on that resolution. Lady Fawn, of course, was as kind and friendly as a friend could be. She loved Lady Fawn dearly. But she was not bound to think Lady Fawn right, and in this instance she did not think Lady Fawn right. So she folded up the letter and put it in her pocket. But by putting the letter into her pocket she could not put it out of her mind. Though she had resolved, of what use to her was a resolution in which she could not trust? Day had passed by after day, week after week, and month after month, and her very soul within her had become sad for want of seeing this man, who was living almost in the next street to her. She was ashamed to own to herself how many hours she had sat at the window, thinking that, perhaps, he might walk before the house in which he knew that she was immured. And, even had it been impossible that he should come to her, the post was open to him. She had scorned to write to him oftener than he would write to her, and now their correspondence had dwindled almost to nothing. He knew as well as did Lady Fawn when the period of her incarceration in Lady Linlithgow's dungeon would come to an end; and he knew, too, how great had been her hope that she might be accepted as a guest at the deanery when that period should arrive. He knew that she must look for a new home, unless he would tell her where she should live. Was it likely,--was it possible, that he should be silent so long if he still intended to make her his wife? No doubt he had come to remember his debts, to remember his ambition, to think of his cousin's wealth,--and to think also of his cousin's beauty. What right had she ever had to hope for such a position as that of his wife,--she who had neither money nor beauty,--she who had nothing to give him in return for his name and the shelter of his house beyond her mind and her heart? As she thought of it all, she looked down upon her faded grey frock, and stood up that she might glance at her features in the glass; and she saw how small she was and insignificant, and reminded herself that all she had in the world was a few pounds which she had saved and was still saving in order that she might go to him with decent clothes upon her back. Was it reasonable that she should expect it? But why had he come to her and made her thus wretched? She could acknowledge to herself that she had been foolish, vain, utterly ignorant of her own value in venturing to hope; perhaps unmaidenly in allowing it to be seen that she had hoped;--but what was he in having first exalted her before all her friends, and then abasing her so terribly and bringing her to such utter shipwreck? From spoken or written reproaches she could, of course, abstain. She would neither write nor speak any;--but from unuttered reproaches how could she abstain? She had called him a traitor once in playful, loving irony, during those few hours in which her love had been to her a luxury that she could enjoy. But now he was a traitor indeed. Had he left her alone she would have loved him in silence, and not have been wretched in her love. She would, she knew, in that case, have had vigour enough and sufficient strength of character to bear her burthen without outward signs of suffering, without any inward suffering that would have disturbed the current of her life. But now everything was over with her. She had no thought of dying, but her future life was a blank to her. She came down-stairs to sit at lunch with Lady Linlithgow, and the old woman did not perceive that anything was amiss with her companion. Further news had been heard of Lizzie Eustace, and of Lord Fawn, and of the robberies, and the countess declared how she had read in the newspaper that one man was already in custody for the burglary at the house in Hertford Street. From that subject she went on to tidings which had reached her from her old friend Lady Clantantram that the Fawn marriage was on again. "Not that I believe it, my dear; because I think that Mr. Greystock has made it quite safe in that quarter." All this Lucy heard, and never showed by a single sign, or by a motion of a muscle, that she was in pain. Then Lady Linlithgow asked her what she meant to do after the 5th of April. "I don't see at all why you shouldn't stay here, if you like it, Miss Morris;--that is, if you have abandoned the stupid idea of an engagement with Frank Greystock." Lucy smiled, and even thanked the countess, and said that she had made up her mind to go back to Richmond for a month or two, till she could get another engagement as a governess. Then she returned to her room and sat again at her window, looking out upon the street. What did it matter now where she went? And yet she must go somewhere, and do something. There remained to her the wearisome possession of herself, and while she lived she must eat, and have clothes, and require shelter. She could not dawdle out a bitter existence under Lady Fawn's roof, eating the bread of charity, hanging about the rooms and shrubberies useless and idle. How bitter to her was that possession of herself, as she felt that there was nothing good to be done with the thing so possessed! She doubted even whether ever again she could become serviceable as a governess, and whether the energy would be left to her of earning her bread by teaching adequately the few things that she knew. But she must make the attempt,--and must go on making it, till God in his mercy should take her to himself. And yet but a few months since life had been so sweet to her! As she felt this she was not thinking of those short days of excited, feverish bliss in which she had believed that all the good things of the world were to be showered into her lap; but of previous years in which everything had been with her as it was now,--with the one exception that she had not then been deceived. She had been full of smiles, and humour, and mirth, absolutely happy among her friends, though conscious of the necessity of earning her bread by the exercise of a most precarious profession,--while elated by no hope. Though she had loved the man and had been hopeless, she was happy. But now, surely, of all maidens and of all women, she was the most forlorn. Having once acceded to the truth of Lady Fawn's views, she abandoned all hope. Everybody said so, and it was so. There was no word from any side to encourage her. The thing was done and over, and she would never mention his name again. She would simply beg of all the Fawns that no allusion might be made to him in her presence. She would never blame him, and certainly she would never praise him. As far as she could rule her tongue, she would never have his name upon her lips again. She thought for a time that she would send the letter which she had already written. Any other letter she could not bring herself to write. Even to think of him was an agony to her; but to communicate her thoughts to him was worse than agony. It would be almost madness. What need was there for any letter? If the thing was done, it was done. Perhaps there remained with her,--staying by her without her own knowledge, some faint spark of hope, that even yet he might return to her. At last she resolved that there should be no letter, and she destroyed that which she had written. But she did write a note to Lady Fawn, in which she gratefully accepted her old friend's kindness till such time as she could "find a place." "As to that other subject," she said, "I know that you are right. Please let it all be as though it had never been." CHAPTER LXI Lizzie's Great Friend The Saturday morning came at last for which Lord Fawn had made his appointment with Lizzie, and a very important day it was in Hertford Street,--chiefly on account of his lordship's visit, but also in respect to other events which crowded themselves into the day. In the telling of our tale, we have gone a little in advance of this, as it was not till the subsequent Monday that Lady Linlithgow read in the newspaper, and told Lucy, how a man had been arrested on account of the robbery. Early on the Saturday morning Sir Griffin Tewett was in Hertford Street, and, as Lizzie afterwards understood, there was a terrible scene between both him and Lucinda and him and Mrs. Carbuncle. She saw nothing of it herself, but Mrs. Carbuncle brought her the tidings. For the last few days Mrs. Carbuncle had been very affectionate in her manner to Lizzie, thereby showing a great change; for during nearly the whole of February the lady, who in fact owned the house, had hardly been courteous to her remunerative guest, expressing more than once a hint that the arrangement which had brought them together had better come to an end. "You see, Lady Eustace," Mrs. Carbuncle had once said, "the trouble about these robberies is almost too much for me." Lizzie, who was ill at the time, and still trembling with constant fear on account of the lost diamonds, had taken advantage of her sick condition, and declined to argue the question of her removal. Now she was supposed to be convalescent, but Mrs. Carbuncle had returned to her former ways of affection. No doubt there was cause for this,--cause that was patent to Lizzie herself. Lady Glencora Palliser had called,--which thing alone was felt by Lizzie to alter her position altogether. And then, though her diamonds were gone, and though the thieves who had stolen them were undoubtedly aware of her secret as to the first robbery, though she had herself told that secret to Lord George, whom she had not seen since she had done so,--in spite of all these causes for trouble, she had of late gradually found herself to be emerging from the state of despondency into which she had fallen while the diamonds were in her own custody. She knew that she was regaining her ascendancy; and, therefore, when Mrs. Carbuncle came to tell her of the grievous things which had been said down-stairs between Sir Griffin and his mistress, and to consult her as to the future, Lizzie was not surprised. "I suppose the meaning of it is that the match must be off," said Lizzie. "Oh dear, no;--pray don't say anything so horrid after all that I have gone through. Don't suggest anything of that kind to Lucinda." "But surely after what you've told me now, he'll never come here again." "Oh yes, he will. There's no danger about his coming back. It's only a sort of a way he has." "A very disagreeable way," said Lizzie. "No doubt, Lady Eustace. But then you know you can't have it all sweet. There must be some things disagreeable. As far as I can learn, the property will be all right after a few years,--and it is absolutely indispensable that Lucinda should do something. She has accepted him, and she must go on with it." "She seems to me to be very unhappy, Mrs. Carbuncle." "That was always her way. She was never gay and cheery like other girls. I have never known her once to be what you would call happy." "She likes hunting." "Yes,--because she can gallop away out of herself. I have done all I can for her, and she must go on with the marriage now. As for going back, it is out of the question. The truth is, we couldn't afford it." "Then you must keep him in a better humour." "I am not so much afraid about him; but, dear Lady Eustace, we want you to help us a little." "How can I help you?" "You can, certainly. Could you lend me two hundred and fifty pounds, just for six weeks?" Lizzie's face fell and her eyes became very serious in their aspect. Two hundred and fifty pounds! "You know you would have ample security. You need not give Lucinda her present till I've paid you, and that will be forty-five pounds." "Thirty-five," said Lizzie with angry decision. "I thought we agreed upon forty-five when we settled about the servants' liveries;--and then you can let the man at the stables know that I am to pay for the carriage and horses. You wouldn't be out of the money hardly above a week or so, and it might be the salvation of Lucinda just at present." "Why don't you ask Lord George?" "Ask Lord George! He hasn't got it. It's much more likely that he should ask me. I don't know what's come to Lord George this last month past. I did believe that you and he were to come together. I think these two robberies have upset him altogether. But, dear Lizzie;--you can let me have it, can't you?" Lizzie did not at all like the idea of lending money, and by no means appreciated the security now offered to her. It might be very well for her to tell the man at the stables that Mrs. Carbuncle would pay him her bill, but how would it be with her if Mrs. Carbuncle did not pay the bill? And as for her present to Lucinda,--which was to have been a present, and regarded by the future Lady Tewett as a voluntary offering of good-will and affection,--she was altogether averse to having it disposed of in this fashion. And yet she did not like to make an enemy of Mrs. Carbuncle. "I never was so poor in my life before,--not since I was married," said Lizzie. "You can't be poor, dear Lady Eustace." "They took my money out of my desk, you know,--ever so much." "Forty-three pounds," said Mrs. Carbuncle, who was, of course, well instructed in all the details of the robbery. "And I don't suppose you can guess what the autumn cost me at Portray. The bills are only coming in now, and really they sometimes so frighten me that I don't know what I shall do. Indeed, I haven't got the money to spare." "You'll have every penny of it back in six weeks," said Mrs. Carbuncle, upon whose face a glow of anger was settling down. She quite intended to make herself very disagreeable to her "dear Lady Eustace" or her "dear Lizzie" if she did not get what she wanted; and she knew very well how to do it. It must be owned that Lizzie was afraid of the woman. It was almost impossible for her not to be afraid of the people with whom she lived. There were so many things against her;--so many sources of fear! "I am quite sure you won't refuse me such a trifling favour as this," said Mrs. Carbuncle, with the glow of anger reddening more and more upon her brow. "I don't think I have so much at the bankers," said Lizzie. "They'll let you overdraw,--just as much as you please. If the cheque comes back that will be my look out." Lizzie had tried that game before, and knew that the bankers would allow her to overdraw. "Come, be a good friend and do it at once," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Perhaps I can manage a hundred and fifty," said Lizzie, trembling. Mrs. Carbuncle fought hard for the greater sum; but at last consented to take the less, and the cheque was written. "This, of course, won't interfere with Lucinda's present," said Mrs. Carbuncle,--"as we can make all this right by the horse and carriage account." To this proposition, however, Lady Eustace made no answer. Soon after lunch, at which meal Miss Roanoke did not show herself, Lady Glencora Palliser was announced, and sat for about ten minutes in the drawing-room. She had come, she said, especially to give the Duke of Omnium's compliments to Lady Eustace, and to express a wish on the part of the duke that the lost diamonds might be recovered. "I doubt," said Lady Glencora, "whether there is any one in England except professed jewellers who knows so much about diamonds as his grace." "Or who has so many," said Mrs. Carbuncle, smiling graciously. "I don't know about that. I suppose there are family diamonds, though I have never seen them. But he sympathises with you completely, Lady Eustace. I suppose there is hardly hope now of recovering them." Lizzie smiled and shook her head. "Isn't it odd that they never should have discovered the thieves? I'm told they haven't at all given it up,--only, unfortunately, they'll never get back the necklace." She sat there for about a quarter of an hour, and then, as she took her leave, she whispered a few words to Lizzie. "He is to come and see you;--isn't he?" Lizzie assented with a smile, but without a word. "I hope it will be all right," said Lady Glencora, and then she went. Lizzie liked this friendship from Lady Glencora amazingly. Perhaps, after all, nothing more would ever be known about the diamonds, and they would simply be remembered as having added a peculiar and not injurious mystery to her life. Lord George knew,--but then she trusted that a benevolent, true-hearted Corsair, such as was Lord George, would never tell the story against her. The thieves knew,--but surely they, if not detected, would never tell. And if the story were told by thieves, or even by a Corsair, at any rate half the world would not believe it. What she had feared,--had feared till the dread had nearly overcome her,--was public exposure at the hands of the police. If she could escape that, the world might still be bright before her. And the interest taken in her by such persons as the Duke of Omnium and Lady Glencora was evidence not only that she had escaped it hitherto, but also that she was in a fair way to escape it altogether. Three weeks ago she would have given up half her income to have been able to steal out of London without leaving a trace behind her. Three weeks ago Mrs. Carbuncle was treating her with discourtesy, and she was left alone nearly the whole day in her sick bedroom. Things were going better with her now. She was recovering her position. Mr. Camperdown, who had been the first to attack her, was, so to say, "nowhere." He had acknowledged himself beaten. Lord Fawn, whose treatment to her had been so great an injury, was coming to see her that very day. Her cousin Frank, though he had never offered to marry her, was more affectionate to her than ever. Mrs. Carbuncle had been at her feet that morning borrowing money. And Lady Glencora Palliser,--the very leading star of fashion,--had called upon her twice! Why should she succumb? She had an income of four thousand pounds a year, and she thought that she could remember that her aunt, Lady Linlithgow, had but seven hundred pounds. Lady Fawn with all her daughters had not near so much as she had. And she was beautiful, too, and young, and perfectly free to do what she pleased. No doubt the last eighteen months of her life had been made wretched by those horrid diamonds;--but they were gone, and she had fair reason to hope that the very knowledge of them was gone also. In this condition would it be expedient for her to accept Lord Fawn when he came? She could not, of course, be sure that any renewed offer would be the result of his visit;--but she thought it probable that with care she might bring him to that. Why should he come to her if he himself had no such intention? Her mind was quite made up on this point,--that he should be made to renew his offer; but whether she would renew her acceptance was quite another question. She had sworn to her cousin Frank that she would never do so, and she had sworn also that she would be revenged on this wretched lord. Now would be her opportunity of accomplishing her revenge, and of proving to Frank that she had been in earnest. And she positively disliked the man. That, probably, did not go for much, but it went for something, even with Lizzie Eustace. Her cousin she did like,--and Lord George. She hardly knew which was her real love;--though, no doubt, she gave the preference greatly to her cousin, because she could trust him. And then Lord Fawn was very poor. The other two men were poor also; but their poverty was not so objectionable in Lizzie's eyes as were the respectable, close-fisted economies of Lord Fawn. Lord Fawn, no doubt, had an assured income and a real peerage, and could make her a peeress. As she thought of it all, she acknowledged that there was a great deal to be said on each side, and that the necessity of making up her mind then and there was a heavy burthen upon her. Exactly at the hour named Lord Fawn came, and Lizzie was, of course, found alone. That had been carefully provided. He was shown up, and she received him very gracefully. She was sitting, and she rose from her chair, and put out her hand for him to take. She spoke no word of greeting, but looked at him with a pleasant smile, and stood for a few seconds with her hand in his. He was awkward, and much embarrassed, and she certainly had no intention of lessening his embarrassment. "I hope you are better than you have been," he said at last. "I am getting better, Lord Fawn. Will you not sit down?" He then seated himself, placing his hat beside him on the floor, but at the moment could not find words to speak. "I have been very ill." "I have been so sorry to hear it." "There has been much to make me ill,--has there not?" "About the robbery, you mean?" "About many things. The robbery has been by no means the worst, though, no doubt, it frightened me much. There were two robberies, Lord Fawn." "Yes,--I know that." "And it was very terrible. And then, I had been threatened with a lawsuit. You have heard that, too?" "Yes,--I had heard it." "I believe they have given that up now. I understand from my cousin, Mr. Greystock, who has been my truest friend in all my troubles, that the stupid people have found out at last that they had not a leg to stand on. I daresay you have heard that, Lord Fawn?" Lord Fawn certainly had heard, in a doubtful way, the gist of Mr. Dove's opinion, namely, that the necklace could not be claimed from the holder of it as an heirloom attached to the Eustace family. But he had heard at the same time that Mr. Camperdown was as confident as ever that he could recover the property by claiming it after another fashion. Whether or no that claim had been altogether abandoned, or had been allowed to fall into abeyance because of the absence of the diamonds, he did not know, nor did any one know,--Mr. Camperdown himself having come to no decision on the subject. But Lord Fawn had been aware that his sister had of late shifted the ground of her inveterate enmity to Lizzie Eustace, making use of the scene which Mr. Gowran had witnessed, in lieu of the lady's rapacity in regard to the necklace. It might therefore be assumed, Lord Fawn thought and feared, that his strong ground in regard to the necklace had been cut from under his feet. But still, it did not behove him to confess that the cause which he had always alleged as the ground for his retreat from the engagement was no cause at all. It might go hard with him should an attempt be made to force him to name another cause. He knew that he would lack the courage to tell the lady that he had heard from his sister that one Andy Gowran had witnessed a terrible scene down among the rocks at Portray. So he sat silent, and made no answer to Lizzie's first assertion respecting the diamonds. But the necklace was her strong point, and she did not intend that he should escape the subject. "If I remember right, Lord Fawn, you yourself saw that wretched old attorney once or twice on the subject?" "I did see Mr. Camperdown, certainly. He is my own family lawyer." "You were kind enough to interest yourself about the diamonds,--were you not?" She asked him this as a question, and then waited for a reply. "Was it not so?" "Yes, Lady Eustace; it was so." "They were of great value, and it was natural," continued Lizzie. "Of course you interested yourself. Mr. Camperdown was full of awful threats against me;--was he not? I don't know what he was not going to do. He stopped me in the street as I was driving to the station in my own carriage, when the diamonds were with me;--which was a very strong measure, I think. And he wrote me ever so many,--oh, such horrid letters. And he went about telling everybody that it was an heirloom;--didn't he? You know all that, Lord Fawn?" "I know that he wanted to recover them." "And did he tell you that he went to a real lawyer,--somebody who really knew about it, Mr. Turbot, or Turtle, or some such name as that, and the real lawyer told him that he was all wrong, and that the necklace couldn't be an heirloom at all, because it belonged to me, and that he had better drop his lawsuit altogether? Did you hear that?" "No;--I did not hear that." "Ah, Lord Fawn, you dropped your inquiries just at the wrong place. No doubt you had too many things to do in Parliament and the Government to go on with them; but if you had gone on, you would have learned that Mr. Camperdown had just to give it up,--because he had been wrong from beginning to end." Lizzie's words fell from her with extreme rapidity, and she had become almost out of breath from the effects of her own energy. Lord Fawn felt strongly the necessity of clinging to the diamonds as his one great and sufficient justification. "I thought," said he, "that Mr. Camperdown had abandoned his action for the present because the jewels had been stolen." "Not a bit of it," said Lizzie, rising suddenly to her legs. "Who says so? Who dares to say so? Whoever says so is--is a storyteller. I understand all about that. The action could go on just the same, and I could be made to pay for the necklace out of my own income if it hadn't been my own. I am sure, Lord Fawn, such a clever man as you, and one who has always been in the Government and in Parliament, can see that. And will anybody believe that such an enemy as Mr. Camperdown has been to me, persecuting me in every possible way, telling lies about me to everybody,--who tried to prevent my dear, darling husband from marrying me,--that he wouldn't go on with it if he could?" "Mr. Camperdown is a very respectable man, Lady Eustace." "Respectable! Talk to me of respectable after all that he has made me suffer! As you were so fond of making inquiries, Lord Fawn, you ought to have gone on with them. You never would believe what my cousin said." "Your cousin always behaved very badly to me." "My cousin, who is a brother rather than a cousin, has known how to protect me from the injuries done to me,--or, rather, has known how to take my part when I have been injured. My lord, as you have been unwilling to believe him, why have you not gone to that gentleman who, as I say, is a real lawyer? I don't know, my lord, that it need have concerned you at all, but as you began, you surely should have gone on with it. Don't you think so?" She was still standing up, and, small as was her stature, was almost menacing the unfortunate Under-Secretary of State, who was still seated in his chair. "My lord," continued Lizzie, "I have had great wrong done me." "Do you mean by me?" "Yes, by you. Who else has done it?" "I do not think that I have done wrong to any one. I was obliged to say that I could not recognise those diamonds as the property of my wife." "But what right had you to say so? I had the diamonds when you asked me to be your wife." "I did not know it." "Nor did you know that I had this little ring upon my finger. Is it fit that you, or that any man should turn round upon a lady and say to her that your word is to be broken, and that she is to be exposed before all her friends, because you have taken a fancy to dislike her ring or her brooch? I say, Lord Fawn, it was no business of yours, even after you were engaged to me. What jewels I might have, or not have, was no concern of yours till after I had become your wife. Go and ask all the world if it is not so? You say that my cousin affronts you because he takes my part,--like a brother. Ask any one else. Ask any lady you may know. Let us name some one to decide between us which of us has been wrong. Lady Glencora Palliser is a friend of yours, and her husband is in the Government. Shall we name her? It is true, indeed, that her uncle, the Duke of Omnium, the grandest and greatest of English noblemen, is specially interested on my behalf." This was very fine in Lizzie. The Duke of Omnium she had never seen; but his name had been mentioned to her by Lady Glencora, and she was quick to use it. "I can admit of no reference to any one," said Lord Fawn. "And I then,--what am I to do? I am to be thrown over simply because your lordship--chooses to throw me over? Your lordship will admit no reference to any one! Your lordship makes inquiries as long as an attorney tells you stories against me, but drops them at once when the attorney is made to understand that he is wrong. Tell me this, sir. Can you justify yourself,--in your own heart?" Unfortunately for Lord Fawn, he was not sure that he could justify himself. The diamonds were gone, and the action was laid aside, and the general opinion which had prevailed a month or two since, that Lizzie had been disreputably concerned in stealing her own necklace, seemed to have been laid aside. Lady Glencora and the duke went for almost as much with Lord Fawn as they did with Lizzie. No doubt the misbehaviour down among the rocks was left to him; but he had that only on the evidence of Andy Gowran,--and even Andy Gowran's evidence he had declined to receive otherwise than second-hand. Lizzie, too, was prepared with an answer to this charge,--an answer which she had already made more than once, though the charge was not positively brought against her, and which consisted in an assertion that Frank Greystock was her brother rather than her cousin. Such brotherhood was not altogether satisfactory to Lord Fawn, when he came once more to regard Lizzie Eustace as his possible future wife; but still the assertion was an answer, and one that he could not altogether reject. It certainly was the case that he had again begun to think what would be the result of a marriage with Lady Eustace. He must sever himself altogether from Mrs. Hittaway, and must relax the closeness of his relations with Fawn Court. He would have a wife respecting whom he himself had spread evil tidings, and the man whom he most hated in the world would be his wife's favourite cousin, or, so to say,--brother. He would, after a fashion, be connected with Mrs. Carbuncle, Lord George de Bruce Carruthers, and Sir Griffin Tewett, all of whom he regarded as thoroughly disreputable. And, moreover, at his own country house at Portray, as in such case it would be, his own bailiff or steward would be the man who had seen--what he had seen. These were great objections; but how was he to avoid marrying her? He was engaged to her. How, at any rate, was he to escape from the renewal of his engagement at this moment? He had more than once positively stated that he was deterred from marrying her only by her possession of the diamonds. The diamonds were now gone. Lizzie was still standing, waiting for an answer to her question,--Can you justify yourself in your own heart? Having paused for some seconds, she repeated her question in a stronger and more personal form. "Had I been your sister, Lord Fawn, and had another man behaved to me as you have now done, would you say that he had behaved well, and that she had no ground for complaint? Can you bring yourself to answer that question honestly?" "I hope I shall answer no question dishonestly." "Answer it then. No; you cannot answer it, because you would condemn yourself. Now, Lord Fawn, what do you mean to do?" "I had thought, Lady Eustace, that any regard which you might ever have entertained for me--" "Well;--what had you thought of my regard?" "That it had been dissipated." "Have I told you so? Has any one come to you from me with such a message?" "Have you not received attentions from any one else?" "Attentions,--what attentions? I have received plenty of attentions,--most flattering attentions. I was honoured even this morning by a most gratifying attention on the part of his grace the Duke of Omnium." "I did not mean that." "What do you mean, then? I am not going to marry the Duke of Omnium because of his attention,--nor any one else. If you mean, sir, after the other inquiries you have done me the honour to make, to throw it in my face now, that I have--have in any way rendered myself unworthy of the position of your wife because people have been civil and kind to me in my sorrow, you are a greater dastard than I took you to be. Tell me at once, sir, whom you mean." It is hardly too much to say that the man quailed before her. And it certainly is not too much to say that, had Lizzie Eustace been trained as an actress, she would have become a favourite with the town. When there came to her any fair scope for acting, she was perfect. In the ordinary scenes of ordinary life, such as befell her during her visit to Fawn Court, she could not acquit herself well. There was no reality about her, and the want of it was strangely plain to most unobservant eyes. But give her a part to play that required exaggerated, strong action, and she hardly ever failed. Even in that terrible moment, when, on her return from the theatre, she thought that the police had discovered her secret about the diamonds, though she nearly sank through fear, she still carried on her acting in the presence of Lucinda Roanoke; and when she had found herself constrained to tell the truth to Lord George Carruthers, the power to personify a poor, weak, injured creature was not wanting to her. The reader will not think that her position in society at the present moment was very well established,--will feel, probably, that she must still have known herself to be on the brink of social ruin. But she had now fully worked herself up to the necessities of the occasion, and was as able to play her part as well as any actress that ever walked the boards. She had called him a dastard, and now stood looking him in the face. "I didn't mean anybody in particular," said Lord Fawn. "Then what right can you have to ask me whether I have received attentions? Had it not been for the affectionate attention of my cousin, Mr. Greystock, I should have died beneath the load of sorrow you have heaped upon me!" This she said quite boldly, and yet the man she named was he of whom Andy Gowran told his horrid story, and whose love-making to Lizzie had, in Mrs. Hittaway's opinion, been sufficient to atone for any falling off of strength in the matter of the diamonds. "A rumour reached me," said Lord Fawn, plucking up his courage, "that you were engaged to marry your cousin." "Then rumour lied, my lord. And he or she who repeated the rumour to you, lied also. And any he or she who repeats it again will go on with the lie." Lord Fawn's brow became very black. The word "lie" itself was offensive to him,--offensive, even though it might not be applied directly to himself; but he still quailed, and was unable to express his indignation,--as he had done to poor Lucy Morris, his mother's governess. "And now let me ask, Lord Fawn, on what ground you and I stand together. When my friend, Lady Glencora, asked me, only this morning, whether my engagement with you was still an existing fact, and brought me the kindest possible message on the same subject from her uncle, the duke, I hardly knew what answer to make her." It was not surprising that Lizzie in her difficulties should use her new friend, but perhaps she over-did the friendship a little. "I told her that we were engaged, but that your lordship's conduct to me had been so strange, that I hardly knew how to speak of you among my friends." "I thought I explained myself to your cousin." "My cousin certainly did not understand your explanation." Lord Fawn was certain that Greystock had understood it well; and Greystock had in return insulted him,--because the engagement was broken off. But it is impossible to argue on facts with a woman who has been ill-used. "After all that has passed, perhaps we had better part," said Lord Fawn. "Then I shall put the matter into the hands of the Duke of Omnium," said Lizzie boldly. "I will not have my whole life ruined, my good name blasted--" "I have not said a word to injure your good name." "On what plea, then, have you dared to take upon yourself to put an end to an engagement which was made at your own pressing request,--which was, of course, made at your own request? On what ground do you justify such conduct? You are a Liberal, Lord Fawn; and everybody regards the Duke of Omnium as the head of the Liberal nobility in England. He is my friend, and I shall put the matter into his hands." It was, probably, from her cousin Frank that Lizzie had learned that Lord Fawn was more afraid of the leaders of his own party than of any other tribunal upon earth,--or perhaps elsewhere. Lord Fawn felt the absurdity of the threat, and yet it had effect upon him. He knew that the Duke of Omnium was a worn-out old debauchee, with one foot in the grave, who was looked after by two or three women who were only anxious that he should not disgrace himself by some absurdity before he died. Nevertheless, the Duke of Omnium, or the duke's name, was a power in the nation. Lady Glencora was certainly very powerful, and Lady Glencora's husband was Chancellor of the Exchequer. He did not suppose that the duke cared in the least whether Lizzie Eustace was or was not married;--but Lady Glencora had certainly interested herself about Lizzie, and might make London almost too hot to hold him if she chose to go about everywhere saying that he ought to marry the lady. And in addition to all this prospective grief, there was the trouble of the present moment. He was in Lizzie's own room,--fool that he had been to come there,--and he must get out as best he could. "Lady Eustace," he said, "I am most anxious not to behave badly in this matter." "But you are behaving badly,--very badly." "With your leave I will tell you what I would suggest. I will submit to you in writing my opinion on this matter;"--Lord Fawn had been all his life submitting his opinion in writing, and thought that he was rather a good hand at the work. "I will then endeavour to explain to you the reasons which make me think that it will be better for us both that our engagement should be at an end. If, after reading it, you shall disagree with me, and still insist on the right which I gave you when I asked you to become my wife,--I will then perform the promise which I certainly made." To this most foolish proposal on his part, Lizzie, of course, acquiesced. She acquiesced, and bade him farewell with her sweetest smile. It was now manifest to her that she could have her husband,--or her revenge, just as she might prefer. This had been a day of triumph to her, and she was talking of it in the evening triumphantly to Mrs. Carbuncle, when she was told that a policeman wanted to see her down-stairs! Oh, those wretched police! Again all the blood rushed to her head and nearly killed her. She descended slowly; and was then informed by a man, not dressed, like Bunfit, in plain clothes, but with all the paraphernalia of a policeman's uniform, that her late servant, Patience Crabstick, had given herself up as Queen's evidence, and was now in custody in Scotland Yard. It had been thought right that she should be so far informed; but the man was able to tell her nothing further. CHAPTER LXII "You Know Where My Heart Is" On the Sunday following, Frank, as usual, was in Hertford Street. He had become almost a favourite with Mrs. Carbuncle; and had so far ingratiated himself even with Lucinda Roanoke that, according to Lizzie's report, he might, if so inclined, rob Sir Griffin of his prize without much difficulty. On this occasion he was unhappy and in low spirits; and when questioned on the subject made no secret of the fact that he was harassed for money. "The truth is I have overdrawn my bankers by five hundred pounds, and they have, as they say, ventured to remind me of it. I wish they were not venturesome quite so often; for they reminded me of the same fact about a fortnight ago." "What do you do with your money, Mr. Greystock?" asked Mrs. Carbuncle, laughing. "Muddle it away, paying my bills with it,--according to the very, very old story. The fact is, I live in that detestable no-man's land, between respectability and insolvency, which has none of the pleasure of either. I am fair game for every creditor, as I am supposed to pay my way,--and yet I never can pay my way." "Just like my poor dear father," said Lizzie. "Not exactly, Lizzie. He managed much better, and never paid anybody. If I could only land on terra-firma,--one side or the other,--I shouldn't much care which. As it is I have all the recklessness, but none of the carelessness, of the hopelessly insolvent man. And it is so hard with us. Attorneys owe us large sums of money, and we can't dun them very well. I have a lot of money due to me from rich men, who don't pay me simply because they don't think that it matters. I talk to them grandly, and look big, as though money was the last thing I thought of, when I am longing to touch my hat and ask them as a great favour to settle my little bill." All this time Lizzie was full of matter which she must impart to her cousin, and could impart to him only in privacy. It was absolutely necessary that she should tell him what she had heard of Patience Crabstick. In her heart of hearts she wished that Patience Crabstick had gone off safely with her plunder to the Antipodes. She had no wish to get back what had been lost, either in the matter of the diamonds or of the smaller things taken. She had sincerely wished that the police might fail in all their endeavours, and that the thieves might enjoy perfect security with their booty. She did not even begrudge Mr. Benjamin the diamonds,--or Lord George, if in truth Lord George had been the last thief. The robbery had enabled her to get the better of Mr. Camperdown, and apparently of Lord Fawn; and had freed her from the custody of property which she had learned to hate. It had been a very good robbery. But now these wretched police had found Patience Crabstick, and would disturb her again! Of course she must tell her cousin. He must hear the news, and it would be better that he should hear it from her than from others. This was Sunday, and she thought he would be sure to know the truth on the following Monday. In this she was right; for on the Monday old Lady Linlithgow saw it stated in the newspapers that an arrest had been made. "I have something to tell you," she said, as soon as she had succeeded in finding herself alone with him. "Anything about the diamonds?" "Well, no; not exactly about the diamonds;--though perhaps it is. But first, Frank, I want to say something else to you." "Not about the diamonds?" "Oh no;--not at all. It is this. You must let me lend you that five hundred pounds you want." "Indeed you shall do no such thing. I should not have mentioned it to you if I had not thought that you were one of the insolvent yourself. You were in debt yourself when we last talked about money." "So I am;--and that horrid woman, Mrs. Carbuncle, has made me lend her one hundred and fifty pounds. But it is so different with you, Frank." "Yes;--my needs are greater than hers." "What is she to me?--while you are everything! Things can't be so bad with me but what I can raise five hundred pounds. After all, I am not really in debt, for a person with my income; but if I were, still my first duty would be to help you if you want help." "Be generous first, and just afterwards. That's it;--isn't it, Lizzie? But indeed, under no circumstances could I take a penny of your money. There are some persons from whom a man can borrow, and some from whom he cannot. You are clearly one of those from whom I cannot borrow." "Why not?" "Ah,--one can't explain these things. It simply is so. Mrs. Carbuncle was quite the natural person to borrow your money, and it seems that she has complied with nature. Some Jew who wants thirty per cent. is the natural person for me. All these things are arranged, and it is of no use disturbing the arrangements and getting out of course. I shall pull through. And now let me know your own news." "The police have taken Patience." "They have,--have they? Then at last we shall know all about the diamonds." This was gall to poor Lizzie. "Where did they get her?" "Ah!--I don't know that." "And who told you?" "A policeman came here last night and said so. She is going to turn against the thieves, and tell all that she knows. Nasty, mean creature." "Thieves are nasty, mean creatures generally. We shall get it all out now,--as to what happened at Carlisle and what happened here. Do you know that everybody believes, up to this moment, that your dear friend Lord George de Bruce sold the diamonds to Mr. Benjamin, the jeweller?" Lizzie could only shrug her shoulders. She herself, among many doubts, was upon the whole disposed to think as everybody thought. She did believe,--as far as she believed anything in the matter, that the Corsair had determined to become possessed of the prize from the moment that he saw it in Scotland, that the Corsair arranged the robbery in Carlisle, and that again he arranged the robbery in the London house as soon as he learned from Lizzie where the diamonds were placed. To her mind this had been the most ready solution of the mystery, and when she found that other people almost regarded him as the thief, her doubts became a belief. And she did not in the least despise or dislike him or condemn him for what he had done. Were he to come to her and confess it all, telling his story in such a manner as to make her seem to be safe for the future, she would congratulate him and accept him at once as her own dear, expected Corsair. But, if so, he should not have bungled the thing. He should have managed his subordinates better than to have one of them turn evidence against him. He should have been able to get rid of a poor weak female like Patience Crabstick. Why had he not sent her to New York, or--or--or anywhere? If Lizzie were to hear that Lord George had taken Patience out to sea in a yacht,--somewhere among the bright islands of which she thought so much,--and dropped the girl overboard, tied up in a bag, she would regard it as a proper Corsair arrangement. Now she was angry with Lord George because her trouble was coming back upon her. Frank had suggested that Lord George was the robber in chief, and Lizzie merely shrugged her shoulders. "We shall know all about it now," said he triumphantly. "I don't know that I want to know any more about it. I have been so tortured about these wretched diamonds, that I never wish to hear them mentioned again. I don't care who has got them. My enemies used to think that I loved them so well that I could not bear to part with them. I hated them always, and never took any pleasure in them. I used to think that I would throw them into the sea; and when they were gone I was glad of it." "Thieves ought to be discovered, Lizzie,--for the good of the community." "I don't care for the community. What has the community ever done for me? And now I have something else to tell you. Ever so many people came yesterday as well as that wretched policeman. Dear Lady Glencora was here again." "They'll make a Radical of you among them, Lizzie." "I don't care a bit about that. I'd just as soon be a Radical as a stupid old Conservative. Lady Glencora has been most kind, and she brought me the dearest message from the Duke of Omnium. The duke had heard how ill I had been treated." "The duke is doting." "It is so easy to say that when a man is old. I don't think you know him, Frank." "Not in the least;--nor do I wish." "It is something to have the sympathy of men high placed in the world. And as to Lady Glencora, I do love her dearly. She just comes up to my beau-ideal of what a woman should be,--disinterested, full of spirit, affectionate, with a dash of romance about her." "A great dash of romance, I fancy." "And a determination to be something in the world. Lady Glencora Palliser is something." "She is awfully rich, Lizzie." "I suppose so. At any rate, that is no disgrace. And then, Frank, somebody else came." "Lord Fawn was to have come." "He did come." "And how did it go between you?" "Ah,--that will be so difficult to explain. I wish you had been behind the curtain to hear it all. It is so necessary that you should know, and yet it is so hard to tell. I spoke up to him, and was quite high-spirited." "I daresay you were." "I told him out, bravely, of all the wrong he had done me. I did not sit and whimper, I can assure you. Then he talked about you,--of your attentions." Frank Greystock, of course, remembered the scene among the rocks, and Mr. Gowran's wagging head and watchful eyes. At the time he had felt certain that some use would be made of Andy's vigilance, though he had not traced the connexion between the man and Mrs. Hittaway. If Lord Fawn had heard of the little scene, there might, doubtless, be cause for him to talk of "attentions." "What did it matter to him?" asked Frank. "He is an insolent ass,--as I have told him once, and shall have to tell him again." "I think it did matter, Frank." "I don't see it a bit. He had resigned his rights,--whatever they were." "But I had not accepted his resignation,--as they say in the newspapers;--nor have I now." "You would still marry him?" "I don't say that, Frank. This is an important business, and let us go through it steadily. I would certainly like to have him again at my feet. Whether I would deign to lift him up again is another thing. Is not that natural, after what he has done to me?" "Woman's nature." "And I am a woman. Yes, Frank. I would have him again at my disposal,--and he is so. He is to write me a long letter;--so like a Government-man, isn't it? And he has told me already what he is to put into the letter. They always do, you know. He is to say that he'll marry me if I choose." "He has promised to say that?" "When he said that he would come, I made up my mind that he should not go out of the house till he had promised that. He couldn't get out of it. What had I done?" Frank thought of the scene among the rocks. He did not, of course, allude to it, but Lizzie was not so reticent. "As to what that old rogue saw down in Scotland, I don't care a bit about it, Frank. He has been up in London, and telling them all, no doubt. Nasty, dirty eavesdropper! But what does it come to? Psha! When he mentioned your name I silenced him at once. What could I have done, unless I had had some friend? At any rate, he is to ask me again in writing,--and then what shall I say?" "You must consult your own heart." "No, Frank;--I need not do that. Why do you say so?" "I know not what else to say." "A woman can marry without consulting her heart. Women do so every day. This man is a lord, and has a position. No doubt I despise him thoroughly,--utterly. I don't hate him, because he is not worth being hated." "And yet you would marry him?" "I have not said so. I will tell you this truth, though perhaps you will say it is not feminine. I would fain marry some one. To be as I have been for the last two years is not a happy condition." "I would not marry a man I despised." "Nor would I,--willingly. He is honest and respectable; and in spite of all that has come and gone would, I think, behave well to a woman when she was once his wife. Of course, I would prefer to marry a man that I could love. But if that is impossible, Frank--" "I thought that you had determined that you would have nothing to do with this lord." "I thought so too. Frank, you have known all that I have thought, and all that I have wished. You talk to me of marrying where my heart has been given. Is it possible that I should do so?" "How am I to say?" "Come, Frank, be true with me. I am forcing myself to speak truth to you. I think that between you and me, at any rate, there should be no words spoken that are not true. Frank, you know where my heart is." As she said this, she stood over him, and laid her hand upon his shoulder. "Will you answer me one question?" "If I can, I will." "Are you engaged to marry Lucy Morris?" "I am." "And you intend to marry her?" To this question he made no immediate answer. "We are old enough now, Frank, to know that something more than what you call heart is wanted to make us happy when we marry. I will say nothing hard of Lucy, though she be my rival." "You can say nothing hard of her. She is perfect." "We will let that pass, though it is hardly kind of you, just at the present moment. Let her be perfect. Can you marry this perfection without a sixpence,--you that are in debt, and who never could save a sixpence in your life? Would it be for her good,--or for yours? You have done a foolish thing, sir, and you know that you must get out of it." "I know nothing of the kind." "You cannot marry Lucy Morris. That is the truth. My present need makes me bold. Frank, shall I be your wife? Such a marriage will not be without love, at any rate on one side,--though there be utter indifference on the other!" "You know I am not indifferent to you," said he, with wicked weakness. "Now, at any rate," she continued, "you must understand what must be my answer to Lord Fawn. It is you that must answer Lord Fawn. If my heart is to be broken, I may as well break it under his roof as another." "I have no roof to offer you," he said. "But I have one for you," she said, throwing her arm round his neck. He bore her embrace for a minute, returning it with the pressure of his arm; and then, escaping from it, seized his hat and left her standing in the room. CHAPTER LXIII The Corsair Is Afraid On the following morning,--Monday morning,--there appeared in one of the daily newspapers the paragraph of which Lady Linlithgow had spoken to Lucy Morris. "We are given to understand,"--newspapers are very frequently given to understand,--"that a man well-known to the London police as an accomplished housebreaker has been arrested in reference to the robbery which was effected on the 30th of January last at Lady Eustace's house in Hertford Street. No doubt the same person was concerned in the robbery of her ladyship's jewels at Carlisle on the night of the 8th of January. The mystery which has so long enveloped these two affairs, and which has been so discreditable to the metropolitan police, will now probably be cleared up." There was not a word about Patience Crabstick in this; and, as Lizzie observed, the news brought by the policeman on Saturday night referred only to Patience, and said nothing of the arrest of any burglar. The ladies in Hertford Street scanned the sentence with the greatest care, and Mrs. Carbuncle was very angry because the house was said to be Lizzie's house. "It wasn't my doing," said Lizzie. "The policeman came to you about it." "I didn't say a word to the man,--and I didn't want him to come." "I hope it will be all found out now," said Lucinda. "I wish it were all clean forgotten," said Lizzie. "It ought to be found out," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "But the police should be more careful in what they say. I suppose we shall all have to go before the magistrates again." Poor Lizzie felt that fresh trouble was certainly coming upon her. She had learned now that the crime for which she might be prosecuted and punished was that of perjury,--that even if everything was known, she could not be accused of stealing, and that if she could only get out of the way till the wrath of the magistrate and policemen should have evaporated, she might possibly escape altogether. At any rate, they could not take her income away from her. But how could she get out of the way, and how could she endure to be cross-examined, and looked at, and inquired into, by all those who would be concerned in the matter? She thought that, if only she could have arranged her matrimonial affairs before the bad day came upon her, she could have endured it better. If she might be allowed to see Lord George, she could ask for advice,--could ask for advice, not as she was always forced to do from her cousin, on a false statement of facts, but with everything known and declared. On that very day Lord George came to Hertford Street. He had been there more than once, perhaps half a dozen times, since the robbery; but on all these occasions Lizzie had been in bed, and he had declined to visit her in her chamber. In fact, even Lord George had become somewhat afraid of her since he had been told the true story as to the necklace at Carlisle. That story he had heard from herself, and he had also heard from Mr. Benjamin some other little details as to her former life. Mr. Benjamin, whose very close attention had been drawn to the Eustace diamonds, had told Lord George how he had valued them at her ladyship's request, and had caused an iron case to be made for them, and how her ladyship had, on one occasion, endeavoured to sell the necklace to him. Mr. Benjamin, who certainly was intimate with Lord George, was very fond of talking about the diamonds, and had once suggested to his lordship that, were they to become his lordship's by marriage, he, Benjamin, might be willing to treat with his lordship. In regard to treating with her ladyship,--Mr. Benjamin acknowledged that he thought it would be too hazardous. Then came the robbery of the box, and Lord George was all astray. Mr. Benjamin was for a while equally astray, but neither friend believed in the other friend's innocence. That Lord George should suspect Mr. Benjamin was quite natural. Mr. Benjamin hardly knew what to think;--hardly gave Lord George credit for the necessary courage, skill, and energy. But at last, as he began to put two and two together, he divined the truth, and was enabled to set the docile Patience on the watch over her mistress's belongings. So it had been with Mr. Benjamin, who at last was able to satisfy Mr. Smiler and Mr. Cann that he had been no party to their cruel disappointment at Carlisle. How Lord George had learned the truth has been told;--the truth as to Lizzie's hiding the necklace under her pillow and bringing it up to London in her desk. But of the facts of the second robbery he knew nothing up to this morning. He almost suspected that Lizzie had herself again been at work,--and he was afraid of her. He had promised her that he would take care of her,--had, perhaps, said enough to make her believe that some day he would marry her. He hardly remembered what he had said;--but he was afraid of her. She was so wonderfully clever that, if he did not take care, she would get him into some mess from which he would be unable to extricate himself. He had never whispered her secret to any one; and had still been at a loss about the second robbery, when he too saw the paragraph in the newspaper. He went direct to Scotland Yard and made inquiry there. His name had been so often used in the affair, that such inquiry from him was justified. "Well, my lord; yes; we have found out something," said Bunfit. "Mr. Benjamin is off, you know." "Benjamin off?" "Cut the painter, my lord, and started. But what's the good, now we has the wires?" "And who were the thieves?" "Ah, my lord, that's telling. Perhaps I don't know. Perhaps I do. Perhaps two or three of us knows. You'll hear all in good time, my lord." Mr. Bunfit wished to appear communicative because he knew but little himself. Gager, in the meanest possible manner, had kept the matter very close; but the fact that Mr. Benjamin had started suddenly on foreign travel had become known to Mr. Bunfit. Lord George had been very careful, asking no question about the necklace;--no question which would have shown that he knew that the necklace had been in Hertford Street when the robbery took place there; but it seemed to him now that the police must be aware that it was so. The arrest had been made because of the robbery in Hertford Street, and because of that arrest Mr. Benjamin had taken his departure. Mr. Benjamin was too big a man to have concerned himself deeply in the smaller matters which had then been stolen. From Scotland Yard Lord George went direct to Hertford Street. He was in want of money, in want of a settled home, in want of a future income, and altogether unsatisfied with his present mode of life. Lizzie Eustace, no doubt, would take him,--unless she had told her secret to some other lover. To have his wife, immediately on her marriage, or even before it, arraigned for perjury, would not be pleasant. There was very much in the whole affair of which he would not be proud as he led his bride to the altar;--but a man does not expect to get four thousand pounds a year for nothing. Lord George, at any rate, did not conceive himself to be in a position to do so. Had there not been something crooked about Lizzie,--a screw loose, as people say,--she would never have been within his reach. There are men who always ride lame horses, and yet see as much of the hunting as others. Lord George, when he had begun to think that, after the tale which he had forced her to tell him, she had caused the diamonds to be stolen by her own maid out of her own desk, became almost afraid of her. But now, as he looked at the matter again and again, he believed that the second robbery had been genuine. He did not quite make up his mind, but he went to Hertford Street resolved to see her. He asked for her, and was shown at once into her own sitting-room. "So you have come at last," she said. "Yes;--I've come at last. It would not have done for me to come up to you when you were in bed. Those women down-stairs would have talked about it everywhere." "I suppose they would," said Lizzie almost piteously. "It wouldn't have been at all wise after all that has been said. People would have been sure to suspect that I had got the things out of your desk." "Oh, no;--not that." "I wasn't going to run the risk, my dear." His manner to her was anything but civil, anything but complimentary. If this was his Corsair humour, she was not sure that a Corsair might be agreeable to her. "And now tell me what you know about this second robbery." "I know nothing, Lord George." "Oh, yes, you do. You know something. You know, at any rate, that the diamonds were there." "Yes;--I know that." "And that they were taken?" "Of course they were taken." "You are sure of that?" There was something in his manner absolutely insolent to her. Frank was affectionate, and even Lord Fawn treated her with deference. "Because, you know, you have been very clever. To tell you the truth, I did not think at first that they had been really stolen. It might, you know, have been a little game to get them out of your own hands,--between you and your maid." "I don't know what you take me for, Lord George." "I take you for a lady who, for a long time, got the better of the police and the magistrates, and who managed to shift all the trouble off your own shoulders on to those of other people. You have heard that they have taken one of the thieves?" "And they have got the girl." "Have they? I didn't know that. That scoundrel Benjamin has levanted too." "Levanted!" said Lizzie, raising both her hands. "Not an hour too soon, my lady. And now what do you mean to do?" "What ought I to do?" "Of course the whole truth will come out." "Must it come out?" "Not a doubt of that. How can it be helped?" "You won't tell. You promised that you would not." "Psha;--promised! If they put me in a witness-box of course I must tell. When you come to this kind of work, promises don't go for much. I don't know that they ever do. What is a broken promise?" "It's a story," said Lizzie, in innocent amazement. "And what was it you told when you were upon your oath at Carlisle; and again when the magistrate came here?" "Oh, Lord George;--how unkind you are to me!" "Patience Crabstick will tell it all, without any help from me. Don't you see that the whole thing must be known? She'll say where the diamonds were found;--and how did they come there, if you didn't put them there? As for telling, there'll be telling enough. You've only two things to do." "What are they, Lord George?" "Go off, like Mr. Benjamin; or else make a clean breast of it. Send for John Eustace and tell him the whole. For his brother's sake he'll make the best of it. It will all be published, and then, perhaps, there will be an end of it." "I couldn't do that, Lord George!" said Lizzie, bursting into tears. "You ask me, and I can only tell you what I think. That you should be able to keep the history of the diamonds a secret, does not seem to me to be upon the cards. No doubt people who are rich, and are connected with rich people, and have great friends,--who are what the world call swells,--have great advantages over their inferiors when they get into trouble. You are the widow of a baronet, and you have an uncle a bishop, and another a dean, and a countess for an aunt. You have a brother-in-law and a first-cousin in Parliament, and your father was an admiral. The other day you were engaged to marry a peer." "Oh yes," said Lizzie, "and Lady Glencora Palliser is my particular friend." "She is; is she? So much the better. Lady Glencora, no doubt, is a very swell among swells." "The Duke of Omnium would do anything for me," said Lizzie with enthusiasm. "If you were nobody, you would, of course, be indicted for perjury, and would go to prison. As it is, if you will tell all your story to one of your swell friends, I think it very likely that you may be pulled through. I should say that Mr. Eustace, or your cousin Greystock, would be the best." "Why couldn't you do it? You know it all. I told you because--because--because I thought you would be the kindest to me." "You told me, my dear, because you thought it would not matter much with me, and I appreciate the compliment. I can do nothing for you. I am not near enough to those who wear wigs." Lizzie did not above half understand him,--did not at all understand him when he spoke of those who wore wigs, and was quite dark to his irony about her great friends;--but she did perceive that he was in earnest in recommending her to confess. She thought about it for a moment in silence, and the more she thought the more she felt that she could not do it. Had he not suggested a second alternative,--that she should go off like Mr. Benjamin? It might be possible that she should go off, and yet be not quite like Mr. Benjamin. In that case ought she not to go under the protection of her Corsair? Would not that be the proper way of going? "Might I not go abroad,--just for a time?" she asked. "And so let it blow over?" "Just so, you know." "It is possible that you might," he said. "Not that it would blow over altogether. Everybody would know it. It is too late now to stop the police, and if you meant to be off, you should be off at once;--to-day or to-morrow." "Oh dear!" "Indeed, there's no saying whether they will let you go. You could start now, this moment;--and if you were at Dover could get over to France. But when once it is known that you had the necklace all that time in your own desk, any magistrate, I imagine, could stop you. You'd better have some lawyer you can trust;--not that blackguard Mopus." Lord George had certainly brought her no comfort. When he told her that she might go at once if she chose, she remembered, with a pang of agony, that she had already overdrawn her account at the bankers. She was the actual possessor of an income of four thousand pounds a year, and now, in her terrible strait, she could not stir because she had no money with which to travel. Had all things been well with her, she could, no doubt, have gone to her bankers and have arranged this little difficulty. But as it was, she could not move, because her purse was empty. Lord George sat looking at her, and thinking whether he would make the plunge and ask her to be his wife,--with all her impediments and drawbacks about her. He had been careful to reduce her to such a condition of despair, that she would undoubtedly have accepted him, so that she might have some one to lean upon in her trouble;--but, as he looked at her, he doubted. She was such a mass of deceit, that he was afraid of her. She might say that she would marry him, and then, when the storm was over, refuse to keep her word. She might be in debt,--almost to any amount. She might be already married, for anything that he knew. He did know that she was subject to all manner of penalties for what she had done. He looked at her, and told himself that she was very pretty. But in spite of her beauty, his judgment went against her. He did not dare to share even his boat with so dangerous a fellow-passenger. "That's my advice," he said, getting up from his chair. "Are you going?" "Well;--yes; I don't know what else I can do for you." "You are so unkind!" He shrugged his shoulders, just touched her hand, and left the room without saying another word to her. CHAPTER LXIV Lizzie's Last Scheme Lizzie, when she was left alone, was very angry with the Corsair,--in truth, more sincerely angry than she had ever been with any of her lovers, or, perhaps, with any human being. Sincere, true, burning wrath was not the fault to which she was most exposed. She could snap and snarl, and hate, and say severe things; she could quarrel, and fight, and be malicious;--but to be full of real wrath was uncommon with her. Now she was angry. She had been civil, more than civil, to Lord George. She had opened her house to him, and her heart. She had told him her great secret. She had implored his protection. She had thrown herself into his arms. And now he had rejected her. That he should have been rough to her was only in accordance with the poetical attributes which she had attributed to him. But his roughness should have been streaked with tenderness. He should not have left her roughly. In the whole interview he had not said a loving word to her. He had given her advice,--which might be good or bad,--but he had given it as to one whom he despised. He had spoken to her throughout the interview exactly as he might have spoken to Sir Griffin Tewett. She could not analyse her feelings thoroughly, but she felt that because of what had passed between them, by reason of his knowledge of her secret, he had robbed her of all that observance which was due to her as a woman and a lady. She had been roughly used before,--by people of inferior rank who had seen through her ways. Andrew Gowran had insulted her. Patience Crabstick had argued with her. Benjamin, the employer of thieves, had been familiar with her. But hitherto, in what she was pleased to call her own set, she had always been treated with that courtesy which ladies seldom fail to receive. She understood it all. She knew how much of mere word-service there often is in such complimentary usage. But, nevertheless, it implies respect, and an acknowledgement of the position of her who is so respected. Lord George had treated her as one schoolboy treats another. And he had not spoken to her one word of love. Love will excuse roughness. Spoken love will palliate even spoken roughness. Had he once called her his own Lizzie, he might have scolded her as he pleased,--might have abused her to the top of his bent. But as there had been nothing of the manner of a gentleman to a lady, so also had there been nothing of the lover to his mistress. That dream was over. Lord George was no longer a Corsair, but a brute. But what should she do? Even a brute may speak truth. She was to have gone to a theatre that evening with Mrs. Carbuncle, but she stayed at home thinking over her position. She heard nothing throughout the day from the police; and she made up her mind that, unless she were stopped by the police, she would go to Scotland on the day but one following. She thought that she was sure that she would do so; but, of course, she must be guided by events as they occurred. She wrote, however, to Miss Macnulty saying that she would come, and she told Mrs. Carbuncle of her proposed journey as that lady was leaving the house for the theatre. On the following morning, however, news came which again made her journey doubtful. There was another paragraph in the newspaper about the robbery, acknowledging the former paragraph to have been in some respect erroneous. The "accomplished housebreaker" had not been arrested. A confederate of the "accomplished housebreaker" was in the hands of the police, and the police were on the track of the "accomplished housebreaker" himself. Then there was a line or two alluding in a very mysterious way to the disappearance of a certain jeweller. Taking it altogether, Lizzie thought that there was ground for hope,--and that, at any rate, there would be delay. She would, perhaps, put off going to Scotland for yet a day or two. Was it not necessary that she should wait for Lord Fawn's answer; and would it not be incumbent on her cousin Frank to send her some account of himself after the abrupt manner in which he had left her? If in real truth she should be driven to tell her story to any one,--and she began to think that she was so driven,--she would tell it to him. She believed more in his regard for her than that of any other human being. She thought that he would, in truth, have been devoted to her, had he not become entangled with that wretched little governess. And she thought that if he could see his way out of that scrape, he would marry her even yet,--would marry her, and be good to her, so that her dream of a poetical phase of life should not be altogether dissolved. After all, the diamonds were her own. She had not stolen them. When perplexed in the extreme by magistrates and policemen, with nobody near her whom she trusted to give her advice,--for Lizzie now of course declared to herself that she had never for a moment trusted the Corsair,--she had fallen into an error, and said what was not true. As she practised it before the glass, she thought that she could tell her story in a becoming manner, with becoming tears, to Frank Greystock. And were it not for Lucy Morris, she thought that he would take her with all her faults and all her burthens. As for Lord Fawn, she knew well enough that, let him write what he would, and renew his engagement in what most formal manner might be possible, he would be off again when he learned the facts as to that night at Carlisle. She had brought him to succumb, because he could no longer justify his treatment of her by reference to the diamonds. But when once all the world should know that she had twice perjured herself, his justification would be complete,--and his escape would be certain. She would use his letter simply to achieve that revenge which she had promised herself. Her effort,--her last final effort,--must be made to secure the hand and heart of her cousin Frank. "Ah, 'tis his heart I want!" she said to herself. She must settle something before she went to Scotland,--if there was anything that could be settled. If she could only get a promise from Frank before all her treachery had been exposed, he probably would remain true to his promise. He would not desert her as Lord Fawn had done. Then, after much thinking of it, she resolved upon a scheme which, of all her schemes, was the wickedest. Whatever it might cost her, she would create a separation between Frank Greystock and Lucy Morris. Having determined upon this, she wrote to Lucy, asking her to call in Hertford Street at a certain hour. DEAR LUCY, I particularly want to see you,--on business. Pray come to me at twelve to-morrow. I will send the carriage for you, and it will take you back again. Pray do this. We used to love one another, and I am sure I love you still. Your affectionate old friend, LIZZIE. As a matter of course Lucy went to her. Lizzie, before the interview, studied the part she was to play with all possible care,--even to the words which she was to use. The greeting was at first kindly, for Lucy had almost forgotten the bribe that had been offered to her, and had quite forgiven it. Lizzie Eustace never could be dear to her; but,--so Lucy had thought during her happiness,--this former friend of hers was the cousin of the man who was to be her husband, and was dear to him. Of course she had forgiven the offence. "And now, dear, I want to ask you a question," Lizzie said; "or rather, perhaps not a question. I can do it better than that. I think that my cousin Frank once talked of--of making you his wife." Lucy answered not a word, but she trembled in every limb, and the colour came to her face. "Was it not so, dear?" "What if it was? I don't know why you should ask me any question like that about myself." "Is he not my cousin?" "Yes,--he is your cousin. Why don't you ask him? You see him every day, I suppose?" "Nearly every day." "Why do you send for me, then?" "It is so hard to tell you, Lucy. I have sent to you in good faith, and in love. I could have gone to you,--only for the old vulture, who would not have let us had a word in peace. I do see him--constantly. And I love him dearly." "That is nothing to me," said Lucy. Anybody hearing them, and not knowing them, would have said that Lucy's manner was harsh in the extreme. "He has told me everything." Lizzie, when she said this, paused, looking at her victim. "He has told me things which he could not mention to you. It was only yesterday,--the day before yesterday,--that he was speaking to me of his debts. I offered to place all that I have at his disposal, so as to free him, but he would not take my money." "Of course he would not." "Not my money alone. Then he told me that he was engaged to you. He had never told me before, but yet I knew it. It all came out then. Lucy, though he is engaged to you, it is me that he loves." "I don't believe it," said Lucy. "You can't make me angry, Lucy, because my heart bleeds for you." "Nonsense! trash! I don't want your heart to bleed. I don't believe you've got a heart. You've got money; I know that." "And he has got none. If I did not love him, why should I wish to give him all that I have? Is not that disinterested?" "No. You are always thinking of yourself. You couldn't be disinterested." "And of whom are you thinking? Are you doing the best for him,--a man in his position, without money, ambitious, sure to succeed if want of money does not stop him,--in wishing him to marry a girl with nothing? Cannot I do more for him than you can?" "I could work for him on my knees, I love him so truly!" "Would that do him any service? He cannot marry you. Does he ever see you? Does he write to you as though you were to be his wife? Do you not know that it is all over?--that it must be over? It is impossible that he should marry you. But if you will give him back his word, he shall be my husband, and shall have all that I possess. Now, let us see who loves him best!" "I do!" said Lucy. "How will you show it?" "There is no need that I should show it. He knows it. The only one in the world to whom I wish it to be known, knows it already well enough. Did you send for me for this?" "Yes;--for this." "It is for him to tell me the tidings;--not for you. You are nothing to me;--nothing. And what you say to me now is all for yourself,--not for him. But it is true that he does not see me. It is true that he does not write to me. You may tell him from me,--for I cannot write to him myself,--that he may do whatever is best for him. But if you tell him that I do not love him better than all the world, you will lie to him. And if you say that he loves you better than he does me, that also will be a lie. I know his heart." "But Lucy--" "I will hear no more. He can do as he pleases. If money be more to him than love and honesty, let him marry you. I shall never trouble him; he may be sure of that. As for you, Lizzie, I hope that we may never meet again." She would not get into the Eustace-Carbuncle carriage, which was waiting for her at the door, but walked back to Bruton Street. She did not doubt but that it was all over with her now. That Lizzie Eustace was an inveterate liar, she knew well; but she did believe that the liar had on this occasion been speaking truth. Lady Fawn was not a liar, and Lady Fawn had told her the same. And, had she wanted more evidence, did not her lover's conduct give it? "It is because I am poor," she said to herself,--"for I know well that he loves me!" CHAPTER LXV Tribute Lizzie put off her journey to Scotland from day to day, though her cousin Frank continually urged upon her the expediency of going. There were various reasons, he said, why she should go. Her child was there, and it was proper that she should be with her child. She was living at present with people whose reputation did not stand high,--and as to whom all manner of evil reports were flying about the town. It was generally thought,--so said Frank,--that that Lord George de Bruce Carruthers had assisted Mr. Benjamin in stealing the diamonds, and Frank himself did not hesitate to express his belief in the accusation. "Oh no, that cannot be," said Lizzie, trembling. But, though she rejected the supposition, she did not reject it very firmly. "And then, you know," continued Lizzie, "I never see him. I have actually only set eyes on him once since the second robbery, and then just for a minute. Of course, I used to know him,--down at Portray,--but now we are strangers." Frank went on with his objections. He declared that the manner in which Mrs. Carbuncle had got up the match between Lucinda Roanoke and Sir Griffin was shameful,--all the world was declaring that it was shameful,--that she had not a penny, that the girl was an adventurer, and that Sir Griffin was an obstinate, pig-headed, ruined idiot. It was expedient on every account that Lizzie should take herself away from that "lot." The answer that Lizzie desired to make was very simple. Let me go as your betrothed bride, and I will start to-morrow,--to Scotland or elsewhere, as you may direct. Let that little affair be settled, and I shall be quite as willing to get out of London as you can be to send me. But I am in such a peck of troubles that something must be settled. And as it seems that after all the police are still astray about the necklace, perhaps I needn't run away from them for a little while even yet. She did not say this. She did not even in so many words make the first proposition. But she did endeavour to make Frank understand that she would obey his dictation if he would earn the right to dictate. He either did not or would not understand her, and then she became angry with him,--or pretended to be angry. "Really, Frank," she said, "you are hardly fair to me." "In what way am I unfair?" "You come here and abuse all my friends, and tell me to go here and go there, just as though I were a child. And--and--and--" "And what, Lizzie?" "You know what I mean. You are one thing one day, and one another. I hope Miss Lucy Morris was quite well when you last heard from her." "You have no right to speak to me of Lucy,--at least, not in disparagement." "You are treating her very badly;--you know that." "I am." "Then why don't you give it up? Why don't you let her have her chances,--to do what she can with them? You know very well that you can't marry her. You know that you ought not to have asked her. You talk of Miss Roanoke and Sir Griffin Tewett. There are people quite as bad as Sir Griffin,--or Mrs. Carbuncle either. Don't suppose I am speaking for myself. I've given up all that idle fancy long ago. I shall never marry a second time myself. I have made up my mind to that. I have suffered too much already." Then she burst into tears. He dried her tears and comforted her, and forgave all the injurious things she had said of him. It is almost impossible for a man,--a man under forty and unmarried, and who is not a philosopher,--to have familiar and affectionate intercourse with a beautiful young woman, and carry it on as he might do with a friend of the other sex. In his very heart Greystock despised this woman; he had told himself over and over again that were there no Lucy in the case he would not marry her; that she was affected, unreal,--and, in fact, a liar in every word and look and motion which came from her with premeditation. Judging, not from her own account, but from circumstances as he saw them and such evidence as had reached him, he did not condemn her in reference to the diamonds. He had never for a moment conceived that she had secreted them. He acquitted her altogether from those special charges which had been widely circulated against her; but, nevertheless, he knew her to be heartless and bad. He had told himself a dozen times that it would be well for him that she should be married and taken out of his hands. And yet he loved her after a fashion, and was prone to sit near her, and was fool enough to be flattered by her caresses. When she would lay her hand on his arm, a thrill of pleasure went through him. And yet he would willingly have seen any decent man take her and marry her, making a bargain that he should never see her again. Young or old, men are apt to become Merlins when they encounter Viviens. On this occasion he left her, disgusted indeed, but not having told her that he was disgusted. "Come again, Frank, to-morrow, won't you?" she said. He made her no promise as he went, nor had she expected it. He had left her quite abruptly the other day, and he now went away almost in the same fashion. But she was not surprised. She understood that the task she had in hand was one very difficult to be accomplished,--and she did perceive, in some dark way, that, good as her acting was, it was not quite good enough. Lucy held her ground because she was real. You may knock about a diamond, and not even scratch it; whereas paste in rough usage betrays itself. Lizzie, with all her self-assuring protestations, knew that she was paste, and knew that Lucy was real stone. Why could she not force herself to act a little better, so that the paste might be as good as the stone,--might at least seem to be as good? "If he despises me now, what will he say when he finds it all out?" she asked herself. As for Frank Greystock himself, though he had quite made up his mind about Lizzie Eustace, he was still in doubt about the other girl. At the present moment he was making over two thousand pounds a year, and yet was more in debt now than he had been a year ago. When he attempted to look at his affairs, he could not even remember what had become of his money. He did not gamble. He had no little yacht, costing him about six hundred a year. He kept one horse in London, and one only. He had no house. And when he could spare time from his work, he was generally entertained at the houses of his friends. And yet from day to day his condition seemed to become worse and worse. It was true that he never thought of half-a-sovereign; that in calling for wine at his club he was never influenced by the cost; that it seemed to him quite rational to keep a cab waiting for him half the day; that in going or coming he never calculated expense; that in giving an order to a tailor he never dreamed of anything beyond his own comfort. Nevertheless, when he recounted with pride his great economies, reminding himself that he, a successful man, with a large income and no family, kept neither hunters, nor yacht, nor moor, and that he did not gamble, he did think it very hard that he should be embarrassed. But he was embarrassed, and in that condition could it be right for him to marry a girl without a shilling? In these days Mrs. Carbuncle was very urgent with her friend not to leave London till after the marriage. Lizzie had given no promise,--had only been induced to promise that the loan of one hundred and fifty pounds should not be held to have any bearing on the wedding present to be made to Lucinda. That could be got on credit from Messrs. Harter and Benjamin; for though Mr. Benjamin was absent,--on a little tour through Europe in search of precious stones in the cheap markets, old Mr. Harter suggested,--the business went on the same as ever. There was a good deal of consultation about the present, and Mrs. Carbuncle at last decided, no doubt with the concurrence of Miss Roanoke, that it should consist simply of silver forks and spoons,--real silver as far as the money would go. Mrs. Carbuncle herself went with her friend to select the articles,--as to which, perhaps, we shall do her no injustice in saying that a ready sale, should such a lamentable occurrence ever become necessary, was one of the objects which she had in view. Mrs. Carbuncle's investigations as to the quality of the metal quite won Mr. Harter's respect; and it will probably be thought that she exacted no more than justice,--seeing that the thing had become a matter of bargain,--in demanding that the thirty-five pounds should be stretched to fifty, because the things were bought on long credit. "My dear Lizzie," Mrs. Carbuncle said, "the dear girl won't have an ounce more than she would have got, had you gone into another sort of shop with thirty-five sovereigns in your hand." Lizzie growled, but Mrs. Carbuncle's final argument was conclusive. "I'll tell you what we'll do," said she; "we'll take thirty pounds down in ready money." There was no answer to be made to so reasonable a proposition. The presents to be made to Lucinda were very much thought of in Hertford Street at this time, and Lizzie,--independently of any feeling that she might have as to her own contribution,--did all she could to assist the collection of tribute. It was quite understood that as a girl can only be married once,--for a widow's chance in such matters amounts to but little,--everything should be done to gather toll from the tax-payers of society. It was quite fair on such an occasion that men should be given to understand that something worth having was expected,--no trumpery thirty-shilling piece of crockery, no insignificant glass bottle, or fantastic paper-knife of no real value whatever, but got up just to put money into the tradesmen's hands. To one or two elderly gentlemen upon whom Mrs. Carbuncle had smiled, she ventured to suggest in plain words that a cheque was the most convenient cadeau. "What do you say to a couple of sovereigns?" one sarcastic old gentleman replied, upon whom probably Mrs. Carbuncle had not smiled enough. She laughed and congratulated her sarcastic friend upon his joke;--but the two sovereigns were left upon the table, and went to swell the spoil. "You must do something handsome for Lucinda," Lizzie said to her cousin. "What do you call handsome?" "You are a bachelor and a Member of Parliament. Say fifteen pounds." "I'll be ---- if I do!" said Frank, who was beginning to be very much disgusted with the house in Hertford Street. "There's a five-pound note, and you may do what you please with it." Lizzie gave over the five-pound note,--the identical bit of paper that had come from Frank; and Mrs. Carbuncle, no doubt, did do what she pleased with it. There was almost a quarrel because Lizzie, after much consideration, declared that she did not see her way to get a present from the Duke of Omnium. She had talked so much to Mrs. Carbuncle about the duke, that Mrs. Carbuncle was almost justified in making the demand. "It isn't the value, you know," said Mrs. Carbuncle; "neither I nor Lucinda would think of that; but it would look so well to have the dear duke's name on something." Lizzie declared that the duke was unapproachable on such subjects. "There you're wrong," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "I happen to know there is nothing his grace likes so much as giving wedding presents." This was the harder upon Lizzie as she actually did succeed in saying such kind things about Lucinda, that Lady Glencora sent Miss Roanoke the prettiest smelling-bottle in the world. "You don't mean to say you've given a present to the future Lady Tewett?" said Madame Max Goesler to her friend. "Why not? Sir Griffin can't hurt me. When one begins to be good-natured, why shouldn't one be good-natured all round?" Madame Max remarked that it might, perhaps, be preferable to put an end to good-nature altogether. "There I daresay you're right, my dear," said Lady Glencora. "I've long felt that making presents means nothing. Only if one has a lot of money and people like it, why shouldn't one? I've made so many to people I hardly ever saw that one more to Lady Tewett can't hurt." Perhaps the most wonderful affair in that campaign was the spirited attack which Mrs. Carbuncle made on a certain Mrs. Hanbury Smith, who for the last six or seven years had not been among Mrs. Carbuncle's more intimate friends. Mrs. Hanbury Smith lived with her husband in Paris, but before her marriage had known Mrs. Carbuncle in London. Her father, Mr. Bunbury Jones, had, from certain causes, chosen to show certain civilities to Mrs. Carbuncle just at the period of his daughter's marriage, and Mrs. Carbuncle being perhaps at that moment well supplied with ready money, had presented a marriage present. From that to this present day Mrs. Carbuncle had seen nothing of Mrs. Hanbury Smith, nor of Mr. Bunbury Jones, but she was not the woman to waste the return-value of such a transaction. A present so given was seed sown in the earth,--seed, indeed, that could not be expected to give back twenty-fold, or even ten-fold, but still seed from which a crop should be expected. So she wrote to Mrs. Hanbury Smith, explaining that her darling niece Lucinda was about to be married to Sir Griffin Tewett, and that, as she had no child of her own, Lucinda was the same to her as a daughter. And then, lest there might be any want of comprehension, she expressed her own assurance that her friend would be glad to have an opportunity of reciprocating the feelings which had been evinced on the occasion of her own marriage. "It is no good mincing matters now-a-days," Mrs. Carbuncle would have said, had any friend pointed out to her that she was taking strong measures in the exaction of toll. "People have come to understand that a spade is a spade, and £10, £10," she would have said. Had Mrs. Hanbury Smith not noticed the application, there might, perhaps, have been an end of it, but she was silly enough to send over from Paris a little trumpery bit of finery, bought in the Palais Royal for ten francs. Whereupon Mrs. Carbuncle wrote the following letter:-- MY DEAR MRS. HANBURY SMITH, Lucinda has received your little brooch, and is much obliged to you for thinking of her; but you must remember that when you were married, I sent you a bracelet which cost £10. If I had a daughter of my own, I should, of course, expect that she would reap the benefit of this on her marriage;--and my niece is the same to me as a daughter. I think that this is quite understood now among people in society. Lucinda will be disappointed much if you do not send her what she thinks she has a right to expect. Of course you can deduct the brooch if you please. Yours very sincerely, JANE CARBUNCLE. Mr. Hanbury Smith was something of a wag, and caused his wife to write back as follows:-- DEAR MRS. CARBUNCLE, I quite acknowledge the reciprocity system, but don't think it extends to descendants,--certainly not to nieces. I acknowledge, too, the present quoted at £10. I thought it had been £7 10s.--["The nasty, mean creature," said Mrs. Carbuncle, when showing the correspondence to Lizzie, "must have been to the tradesman to inquire! The price named was £10, but I got £2 l0s. off for ready money."]--At your second marriage I will do what is needful; but I can assure you I haven't recognised nieces with any of my friends. Yours very truly, CAROLINE HANBURY SMITH. The correspondence was carried no further, for not even can a Mrs. Carbuncle exact payment of such a debt in any established court; but she inveighed bitterly against the meanness of Mrs. Smith, telling the story openly, and never feeling that she told it against herself. In her set it was generally thought that she had done quite right. She managed better with old Mr. Cabob, who had certainly received many of Mrs. Carbuncle's smiles, and who was very rich. Mr. Cabob did as he was desired, and sent a cheque,--a cheque for £20; and added a message that he hoped Miss Roanoke would buy with it any little thing that she liked. Miss Roanoke,--or her aunt for her,--liked a thirty-guinea ring, and bought it, having the bill for the balance sent in to Mr. Cabob. Mr. Cabob, who probably knew that he must pay well for his smiles, never said anything about it. Lady Eustace went into all this work, absolutely liking it. She had felt nothing of anger even as regarded her own contribution,--much as she had struggled to reduce the amount. People, she felt, ought to be sharp;--and it was nice to look at pretty things, and to be cunning about them. She would have applied to the Duke of Omnium had she dared, and was very triumphant when she got the smelling-bottle from Lady Glencora. But Lucinda herself took no part whatever in all these things. Nothing that Mrs. Carbuncle could say would induce her to take any interest in them, or even in the trousseau, which, without reference to expense, was being supplied chiefly on the very indifferent credit of Sir Griffin. What Lucinda had to say about the matter was said solely to her aunt. Neither Lady Eustace, nor Lord George, nor even the maid who dressed her, heard any of her complaints. But complain she did, and that with terrible energy. "What is the use of it, Aunt Jane? I shall never have a house to put them into." "What nonsense, my dear! Why shouldn't you have a house as well as others?" "And if I had, I should never care for them. I hate them. What does Lady Glencora Palliser or Lord Fawn care for me?" Even Lord Fawn had been put under requisition, and had sent a little box full of stationery. "They are worth money, Lucinda; and when a girl marries she always gets them." "Yes;--and when they come from people who love her, and who pour them into her lap with kisses, because she has given herself to a man she loves, then it must be nice. Oh,--if I were marrying a poor man, and a poor friend had given me a gridiron to help me to cook my husband's dinner, how I could have valued it!" "I don't know that you like poor things and poor people better than anybody else," said Aunt Jane. "I don't like anything or anybody," said Lucinda. "You had better take the good things that come to you, then; and not grumble. How I have worked to get all this arranged for you, and now what thanks have I?" "You'll find you have worked for very little, Aunt Jane. I shall never marry the man yet." This, however, had been said so often that Aunt Jane thought nothing of the threat. CHAPTER LXVI The Aspirations of Mr. Emilius It was acknowledged by Mrs. Carbuncle very freely that in the matter of tribute no one behaved better than Mr. Emilius, the fashionable, foreign, ci-devant Jew preacher, who still drew great congregations in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Carbuncle's house. Mrs. Carbuncle, no doubt, attended regularly at Mr. Emilius's church, and had taken a sitting for thirteen Sundays at something like ten shillings a Sunday. But she had not as yet paid the money, and Mr. Emilius was well aware that if his tickets were not paid for in advance, there would be considerable defalcations in his income. He was, as a rule, very particular as to such payments, and would not allow a name to be put on a sitting till the money had reached his pockets; but with Mrs. Carbuncle he had descended to no such commercial accuracy. Mrs. Carbuncle had seats for three,--for one of which Lady Eustace paid her share in advance,--in the midst of the very best pews in the most conspicuous part of the house,--and hardly a word had been said to her about the money. And now there came to them from Mr. Emilius the prettiest little gold salver that ever was seen. "I send Messrs. Clerico's docket," wrote Mr. Emilius, "as Miss Roanoke may like to know the quality of the metal." "Ah," said Mrs. Carbuncle, inspecting the little dish, and putting two and two together; "he's got it cheap, no doubt,--at the place where they commissioned him to buy the plate and candlesticks for the church; but at £3 16s. 3d. the gold is worth nearly twenty pounds." Mr. Emilius no doubt had had his outing in the autumn through the instrumentality of Mrs. Carbuncle's kindness; but that was past and gone, and such lavish gratitude for a past favour could hardly be expected from Mr. Emilius. "I'll be hanged if he isn't after Portray Castle," said Mrs. Carbuncle to herself. Mr. Emilius was after Portray Castle, and had been after Portray Castle in a silent, not very confident, but yet not altogether hopeless manner ever since he had seen the glories of that place, and learned something of truth as to the widow's income. Mrs. Carbuncle was led to her conclusion not simply by the wedding present, but in part also by the diligence displayed by Mr. Emilius in removing the doubts which had got abroad respecting his condition in life. He assured Mrs. Carbuncle that he had never been married. Shortly after his ordination, which had been effected under the hands of that great and good man the late Bishop of Jerusalem, he had taken to live with him a lady who was-- Mrs. Carbuncle did not quite recollect who the lady was, but remembered that she was connected in some way with a step-mother of Mr. Emilius who lived in Bohemia. This lady had for awhile kept house for Mr. Emilius;--but ill-natured things had been said, and Mr. Emilius, having respect to his cloth, had sent the poor lady back to Bohemia. The consequence was that he now lived in a solitude which was absolute, and, as Mr. Emilius added, somewhat melancholy. All this Mr. Emilius explained very fully, not to Lizzie herself, but to Mrs. Carbuncle. If Lady Eustace chose to entertain such a suitor, why should he not come? It was nothing to Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie laughed when she was told that she might add the reverend gentleman to the list of her admirers. "Don't you remember," she said, "how we used to chaff Miss Macnulty about him?" "I knew better than that," replied Mrs. Carbuncle. "There is no saying what a man may be after," said Lizzie. "I didn't know but what he might have thought that Macnulty's connexions would increase his congregation." "He's after you, my dear, and your income. He can manage a congregation for himself." Lizzie was very civil to him, but it would be unjust to her to say that she gave him any encouragement. It is quite the proper thing for a lady to be on intimate, and even on affectionate, terms with her favourite clergyman, and Lizzie certainly had intercourse with no clergyman who was a greater favourite with her than Mr. Emilius. She had a dean for an uncle, and a bishop for an uncle-in-law; but she was at no pains to hide her contempt for these old fogies of the Church. "They preach now and then in the cathedral," she said to Mr. Emilius, "and everybody takes the opportunity of going to sleep." Mr. Emilius was very much amused at this description of the eloquence of the dignitaries. It was quite natural to him that people should go to sleep in church who take no trouble in seeking eloquent preachers. "Ah," he said, "the Church in England, which is my Church,--the Church which I love,--is beautiful. She is as a maiden, all glorious with fine raiment. But alas! she is mute. She does not sing. She has no melody. But the time cometh in which she shall sing. I, myself,--I am a poor singer in the great choir." In saying which Mr. Emilius no doubt intended to allude to his eloquence as a preacher. He was a man who could listen as well as sing, and he was very careful to hear well that which was being said in public about Lady Eustace and her diamonds. He had learned thoroughly what was her condition in reference to the Portray estate, and was rejoiced rather than otherwise to find that she enjoyed only a life-interest in the property. Had the thing been better than it was, it would have been the further removed from his reach. And in the same way, when rumours reached him prejudicial to Lizzie in respect of the diamonds, he perceived that such prejudice might work weal for him. A gentleman once, on ordering a mackerel for dinner, was told that a fresh mackerel would come to a shilling. He could have a stale mackerel for sixpence. "Then bring me a stale mackerel," said the gentleman. Mr. Emilius coveted fish, but was aware that his position did not justify him in expecting the best fish on the market. The Lord Fawns and the Frank Greystocks of the world would be less likely to covet Lizzie, should she, by any little indiscretion, have placed herself under a temporary cloud. Mr. Emilius had carefully observed the heavens, and knew how quickly such clouds will disperse themselves when they are tinged with gold. There was nothing which Lizzie had done, or would be likely to do, which could materially affect her income. It might indeed be possible that the Eustaces should make her pay for the necklace; but even in that case, there would be quite enough left for that modest, unambitious comfort which Mr. Emilius desired. It was by preaching, and not by wealth, that he must make himself known in the world!--but for a preacher to have a pretty wife with a title and a good income,--and a castle in Scotland,--what an Elysium it would be! In such a condition he would envy no dean, no bishop,--no archbishop! He thought a great deal about it, and saw no positive bar to his success. She told him that she was going to Scotland. "Not immediately!" he exclaimed. "My little boy is there," she said. "But why should not your little boy be here? Surely, for people who can choose, the great centre of the world offers attractions which cannot be found in secluded spots." "I love seclusion," said Lizzie, with rapture. "Ah, yes; I can believe that." Mr. Emilius had himself witnessed the seclusion of Portray Castle, and had heard, when there, many stories of the Ayrshire hunting. "It is your nature;--but, dear Lady Eustace, will you allow me to say that our nature is implanted in us in accordance with the Fall?" "Do you mean to say that it is wicked to like to be in Scotland better than in this giddy town?" "I say nothing about wicked, Lady Eustace; but this I do say, that nature alone will not lead us always aright. It is good to be at Portray part of the year, no doubt; but are there not blessings in such a congregation of humanity as this London which you cannot find at Portray?" "I can hear you preach, Mr. Emilius, certainly." "I hope that is something, too, Lady Eustace;--otherwise a great many people who kindly come to hear me must sadly waste their time. And your example to the world around;--is it not more serviceable amidst the crowds of London than in the solitudes of Scotland? There is more good to be done, Lady Eustace, by living among our fellow-creatures than by deserting them. Therefore I think you should not go to Scotland before August, but should have your little boy brought to you here." "The air of his native mountains is everything to my child," said Lizzie. The child had, in fact, been born at Bobsborough, but that probably would make no real difference. "You cannot wonder that I should plead for your stay," said Mr. Emilius, throwing all his soul into his eyes. "How dark would everything be to me if I missed you from your seat in the house of praise and prayer!" Lizzie Eustace, like some other ladies who ought to be more appreciative, was altogether deficient in what may perhaps be called good taste in reference to men. Though she was clever, and though, in spite of her ignorance, she at once knew an intelligent man from a fool, she did not know the difference between a gentleman and a--"cad." It was in her estimation something against Mr. Emilius that he was a clergyman, something against him that he had nothing but what he earned, something against him that he was supposed to be a renegade Jew, and that nobody knew whence he came nor who he was. These deficiencies or drawbacks Lizzie recognised. But it was nothing against him in her judgment that he was a greasy, fawning, pawing, creeping, black-browed rascal, who could not look her full in the face, and whose every word sounded like a lie. There was a twang in his voice which ought to have told her that he was utterly untrustworthy. There was an oily pretence at earnestness in his manner which ought to have told that he was not fit to associate with gentlemen. There was a foulness of demeanour about him which ought to have given to her, as a woman at any rate brought up among ladies, an abhorrence of his society. But all this Lizzie did not feel. She ridiculed to Mrs. Carbuncle the idea of the preacher's courtship. She still thought that in the teeth of all her misfortunes she could do better with herself than marry Mr. Emilius. She conceived that the man must be impertinent if Mrs. Carbuncle's assertions were true;--but she was neither angry nor disgusted, and she allowed him to talk to her, and even to make love to her, after his nasty pseudo-clerical fashion. She could surely still do better with herself than marry Mr. Emilius! It was now the twentieth of March, and a fortnight had gone since an intimation had been sent to her from the headquarters of the police that Patience Crabstick was in their hands. Nothing further had occurred, and it might be that Patience Crabstick had told no tale against her. She could not bring herself to believe that Patience had no tale to tell, but it might be that Patience, though she was in the hands of the police, would find it to her interest to tell no tale against her late mistress. At any rate, there was silence and quiet, and the affair of the diamonds seemed almost to be passing out of people's minds. Greystock had twice called in Scotland Yard, but had been able to learn nothing. It was feared, they said, that the people really engaged in the robbery had got away scot-free. Frank did not quite believe them, but he could learn nothing from them. Thus encouraged, Lizzie determined that she would remain in London till after Lucinda's marriage,--till after she should have received the promised letter from Lord Fawn, as to which, though it was so long in coming, she did not doubt that it would come at last. She could do nothing with Frank,--who was a fool! She could do nothing with Lord George,--who was a brute! Lord Fawn would still be within her reach, if only the secret about the diamonds could be kept a secret till after she should have become his wife. About this time Lucinda spoke to her respecting her proposed journey. "You were talking of going to Scotland a week ago, Lady Eustace." "And am still talking of it." "Aunt Jane says that you are waiting for my wedding. It is very kind of you;--but pray don't do that." "I shouldn't think of going now till after your marriage. It only wants ten or twelve days." "I count them. I know how many days it wants. It may want more than that." "You can't put it off now, I should think," said Lizzie; "and as I have ordered my dress for the occasion I shall certainly stay and wear it." "I am very sorry for your dress. I am very sorry for it all. Do you know;--I sometimes think I shall--murder him." "Lucinda,--how can you say anything so horrible! But I see you are only joking." There did come a ghastly smile over that beautiful face, which was so seldom lighted up by any expression of mirth or good humour. "But I wish you would not say such horrible things." "It would serve him right;--and if he were to murder me, that would serve me right. He knows that I detest him, and yet he goes on with it. I have told him so a score of times, but nothing will make him give it up. It is not that he loves me, but he thinks that that will be his triumph." "Why don't you give it up, if it makes you unhappy?" "It ought to come from him,--ought it not?" "I don't see why," said Lizzie. "He is not bound to anybody as I am bound to my aunt. No one can have exacted an oath from him. Lady Eustace, you don't quite understand how we are situated. I wonder whether you would take the trouble to be good to me?" Lucinda Roanoke had never asked a favour of her before;--had never, to Lizzie's knowledge, asked a favour of any one. "In what way can I be good to you?" she said. "Make him give it up. You may tell him what you like of me. Tell him that I shall only make him miserable, and more despicable than he is;--that I shall never be a good wife to him. Tell him that I am thoroughly bad, and that he will repent it to the last day of his life. Say whatever you like,--but make him give it up." "When everything has been prepared!" "What does all that signify compared to a life of misery? Lady Eustace, I really think that I should--kill him, if he really were--were my husband." Lizzie at last said that she would, at any rate, speak to Sir Griffin. And she did speak to Sir Griffin, having waited three or four days for an opportunity to do so. There had been some desperately sharp words between Sir Griffin and Mrs. Carbuncle with reference to money. Sir Griffin had been given to understand that Lucinda had, or would have, some few hundred pounds, and insisted that the money should be handed over to him on the day of his marriage. Mrs. Carbuncle had declared that the money was to come from property to be realised in New York, and had named a day which had seemed to Sir Griffin to be as the Greek Kalends. He expressed an opinion that he was swindled, and Mrs. Carbuncle, unable to restrain herself, had turned upon him full of wrath. He was caught by Lizzie as he was descending the stairs, and in the dining-room he poured out the tale of his wrongs. "That woman doesn't know what fair dealing means," said he. "That's a little hard, Sir Griffin, isn't it?" said Lizzie. "Not a bit. A trumpery six hundred pounds! And she hasn't a shilling of fortune, and never will have, beyond that! No fellow ever was more generous or more foolish than I have been." Lizzie, as she heard this, could not refrain from thinking of the poor departed Sir Florian. "I didn't look for fortune, or say a word about money, as almost every man does,--but just took her as she was. And now she tells me that I can't have just the bit of money that I wanted for our tour. It would serve them both right if I were to give it up." "Why don't you?" said Lizzie. He looked quickly, sharply, and closely into her face as she asked the question. "I would, if I thought as you do." "And lay myself in for all manner of damages," said Sir Griffin. "There wouldn't be anything of that kind, I'm sure. You see, the truth is, you and Miss Roanoke are always having--having little tiffs together. I sometimes think you don't really care a bit for her." "It's the old woman I'm complaining of," said Sir Griffin, "and I'm not going to marry her. I shall have seen the last of her when I get out of the church, Lady Eustace." "Do you think she wishes it?" "Who do you mean?" asked Sir Griffin. "Why;--Lucinda." "Of course she does. Where'd she be now if it wasn't to go on? I don't believe they've money enough between them to pay the rent of the house they're living in." "Of course, I don't want to make difficulties, Sir Griffin, and no doubt the affair has gone very far now. But I really think Lucinda would consent to break it off if you wish it. I have never thought that you were really in love with her." He again looked at her very sharply and very closely. "Has she sent you to say all this?" "Has who sent me? Mrs. Carbuncle didn't." "But Lucinda?" She paused for a moment before she replied;--but she could not bring herself to be absolutely honest in the matter. "No;--she didn't send me. But from what I see and hear, I am quite sure she does not wish to go on with it." "Then she shall go on with it," said Sir Griffin. "I'm not going to be made a fool of in that way. She shall go on with it; and the first thing I mean to tell her as my wife is, that she shall never see that woman again. If she thinks she's going to be master, she's very much mistaken." Sir Griffin, as he said this, showed his teeth, and declared his purpose to be masterful by his features as well as by his words;--but Lady Eustace was, nevertheless, of opinion that when the two came to an absolute struggle for mastery, the lady would get the better of it. Lizzie never told Miss Roanoke of her want of success, or even of the effort she had made; nor did the unhappy young woman come to her for any reply. The preparations went on, and it was quite understood that on this peculiar occasion Mrs. Carbuncle intended to treat her friends with profuse hospitality. She proposed to give a breakfast; and as the house in Hertford Street was very small, rooms had been taken at an hotel in Albemarle Street. Thither, as the day of the marriage drew near, all the presents were taken,--so that they might be viewed by the guests, with the names of the donors attached to them. As some of the money given had been very much wanted indeed, so that the actual cheques could not be conveniently spared just at the moment to pay for the presents which ought to have been bought,--a few very pretty things were hired, as to which, when the donors should see their names attached to them, they should surely think that the money given had been laid out to great advantage. CHAPTER LXVII The Eye of the Public It took Lord Fawn a long time to write his letter, but at last he wrote it. The delay must not be taken as throwing any slur on his character as a correspondent or a man of business, for many irritating causes sprang up sufficient to justify him in pleading that it arose from circumstances beyond his own control. It is, moreover, felt by us all that the time which may fairly be taken in the performance of any task depends, not on the amount of work, but on the performance of it when done. A man is not expected to write a cheque for a couple of thousand pounds as readily as he would one for five,--unless he be a man to whom a couple of thousand pounds is a mere nothing. To Lord Fawn the writing of this letter was everything. He had told Lizzie, with much exactness, what he would put into it. He would again offer his hand,--acknowledging himself bound to do so by his former offer,--but would give reasons why she should not accept it. If anything should occur in the meantime which would, in his opinion, justify him in again repudiating her, he would of course take advantage of such circumstance. If asked himself what was his prevailing motive in all that he did or intended to do, he would have declared that it was above all things necessary that he should "put himself right in the eye of the British public." But he was not able to do this without interference from the judgment of others. Both Mr. and Mrs. Hittaway interfered; and he could not prevent himself from listening to them and believing them, though he would contradict all they said, and snub all their theories. Frank Greystock also continued to interfere, and Lady Glencora Palliser. Even John Eustace had been worked upon to write to Lord Fawn, stating his opinion, as trustee for his late brother's property, that the Eustace family did not think that there was ground of complaint against Lady Eustace in reference to the diamonds which had been stolen. This was a terrible blow to Lord Fawn, and had come, no doubt, from a general agreement among the Eustace faction,--including the bishop, John Eustace, and even Mr. Camperdown,--that it would be a good thing to get the widow married and placed under some decent control. Lady Glencora absolutely had the effrontery to ask him whether the marriage was not going to take place, and when a day would be fixed. He gathered up his courage to give her ladyship a rebuke. "My private affairs do seem to be uncommonly interesting," he said. "Why, yes, Lord Fawn," said Lady Glencora, whom nothing could abash;--"most interesting. You see, dear Lady Eustace is so very popular, that we all want to know what is to be her fate." "I regret to say that I cannot answer your ladyship's question with any precision," said Lord Fawn. But the Hittaway persecution was by far the worst. "You have seen her, Frederic?" said his sister. "Yes,--I have." "You have made her no promise?" "My dear Clara, this is a matter in which I must use my own judgment." "But the family, Frederic?" "I do not think that any member of our family has a just right to complain of my conduct since I have had the honour of being its head. I have endeavoured so to live that my actions should encounter no private or public censure. If I fail to meet with your approbation, I shall grieve; but I cannot on that account act otherwise than in accordance with my own judgment." Mrs. Hittaway knew her brother well, and was not afraid of him. "That's all very well; and I am sure you know, Frederic, how proud we all are of you. But this woman is a nasty, low, scheming, ill-conducted, dishonest little wretch; and if you make her your wife you'll be miserable all your life. Nothing would make me and Orlando so unhappy as to quarrel with you. But we know that it is so, and to the last minute I shall say so. Why don't you ask her to her face about that man down in Scotland?" "My dear Clara, perhaps I know what to ask her and what not to ask her better than you can tell me." And his brother-in-law was quite as bad. "Fawn," he said, "in this matter of Lady Eustace, don't you think you ought to put your conduct into the hands of some friend?" "What do you mean by that?" "I think it is an affair in which a man would have so much comfort in being able to say that he was guided by advice. Of course, her people want you to marry her. Now, if you could just tell them that the whole thing was in the hands of,--say me,--or any other friend, you would be relieved, you know, of so much responsibility. They might hammer away at me ever so long, and I shouldn't care twopence." "If there is to be any hammering, it cannot be borne vicariously," said Lord Fawn,--and as he said it, he was quite pleased by his own sharpness and wit. He had, indeed, put himself beyond protection by vicarious endurance of hammering when he promised to write to Lady Eustace, explaining his own conduct and giving reasons. Had anything turned up in Scotland Yard which would have justified him in saying,--or even in thinking,--that Lizzie had stolen her own diamonds, he would have sent word to her that he must abstain from any communication till that matter had been cleared up; but since the appearance of that mysterious paragraph in the newspapers, nothing had been heard of the robbery, and public opinion certainly seemed to be in favour of Lizzie's innocence. He did think that the Eustace faction was betraying him, as he could not but remember how eager Mr. Camperdown had been in asserting that the widow was keeping an enormous amount of property and claiming it as her own, whereas, in truth, she had not the slightest title to it. It was, in a great measure, in consequence of the assertions of the Eustace faction, almost in obedience to their advice, that he had resolved to break off the match; and now they turned upon him, and John Eustace absolutely went out of his way to write him a letter which was clearly meant to imply that he, Lord Fawn, was bound to marry the woman to whom he had once engaged himself! Lord Fawn felt that he was ill-used, and that a man might have to undergo a great deal of bad treatment who should strive to put himself right in the eye of the public. At last he wrote his letter,--on a Wednesday, which with him had something of the comfort of a half-holiday, as on that day he was not required to attend Parliament. India Office, 28th March, 18--. MY DEAR LADY EUSTACE, In accordance with the promise which I made to you when I did myself the honour of waiting upon you in Hertford Street, I take up my pen with the view of communicating to you the result of my deliberations respecting the engagement of marriage which, no doubt, did exist between us last summer. Since that time I have no doubt taken upon myself to say that that engagement was over; and I am free to admit that I did so without any assent or agreement on your part to that effect. Such conduct no doubt requires a valid and strong defence. My defence is as follows:-- I learned that you were in possession of a large amount of property, vested in diamonds, which was claimed by the executors under your late husband's will as belonging to his estate; and as to which they declared, in the most positive manner, that you had no right or title to it whatever. I consulted friends and I consulted lawyers, and I was led to the conviction that this property certainly did not belong to you. Had I married you in these circumstances, I could not but have become a participator in the lawsuit which I was assured would be commenced. I could not be a participator with you, because I believed you to be in the wrong. And I certainly could not participate with those who would in such case be attacking my own wife. In this condition of things I requested you,--as you must, I think, yourself own, with all deference and good feeling,--to give up the actual possession of the property, and to place the diamonds in neutral hands,--[Lord Fawn was often called upon to be neutral in reference to the condition of outlying Indian principalities]--till the law should have decided as to their ownership. As regards myself, I neither coveted nor rejected the possession of that wealth for my future wife. I desired simply to be free from an embarrassment which would have overwhelmed me. You declined my request,--not only positively, but perhaps I may add peremptorily; and then I was bound to adhere to the decision I had communicated to you. Since that time the property has been stolen and, as I believe, dissipated. The lawsuit against you has been withdrawn; and the bone of contention, so to say, is no longer existing. I am no longer justified in declining to keep my engagement because of the prejudice to which I should have been subjected by your possession of the diamonds;--and, therefore, as far as that goes, I withdraw my withdrawal. [This Lord Fawn thought was rather a happy phrase, and he read it aloud to himself more than once.] But now there arises the question whether, in both our interests, this marriage should go on, or whether it may not be more conducive to your happiness and to mine that it should be annulled for causes altogether irrespective of the diamonds. In a matter so serious as marriage, the happiness of the two parties is that which requires graver thought than any other consideration. There has no doubt sprung up between us a feeling of mutual distrust, which has led to recrimination, and which is hardly compatible with that perfect confidence which should exist between a man and his wife. This first arose, no doubt, from the different views which we took as to that property of which I have spoken,--and as to which your judgment may possibly have been better than mine. On that head I will add nothing to what I have already said; but the feeling has arisen; and I fear it cannot be so perfectly allayed as to admit of that reciprocal trust without which we could not live happily together. I confess that for my own part I do not now desire a union which was once the great object of my ambition,--and that I could not go to the altar with you without fear and trembling. As to your own feelings, you best know what they are. I bring no charge against you;--but if you have ceased to love me, I think you should cease to wish to be my wife, and that you should not insist upon a marriage simply because by doing so you would triumph over a former objection. Before he finished this paragraph, he thought much of Andy Gowran and of the scene among the rocks of which he had heard. But he could not speak of it. He had found himself unable to examine the witness who had been brought to him, and had honestly told himself that he could not take that charge as proved. Andy Gowran might have lied. In his heart he believed that Andy Gowran had lied. The matter was distasteful to him, and he would not touch it. And yet he knew that the woman did not love him, and he longed to tell her so. As to what we might each gain or each lose in a worldly point of view, either by marrying or not marrying, I will not say a word. You have rank and wealth, and therefore I can comfort myself by thinking that if I dissuade you from this marriage I shall rob you of neither. I acknowledge that I wish to dissuade you, as I believe that we should not make each other happy. As, however, I do consider that I am bound to keep my engagement to you if you demand that I shall do so, I leave the matter in your hands for decision. I am, and shall remain, Your sincere friend, FAWN. He read the letter and copied it, and gave himself great credit for the composition. He thought that it was impossible that any woman after reading it should express a wish to become the wife of the man who wrote it; and yet,--so he believed,--no man or woman could find fault with him for writing it. There certainly was one view of the case which was very distressing. How would it be with him if, after all, she should say that she would marry him? After having given her her choice,--having put it all in writing,--he could not again go back from it. He would be in her power, and of what use would his life be to him? Would Parliament, or the India Office, or the eye of the public be able to comfort him then in the midst of his many miseries? What could he do with a wife whom he married with a declaration that he disliked her? With such feelings as were his, how could he stand before a clergyman and take an oath that he would love her and cherish her? Would she not ever be as an adder to him,--as an adder whom it would be impossible that he should admit into his bosom? Could he live in the same house with her; and if so, could he ask his mother and sisters to visit her? He remembered well what Mrs. Hittaway had called her;--a nasty, low, scheming, ill-conducted, dishonest little wretch! And he believed that she was so! Yet he was once again offering to marry her, should she choose to accept him. Nevertheless, the letter was sent. There was, in truth, no alternative. He had promised that he would write such a letter, and all that had remained to him was the power of cramming into it every available argument against the marriage. This he had done, and, as he thought, had done well. It was impossible that she should desire to marry him after reading such a letter as that! Lizzie received it in her bedroom, where she breakfasted, and told of its arrival to her friend Mrs. Carbuncle as soon as they met each other. "My lord has come down from his high horse at last," she said, with the letter in her hand. "What,--Lord Fawn?" "Yes; Lord Fawn. What other lord? There is no other lord for me. He is my lord, my peer of Parliament, my Cabinet minister, my right honourable, my member of the Government,--my young man, too, as the maid-servants call them." "What does he say?" "Say;--what should he say?--just that he has behaved very badly, and that he hopes I shall forgive him." "Not quite that; does he?" "That's what it all means. Of course, there is ever so much of it,--pages of it. It wouldn't be Lord Fawn if he didn't spin it all out like an Act of Parliament, with 'whereas' and 'wherein,' and 'whereof.' It is full of all that; but the meaning of it is that he's at my feet again, and that I may pick him up if I choose to take him. I'd show you the letter, only perhaps it wouldn't be fair to the poor man." "What excuse does he make?" "Oh,--as to that he's rational enough. He calls the necklace the--bone of contention. That's rather good for Lord Fawn; isn't it? The bone of contention, he says, has been removed; and, therefore, there is no reason why we shouldn't marry if we like it. He shall hear enough about the bone of contention if we do 'marry.'" "And what shall you do now?" "Ah, yes; that's easily asked; is it not? The man's a good sort of man in his way, you know. He doesn't drink or gamble; and I don't think there is a bit of the King David about him,--that I don't." "Virtue personified, I should say." "And he isn't extravagant." "Then why not have him and have done with it?" asked Mrs. Carbuncle. "He is such a lumpy man," said Lizzie;--"such an ass; such a load of Government waste-paper." "Come, my dear;--you've had troubles." "I have, indeed," said Lizzie. "And there's no quite knowing yet how far they're over." "What do you mean by that, Mrs. Carbuncle?" "Nothing very much;--but still, you see, they may come again. As to Lord George, we all know that he has not got a penny-piece in the world that he can call his own." "If he had as many pennies as Judas, Lord George would be nothing to me," said Lizzie. "And your cousin really doesn't seem to mean anything." "I know very well what my cousin means. He and I understand each other thoroughly; but cousins can love one another very well without marrying." "Of course you know your own business, but if I were you I would take Lord Fawn. I speak in true kindness,--as one woman to another. After all, what does love signify? How much real love do we ever see among married people? Does Lady Glencora Palliser really love her husband, who thinks of nothing in the world but putting taxes on and off?" "Do you love your husband, Mrs. Carbuncle?" "No;--but that is a different kind of thing. Circumstances have caused me to live apart from him. The man is a good man, and there is no reason why you should not respect him, and treat him well. He will give you a fixed position,--which really you want badly, Lady Eustace." "Tooriloo, tooriloo, tooriloo, looriloo," said Lizzie, in contemptuous disdain of her friend's caution. "And then all this trouble about the diamonds and the robberies will be over," continued Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie looked at her very intently. What should make Mrs. Carbuncle suppose that there need be, or, indeed, could be, any further trouble about the diamonds? "So;--that's your advice," said Lizzie. "I'm half inclined to take it, and perhaps I shall. However, I have brought him round, and that's something, my dear. And either one way or the other, I shall let him know that I like my triumph. I was determined to have it, and I've got it." Then she read the letter again very seriously. Could she possibly marry a man who in so many words told her that he didn't want her? Well;--she thought she could. Was not everybody treating everybody else much in the same way? Had she not loved her Corsair truly,--and how had he treated her? Had she not been true, disinterested, and most affectionate to Frank Greystock; and what had she got from him? To manage her business wisely, and put herself upon firm ground;--that was her duty at present. Mrs. Carbuncle was right there. The very name of Lady Fawn would be a rock to her,--and she wanted a rock. She thought upon the whole that she could marry him;--unless Patience Crabstick and the police should again interfere with her prosperity. CHAPTER LXVIII The Major Lady Eustace did not intend to take as much time in answering Lord Fawn's letter as he had taken in writing it; but even she found that the subject was one which demanded a good deal of thought. Mrs. Carbuncle had very freely recommended her to take the man, supporting her advice by arguments which Lizzie felt to be valid; but then Mrs. Carbuncle did not know all the circumstances. Mrs. Carbuncle had not actually seen his lordship's letter; and though the great part of the letter, the formal repetition, namely, of the writer's offer of marriage, had been truly told to her, still, as the reader will have perceived, she had been kept in the dark as to some of the details. Lizzie did sit at her desk with the object of putting a few words together in order that she might see how they looked, and she found that there was a difficulty. "My dear Lord Fawn. As we have been engaged to marry each other, and as all our friends have been told, I think that the thing had better go on." That, after various attempts, was, she thought, the best letter that she could send,--if she should make up her mind to be Lady Fawn. But, on the morning of the 30th of March she had not sent her letter. She had told herself that she would take two days to think of her reply,--and, on the Friday morning the few words she had prepared were still lying in her desk. What was she to get by marrying a man she absolutely disliked? That he also absolutely disliked her was not a matter much in her thoughts. The man would not ill-treat her because he disliked her; or, it might perhaps be juster to say, that the ill-treatment which she might fairly anticipate would not be of a nature which would much affect her comfort grievously. He would not beat her, nor rob her, nor lock her up, nor starve her. He would either neglect her, or preach sermons to her. For the first she could console herself by the attention of others; and should he preach, perhaps she could preach too,--as sharply if not as lengthily as his lordship. At any rate, she was not afraid of him. But what would she gain? It is very well to have a rock, as Mrs. Carbuncle had said, but a rock is not everything. She did not know whether she cared much for living upon a rock. Even stability may be purchased at too high a price. There was not a grain of poetry in the whole composition of Lord Fawn, and poetry was what her very soul craved;--poetry, together with houses, champagne, jewels, and admiration. Her income was still her own, and she did not quite see that the rock was so absolutely necessary to her. Then she wrote another note to Lord Fawn, a specimen of a note, so that she might have the opportunity of comparing the two. This note took her much longer than the one first written. MY LORD,-- I do not know how to acknowledge with sufficient humility the condescension and great kindness of your lordship's letter. But perhaps its manly generosity is more conspicuous than either. The truth is, my lord, you want to escape from your engagement, but are too much afraid of the consequences to dare to do so by any act of your own;--therefore you throw it upon me. You are quite successful. I don't think you ever read poetry, but perhaps you may understand the two following lines:-- "I am constrained to say, your lordship's scullion Should sooner be my husband than yourself." I see through you, and despise you thoroughly. E. EUSTACE. She was comparing the two answers together, very much in doubt as to which should be sent, when there came a message to her by a man whom she knew to be a policeman, though he did not announce himself as such, and was dressed in plain clothes. Major Mackintosh sent his compliments to her, and would wait upon her that afternoon at three o'clock, if she would have the kindness to receive him. At the first moment of seeing the man she felt that after all the rock was what she wanted. Mrs. Carbuncle was right. She had had troubles and might have more, and the rock was the thing. But then the more certainly did she become convinced of this by the presence of the major's messenger, the more clearly did she see the difficulty of attaining the security which the rock offered. If this public exposure should fall upon her, Lord Fawn's renewed offer, as she knew well, would stand for nothing. If once it were known that she had kept the necklace,--her own necklace,--under her pillow at Carlisle, he would want no further justification in repudiating her, were it for the tenth time. She was very uncivil to the messenger, and the more so because she found that the man bore her rudeness without turning upon her and rending her. When she declared that the police had behaved very badly, and that Major Mackintosh was inexcusable in troubling her again, and that she had ceased to care twopence about the necklace,--the man made no remonstrance to her petulance. He owned that the trouble was very great, and the police very inefficient. He almost owned that the major was inexcusable. He did not care what he owned so that he achieved his object. But when Lizzie said that she could not see Major Mackintosh at three, and objected equally to two, four, or five; then the courteous messenger from Scotland Yard did say a word to make her understand that there must be a meeting,--and he hinted also that the major was doing a most unusually good-natured thing in coming to Hertford Street. Of course, Lizzie made the appointment. If the major chose to come, she would be at home at three. As soon as the policeman was gone, she sat alone, with a manner very much changed from that which she had worn since the arrival of Lord Fawn's letter,--with a fresh weight of care upon her, greater perhaps than she had ever hitherto borne. She had had bad moments,--when, for instance, she had been taken before the magistrates at Carlisle, when she found the police in her house on her return from the theatre, and when Lord George had forced her secret from her. But at each of these periods hope had come renewed before despair had crushed her. Now it seemed to her that the thing was done and that the game was over. This chief man of the London police no doubt knew the whole story. If she could only already have climbed upon some rock, so that there might be a man bound to defend her,--a man at any rate bound to put himself forward on her behalf and do whatever might be done in her defence,--she might have endured it! What should she do now,--at this minute? She looked at her watch and found that it was already past one. Mrs. Carbuncle, as she knew, was closeted up-stairs with Lucinda, whose wedding was fixed for the following Monday. It was now Friday. Were she to call upon Mrs. Carbuncle for aid, no aid would be forthcoming unless she were to tell the whole truth. She almost thought that she would do so. But then, how great would have been her indiscretion if, after all, when the major should come, she should discover that he did not know the truth himself! That Mrs. Carbuncle would keep her secret she did not for a moment think. She longed for the comfort of some friend's counsel, but she found at last that she could not purchase it by telling everything to a woman. Might it not be possible that she should still run away? She did not know much of the law, but she thought that they could not punish her for breaking an appointment even with a man so high in authority as Major Mackintosh. She could leave a note saying that pressing business called her out. But whither should she go? She thought of taking a cab to the House of Commons, finding her cousin, and telling him everything. It would be so much better that he should see the major. But then again, it might be that she should be mistaken as to the amount of the major's information. After a while she almost determined to fly off at once to Scotland, leaving word that she was obliged to go instantly to her child. But there was no direct train to Scotland before eight or nine in the evening, and during the intervening hours the police would have ample time to find her. What, indeed, could she do with herself during these intervening hours? Ah, if she had but a rock now, so that she need not be dependent altogether on the exercise of her own intellect! Gradually the minutes passed by, and she became aware that she must face the major. Well! What had she done? She had stolen nothing. She had taken no person's property. She had, indeed, been wickedly robbed, and the police had done nothing to get back for her her property, as they were bound to have done. She would take care to tell the major what she thought about the negligence of the police. The major should not have the talk all to himself. If it had not been for one word with which Lord George had stunned her ears, she could still have borne it well. She had told a lie;--perhaps two or three lies. She knew that she had lied. But then people lie every day. She would not have minded it much if she were simply to be called a liar. But he had told her that she would be accused of--perjury. There was something frightful to her in the name. And there were, she knew not what, dreadful penalties attached to it. Lord George had told her that she might be put in prison,--whether he had said for years or for months she had forgotten. And she thought she had heard of people's property being confiscated to the Crown when they had been made out to be guilty of certain great offences. Oh, how she wished that she had a rock! When three o'clock came she had not started for Scotland or elsewhere, and at last she received the major. Could she have thoroughly trusted the servant, she would have denied herself at the last moment, but she feared that she might be betrayed, and she thought that her position would be rendered even worse than it was at present by a futile attempt. She was sitting alone, pale, haggard, trembling, when Major Mackintosh was shown into her room. It may be as well explained at once that, at this moment, the major knew, or thought that he knew, every circumstance of the two robberies, and that his surmises were in every respect right. Miss Crabstick and Mr. Cann were in comfortable quarters, and were prepared to tell all that they could tell. Mr. Smiler was in durance, and Mr. Benjamin was at Vienna, in the hands of the Austrian police, who were prepared to give him up to those who desired his society in England, on the completion of certain legal formalities. That Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Smiler would be prosecuted, the latter for the robbery and the former for conspiracy to rob, and for receiving stolen goods, was a matter of course. But what was to be done with Lady Eustace? That, at the present moment, was the prevailing trouble with the police. During the last three weeks every precaution had been taken to keep the matter secret, and it is hardly too much to say that Lizzie's interests were handled not only with consideration but with tenderness. "Lady Eustace," said the major, "I am very sorry to trouble you. No doubt the man who called on you this morning explained to you who I am." "Oh yes, I know who you are,--quite well." Lizzie made a great effort to speak without betraying her consternation; but she was nearly prostrated. The major, however, hardly observed her, and was by no means at ease himself in his effort to save her from unnecessary annoyance. He was a tall, thin, gaunt man of about forty, with large, good-natured eyes;--but it was not till the interview was half over that Lizzie took courage to look even into his face. "Just so; I am come, you know, about the robbery which took place here,--and the other robbery at Carlisle." "I have been so troubled about these horrid robberies! Sometimes I think they'll be the death of me." "I think, Lady Eustace, we have found out the whole truth." "Oh, I daresay. I wonder why--you have been so long--finding it out." "We have had very clever people to deal with, Lady Eustace;--and I fear that, even now, we shall never get back the property." "I do not care about the property, sir;--although it was all my own. Nobody has lost anything but myself; and I really don't see why the thing should not die out, as I don't care about it. Whoever it is, they may have it now." "We were bound to get to the bottom of it all, if we could; and I think that we have,--at last. Perhaps, as you say, we ought to have done it sooner." "Oh,--I don't care." "We have two persons in custody, Lady Eustace, whom we shall use as witnesses, and I am afraid we shall have to call upon you also,--as a witness." It occurred to Lizzie that they could not lock her up in prison and make her a witness too, but she said nothing. Then the major continued his speech,--and asked her the question which was, in fact, alone material. "Of course, Lady Eustace, you are not bound to say anything to me unless you like it,--and you must understand that I by no means wish you to criminate yourself." "I don't know what that means." "If you yourself have done anything wrong, I don't want to ask you to confess it." "I have had all my diamonds stolen, if you mean that. Perhaps it was wrong to have diamonds." "But to come to my question,--I suppose we may take it for granted that the diamonds were in your desk when the thieves made their entrance into this house, and broke the desk open, and stole the money out of it?" Lizzie breathed so hardly, that she was quite unable to speak. The man's voice was very gentle and very kind,--but then how could she admit that one fact? All depended on that one fact. "The woman Crabstick," said the major, "has confessed, and will state on her oath that she saw the necklace in your hands in Hertford Street, and that she saw it placed in the desk. She then gave information of this to Benjamin,--as she had before given information as to your journey up from Scotland,--and she was introduced to the two men whom she let into the house. One of them, indeed, who will also give evidence for us, she had before met at Carlisle. She then was present when the necklace was taken out of the desk. The man who opened the desk and took it out, who also cut the door at Carlisle, will give evidence to the same effect. The man who carried the necklace out of the house, and who broke open the box at Carlisle, will be tried,--as will also Benjamin, who disposed of the diamonds. I have told you the whole story, as it has been told to me by the woman Crabstick. Of course, you will deny the truth of it, if it be untrue." Lizzie sat with her eyes fixed upon the floor, but said nothing. She could not speak. "If you will allow me, Lady Eustace, to give you advice,--really friendly advice--" "Oh, pray do." "You had better admit the truth of the story, if it is true." "They were my own," she whispered. "Or, at any rate, you believed that they were. There can be no doubt, I think, as to that. No one supposes that the robbery at Carlisle was arranged on your behalf." "Oh, no." "But you had taken them out of the box before you went to bed at the inn?" "Not then." "But you had taken them?" "I did it in the morning before I started from Scotland. They frightened me by saying the box would be stolen." "Exactly;--and then you put them into your desk here, in this house?" "Yes,--sir." "I should tell you, Lady Eustace, that I had not a doubt about this before I came here. For some time past I have thought that it must be so; and latterly the confessions of two of the accomplices have made it certain to me. One of the housebreakers and the jeweller will be tried for the felony, and I am afraid that you must undergo the annoyance of being one of the witnesses." "What will they do to me, Major Mackintosh?" Lizzie now for the first time looked up into his eyes, and felt that they were kind. Could he be her rock? He did not speak to her like an enemy;--and then, too, he would know better than any man alive how she might best escape from her trouble. "They will ask you to tell the truth." "Indeed I will do that," said Lizzie,--not aware that, after so many lies, it might be difficult to tell the truth. "And you will probably be asked to repeat it, this way and that, in a manner that will be troublesome to you. You see that here in London, and at Carlisle, you have--given incorrect versions." "I know I have. But the necklace was my own. There was nothing dishonest;--was there, Major Mackintosh? When they came to me at Carlisle I was so confused that I hardly knew what to tell them. And when I had once--given an incorrect version, you know, I didn't know how to go back." The major was not so well acquainted with Lizzie as is the reader, and he pitied her. "I can understand all that," he said. How much kinder he was than Lord George had been when she confessed the truth to him. Here would be a rock! And such a handsome man as he was, too,--not exactly a Corsair, as he was great in authority over the London police,--but a powerful, fine fellow, who would know what to do with swords and pistols as well as any Corsair;--and one, too, no doubt, who would understand poetry! Any such dream, however, was altogether unavailing, as the major had a wife at home and seven children. "If you will only tell me what to do, I will do it," she said, looking up into his face with entreaty, and pressing her hands together in supplication. Then at great length, and with much patience, he explained to her what he would have her do. He thought that, if she were summoned and used as a witness, there would be no attempt to prosecute her for the--incorrect versions--of which she had undoubtedly been guilty. The probability was, that she would receive assurance to this effect before she would be asked to give her evidence, preparatory to the committal of Benjamin and Smiler. He could not assure her that it would be so, but he had no doubt of it. In order, however, that things might be made to run as smooth as possible, he recommended her very strongly to go at once to Mr. Camperdown and make a clean breast of it to him. "The whole family should be told," said the major, "and it will be better for you that they should know it from yourself than from us." When she hesitated, he explained to her that the matter could no longer be kept as a secret, and that her evidence would certainly appear in the papers. He proposed that she should be summoned for that day week,--which would be the Friday after Lucinda's marriage, and he suggested that she should go to Mr. Camperdown's on the morrow. "What!--to-morrow?" exclaimed Lizzie, in dismay. "My dear Lady Eustace," said the major, "the sooner you get back into straight running, the sooner you will be comfortable." Then she promised that she would go on the Tuesday,--the day after the marriage. "If he learns it in the meantime, you must not be surprised," said the major. "Tell me one thing, Major Mackintosh," she said, as she gave him her hand at parting,--"they can't take away from me anything that is my own;--can they?" "I don't think they can," said the major, escaping rather quickly from the room. CHAPTER LXIX "I Cannot Do It" The Saturday and the Sunday Lizzie passed in outward tranquillity, though doubtless her mind was greatly disturbed. She said nothing of what had passed between her and Major Mackintosh, explaining that his visit had been made solely with the object of informing her that Mr. Benjamin was to be sent home from Vienna, but that the diamonds were gone for ever. She had, as she declared to herself, agreed with Major Mackintosh that she would not go to Mr. Camperdown till the Tuesday,--justifying her delay by her solicitude in reference to Miss Roanoke's marriage; and therefore these two days were her own. After them would come a totally altered phase of existence. All the world would know the history of the diamonds,--cousin Frank, and Lord Fawn, and John Eustace, and Mrs. Carbuncle, and the Bobsborough people, and Lady Glencora, and that old vulturess, her aunt, the Countess of Linlithgow. It must come now;--but she had two days in which she could be quiet and think of her position. She would, she thought, send one of her letters to Lord Fawn before she went to Mr. Camperdown;--but which should she send? Or should she write a third explaining the whole matter in sweetly piteous feminine terms, and swearing that the only remaining feeling in her bosom was a devoted affection to the man who had now twice promised to be her husband? In the meantime the preparations for the great marriage went on. Mrs. Carbuncle spent her time busily between Lucinda's bedchamber and the banqueting hall in Albemarle Street. In spite of pecuniary difficulties the trousseau was to be a wonder; and even Lizzie was astonished at the jewellery which that indefatigable woman had collected together for a preliminary show in Hertford Street. She had spent hours at Howell and James's, and had made marvellous bargains there and elsewhere. Things were sent for selection, of which the greater portion were to be returned, but all were kept for the show. The same things which were shown to separate friends in Hertford Street as part of the trousseau on Friday and Saturday were carried over to Albemarle Street on the Sunday, so as to add to the quasi-public exhibition of presents on the Monday. The money expended had gone very far. The most had been made of a failing credit. Every particle of friendly generosity had been so manipulated as to add to the external magnificence. And Mrs. Carbuncle had done all this without any help from Lucinda,--in the midst of most contemptuous indifference on Lucinda's part. She could hardly be got to allow the milliners to fit the dresses to her body, and positively refused to thrust her feet into certain golden-heeled boots with brightly-bronzed toes, which were a great feature among the raiment. Nobody knew it except Mrs. Carbuncle and the maid,--even Lizzie Eustace did not know it;--but once the bride absolutely ran amuck among the finery, scattering the laces here and there, pitching the glove-boxes under the bed, chucking the golden-heeled boots into the fire-place, and exhibiting quite a tempest of fury against one of the finest shows of petticoats ever arranged with a view to the admiration and envy of female friends. But all this Mrs. Carbuncle bore, and still persevered. The thing was so nearly done now that she could endure to persevere though the provocation to abandon it was so great. She had even ceased to find fault with her niece,--but went on in silence counting the hours till the trouble should be taken off her own shoulders and placed on those of Sir Griffin. It was a great thing to her, almost more than she had expected, that neither Lucinda nor Sir Griffin should have positively declined the marriage. It was impossible that either should retreat from it now. Luckily for Mrs. Carbuncle, Sir Griffin took delight in the show. He did this after a bearish fashion, putting his finger upon little flaws with an intelligence for which Mrs. Carbuncle had not hitherto given him credit. As to certain ornaments, he observed that the silver was plated and the gold ormolu. A "rope" of pearls he at once detected as being false,--and after fingering certain lace he turned up his nose and shook his head. Then, on the Sunday, in Albemarle Street, he pointed out to Mrs. Carbuncle sundry articles which he had seen in the bedroom on the Saturday. "But, my dear Sir Griffin,--that's of course," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Oh;--that's of course, is it?" said Sir Griffin, turning up his nose again. "Where did that Delph bowl come from?" "It is one of Mortlock's finest Etruscan vases," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Oh,--I thought that Etruscan vases came from--from somewhere in Greece or Italy," said Sir Griffin. "I declare that you are shocking," said Mrs. Carbuncle, struggling to maintain her good humour. He passed hours of the Sunday in Hertford Street, and Lord George also was there for some time. Lizzie, who could hardly devote her mind to the affairs of the wedding, remained alone in her own sitting-room during the greater part of the day;--but she did show herself while Lord George was there. "So I hear that Mackintosh has been here," said Lord George. "Yes,--he was here." "And what did he say?" Lizzie did not like the way in which the man looked at her, feeling it to be not only unfriendly, but absolutely cruel. It seemed to imply that he knew that her secret was about to be divulged. And what was he to her now that he should be impertinent to her? What he knew, all the world would know before the end of the week. And that other man who knew it already, had been kind to her, had said nothing about perjury, but had explained to her that what she would have to bear would be trouble, and not imprisonment and loss of money. Lord George, to whom she had been so civil, for whom she had spent money, to whom she had almost offered herself and all that she possessed,--Lord George, whom she had selected as the first repository of her secret, had spoken no word to comfort her, but had made things look worse for her than they were. Why should she submit to be questioned by Lord George? In a day or two the secret which he knew would be no secret. "Never mind what he said, Lord George," she replied. "Has he found it all out?" "You had better go and ask himself," said Lizzie. "I am sick of the subject, and I mean to have done with it." Lord George laughed, and Lizzie hated him for his laugh. "I declare," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "that you two who were such friends are always snapping at each other now." "The fickleness is all on her ladyship's part,--not on mine," said Lord George; whereupon Lady Eustace walked out of the room and was not seen again till dinner-time. Soon afterwards Lucinda also endeavoured to escape, but to this Sir Griffin objected. Sir Griffin was in a very good humour, and bore himself like a prosperous bridegroom. "Come, Luce," he said, "get off your high horse for a little. To-morrow, you know, you must come down altogether." "So much the more reason for my remaining up to-day." "I'll be shot if you shall," said Sir Griffin. "Luce, sit in my lap, and give me a kiss." At this moment Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle were in the front drawing-room, and Lord George was telling her the true story as to the necklace. It must be explained on his behalf that in doing this he did not consider that he was betraying the trust reposed in him. "They know all about it in Scotland Yard," he said; "I got it from Gager. They were bound to tell me, as up to this week past every man in the police thought that I had been the master-mind among the thieves. When I think of it I hardly know whether to laugh or cry." "And she had them all the time?" exclaimed Mrs. Carbuncle. "Yes;--in this house! Did you ever hear of such a little cat? I could tell you more than that. She wanted me to take them and dispose of them." "No!" "She did though;--and now see the way she treats me! Never mind. Don't say a word to her about it till it comes out of itself. She'll have to be arrested, no doubt." "Arrested!" Mrs. Carbuncle's further exclamations were stopped by Lucinda's struggles in the other room. She had declined to sit upon the bridegroom's lap, but had acknowledged that she was bound to submit to be kissed. He had kissed her, and then had striven to drag her on to his knee. But she was strong, and had resisted violently, and, as he afterwards said, had struck him savagely. "Of course I struck him," said Lucinda. "By ----, you shall pay for it!" said Sir Griffin. This took place in the presence of Lord George and Mrs. Carbuncle, and yet they were to be married to-morrow. "The idea of complaining that a girl hit you,--and the girl who is to be your wife!" said Lord George, as they walked off together. "I know what to complain of, and what not," said Sir Griffin. "Are you going to let me have that money?" "No;--I am not," said Lord George,--"so there's an end of that." Nevertheless, they dined together at their club afterwards, and in the evening Sir Griffin was again in Hertford Street. This happened on the Sunday, on which day none of the ladies had gone to church. Mr. Emilius well understood the cause of their absence, and felt nothing of a parson's anger at it. He was to marry the couple on the Monday morning, and dined with the ladies on the Sunday. He was peculiarly gracious and smiling, and spoke of the Hymeneals as though they were even more than ordinarily joyful and happy in their promise. To Lizzie he was almost affectionate, and Mrs. Carbuncle he flattered to the top of her bent. The power of the man in being sprightly under such a load of trouble as oppressed the household, was wonderful. He had to do with three women who were worldly, hard, and given entirely to evil things. Even as regarded the bride, who felt the horror of her position, so much must be in truth admitted. Though from day to day and hour to hour she would openly declare her hatred of the things around her,--yet she went on. Since she had entered upon life she had known nothing but falsehood and scheming wickedness;--and, though she rebelled against the consequences, she had not rebelled against the wickedness. Now to this unfortunate young woman and her two companions, Mr. Emilius discoursed with an unctuous mixture of celestial and terrestrial glorification, which was proof, at any rate, of great ability on his part. He told them how a good wife was a crown, or rather a chaplet of aetherial roses to her husband, and how high rank and great station in the world made such a chaplet more beautiful and more valuable. His work in the vineyard, he said, had fallen lately among the wealthy and nobly born; and though he would not say that he was entitled to take glory on that account, still he gave thanks daily in that he had been enabled to give his humble assistance towards the running of a godly life to those who, by their example, were enabled to have so wide an effect upon their poorer fellow-creatures. He knew well how difficult it was for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. They had the highest possible authority for that. But Scripture never said that the camel,--which, as he explained it, was simply a thread larger than ordinary thread,--could not go through the needle's eye. The camel which succeeded, in spite of the difficulties attending its exalted position, would be peculiarly blessed. And he went on to suggest that the three ladies before him, one of whom was about to enter upon a new phase of life to-morrow, under auspices peculiarly propitious, were, all of them, camels of this description. Sir Griffin, when he came in, received for a while the peculiar attention of Mr. Emilius. "I think, Sir Griffin," he commenced, "that no period of a man's life is so blessed, as that upon which you will enter to-morrow." This he said in a whisper, but it was a whisper audible to the ladies. "Well;--yes; it's all right, I daresay," said Sir Griffin. "Well, after all, what is life till a man has met and obtained the partner of his soul? It is a blank,--and the blank becomes every day more and more intolerable to the miserable solitary." "I wonder you don't get married yourself," said Mrs. Carbuncle, who perceived that Sir Griffin was rather astray for an answer. "Ah!--if one could always be fortunate when one loved!" said Mr. Emilius, casting his eyes across to Lizzie Eustace. It was evident to them all that he did not wish to conceal his passion. It was the object of Mrs. Carbuncle that the lovers should not be left alone together, but that they should be made to think that they were passing the evening in affectionate intercourse. Lucinda hardly spoke, hardly had spoken since her disagreeable struggle with Sir Griffin. He said but little, but with Mrs. Carbuncle was better humoured than usual. Every now and then she made little whispered communications to him, telling that they would be sure to be at the church at eleven to the moment, explaining to him what would be the extent of Lucinda's boxes for the wedding tour, and assuring him that he would find Lucinda's new maid a treasure in regard to his own shirts and pocket-handkerchiefs. She toiled marvellously at little subjects, always making some allusion to Lucinda, and never hinting that aught short of Elysium was in store for him. The labour was great; the task was terrible; but now it was so nearly over! And to Lizzie she was very courteous, never hinting by a word or a look that there was any new trouble impending on the score of the diamonds. She, too, as she received the greasy compliments of Mr. Emilius with pretty smiles, had her mind full enough of care. At last Sir Griffin went, again kissing his bride as he left. Lucinda accepted his embrace without a word and almost without a shudder. "Eleven to the moment, Sir Griffin," said Mrs. Carbuncle, with her best good humour. "All right," said Sir Griffin as he passed out of the door. Lucinda walked across the room, and kept her eyes fixed on his retreating figure as he descended the stairs. Mr. Emilius had already departed, with many promises of punctuality, and Lizzie now withdrew for the night. "Dear Lizzie, good night," said Mrs. Carbuncle, kissing her. "Good night, Lady Eustace," said Lucinda. "I suppose I shall see you to-morrow?" "See me!--of course you will see me. I shall come into your room with the girls, after you have had your tea." The girls mentioned were the four bridesmaids, as to whom there had been some difficulty, as Lucinda had neither sister nor cousins, and had contracted no peculiarly tender friendships. But Mrs. Carbuncle had arranged it, and four properly-equipped young ladies were to be in attendance at ten on the morrow. Then Lucinda and Mrs. Carbuncle were alone. "Of one thing I feel sure," said Lucinda in a low voice. "What is that, dear?" "I shall never see Sir Griffin Tewett again." "You talk in that way on purpose to break me down at the last moment," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "Dear Aunt Jane, I would not break you down if I could help it. I have struggled so hard,--simply that you might be freed from me. We have been very foolish, both of us; but I would bear all the punishment,--if I could." "You know that this is nonsense now." "Very well. I only tell you. I know that I shall never see him again. I will never trust myself alone in his presence. I could not do it. When he touches me my whole body is in agony. To be kissed by him is madness." "Lucinda, this is very wicked. You are working yourself up to a paroxysm of folly." "Wicked;--yes, I know that I am wicked. There has been enough of wickedness certainly. You don't suppose that I mean to excuse myself?" "Of course you will marry Sir Griffin to-morrow." "I shall never be married to him. How I shall escape from him,--by dying, or going mad,--or by destroying him, God only knows." Then she paused, and her aunt looking into her face almost began to fear that she was in earnest. But she would not take it as at all indicating any real result for the morrow. The girl had often said nearly the same thing before, and had still submitted. "Do you know, Aunt Jane, I don't think I could feel to any man as though I loved him. But for this man,-- Oh God, how I do detest him! I cannot do it." "You had better go to bed, Lucinda, and let me come to you in the morning." "Yes;--come to me in the morning;--early." "I will,--at eight." "I shall know then, perhaps." "My dear, will you come to my room to-night, and sleep with me?" "Oh, no. I have ever so many things to do. I have papers to burn, and things to put away. But come to me at eight. Good night, Aunt Jane." Mrs. Carbuncle went up to her room with her, kissed her affectionately, and then left her. She was now really frightened. What would be said of her if she should press the marriage forward to a completion, and if after that some terrible tragedy should take place between the bride and bridegroom? That Lucinda, in spite of all that had been said, would stand at the altar, and allow the ceremony to be performed, she still believed. Those last words about burning papers and putting things away, seemed to imply that the girl still thought that she would be taken away from her present home on the morrow. But what would come afterwards? The horror which the bride expressed was, as Mrs. Carbuncle well knew, no mock feeling, no pretence at antipathy. She tried to think of it, and to realise what might in truth be the girl's action and ultimate fate when she should find herself in the power of this man whom she so hated. But had not other girls done the same thing, and lived through it all, and become fat, indifferent, and fond of the world? It is only the first step that signifies. At any rate, the thing must go on now;--must go on, whatever might be the result to Lucinda or to Mrs. Carbuncle herself. Yes; it must go on. There was, no doubt, very much of bitterness in the world for such as them,--for persons doomed by the necessities of their position to a continual struggle. It always had been so, and always would be so. But each bitter cup must be drained in the hope that the next might be sweeter. Of course the marriage must go on; though, doubtless, this cup was very bitter. More than once in the night Mrs. Carbuncle crept up to the door of her niece's room, endeavouring to ascertain what might be going on within. At two o'clock, while she was on the landing-place, the candle was extinguished, and she could hear that Lucinda put herself to bed. At any rate, so far, things were safe. An indistinct, incompleted idea of some possible tragedy had flitted across the mind of the poor woman, causing her to shake and tremble, forbidding her, weary as she was, to lie down;--but now she told herself at last that this was an idle phantasy, and she went to bed. Of course Lucinda must go through with it. It had been her own doing, and Sir Griffin was not worse than other men. As she said this to herself, Mrs. Carbuncle hardened her heart by remembering that her own married life had not been peculiarly happy. Exactly at eight on the following morning she knocked at her niece's door, and was at once bidden to enter. "Come in, Aunt Jane." The words cheered her wonderfully. At any rate, there had been no tragedy as yet, and as she turned the handle of the door, she felt that, as a matter of course, the marriage would go on just like any other marriage. She found Lucinda up and dressed,--but so dressed as certainly to show no preparation for a wedding-toilet. She had on an ordinary stuff morning frock, and her hair was close tucked up and pinned, as it might have been had she already prepared herself for a journey. But what astonished Mrs. Carbuncle more than the dress was the girl's manner. She was sitting at a table with a book before her, which was afterwards found to be the Bible, and she never turned her head as her aunt entered the room. "What, up already," said Mrs. Carbuncle,--"and dressed?" "Yes; I am up,--and dressed. I have been up ever so long. How was I to lie in bed on such a morning as this? Aunt Jane, I wish you to know as soon as possible that no earthly consideration will induce me to leave this room to-day." "What nonsense, Lucinda!" "Very well;--all the same you might as well believe me. I want you to send to Mr. Emilius, and to those girls,--and to the man. And you had better get Lord George to let the other people know. I'm quite in earnest." And she was in earnest,--quite in earnest, though there was a flightiness about her manner which induced Mrs. Carbuncle for awhile to think that she was less so than she had been on the previous evening. The unfortunate woman remained with her niece for an hour and a half, imploring, threatening, scolding, and weeping. When the maids came to the door, first one maid and then another, they were refused entrance. It might still be possible, Mrs. Carbuncle thought, that she would prevail. But nothing now could shake Lucinda or induce her even to discuss the subject. She sat there looking steadfastly at the book,--hardly answering, never defending herself, but protesting that nothing should induce her to leave the room on that day. "Do you want to destroy me?" Mrs. Carbuncle said at last. "You have destroyed me," said Lucinda. At half-past nine Lizzie Eustace came to the room, and Mrs. Carbuncle, in her trouble, thought it better to take other counsel. Lizzie, therefore, was admitted. "Is anything wrong?" asked Lizzie. "Everything is wrong," said the aunt. "She says that--she won't be married." "Oh, Lucinda!" "Pray speak to her, Lady Eustace. You see it is getting so late, and she ought to be nearly dressed now. Of course she must allow herself to be dressed." "I am dressed," said Lucinda. "But, dear Lucinda,--everybody will be waiting for you," said Lizzie. "Let them wait,--till they're tired. If Aunt Jane doesn't choose to send, it is not my fault. I sha'n't go out of this room to-day unless I am carried out. Do you want to hear that I have murdered the man?" They brought her tea, and endeavoured to induce her to eat and drink. She would take the tea, she said, if they would promise to send to put the people off. Mrs. Carbuncle so far gave way as to undertake to do so, if she would name the next day or the day following for the wedding. But on hearing this she arose almost in a majesty of wrath. Neither on this day, or on the next, or on any following day, would she yield herself to the wretch whom they had endeavoured to force upon her. "She must do it, you know," said Mrs. Carbuncle, turning to Lizzie. "You'll see if I must," said Lucinda, sitting square at the table, with her eyes firmly fixed upon the book. Then came up the servant to say that the four bridesmaids were all assembled in the drawing-room. When she heard this, even Mrs. Carbuncle gave way, and threw herself upon the bed and wept. "Oh, Lady Eustace, what are we to do? Lucinda, you have destroyed me. You have destroyed me altogether, after all that I have done for you." "And what has been done to me, do you think?" said Lucinda. Something must be settled. All the servants in the house by this time knew that there would be no wedding, and no doubt some tidings as to the misadventure of the day had already reached the four ladies in the drawing-room. "What am I to do?" said Mrs. Carbuncle, starting up from the bed. "I really think you had better send to Mr. Emilius," said Lizzie;--"and to Lord George." "What am I to say? Who is there to go? Oh,--I wish that somebody would kill me this minute! Lady Eustace, would you mind going down and telling those ladies to go away?" "And had I not better send Richard to the church?" "Oh yes;--send anybody everywhere. I don't know what to do. Oh, Lucinda, this is the unkindest and the wickedest, and the most horrible thing that anybody ever did! I shall never, never be able to hold up my head again." Mrs. Carbuncle was completely prostrate, but Lucinda sat square at the table, firm as a rock, saying nothing, making no excuse for herself, with her eyes fixed upon the Bible. Lady Eustace carried her message to the astonished and indignant bridesmaids, and succeeded in sending them back to their respective homes. Richard, glorious in new livery, forgetting that his flowers were still on his breast,--ready dressed to attend the bride's carriage,--went with his sad message, first to the church and then to the banqueting-hall in Albemarle Street. "Not any wedding?" said the head-waiter at the hotel. "I knew they was folks as would have a screw loose somewheres. There's lots to stand for the bill, anyways," he added, as he remembered all the tribute. CHAPTER LXX Alas! No attempt was made to send other messages from Hertford Street than those which were taken to the church and to the hotel. Sir Griffin and Lord George went together to the church in a brougham, and, on the way, the best man rather ridiculed the change in life which he supposed that his friend was about to make. "I don't in the least know how you mean to get along," said Lord George. "Much as other men do, I suppose." "But you're always sparring, already." "It's that old woman that you're so fond of," said Sir Griffin. "I don't mean to have any ill-humour from my wife, I can tell you. I know who will have the worst of it if there is." "Upon my word, I think you'll have your hands full," said Lord George. They got out at a sort of private door attached to the chapel, and were there received by the clerk, who wore a very long face. The news had already come, and had been communicated to Mr. Emilius, who was in the vestry. "Are the ladies here yet?" asked Lord George. The woebegone clerk told them that the ladies were not yet there, and suggested that they should see Mr. Emilius. Into the presence of Mr. Emilius they were led, and then they heard the truth. "Sir Griffin," said Mr. Emilius, holding the baronet by the hand, "I'm sorry to have to tell you that there's something wrong in Hertford Street." "What's wrong?" asked Sir Griffin. "You don't mean to say that Miss Roanoke is not to be here?" demanded Lord George. "By George, I thought as much. I did indeed." "I can only tell you what I know, Lord George. Mrs. Carbuncle's servant was here ten minutes since, Sir Griffin,--before I came down, and he told the clerk that--that--" "What the d---- did he tell him?" asked Sir Griffin. "He said that Miss Roanoke had changed her mind, and didn't mean to be married at all. That's all that I can learn from what he says. Perhaps you will think it best to go up to Hertford Street?" "I'll be ---- if I do," said Sir Griffin. "I am not in the least surprised," repeated Lord George. "Tewett, my boy, we might as well go home to lunch, and the sooner you're out of town the better." "I knew that I should be taken in at last by that accursed woman," said Sir Griffin. "It wasn't Mrs. Carbuncle, if you mean that. She'd have given her left hand to have had it completed. I rather think you've had an escape, Griff; and if I were you, I'd make the best of it." Sir Griffin spoke not another word, but left the church with his friend in the brougham that had brought them, and so he disappears from our story. Mr. Emilius looked after him with wistful eyes, regretful for his fee. Had the baronet been less coarse and violent in his language he would have asked for it; but he feared that he might be cursed in his own church, before his clerk, and abstained. Late in the afternoon Lord George, when he had administered comfort to the disappointed bridegroom in the shape of a hot lunch, Curaçoa, and cigars, walked up to Hertford Street, calling at the hotel in Albemarle Street on the way. The waiter told him all that he knew. Some thirty or forty guests had come to the wedding-banquet, and had all been sent away with tidings that the marriage had been--postponed. "You might have told 'em a trifle more than that," said Lord George. "Postponed was pleasantest, my lord," said the waiter. "Anyways, that was said, and we supposes, my lord, as the things ain't wanted now." Lord George replied that, as far as he knew, the things were not wanted, and then continued his way up to Hertford Street. At first he saw Lizzie Eustace, upon whom the misfortune of the day had had a most depressing effect. The wedding was to have been the one morsel of pleasing excitement which would come before she underwent the humble penance to which she was doomed. That was frustrated and abandoned, and now she could think only of Mr. Camperdown, her cousin Frank, and Lady Glencora Palliser. "What's up now?" said Lord George, with that disrespect which had always accompanied his treatment of her since she had told him her secret. "What's the meaning of all this?" "I daresay that you know as well as I do, my lord." "I must know a good deal if I do. It seems that among you there is nothing but one trick upon another." "I suppose you are speaking of your own friends, Lord George. You doubtless know much more than I do of Miss Roanoke's affairs." "Does she mean to say that she doesn't mean to marry the man at all?" "So I understand;--but really you had better send for Mrs. Carbuncle." He did send for Mrs. Carbuncle, and after some words with her, was taken up into Lucinda's room. There sat the unfortunate girl, in the chair from which she had not moved since the morning. There had come over her face a look of fixed but almost idiotic resolution; her mouth was compressed, and her eyes were glazed, and she sat twiddling her book before her with her fingers. She had eaten nothing since she had got up, and had long ceased to be violent when questioned by her aunt. But, nevertheless, she was firm enough when her aunt begged to be allowed to write a letter to Sir Griffin, explaining that all this had arisen from temporary indisposition. "No; it isn't temporary. It isn't temporary at all. You can write to him; but I'll never come out of this room if I am told that I am to see him." "What is all this about, Lucinda?" said Lord George, speaking in his kindest voice. "Is he there?" said she, turning round suddenly. "Sir Griffin?--no indeed. He has left town." "You're sure he's not there? It's no good his coming. If he comes for ever and ever he shall never touch me again;--not alive; he shall never touch me again alive." As she spoke she moved across the room to the fire-place and grasped the poker in her hand. "Has she been like that all the morning?" whispered Lord George. "No;--not like. She has been quite quiet. Lucinda!" "Don't let him come here, then; that's all. What's the use? They can't make me marry him. And I won't marry him. Everybody has known that I hated him,--detested him. Oh, Lord George, it has been very, very cruel." "Has it been my fault, Lucinda?" "She wouldn't have done it if you had told her not. But you won't bring him again;--will you?" "Certainly not. He means to go abroad." "Ah,--yes; that will be best. Let him go abroad. He knew it all the time,--that I hated him. Why did he want me to be his wife? If he has gone abroad, I will go down-stairs. But I won't go out of the house. Nothing shall make me go out of the house. Are the bridesmaids gone?" "Long ago," said Mrs. Carbuncle, piteously. "Then I will go down." And, between them, they led her into the drawing-room. "It is my belief," said Lord George to Mrs. Carbuncle, some minutes afterwards, "that you have driven her mad." "Are you going to turn against me?" "It is true. How you have had the heart to go on pressing it upon her, I could never understand. I am about as hard as a milestone, but I'll be shot if I could have done it. From day to day I thought that you would have given way." "That is so like a man,--when it is all over, to turn upon a woman and say that she did it." "Didn't you do it? I thought you did, and that you took a great deal of pride in the doing of it. When you made him offer to her down in Scotland, and made her accept him, you were so proud that you could hardly hold yourself. What will you do now? Go on just as though nothing had happened?" "I don't know what we shall do. There will be so many things to be paid." "I should think there would,--and you can hardly expect Sir Griffin to pay for them. You'll have to take her away somewhere. You'll find that she can't remain here. And that other woman will be in prison before the week's over, I should say,--unless she runs away." There was not much of comfort to be obtained by any of them from Lord George, who was quite as harsh to Mrs. Carbuncle as he had been to Lizzie Eustace. He remained in Hertford Street for an hour, and then took his leave, saying that he thought that he also should go abroad. "I didn't think," he said, "that anything could have hurt my character much; but, upon my word, between you and Lady Eustace, I begin to find that in every deep there may be a lower depth. All the town has given me credit for stealing her ladyship's necklace, and now I shall be mixed up in this mock marriage. I shouldn't wonder if Rooper were to send his bill in to me,"--Mr. Rooper was the keeper of the hotel in Albemarle Street,--"I think I shall follow Sir Griffin abroad. You have made England too hot to hold me." And so he left them. The evening of that day was a terrible time to the three ladies in Hertford Street,--and the following day was almost worse. Nobody came to see them, and not one of them dared to speak of the future. For the third day, the Wednesday, Lady Eustace had made her appointment with Mr. Camperdown, having written to the attorney, in compliance with the pressing advice of Major Mackintosh, to name an hour. Mr. Camperdown had written again, sending his compliments, and saying that he would receive Lady Eustace at the time fixed by her. The prospect of this interview was very bad, but even this was hardly so oppressive as the actual existing wretchedness of that house. Mrs. Carbuncle, whom Lizzie had always known as high-spirited, bold, and almost domineering, was altogether prostrated by her misfortunes. She was querulous, lachrymose, and utterly despondent. From what Lizzie now learned, her hostess was enveloped in a mass of debt which would have been hopeless, even had Lucinda gone off as a bride; but she had been willing to face all that with the object of establishing her niece. She could have expected nothing from the marriage for herself. She well knew that Sir Griffin would neither pay her debts nor give her a home nor lend her money. But to have married the girl who was in her charge would have been in itself a success, and would have in some sort repaid her for her trouble. There would have been something left to show for her expenditure of time and money. But now there was nothing around her but failure and dismay. The very servants in the house seemed to know that ordinary respect was hardly demanded from them. As to Lucinda, Lizzie felt, from the very hour in which she first saw her on the morning of the intended wedding, that her mind was astray. She insisted on passing the time up in her own room, and always sat with the Bible before her. At every knock at the door, or ring at the bell, she would look round suspiciously, and once she whispered into Lizzie's ear that if ever "he" should come there again she would "give him a kiss with a vengeance." On the Tuesday, Lizzie recommended Mrs. Carbuncle to get medical advice,--and at last they sent for Mr. Emilius that they might ask counsel of him. Mr. Emilius was full of smiles and consolation, and still allowed his golden hopes as to some Elysian future to crop out;--but he did acknowledge at last, in a whispered conference with Lady Eustace, that somebody ought to see Miss Roanoke. Somebody did see Miss Roanoke,--and the doctor who was thus appealed to shook his head. Perhaps Miss Roanoke had better be taken into the country for a little while. "Dear Lady Eustace," said Mrs. Carbuncle, "now you can be a friend indeed,"--meaning, of course, that an invitation to Portray Castle would do more than could anything else towards making straight the crooked things of the hour. Mrs. Carbuncle, when she made the request, of course knew of Lizzie's coming troubles;--but let them do what they could to Lizzie, they could not take away her house. But Lizzie felt at once that this would not suit. "Ah, Mrs. Carbuncle," she said. "You do not know the condition which I am in myself!" CHAPTER LXXI Lizzie Is Threatened with the Treadmill Early on the Wednesday morning, two or three hours before the time fixed for Lizzie's visit to Mr. Camperdown, her cousin Frank came to call upon her. She presumed him to be altogether ignorant of all that Major Mackintosh had known, and therefore endeavoured to receive him as though her heart were light. "Oh, Frank," she said, "you have heard of our terrible misfortune here?" "I have heard so much," said he gravely, "that I hardly know what to believe and what not to believe." "I mean about Miss Roanoke's marriage?" "Oh, yes;--I have been told that it is broken off." Then Lizzie, with affected eagerness, gave him a description of the whole affair, declaring how horrible, how tragic, the thing had been from its very commencement. "Don't you remember, Frank, down at Portray, they never really cared for each other? They became engaged the very time you were there." "I have not forgotten it." "The truth is, Lucinda Roanoke did not understand what real love means. She had never taught herself to comprehend what is the very essence of love;--and as for Sir Griffin Tewett, though he was anxious to marry her, he never had any idea of love at all. Did not you always feel that, Frank?" "I'm sorry you have had so much to do with them, Lizzie." "There's no help for spilt milk, Frank; and, as for that, I don't suppose that Mrs. Carbuncle can do me any harm. The man is a baronet, and the marriage would have been respectable. Miss Roanoke has been eccentric, and that has been the long and the short of it. What will be done, Frank, with all the presents that were bought?" "I haven't an idea. They'd better be sold to pay the bills. But I came to you, Lizzie, about another piece of business." "What piece of business?" she asked, looking him in the face for a moment, trying to be bold, but trembling as she did so. She had believed him to be ignorant of her story, but she had soon perceived, from his manner to her, that he knew it all,--or, at least, that he knew so much that she would have to tell him all the rest. There could be no longer any secret with him. Indeed there could be no longer any secret with anybody. She must be prepared to encounter a world accurately informed as to every detail of the business which, for the last three months, had been to her a burden so oppressive that, at some periods, she had sunk altogether under the weight. She had already endeavoured to realise her position, and to make clear to herself the condition of her future life. Lord George had talked to her of perjury and prison, and had tried to frighten her by making the very worst of her faults. According to him she would certainly be made to pay for the diamonds, and would be enabled to do so by saving her income during a long term of incarceration. This was a terrible prospect of things;--and she had almost believed in it. Then the major had come to her. The major, she thought, was the truest gentleman she had ever seen, and her best friend. Ah;--if it had not been for the wife and seven children, there might still have been comfort! That which had been perjury with Lord George, had by the major been so simply, and yet so correctly, called an incorrect version of facts! And so it was,--and no more than that. Lizzie, in defending herself to herself, felt that, though cruel magistrates and hard-hearted lawyers and pig-headed jurymen might call her little fault by the name of perjury, it could not be real, wicked perjury, because the diamonds had been her own. She had defrauded nobody,--had wished to defraud nobody,--if only the people would have left her alone. It had suited her to give--an incorrect version of facts, because people had troubled themselves about her affairs; and now all this had come upon her! The major had comforted her very greatly; but still,--what would the world say? Even he, kind and comfortable as he had been, had made her understand that she must go into court and confess the incorrectness of her own version. She believed every word the major said. Ah, there was a man worthy to be believed;--a man of men! They could not take away her income or her castle. They could not make her pay for the diamonds. But still,--what would the world say? And what would her lovers say? What one of her lovers thought proper to say, she had already heard. Lord George had spoken out, and had made himself very disagreeable. Lord Fawn, she knew, would withdraw the renewal of his offer, let her answer to him be what it might. But what would Frank say? And now Frank was with her, looking into her face with severe eyes. She was more than ever convinced that the life of a widow was not suited for her, and that, among her several lovers, she must settle her wealth and her heart upon some special lover. Neither her wealth nor her heart would be in any way injured by the confession which she was prepared to make. But then men are so timid, so false, and so blind! In regard to Frank, whom she now believed that she had loved with all the warmth of her young affections from the first moment in which she had seen him after Sir Florian's death,--she had been at great trouble to clear the way for him. She knew of his silly engagement to Lucy Morris, and was willing to forgive him that offence. She knew that he could not marry Lucy, because of her pennilessness and his indebtedness; and therefore she had taken the trouble to see Lucy with the view of making things straight on that side. Lucy had, of course, been rough with her, and ill-mannered, but Lizzie thought that, upon the whole, she had succeeded. Lucy was rough and ill-mannered, but was, at the same time, what the world calls good, and would hardly persevere after what had been said to her. Lizzie was sure that, a month since, her cousin would have yielded himself to her willingly, if he could only have freed himself from Lucy Morris. But now, just in this very nick of time, which was so momentous to her, the police had succeeded in unravelling her secret, and there sat Frank, looking at her with stern, ill-natured eyes, like an enemy rather than a lover. "What piece of business?" she asked, in answer to his question. She must be bold,--if she could. She must brazen it out with him, if only she could be strong enough to put on her brass in his presence. He had been so stupidly chivalrous in believing all her stories about the robbery when nobody else had quite believed them, that she felt that she had before her a task that was very disagreeable and very difficult. She looked up at him, struggling to be bold, and then her glance sank before his gaze and fell upon the floor. "I do not at all wish to pry into your secrets," he said. Secrets from him! Some such exclamation was on her lips, when she remembered that her special business, at the present moment, was to acknowledge a secret which had been kept from him. "It is unkind of you to speak to me in that way," she said. "I am quite in earnest. I do not wish to pry into your secrets. But I hear rumours which seem to be substantiated; and though, of course, I could stay away from you--" "Oh,--whatever happens, pray, pray do not stay away from me. Where am I to look for advice if you stay away from me?" "That is all very well, Lizzie." "Ah, Frank! if you desert me, I am undone." "It is, of course, true that some of the police have been with you lately?" "Major Mackintosh was here, about the end of last week,--a most kind man, altogether a gentleman, and I was so glad to see him." "What made him come?" "What made him come?" How should she tell her story? "Oh, he came, of course, about the robbery. They have found out everything. It was the jeweller, Benjamin, who concocted it all. That horrid sly girl I had, Patience Crabstick, put him up to it. And there were two regular housebreakers. They have found it all out at last." "So I hear." "And Major Mackintosh came to tell me about it." "But the diamonds are gone?" "Oh yes;--those weary, weary diamonds. Do you know, Frank, that, though they were my own, as much as the coat you wear is your own, I am glad they are gone. I am glad that the police have not found them. They tormented me so that I hated them. Don't you remember that I told you how I longed to throw them into the sea, and to be rid of them for ever?" "That, of course, was a joke." "It was no joke, Frank. It was solemn, serious truth." "What I want to know is,--where were they stolen?" That, of course, was the question which hitherto Lizzie Eustace had answered by an incorrect version of facts, and now she must give the true version. She tried to put a bold face upon it, but it was very difficult. A face bold with brass she could not assume. Perhaps a little bit of acting might serve her turn, and a face that should be tender rather than bold. "Oh, Frank!" she exclaimed, bursting out into tears. "I always supposed that they were taken at Carlisle," said Frank. Lizzie fell on her knees, at his feet, with her hands clasped together, and her one long lock of hair hanging down so as to touch his arm. Her eyes were bright with tears, but were not, as yet, wet and red with weeping. Was not this confession enough? Was he so hard-hearted as to make her tell her own disgrace in spoken words? Of course he knew, well enough, now, when the diamonds had been stolen. If he were possessed of any tenderness, any tact, any manliness, he would go on, presuming that question to have been answered. "I don't quite understand it all," he said, laying his hand softly upon her shoulder. "I have been led to make so many statements to other people, which now seem to have been--incorrect! It was only the box that was taken at Carlisle?" "Only the box." She could answer that question. "But the thieves thought that the diamonds were in the box?" "I suppose so. But, oh, Frank! don't cross-question me about it. If you could know what I have suffered, you would not punish me any more. I have got to go to Mr. Camperdown's this very day. I offered to do that at once, and I sha'n't have strength to go through it if you are not kind to me now. Dear, dear Frank,--do be kind to me." And he was kind to her. He lifted her up to the sofa and did not ask her another question about the necklace. Of course she had lied to him and to all the world. From the very commencement of his intimacy with her, he had known that she was a liar, and what else could he have expected but lies? As it happened, this particular lie had been very big, very efficacious, and the cause of boundless troubles. It had been wholly unnecessary, and, from the first, though injurious to many, more injurious to her than to any other. He himself had been injured, but it seemed to him now that she had absolutely ruined herself. And all this had been done for nothing,--had been done, as he thought, that Mr. Camperdown might be kept in the dark, whereas all the light in the world would have assisted Mr. Camperdown nothing. He brought to mind, as he stood over her, all those scenes which she had so successfully performed in his presence since she had come to London,--scenes in which the robbery in Carlisle had been discussed between them. She had on these occasions freely expressed her opinion about the necklace, saying, in a low whisper, with a pretty little shrug of her shoulders, that she presumed it to be impossible that Lord George should have been concerned in the robbery. Frank had felt, as she said so, that some suspicion was intended by her to be attached to Lord George. She had wondered whether Mr. Camperdown had known anything about it. She had hoped that Lord Fawn would now be satisfied. She had been quite convinced that Mr. Benjamin had the diamonds. She had been indignant that the police had not traced the property. She had asked in another whisper,--a very low whisper indeed,--whether it was possible that Mrs. Carbuncle should know more about it than she was pleased to tell? And all the while the necklace had been lying in her own desk, and she had put it there with her own hands! It was marvellous to him that the woman could have been so false and have sustained her falsehood so well. And this was his cousin, his well-beloved,--as a cousin, certainly well-beloved; and there had, doubtless, been times in which he had thought that he would make her his wife! He could not but smile as he stood looking at her, contemplating all the confusion which she had caused, and thinking how very little the disclosure of her iniquity seemed to confound herself. "Oh, Frank, do not laugh at me," she said. "I am not laughing, Lizzie; I am only wondering." "And now, Frank, what had I better do?" "Ah;--that is difficult; is it not? You see I hardly know all the truth yet. I do not want to know more,--but how can I advise you?" "I thought you knew everything." "I don't suppose anybody can do anything to you." "Major Mackintosh says that nobody can. He quite understands that they were my own property, and that I had a right to keep them in my desk if I pleased. Why was I to tell everybody where they were? Of course I was foolish, and now they are lost. It is I that have suffered. Major Mackintosh quite understands that, and says that nobody can do anything to me;--only I must go to Mr. Camperdown." "You will have to be examined again before a magistrate." "Yes;--I suppose I must be examined. You will go with me, Frank,--won't you?" He winced, and made no immediate reply. "I don't mean to Mr. Camperdown, but before the magistrate. Will it be in a court?" "I suppose so." "The gentleman came here before. Couldn't he come here again?" Then he explained to her the difference of her present position, and in doing so he did say something of her iniquity. He made her understand that the magistrate had gone out of his way at the last inquiry, believing her to be a lady who had been grievously wronged, and one, therefore, to whom much consideration was due. "And I have been grievously wronged," said Lizzie. But now she would be required to tell the truth in opposition to the false evidence which she had formerly given; and she would herself be exempted from prosecution for perjury only on the ground that she would be called on to criminate herself in giving evidence against criminals whose crimes had been deeper than her own. "I suppose they can't quite eat me," she said, smiling through her tears. "No;--they won't eat you," he replied gravely. "And you will go with me?" "Yes;--I suppose I had better do so." "Ah;--that will be so nice." The idea of the scene at the police-court was not at all "nice" to Frank Greystock. "I shall not mind what they say to me as long as you are by my side. Everybody will know that they were my own,--won't they?" "And there will be the trial afterwards." "Another trial?" Then he explained to her the course of affairs,--that the men might not improbably be tried at Carlisle for stealing the box, and again in London for stealing the diamonds,--that two distinct acts of burglary had been committed, and that her evidence would be required on both occasions. He told her also that her attendance before the magistrate on Friday would only be a preliminary ceremony, and that, before the thing was over she would, doubtless, be doomed to bear a great deal of annoyance, and to answer very many disagreeable questions. "I shall care for nothing if you will only be at my side," she exclaimed. He was very urgent with her to go to Scotland as soon as her examination before the magistrates should be over, and was much astonished at the excuse she made for not doing so. Mrs. Carbuncle had borrowed all her ready money; but as she was now in Mrs. Carbuncle's house, she could repay herself a portion of the loan by remaining there and eating it out. She did not exactly say how much Mrs. Carbuncle had borrowed, but she left an impression on Frank's mind that it was about ten times the actual sum. With this excuse he was not satisfied, and told her that she must go to Scotland, if only for the sake of escaping from the Carbuncle connexion. She promised to obey him if he would be her convoy. The Easter holidays were just now at hand, and he could not refuse on the plea of time. "Oh, Frank, do not refuse me this;--only think how terribly forlorn is my position!" He did not refuse, but he did not quite promise. He was still tender-hearted towards her in spite of her enormities. One iniquity,--perhaps her worst iniquity, he did not yet know. He had not as yet heard of her disinterested appeal to Lucy Morris. When he left her she was almost joyous for a few minutes;--till the thought of her coming interview with Mr. Camperdown again overshadowed her. She had dreaded two things chiefly,--her first interview with her cousin Frank after he should have learned the truth, and those perils in regard to perjury with which Lord George had threatened her. Both these bugbears had now vanished. That dear man, the major, had told her that there would be no such perils, and her cousin Frank had not seemed to think so very much of her lies and treachery! He had still been affectionate with her; he would support her before the magistrate, and would travel with her to Scotland. And after that who could tell what might come next? How foolish she had been to trouble herself as she had done,--almost to choke herself with an agony of fear, because she had feared detection. Now she was detected;--and what had come of it? That great officer of justice, Major Mackintosh, had been almost more than civil to her; and her dear cousin Frank was still a cousin,--dear as ever. People, after all, did not think so very much of perjury,--of perjury such as hers, committed in regard to one's own property. It was that odious Lord George who had frightened her, instead of comforting, as he would have done had there been a spark of the true Corsair poetry about him. She did not feel comfortably confident as to what might be said of her by Lady Glencora and the Duke of Omnium, but she was almost inclined to think that Lady Glencora would support her. Lady Glencora was no poor, mealy-mouthed thing, but a woman of the world who understood what was what. Lizzie no doubt wished that the trials and examinations were over;--but her money was safe. They could not take away Portray, nor could they rob her of four thousand a year. As for the rest, she could live it down. She had ordered the carriage to take her to Mr. Camperdown's chambers, and now she dressed herself for the occasion. He should not be made to think, at any rate by her outside appearance, that she was ashamed of herself. But before she started she had just a word with Mrs. Carbuncle. "I think I shall go down to Scotland on Saturday," she said, proclaiming her news not in the most gracious manner. "That is if they let you go," said Mrs. Carbuncle. "What do you mean? Who is to prevent me?" "The police. I know all about it, Lady Eustace, and you need not look like that. Lord George informs me that you will probably--be locked up to-day or to-morrow." "Lord George is a story-teller. I don't believe he ever said so. And if he did, he knows nothing about it." "He ought to know, considering all that you have made him suffer. That you should have gone on, with the necklace in your own box all the time, letting people think that he had taken it, and accepting his attentions all the while, is what I cannot understand! And however you were able to look those people at Carlisle in the face, passes me! Of course, Lady Eustace, you can't stay here after what has occurred." "I shall stay just as long as I like, Mrs. Carbuncle." "Poor dear Lucinda! I do not wonder that she should be driven beyond herself by so horrible a story. The feeling that she has been living all this time in the same house with a woman who had deceived all the police,--all the police,--has been too much for her. I know it has been almost too much for me." And yet, as Lizzie at once understood, Mrs. Carbuncle knew nothing now which she had not known when she made her petition to be taken to Portray. And this was the woman, too, who had borrowed her money last week, whom she had entertained for months at Portray, and who had pretended to be her bosom-friend. "You are quite right in getting off to Scotland as soon as possible,--if they will let you go," continued Mrs. Carbuncle. "Of course you could not stay here. Up to Friday night it can be permitted; but the servants had better wait upon you in your own rooms." "How dare you talk to me in that way?" screamed Lizzie. "When a woman has committed perjury," said Mrs. Carbuncle, holding up both her hands in awe and grief, "nothing too bad can possibly be said to her. You are amenable to the outraged laws of the country, and it is my belief that they can keep you upon the treadmill and bread and water for months and months,--if not for years." Having pronounced this terrible sentence, Mrs. Carbuncle stalked out of the room. "That they can sequester your property for your creditors, I know," she said, returning for a moment and putting her head within the door. The carriage was ready, and it was time for Lizzie to start if she intended to keep her appointment with Mr. Camperdown. She was much flustered and weakened by Mrs. Carbuncle's ill-usage, and had difficulty in restraining herself from tears. And yet what the woman had said was false from beginning to end. The maid, who was the successor of Patience Crabstick, was to accompany her; and, as she passed through the hall, she so far recovered herself as to be able to conceal her dismay from the servants. CHAPTER LXXII Lizzie Triumphs Reports had, of course, reached Mr. Camperdown of the true story of the Eustace diamonds. He had learned that the Jew jeweller had made a determined set at them, having in the first place hired housebreakers to steal them at Carlisle, and having again hired the same housebreakers to steal them from the house in Hertford Street, as soon as he knew that Lady Eustace had herself secreted them. By degrees this information had reached him,--but not in a manner to induce him to declare himself satisfied with the truth. But now Lady Eustace was coming to him,--as he presumed, to confess everything. When he first heard that the diamonds had been stolen at Carlisle, he was eager with Mr. Eustace in contending that the widow's liability in regard to the property was not at all the less because she had managed to lose it through her own pig-headed obstinacy. He consulted his trusted friend, Mr. Dove, on the occasion, making out another case for the barrister, and Mr. Dove had opined that, if it could be first proved that the diamonds were the property of the estate and not of Lady Eustace, and afterwards proved that they had been stolen through her laches,--then could the Eustace estate recover the value from her estate. As she had carried the diamonds about with her in an absurd manner, her responsibility might probably be established;--but the non-existence of ownership by her must be first declared by a Vice-Chancellor,--with probability of appeal to the Lords Justices and to the House of Lords. A bill in Chancery must be filed, in the first place, to have the question of ownership settled; and then, should the estate be at length declared the owner, restitution of the property which had been lost through the lady's fault must be sought at Common Law. That had been the opinion of the Turtle Dove, and Mr. Camperdown had at once submitted to the law of his great legal mentor. But John Eustace had positively declared when he heard it that no more money should be thrown away in looking after property which would require two lawsuits to establish, and which, when established, might not be recovered. "How can we make her pay ten thousand pounds? She might die first," said John Eustace;--and Mr. Camperdown had been forced to yield. Then came the second robbery, and gradually there was spread about a report that the diamonds had been in Hertford Street all the time;--that they had not been taken at Carlisle, but certainly had been stolen at last. Mr. Camperdown was again in a fever, and again had recourse to Mr. Dove and to John Eustace. He learned from the police all that they would tell him, and now the whole truth was to be divulged to him by the chief culprit herself. For, to the mind of Mr. Camperdown the two housebreakers, and Patience Crabstick,--and even Mr. Benjamin himself, were white as snow compared with the blackness of Lady Eustace. In his estimation no punishment could be too great for her,--and yet he began to understand that she would escape scot-free! Her evidence would be needed to convict the thieves, and she could not be prosecuted for perjury when once she had been asked for her evidence. "After all, she has only told a fib about her own property," said the Turtle Dove. "About property not her own," replied Mr. Camperdown stoutly. "Her own,--till the contrary shall have been proved; her own, for all purposes of defence before a jury, if she were prosecuted now. Were she tried for the perjury, your attempt to obtain possession of the diamonds would be all so much in her favour." With infinite regrets, Mr. Camperdown began to perceive that nothing could be done to her. But she was to come to him and let him know, from her own lips, facts of which nothing more than rumour had yet reached him. He had commenced his bill in Chancery, and had hitherto stayed proceedings simply because it had been reported,--falsely, as it now appeared,--that the diamonds had been stolen at Carlisle. Major Mackintosh, in his desire to use Lizzie's evidence against the thieves, had recommended her to tell the whole truth openly to those who claimed the property on behalf of her husband's estate; and now, for the first time in her life, this odious woman was to visit him in his own chambers. He did not think it expedient to receive her alone. He consulted his mentor, Mr. Dove, and his client, John Eustace, and the latter consented to be present. It was suggested to Mr. Dove that he might, on so peculiar an occasion as this, venture to depart from the established rule, and visit the attorney on his own quarter-deck; but he smiled, and explained that, though he was altogether superior to any such prejudice as that, and would not object at all to call on his friend, Mr. Camperdown, could any good effect arise from his doing so, he considered that, were he to be present on this occasion, he would simply assist in embarrassing the poor lady. On this very morning, while Mrs. Carbuncle was abusing Lizzie in Hertford Street, John Eustace and Mr. Camperdown were in Mr. Dove's chambers, whither they had gone to tell him of the coming interview. The Turtle Dove was sitting back in his chair, with his head leaning forward as though it were going to drop from his neck, and the two visitors were listening to his words. "Be merciful, I should say," suggested the barrister. John Eustace was clearly of opinion that they ought to be merciful. Mr. Camperdown did not look merciful. "What can you get by harassing the poor, weak, ignorant creature?" continued Mr. Dove. "She has hankered after her bauble, and has told falsehoods in her efforts to keep it. Have you never heard of older persons, and more learned persons, and persons nearer to ourselves, who have done the same?" At that moment there was presumed to be great rivalry, not unaccompanied by intrigue, among certain leaders of the learned profession with reference to various positions of high honour and emolument, vacant or expected to be vacant. A Lord Chancellor was about to resign, and a Lord Justice had died. Whether a somewhat unpopular Attorney-General should be forced to satisfy himself with the one place, or allowed to wait for the other, had been debated in all the newspapers. It was agreed that there was a middle course in reference to a certain second-class Chief-Justiceship,--only that the present second-class Chief-Justice objected to shelving himself. There existed considerable jealousy, and some statements had been made which were not, perhaps, strictly founded on fact. It was understood, both by the attorney and by the Member of Parliament, that the Turtle Dove was referring to these circumstances when he spoke of baubles and falsehoods, and of learned persons near to themselves. He himself had hankered after no bauble,--but, as is the case with many men and women who are free from such hankerings, he was hardly free from that dash of malice which the possession of such things in the hands of others is so prone to excite. "Spare her," said Mr. Dove. "There is no longer any material question as to the property, which seems to be gone irrecoverably. It is, upon the whole, well for the world, that property so fictitious as diamonds should be subject to the risk of such annihilation. As far as we are concerned, the property is annihilated, and I would not harass the poor, ignorant young creature." As Eustace and the attorney walked across from the Old to the New Square, the former declared that he quite agreed with Mr. Dove. "In the first place, Mr. Camperdown, she is my brother's widow." Mr. Camperdown with sorrow admitted the fact. "And she is the mother of the head of our family. It should not be for us to degrade her;--but rather to protect her from degradation, if that be possible." "I heartily wish she had got her merits before your poor brother ever saw her," said Mr. Camperdown. Lizzie, in her fears, had been very punctual; and when the two gentlemen reached the door leading up to Mr. Camperdown's chambers, the carriage was already standing there. Lizzie had come up the stairs, and had been delighted at hearing that Mr. Camperdown was out, and would be back in a moment. She instantly resolved that it did not become her to wait. She had kept her appointment, had not found Mr. Camperdown at home, and would be off as fast as her carriage-wheels could take her. But, unfortunately, while with a gentle murmur she was explaining to the clerk how impossible it was that she should wait for a lawyer who did not keep his own appointment, John Eustace and Mr. Camperdown appeared upon the landing, and she was at once convoyed into the attorney's particular room. Lizzie, who always dressed well, was now attired as became a lady of rank, who had four thousand a year, and was the intimate friend of Lady Glencora Palliser. When last she saw Mr. Camperdown she had been arrayed for a long, dusty summer journey down to Scotland, and neither by her outside garniture nor by her manner had she then been able to exact much admiration. She had been taken by surprise in the street, and was frightened. Now, in difficulty though she was, she resolved that she would hold up her head and be very brave. She was a little taken aback when she saw her brother-in-law, but she strove hard to carry herself with confidence. "Ah, John," she said, "I did not expect to find you with Mr. Camperdown." "I thought it best that I should be here,--as a friend," he said. "It makes it much pleasanter for me, of course," said Lizzie. "I am not quite sure that Mr. Camperdown will allow me to regard him as a friend." "You have never had any reason to regard me as your enemy, Lady Eustace," said Mr. Camperdown. "Will you take a seat? I understand that you wish to state the circumstances under which the Eustace family diamonds were stolen while they were in your hands." "My own diamonds, Mr. Camperdown." "I cannot admit that for a moment, my lady." "What does it signify?" said Eustace. "The wretched stones are gone for ever; and whether they were of right the property of my sister-in-law, or of her son, cannot matter now." Mr. Camperdown was irritated, and shook his head. It cut him to the heart that everybody should take the part of the wicked, fraudulent woman who had caused him such infinite trouble. Lizzie saw her opportunity and was bolder than ever. "You will never get me to acknowledge that they were not my own," she said. "My husband gave them to me, and I know that they were my own." "They have been stolen, at any rate," said the lawyer. "Yes;--they have been stolen." "And now will you tell us how?" Lizzie looked round upon her brother-in-law and sighed. She had never yet told the story in all its nakedness, although it had been three or four times extracted from her by admission. She paused, hoping that questions might be asked her which she could answer by easy monosyllables, but not a word was uttered to help her. "I suppose you know all about it," she said at last. "I know nothing about it," said Mr. Camperdown. "We heard that your jewel-case was taken out of your room at Carlisle and broken open," said Eustace. "So it was. They broke into my room in the dead of night, when I was in bed, fast asleep, and took the case away. When the morning came, everybody rushed into my room, and I was so frightened that I did not know what I was doing. How would your daughter bear it, if two men cut away the locks and got into her bedroom when she was asleep? You don't think about that at all." "And where was the necklace?" asked Eustace. Lizzie remembered that her friend the major had specially advised her to tell the whole truth to Mr. Camperdown,--suggesting that by doing so she would go far towards saving herself from any prosecution. "It was under my pillow," she whispered. "And why did you not tell the magistrate that it had been under your pillow?" Mr. Camperdown's voice, as he put to her this vital question, was severe, and almost justified the little burst of sobs which came forth as a prelude to Lizzie's answer. "I did not know what I was doing. I don't know what you expect from me. You had been persecuting me ever since Sir Florian's death about the diamonds, and I didn't know what I was to do. They were my own, and I thought I was not obliged to tell everybody where I kept them. There are things which nobody tells. If I were to ask you all your secrets, would you tell them? When Sir Walter Scott was asked whether he wrote the novels, he didn't tell." "He was not upon his oath, Lady Eustace." "He did take his oath,--ever so many times. I don't know what difference an oath makes. People ain't obliged to tell their secrets, and I wouldn't tell mine." "The difference is this, Lady Eustace;--that if you give false evidence upon oath, you commit perjury." "How was I to think of that, when I was so frightened and confused that I didn't know where I was or what I was doing? There;--now I have told you everything." "Not quite everything. The diamonds were not stolen at Carlisle, but they were stolen afterwards. Did you tell the police what you had lost,--or the magistrate,--after the robbery in Hertford Street?" "Yes; I did. There was some money taken, and rings, and other jewellery." "Did you tell them that the diamonds had been really stolen on that occasion?" "They never asked me, Mr. Camperdown." "It is all as clear as a pike-staff, John," said the lawyer. "Quite clear, I should say," replied Mr. Eustace. "And I suppose I may go," said Lizzie, rising from her chair. There was no reason why she should not go; and, indeed, now that the interview was over, there did not seem to be any reason why she should have come. Though they had heard so much from her own mouth, they knew no more than they had known before. The great mystery had been elucidated, and Lizzie Eustace had been found to be the intriguing villain; but it was quite clear, even to Mr. Camperdown, that nothing could be done to her. He had never really thought that it would be expedient that she should be prosecuted for perjury, and he now found that she must go utterly scatheless, although, by her obstinacy and dishonesty, she had inflicted so great a loss on the distinguished family which had taken her to its bosom. "I have no reason for wishing to detain you, Lady Eustace," he said. "If I were to talk for ever, I should not, probably, make you understand the extent of the injury you have done, or teach you to look in a proper light at the position in which you have placed yourself and all those who belong to you. When your husband died, good advice was given you, and given, I think, in a very kind way. You would not listen to it, and you see the result." "I ain't a bit ashamed of anything," said Lizzie. "I suppose not," rejoined Mr. Camperdown. "Good-bye, John." And Lizzie put out her hand to her brother-in-law. "Good-bye, Lizzie." "Mr. Camperdown, I have the honour to wish you good morning." And Lizzie made a low curtsey to the lawyer, and was then attended to her carriage by the lawyer's clerk. She had certainly come forth from the interview without fresh wounds. "The barrister who will have the cross-examining of her at the Central Criminal Court," said Mr. Camperdown, as soon as the door was closed behind her, "will have a job of work on his hands. There's nothing a pretty woman can't do when she has got rid of all sense of shame." "She is a very great woman," said John Eustace,--"a very great woman; and, if the sex could have its rights, would make an excellent lawyer." In the meantime Lizzie Eustace returned home to Hertford Street in triumph. CHAPTER LXXIII Lizzie's Last Lover Lizzie's interview with the lawyer took place on the Wednesday afternoon, and, on her return to Hertford Street she found a note from Mrs. Carbuncle. "I have made arrangements for dining out to-day, and shall not return till after ten. I will do the same to-morrow, and on every day till you leave town, and you can breakfast in your own room. Of course you will carry out your plan for leaving this house on Monday. After what has passed, I shall prefer not to meet you again.--J.C." And this was written by a woman who, but a few days since, had borrowed £150 from her, and who at this moment had in her hands fifty pounds' worth of silver-plate, supposed to have been given to Lucinda, and which clearly ought to have been returned to the donor when Lucinda's marriage was--postponed, as the newspapers had said! Lucinda at this time had left the house in Hertford Street, but Lizzie had not been informed whither she had been taken. She could not apply to Lucinda for restitution of the silver,--which was, in fact, held at the moment by the Albemarle Street hotel-keeper as part security for his debt,--and she was quite sure that any application to Mrs. Carbuncle for either the silver or the debt would be unavailing. But she might, perhaps, cause annoyance by a letter, and could, at any rate, return insult for insult. She therefore wrote to her late friend. MADAM, I certainly am not desirous of continuing an acquaintance into which I was led by false representations, and in the course of which I have been almost absurdly hospitable to persons altogether unworthy of my kindness. You, and your niece, and your especial friend Lord George Carruthers, and that unfortunate young man your niece's lover, were entertained at my country-house as my guests for some months. I am here, in my own right, by arrangement; and as I pay more than a proper share of the expense of the establishment, I shall stay as long as I please, and go when I please. In the meantime, as we are about to part, certainly for ever, I must beg you at once to repay me the sum of £150,--which you have borrowed from me; and I must also insist on your letting me have back the present of silver which was prepared for your niece's marriage. That you should retain it as a perquisite for yourself cannot for a moment be thought of, however convenient it might be to yourself. Yours, &c., E. EUSTACE. As far as the application for restitution went, or indeed in regard to the insult, she might as well have written to a milestone. Mrs. Carbuncle was much too strong, and had fought her battle with the world much too long, to regard such word-pelting as that. She paid no attention to the note, and as she had come to terms with the agent of the house by which she was to evacuate it on the following Monday,--a fact which was communicated to Lizzie by the servant,--she did not much regard Lizzie's threat to remain there. She knew, moreover, that arrangements were already being made for the journey to Scotland. Lizzie had come back from the attorney's chambers in triumph, and had been triumphant when she wrote her note to Mrs. Carbuncle; but her elation was considerably repressed by a short notice which she read in the fashionable evening paper of the day. She always took the fashionable evening paper, and had taught herself to think that life without it was impossible. But on this afternoon she quarrelled with that fashionable evening paper for ever. The popular and well-informed organ of intelligence in question informed its readers, that the Eustace diamonds--&c., &c. In fact, it told the whole story; and then expressed a hope that, as the matter had from the commencement been one of great interest to the public, who had sympathised with Lady Eustace deeply as to the loss of her diamonds, Lady Eustace would be able to explain that part of her conduct which certainly, at present, was quite unintelligible. Lizzie threw the paper from her with indignation, asking what right newspaper scribblers could have to interfere with the private affairs of such persons as herself! But on this evening the question of her answer to Lord Fawn was the one which most interested her. Lord Fawn had taken long in the writing of his letter, and she was justified in taking what time she pleased in answering it;--but, for her own sake, it had better be answered quickly. She had tried her hand at two different replies, and did not at all doubt but what she would send the affirmative answer, if she were sure that these latter discoveries would not alter Lord Fawn's decision. Lord Fawn had distinctly told her that, if she pleased, he would marry her. She would please;--having been much troubled by the circumstances of the past six months. But then, was it not almost a certainty that Lord Fawn would retreat from his offer on learning the facts which were now so well known as to have been related in the public papers? She thought that she would take one more night to think of it. Alas! she took one night too many. On the next morning, while she was still in bed, a letter was brought to her from Lord Fawn, dated from his club the preceding evening. "Lord Fawn presents his compliments to Lady Eustace. Lady Eustace will be kind enough to understand that Lord Fawn recedes altogether from the proposition made by him in his letter to Lady Eustace dated March 28th last. Should Lady Eustace think proper to call in question the propriety of this decision on the part of Lord Fawn, she had better refer the question to some friend, and Lord Fawn will do the same. Lord Fawn thinks it best to express his determination, under no circumstances, to communicate again personally with Lady Eustace on this subject,--or, as far as he can see at present, on any other." The letter was a blow to her, although she had felt quite certain that Lord Fawn would have no difficulty in escaping from her hands as soon as the story of the diamonds should be made public. It was a blow to her, although she had assured herself a dozen times that a marriage with such a one as Lord Fawn, a man who had not a grain of poetry in his composition, would make her unutterably wretched. What escape would her heart have had from itself in such a union? This question she had asked herself over and over again, and there had been no answer to it. But then why had she not been beforehand with Lord Fawn? Why had she not rejected his second offer with the scorn which such an offer had deserved? Ah,--there was her misfortune; there was her fault! But, with Lizzie Eustace, when she could not do a thing which it was desirable that she should be known to have done, the next consideration was whether she could not so arrange as to seem to have done it. The arrival of Lord Fawn's note just as she was about to write to him, was unfortunate. But she would still write to him, and date her letter before the time that his was dated. He probably would not believe her date. She hardly ever expected to be really believed by anybody. But he would have to read what she wrote; and writing on this pretence, she would avoid the necessity of alluding to his last letter. Neither of the notes which she had by her quite suited the occasion,--so she wrote a third. The former letter in which she declined his offer was, she thought, very charmingly insolent, and the allusion to his lordship's scullion would have been successful, had it been sent on the moment, but now a graver letter was required,--and the graver letter was as follows:-- Hertford Street, Wednesday, April 3. --The date, it will be observed, was the day previous to the morning on which she had received Lord Fawn's last very conclusive note.-- MY LORD, I have taken a week to answer the letter which your lordship has done me the honour of writing to me, because I have thought it best to have time for consideration in a matter of such importance. In this I have copied your lordship's official caution. I think I never read a letter so false, so unmanly, and so cowardly, as that which you have found yourself capable of sending to me. You became engaged to me when, as I admit with shame, I did not know your character. You have since repudiated me and vilified my name, simply because, having found that I had enemies, and being afraid to face them, you wished to escape from your engagement. It has been cowardice from the beginning to the end. Your whole conduct to me has been one long, unprovoked insult, studiously concocted, because you have feared that there might possibly be some trouble for you to encounter. Nobody ever heard of anything so mean, either in novels or in real life. And now you again offer to marry me,--because you are again afraid. You think you will be thrashed, I suppose, if you decline to keep your engagement; and feel that if you offer to go on with it, my friends cannot beat you. You need not be afraid. No earthly consideration would induce me to be your wife. And if any friend of mine should look at you as though he meant to punish you, you can show him this letter and make him understand that it is I who have refused to be your wife, and not you who have refused to be my husband. E. EUSTACE. This epistle Lizzie did send, believing that she could add nothing to its insolence, let her study it as she might. And, she thought, as she read it for the fifth time, that it sounded as though it had been written before her receipt of the final note from himself, and that it would, therefore, irritate him the more. This was to be the last week of her sojourn in town, and then she was to go down and bury herself at Portray, with no other companionship than that of the faithful Macnulty, who had been left in Scotland for the last three months as nurse-in-chief to the little heir. She must go and give her evidence before the magistrate on Friday, as to which she had already received an odious slip of paper;--but Frank would accompany her. Other misfortunes had passed off so lightly that she hardly dreaded this. She did not quite understand why she was to be so banished, and thought much on the subject. She had submitted herself to Frank's advice when first she had begun to fear that her troubles would be insuperable. Her troubles were now disappearing; and, as for Frank,--what was Frank to her, that she should obey him? Nevertheless, her trunks were being already packed, and she knew that she must go. He was to accompany her on her journey, and she would still have one more chance with him. As she was thinking of all this, Mr. Emilius, the clergyman, was announced. In her loneliness she was delighted to receive any visitor, and she knew that Mr. Emilius would be at least courteous to her. When he had seated himself, he at once began to talk about the misfortune of the unaccomplished marriage, and in a very low voice hinted that from the beginning to end there had been something wrong. He had always feared that an alliance based on a footing that was so openly "pecuniary,"--he declared that the word pecuniary expressed his meaning better than any other epithet,--could not lead to matrimonial happiness. "We all know," said he, "that our dear friend, Mrs. Carbuncle, had views of her own quite distinct from her niece's happiness. I have the greatest possible respect for Mrs. Carbuncle,--and I may say esteem; but it is impossible to live long in any degree of intimacy with Mrs. Carbuncle without seeing that she is--mercenary." "Mercenary;--indeed she is," said Lizzie. "You have observed it? Oh, yes; it is so, and it casts a shadow over a character which otherwise has so much to charm." "She is the most insolent and the most ungrateful woman that I ever heard of!" exclaimed Lizzie, with energy. Mr. Emilius opened his eyes, but did not contradict her assertion. "As you have mentioned her name, Mr. Emilius, I must tell you. I have done everything for that woman. You know how I treated her down in Scotland." "With a splendid hospitality," said Mr. Emilius. "Of course she did not pay for anything there." "Oh, no." The idea of any one being called upon to pay for what one ate and drank at a friend's house, was peculiarly painful to Mr. Emilius. "And I have paid for everything here. That is to say, we have made an arrangement, very much in her favour. And she has borrowed large sums of money from me." "I am not at all surprised at that," said Mr. Emilius. "And when that unfortunate girl, her niece, was to be married to poor Sir Griffin Tewett, I gave her a whole service of plate." "What unparalleled generosity!" "Would you believe she has taken the whole for her own base purposes? And then what do you think she has done?" "My dear Lady Eustace, hardly anything would astonish me." Lizzie suddenly found a difficulty in describing to her friend the fact that Mrs. Carbuncle was endeavouring to turn her out of the house, without also alluding to her own troubles about the robbery. "She has actually told me," she continued, "that I must leave the house without a day's warning. But I believe the truth is, that she has run so much into debt that she cannot remain." "I know that she is very much in debt, Lady Eustace." "But she owed me some civility. Instead of that, she has treated me with nothing but insolence. And why, do you think? It is all because I would not allow her to take that poor, insane young woman to Portray Castle." "You don't mean that she asked to go there?" "She did, though." "I never heard such impertinence in my life,--never," said Mr. Emilius, again opening his eyes and shaking his head. "She proposed that I should ask them both down to Portray, for--for--of course it would have been almost for ever. I don't know how I should have got rid of them. And that poor young woman is mad, you know;--quite mad. She never recovered herself after that morning. Oh,--what I have suffered about that unhappy marriage, and the cruel, cruel way in which Mrs. Carbuncle urged it on. Mr. Emilius, you can't conceive the scenes which have been acted in this house during the last month. It has been dreadful. I wouldn't go through such a time again for anything that could be offered to me. It has made me so ill that I am obliged to go down to Scotland to recruit my health." "I heard that you were going to Scotland, and I wished to have an opportunity of saying--just a word to you, in private, before you go." Mr. Emilius had thought a good deal about this interview, and had prepared himself for it with considerable care. He knew, with tolerable accuracy, the whole story of the necklace, having discussed it with Mrs. Carbuncle, who, as the reader will remember, had been told the tale by Lord George. He was aware of the engagement with Lord Fawn, and of the growing intimacy which had existed between Lord George and Lizzie. He had been watchful, diligent, patient, and had at last become hopeful. When he learned that his beloved was about to start for Scotland, he felt that it would be well that he should strike a blow before she went. As to a journey down to Ayrshire, that would be nothing to one so enamoured as was Mr. Emilius; and he would not scruple to show himself at the castle-door without invitation. Whatever may have been his deficiencies, Mr. Emilius did not lack the courage needed to carry such an enterprise as this to a happy conclusion. As far as pluck and courage might serve a man, he was well served by his own gifts. He could, without a blush, or a quiver in his voice, have asked a duchess to marry him, with ten times Lizzie's income. He had now considered deeply whether, with the view of prevailing, it would be better that he should allude to the lady's trespasses in regard to the diamonds, or that he should pretend to be in ignorance; and he had determined that ultimate success might, with most probability, be achieved by a bold declaration of the truth. "I know how desperately you must be in want of some one to help you through your troubles, and I know also that your grand lovers will avoid you because of what you have done, and therefore you had better take me at once. Take me, and I'll bring you through everything. Refuse me, and I'll help to crush you." Such were the arguments which Mr. Emilius had determined to use, and such the language,--of course, with some modifications. He was now commencing his work, and was quite resolved to leave no stone unturned in carrying it to a successful issue. He drew his chair nearer to Lizzie as he announced his desire for a private interview, and leaned over towards her with his two hands closed together between his knees. He was a dark, hookey-nosed, well-made man, with an exuberance of greasy hair, who would have been considered handsome by many women, had there not been something, almost amounting to a squint, amiss with one of his eyes. When he was preaching, it could hardly be seen, but in the closeness of private conversation it was disagreeable. "Oh,--indeed!" said Lizzie, with a look of astonishment, perfectly well assumed. She had already begun to consider whether, after all, Mr. Emilius--would do. "Yes;--Lady Eustace; it is so. You and I have known each other now for many months, and I have received the most unaffected pleasure from the acquaintance,--may I not say from the intimacy which has sprung up between us?" Lizzie did not forbid the use of the pleasant word, but merely bowed. "I think that, as a devoted friend and a clergyman, I shall not be thought to be intruding on private ground in saying that circumstances have made me aware of the details of the robberies by which you have been so cruelly persecuted." So the man had come about the diamonds, and not to make an offer! Lizzie raised her eyebrows and bowed her head with the slightest possible motion. "I do not know how far your friends or the public may condemn you, but--" "My friends don't condemn me at all, sir." "I am so glad to hear it!" "Nobody has dared to condemn me, except this impudent woman here, who wants an excuse for not paying me what she owes me." "I am delighted. I was going to explain that although I am aware you have infringed the letter of the law, and made yourself liable to proceedings which may, perhaps, be unpleasant--" "I ain't liable to anything unpleasant at all, Mr. Emilius." "Then my mind is greatly relieved. I was about to remark, having heard in the outer world that there were those who ventured to accuse you of--of perjury--" "Nobody has dared to accuse me of anything. What makes you come here and say such things?" "Ah,--Lady Eustace. It is because these calumnies are spoken so openly behind your back." "Who speaks them? Mrs. Carbuncle, and Lord George Carruthers;--my enemies." Mr. Emilius was beginning to feel that he was not making progress. "I was on the point of observing to you that according to the view of the matter which I, as a clergyman, have taken, you were altogether justified in the steps which you took for the protection of property which was your own, but which had been attacked by designing persons." "Of course I was justified," said Lizzie. "You know best, Lady Eustace, whether any assistance I can offer will avail you anything." "I don't want any assistance, Mr. Emilius,--thank you." "I certainly have been given to understand that they who ought to stand by you with the closest devotion have, in this period of what I may, perhaps, call--tribulation, deserted your side with cold selfishness." "But there isn't any tribulation, and nobody has deserted my side." "I was told that Lord Fawn--" "Lord Fawn is an idiot." "Quite so;--no doubt." "And I have deserted him. I wrote to him this very morning, in answer to a pressing letter from him to renew our engagement, to tell him that that was out of the question. I despise Lord Fawn, and my heart never can be given where my respect does not accompany it." "A noble sentiment, Lady Eustace, which I reciprocate completely. And now, to come to what I may call the inner purport of my visit to you this morning, the sweet cause of my attendance on you, let me assure you that I should not now offer you my heart, unless with my heart went the most perfect respect and esteem which any man ever felt for a woman." Mr. Emilius had found the necessity of coming to the point by some direct road, as the lady had refused to allow him to lead up to it in the manner he had proposed to himself. He still thought that what he had said might be efficacious, as he did not for a moment believe her assertions as to her own friends, and the non-existence of any trouble as to the oaths which she had falsely sworn. But she carried the matter with a better courage than he had expected to find, and drove him out of his intended line of approach. He had, however, seized his opportunity without losing much time. "What on earth do you mean, Mr. Emilius?" she said. "I mean to lay my heart, my hand, my fortunes, my profession, my career at your feet. I make bold to say of myself that I have, by my own unaided eloquence and intelligence, won for myself a great position in this swarming metropolis. Lady Eustace, I know your great rank. I feel your transcendent beauty,--ah, too acutely. I have been told that you are rich. But I, myself, who venture to approach you as a suitor for your hand, am also somebody in the world. The blood that runs in my veins is as illustrious as your own, having descended to me from the great and ancient nobles of my native country. The profession which I have adopted is the grandest which ever filled the heart of man with aspirations. I have barely turned my thirty-second year, and I am known as the greatest preacher of my day, though I preach in a language which is not my own. Your House of Lords would be open to me as a spiritual peer, would I condescend to come to terms with those who crave the assistance which I could give them. I can move the masses. I can touch the hearts of men. And in this great assemblage of mankind which you call London, I can choose my own society among the highest of the land. Lady Eustace, will you share with me my career and my fortunes? I ask you, because you are the only woman whom my heart has stooped to love." The man was a nasty, greasy, lying, squinting Jew preacher; an impostor, over forty years of age, whose greatest social success had been achieved when, through the agency of Mrs. Carbuncle, he made his way into Portray Castle. He was about as near an English mitre as had been that great man of a past generation, the Deputy Shepherd. He was a creature to loathe,--because he was greasy, and a liar, and an impostor. But there was a certain manliness in him. He was not afraid of the woman; and in pleading his cause with her he could stand up for himself courageously. He had studied his speech, and having studied it, he knew how to utter the words. He did not blush, nor stammer, nor cringe. Of grandfather or grandmother belonging to himself he had probably never heard, but he could so speak of his noble ancestors as to produce belief in Lizzie's mind. And he almost succeeded in convincing her that he was, by the consent of mankind, the greatest preacher of the day. While he was making his speech she almost liked his squint. She certainly liked the grease and nastiness. Presuming, as she naturally did, that something of what he said was false, she liked the lies. There was a dash of poetry about him; and poetry, as she thought, was not compatible with humdrum truth. A man, to be a man in her eyes, should be able to swear that all his geese are swans;--should be able to reckon his swans by the dozen, though he have not a feather belonging to him, even from a goose's wing. She liked his audacity; and then, when he was making love, he was not afraid of talking out boldly about his heart. Nevertheless he was only Mr. Emilius, the clergyman; and she had means of knowing that his income was not generous. Though she admired his manner and his language, she was quite aware that he was in pursuit of her money. And from the moment in which she first understood his object, she was resolved that she would never become the wife of Mr. Emilius as long as there was a hope as to Frank Greystock. "I was told, Mr. Emilius," she said, "that some time since you used to have a wife." "It was a falsehood, Lady Eustace. From motives of pure charity I gave a home to a distant cousin. I was then in a land of strangers, and my life was misinterpreted. I made no complaint, but sent the lady back to her native country. My compassion could supply her wants there as well as here." "Then you still support her?" Mr. Emilius bethought himself for a moment. There might be danger in asserting that he was subject to such an encumbrance. "I did do so," he answered, "till she found a congenial home as the wife of an honest man." "Oh, indeed. I'm quite glad to hear that." "And now, Lady Eustace, may I venture to hope for a favourable answer?" Upon this, Lizzie made him a speech as long and almost as well-turned as his own. Her heart had of late been subject to many vicissitudes. She had lost the dearest husband that a woman had ever worshipped. She had ventured, for purposes with reference to her child which she could not now explain, to think once again of matrimony with a man of high rank, but who had turned out to be unworthy of her. She had receded;--Lizzie, as she said this, acted the part of receding with a fine expression of scornful face;--and after that she was unwilling to entertain any further idea of marriage. Upon hearing this, Mr. Emilius bowed low, and before the street-door was closed against him had begun to calculate how much a journey to Scotland would cost him. CHAPTER LXXIV Lizzie at the Police-Court On the Wednesday and Thursday Lizzie had been triumphant; for she had certainly come out unscathed from Mr. Camperdown's chambers, and a lady may surely be said to triumph when a gentleman lays his hand, his heart, his fortunes, and all that he has got, at her feet. But when the Friday came, though she was determined to be brave, her heart did sink within her bosom. She understood well that she would be called upon to admit in public the falseness of the oaths she had sworn upon two occasions; and that, though she would not be made amenable to any absolute punishment for her perjury, she would be subject to very damaging remarks from the magistrate, and probably also from some lawyers employed to defend the prisoners. She went to bed in fairly good spirits, but in the morning she was cowed and unhappy. She dressed herself from head to foot in black, and prepared for herself a heavy black veil. She had ordered from the livery stable a brougham for the occasion, thinking it wise to avoid the display of her own carriage. She breakfasted early, and then took a large glass of wine to support her. When Frank called for her at a quarter to ten, she was quite ready, and grasped his hand almost without a word. But she looked into his face with her eyes filled with tears. "It will soon be over," he said. She pressed his hand, and made him a sign to show that she was ready to follow him to the door. "The case will come on at once," he said, "so that you will not be kept waiting." "Oh, you are so good;--so good to me." She pressed his arm, and did not speak another word on their way to the police-court. There was a great crowd about the office, which was in a little by-street, and so circumstanced that Lizzie's brougham could hardly make its way up to the door. But way was at once made for her when Frank handed her out of it, and the policemen about the place were as courteous to her as though she had been the Lord Chancellor's wife. Evil-doing will be spoken of with bated breath and soft words even by policemen, when the evil-doer comes in a carriage, and with a title. Lizzie was led at once into a private room, and told that she would be kept there only a very few minutes. Frank made his way into the court and found that two magistrates had just seated themselves on the bench. One would have sufficed for the occasion; but this was a case of great interest, and even police-magistrates are human in their interests. Greystock was allowed to get round to the bench, and to whisper a word or two to the gentleman who was to preside. The magistrate nodded his head, and then the case began. The unfortunate Mr. Benjamin had been sent back in durance vile from Vienna, and was present in the court. With him, as joint malefactor, stood Mr. Smiler, the great housebreaker, a huge, ugly, resolute-looking scoundrel, possessed of enormous strength, who was very intimately known to the police, with whom he had had various dealings since he had been turned out upon the town to earn his bread some fifteen years before. Indeed, long before that he had known the police. As far as his memory went back he had always known them. But the sportive industry of his boyish years was not now counted up against him. In the last fifteen years his biography had been written with all the accuracy due to the achievements of a great man; and during those hundred and eighty months he had spent over one hundred in prison, and had been convicted twenty-three times. He was now growing old,--as a thief; and it was thought by his friends that he would be settled for life in some quiet retreat. Mr. Benjamin was a very respectable-looking man of about fifty, with slightly grizzled hair, with excellent black clothes, showing, by a surprised air, his great astonishment at finding himself in such a position. He spoke constantly, both to his attorney and to the barrister who was to show cause why he should not be committed, and throughout the whole morning was very busy. Smiler, who was quite at home, and who understood his position, never said a word to any one. He stood, perfectly straight, looking at the magistrate, and never for a moment leaning on the rail before him during the four hours that the case consumed. Once, when his friend, Billy Cann, was brought into court to give evidence against him, dressed up to the eyes, serene and sleek as when we saw him once before at the "Rising Sun," in Meek Street, Smiler turned a glance upon him which, to the eyes of all present, contained a threat of most bloody revenge. But Billy knew the advantages of his situation, and nodded at his old comrade, and smiled. His old comrade was very much stronger than he, and possessed of many natural advantages; but, perhaps, upon the whole, his old comrade had been the less intelligent thief of the two. It was thus that the bystanders read the meaning of Billy's smile. The case was opened very shortly and very clearly by the gentleman who was employed for the prosecution. It would all, he said, have laid in a nutshell, had it not been complicated by a previous robbery at Carlisle. Were it necessary, he said, there would be no difficulty in convicting the prisoners for that offence also, but it had been thought advisable to confine the prosecution to the act of burglary committed in Hertford Street. He stated the facts of what had happened at Carlisle, merely for explanation, but would state nothing that could not be proved. Then he told all that the reader knows about the iron box. But the diamonds were not then in the box,--and he told that story also, treating Lizzie with great tenderness as he did so. Lizzie, all this time, was sitting behind her veil in the private room, and did not hear a word of what was going on. Then he came to the robbery in Hertford Street. He would prove by Lady Eustace that the diamonds were left by her in a locked desk,--were so deposited, though all her friends believed them to have been taken at Carlisle; and he would, moreover, prove by accomplices that they were stolen by two men,--the younger prisoner at the bar being one of them, and the witness who would be adduced, the other,--that they were given up by these men to the elder prisoner, and that a certain sum had been paid by him for the execution of the two robberies. There was much more of it;--but to the reader, who knows it all, it would be but a thrice-told tale. He then said that he first proposed to take the evidence of Lady Eustace, the lady who had been in possession of the diamonds when they were stolen. Then Frank Greystock left the court, and returned with poor Lizzie on his arm. She was handed to a chair, and, after she was sworn, was told that she might sit down. But she was requested to remove her veil, which she had replaced as soon as she had kissed the book. The first question asked her was very easy. Did she remember the night at Carlisle? Would she tell the history of what occurred on that night? When the box was stolen, were the diamonds in it? No; she had taken the diamonds out for security, and had kept them under her pillow. Then came a bitter moment, in which she had to confess her perjury before the Carlisle bench;--but even that seemed to pass off smoothly. The magistrate asked one severe question. "Do you mean to say, Lady Eustace, that you gave false evidence on that occasion,--knowing it to be false?" "I was in such a state, sir, from fear, that I did not know what I was saying," exclaimed Lizzie, bursting into tears and stretching forth towards the bench her two clasped hands with the air of a suppliant. From that moment the magistrate was altogether on her side,--and so were the public. Poor ignorant, ill-used young creature;--and then so lovely! That was the general feeling. But she had not as yet come beneath the harrow of the learned gentleman on the other side, whose best talents were due to Mr. Benjamin. Then she told all she knew about the other robbery. She certainly had not said, when examined on that occasion, that the diamonds had then been taken. She had omitted to name the diamonds in her catalogue of the things stolen; but she was sure that she had never said that they were not then taken. She had said nothing about the diamonds, knowing them to be her own, and preferring to lose them to the trouble of again referring to the night at Carlisle. Such was her evidence for the prosecution, and then she was turned over to the very learned and very acute gentleman whom Mr. Benjamin had hired for his defence,--or rather, to show cause why he should not be sent for trial. It must be owned that poor Lizzie did receive from his hands some of that punishment which she certainly deserved. This acute and learned gentleman seemed to possess for the occasion the blandest and most dulcet voice that ever was bestowed upon an English barrister. He addressed Lady Eustace with the softest words, as though he hardly dared to speak to a woman so eminent for wealth, rank, and beauty; but nevertheless he asked her some very disagreeable questions. "Was he to understand that she went of her own will before the bench of magistrates at Carlisle, with the view of enabling the police to capture certain persons for stealing certain jewels, while she knew that the jewels were actually in her own possession?" Lizzie, confounded by the softness of his voice as joined to the harshness of the question, could hardly understand him, and he repeated it thrice, becoming every time more and more mellifluous. "Yes," said Lizzie at last. "Yes?" he asked. "Yes," said Lizzie. "Your ladyship did send the Cumberland police after men for stealing jewels which were in your ladyship's own hands when you swore the information?" "Yes," said Lizzie. "And your ladyship knew that the information was untrue?" "Yes," said Lizzie. "And the police were pursuing the men for many weeks?" "Yes," said Lizzie. "On your information?" "Yes," said Lizzie, through her tears. "And your ladyship knew all the time that the poor men were altogether innocent of taking the jewels?" "But they took the box," said Lizzie, through her tears. "Yes," said the acute and learned gentleman, "somebody took your ladyship's iron box out of the room, and you swore that the diamonds had been taken. Was it not the fact that legal proceedings were being taken against you for recovery of the diamonds by persons who claimed the property?" "Yes," said Lizzie. "And these persons withdrew their proceedings as soon as they heard that the diamonds had been stolen?" Soft as he was in his manner, he nearly reduced Lizzie Eustace to fainting. It seemed to her that the questions would never end. It was in vain that the magistrate pointed out to the learned gentleman that Lady Eustace had confessed her own false swearing, both at Carlisle and in London, a dozen times. He continued his questions over and over again, harping chiefly on the affair at Carlisle, and saying very little as to the second robbery in Hertford Street. His idea was to make it appear that Lizzie had arranged the robbery with the view of defrauding Mr. Camperdown, and that Lord George Carruthers was her accomplice. He even asked her, almost in a whisper, and with the sweetest smile, whether she was not engaged to marry Lord George. When Lizzie denied this, he still suggested that some such alliance might be in contemplation. Upon this, Frank Greystock called upon the magistrate to defend Lady Eustace from such unnecessary vulgarity, and there was a scene in the court. Lizzie did not like the scene, but it helped to protect her from the contemplation of the public, who of course were much gratified by high words between two barristers. Lady Eustace was forced to remain in the private room during the examination of Patience Crabstick and Mr. Cann; and she did not hear it. Patience was a most obdurate and difficult witness,--extremely averse to say evil of herself, and on that account unworthy of the good things which she had received. But Billy Cann was charming,--graceful, communicative, and absolutely accurate. There was no shaking him. The learned and acute gentleman who tried to tear him in pieces could do nothing with him. He was asked whether he had not been a professional thief for ten years. "Ten or twelve," he said. Did he expect that any juryman would believe him on his oath? "Not unless I am fully corroborated." "Can you look that man in the face,--that man who is at any rate so much honester than yourself?" asked the learned gentleman with pathos. Billy said that he thought he could, and the way in which he smiled upon Smiler caused a roar through the whole court. The two men were, as a matter of course, committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court, and Lizzie Eustace was bound by certain penalties to come forward when called upon, and give her evidence again. "I am glad that it is over," said Frank, as he left her at Mrs. Carbuncle's hall-door. "Oh, Frank, dearest Frank, where should I be if it were not for you?" CHAPTER LXXV Lord George Gives His Reasons Lady Eustace did not leave the house during the Saturday and Sunday, and engaged herself exclusively with preparing for her journey. She had no further interview with Mrs. Carbuncle, but there were messages between them, and even notes were written. They resulted in nothing. Lizzie was desirous of getting back the spoons and forks, and, if possible, some of her money. The spoons and forks were out of Mrs. Carbuncle's power,--in Albemarle Street; and the money had of course been spent. Lizzie might have saved herself the trouble, had it not been that it was a pleasure to her to insult her late friend, even though in doing so new insults were heaped upon her own head. As for the trumpery spoons, they,--so said Mrs. Carbuncle,--were the property of Miss Roanoke, having been made over to her unconditionally long before the wedding, as a part of a separate pecuniary transaction. Mrs. Carbuncle had no power of disposing of Miss Roanoke's property. As to the money which Lady Eustace claimed, Mrs. Carbuncle asserted that, when the final accounts should be made up between them, it would be found that there was a considerable balance due to Mrs. Carbuncle. But even were there anything due to Lady Eustace, Mrs. Carbuncle would decline to pay it, as she was informed that all moneys possessed by Lady Eustace were now confiscated to the Crown by reason of the PERJURIES,--the word was doubly scored in Mrs. Carbuncle's note,--which Lady Eustace had committed. This, of course, was unpleasant; but Mrs. Carbuncle did not have the honours of the battle all to herself. Lizzie also said some unpleasant things,--which, perhaps, were the more unpleasant because they were true. Mrs. Carbuncle had come pretty nearly to the end of her career, whereas Lizzie's income, in spite of her perjuries, was comparatively untouched. The undoubted mistress of Portray Castle, and mother of the Sir Florian Eustace of the day, could still despise and look down upon Mrs. Carbuncle, although she were known to have told fibs about the family diamonds. Lord George always came to Hertford Street on a Sunday, and Lady Eustace left word for him with the servant that she would be glad to see him before her journey into Scotland. "Goes to-morrow, does she?" said Lord George to the servant. "Well; I'll see her." And he was shown up to her room before he went to Mrs. Carbuncle. Lizzie, in sending to him, had some half-formed idea of a romantic farewell. The man, she thought, had behaved very badly to her,--had accepted very much from her hands, and had refused to give her anything in return; had become the first depository of her great secret, and had placed no mutual confidence in her. He had been harsh to her, and unjust; and then, too, he had declined to be in love with her! She was full of spite against Lord George, and would have been glad to injure him. But, nevertheless, there would be some excitement in a farewell in which some mock affection might be displayed, and she would have an opportunity of abusing Mrs. Carbuncle. "So you are off to-morrow?" said Lord George, taking his place on the rug before her fire, and looking down at her with his head a little on one side. Lizzie's anger against the man chiefly arose from a feeling that he treated her with all a Corsair's freedom without any of a Corsair's tenderness. She could have forgiven the want of deferential manner, had there been any devotion;--but Lord George was both impudent and indifferent. "Yes," she said. "Thank goodness, I shall get out of this frightful place to-morrow, and soon have once more a roof of my own over my head. What an experience I have had since I have been here!" "We have all had an experience," said Lord George, still looking at her with that half-comic turn of his face,--almost as though he were investigating some curious animal of which so remarkable a specimen had never before come under his notice. "No woman ever intended to show a more disinterested friendship than I have done; and what has been my return?" "You mean to me?--disinterested friendship to me?" And Lord George tapped his breast lightly with his fingers. His head was still a little on one side, and there was still the smile upon his face. "I was alluding particularly to Mrs. Carbuncle." "Lady Eustace, I cannot take charge of Mrs. Carbuncle's friendships. I have enough to do to look after my own. If you have any complaint to make against me,--I will at least listen to it." "God knows I do not want to make complaints," said Lizzie, covering her face with her hands. "They don't do much good;--do they? It's better to take people as you find 'em, and then make the best of 'em. They're a queer lot;--ain't they,--the sort of people one meets about in the world?" "I don't know what you mean by that, Lord George." "Just what you were saying, when you talked of your experiences. These experiences do surprise one. I have knocked about the world a great deal, and would have almost said that nothing would surprise me. You are no more than a child to me, but you have surprised me." "I hope I have not injured you, Lord George." "Do you remember how you rode to hounds the day your cousin took that other man's horse? That surprised me." "Oh, Lord George, that was the happiest day of my life. How little happiness there is for people!" "And when Tewett got that girl to say she'd marry him, the coolness with which you bore all the abomination of it in your house,--for people who were nothing to you;--that surprised me!" "I meant to be so kind to you all." "And when I found that you always travelled with ten thousand pounds' worth of diamonds in a box, that surprised me very much. I thought that you were a very dangerous companion." "Pray don't talk about the horrid necklace." "Then came the robbery, and you seemed to lose your diamonds without being at all unhappy about them. Of course, we understand that now." On hearing this, Lizzie smiled, but did not say a word. "Then I perceived that I--I was supposed to be the thief. You--you yourself couldn't have suspected me of taking the diamonds, because--because you'd got them, you know, all safe in your pocket. But you might as well own the truth now. Didn't you think that it was I who stole the box?" "I wish it had been you," said Lizzie laughing. "All that surprised me. The police were watching me every day as a cat watches a mouse, and thought that they surely had got the thief when they found that I had dealings with Benjamin. Well; you--you were laughing at me in your sleeve all the time." "Not laughing, Lord George." "Yes, you were. You had got the kernel yourself, and thought that I had taken all the trouble to crack the nut and had found myself with nothing but the shell. Then, when you found you couldn't eat the kernel, that you couldn't get rid of the swag without assistance, you came to me to help you. I began to think then that you were too many for all of us. By Jove, I did! Then I heard of the second robbery, and, of course, I thought you had managed that too." "Oh, no," said Lizzie "Unfortunately you didn't; but I thought you did. And you thought that I had done it! Mr. Benjamin was too clever for us both, and now he is going to have penal servitude for the rest of his life. I wonder who will be the better of it all. Who'll have the diamonds at last?" "I do not in the least care. I hate the diamonds. Of course I would not give them up, because they were my own." "The end of it seems to be that you have lost your property, and sworn ever so many false oaths, and have brought all your friends into trouble, and have got nothing by it. What was the good of being so clever?" "You need not come here to tease me, Lord George." "I came here because you sent for me. There's my poor friend, Mrs. Carbuncle, declares that all her credit is destroyed, and her niece unable to marry, and her house taken away from her,--all because of her connexion with you." "Mrs. Carbuncle is--is--is-- Oh, Lord George, don't you know what she is?" "I know that Mrs. Carbuncle is in a very bad way, and that that girl has gone crazy, and that poor Griff has taken himself off to Japan, and that I am so knocked about that I don't know where to go; and somehow it seems all to have come from your little manoeuvres. You see, we have, all of us, been made remarkable; haven't we?" "You are always remarkable, Lord George." "And it is all your doing. To be sure you have lost your diamonds for your pains. I wouldn't mind it so much if anybody were the better for it. I shouldn't have begrudged even Benjamin the pull, if he'd got it." He stood there, still looking down upon her, speaking with a sarcastic subrisive tone, and, as she felt, intending to be severe to her. She had sent for him, and now she didn't know what to say to him. Though she believed that she hated him, she would have liked to get up some show of an affectionate farewell, some scene in which there might have been tears, and tenderness, and poetry,--and, perhaps, a parting caress. But with his jeering words, and sneering face, he was as hard to her as a rock. He was now silent, but still looking down upon her as he stood motionless upon the rug,--so that she was compelled to speak again. "I sent for you, Lord George, because I did not like the idea of parting with you for ever, without one word of adieu." "You are going to tear yourself away;--are you?" "I am going to Portray on Monday." "And never coming back any more? You'll be up here before the season is over, with fifty more wonderful schemes in your little head. So Lord Fawn is done with, is he?" "I have told Lord Fawn that nothing shall induce me ever to see him again." "And cousin Frank?" "My cousin attends me down to Scotland." "Oh-h. That makes it altogether another thing. He attends you down to Scotland;--does he? Does Mr. Emilius go too?" "I believe you are trying to insult me, sir." "You can't expect but what a man should be a little jealous, when he has been so completely cut out himself. There was a time, you know, when even cousin Frank wasn't a better fellow than myself." "Much you thought about it, Lord George." "Well;--I did. I thought about it a good deal, my lady. And I liked the idea of it very much." Lizzie pricked up her ears. In spite of all his harshness, could it be that he should be the Corsair still? "I am a rambling, uneasy, ill-to-do sort of man; but still I thought about it. You are pretty, you know,--uncommonly pretty." "Don't, Lord George." "And I'll acknowledge that the income goes for much. I suppose that's real at any rate?" "Well;--I hope so. Of course it's real. And so is the prettiness, Lord George;--if there is any." "I never doubted that, Lady Eustace. But when it came to my thinking that you had stolen the diamonds, and you thinking that I had stolen the box--! I'm not a man to stand on trifles, but, by George, it wouldn't do then." "Who wanted it to do?" said Lizzie. "Go away. You are very unkind to me. I hope I may never see you again. I believe you care more for that odious vulgar woman down-stairs than you do for anybody else in the world." "Ah, dear! I have known her for many years, Lizzie, and that both covers and discovers many faults. One learns to know how bad one's old friends are, but then one forgives them, because they are old friends." "You can't forgive me,--because I'm bad, and only a new friend." "Yes, I will. I forgive you all, and hope you may do well yet. If I may give you one bit of advice at parting, it is to caution you against being clever when there is nothing to get by it." "I ain't clever at all," said Lizzie, beginning to whimper. "Good-bye, my dear." "Good-bye," said Lizzie. He took her hand in one of his; patted her on the head with the other, as though she had been a child, and then he left her. CHAPTER LXXVI Lizzie Returns to Scotland Frank Greystock, the writer fears, will not have recommended himself to those readers of this tale who think the part of lover to the heroine should be always filled by a young man with heroic attributes. And yet the young member for Bobsborough was by no means deficient in fine qualities, and perhaps was quite as capable of heroism as the majority of barristers and members of Parliament among whom he consorted, and who were to him--the world. A man born to great wealth may,--without injury to himself or friends,--do pretty nearly what he likes in regard to marriage, always presuming that the wife he selects be of his own rank. He need not marry for money, nor need he abstain from marriage because he can't support a wife without money. And the very poor man, who has no pretension to rank or standing, other than that which honesty may give him, can do the same. His wife's fortune will consist in the labour of her hands, and in her ability to assist him in his home. But between these there is a middle class of men, who, by reason of their education, are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of womanhood, but who literally cannot marry for love, because their earnings will do no more than support themselves. As to this special young man, it must be confessed that his earnings should have done much more than that; but not the less did he find himself in a position in which marriage with a penniless girl seemed to threaten him and her with ruin. All his friends told Frank Greystock that he would be ruined were he to marry Lucy Morris;--and his friends were people supposed to be very good and wise. The dean, and the dean's wife, his father and mother, were very clear that it would be so. Old Lady Linlithgow had spoken of such a marriage as quite out of the question. The Bishop of Bobsborough, when it was mentioned in his hearing, had declared that such a marriage would be a thousand pities. And even dear old Lady Fawn, though she wished it for Lucy's sake, had many times prophesied that such a thing was quite impossible. When the rumour of the marriage reached Lady Glencora, Lady Glencora told her friend, Madame Max Goesler, that that young man was going to blow his brains out. To her thinking, the two actions were equivalent. It is only when we read of such men that we feel that truth to his sweetheart is the first duty of man. I am afraid that it is not the advice which we give to our sons. But it was the advice which Frank Greystock had most persistently given to himself since he had first known Lucy Morris. Doubtless he had vacillated, but, on the balance of his convictions as to his own future conduct, he had been much nobler than his friends. He had never hesitated for a moment as to the value of Lucy Morris. She was not beautiful. She had no wonderful gifts of nature. There was nothing of a goddess about her. She was absolutely penniless. She had never been what the world calls well-dressed. And yet she had been everything to him. There had grown up a sympathy between them quite as strong on his part as on hers, and he had acknowledged it to himself. He had never doubted his own love,--and when he had been most near to convincing himself that in his peculiar position he ought to marry his rich cousin, because of her wealth, then, at those moments, he had most strongly felt that to have Lucy Morris close to him was the greatest charm in existence. Hitherto his cousin's money, joined to flatteries and caresses,--which, if a young man can resist, he is almost more than a young man,--had tempted him; but he had combated the temptation. On one memorable evening his love for Lucy had tempted him. To that temptation he had yielded, and the letter by which he became engaged to her had been written. He had never meant to evade it;--had always told himself that it should not be evaded; but, gradually, days had been added to days, and months to months, and he had allowed her to languish without seeing him, and almost without hearing from him. She, too, had heard from all sides that she was deserted by him, and she had written to him to give him back his troth; but she had not sent her letters. She did not doubt that the thing was over,--she hardly doubted. And yet she would not send any letter. Perhaps it would be better that the matter should be allowed to drop without any letter-writing. She would never reproach him,--though she would ever think him to be a traitor. Would not she have starved herself for him, could she so have served him? And yet he could bear for her sake no touch of delay in his prosperity! Would she not have been content to wait, and always to wait,--so that he with some word of love would have told her that he waited also? But he would not only desert her,--but would give himself to that false, infamous woman, who was so wholly unfitted to be his wife. For Lucy, though to herself she would call him a traitor,--and would think him to be a traitor, still regarded him as the best of mankind, as one who, in marrying such a one as Lizzie Eustace, would destroy all his excellence, as a man might mar his strength and beauty by falling into a pit. For Lizzie Eustace Lucy Morris had now no forgiveness. Lucy had almost forgotten Lizzie's lies, and her proffered bribe, and all her meanness, when she made that visit to Hertford Street. Then, when Lizzie claimed this man as her lover, a full remembrance of all the woman's iniquities came back on Lucy's mind. The statement that Lizzie then made, Lucy did believe. She did think that Frank, her Frank, the man whom she worshipped, was to take this harpy to his bosom as his wife. And if it were to be so, was it not better that she should be so told? But, from that moment, poor Lizzie's sins were ranker to Lucy Morris than even to Mr. Camperdown or Mrs. Hittaway. She could not refrain from saying a word even to old Lady Linlithgow. The countess had called her niece a little liar. "Liar!" said Lucy. "I do not think Satan himself can lie as she does." "Heighty-tighty," said the countess. "I suppose, then, there's to be a match between Lady Satan and her cousin Frank?" "They can do as they like about that," said Lucy, walking out of the room. Then came the paragraph in the fashionable evening newspaper; after that, the report of the examination before the magistrate, and then certain information that Lady Eustace was about to proceed to Scotland together with her cousin Mr. Greystock, the Member for Bobsborough. "It is a large income," said the countess; "but, upon my word, she's dear at the money." Lucy did not speak, but she bit her lip till the blood ran into her mouth. She was going down to Fawn Court almost immediately, to stay there with her old friends till she should be able to find some permanent home for herself. Once, and once only, would she endure discussion, and then the matter should be banished for ever from her tongue. Early on the appointed morning Frank Greystock, with a couple of cabs, was at Mrs. Carbuncle's door in Hertford Street. Lizzie had agreed to start by a very early train,--at eight a.m.,--so that she might get through to Portray in one day. It had been thought expedient, both by herself and by her cousin, that for the present there should be no more sleeping at the Carlisle hotel. The robbery was probably still talked about in that establishment; and the report of the proceedings at the police-court had, no doubt, travelled as far north as the border city. It was to be a long day, and could hardly be other than sad. Lizzie, understanding this, feeling that though she had been in a great measure triumphant over her difficulties before the magistrate, she ought still to consider herself, for a short while, as being under a cloud, crept down into the cab and seated herself beside her cousin almost without a word. She was again dressed in black, and again wore the thick veil. Her maid, with the luggage, followed them, and they were driven to Euston Square almost without a word. On this occasion no tall footman accompanied them. "Oh, Frank; dear Frank," she had said, and that was all. He had been active about the luggage and useful in giving orders;--but beyond his directions and inquiries as to the journey, he spoke not a word. Had she breakfasted? Would she have a cup of tea at the station? Should he take any luncheon for her? At every question she only looked into his face and shook her head. All thoughts as to creature-comforts were over with her now for ever. Tranquillity, a little poetry, and her darling boy, were all that she needed for the short remainder of her sojourn upon earth. These were the sentiments which she intended to convey when she shook her head and looked up into his eyes. The world was over for her. She had had her day of pleasure, and found how vain it was. Now she would devote herself to her child. "I shall see my boy again to-night," she said, as she took her seat in the carriage. Such was the state of mind, or such, rather, the resolutions, with which she commenced her journey. Should he become bright, communicative, and pleasant, or even tenderly silent, or, perhaps, now at length affectionate and demonstrative, she, no doubt, might be able to change as he changed. He had been cousinly, but gloomy, at the police-court; in the same mood when he brought her home; and, as she saw with the first glance of her eye, in the same mood again when she met him in the hall this morning. Of course she must play his tunes. Is it not the fate of women to play the tunes which men dictate,--except in some rare case in which the woman can make herself the dictator? Lizzie loved to be a dictator; but at the present moment she knew that circumstances were against her. She watched him,--so closely. At first he slept a good deal. He was never in bed very early, and on this morning had been up at six. At Rugby he got out and ate what he said was his breakfast. Would not she have a cup of tea? Again she shook her head and smiled. She smiled as some women smile when you offer them a third glass of champagne. "You are joking with me, I know. You cannot think that I would take it." That was the meaning of Lizzie's smile. He went into the refreshment-room, growled at the heat of the tea and the abominable nastiness of the food provided, and then, after the allotted five minutes, took himself to a smoking-carriage. He did not rejoin his cousin till they were at Crewe. When he went back to his old seat, she only smiled again. He asked her whether she had slept, and again she shook her head. She had been repeating to herself the address to Ianthe's soul, and her whole being was pervaded with poetry. It was absolutely necessary, as he thought, that she should eat something, and he insisted that she should dine upon the road, somewhere. He, of course, was not aware that she had been nibbling biscuits and chocolate while he had been smoking, and had had recourse even to the comfort of a sherry-flask which she carried in her dressing-bag. When he talked of dinner she did more than smile and refuse. She expostulated. For she well knew that the twenty minutes for dinner were allowed at the Carlisle station; and even if there had been no chocolate and no sherry, she would have endured on, even up to absolute inanition, rather than step out upon this well-remembered platform. "You must eat, or you'll be starved," he said. "I'll fetch you something." So he bribed a special waiter, and she was supplied with cold chicken and more sherry. After this Frank smoked again, and did not reappear till they had reached Dumfries. Hitherto there had been no tenderness,--nothing but the coldest cousinship. He clearly meant her to understand that he had submitted to the task of accompanying her back to Portray Castle as a duty, but that he had nothing to say to one who had so misbehaved herself. This was very irritating. She could have taken herself home to Portray without his company, and have made the journey more endurable without him than with him, if this were to be his conduct throughout. They had had the carriage to themselves all the way from Crewe to Carlisle, and he had hardly spoken a word to her. If he would have rated her soundly for her wickednesses, she could have made something of that. She could have thrown herself on her knees, and implored his pardon; or, if hard pressed, have suggested the propriety of throwing herself out of the carriage-window. She could have brought him round if he would only have talked to her, but there is no doing anything with a silent man. He was not her master. He had no power over her. She was the lady of Portray, and he could not interfere with her. If he intended to be sullen with her to the end, and to show his contempt for her, she would turn against him. "The worm will turn," she said to herself. And yet she did not think herself a worm. A few stations beyond Dumfries they were again alone. It was now quite dark, and they had already been travelling over ten hours. They would not reach their own station till eight, and then again there would be the journey to Portray. At last he spoke to her. "Are you tired, Lizzie?" "Oh, so tired!" "You have slept, I think." "No, not once; not a wink. You have slept." This she said in a tone of reproach. "Indeed I have." "I have endeavoured to read, but one cannot command one's mind at all times. Oh, I am so weary. Is it much further? I have lost all reckoning as to time and place." "We change at the next station but one. It will soon be over now. Will you have a glass of sherry? I have some in my flask." Again she shook her head. "It is a long way down to Portray, I must own." "Oh, I am so sorry that I have given you the trouble to accompany me." "I was not thinking of myself. I don't mind it. It was better that you should have somebody with you,--just for this journey." "I don't know why this journey should be different from any other," said Lizzie crossly. She had not done anything that made it necessary that she should be taken care of,--like a naughty girl. "I'll see you to the end of it now, anyway." "And you'll stay a few days with me, Frank? You won't go away at once? Say you'll stay a week. Dear, dear Frank; say you'll stay a week. I know that the House doesn't meet for ever so long. Oh, Frank, I do so wish you'd be more like yourself." There was no reason why she should not make one other effort, and as she made it every sign of fatigue passed away from her. "I'll stay over to-morrow certainly," he replied. "Only one day!" "Days with me mean money, Lizzie, and money is a thing which is at present very necessary to me." "I hate money." "That's very well for you, because you have plenty of it." "I hate money. It is the only thing that one has that one cannot give to those one loves. I could give you anything else;--though it cost a thousand pounds." "Pray don't. Most people like presents, but they only bore me." "Because you are so indifferent, Frank;--so cold. Do you remember giving me a little ring?" "Very well indeed. It cost eight and sixpence." "I never thought what it cost;--but there it is." This she said, drawing off her glove and showing him her finger. "And when I am dead, there it will be. You say you want money, Frank. May I not give it you? Are not we brother and sister?" "My dear Lizzie, you say you hate money. Don't talk about it." "It is you that talk about it. I only talk about it because I want to give it you;--yes, all that I have. When I first knew what was the real meaning of my husband's will, my only thought was to be of assistance to you." In real truth Frank was becoming very sick of her. It seemed to him now to have been almost impossible that he should ever soberly have thought of making her his wife. The charm was all gone, and even her prettiness had in his eyes lost its value. He looked at her, asking himself whether in truth she was pretty. She had been travelling all day, and perhaps the scrutiny was not fair. But he thought that even after the longest day's journey Lucy would not have been soiled, haggard, dishevelled, and unclean, as was this woman. Travellers again entered the carriage, and they went on with a crowd of persons till they reached the platform at which they changed the carriage for Troon. Then they were again alone, for a few minutes, and Lizzie with infinite courage determined that she would make her last attempt. "Frank," she said, "you know what it is that I mean. You cannot feel that I am ungenerous. You have made me love you. Will you have all that I have to give?" She was leaning over, close to him, and he was observing that her long lock of hair was out of curl and untidy,--a thing that ought not to have been there during such a journey as this. "Do you not know," he said, "that I am engaged to marry Lucy Morris?" "No;--I do not know it." "I have told you so more than once." "You cannot afford to marry her." "Then I shall do it without affording." Lizzie was about to speak,--had already pronounced her rival's name in that tone of contempt which she so well knew how to use, when he stopped her. "Do not say anything against her, Lizzie, in my hearing, for I will not bear it. It would force me to leave you at the Troon station, and I had better see you now to the end of the journey." Lizzie flung herself back into the corner of her carriage, and did not utter another word till she reached Portray Castle. He handed her out of the railway carriage, and into her own vehicle which was waiting for them, attended to the maid, and got the luggage; but still she did not speak. It would be better that she should quarrel with him. That little snake, Lucy, would of course now tell him of the meeting between them in Hertford Street, after which anything but quarrelling would be impossible. What a fool the man must be, what an idiot, what a soft-hearted, mean-spirited fellow! Lucy, by her sly, quiet little stratagems, had got him once to speak the word, and now he had not courage enough to go back from it! He had less strength of will even than Lord Fawn! What she offered to him would be the making of him. With his position, his seat in Parliament, such a country house as Portray Castle, and the income which she would give him, there was nothing that he might not reach! And he was so infirm of purpose, that though he had hankered after it all, he would not open his hand to take it,--because he was afraid of such a little thing as Lucy Morris! It was thus that she thought of him as she leaned back in the carriage without speaking. In giving her all that is due to her, we must acknowledge that she had less feeling of the injury done to her charms as a woman than might have been expected. That she hated Lucy was a matter of course;--and equally so that she should be very angry with Frank Greystock. But the anger arose from general disappointment, rather than from any sense of her own despised beauty. "Ah, now I shall see my child," she said, as the carriage stopped at the castle-gate. When Frank Greystock went to his supper, Miss Macnulty brought to him his cousin's compliments with a message saying that she was too weary to see him again that night. The message had been intended to be curt and uncourteous, but Miss Macnulty had softened it,--so that no harm was done. "She must be very weary," said Frank. "I suppose though that nothing would ever really tire Lady Eustace," said Miss Macnulty. "When she is excited nothing will tire her. Perhaps the journey has been dull." "Exceedingly dull," said Frank, as he helped himself to the collops which the Portray cook had prepared for his supper. Miss Macnulty was very attentive to him, and had many questions to ask. About the necklace she hardly dared to speak, merely observing how sad it was that all those precious diamonds should have been lost for ever. "Very sad indeed," said Frank with his mouth full. She then went on to the marriage,--the marriage that was no marriage. Was not that very dreadful? Was it true that Miss Roanoke was really--out of her mind? Frank acknowledged that it was dreadful, but thought that the marriage had it been completed would have been more so. As for the young lady, he only knew that she had been taken somewhere out of the way. Sir Griffin, he had been told, had gone to Japan. "To Japan!" said Miss Macnulty, really interested. Had Sir Griffin gone no further than Boulogne, her pleasure in the news would certainly have been much less. Then she asked some single question about Lord George, and from that came to the real marrow of her anxiety. Had Mr. Greystock lately seen the--the Rev. Mr. Emilius? Frank had not seen the clergyman, and could only say of him that had Lucinda Roanoke and Sir Griffin Tewett been made one, the knot would have been tied by Mr. Emilius. "Would it indeed? Did you not think Mr. Emilius very clever when you met him down here?" "I don't doubt but what he is a sharp sort of fellow." "Oh, Mr. Greystock, I don't think that that's the word for him at all. He did promise me when he was here that he would write to me occasionally, but I suppose that the increasing duties of his position have rendered that impossible." Frank, who had no idea of the extent of the preacher's ambition, assured Miss Macnulty that among his multifarious clerical labours it was out of the question that Mr. Emilius should find time to write letters. Frank had consented to stay one day at Portray, and did not now like to run away without again seeing his cousin. Though much tempted to go at once, he did stay the day, and had an opportunity of speaking a few words to Mr. Gowran. Mr. Gowran was very gracious, but said nothing of his journey up to London. He asked various questions concerning her "leddyship's" appearance at the police-court, as to which tidings had already reached Ayrshire, and pretended to be greatly shocked at the loss of the diamonds. "When they talk o' ten thoosand poond, that's a lee, nae doobt?" asked Andy. "No lie at all, I believe," said Greystock. "And her leddyship wad tak' aboot wi' her ten thoosand poond--in a box?" Andy still showed much doubt by the angry glance of his eye and the close compression of his lips, and the great severity of his demeanour as he asked the question. "I know nothing about diamonds myself, but that is what they say they were worth." "Her leddyship's her ain sell seems nae to ha' been in ain story aboot the box, Muster Greystock?" But Frank could not stand to be cross-questioned on this delicate matter, and walked off, saying that as the thieves had not yet been tried for the robbery, the less said about it the better. At four o'clock on that afternoon he had not seen Lizzie, and then he received a message from her to the effect that she was still so unwell from the fatigue of her journey that she could bear no one with her but her child. She hoped that her cousin was quite comfortable, and that she might be able to see him after breakfast on the following day. But Frank was determined to leave Portray very early on the following day, and therefore wrote a note to his cousin. He begged that she would not disturb herself, that he would leave the castle the next morning before she could be up, and that he had only further to remind her that she must come up to London at once as soon as she should be summoned for the trial of Mr. Benjamin and his comrade. It had seemed to Frank that she had almost concluded that her labours connected with that disagreeable matter were at an end. "The examination may be long, and I will attend you if you wish it," said her cousin. Upon receiving this she thought it expedient to come down to him, and there was an interview for about a quarter of an hour in her own little sitting-room looking out upon the sea. She had formed a project, and at once suggested it to him. If she found herself ill when the day of the trial came, could they make her go up and give her evidence? Frank told her that they could, and that they would. She was very clever about it. "They couldn't go back to what I said at Carlisle, you know; because they already have made me tell all that myself." As she had been called upon to criminate herself, she could not now be tried for the crime. Frank, however, would not listen to this, and told her that she must come. "Very well, Frank. I know you like to have your own way. You always did. And you think so little of my feelings! I shall make inquiry, and if I must,--why I suppose I must." "You'd better make up your mind to come." "Very well. And now, Frank, as I am so very tired, if you please I'll say good-bye to you. I am very much obliged to you for coming with me. Good-bye." And so they parted. CHAPTER LXXVII The Story of Lucy Morris Is Concluded On the day appointed, Lucy Morris went back from the house of the old countess to Fawn Court. "My dear," said Lady Linlithgow, "I am sorry that you are going. Perhaps you'll think I haven't been very kind to you, but I never am kind. People have always been hard to me, and I'm hard. But I do like you." "I'm glad you like me, as we have lived together so long." "You may go on staying here, if you choose, and I'll try to make it better." "It hasn't been bad at all,--only that there's nothing particular to do. But I must go. I shall get another place as a governess somewhere, and that will suit me best." "Because of the money, you mean." "Well;--that in part." "I mean to pay you something," said the countess, opening her pocket-book, and fumbling for two bank-notes which she had deposited there. "Oh, dear, no. I haven't earned anything." "I always gave Macnulty something, and she was not near so nice as you." And then the countess produced two ten-pound notes. But Lucy would have none of her money, and when she was pressed, became proud and almost indignant in her denial. She had earned nothing, and she would take nothing; and it was in vain that the old lady spread the clean bits of paper before her. "And so you'll go and be a governess again; will you?" "When I can get a place." "I'll tell you what, my dear. If I were Frank Greystock, I'd stick to my bargain." Lucy at once fell a-crying, but she smiled upon the old woman through her tears. "Of course he's going to marry that little limb of the devil." "Oh, Lady Linlithgow,--if you can, prevent that!" "How am I to prevent it, my dear? I've nothing to say to either of them." "It isn't for myself I'm speaking. If I can't--if I can't--can't have things go as I thought they would by myself, I will never ask any one to help me. It is not that I mean. I have given all that up." "You have given it up?" "Yes;--I have. But nevertheless I think of him. She is bad, and he will never be happy if he marries her. When he asked me to be his wife, he was mistaken as to what would be good for him. He ought not to have made such a mistake. For my sake he ought not." "That's quite true, my dear." "But I do not wish him to be unhappy all his life. He is not bad, but she is very bad. I would not for worlds that anybody should tell him that he owed me anything; but if he could be saved from her,--oh, I should be so-glad." "You won't have my money, then?" "No,--Lady Linlithgow." "You'd better. It is honestly your own." "I will not take it, thank you." "Then I may as well put it up again." And the countess replaced the notes in her pocket-book. When this conversation took place, Frank Greystock was travelling back alone from Portray to London. On the same day the Fawn carriage came to fetch Lucy away. As Lucy was in peculiar distress, Lady Fawn would not allow her to come by any other conveyance. She did not exactly think that the carriage would console her poor favourite; but she did it as she would have ordered something specially nice to eat for any one who had broken his leg. Her soft heart had compassion for misery, though she would sometimes show her sympathy by strange expressions. Lady Linlithgow was almost angry about the carriage. "How many carriages and how many horses does Lady Fawn keep?" she asked. "One carriage and two horses." "She's very fond of sending them up into the streets of London, I think." Lucy said nothing more, knowing that it would be impossible to soften the heart of this dowager in regard to the other. But she kissed the old woman at parting, and then was taken down to Richmond in state. She had made up her mind to have one discussion with Lady Fawn about her engagement,--the engagement which was no longer an engagement,--and then to have done with it. She would ask Lady Fawn to ask the girls never to mention Mr. Greystock's name in her hearing. Lady Fawn had also made up her mind to the same effect. She felt that the subject should be mentioned once,--and once only. Of course Lucy must have another place, but there need be no hurry about that. She fully recognised her young friend's feeling of independence, and was herself aware that she would be wrong to offer to the girl a permanent home among her own daughters, and therefore she could not abandon the idea of a future place; but Lucy would, of course, remain till a situation should have been found for her that would be in every sense unexceptionable. There need, however, be no haste,--and, in the meantime, the few words about Frank Greystock must be spoken. They need not, however, be spoken quite immediately. Let there be smiles, and joy, and a merry ring of laughter on this the first day of the return of their old friend. As Lucy had the same feelings on that afternoon, they did talk pleasantly and were merry. The girls asked questions about the Vulturess,--as they had heard her called by Lizzie Eustace,--and laughed at Lucy to her face when she swore that, after a fashion, she liked the old woman. "You'd like anybody, then," said Nina. "Indeed I don't," said Lucy, thinking at once of Lizzie Eustace. Lady Fawn planned out the next day with great precision. After breakfast, Lucy and the girls were to spend the morning in the old school-room, so that there might be a general explanation as to the doings of the last six months. They were to dine at three, and after dinner there should be the discussion. "Will you come up to my room at four o'clock, my dear?" said Lady Fawn, patting Lucy's shoulder, in the breakfast-parlour. Lucy knew well why her presence was required. Of course she would come. It would be wise to get it over and have done with it. At noon Lady Fawn, with her three eldest daughters, went out in the carriage, and Lucy was busy among the others with books and maps and sheets of scribbled music. Nothing was done on that day in the way of instruction; but there was much of half-jocose acknowledgement of past idleness, and a profusion of resolutions of future diligence. One or two of the girls were going to commence a course of reading that would have broken the back of any professor, and suggestions were made as to very rigid rules as to the talking of French and German. "But as we can't talk German," said Nina, "we should simply be dumb." "You'd talk High Dutch, Nina, sooner than submit to that," said one of the sisters. The conclave was still sitting in full deliberation, when one of the maids entered the room with a very long face. There was a gentleman in the drawing-room asking for Miss Morris! Lucy, who at the moment was standing at a table on which were spread an infinity of books, became at once as white as a sheet. Her fast friend, Lydia Fawn, who was standing by her, immediately took hold of her hand quite tightly. The face of the maid was fit for a funeral. She knew that Miss Morris had had a "follower,"--that the follower had come,--and that then Miss Morris had gone away. Miss Morris had been allowed to come back; and now, on the very first day, just when my lady's back was turned, here was the follower again! Before she had come up with her message, there had been an unanimous expression of opinion in the kitchen that the fat would all be in the fire. Lucy was as white as marble, and felt such a sudden shock at her heart, that she could not speak. And yet she never doubted for a moment that Frank Greystock was the man. And with what purpose but one could he have come there? She had on the old, old frock in which, before her visit to Lady Linlithgow, she used to pass the morning amidst her labours with the girls,--a pale, grey, well-worn frock, to which must have been imparted some attraction from the milliner's art, because everybody liked it so well,--but which she had put on this very morning as a testimony, to all the world around her, that she had abandoned the idea of being anything except a governess. Lady Fawn had understood the frock well. "Here is the dear little old woman just the same as ever," Lydia had said, embracing her. "She looks as if she'd gone to bed before the winter, and had a long sleep, like a dormouse," said Cecilia. Lucy had liked it all, and thoroughly appreciated the loving-kindness; but she had known what it all meant. She had left them as the engaged bride of Mr. Greystock, the member for Bobsborough; and now she had come back as Lucy Morris, the governess, again. "Just the same as ever," Lucy had said, with the sweetest smile. They all understood that, in so saying, she renounced her lover. And now there stood the maid, inside the room, who, having announced that there was a gentleman asking for Miss Morris, was waiting for an answer. Was the follower to be sent about his business, with a flea in his ear, having come, slyly, craftily, and wickedly, in Lady Fawn's absence; or would Miss Morris brazen it out, and go and see him? "Who is the gentleman?" asked Diana, who was the eldest of the Fawn girls present. "It's he as used to come after Miss Morris before," said the maid. "It is Mr. Greystock," said Lucy, recovering herself with an effort. "I had better go down to him. Will you tell him, Mary, that I'll be with him almost immediately?" "You ought to have put on the other frock, after all," said Nina, whispering into her ear. "He has not lost much time in coming to see you," said Lydia. "I suppose it was all because he didn't like Lady Linlithgow," said Cecilia. Lucy had not a word to say. She stood for a minute among them, trying to think, and then she slowly left the room. She would not condescend to alter her dress by the aid of a single pin, or by the adjustment of a ribbon. It might well be that, after the mingled work and play of the morning, her hair should not be smooth; but she was too proud to look at her hair. The man whom she had loved, who had loved her but had neglected her, was in the house. He would surely not have followed her thither did he not intend to make reparation for his neglect. But she would use no art with him;--nor would she make any entreaty. It might be that, after all, he had the courage to come and tell her, in a manly, straightforward way, that the thing must be all over,--that he had made a mistake, and would beg her pardon. If it were so, there should be no word of reproach. She would be quite quiet with him; but there should be no word of reproach. But if-- In that other case she could not be sure of her behaviour, but she knew well that he would not have to ask long for forgiveness. As for her dress,--he had chosen to love her in that frock before, and she did not think that he would pay much attention to her dress on the present occasion. She opened the door very quietly and very slowly, intending to approach him in the same way. But in a moment, before she could remember that she was in the room, he had seized her in his arms, and was showering kisses upon her forehead, her eyes, and her lips. When she thought of it afterwards, she could not call to mind a single word that he had spoken before he held her in his embrace. It was she, surely, who had spoken first, when she begged to be released from his pressure. But she well remembered the first words that struck her ear. "Dearest Lucy, will you forgive me?" She could only answer them through her tears by taking up his hand and kissing it. When Lady Fawn came back with the carriage, she herself saw the figures of two persons, walking very close together, in the shrubberies. "Is that Lucy?" she asked. "Yes," said Augusta, with a tone of horror. "Indeed it is, and--Mr. Greystock." Lady Fawn was neither shocked nor displeased; nor was she disappointed; but a certain faint feeling of being ill-used by circumstances came over her. "Dear me;--the very first day!" she said. "It's because he wouldn't go to Lady Linlithgow's," said Amelia. "He has only waited, mamma." "But the very first day!" exclaimed Lady Fawn. "I hope Lucy will be happy;--that's all." There was a great meeting of all the Fawns, as soon as Lady Fawn and the eldest girls were in the house. Mr. Greystock had been walking about the grounds with Lucy for the last hour and a half. Lucy had come in once to beg that Lady Fawn might be told directly she came in. "She said you were to send for her, mamma," said Lydia. "But it's dinner-time, my dear. What are we to do with Mr. Greystock?" "Ask him to lunch, of course," said Amelia. "I suppose it's all right," said Lady Fawn. "I'm quite sure it's all right," said Nina. "What did she say to you, Lydia?" asked the mother. "She was as happy as ever she could be," said Lydia. "There's no doubt about its being all right, mamma. She looked just as she did when she got the letter from him before." "I hope she managed to change her frock," said Augusta. "She didn't then," said Cecilia. "I don't suppose he cares one halfpenny about her frock," said Nina. "I should never think about a man's coat if I was in love." "Nina, you shouldn't talk in that way," said Augusta. Whereupon Nina made a face behind one of her sisters' backs. Poor Augusta was never allowed to be a prophetess among them. The consultation was ended by a decision in accordance with which Nina went as an ambassador to the lovers. Lady Fawn sent her compliments to Mr. Greystock, and hoped he would come in to lunch. Lucy must come in to dinner, because dinner was ready. "And mamma wants to see you just for a minute," added Nina, in a pretended whisper. "Oh, Nina, you darling girl!" said Lucy, kissing her young friend in an ecstasy of joy. "It's all right?" asked Nina in a whisper which was really intended for privacy. Lucy did not answer the question otherwise than by another kiss. Frank Greystock was, of course, obliged to take his seat at the table, and was entertained with a profusion of civility. Everybody knew that he had behaved badly to Lucy,--everybody, except Lucy herself, who, from this time forward, altogether forgot that she had for some time looked upon him as a traitor, and had made up her mind that she had been deceived and ill-used. All the Fawns had spoken of him, in Lucy's absence, in the hardest terms of reproach, and declared that he was not fit to be spoken to by any decent person. Lady Fawn had known from the first that such a one as he was not to be trusted. Augusta had never liked him. Amelia had feared that poor Lucy Morris had been unwise, and too ambitious. Georgina had seen that, of course, it would never do. Diana had sworn that it was a great shame. Lydia was sure that Lucy was a great deal too good for him. Cecilia had wondered where he would go to;--a form of anathema which had brought down a rebuke from her mother. And Nina had always hated him like poison. But now nothing was too good for him. An unmarried man who is willing to sacrifice himself is, in feminine eyes, always worthy of ribbons and a chaplet. Among all these Fawns there was as little selfishness as can be found,--even among women. The lover was not the lover of one of themselves, but of their governess. And yet, though he desired neither to eat nor drink at that hour, something special had been cooked for him, and a special bottle of wine had been brought out of the cellar. All his sins were forgiven him. No single question was asked as to his gross misconduct during the last six months. No pledge or guarantee was demanded for the future. There he was, in the guise of a declared lover, and the fatted calf was killed. After this early dinner it was necessary that he should return to town, and Lucy obtained leave to walk with him to the station. To her thinking now, there was no sin to be forgiven. Everything was, and had been, just as it ought to be. Had any human being hinted that he had sinned, she would have defended him to the death. Something was said between them about Lizzie, but nothing that arose from jealousy. Not till many months had passed did she tell him of Lizzie's message to herself, and of her visit to Hertford Street. But they spoke of the necklace, and poor Lucy shuddered as she was told the truth about those false oaths. "I really do think that, after that, Lord Fawn is right," she said, looking round at her lover. "Yes; but what he did, he did before that," said Frank. "But are they not good and kind?" she said, pleading for her friends. "Was ever anybody so well treated as they have treated me? I'll tell you what, sir, you mustn't quarrel with Lord Fawn any more. I won't allow it." Then she walked back from the station alone, almost bewildered by her own happiness. That evening something like an explanation was demanded by Lady Fawn, but no explanation was forthcoming. When questions were asked about his silence, Lucy, half in joke and half in earnest, fired up and declared that everything had been as natural as possible. He could not have come to Lady Linlithgow's house. Lady Linlithgow would not receive him. No doubt she had been impatient, but then that had been her fault. Had he not come to her the very first day after her return to Richmond? When Augusta said something as to letters which might have been written, Lucy snubbed her. "Who says he didn't write? He did write. If I am contented, why should you complain?" "Oh, I don't complain," said Augusta. Then questions were asked as to the future,--questions to which Lady Fawn had a right to demand an answer. What did Mr. Greystock propose to do now? Then Lucy broke down, sobbing, crying, triumphing, with mingled love and happiness. She was to go to the deanery. Frank had brought with him a little note to her from his mother, in which she was invited to make the deanery at Bobsborough her home for the present. "And you are to go away just when you've come?" asked Nina. "Stay with us a month, my dear," said Lady Fawn, "just to let people know that we are friends, and after that the deanery will be the best home for you." And so it was arranged. * * * * * It need only be further said, in completing the history of Lucy Morris as far as it can be completed in these pages, that she did go to the deanery, and that there she was received with all the affection which Mrs. Greystock could show to an adopted daughter. Her quarrel had never been with Lucy personally,--but with the untoward fact that her son would not marry money. At the deanery she remained for fifteen happy months, and then became Mrs. Greystock, with a bevy of Fawn bridesmaids around her. As the personages of a chronicle such as this should all be made to operate backwards and forwards on each other from the beginning to the end, it would have been desirable that the chronicler should have been able to report that the ceremony was celebrated by Mr. Emilius. But as the wedding did not take place till the end of the summer, and as Mr. Emilius at that time never remained in town, after the season was over, this was impossible. It was the Dean of Bobsborough, assisted by one of the minor canons, who performed the service. CHAPTER LXXVIII The Trial Having told the tale of Lucy Morris to the end, the chronicler must now go back to the more important persons of this history. It was still early in April when Lizzie Eustace was taken down to Scotland by her cousin, and the trial of Mr. Benjamin and Mr. Smiler was fixed to take place at the Central Criminal Court about the middle of May. Early in May the attorneys for the prosecution applied to Greystock, asking him whether he would make arrangements for his cousin's appearance on the occasion, informing him that she had already been formally summoned. Whereupon he wrote to Lizzie, telling her what she had better do, in the kindest manner,--as though there had been no cessation of their friendly intercourse, offering to go with her into court,--and naming an hotel at which he would advise her to stay during the very short time that she need remain in London. She answered this letter at once. She was sorry to say that she was much too ill to travel, or even to think of travelling. Such was her present condition that she doubted greatly whether she would ever again be able to leave the two rooms to which she was at present confined. All that remained to her in life was to watch her own blue waves from the casement of her dear husband's castle,--that casement at which he had loved to sit, and to make herself happy in the smiles of her child. A few months would see the last of it all, and then, perhaps, they who had trampled her to death would feel some pangs of remorse as they thought of her early fate. She had given her evidence once and had told all the truth,--though she was now aware that she need not have done so, as she had been defrauded of a vast amount of property through the gross negligence of the police. She was advised now by persons who seemed really to understand the law, that she could recover the value of the diamonds which her dear, dear husband had given her, from the freeholders of the parish in which the robbery had taken place. She feared that her health did not admit of the necessary exertion. Were it otherwise she would leave no stone unturned to recover the value of her property,--not on account of its value, but because she had been so ill-treated by Mr. Camperdown and the police. Then she added a postscript to say that it was quite out of the question that she should take any journey for the next six months. The reader need hardly be told that Greystock did not believe a word of what she said. He felt sure that she was not ill. There was an energy in the letter hardly compatible with illness. But he could not make her come. He certainly did not intend to go down again to Scotland to fetch her,--and even had he done so he could not have forced her to accompany him. He could only go to the attorneys concerned, and read to them so much of the letter as he thought fit to communicate to them. "That won't do at all," said an old gentleman at the head of the firm. "She has been very leniently treated, and she must come." "You must manage it, then," said Frank. "I hope she won't give us trouble, because if she does we must expose her," said the second member. "She has not even sent a medical certificate," said the tyro of the firm, who was not quite so sharp as he will probably become when he has been a member of it for ten or twelve years. You should never ask the ostler whether he greases his oats. In this case Frank Greystock was not exactly in the position of the ostler; but he did inform his cousin by letter that she would lay herself open to all manner of pains and penalties if she disobeyed such a summons as she had received, unless she did so by a very strong medical advice, backed by a medical certificate. Lizzie, when she received this, had two strings to her bow. A writer from Ayr had told her that the summons sent to her was not worth the paper on which it was printed in regard to a resident in Scotland;--and she had also got a doctor from the neighbourhood who was satisfied that she was far too ill to travel up to London. Pulmonary debilitation was the complaint from which she was suffering, which, with depressed vitality in all the organs, and undue languor in all the bodily functions, would be enough to bring her to a speedy end if she so much as thought of making a journey up to London. A certificate to this effect was got in triplicate. One copy she sent to the attorneys, one to Frank, and one she kept herself. The matter was very pressing indeed. It was considered that the trial could not be postponed till the next sitting at the Criminal Court, because certain witnesses in respect to the diamonds had been procured from Hamburg and Vienna, at a very great cost; they were actually on their way to London when Lizzie's second letter was received. Mr. Camperdown had resolved to have the diamonds, still with a hope that they might be restored to the keeping of Messrs. Garnett, there to lie hidden and unused at any rate for the next twenty years. The diamonds had been traced first to Hamburg, and then to Vienna;--and it was to be proved that they were now adorning the bosom of a certain enormously rich Russian princess. From the grasp of the Russian princess it was found impossible to rescue them; but the witnesses who, as it was hoped, might have aided Mr. Camperdown in his efforts, were to be examined at the trial. A confidential clerk was sent down to Portray, but the confidential clerk altogether failed in making his way into Lizzie's presence. Word was brought to him that nothing but force could take Lady Eustace from her bed-chamber; and that force used to that effect might take her out dead, but certainly not alive. He made inquiry, however, about the doctor, and found that he certainly was a doctor. If a doctor will certify that a lady is dying, what can any judge do, or any jury? There are certain statements which, though they are false as hell, must be treated as though they were true as gospel. The clerk reported, when he got back to London, that, to his belief, Lady Eustace was enjoying an excellent state of health;--but that he was perfectly certain that she would not appear as a witness at the trial. The anger felt by many persons as to Lizzie's fraudulent obstinacy was intense. Mr. Camperdown thought that she ought to be dragged up to London by cart ropes. The attorneys engaged for the prosecution were almost beside themselves. They did send down a doctor of their own, but Lizzie would not see the doctor,--would not see the doctor though threats of most frightful consequences were conveyed to her. She would be exposed, fined thousands of pounds, committed to gaol for contempt of court, and prosecuted for perjury into the bargain. But she was firm. She wrote one scrap of a note to the doctor who came from London, "I shall not live to satisfy their rabid vengeance." Even Frank Greystock felt almost more annoyed than gratified that she should be able thus to escape. People who had heard of the inquiry before the magistrate, had postponed their excitement and interest on the occasion, because they knew that the day of the trial would be the great day; and when they heard that they were to be robbed of the pleasure of Lady Eustace's cross-examination, there arose almost a public feeling of wrath that justice should be thus outraged. The doctor who had given the certificate was vilified in the newspapers, and long articles were written as to the impotence of the law. But Lizzie was successful, and the trial went on without her. It appeared that though her evidence was very desirable it was not absolutely essential, as, in consequence of her certified illness, the statement which she had made at the police-court could be brought up and used against the prisoners. All the facts of the robbery were, moreover, proved by Patience Crabstick and Billy Cann; and the transfer of the diamonds by Mr. Benjamin to the man who recut them at Hamburg was also proved. Many other morsels of collateral evidence had also been picked up by the police,--so that there was no possible doubt as to any detail of the affair in Hertford Street. There was a rumour that Mr. Benjamin intended to plead guilty. He might, perhaps, have done so had it not been for the absence of Lady Eustace; but as that was thought to give him a possible chance of escape, he stood his ground. Lizzie's absence was a great disappointment to the sight-seers of London, but nevertheless the court was crowded. It was understood that the learned serjeant who was retained on this occasion to defend Mr. Benjamin, and who was assisted by the acute gentleman who had appeared before the magistrate, would be rather severe upon Lady Eustace, even in her absence; and that he would ground his demand for an acquittal on the combined facts of her retention of the diamonds, her perjury, and of her obstinate refusal to come forward on the present occasion. As it was known that he could be very severe, many came to hear him,--and they were not disappointed. The reader shall see a portion of his address to the jury,--which we hope may have had some salutary effect on Lizzie, as she read it in her retreat at Portray, looking out upon her own blue waves. "And now, gentlemen of the jury, let me recapitulate to you the history of this lady as far as it relates to the diamonds as to which my client is now in jeopardy. You have heard on the testimony of Mr. Camperdown that they were not hers at all,--that, at any rate, they were not supposed to be hers by those in whose hands was left the administration of her husband's estate, and that when they were first supposed to have been stolen at the inn at Carlisle, he had already commenced legal steps for the recovery of them from her clutches. A bill in Chancery had been filed because she had obstinately refused to allow them to pass out of her hands. It has been proved to you by Lord Fawn that though he was engaged to marry her, he broke his engagement because he supposed her possession of these diamonds to be fraudulent and dishonest." This examination had been terrible to the unfortunate Under-Secretary;--and had absolutely driven him away from the India Board and from Parliament for a month. "It has been proved to you that when the diamonds were supposed to have vanished at Carlisle, she there committed perjury. That she did so she herself stated on oath in that evidence which she gave before the magistrate when my client was committed, and which has, as I maintain, improperly and illegally been used against my client at this trial." Here the judge looked over his spectacles and admonished the learned serjeant, that his argument on that subject had already been heard, and the matter decided. "True, my lord; but my conviction of my duty to my client compels me to revert to it. Lady Eustace committed perjury at Carlisle, having the diamonds in her pocket at the very moment in which she swore that they had been stolen from her. And if justice had really been done in this case, gentlemen, it is Lady Eustace who should now be on her trial before you, and not my unfortunate client. Well,--what is the next that we hear of it? It seems that she brought the diamonds up to London; but how long she kept them there, nobody knows. It was, however, necessary to account for them. A robbery is got up between a young woman who seems to have been the confidential friend rather than the maid of Lady Eustace, and that other witness whom you have heard testifying against himself, and who is, of all the informers that ever came into my hands, the most flippant, the most hardened, the least conscientious, and the least credible. That they two were engaged in a conspiracy I cannot doubt. That Lady Eustace was engaged with them, I will not say. But I will ask you to consider whether such may not probably have been the case. At any rate, she then perjures herself again. She gives a list of the articles stolen from her, and omits the diamonds. She either perjures herself a second time,--or else the diamonds, in regard to which my client is in jeopardy, were not in the house at all, and could not then have been stolen. It may very probably have been so. Nothing more probable. Mr. Camperdown and the managers of the Eustace estate had gradually come to a belief that the Carlisle robbery was a hoax,--and, therefore, another robbery is necessary to account for the diamonds. Another robbery is arranged, and this young and beautiful widow, as bold as brass, again goes before the magistrate and swears. Either the diamonds were not stolen, or else again she commits a second perjury. "And now, gentlemen, she is not here. She is sick forsooth at her own castle in Scotland, and sends to us a medical certificate. But the gentlemen who are carrying on the prosecution know their witness, and don't believe a word of her sickness. Had she the feelings of woman in her bosom she ought indeed to be sick unto death. But they know her better, and send down a doctor of their own. You have heard his evidence,--and yet this wonderful lady is not before us. I say again that she ought to be here in that dock,--in that dock in spite of her fortune, in that dock in spite of her title, in that dock in spite of her castle, her riches, her beauty, and her great relatives. A most wonderful woman, indeed, is the widow Eustace. It is she whom public opinion will convict as the guilty one in this marvellous mass of conspiracy and intrigue. In her absence, and after what she has done herself, can you convict any man either of stealing or of disposing of these diamonds?" The vigour, the attitude, and the indignant tone of the man were more even than his words;--but, nevertheless, the jury did find both Benjamin and Smiler guilty, and the judge did sentence them to penal servitude for fifteen years. And this was the end of the Eustace diamonds as far as anything was ever known of them in England. Mr. Camperdown altogether failed, even in his attempt to buy them back at something less than their value, and was ashamed himself to look at the figures when he found how much money he had wasted for his clients in their pursuit. In discussing the matter afterwards with Mr. Dove, he excused himself by asserting his inability to see so gross a robbery perpetrated by a little minx under his very eyes without interfering with the plunder. "I knew what she was," he said, "from the moment of Sir Florian's unfortunate marriage. He had brought a little harpy into the family, and I was obliged to declare war against her." Mr. Dove seemed to be of opinion that the ultimate loss of the diamonds was upon the whole desirable, as regarded the whole community. "I should like to have had the case settled as to right of possession," he said, "because there were in it one or two points of interest. We none of us know, for instance, what a man can, or what a man cannot, give away by a mere word." "No such word was ever spoken," said Mr. Camperdown in wrath. "Such evidence as there is would have gone to show that it had been spoken. But the very existence of such property so to be disposed of, or so not to be disposed of, is in itself an evil. Thus, we have had to fight for six months about a lot of stones hardly so useful as the flags in the street, and then they vanish from us, leaving us nothing to repay us for our labour." All which Mr. Camperdown did not quite understand. Mr. Dove would be paid for his labour,--as to which, however, Mr. Camperdown knew well that no human being was more indifferent than Mr. Dove. There was much sorrow, too, among the police. They had no doubt succeeded in sending two scoundrels out of the social world, probably for life, and had succeeded in avoiding the reproach which a great robbery, unaccounted for, always entails upon them. But it was sad to them that the property should altogether have been lost, and sad also that they should have been constrained to allow Billy Cann to escape out of their hands. Perhaps the sadness may have been lessened to a certain degree in the breast of the great Mr. Gager by the charms and graces of Patience Crabstick, to whom he kept his word by making her his wife. This fact,--or rather the prospect of this fact, as it then was,--had also come to the knowledge of the learned serjeant, and, in his hands, had served to add another interest to the trial. Mr. Gager, when examined on the subject, did not attempt to deny the impeachment, and expressed a strong opinion that, though Miss Crabstick had given way to temptation under the wiles of the Jew, she would make an honest and an excellent wife. In which expectation let us trust that he may not be deceived. Amusement had, indeed, been expected from other sources which failed. Mrs. Carbuncle had been summoned, and Lord George; but both of them had left town before the summons could reach them. It was rumoured that Mrs. Carbuncle, with her niece, had gone to join her husband at New York. At any rate, she disappeared altogether from London, leaving behind her an amount of debts which showed how extremely liberal in their dealings the great tradesmen of London will occasionally be. There were milliners' bills which had been running for three years, and horse-dealers had given her credit year after year, though they had scarcely ever seen the colour of her money. One account, however, she had honestly settled. The hotel-keeper in Albemarle Street had been paid, and all the tribute had been packed and carried off from the scene of the proposed wedding banquet. What became of Lord George for the next six months, nobody ever knew; but he appeared at Melton in the following November, and I do not know that any one dared to ask him questions about the Eustace diamonds. Of Lizzie, and her future career, something further must be said in the concluding chapters of this work. She has been our heroine, and we must see her through her immediate troubles before we can leave her; but it may be as well to mention here, that although many threats had been uttered against her, not only by Mr. Camperdown and the other attorneys, but even by the judge himself, no punishment at all was inflicted upon her in regard to her recusancy, nor was any attempt made to punish her. The affair was over, and men were glad to avoid the necessity of troubling themselves further with the business. It was said that a case would be got up with the view of proving that she had not been ill at all, and that the Scotch doctor would be subjected to the loss of his degree, or whatever privileges in the healing art belonged to him;--but nothing was done, and Lizzie triumphed in her success. CHAPTER LXXIX Once More at Portray On the very day of the trial Mr. Emilius travelled from London to Kilmarnock. The trial took place on a Monday, so that he had at his command an entire week before he would be required to appear again in his church. He had watched the case against Benjamin and Smiler very closely, and had known beforehand, almost with accuracy, what witnesses would appear and what would not at the great coming event at the Old Bailey. When he first heard of Lady Eustace's illness, he wrote to her a most affectionately pastoral letter, strongly adjuring her to think of her health before all things, and assuring her that in his opinion, and in that of all his friends, she was quite right not to come up to London. She wrote him a very short but a very gracious answer, thanking him for his solicitude, and explaining to him that her condition made it quite impossible that she should leave Portray. "I don't suppose anybody knows how ill I am; but it does not matter. When I am gone, they will know what they have done." Then Mr. Emilius resolved that he would go down to Scotland. Perhaps Lady Eustace was not as ill as she thought; but it might be that the trial, and the hard things lately said of her, and her loneliness, and the feeling that she needed protection, might, at such a moment as this, soften her heart. She should know at least that one tender friend did not desert her because of the evil things which men said of her. He went to Kilmarnock, thinking it better to make his approaches by degrees. Were he to present himself at once at the castle and be refused admittance, he would hardly know how to repeat his application or to force himself upon her presence. From Kilmarnock he wrote to her, saying that business connected with his ministrations during the coming autumn had brought him into her beautiful neighbourhood, and that he could not leave it without paying his respects to her in person. With her permission he would call upon her on the Thursday at about noon. He trusted that the state of her health would not prevent her from seeing him, and reminded her that a clergyman was often as welcome a visitor at the bedside of the invalid, as the doctor or the nurse. He gave her no address, as he rather wished to hinder her from answering him, but at the appointed hour he knocked at the castle-door. Need it be said that Lizzie's state of health was not such as to preclude her from seeing so intimate a friend as Mr. Emilius? That she was right to avoid by any effort the castigation which was to have fallen upon her from the tongue of the learned serjeant, the reader who is not straight-laced will be disposed to admit. A lone woman, very young, and delicately organised! How could she have stood up against such treatment as was in store for her? And is it not the case that false pretexts against public demands are always held to be justifiable by the female mind? What lady will ever scruple to avoid her taxes? What woman ever understood her duty to the State? And this duty which was required of her was so terrible, that it might well have reduced to falsehood a stouter heart than her own. It can hardly be reckoned among Lizzie's great sins that she did not make that journey up to London. An appearance of sickness she did maintain, even with her own domestics. To do as much as that was due even to the doctor whom she had cajoled out of the certificate, and who was afterwards frightened into maintaining it. But Mr. Emilius was her clergyman,--her own clergyman, as she took care to say to her maid,--her own clergyman, who had come all the way from London to be present with her in her sickness; and of course she would see him. Lizzie did not think much of the coming autumnal ministration at Kilmarnock. She knew very well why Mr. Emilius had undertaken the expense of a journey into Scotland in the middle of the London season. She had been maimed fearfully in her late contests with the world, and was now lame and soiled and impotent. The boy with none of the equipments of the skilled sportsman can make himself master of a wounded bird. Mr. Emilius was seeking her in the moment of her weakness, fearing that all chance of success might be over for him should she ever again recover the full use of her wings. All this Lizzie understood, and was able to measure Mr. Emilius at his own value of himself. But then, again, she was forced to ask herself what was her value. She had been terribly mauled by the fowlers. She had been hit, so to say, on both wings, and hardly knew whether she would ever again be able to attempt a flight in public. She could not live alone in Portray Castle for the rest of her days. Ianthe's soul and the Corsair were not, in truth, able to console her for the loss of society. She must have somebody to depend upon;--ah, some one whom, if it were possible, she might love. She saw no reason why she should not love Mr. Emilius. She had been shockingly ill-treated by Lord Fawn, and the Corsair, and Frank Greystock. No woman had ever been so knocked about in her affections. She pitied herself with an exceeding pity when she thought of all the hardships which she had endured. Left an early widow, persecuted by her husband's family, twice robbed, spied upon by her own servants, unappreciated by the world at large, ill-used by three lovers, victimised by her selected friend, Mrs. Carbuncle, and now driven out of society because she had lost her diamonds, was she not more cruelly treated than any woman of whom she had ever read or heard? But she was not going to give up the battle, even now. She still had her income, and she had great faith in income. And though she knew that she had been grievously wounded by the fowlers, she believed that time would heal her wounds. The world would not continue to turn its back altogether upon a woman with four thousand pounds a year, because she had told a fib about her necklace. She weighed all this; but the conviction strongest upon her mind was the necessity that she should have a husband. She felt that a woman by herself in the world can do nothing, and that an unmarried woman's strength lies only in the expectation that she may soon be married. To her it was essentially necessary that she should have the protection of a husband who might endure on her behalf some portion of those buffetings to which she seemed to be especially doomed. Could she do better with herself than take Mr. Emilius? Might she have chosen from all the world, Mr. Emilius was not, perhaps, the man whom she would have selected. There were, indeed, attributes in the man, very objectionable in the sight of some people, which to her were not specially disagreeable. She thought him rather good-looking than otherwise, in spite of a slight defect in his left eye. His coal-black, glossy hair commanded and obtained her admiration, and she found his hooky nose to be handsome. She did not think much of the ancestral blood of which he had boasted, and hardly believed that he would ever become a bishop. But he was popular, and with a rich, titled wife, might become more so. Mr. Emilius and Lady Eustace would, she thought, sound very well, and would surely make their way in society. The man had a grasping ambition about him, and a capacity, too, which, combined, would enable him to preach himself into notoriety. And then in marrying Mr. Emilius, should she determine to do so, she might be sure, almost sure, of dictating her own terms as to settlement. With Lord Fawn, with Lord George, or even with her cousin Frank, there would have been much difficulty. She thought that with Mr. Emilius she might obtain the undisputed command of her own income. But she did not quite make up her mind. She would see him and hear what he had to say. Her income was her own, and should she refuse Mr. Emilius, other suitors would no doubt come. She dressed herself with considerable care,--having first thought of receiving him in bed. But as the trial had now gone on without her, it would be convenient that her recovery should be commenced. So she had herself dressed in a white morning wrapper with pink bows, and allowed the curl to be made fit to hang over her shoulder. And she put on a pair of pretty slippers, with gilt bindings, and took a laced handkerchief and a volume of Shelley,--and so she prepared herself to receive Mr. Emilius. Lizzie, since the reader first knew her, had begun to use a little colouring in the arrangement of her face, and now, in honour of her sickness, she was very pale indeed. But still, through the paleness, there was the faintest possible tinge of pink colour shining through the translucent pearl powder. Any one who knew Lizzie would be sure that, when she did paint, she would paint well. The conversation was at first, of course, confined to the lady's health. She thought that she was, perhaps, getting better, though, as the doctor had told her, the reassuring symptoms might too probably only be too fallacious. She could eat nothing,--literally nothing. A few grapes out of the hothouse had supported her for the last week. This statement was foolish on Lizzie's part, as Mr. Emilius was a man of an inquiring nature, and there was not a grape in the garden. Her only delight was in reading and in her child's society. Sometimes she thought that she would pass away with the boy in her arms and her favourite volume of Shelley in her hand. Mr. Emilius expressed a hope that she would not pass away yet, for ever so many years. "Oh, my friend," said Lizzie, "what is life, that one should desire it?" Mr. Emilius of course reminded her that, though her life might be nothing to herself, it was very much indeed to those who loved her. "Yes;--to my boy," said Lizzie. Mr. Emilius informed her, with confidence, that it was not only her boy that loved her. There were others;--or, at any rate, one other. She might be sure of one faithful heart, if she cared for that. Lizzie only smiled, and threw from her taper fingers a little paper pellet into the middle of the room,--probably with the view of showing at what value she priced the heart of which Mr. Emilius was speaking. The trial had occupied two days, Monday and Tuesday, and this was now the Wednesday. The result had been telegraphed to Mr. Emilius,--of course without any record of the serjeant's bitter speech,--and the suitor now gave the news to his lady-love. Those two horrid men had at last been found guilty, and punished with all the severity of the law. "Poor fellows," said Lady Eustace,--"poor Mr. Benjamin! Those ill-starred jewels have been almost as unkind to him as to me." "He'll never come back alive, of course," said Mr. Emilius. "It'll kill him." "And it will kill me too," said Lizzie. "I have a something here which tells me that I shall never recover. Nobody will ever believe what I have suffered about those paltry diamonds. But he coveted them. I never coveted them, Mr. Emilius; though I clung to them because they were my darling husband's last gift to me." Mr. Emilius assured her that he quite understood the facts, and appreciated all her feelings. And now, as he thought, had come the time for pressing his suit. With widows, he had been told, the wooing should be brisk. He had already once asked her to be his wife, and of course she knew the motive of his journey to Scotland. "Dearest Lady Eustace," he said suddenly, "may I be allowed to renew the petition which I was once bold enough to make to you in London?" "Petition!" exclaimed Lizzie. "Ah yes; I can well understand that your indifference should enable you to forget it. Lady Eustace, I did venture to tell you--that--I loved you." "Mr. Emilius, so many men have told me that." "I can well believe it. Some have told you so, perhaps, from base, mercenary motives." "You are very complimentary, sir." "I shall never pay you any compliments, Lady Eustace. Whatever may be our future intercourse in life, you will only hear words of truth from my lips. Some have told you so from mercenary motives."--Mr. Emilius repeated the words with severity, and then paused to hear whether she would dare to argue with him. As she was silent, he changed his voice, and went on with that sweet, oily tone which had made his fortune for him.--"Some, no doubt, have spoken from the inner depths of their hearts. But none, Lady Eustace, have spoken with such adamantine truth, with so intense an anxiety, with so personal a solicitude for your welfare in this world and the next, as that,--or I should rather say those,--which glow within this bosom." Lizzie was certainly pleased by the manner in which he addressed her. She thought that a man ought to dare to speak out, and that on such an occasion as this he should venture to do so with some enthusiasm and some poetry. She considered that men generally were afraid of expressing themselves, and were as dumb as dogs from the want of becoming spirit. Mr. Emilius gesticulated, and struck his breast, and brought out his words as though he meant them. "It is easy to say all that, Mr. Emilius," she replied. "The saying of it is hard enough, Lady Eustace. You can never know how hard it is to speak from a full heart. But to feel it, I will not say is easy;--only to me, not to feel it is impossible. Lady Eustace, my heart is devoted to your heart, and seeks its comrade. It is sick with love and will not be stayed. It forces from me words,--words which will return upon me with all the bitterness of gall, if they be not accepted by you as faithful, ay and of great value." "I know well the value of such a heart as yours, Mr. Emilius." "Accept it then, dearest one." "Love will not always go by command, Mr. Emilius." "No indeed;--nor at command will it stay away. Do you think I have not tried that? Do you believe that for a man it can be pleasant to be rebuffed;--that for one who up to this day has always walked on, triumphant over every obstacle, who has conquered every nay that has obstructed his path, it can have less of bitterness than the bitterness of death to encounter a no from the lips of a woman?" "A poor woman's no should be nothing to you, Mr. Emilius." "It is everything to me,--death, destruction, annihilation,--unless I can overcome it. Darling of my heart, queen of my soul, empress presiding over the very spirit of my being, say,--shall I overcome it now?" She had never been made love to after this fashion before. She knew, or half knew, that the man was a scheming hypocrite, craving her money, and following her in the hour of her troubles, because he might then have the best chance of success. She had no belief whatever in his love; and yet she liked it, and approved his proceedings. She liked lies, thinking them to be more beautiful than truth. To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in woman and an added grace in man. There was that wretched Macnulty, who would never lie; and what was the result? She was unfit even for the poor condition of life which she pretended to fill. When poor Macnulty had heard that Mr. Emilius was coming to the castle, and had not even mentioned her name, and again, when he had been announced on this very morning, the unfortunate woman had been unable to control her absurd disappointment. "Mr. Emilius," Lizzie said, throwing herself back upon her couch, "you press me very hard." "I would press you harder still to gain the glory I covet." And he made a motion with his arms as though he had already got her tight within his grasp. "You take advantage of my illness." "In attacking a fortress do not the besiegers take all advantages? Dear Lady Eustace, allow me to return to London with the right of protecting your name at this moment, in which the false and the thoughtless are attacking it. You need a defender now." "I can defend myself, sir, from all attacks. I do not know that any one can hurt me." "God forbid that you should be hurt. Heaven forbid that even the winds of heaven should blow too harshly on my beloved. But my beloved is subject to the malice of the world. My beloved is a flower all beautiful within and without, but one whose stalk is weak, whose petals are too delicate, whose soft bloom is evanescent. Let me be the strong staff against which my beloved may blow in safety." A vague idea came across Lizzie's mind that this glowing language had a taste of the Bible about it, and that, therefore, it was in some degree impersonal, and intended to be pious. She did not relish piety at such a crisis as this, and was, therefore, for a moment inclined to be cold. But she liked being called a flower, and was not quite sure whether she remembered her Bible rightly. The words which struck her ear as familiar might have come from Juan and Haidee, and if so, nothing could be more opportune. "Do you expect me to give you answer now, Mr. Emilius?" "Yes,--now." And he stood before her in calm dignity, with his arms crossed upon his breast. She did give him his answer then and there, but first she turned her face to the wall,--or rather to the back of the sofa, and burst into a flood of tears. It was a delicious moment to her, that in which she was weeping. She sobbed forth something about her child, something about her sorrows, something as to the wretchedness of her lot in life, something of her widowed heart,--something also of that duty to others which would compel her to keep her income in her own hands; and then she yielded herself to his entreaties. * * * * * That evening she thought it proper to tell Miss Macnulty what had occurred. "He is a great preacher of the gospel," she said, "and I know no position in the world more worthy of a woman's fondest admiration." Miss Macnulty was unable to answer a word. She could not congratulate her successful rival, even though her bread depended on it. She crept slowly out of the room, and went up-stairs, and wept. Early in the month of June, Lady Eustace was led to the hymeneal altar by her clerical bridegroom. The wedding took place at the Episcopal church at Ayr, far from the eyes of curious Londoners. It need only be further said that Mr. Emilius could be persuaded to agree to no settlements prejudicial to that marital supremacy which should be attached to the husband; and that Lizzie, when the moment came, knowing that her betrothal had been made public to all the world, did not dare to recede from another engagement. It may be that Mr. Emilius will suit her as well as any husband that she could find,--unless it shall be found that his previous career has been too adventurous. After a certain fashion he will, perhaps, be tender to her; but he will have his own way in everything, and be no whit afraid when she is about to die in an agony of tears before his eyes. The writer of the present story may, however, declare that the future fate of this lady shall not be left altogether in obscurity. CHAPTER LXXX What Was Said About It All at Matching The Whitsuntide holidays were late this year, not taking place till the beginning of June, and were protracted till the 9th of that month. On the 8th Lizzie and Mr. Emilius became man and wife, and on that same day Lady Glencora Palliser entertained a large company of guests at Matching Priory. That the Duke of Omnium was there was quite a matter of course. Indeed, in these days Lady Glencora seldom separated herself far, or for any long time, from her husband's uncle,--doing her duty to the head of her husband's family in the most exemplary manner. People indeed said that she watched him narrowly, but of persons in high station common people will say anything. It was at any rate certain that she made the declining years of that great nobleman's life comfortable and decorous. Madame Max Goesler was also at Matching, a lady whose society always gave gratification to the duke. And Mr. Palliser was also there, taking the rest that was so needful to him;--by which it must be understood that after having worked all day, he was able to eat his dinner, and then only write a few letters before going to bed, instead of attending the House of Commons till two or three o'clock in the morning. But his mind was still deep in quints and semitenths. His great measure was even now in committee. His hundred and second clause had been carried, with only nine divisions against him of any consequence. Seven of the most material clauses had, no doubt, been postponed, and the great bone of contention as to the two superfluous farthings still remained before him. Nevertheless he fondly hoped that he would be able to send his bill complete to the House of Lords before the end of July. What might be done in the way of amendments there he had hitherto refused to consider. "If the peers choose to put themselves in opposition to the whole nation on a purely commercial question, the responsibility of all evils that may follow must be at their doors." This he had said as a commoner. A year or two at the farthest,--or more probably a few months,--would make him a peer; and then, no doubt, he would look at the matter in a wholly different light. But he worked at his great measure with a diligence which at any rate deserved success; and he now had with him a whole bevy of secretaries, private secretaries, chief clerks, and accountants, all of whom Lady Glencora captivated by her flattering ways, and laughed at behind their backs. Mr. Bonteen was there with his wife, repeatedly declaring to all his friends that England would achieve the glories of decimal coinage by his blood and over his grave,--and Barrington Erle, who took things much more easily, and Lord Chiltern, with his wife, who would occasionally ask her if she could explain to him the value of a quint, and many others whom it may not be necessary to name. Lord Fawn was not there. Lord Fawn, whose health had temporarily given way beneath the pressing labours of the India Board, was visiting his estates in Tipperary. "She is married to-day, duke, down in Scotland,"--said Lady Glencora, sitting close to the duke's ear, for the duke was a little deaf. They were in the duke's small morning sitting-room, and no one else was present excepting Madame Max Goesler. "Married to-morrow,--down in Scotland. Dear, dear! what is he?" The profession to which Mr. Emilius belonged had been mentioned to the duke more than once before. "He's some sort of a clergyman, duke. You went and heard him preach, Madame Max. You can tell us what he's like." "Oh, yes; he's a clergyman of our church," said Madame Goesler. "A clergyman of our church;--dear, dear. And married in Scotland! That makes it stranger. I wonder what made a clergyman marry her?" "Money, duke," said Lady Glencora, speaking very loud. "Oh, ah, yes; money. So he'd got money; had he?" "Not a penny, duke; but she had." "Oh, ah, yes. I forgot. She was very well left; wasn't she? And so she has married a clergyman without a penny. Dear, dear! Did not you say she was very beautiful?" "Lovely!" "Let me see,--you went and saw her, didn't you?" "I went to her twice,--and got quite scolded about it. Plantagenet said that if I wanted horrors I'd better go to Madame Tussaud. Didn't he, Madame Max?" Madame Max smiled and nodded her head. "And what's the clergyman like?" asked the duke. "Now, my dear, you must take up the running," said Lady Glencora, dropping her voice. "I ran after the lady, but it was you who ran after the gentleman." Then she raised her voice. "Madame Max will tell you all about it, duke. She knows him very well." "You know him very well; do you? Dear, dear, dear!" "I don't know him at all, duke, but I once went to hear him preach. He's one of those men who string words together, and do a good deal of work with a cambric pocket-handkerchief." "A gentleman?" asked the duke. "About as like a gentleman as you're like an archbishop," said Lady Glencora. This tickled the duke amazingly. "He, he, he;--I don't see why I shouldn't be like an archbishop. If I hadn't happened to be a duke, I should have liked to be an archbishop. Both the archbishops take rank of me. I never quite understood why that was, but they do. And these things never can be altered when they're once settled. It's quite absurd, now-a-days, since they've cut the archbishops down so terribly. They were princes once, I suppose, and had great power. But it's quite absurd now, and so they must feel it. I have often thought about that a good deal, Glencora." "And I think about poor Mrs. Arch, who hasn't got any rank at all." "A great prelate having a wife does seem to be an absurdity," said Madame Max, who had passed some years of her life in a Catholic country. "And the man is a cad;--is he?" asked the duke. "A Bohemian Jew, duke,--an impostor who has come over here to make a fortune. We hear that he has a wife in Prague, and probably two or three elsewhere. But he has got poor little Lizzie Eustace and all her money into his grasp, and they who know him say that he's likely to keep it." "Dear, dear, dear!" "Barrington says that the best spec he knows out, for a younger son, would be to go to Prague for the former wife, and bring her back with evidence of the marriage. The poor little woman could not fail of being grateful to the hero who would liberate her." "Dear, dear, dear!" said the duke. "And the diamonds never turned up after all. I think that was a pity, because I knew the late man's father very well. We used to be together a good deal at one time. He had a fine property, and we used to live--but I can't just tell you how we used to live. He, he, he!" "You had better tell us nothing about it, duke," said Madame Max. The affairs of our heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry, and let the large fish escape." "Whom did you specially want to catch?" asked Lady Glencora. "Lady Eustace, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers,--as he calls himself." "I quite agree with you, Mr. Bonteen, that it would be very nice to send the brother of a marquis to Botany Bay, or wherever they go now; and that it would do a deal of good to have the widow of a baronet locked up in the Penitentiary; but you see, if they didn't happen to be guilty, it would be almost a shame to punish them for the sake of the example." "They ought to have been guilty," said Barrington Erle. "They were guilty," protested Mr. Bonteen. Mr. Palliser was enjoying ten minutes of recreation before he went back to his letters. "I can't say that I attended to the case very closely," he observed, "and perhaps, therefore, I am not entitled to speak about it." "If people only spoke about what they attended to, how very little there would be to say,--eh, Mr. Bonteen?" This observation came, of course, from Lady Glencora. "But as far as I could hear," continued Mr. Palliser, "Lord George Carruthers cannot possibly have had anything to do with it. It was a stupid mistake on the part of the police." "I'm not quite so sure, Mr. Palliser," said Bonteen. "I know Coldfoot told me so." Now Sir Harry Coldfoot was at this time Secretary of State for the Home affairs, and in a matter of such importance of course had an opinion of his own. "We all know that he had money dealings with Benjamin, the Jew," said Mrs. Bonteen. "Why didn't he come forward as a witness when he was summoned?" asked Mr. Bonteen triumphantly. "And as for the woman, does anybody mean to say that she should not have been indicted for perjury?" "The woman, as you are pleased to call her, is my particular friend," said Lady Glencora. When Lady Glencora made any such statement as this,--and she often did make such statements,--no one dared to answer her. It was understood that Lady Glencora was not to be snubbed, though she was very much given to snubbing others. She had attained this position for herself by a mixture of beauty, rank, wealth, and courage;--but the courage had, of the four, been her greatest mainstay. Then Lord Chiltern, who was playing billiards with Barrington Erle, rapped his cue down on the floor, and made a speech. "I never was so sick of anything in my life as I am of Lady Eustace. People have talked about her now for the last six months." "Only three months, Lord Chiltern," said Lady Glencora, in a tone of rebuke. "And all that I can hear of her is, that she has told a lot of lies and lost a necklace." "When Lady Chiltern loses a necklace worth ten thousand pounds there will be talk of her," said Lady Glencora. At that moment Madame Max Goesler entered the room and whispered a word to the hostess. She had just come from the duke, who could not bear the racket of the billiard-room. "Wants to go to bed, does he? Very well. I'll go to him." "He seems to be quite fatigued with his fascination about Lady Eustace." "I call that woman a perfect God-send. What should we have done without her?" This Lady Glencora said almost to herself as she prepared to join the duke. The duke had only one more observation to make before he retired for the night. "I'm afraid, you know, that your friend hasn't what I call a good time before her, Glencora." In this opinion of the Duke of Omnium, the readers of this story will perhaps agree.