                             THE NEW TENANT

                        BY E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

AUTHOR OF "THE YELLOW HOUSE," "TO WIN THE LOVE HE SOUGHT," "A DAUGHTER
OF ASTREA," ETC.


DONALD W. NEWTON
156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
C. H. DOSCHER & CO.

THE TROW PRESS, NEW YORK




CONTENTS


       I. FALCON'S NEST

      II. THE MURDER NEAR THE FALCON'S NEST

     III. MR. BERNARD BROWN

      IV. AN EVIL END TO AN EVIL LIFE

       V. THE INNER ROOM AT THE FALCON'S NEST

      VI. A TERRIBLE ENEMY

     VII. HELEN THURWELL'S SUSPICIONS

    VIII. DID YOU KILL SIR GEOFFREY KYNASTON?

      IX. MR. BROWN DINES AT THE COURT

       X. THE TRAGEDY OF RACHEL KYNASTON

      XI. LEVY & SON, PRIVATE AGENTS

     XII. A JEWEL OF A SON

    XIII. A STRANGE MEETING

     XIV. HELEN THURWELL ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION

      XV. A LITERARY CELEBRITY

     XVI. A SNUB FOR A BARONET

    XVII. BERNARD MADDISON AND HELEN THURWELL

   XVIII. A CHEQUE FOR £1,000

     XIX. AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY FOR BERNARD BROWN

      XX. GOD! THAT I MAY DIE!

     XXI. SIR ALLAN BEAUMERVILLE HAS A CALLER

    XXII. "GOD FORBID IT!"

   XXIII. LOVERS

    XXIV. A WOMAN'S LOVE

     XXV. MR. LEVY, JUNIOR, GOES ON THE CONTINENT

    XXVI. HELEN DECIDES TO GO HOME

   XXVII. MR. THURWELL MAKES SOME INQUIRIES

  XXVIII. SIR ALLAN BEAUMERVILLE VISITS THE COURT

    XXIX. THE SCENE CHANGES

     XXX. BENJAMIN LEVY RUNS HIS QUARRY TO EARTH

    XXXI. BENJAMIN LEVY WRITES HOME

   XXXII. A STRANGE TRIO OF PASSENGERS

  XXXIII. VISITORS FOR MR. BERNARD MADDISON

   XXXIV. ARRESTED

    XXXV. COMMITTED FOR TRIAL

   XXXVI. MR. LEVY PROMISES TO DO HIS BEST

  XXXVII. BERNARD A PRISONER

 XXXVIII. "THERE IS MY HAND. DARE YOU TAKE IT?"

   XXXIX. MR. BENJAMIN LEVY IS BUSY

      XL. A STRANGE BIRTHDAY PARTY

     XLI. INNOCENT

    XLII. AT LAST




THE NEW TENANT




CHAPTER I

FALCON'S NEST


Thurwell Court, by Thurwell-on-the-Sea, lay bathed in the quiet
freshness of an early morning. The dewdrops were still sparkling upon
the terraced lawns like little globules of flashing silver, and the
tumult of noisy songsters from the thick shrubberies alone broke the
sweet silence. The peacocks strutting about the grey stone balcony and
perched upon the worn balustrade were in deshabille, not being
accustomed to display their splendors to an empty paradise, and the few
fat blackbirds who were hopping about on the lawn did so in a desultory
manner, as though they were only half awake and had turned out under
protest. Stillness reigned everywhere, but it was the sweet hush of
slowly awakening day rather than the drowsy, languorous quiet of
exhausted afternoon. With one's eyes shut one could tell that the pulse
of day was only just beginning to beat. The pure atmosphere was buoyant
with the vigorous promise of morning, and gently laden with the mingled
perfumes of slowly opening flowers. There was life in the breathless
air.

The sunlight was everywhere. In the distance it lay upon the dark
hillside, played upon the deep yellow gorse and purple heather of the
moorland, and, further away still, flashed upon a long silver streak of
the German Ocean. In the old-fashioned gardens of the court it shone
upon luscious peaches hanging on the time-mellowed red-brick walls; lit
up the face and gleamed upon the hands of the stable clock, and warmed
the ancient heart of the stooping, grey-haired old gardener's help who,
with blinking eyes and hands tucked in his trousers pockets, was smoking
a matutinal pipe, seated on the wheelbarrow outside the tool shed.

Around the mansion itself it was very busy, casting a thousand sunbeams
upon its long line of oriel windows, and many quaint shadows of its
begabled roof upon the lawns and bright flower-beds below. On one of the
terraces a breakfast-table was laid for two, and here its splendour was
absolutely dazzling. It gleamed upon the sparkling silver, and the
snow-white tablecloth; shone with a delicate softness upon the
freshly-gathered fruit and brilliant flowers, and seemed to hover with a
gentle burnished light upon the ruddy golden hair of a girl who sat
there waiting, with her arm resting lightly upon the stone balustrade,
and her eyes straying over the quaint well-kept gardens to the open
moorland and dark patches of wooded country beyond.

"Good morning, Helen! First, as usual."

She turned round with a somewhat languid greeting. A tall, well-made
man, a little past middle-age, in gaiters and light tweed coat, had
stepped out on to the balcony from one of the open windows. In his right
hand he was swinging carelessly backwards and forwards by a long strap a
well-worn letter-bag.

"Is breakfast ready?" he inquired.

"Waiting for you, father," she answered, touching a small handbell by
her side. "Try one of those peaches. Burdett says they are the finest he
ever raised."

He stretched out his hand for one, and sinking into a low basket chair,
commenced lazily to peel it, with his eyes wandering over the sunny
landscape. A footman brought out the tea equipage and some
silver-covered dishes, and, after silently arranging them upon the
table, withdrew.

"What an exquisite morning!" Mr. Thurwell remarked, looking up at the
blue cloudless sky, and pulling his cap a little closer over his eyes to
protect them from the sun. "We might be in Italy again."

"Indeed we might," she answered. "I am going to imagine that we are, and
make my breakfast of peaches and cream and chocolate! Shall I give you
some?"

He shook his head, with a little grimace.

"No, thanks. I'm Philistine enough to prefer devilled kidneys and tea. I
wonder if there is anything in the letters."

He drew a key from his waistcoat pocket, and, unlocking the bag, shook
its contents upon the tablecloth. His daughter looked at the pile with a
faint show of interest. There were one or two invitations, which he
tossed over to her, a few business letters, which he put on one side for
more leisurely perusal later on, and a little packet from his agent
which he opened at once, and the contents of which brought a slight
frown into his handsome face.

Helen Thurwell glanced through her share without finding anything
interesting. Tennis parties, archery meetings, a bazaar fête;
absolutely nothing fresh. She was so tired of all that sort of
thing--tired of eternally meeting the same little set of people, and
joining in the same round of so-called amusements. There was nothing in
Northshire society which attracted her. It was all very stupid, and she
was very much bored.

"Some news here that will interest you, Helen," her father remarked
suddenly. "Who do you think is coming home?"

She shook her head. She was not in the least curious.

"I don't remember any one going away lately," she remarked. "How warm it
is!"

"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston is coming back."

After all, she was a little interested. She looked away from the sunny
gardens and into her father's face.

"Really!"

"It is a fact!" he declared. "Douglas says that he will be here to-day
or to-morrow. Let me see, it must be nearly fifteen years since he was
in England. Time he settled down, if he means to at all."

"Was he very wild, then?" she asked.

The squire nodded.

"Rather!" he answered dryly. "I dare say people will have forgotten all
about it by now, though. Forty thousand a year covers a multitude of
sins, especially in a tenth baronet!"

She asked no more questions, but leaned back in her chair, and looked
thoughtfully across the open country towards the grey turrets of
Kynaston Towers, from which a flag was flying. Mr. Thurwell re-read his
agent's letter with a slight frown upon his forehead.

"I don't know what to do here," he remarked.

"What is it?" she asked absently. She was watching the flag slowly
unfurling itself in the breeze, and fluttering languidly above the
tree-tops. It was odd to think that a master was coming to rule there.

"It's about Falcon's Nest. I wish I'd never thought of letting it!"

"Why? It would be a great deal better occupied, surely!"

"If I could let it to a decent tenant, of course it would. But, you know
that fellow Chapman, of Mallory? He wants it!"

She looked up at him quickly.

"You surely would not let it to a man like that?"

"Certainly not. But, on the other hand, I don't want to offend him. If I
were to decide to stand for the county at the next election, he would be
my most useful man in Mallory, or my worst enemy. He's just the sort of
fellow to take offence--quickly, too."

"Can't you tell him it's let?"

"Not unless I do let it to some one. Of course not!"

"But are there no other applications?"

"Yes, there is one other," he answered; "but the most awkward part of it
is that it's from a complete stranger. Fellow who calls himself
'Brown.'"

"Let me see the letter," she said.

He passed it over the table to her. It was written on plain notepaper,
in a peculiar, cramped handwriting.

     "_London_, May 30.

     "DEAR SIR,--I understand, from an advertisement in this week's
     _Field_, that you are willing to let 'Falcon's Nest,' situated on
     your estate. I shall be happy to take it at the rent you quote, if
     not already disposed of. My solicitors are Messrs. Cuthbert, of
     Lincoln's Inn; and my bankers, Gregsons. I may add that I am a
     bachelor, living alone. The favor of your immediate reply will much
     oblige,

     "Yours faithfully,

     "BERNARD BROWN."

She folded the letter up, and returned it to her father without remark.

"You see," Mr. Thurwell said, "my only chance of escaping from Chapman,
without offending him, is to say that it is already let, and to accept
this fellow's offer straight off. But it's an awful risk. How do I know
that Brown isn't a retired tallow-chandler or something of that sort?"

"Why not telegraph to his solicitors?" she suggested; "they would know
who he was, I suppose."

"That's not a bad idea!" he declared. "Morton shall ride over to Mallory
at once. I'm glad you thought of it, Helen."

Having come to this decision, Mr. Thurwell turned round and made an
excellent breakfast, after which he and his daughter spent the day very
much in the same manner as any other English country gentleman and young
lady are in the habit of doing. He made a pretense of writing some
letters and arranging some business affairs with his agent in the
library for an hour, and, later on in the morning, he drove over to
Mallory, and took his seat on the magistrates' bench during the hearing
of a poaching case. After lunch, he rode to an outlying farm to inspect
a new system of drainage, and when he returned, about an hour before
dinner-time, he considered that he had done a good day's work.

Helen spent the early part of the morning in the garden, and arranging
freshly cut flowers about the house. Then she practised for an hour,
solely out of a sense of duty, for she was no musician. Directly the
time was up, she closed the piano with a sigh of relief, and spent the
rest of the time before two o'clock reading a rather stupid novel. After
luncheon she made a call several miles off, driving herself in a
light-brown cart, and played several sets of tennis, having for her
partner a very mild and brainless young curate. At dinner-time she and
her father met again, and when he entered the room he had two slips of
orange-colored paper in his hand.

"Well, what news?" she inquired.

He handed the telegrams to her without a word, and she glanced them
through. The first was from the bankers.

     "To Guy Davenant Thurwell, Esq.,
     Thurwell Court, Northshire.

     "We consider Mr. Brown a desirable tenant for you from a pecuniary
     point of view. We know nothing of his family."

The other one was from his lawyers.

     "To Guy D. Thurwell, Esq.,
     Thurwell Court, Northshire.

     "Mr. Brown is a gentleman of means, and quite in a position to rent
     'Falcon's Nest.' We are not at liberty to say anything as to his
     antecedents or family."

"What am I to do?" asked Mr. Thurwell, undecidedly. "I don't like the
end of this last telegram. A solicitor ought to be able to say a little
more about a client than that."

Helen considered for a moment. She was so little interested in the
matter that she found it difficult to make up her mind either way.
Afterwards she scarcely dared think of that moment's indecision.

"Perhaps so," she said. "All the same, I detest Mr. Chapman. I should
vote for Mr. Brown."

"Mr. Brown it shall be, then!" he answered. "Douglas shall write him
to-morrow."

A fortnight later Mr. Bernard Brown took up his quarters at Falcon's
Nest.




CHAPTER II

THE MURDER NEAR THE FALCON'S NEST


"I call it perfectly dreadful of those men!" Helen Thurwell exclaimed
suddenly. "They're more than an hour late, and I'm desperately hungry!"

"It is rank ingratitude!" Rachel Kynaston sighed. "I positively cannot
sit still and look at that luncheon any longer. Groves, give me a
biscuit."

They were both seated on low folding-chairs out on the open moorland,
only a few yards away from the edge of the rugged line of cliffs against
which, many hundreds of feet below, the sea was breaking with a low
monotonous murmur. Close behind them, on a level stretch of springy
turf, a roughly improvised table, covered with a cloth of dazzling
whiteness, was laden with deep bowls of lobster salad, _pâtes de foie
gras_, chickens, truffled turkeys, piles of hothouse fruit, and many
other delicacies peculiarly appreciated at _al fresco_ symposia; and, a
little further away still, under the shade of a huge yellow gorse bush,
were several ice-pails, in which were reposing many rows of gold-foiled
bottles. The warm sun was just sufficiently tempered by a mild
heather-scented breeze, and though it flashed gayly upon the glass and
silver, and danced across the bosom of the blue water below, its heat
was more pleasant than oppressive. The two women who sat there looked
delightfully cool. Helen Thurwell especially, in her white holland gown,
with a great bunch of heather stuck in her belt, and a faint healthy
glow in her cheeks, looked as only an English country girl of good birth
can look--the very personification of dainty freshness.

"There go the guns again!" she exclaimed. "Listen to the echoes. They
can't be far away now."

There was a little murmur of satisfaction. Every allowance is to be made
for such a keen sportsman as Mr. Thurwell on the glorious twelfth, but
the time fixed for the rendezvous had been exceeded by more than an
hour.

"I have reached the limit of my endurance!" Rachel Kynaston declared,
getting up from her seat. "I must either lunch or faint! As a matter of
choice, I prefer the former."

"They will be here directly, miss," Groves remarked, as he completed the
finishing touches which he had been putting to the table, and stepped
back a little to view the effect. So far as he was concerned they might
come any time now. For once his subordinates had not failed him. Nothing
had been forgotten; and, on the whole, he felt that he had reason to be
proud of his handiwork.

He glanced away inland again, shading his eyes with his hand.

"They'll be coming round the Black Copse in five minutes," he said, half
to himself. "James, get the other chairs out of the wagon."

Rachel Kynaston was still standing up looking around her. Suddenly her
eyes fell upon a quaintly built cottage, perched upon the edge of the
cliff about a mile away.

"I meant to ask you before, Helen," she exclaimed. "Who lives in that
extraordinary-looking building--Falcon's Nest, I think you call it?"

She moved her parasol in its direction, and looked at it curiously. A
strange-looking abode it certainly was; built of yellow stone, with a
background of stunted fir trees which stretched half way down the cliff
side.

Helen Thurwell looked across at it indifferently.

"I can tell you his name, and that is all," she answered. "He calls
himself Mr. Brown--Mr. Bernard Brown."

"Well, who is he? What does he do?"

Helen shook her head.

"Really, I haven't the least idea," she declared. "I do not even know
what he is like. He has been there for two months, and we haven't seen
him yet. Papa called upon him, but he was out. He has not returned the
call! He--oh, bother Mr. Brown, here they come! I'm so glad!"

They both got up and looked. Rounding the corner of a long plantation,
about half a mile away, were several men in broken line, with their guns
under their arms; and a little way behind came three keepers, carrying
bags.

Rachel Kynaston looked at them fixedly.

"One, two, three, four, five," she counted. "One short. I don't see
Geoffrey."

Helen moved to her side, and shaded her eyes with her hand. On the
fourth finger a half hoop of diamonds, which had not been there three
months ago, was flashing in the sunlight.

"Neither do I," she said. "I wonder where he is."

Her tone was a little indifferent, considering that it was her _fiancé_
who was missing. But no one ever looked for much display of feeling from
Helen Thurwell, not even the man who called himself her lover. Indeed,
her unresponsiveness to his advances--a sort of delicate composure which
he was powerless in any way to break through--had been her strongest
attraction to Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, who was quite unused to anything of
the sort.

The men quickened their pace, and emptying their guns into the air, soon
came within hailing distance. On that particular day of the year there
was only one possible greeting, and Helen and her companion contented
themselves with a monosyllable.

"Well?"

Mr. Thurwell was in the front rank, and evidently in the best of
spirits. It was he who answered them.

"Capital sport!" he declared heartily. "Birds a little wild, but strong,
and plenty of them. We've made a big bag for only three guns. Sir
Geoffrey was in capital form. Groves, open a bottle of Heidseck."

"Where is Geoffrey?" asked Rachel--his sister.

Mr. Thurwell looked round and discovered his absence for the first time.

"I really don't know," he answered, a little bewildered; "He was with us
a few minutes ago. What's become of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, Heggs?" he
asked, turning round to one of the gamekeepers.

"He left us at the top of the Black Copse, sir," the man answered. "He
was coming round by the other side--shot a woodcock there once, sir," he
said.

They glanced across the moor toward Falcon's Nest. There was no one in
sight.

"He's had plenty of time to get round," remarked Lord Lathon, throwing
down his gun. "Perhaps he's resting."

Mr. Thurwell shook his head.

"No; he wouldn't do that," he said. "He was as keen about getting here
as any of us. Hark! what was that?"

A faint sound was borne across the moor on the lazily stirring breeze.
Helen, whose hearing was very keen, started, and the little party
exchanged uneasy glances.

"It must have been a sea-gull," remarked Lord Lathon, who wanted his
luncheon very badly indeed. "We'd better not wait for him. He'll turn up
all right; Geoffrey always does. Come----"

He broke off suddenly in his speech and listened. There was another
sound, and this time there was no mistake about it. It was the low,
prolonged howl of a spaniel--a mournful sound which struck a strange
note in the afternoon stillness. There was breathless silence for a
moment amongst the little group, and the becoming glow died out of
Helen's cheek.

Rachel Kynaston was the first to recover herself.

"Had Sir Geoffrey a dog with him, Heggs?" she asked quickly.

"Yes, miss," the man answered. "His favorite spaniel had got unchained
somehow, and found us on the moor. I saw her at heel when he left us.
She was very quiet, and Sir Geoffrey wouldn't have her sent back."

"Then something has happened to him!" she cried. "That was Fido's howl."

"Has anyone heard his gun?" Mr. Thurwell asked.

There was no one left to answer him. They had all started across the
moor toward the black patch of spinneys around which Sir Geoffrey should
have come. Mr. Thurwell, forgetting his fatigue, hurried after them;
and Helen, after a moment's hesitation, followed too, some distance
behind.

She ran swiftly, but her dress caught often in the prickly gorse, and
she had to pause each time to release herself. Soon she found herself
alone, for the others had all turned the corner of the plantation before
she reached it. There was a strong, sickly sense of coming disaster
swelling in her heart, and her knees were tottering. Still she held on
her way bravely. A few yards before she reached the corner of the
plantation, she almost ran into the arms of Lord Lathon, who was
hurrying back to meet her. There was a ghastly shade in his pale face,
and his voice trembled.

"Miss Thurwell," he exclaimed in an agitated tone, "you must not come!
Let me take you back. Something--has happened! I am going to Rachel.
Come with me."

She drew away from him, and threw off his restraining arm.

"No; I must see for myself. Let me pass, please--at once."

He tried again to prevent her, but she eluded him. A few rapid steps and
she had gained the corner. There they all were in a little group
scarcely a dozen yards away. A mist floated before her eyes, but she
would see; she was determined that she would see this thing for herself.
She struggled on a few steps nearer. There was something lying on the
grass around which they were all gathered; something very much like a
human shape. Ah! she could see more plainly now. It was Sir
Geoffrey--Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. He was lying half on the grass and half
in the dry ditch. His white face was upturned to the cloudless sky; by
his side, and discoloring his brown tweed shooting coat, was a dark wet
stain. In the midst of it something bright was flashing in the sunlight.

She stood still, rooted to the spot with a great horror. Her pulses had
ceased to beat. The warm summer day seemed suddenly to have closed in
around her. There was a singing in her ears, and she found herself
battling hard with a deadly faintness. Yet she found words.

"Has he--shot himself?" she cried. "Is it an accident?"

Her father turned round with a little cry, and hastened to her side.

"Helen!" he gasped. "You should not be here! Come away, child! I sent
Lathon----"

"I will know--what it is. Is it an accident? Is he--dead?"

He shook his head. The healthy sunburnt tan had left his face, and he
was white to the lips.

"He has been murdered!" he faltered. "Foully, brutally murdered!"




CHAPTER III

MR. BERNARD BROWN


Murder is generally associated in one's mind with darkness, the still
hours of night, and bestiality. It is the outcome of the fierce animal
lust for blood, provoked by low passions working in low minds. De
Quincey's brilliant attempt to elevate it to a place among the fine arts
has only enriched its horrors as an abstract idea. Even detached from
its usual environment of darkness, and ignorance, and vice, it is an
ugly thing.

But here was something quite different. Such a tragedy as this which had
just occurred was possessed of a peculiar hideousness of its own. It
seemed to have completely laid hold of the little group of men gathered
round the body of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston; to have bereft them of all
reasoning power and thought, to have numbed even their limbs and
physical instincts. It was only a few minutes ago since they had left
him, careless and debonair, with his thoughts intent upon the business,
or rather the sport, of the hour. His laugh had been the loudest, his
enjoyment the keenest, and his gun the most deadly of them all. But now
he lay there cold and lifeless, with his heart's blood staining the
green turf, and his sightless eyes dull and glazed. It was an awful
thing!

Physically, he had been the very model of an English country gentleman,
tall and powerful, with great broad shoulders, and strikingly upright
carriage, full of vigorous animal life, with the slight restlessness of
the constant traveler banished by his sudden passion for the girl who
had so lately promised to be his wife.

She drew a little nearer--they were all too much overcome by the shock
of this thing to prevent her--and stood with glazed eyes looking down
upon him. Everything, even the minutest article of his dress, seemed to
appeal to her with a strange vividness. She found herself even studying
the large check of his shooting-coat and the stockings which she had
once laughingly admired, and which he had ever since worn. Her eyes
rested upon the sprig of heliotrope which, with her own fingers, she had
arranged in his button hole, as they had strolled down the garden
together just before the start; and the faint perfume which reached her
where she stood, helped her to realize that she was in the thrall of no
nightmare, but that this thing had really happened. She had never loved
him, she had never even pretended to love him, and it was less any sense
of personal loss than the hideous sin of it which swept in upon her as
she stood there looking down upon him. She recognized, as she could
never have done had he been personally dear to her, the ethical horror
of the thing. The faintness which had almost numbed her senses passed
away. In that swift battle of many sensations it was anger which
survived.

Her voice first broke the deep, awed stillness.

"Who has done this?" she cried, pointing downward.

Her words were like a sudden awakening to them all. They had been
standing like figures in a silent tableau, stricken dumb and motionless.
Now there was a stir. The fire in her tone had dissolved their torpor.
She was standing on rising ground a little above the rest of them, and
her attitude, together with the gesture by which she enforced her words,
was full of intense dramatic force. The slim undulating beauty of her
form was enhanced by the slight disorder of her dress, and her red-gold
hair--she had lost her hat--shone and glistened in the sunlight till
every thread was shining like burnished gold. They themselves were in
the shade of the dark pine trees, and she standing upon the margin of
the moor with the warm sunlight glowing around her, seemed like a being
of another world. Afterwards when they recalled that scene--and there
was no one there who ever forgot it--they could scarcely tell which
seemed the most terrible part to them--the lifeless body of the murdered
man with the terrible writing of death in his white face, or the tragic
figure of Helen Thurwell, the squire's cold, graceful daughter, with her
placid features and whole being suddenly transformed with this wave of
passion.

Mr. Thurwell drew a few steps backward, and his keen gray eyes swept the
open country round.

"There was no one in sight when we got here; but the blackguard can't be
far away!" he said. "Heggs, and you, Smith, and you, Cook, go through
the spinney as fast as you can, one in the middle and one on each side,
mind! I will go up Falcon's Hill and look round. Jem, run to Mallory as
fast as you can for Dr. Holmes, and on to the police station. Quick! all
of you. There's not a moment to lose!"

The desire for action was as strong in them now as had been their former
torpor. Mr. Thurwell and his daughter were alone in less than a minute.

"Helen, I forgot you!" he exclaimed. "I can't leave you alone, and some
one must stay here. Where is Lathon?"

"He has gone on to take Rachel home," she answered. "I will stay here. I
am not afraid. Quick! you can see for miles from the top of the hill and
you have your field glass. Oh, do go. Go!"

He hesitated, but she was evidently very much in earnest.

"I will just climb the hill and hurry down again," he said. "I cannot
leave you here for more than a few minutes. If only we had more men with
us!"

He turned away, and walked swiftly across the moor toward the hill. For
a minute or two she stood watching his departing figure. Then she turned
round with a shudder and buried her face in her clasped hands. Her
appearance was less hard now and more natural, for a sickly sense of
horror at the sight of his body was commencing to assert itself over
that first strange instinct of passionate anger. It was none the less
dreadful to her because in a certain way his removal was a release. She
had promised to marry this man, but there had been scarcely a moment
since when she had not found herself regretting it. Now the sense of
freedom, which she could not altogether evade, was like torture to her.
She dropped on her knees by his side, and took his cold hand in hers. A
few hours ago she dared not have done this, knowing very well that at
the caressing touch of her fingers, she would have felt his strong arms
around her in a passionate and distasteful embrace. But there was no
fear of this now. She would never have to shrink away from him again. He
was dead!

The warm sunlight was glancing among the thickly growing pine trees in
the plantation by her side, casting quaint shadows on the cone-strewn
ground, across the little piece of broken paling in the bottom of the
dry ditch, and upon the mossy bank where his head was resting upon a
sweet-smelling tuft of heather. Most of all it flashed and glittered
upon the inch or two of steel which still lay buried in his side--a
curiously shaped little dagger which, although she strove to keep her
eyes away from it, seemed to have a sort of fascination for her. Every
time her eyes fell upon it, she turned away quickly with a little
shudder; but, nevertheless, she looked at it more than once--and she
remembered it.

The deep stillness of the autumn afternoon presently became almost
oppressive to her. There was the far-off, sweet low murmur of a placid
sea rolling in upon the base of the cliffs, the constant chirping of
ground insects, and the occasional scurrying of a rabbit through the
undergrowth. Once a great lean rat stole up from the ditch,
and--horrible--ran across his body; but at the sound of her startled
movement it paused, sat for a moment quite still, with its wide-open
black eyes blinking at her, and then to her inexpressible relief
scampered away. She was used to the country, with its intense unbroken
silence, but she had never felt it so hard to bear as on that afternoon.
Time became purely relative to her. As a matter of fact, she knew
afterwards that she could not have been alone more than five minutes. It
was like an eternity. She listened in vain for any human sound, even for
the far-off sweep of the scythe in the bracken, or the call of the
laborer to his horses. The tension of those moments was horrible.

She plucked a handful of bay leaves from the ditch, and strove, by
pressing them against her temple, to cool the fever in her blood. Then
she took up once more her position by his side, for horrible though the
sight of it was, his body seemed to have a sort of fascination for her,
and she could not wander far away from it. Once or twice she had looked
round, but there had been no human figure in sight, nor any sign of any.
But as she knelt there on the short turf, pressing the cool leaves to
her aching forehead, she was suddenly conscious of a new sensation.
Without hearing or seeing anything, she knew that some one was
approaching, and, stranger still, she was conscious of a distinct
reluctance to turn her head and see who it was. She heard no footsteps;
the soft stillness was broken by the sound of no human voice. She wished
to turn round, and yet she shrank from it. Something fresh was going to
happen--something was at hand to trouble her. She made a great effort,
and rose to her feet. Then, breaking through her conscious reluctance,
she turned round.

A single figure, at that moment on a slightly elevated ridge of the bare
moor, stood out against the sky. He was walking swiftly toward her, and
yet without any appearance of hurry; and from the direction in which he
was coming, it was evident that he had just left Falcon's Nest. This
fact and his being unknown to her sufficiently established his identity.
It was her father's tenant, Mr. Bernard Brown.




CHAPTER IV

AN EVIL END TO AN EVIL LIFE


They say that, as a rule, the most grotesquely unimportant trifles flash
into the mind and engage the last thoughts of a drowning man. Regarding
this in the light of an analogy, something of the same sort was now
happening to Helen Thurwell.

With her mind steeped in the horror of the last few hours, she yet found
that she was able afterwards to recall every slight particular with
regard to this man's appearance, and even his dress. She remembered the
firm evenness of his movements, swift, yet free from all ungraceful
haste; the extreme shabbiness of his coat, his ill-arranged neck-tie,
escaped from all restraint of collar and waistcoat, and flying loosely
behind him; his trousers very much turned up, and very much frayed, and
the almost singular height of his loose angular figure. His face,
too--she remembered that better than anything--with its pale hollow
cheeks and delicate outline, deep-set dark blue eyes, black eyebrows,
and long, unkempt hair, which would have looked very much the better for
a little trimming. A man utterly regardless of his appearance, untidy,
almost slovenly in his attire, yet with something about him different
from other men.

He was within a few yards of her when she saw a sudden change flash into
his face as their eyes met. He hesitated and a faint color came into his
cheeks, only to fade away again immediately, leaving them whiter than
ever. There was something in his intense gaze which at that time she had
no means of understanding. But it was over in a moment. He advanced
rapidly, and stood by her side.

She still watched him. She could see that his whole frame was vibrating
with strong internal emotion as he looked downward on the glazed eyes
and motionless form of the murdered man. His lips were pallid, and his
hands were tightly clasped together. There was one thing which seemed to
her very strange. He had not started, or exhibited the least sign of
surprise at the dreadful sight. It was almost as though he had known all
about it.

"This is a terrible thing," she said in a low tone, breaking the silence
between them for the first time. "You have heard of it, I suppose?"

He dropped down on one knee, and bent close over the dead man, feeling
his heart and pulse. In that position his face was hidden from her.

"No; I knew nothing. He has been killed--like this?"

"Yes."

"Did anyone see it? Is the man caught?"

"We know nothing," she answered. "We found him like this. There was no
one in sight."

He rose deliberately to his feet. Her heart was beating fast now, and
she looked searchingly into his face. It told her little. He was grave,
but perfectly composed.

"How is it that you are alone here?" he asked. "Does no one else know of
this?"

She moved her head in assent.

"Yes; but they have all gone to hunt for the murderer. If only you had
been looking from your window, you would have seen it all!"

He did not look as though he shared her regret. He was standing on the
other side of the dead man, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed
steadily upon the cold white face. He seemed to have forgotten her
presence.

"An evil end to an evil life," he said slowly to himself, and then he
added something which she did not hear.

"You knew him, then?"

He looked at her for a moment fixedly, and then down again into the dead
man's face.

"I have heard of him abroad," he said. "Sir Geoffrey Kynaston was a man
with a reputation."

"You will remember that he is dead," she said slowly, for the scorn in
his words troubled her.

He bowed his head, and was silent. Watching him closely, she could see
that he was far more deeply moved than appeared on the surface. His
teeth were set together, and there was a curious faint flush of color in
his livid cheeks. She followed his eyes, wondering. They were fixed, not
upon the dead man's face, but on the dagger which lay buried in his
heart, and the handle of which was still visible.

"That should be a clue," he remarked, breaking a short silence.

"Yes. I hope to God that they will find the wretch!" she answered
passionately.

She looked up at him as she spoke. His eyes were traveling over the
moor, and his hand was shading them.

"There is some one coming," he said. "We shall know very soon."

She followed his rapt gaze, and saw three men coming toward them. One
was her father, another the underkeeper, and the third was a stranger.




CHAPTER V

THE INNER ROOM AT THE FALCON'S NEST


Together they watched the approaching figures. Helen, standing a little
apart, had the better view.

"There is my father, and Heggs, and some one whom I do not know," she
announced quietly. "I wonder if it is a doctor."

He did not answer her. She glanced toward him, wondering at his silence
and rigid attitude. His eyes were still bent upon the three men, and
there was a hard, strained look in his white face. While she was
watching him she saw a spasm of what seemed almost like physical pain
pass across his countenance. Certainly this was no unfeeling man. In his
way he seemed as deeply moved as she herself was.

They were quite close now, and she had a good view of the stranger. He
did not look, by any means, a person to be afraid of. In all her life
she thought she had never seen such a handsome old gentleman--and
gentleman he most assuredly was. His hair was quite white, and his
beard--carefully trimmed and pointed after the fashion of one of
Velasquez' pictures--was of the same color. Yet his walk was upright and
vigorous, and he carried himself with dignity. His high forehead, and
rather long, oval face, with its delicate, clearly cut features, had at
once the stamp of intellect and benevolence, and, as though preserved by
careful and refined living, had still much of the freshness of youth.
He was dressed in a rough tweed walking-suit, with gaiters and thick
boots, and carried under his arm a somewhat ponderous book, and a
botanical specimen case. Helen felt a woman's instinctive liking for him
before she had even heard him speak.

"Have you thought us long, Helen?" her father exclaimed anxiously. "We
haven't seen anything of the scoundrel, but Heggs was fortunate enough
to meet Sir Allan Beaumerville on the moor, and he very kindly offered
to return."

Sir Allan was on his knees by the body before Mr. Thurwell had finished
his sentence. They all watched his brief examination.

"Poor fellow! poor fellow!" he exclaimed in a shocked tone. "That
wretched thing"--lightly touching the handle of the dagger--"is clean
through his heart. It was a strong, cruel arm that drove that home.
Nothing can be done, of course. He must have died within a few seconds!"
He rose from his knees and looked around. "What is to be done with the
body?" he asked. "It must be removed somewhere. Sir Geoffrey Kynaston,
did you say it was? Dear me! dear me! I knew his sister quite well."

"She is not far away," Mr. Thurwell said. "She and my daughter were
awaiting luncheon for us on the cliffs yonder, when this horrible thing
occurred. Lathon went back to look for her. We were afraid that she
might follow us here. She was very fond of her brother, and he had only
just returned home after many years' traveling."

"Poor fellow!" Sir Allan said softly. "But about moving him. Who lives
in that queer-looking place yonder?"

Mr. Thurwell, who knew his tenant by sight, although they had never
spoken, looked at him and hesitated. Sir Allan did the same.

"That is where I live," Mr. Brown said slowly. "If Mr. Thurwell thinks
well, let him be taken there."

He spoke without looking round or addressing any one in particular. His
back was turned upon the celebrated physician.

"The nearest place would be best, in a case like this," Sir Allan
remarked. "Have you sent for any help?"

"Some of my men are coming across the moor there," Mr. Thurwell said,
pointing them out. "They can take a gate off the hinges to carry him on."

A little troop of awed servants, whom Lord Lathon had sent down from the
Court, together with some farm laborers whom they had picked up on the
way, were soon on the spot.

Mr. Thurwell gave some brief directions, and in a few minutes the high
five-barred gate, with "private" painted across it in white letters, was
taken from its hinges, and the body carefully laid upon it. Then Mr.
Thurwell turned resolutely to his daughter.

"Helen, you must go home now," he said firmly. "Jackson will take you.
We can spare him easily."

She shook her head.

"I would rather stay," she said quietly. "I shall not faint, or do
anything stupid, I promise you."

Sir Allan Beaumerville looked at her curiously. It was a strange thing
to him, notwithstanding his wide experience, to find a girl of her years
so little outwardly moved by so terrible a tragedy. Mr. Thurwell, too,
was surprised. He knew that she had never loved Sir Geoffrey Kynaston,
but, nevertheless, he had expected her to show more emotion than this,
if only for the horror of it all. And yet, looking at her more closely,
he began to understand--to realize that her calmness was only attained
by a strenuous repression of feeling, and that underneath it all was
something very different. Though her voice was firm, her cheeks were
deadly pale, and there was a peculiar tightening of the lips and light
in her eyes which puzzled him. Her expression seemed to speak less of
passive grief, than of some active determination--some strong desire.
She had all the appearance of a woman who was bracing herself up for
some ordeal, nerving herself with all the stimulus of a firm will to
triumph over her natural feelings, and follow out a difficult purpose.
Mr. Thurwell scarcely recognized his own daughter. She was no longer a
somewhat languid, beautiful girl, looking out upon the world with a sort
of petulant indifference--petulant, because, with all the high
aspirations of a somewhat romantic disposition, she could see nothing in
it to interest her. All that had passed away. The warm breath of some
awakening force in her nature seemed to have swept before it all her
languor, and all her petulance. They were gone, and in their place was a
certain air of reserve and thoughtful strength which seems always to
cling to those men and women who face the world with a definite purpose
before them. Mr. Thurwell knitted his brows, and had nothing to say.

A sad little procession was formed, and started slowly for the cottage
on the cliff side, the four stalwart men stooping beneath their heavy
burden, and somehow falling into the measured steady tramp common to
corpse bearers. None of them ever forgot that walk. Slowly they wound
their way around many brilliant patches of deep yellow gorse and purple
heather, and the warm sunlight glancing across the moor and glittering
away over the water threw a strange glow upon the still, cold face of
their ghastly burden. A soft breeze sprung from the sea, herald of the
advancing eventide, following the drowsy languor of the perfect autumnal
day. The faintly stirred air was full of its quickening exhilaration,
but it found no human response in their heavy hearts. Solemn thoughts
and silence came over all of them. Scarcely a word was spoken on the way
to their destination.

By some chance, or at least it seemed like chance, Helen found herself a
few steps behind the others, with Mr. Brown by her side. They, too,
walked along in unbroken silence. His eyes were steadily fixed upon the
ground, hers were wandering idly across the sparkling blue sea with its
foam-crested furrows to the horizon. Whatever her thoughts were, they
had changed her expression for the time; to a certain extent its late
definiteness was gone, and a dreamy, refined abstraction had taken its
place.

"If I had to die," she said, half to herself, "I would choose to die on
such a day as this."

He raised his dark eyes and looked at her.

"Why?"

"I scarcely know," she said hesitatingly. "And yet, in my own mind, I
do. It is so beautiful! It seems to give one a sense of peace and
hope--I cannot explain it. It is the sort of thing one feels, and feels
only."

He looked down again.

"I know what you mean. You would fear annihilation less?"

"Annihilation! Is that your creed?"

"Sometimes, if it were not for scenes like this, I might believe it
possible," he answered slowly. "As it is, I do not! The exquisite beauty
of the earth denies it! I pin my faith to a great analogy. The natural
world is a reflex of the spiritual, and in the natural world there is no
annihilation. Nothing can ever die. Nor can our souls ever die."

She looked at him keenly. The dreamy speculation had gone from her eyes.
The fire of her former purpose had returned.

"It is well to feel like that. You would rather be Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston, then, than his murderer, even now?"

He raised his hand quickly to his forehead, as though in pain. It was
gone in an instant, but she had been watching.

"Yes, I would," he answered fervently. "Sir Geoffrey was a wicked man,
but he may have repented. He had his opportunities."

"How do you know that he was wicked?" she asked quickly.

"I heard of him abroad--many years ago. Will you excuse me, Miss
Thurwell. I must hurry on and open the door for them."

He walked swiftly on, leaving her alone. When they reached their
destination, he was there waiting for them.

It was a strangely situated and strangely built abode. A long low
building of deep yellow stone, half hidden by various creepers, and
inaccessible on the side from which they approached it save to foot
passengers. From the bottom of the winding path which they had to climb
it seemed to hang almost sheer over the cliff side. A thickly growing
patch of stunted pine trees rising abruptly in the background literally
overtopped the tiled roof. From the summit of this plantation to the sea
was one abrupt precipice, thickly overgrown for the first hundred feet
or so by pine trees growing out from the side of the cliff in strange
huddled fashion, the haunt of sea birds and a few daring rabbits.

They passed in at the hand-gate, and toiled up the steep path, threading
their way among a wilderness of overgrown box shrubs, long dank grass
and strange weeds. Helen, with her eyes fixed upon an open window on the
right wing of the cottage, fell a little behind. The others came to a
halt before the open door.

Mr. Brown met them and preceded them along the passage.

"I think he had better be carried in here," he said, motioning toward
the room on the left-hand side, the side remote from the sea. "I have
brought a sofa."

They stood on the threshold and looked in. The room was absolutely
unfurnished, and the shutters had only just been thrown back, letting in
long level gleams of sunlight, which fell upon the bare floor and damp
walls, from which the discolored paper was commencing to peel off. Long
cobwebs hung from the ceiling, waving slowly backward and forward in the
unaccustomed draught. Helen Thurwell, who had just joined the little
group, with a curious light in her eyes, and a deep spot of color in her
pale cheeks, looked around and shivered. Mr. Thurwell, with a landlord's
instinct, began to wonder who was at fault, his agent or his tenant.

The four men tramped in, their footsteps sounding dreary and mournful on
the uncarpeted floor, and awakening strange rumbling echoes. Helen
looked at them for a moment, all clustered round the single sofa which
stood in the middle of the apartment, and then stepped softly back again
into the hall. She looked around her eagerly, yet with no idle
curiosity.

The whole interior of the place appeared bare and comfortless. There
were no rugs in the hall, no carpet on the stairs, nor a single sign of
habitation. Nor was there any servant about. She looked again into the
room out of which she had just stepped. They were preparing to lift the
body from the gate, which they had laid upon the floor, on to the sofa.
She stepped back into the hall, and listened. There was no sound from
any other part of the house. They were all too deeply engrossed to think
of her. It was her chance!

She was very pale, and very resolute. The look which had come into her
face for so short a time ago had had its meaning. The time for action
had come. It was sooner than she had expected; but she was ready.

With swift noiseless step she crossed the hall and softly turned the
handle of the door on the opposite side. It opened at once, and she
stepped inside. She listened again. As yet she was undetected. She drew
a little breath and glanced searchingly around her.

This room, too, was unfurnished, save that the floor was covered with
cases full of books. Straight in front of her was another door, leading,
as she knew, into a smaller apartment. Dare she go forward? She listened
for a moment. There was no sound save the low muffled voices of the men
who were lifting Sir Geoffrey on to the couch. Supposing she were
discovered here? At the most, she would be suspected of a vulgar
curiosity. It all flashed through her mind in a moment, and her decision
was taken. Gathering her skirts in her hand lest they should catch
against the edges of the cases, she threaded her way through them, and
stood before the door of the inner room. She tried the handle. It
yielded easily to her touch. She had gone too far to draw back now. In a
moment she had passed the threshold, and the whole contents of the
little room were disclosed to her.

Of all the senses, the eyes seem to carry the most lasting impression to
the brain. One eager glance around, and the whole seemed photographed
into her memory. A little strip of faded carpet only half covering the
floor, piles upon piles of books, and a small table littered all over
with foolscap, a few fine prints and etchings roughly hung upon the
walls, a group of exquisite statuettes all huddled together, and an oak
cabinet strongly bound with brass clasps--they were the things she
chiefly remembered. The whole room was in the wildest disorder, as
though the contents had been just shot inside and left to arrange
themselves.

After that single cursory glance, Helen looked no more around her. Her
whole attention was riveted upon the window exactly opposite. As she had
seen from the outside, it was wide open, and several branches of a shrub
growing up against it were broken off. From the leaves of the same shrub
several drops of water were hanging, and on the ground below was a wet
patch. She looked back into the room again. In one corner was an empty
basin, and by its side, rolled up tightly, was a rough towel.

Before she could make any movement in that direction, another thing
struck her. On a certain spot close by the side of the basin a pile of
books was arranged in disorderly fashion enough, but with some little
method. An idea flashed in upon her. They were arranged in that manner
to hide something upon the floor.

She made a quick motion forward. Then she stopped short, and lifted her
eyes to the door. Her cheeks burned, and her heart beat fast. Sir Allan
Beaumerville was standing on the threshold, looking at her in mute
amazement, and over his shoulder was the pale stern face of Mr. Brown.




CHAPTER VI

A TERRIBLE ENEMY


Afterwards Helen looked back upon those few moments as the most
uncomfortable of her life. She was caught in the very act of a most
unwarrantable and even immodest intrusion, which in the eyes of these
two men could only appear like the attempted gratification of a
reprehensible and vulgar curiosity. She made one spasmodic attempt to
kindle her suspicions into a definite accusation, to stand upon her
dignity, and demand an explanation of what she had seen. But she failed
utterly. Directly she tried to clothe the shreds of this idea of hers
with words, and to express them, she seemed to vividly realize the
almost ludicrous improbability of the whole thing. One glance into the
pale, dignified face which was bent upon her full of unconcerned
surprise--and hateful to her with a gentle shade of pity at her
confusion already creeping into it--and her attempt collapsed. She felt
her cheeks burn with shame, and her eyes drooped before his steady gaze.
She began to long feverishly for something to dissolve the situation.
The silence was dreadful to her, but she could think of nothing to say.
It was Mr. Brown, at last, who spoke.

"I was afraid you would not be able to find your way, Miss Thurwell," he
said quietly. "I must apologize for asking you to come into such a den.
The small engraving on the wall is the proof 'Bartolozzi' I spoke to you
about. The head is perfect, is it not? Some day I should like to show
you my 'Guido.' I am afraid, just now, I could not expect you to
appreciate them."

She murmured something--what, she scarcely knew, and he did not appear
to hear. The cold surprise disappeared from Sir Allan's face. Evidently
he believed in Mr. Brown's mercifully offered explanation of her
presence here.

"What! are you an enthusiast, Miss Thurwell?" he exclaimed. "Well, well,
I was worse myself once in my younger days, before my profession made a
slave of me. Surely, that is a genuine 'Velasquez,' Mr. Brown. Upon my
word! Fancy coming across such a treasure here!"

He picked his way across the disorderly chamber, and, adjusting his
eyeglass, stood looking at the picture. Helen made a hasty movement
towards the door, and Mr. Brown followed her into the adjoining room.

"If I had known that I was to be honored by a visit from a lady," he
said, "I would have endeavored----"

She turned suddenly round upon him with flaming cheeks.

"Don't," she interrupted, almost beseechingly. "Mr. Brown, you were very
good to me just then. Thank you! I was most abominably rude to go into
that room without your permission."

Her eyes were fixed upon the floor, and her distress was evident. It was
clear that she felt her position acutely.

"Pray say no more about it," he begged earnestly. "It isn't worth a
second thought."

She stopped with her back to one of the great cases filled with books,
and hesitated. Should she confess to him frankly why she had gone
there, and ask his pardon for such a wild thought? She raised her eyes
slowly, and looked at him. Of course it was absurd. She has been out of
her mind, she knew that now; and yet----

She looked at him more closely still. He had not seemed in any way
disturbed when they had found her in that room--only a little surprised
and bewildered. And yet, after all, supposing his composed demeanor had
been only assumed. He was certainly very pale, very pale indeed, and
there was a slight twitching of his hands which was out of character
with his absolute impassiveness. Supposing it should be a forced
composure. He looked like a man capable of exercising a strong control
over his feelings. Supposing it should be so. Was there not, after all,
just a chance that her former suspicions were correct?

The action of the mind is instantaneous. All these thoughts and doubts
merely flashed through it, and they left her very confused and
undecided. Her sense of gratitude towards him for shielding her before
Sir Allan Beaumerville, and the intuitive sympathy of her nature with
the delicacy and tact which he had shown in his manner of doing so, were
on the whole stronger than her shadowy suspicions. And yet these latter
had just sufficient strength to check the impulse of generosity which
prompted her to confess everything to him. She did not tell him why she
had started on the quest which had come to such an ignominious
conclusion. She offered him no explanation whatever.

"It was very good of you," she repeated. "I did not deserve it at all.
And now I must go and look for my father."

Mr. Thurwell was waiting in the hall, somewhat surprised at her
absence. But he asked no questions. His thoughts were too full of the
terrible thing which had happened to his friend and neighbor--and withal
his daughter's betrothed.

They walked back across the moor together, saying very little, for there
was only one possible subject for conversation, and both of them shrank
a little from speaking about it. But when they were more than half-way
to their destination, she asked a question.

"Nothing has been discovered, I suppose, of the murderer?"

Her father shook his head.

"Nothing. The dagger is our only clue as yet--except this."

He drew a folded piece of paper from his pocket, and touched it lightly
with his finger.

"What is it? May I see?"

He handed it to her at once.

"It was in his pocket," he said. "I am keeping it to hand over to the
proper authorities. Mr. Brown offered to take care of it, but I felt
that, as a magistrate, I was in a measure responsible for everything in
the shape of a clue, so I brought it away with me. Read it."

She opened the half sheet of notepaper and glanced down it. It was
written in a queer cramped handwriting--evidently disguised.

"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, you are doing a very rash and foolish thing in
coming back to your own country, and thereby publishing your whereabouts
to the world. Have you forgotten what hangs over you--or can you be so
mad as to think that he has forgiven? Read this as a warning; and if
life is in any way dear to you, go back to that hiding which alone has
kept you safe for so many years. Do not hesitate or delay for one
half-hour--one minute may be too long. If, after reading this, you
linger in England, and disregard my warning, take care that you look
into your life and hold yourself prepared to die."

She gave it back to him. There was some one, then, whom he had injured
very deeply. It was like an echo from that stormy past of which many
people had spoken.

"He had an enemy," she murmured, passing her arm through her father's.

"It seems so," he answered. "A terrible enemy."




CHAPTER VII

HELEN THURWELL'S SUSPICIONS


On a certain September day, about six weeks after the funeral of Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston, Mr. Brown was spending what appeared to be a very
pleasant afternoon. He was lying stretched out at full length on a dry
mossy bank, with a volume of Shelley in his hand, and a case of thick
Egyptian cigarettes by his side. In his ears was the whispering of the
faint breeze amongst the pines, and the soft murmuring of the sea,
hundreds of feet below, seen like a brilliant piece of patchwork through
the fluttering leaves and dark tree-trunks which surrounded him. There
was nothing to disturb the sweet silence of the drowsy afternoon. It was
a charming spot which he had chosen, and he was quite alone. People,
amongst whom for the last few weeks his name had become a fruitful
source of conversation, were already beginning to fancy him flying
across the country in an express train, or loitering on the docks at
Liverpool, waiting for an Atlantic liner, or sitting at home trembling
and fearful, struggling to hide his guilt beneath a calm exterior. But,
as a matter of fact, he was doing none of these things. The harsh
excitement of the busy gossips, and their stern judgment, troubled him
nothing, for he was unconscious of them. He was away in thoughtland,
dreaming of a fair, proud young face seen first on the rude pavement of
an old Italian town, where its sweet composed freshness, amongst a pile
of magnificent ruins, had captivated his artist's sense almost before it
had touched his man's heart. He thought of the narrow street shutting in
the sky till, looking upwards, it seemed like one deep band of glorious
blue--of the ruined grey palace, with still some traces left of its
former stately grace, and of the fountain playing in the moss-encrusted
courtyard, gleaming like silver in the sunlight as it rose and fell into
the worn stone basin. Here, where the very air seemed full of the
records of a magnificent decay, everything seemed to form a fitting
framework in his memory for that one face. It had been an artist's
dream--or had it been the man's? Never the latter; he told himself
sadly. Such were not for him. It had been better far that he had never
seen her again. Before, the memory had been a very sweet one, stored
away in his mind amongst all the great and beautiful things he had seen
in his wanderings, always with a dainty freshness clinging to it, as
though it had lain carefully preserved in perfume and spices. Was this
new joy, of having seen and spoken to her, a better thing? this vague
unsettlement of his being, which played havoc with his thoughts, and
stirred up a whole host of strange new feelings in his heart? Surely
not! It seemed to him like the breathing of warm new life into what had
been a crystallized emotion--the humanizing of something spiritual.
Surely, for him, it had better have remained in that first stage.

There was the sound of a light footstep on the springy turf. He started
to his feet. A girl, tall and slim, was coming swiftly along the winding
path through the plantation towards him. He knew at once that it was
Helen Thurwell.

They were both equally surprised. As she looked up and saw him standing
upright in the narrow path, tall, thin, and unnaturally pale, with the
cigarette still burning between his fingers, and his book in his other
hand, she felt strangely stirred. Neither was he unmoved by her sudden
appearance, for though not a feature twitched, not a single gleam of
color relieved the still pallor of his face, there was a new light in
his dry brilliant eyes. But there was a vast difference between the
thoughts which flashed into his mind and those which filled hers. To him
there had stolen a sweetness into the summer's day surpassing the soft
sunlight, and a presence which moved every pulse in his being, and crept
like maddening fire through every sense. And to her, the sight of him
was simply a signal to brace up all her powers of perception; to watch
with suspicion every change of his features, and every tone of his
voice. Had he shown any emotion at the sight of her, she would have
attributed it to a guilty conscience, and would have made note of it in
her mind against him. And as he showed none--none, at least, that she
could detect--she put it down to the exercise of a strong will, and was
a little disappointed. For she had gone with the tide, and, womanlike,
having embraced an idea, it had already become as truth to her. Mr.
Brown was the man who had murdered Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. It was a
murderer with whom she was standing side by side among the glancing
shadows of the rustling pine groves. It must be so!

Yet she did not shrink from him. After her first hesitation at the sight
of a man's figure standing up amongst the dark tree-trunks, she had
walked steadily on until she had reached him. And he, without any change
of countenance, had simply stood and watched her. God! how beautiful
she was! The sunlight, gleaming through the tops of the trees in long
slanting rays, played like fire upon her red-gold hair; and the plain
black gown, which yielded easily to her graceful movements, seemed to
show every line of her supple yet delicate figure. She came nearer
still, so near that he could trace the faint blue veins in her forehead,
and once more recall the peculiar color of her eyes. Then he spoke to
her, raising his hand with a suddenly returning instinct of
conventionality for his cap; but he had risen without it, and was
standing before her bare-headed.

"I am a trespasser, I fear," he said hesitatingly.

She came to a standstill by his side, and shook her head slowly.

"No, this is common land. There is a footpath, you see, although it is
seldom used. It leads nowhere but to the Court."

"It is a favorite walk of mine," he said.

"Yes, it is pleasant. You bring a companion with you," she remarked,
pointing to his book.

He glanced down at it, and then up at her again.

"Yes; a faithful friend, too. We spend a good deal of time out of doors
together."

She read the title, and glanced up at him with a shade of interest in
her face.

"Shelley was a great poet, I suppose," she said; "but I do not
understand him."

For the first time his expression changed. A sudden light swept across
his face, and in a moment it was glowing with sensibility and
enthusiasm. She looked at him astonished. He stood before her revealed
in a new light, and, although unwillingly, she saw him with different
eyes.

"Not understand Shelley! Ah! but that is because you have not tried,
then. If you had, you would not only understand, but you would love
him."

She shook her head. In reality she felt that he was right, that her
languid attempts to read him by a drawing-room fire, with the _Queen_
beside her, and her mind very full of very little things, had not been
the spirit in which to approach a great poet. But, partly out of womanly
perversity, and partly out of curiosity to hear what he would say, she
chose to dissent from him.

"I find him too mystical," she said; "too incomprehensible."

He looked down at her from his superior height with kindling eyes. It
was odd how greatly she was surprised in him. She had imagined him to be
a cynic.

"Mystical!" he repeated. "Yes, in a certain sense, he is so; and it is
his greatest charm. But incomprehensible!--no. The essence of all
artistic poetry is in the perfect blending of matter and form, so that
the meaning creeps in upon us, but with a certain vagueness, a certain
indefiniteness, which reaches us more in the shade of a dreamy
consciousness than through the understanding. May I give you an
illustration? We stand upon a low plain and gaze upon a far-off range of
hills, from the sides of which thick clouds of white mist are hanging.
Gradually, as the sun rises higher in the heavens, they float away, and
we begin dimly to see through a clearer atmosphere the yellow corn
waving on the brown hillside, the smoke rising from the lonely
farmhouse, and, if we have patience and wait still, by-and-by we can
even distinguish the brilliant patches of wild flowers, the poppies and
the cornflowers in the golden fields, and the marsh marigolds in the
meadows at the foot of the hill. It is a question of waiting long
enough. So it is with what people call mysticism in poetry."

For the first time for many months a faint color had found its way into
his wan cheeks. His face was alight with interest, and his dark eyes
shone from their deep hollows with a new, soft fire. From that moment he
assumed a new place in her thoughts. She was loath to grant it to him,
but she had no alternative. Guilty or innocent, this man had something
in him which placed him high above other men in her estimation. She felt
stirred in a manner peculiarly grateful to her. It was as though every
chord of her being had been tuned into fresh harmony; as though the hand
of a magician had lifted the curtain which had enclosed her too narrow
life, and had shown her a new world glowing with beauty and promise.
She, too, wanted to feel like that; to taste the pleasures which this
man tasted, and to feel the enthusiasm which had lit up his pale
scholarly face.

At that moment her mind was too full to harbor those dark suspicions.
With a sudden effort she threw them overboard, trampled on them, scouted
them. Was this the face and the tongue of a murderer? Surely not!

"Thank you," she said softly. "I shall like to think over what you have
said. Now I must go."

Her words seemed to bring him back to his old self. He stooped down and
picked up his cap.

"You are going back to the Court?" he asked. "Let me walk to the end of
the plantation with you."

She assented silently, and they turned along the narrow path side by
side. Below them a bracken-covered cliff, studded with dwarfed trees,
ran down to the sea; and on their left hand the black firs, larger and
growing more thickly together, shut out completely the open moorland
beyond. He had walked there before beneath a sky of darker blue, and
when there had been only stray gleams of moonlight shining through the
cone-laden boughs to show him the rough path; and he had been there when
the tree-tops had bent beneath the shrieking wind, when the black clouds
had been flying over his head, and the roar of the angry sea had filled
the air with thunder. And these things had stirred him--one of nature's
sons--in many ways. Yet none of them had sent the warm blood coursing
through his veins like quicksilver, or had stolen through his senses
with such sweet heart-stirring impetuosity as did the presence of this
tall, fair girl, walking serenely by his side in thoughtful silence.
Once, when too near the edge of the cliff, she put her foot on a
fir-cone and stumbled, and the touch of her hand, as he caught hold of
it to steady her, sent a thrill of keen, exquisite pleasure through his
whole frame. He held it perhaps a little longer than necessary, and she
let him. For the moment she had lost the sense of physical touch, and
the firm grasp of his fingers upon hers seemed to her, in a certain
sense, only an analogy to the sudden sympathy which had sprung up
between them. Even when realization came, she drew her hand away gently,
without anger, without undue haste even. One glance into his face at
that moment would have told her everything; the whole horror of the
situation would have flashed in upon her, and she would have been
overwhelmed. But she did not look, and long before they had come to the
end of the path the passionate light had died out from his eyes, and had
left no trace behind. Once more he was only a plain, sad-looking man,
hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, with bent head and stooping frame.




CHAPTER VIII

DID YOU KILL SIR GEOFFREY KYNASTON?


At the extremity of the plantation they came to a small wicket-gate
opening out on to the cliff top. From here there was a path inland to
the Court, whilst Falcon's Nest was straight in front of them. At the
parting of the ways they hesitated, for it seemed necessary that they
should part.

And whilst they looked around a little dazzled, having just emerged from
the darkness of the plantation, they were conscious of a new glory in
the heavens. Far away across the moorland the autumn sun had shot its
last rays over the level plain and sea, and had sunk quietly to rest. It
was not one of Turner's wild sunsets. There were no banks of angry
clouds full of lurid coloring, flashing their glory all over the western
sky. But in a different fashion it was equally beautiful. Long level
streaks of transparent light, emerging from an ethereal green to a deep
orange, lay stretched across the heavens, and a faint golden haze rising
from the land seemed to mingle with them, and form one harmonious mass
of coloring. And the air too was different--purer and rarer than the
enervating atmosphere of the drowsy afternoon. Together they stood and
became subject to the subtle charm of their environment. It seemed to
Helen Thurwell then that a change was creeping into her life. Impersonal
thought had attained a new strength and a new sweetness. But at that
time she had no knowledge of what it meant.

"See!" he exclaimed softly, pointly westward, "there is what Coleridge
made dear to us for ever, and Byron vainly scoffed at--the 'green light
that lingers in the west.'"

He repeated the stanza absently, and half to himself, with a sudden
oblivion of her presence--

    "It were a vain endeavor,
     Though I should gaze for ever
     On that green light that lingers in the west.
     I may not hope from outward forms to win
     The passion and the life whose fountains are within."

She watched him as his voice sank lower and lower, and though his eyes
were dry and bright, she saw a look of intense sadness sweep across his
face. Almost she felt inclined to let her natural sympathy escape
her--to let loose the kind and tender words which had leapt up from her
heart, and even trembled upon her lips. But a rush of consciousness
came, and she choked them back. Thus much she could do, but no more. She
could not at that moment look upon him as the man already suspected in
many quarters of a most brutal murder. For the instant, all was blotted
out. Had she tried she could not at that moment have revived her own
suspicions. They seemed to her like some grotesque fungi of the
mind--poisonous weeds to be crushed and destroyed. But the seed was
there.

"Those are the saddest lines I ever read," she said quietly. "It is a
true ode to dejection."

"And therefore they are very precious," he answered. "It is always sweet
to find your own emotions so exquisitely expressed. It is like a
spiritual narcotic."

"And yet--yet such poems encourage sadness, and that is morbid."

He shook his head.

"To be sad is not necessarily to be unhappy," he answered. "That sounds
like a paradox, but it isn't! You remember the 'gentle melancholy' which
Milton loved. There is something sweet in that, is there not?"

"But it is not like that with you," she said quickly.

He threw his arms up into the air with a sudden wild gesture of absolute
despair. She had touched a chord in his nature too roughly, and it had
not stood the strain. For a moment he had thrown off his mask. His white
face was ghastly, and his eyes were burning with a hopeless passion.

"My God! No!" he cried. "I am in the depths of hell, with never a gleam
of hope to lead me on. And the sin--the sin----"

He stopped suddenly, and his hands fell to his side. Slowly he turned
round and looked at her, half doubtfully, half fearfully. What had he
said? What had she heard? What did that look in her face mean--that look
of anguish, of fear, of horror? Why did she not speak, even though it
were to accuse him? Anything rather than that awful silence.

Twice she moved her white lips, but no sound came. The power of
articulation seemed gone. Then she caught him by the arm, and turned him
slowly round so that he faced his cottage. Only a few yards below them
was the spot where she and her sister-in-law that was to have been had
lolled in their low chairs by the luncheon-table, and had begun to feel
impatient for the coming of one who had never come. Further away still,
across the moor, was that dark circular patch of plantation behind which
Sir Geoffrey Kynaston had been found, and away upon the cliffs
overlooking the scene of the murder was Falcon's Nest.

The grasp on his arm tightened. Then she stretched out her other hand,
and with shaking fingers pointed downwards--pointed to the very spot
where the deed had been done. The memory of it all came back to her, and
hardened her set white face. She looked him straight in the eyes without
a quiver, and clenched her teeth.

"Did you--do that?" she asked in a firm, hard tone.

A curious mind slumber seemed to have crept over him. His eyes followed
her outstretched hand, and his lips idly repeated her words.

"Did you kill Sir Geoffrey Kynaston?"

Her words fell sharp and clear upon the still air. A tremor passed
through his whole frame, and the light of a sudden understanding flashed
across his face. He was his old self again, and more than his old self.

"You are joking, of course, Miss Thurwell?" he said quietly. "You do not
mean that seriously?"

She caught her breath, and looked at him. After all, it is only a step
from tragedy to commonplace. He was deathly pale, but calm and composed.
He had conquered himself just in time. Another moment, and she felt
assured that she would have known all. Never mind! it should come, she
told herself. The end was not yet.

"No; of course I did not mean it seriously," she repeated slowly. "Who
are those men coming up the hill? Can you see?"

He moved a little nearer to her, and looked downward. On the slope of
the hill were three men. She had recognized them already, and she
watched him steadily.

"Your father is one," he said quietly. "The other two are strangers to
me."

"Perhaps I can tell you something about them," she said, still watching
him intently. "One is the constable from Mallory, and the other is a
detective."

There was a slight hardening of his face, and she fancied that she saw
his under lip quiver for a moment. Had he shown any guilty fear, had he
shrunk back, or uttered a single moan, her sympathy would never have
been aroused. But as it was, she was a woman, and her face softened,
and the tears stood in her eyes. There was something almost grand
in the composure with which he was waiting for what seemed
inevitable--something of the magnificent resignation with which the
noblemen of France one by one took their place at the block, and the
simile was heightened by the slightly contemptuous, slightly defiant
poise of his finely shaped head. She saw him cast one lingering glance
around at the still sea, with its far-off motionless sails; at the clear
sky, from which the brilliancy of coloring was fading away, and at the
long sweep of moorland with its brilliant patches of heather and gorse,
now slightly blurred by the mists rising from the earth. It was as
though he were saying a last farewell to things which he had loved, and
which he would see no more--and it had a strange effect upon her. The
memory of that hideous crime left her. She could think only of the
abstract pathos of the present situation, and she felt very miserable.
It was wrong, unnatural of her; but at that moment, if she could have
helped him to escape, she would have done her best in the face of them
all.

They were almost at hand now, and she lifted her eyes, in which the
tears were fast gathering. She thought nothing of her own situation--of
their finding her alone with the murderer. With characteristic
unselfishness she thought only of him.

She met her father's surprised gaze with indifference. She had a sort of
feeling that nothing mattered much. What was going to happen eclipsed
everything else.

And so it did. Her apathy changed in a moment to amazement, and her
heart stood still. Her father had raised his hat to Mr. Brown with even
more than the usual courtesy of his salute, and the two officials had
saluted in the most correct fashion.

"Mr. Brown," he said, "we have all come in search of you to tender our
most sincere apologies for an unfortunate mistake. Police Constable
Chopping here is mostly to blame, and next to him, I am."

She glanced at the man by her side. His face was absolutely
impenetrable. It showed no signs of the relief which was creeping into
hers. His composure was simply wonderful.

"The fact is," her father continued, "Chopping came to see me with a
long tale and a certain request which, under the circumstances--which I
will explain to you afterwards--I could not as a magistrate refuse. I
was compelled to sign a search warrant for him to go over Falcon's Nest.
It was against my inclination, and a most unpleasant duty for me to
perform. But I considered it my duty, and I attended there myself in
order that it might not be abused. I hope to have your forgiveness for
the liberty which we were compelled to take."

There was still no change in Mr. Brown's face, but, standing close to
him, she heard him take a quick deep breath. Curiously enough, it was a
relief to her to hear it. Such great self-restraint was almost
unnatural.

"You only did your duty, Mr. Thurwell," he answered quietly. "You owe me
no apology."

"I am very glad that you see it in that light," Mr. Thurwell said, "very
glad indeed. But I have a further confession to make."

He drew Mr. Brown a little on one side, out of hearing of the others,
but nearer to her than any of them, and commenced talking earnestly to
him. This time she could tell that he was disturbed and uneasy, but she
could not follow connectedly all her father said. Only a few stray words
reached her.

"Very sorry indeed.... Quite accidental.... Will preserve ...
discovery."

"Then I may rely upon you to keep this absolutely to yourself?" she
heard Mr. Brown say earnestly.

"I give you my word, sir!" her father answered. Then they turned round,
and she saw that Mr. Brown looked distinctly annoyed.

"However did you come here, Helen?" her father asked, suddenly
remembering her presence.

"I came for a walk, and met Mr. Brown in the plantation," she explained.

"Well, since you are here," he remarked good humoredly, "you must help
me to induce Mr. Brown to come back to the Court. So far, we have been
wretched neighbors. We shall insist upon his dining with us, just to
show that there's no ill-feeling," he added, smiling. "Now, no excuses."

"Thank you, but I never go out," Mr. Brown answered. "I have not even
any clothes here. So----"

"Please come, Mr. Brown," she said softly.

He flashed a sudden glance at her from his dark eyes, which brought the
color streaming into her cheeks. Fortunately, twilight was commencing to
fall, and she was standing a little back in the shadow of the
plantation.

"If Miss Thurwell wishes it," he said, in a tone of a man who offers
himself to lead a forlorn hope, "it is settled. I will come."




CHAPTER IX

MR. BROWN DINES AT THE COURT


Both to him and to her there was something strangely unreal in the
little banquet to which they three--Mr. Thurwell, his daughter, and his
tenant--sat down that evening. For many months afterwards, until,
indeed, after the culmination of the tragedy in which she was the
principal moving figure, Helen Thurwell looked back upon that night with
strangely mingled feelings. It was the dawn of a new era in her
existence, a fact which she never doubted, although she struggled vainly
against it. And to him it was like a sudden transition into fairyland.
The long years of lonely life and rigorous asceticism through which he
had passed had been a period of no ordinary self-denial. Instinctively
and with his whole nature the man was an artist. His homely fare,
ill-cooked and ill-served among dreary surroundings, had for long been a
horror to him. Whatever his reasons for such absolute isolation had
been, they had sprung from no actual delight in rough living or
non-appreciation of the refinements of civilized society. He realized to
the full extent the sybaritic pleasures which now surrounded him. The
white tablecloth flaming with daintily modeled plate and cut glass, the
brilliant coloring of the scarlet and yellow flowers, the aromatic
perfume of the chrysanthemums mingling with the faint scent of exotics,
the luscious fruits, and the softly shaded table lights which threw a
rich glow over the lovely face opposite to him--all these things had
their own peculiar effect in the shape of a certain subtle exhilaration
which was not slow to show itself. With scarcely an effort he threw off
the old mask of reserve, with all the little awkwardnesses and
gaucheries which it had entailed, and appeared as the shadow of the self
of former days--a cultured, polished man of the world. Even Mr.
Thurwell's good breeding was scarcely sufficient to conceal his surprise
at the metamorphosis. Never before, at his table, had there been such a
brilliant flow of conversation--conversation which had all the rare art
of appearing general, whereas it was indeed nothing less than a
monologue on the part of this strange guest. He had traveled far, he had
seen great things in many countries, and he had known great men; and he
talked lightly about them all, with the keen appreciation of the artist,
and the graceful diction of the scholar. He was a man who had lived in
the world--every little action and turn of speech denoted it. The French
dishes--Mr. Thurwell was proud of his chef--were no secret to him, and
he knew all about the vintages of the wines he was drinking. In the
whole course of his experience, Mr. Thurwell had never entertained such
a guest as this, and it was a sore trial to his good manners to abstain
from any astonished comment on the lonely life his tenant had been
lately leading.

And Helen sat listening to it all with a sort of dreamy content stealing
over her, out of which she was stirred every now and then into
enthusiasm by some brilliant criticism or fresh turn to the
conversation. At such times her gray luminous eyes, with their strange
dash of foreign color, would light up and flash their sympathetic
approval across the few feet of tablecloth blazing with many-colored
flowers and fruits and glittering silver. And he grew to look for this,
and to receive it with an answering glance from his own dark eyes, full
of a strange light and power. She, watching him more keenly than her
father could, was conscious of something that altogether escaped him, a
sort of undercurrent of suppressed excitement which never rose to the
surface, and revealed itself in none of his mannerisms or his tone. But
it was there, and she felt it--felt it more than ever when their eyes
met, and hers were forced to droop before the steady fire in his, which
more than once brought the faint color into her cheeks, and sent a new
sensation quivering through her being.

Dinner came to an end at last, but when she rose to go her father
protested. She generally sat with him while he smoked a cigarette and
drank his coffee. Why should she go away now? They were making no
stranger of Mr. Brown. And so she stayed.

Presently she found herself strolling round the room by his side,
showing him the pictures which hung lightly upon the high oak panels,
and the foreign bric-à-brac and Italian vases ranged along the wide
black ledge a little below. Her father had been obliged to go out and
speak to the head gamekeeper about some suspected poaching, and they
were alone.

"This is where I like to sit after dinner, when we are alone," she said;
and, lifting some heavy drooping curtains, she led him into a quaint
recess, almost as large as an ordinary room. A shaded lamp was burning
on a small Burmese table, and the faint fragrance of burning pine logs
stole up from the open hearth and floated about on the air, already
slightly perfumed with the odor of chrysanthemums clustered together in
quaint blue china bowls, little patches of gold-and-white coloring,
where everything else was somber and subdued. She sank into a low basket
chair before the fire, and, obeying her gesture, he seated himself
opposite to her.

"Now, talk to me, please," she said, half hiding her face with a feather
screen to protect it from the fire. "No commonplacisms, mind! I have
heard nothing else all my life, and I am weary of them. And, first,
please to light a cigarette. You will find some in the silver box by
your side. I like the perfume."

He did as he was bidden in silence. For a moment he watched the faint
blue smoke curl upward, stole a glance around him, and drew a long
breath as though he were drinking in to the full the artistic content of
the exquisite harmony and coloring, of his surroundings. Then he threw a
sudden, swift look upon the beautiful girl who was leaning back in her
low chair, with her fair head resting upon a cushion of deep olive
green, and her eyes fixed expectantly upon him. She was so near that, by
stretching out his hand, he could have seized her small shapely fingers;
so near, that he could even detect the delicate scent of lavender from
the lace of her black dinner gown. He took in every detail of her dainty
toilette from the single diamond which sparkled in the black velvet
around her throat, to the exquisitely slippered feet resting lightly
upon a tiny sage-green footstool, and just visible through the
gossamerlike draperies which bordered her skirts. In the world of her
sex she had become an era to him.




CHAPTER X

THE TRAGEDY OF RACHEL KYNASTON.


"I wonder whether you know that we have met before, Miss Thurwell?" he
asked her suddenly.

She moved her screen and looked at him.

"Surely not! Where?"

In a few words he reminded her of that quaint street in the old Italian
town, and of the half-ruined Palazzo di Vechi. He had seen her only for
a few minutes, but her face had never been forgotten; the way in which
he told her so, although he did not dwell upon it, told her also that it
had been no ordinary memory--that it had held a separate place in his
thoughts, as was indeed the case. Something in the manner of his
allusion to it showed her too, as though he had laid his whole mind
bare, with what interest, almost reverence, he had guarded it, and all
that it had meant to him; and as she listened a faint color stole into
her cheeks, with which the fire had nothing to do. She held her screen
the closer, and bent her head lest he should see it.

But there was no fear of that; indeed, he had no thought of the kind.
Leaving the dangerous ground behind him, he glided easily and naturally
into impersonal subjects. From Italy he began to talk of Florence, of
Pico della Mirandola, and the painters of the Renaissance. He strove his
utmost to interest her, and with his vast stock of acquired knowledge,
and his wonderfully artistic felicity of expression, he talked on and
on, wandering from country to country, and age to age, till it all
seemed to her like a strangely beautiful poem, full of yellow light and
gleaming shadow, sometimes passionate and intense, at others fantastic
and almost ethereal. Now and then she half closed her eyes, and his
words, and their meaning, the form and the substance, seemed to come to
her like richly blended music, stirring all her senses and quickening
all her dormant faculties. Then she opened them again, and looked
steadily upon the dark, wan face, with its sharp thin outline and
strange poetic abstraction. By chance he spoke for a moment of De
Quincey, and a shudder passed through all her being. Could such a face
as that be a murderer's face? The utter morbidness of such a thought
oppressed her only for a moment. If to-morrow it was to be her duty to
loathe this man, then it should be so; but those few minutes were too
precious to be disturbed by such thoughts. A new life was stirring
within her, and its first breath was too sweet to be crushed on the
threshold. After to-night--anything! But to-night she would have for her
own.

And so the time passed on, and the evening slipped away. Mr. Thurwell
had looked in, but seeing them so engrossed he had quietly retreated and
indulged in his usual nap. A dainty tea equipage had been brought in,
and she had roused herself to prepare it with her own hands, and it
seemed to him that this little touch of domesticity had been the one
thing wanted to make the picture perfect. There had been a momentary
silence then, and she had found herself asking him questions.

"Do you never feel that you would like to be back in the world again?"
she asked. "Yours is a very lonely life!"

"I do not often find it so," he answered, with his eyes fixed upon the
fire. "One's books, and the thoughts one gets from them, are sufficient
companions."

"But they are not human ones, and man is human. Do you think a lonely
life quite healthy--mentally healthy, I mean?"

"It should be the healthiest of all lives. It is only in theory that
solitude is morbid. If you knew more of the world, Miss Thurwell, you
would understand something of its cramping influence upon all
independent thought. I am not a pessimist--at least, I try not to be. I
do not wish to say that there is more badness than goodness in the
world, but there is certainly more littleness than greatness. To live in
any manner of society without imbibing a certain form of selfishness is
difficult; to do so and to taste the full sweetness of the life that
never dies is impossible!"

"But there must be some exceptions!" she said hesitatingly. "If people
care for one another, and care for the same things----"

He shook his head.

"People never do care for one another. Life is so full nowadays, there
are so many things to care about, that any concentration of the
affections is impossible. Love is the derision of the modern world. It
has not even the respect one pays to the antique."

For several minutes there was deep silence. A piece of burning wood
tumbled off from the log and fell upon the tiles, where it lay with its
delicate blue smoke curling upward into the room, laden with the pungent
odor of the pine. She moved her feet, and there was the slight rustling
of her skirts. No other sound broke the stillness which they both
remembered for long afterwards--the stillness before the storm.

Suddenly it came to an end. There was a sound of doors being quickly
opened and shut, voices in the hall, and then a light, firm tread,
crossing the main portion of the room. They both glanced toward the
curtains, and there was a second's expectancy. Then they were thrown on
one side with a hasty movement, and a tall dark woman in a long
traveling cloak swept through them.

She paused for a moment on the threshold, and her flashing black eyes
seemed to take in every detail of the little scene. She saw Helen, fair
and comely, with an added beauty in her soft, animated expression, and
she saw her companion, his face alight with intelligence and
sensibility, and with the glow of a new life in his brilliant eyes. The
perfume of the Egyptian tobacco which hung about the room, the tea tray,
their two chairs drawn up before the fire--nothing escaped her. It all
seemed to increase her wrath.

For she was very angry. Her form was dilated with passion, and her
voice, when she spoke, shook with it. But it was not her anger, nor her
threatening gestures, before which they both shrank back for a moment,
appalled. It was her awful likeness to the murdered Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston.

"Helen!" she cried, "they told me of this; but if I had not seen it with
my own eyes, I would never have believed it."

Helen rose to her feet, pale, but with a kindling light in her eyes, and
a haughty poise of her fair shapely head.

"You speak in riddles, Rachel," she said quietly. "I do not understand
you."

A very storm of hysterical passion seemed to shake the woman, who had
approached a little further into the room.

"Not understand me! Listen, and I will make it plain. You were engaged
to marry my brother. I come here, almost from his funeral, and I find
you thus--with his murderer! Girl, I wonder that you do not die of
shame!"

His murderer! For a moment the color fled from cheeks and lips, and the
room seemed whirling around her. But one glance at him brought back her
drooping courage. He was standing close to her side, erect and firm as a
statue, with his head thrown back, and his eyes fixed upon Rachel
Kynaston. Blanched and colorless as his face was, there was no flinching
in it.

"It is false!" she said proudly. "Ask him yourself."

"Ask him!" She turned upon him like a tigress, her eyes blazing with
fury. "Let him hear what I have to say, and deny it. Is it not you who
followed him from city to city all over the world, seeking always his
life? Is it not you who kept him for many years from his native land for
fear of blood-shed--yours or his? Is it not you who have fought with him
and been worsted, and sworn to carry your enmity with you through life,
and bury it only in his grave? Look at me, man, if you dare, look me in
the face and tell me whether you did not seek his life in Vienna, and
whether you did not fight with him on the sands at Boulogne. Oh, I know
you! It is you! It is you! And then you come down here and live alone,
waiting your chance. He is found foully murdered, and you are the only
man who could have done it. Ask you whether you be guilty? There is no
need, no need. Can anyone in their senses, knowing the story of your
past hate, doubt it for one moment? And yet, answer me if you can. Look
me in the face, and let me hear you lie, if you dare. Tell me that you
know nothing of my brother's death!"

He had stood like marble, with never a change in his face, while she had
poured out her passionate accusation. But when silence came, and she
waited for him to speak, he could not. A seal seemed set upon his lips.
He could not open them. He was silent.

A fearful glare of triumph blazed up in her eyes. She staggered back a
little, and leaned upon the table, with her hand clasped to her side.

"See, Helen," she cried, "is that innocence? O God! give me strength to
go on. I will see Mr. Thurwell. I will tell him everything. He shall
sign a warrant. Ah!"

A terrible scream rang through the room, and echoed through the house.
Mr. Thurwell and several of the servants came hurrying in. In the middle
of the floor Rachel Kynaston lay prostrate, her fingers grasping
convulsively at the empty air, and an awful look in her face. Helen was
on her knees by her side, and Mr. Brown stood in the background,
irresolute whether to stay or leave.

They crowded round her, but she waved them off, and grasping Helen's
wrist, dragged her down till their heads nearly touched.

"Helen," she moaned, "I am dying. Swear to me that you will avenge
Geoffrey's murder. That man did it. His name--his name----"

Suddenly her grasp relaxed, and Helen reeled back fainting into her
father's arms.

"It is a fit," some one murmured.

But it was death.




CHAPTER XI

LEVY & SON, PRIVATE AGENTS


"Anything in the letters, guv'nor?"

"Nothing so far, Ben, my boy," answered a little old gentleman, who was
methodically opening a pile of envelopes, and carefully scrutinizing the
contents of each before arranging them in separate heaps. "Nothing much
yet. A letter from a despairing mother, entreating us to find her lost
son. Description given, payment--tick! Won't do. Here's a note from Mr.
Wallis about his wife's being at the theater the other night, and a line
from Jack Simpson about that woman down St. John's Wood way. Seems he's
found her, so that's off."

"Humph! business is slack," remarked a younger edition of the old
gentleman, who was standing on the hearth rug, with his silk hat on the
back of his head, in an attitude of unstudied grace.

"Say, guv'nor, you couldn't let me have a fiver, could you? Must keep up
the credit of the firm, don't you know, and I'm awfully hard up. 'Pon my
word, I am."

"I couldn't do anything of the sort!" exclaimed the old gentleman
testily. "Certainly not. The way you spend money is grievous to me,
Benjamin, positively grievous!"

He turned round in his chair, and with his spectacles on the top of his
head surveyed his son and heir with a sorrowful interest.

"Oh, hang it all, some one must spend the money if we're to keep the
business at all!" retorted Mr. Benjamin testily. "I can't live as I do
without it, you know; and how are we to get the information we want?
Look at the company I keep, too."

The old gentleman seemed mollified.

"There's something in that, Ben," he remarked, slowly wagging his head.
"There's something in that, of course. Bless me, your mother was telling
me you was with a lord the other day!"

Mr. Benjamin expanded a little with the recollection, and smiled gently.

"That was quite true, dad," he remarked with a grandiloquent air. "I was
just going into the Cri--let me see, on Tuesday night it was--when whom
should I run up against but little Tommy Soampton with a pal, and we all
had drinks together. He was a quiet-looking chap, not dressed half so
well as--er----"

"As you, Ben," interposed his father proudly.

"Well, I wasn't thinking of myself particularly," Mr. Benjamin
continued, twirling an incipient mustache, and looking pleased. "But
when Tommy introduced him as Lord Mossford, I was that surprised I
nearly dropped my glass."

"What did you say to him, Ben?" asked the little old gentleman in an
awed tone.

Ben drew himself up and smiled.

"I asked him how his lordship was, and whether his lordship'd take
anything."

"And did he, Ben?" asked his father eagerly.

"Rather! He was just as affable as you like. I got on with him no end."

The little old gentleman turned away to his letters again to hide a
gratified smile.

"Well, well, Ben, I suppose you must have it," he said leniently. "Young
men will be young men. Only remember this, my boy--wherever you are,
always keep an eye open for business. Never forget that."

Benjamin, junior, slapped his trousers pocket and grinned.

"No fear, dad. I don't forget the biz."

"Well, well; just wait till I've gone through the letters, and we'll see
what we can do. We'll see. Ha! this reads well. I like this. Ben, we're
in luck this morning. In luck, my boy!"

Mr. Benjamin abandoned his negligent attitude, and, drawing close to his
father, peered over his shoulder. The letter which lay upon the desk was
not a long one, but it was to the point.

     "THURWELL COURT,
     "_Thursday_.

     "DEAR SIRS,

     "I am recommended to consult your firm on a matter which requires
     the services of a skilled detective and the utmost secrecy. I am
     coming to London to-morrow, and will call at your office at about
     half-past ten. Please arrange to be in at that time.

    "Yours truly,
    "HELEN THURWELL.

    "To Messrs. Levy & Son,
    "Private Agents,
    ---- Street, Strand, London."

Mr. Levy, senior, drew his hand meditatively down the lower part of his
face once or twice, and looked up at his son.

"Something in it, I think, Benjamin, eh? Thurwell Court! Coat of Arms!
Lady signs herself Miss Thurwell! Money there, eh?"

Mr. Benjamin was looking thoughtfully down at the signature.

"Thurwell, Thurwell! Where the mischief have I heard that name lately.
Holy Moses! I know," he suddenly exclaimed, starting up with glistening
eyes. "Dad, our fortune's made. Our chance has come at last!"

In the exuberance of his spirits he forgot the infirmities of age, and
brought his hand down upon his father's back with such vehemence that
the tears started into the little old gentleman's eyes, and his
spectacles rattled upon his nose.

"Don't do that again, Benjamin," he exclaimed nervously. "I don't like
it; I don't like it at all. You nearly dislocated my shoulder, and if
you had, I'd have stopped the doctor's bill out of your allowance. I
would, indeed! And now, what have you got to say?"

Mr. Benjamin had been walking up and down the office with his hands in
his trousers' pockets whistling softly to himself. At the conclusion of
his father's complaint he came to a standstill.

"All right, guv'nor. Sorry I hurt you. I was a bit excited. Don't you
remember having heard that name Thurwell lately?"

Mr. Levy, senior, shook his head doubtfully.

"I'm afraid my memory isn't what it used to be, Benjamin. The name
sounds a bit familiar, and yet--no, I can't remember," he wound up
suddenly. "Tell me about it, my boy."

"Why, the Kynaston murder, of course. That was at Thurwell Court. Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston was engaged to Miss Thurwell, you know, and she was
one of the first to find him."

"Dear me! Dear me! I remember all about it now, to be sure," Mr. Levy
exclaimed. "The murderer was never found, was he? Got clean off?"

"That's so," assented Mr. Benjamin. "Dad, it's a rum thing, but I was
interested in that case. There was something queer about it. I read it
every bit. I could stand a cross-examination in it now. Dad, it's a
lucky thing. She's coming here to consult us about it, as sure as my
name is Ben Levy. And, by jabers, here she is!"

There was the sound of a cab stopping at the door, and through a chink
in the blinds Mr. Benjamin had seen a lady descend from it. In a moment
his hat was off and on the peg, and he commenced writing a letter at the
desk.

"Dad," he said quickly, without looking up, "leave this matter to me,
will you? I'm up in the case. A lady, did you say, Morrison?"--turning
toward the door. "Very good. Show her in at once."




CHAPTER XII

A JEWEL OF A SON


For the first time in her life Helen was taking a definite and important
step without her father's knowledge. The matter was one which had caused
her infinite thought and many heart searchings. The burden of Rachel
Kynaston's dying words had fallen upon her alone. There seemed to be no
escape from it. She must act, and must act for herself. Any sort of
appeal to her father for help was out of the question. She knew
beforehand exactly what his view of the matter would be. In all things
concerning her sex he was of that ancient school which reckoned
helplessness and inaction the chief and necessary qualities of women
outside the domestic circle. He might himself have made some move in the
matter, but it would have been half hearted and under protest. She knew
exactly what his point of view would be. Rachel Kynaston had been
excited by a fancied wrong--her last words were uttered in a veritable
delirium! She could not part with the responsibility. The shadow of it
lay upon her, and her alone. She must act herself or not at all. She
must act herself, and without her father's knowledge, or be false to the
charge laid upon her by a dying woman. So with a heavy heart she had
accepted what seemed to her to be the inevitable.

She was shown at once into the inner sanctuary of Messrs. Levy & Son.
Her first glance around, nervous though she was, was comprehensive. She
saw a plainly but not ill-furnished office, the chief feature of which
was its gloom. Seated in an easy chair was a little old gentleman with
white hair, who rose to receive her, and a little farther away was a
younger man who was writing busily, and who did not even glance up at
her entrance. Although it was not a particularly dark morning, the
narrowness of the street and the small dusty windows seemed effectually
to keep out the light, and a jet of gas was burning.

Mr. Levy bowed to his visitor, and offered her a chair.

"Miss Thurwell, I presume," he said in his best manner.

The lady bowed without lifting her veil, which, though short, was a
thick one.

"We received a letter from you this morning," he continued.

"Yes; I have called about it."

She hesitated. The commencement was very difficult. After all, had she
done wisely in coming here? Was it not all a mistake? Had she not better
leave the thing to the proper authorities, and content herself with
offering a reward? She had half a mind to declare that her visit was an
error, and make her escape.

It was at this point that the tact of the junior member of the firm
asserted itself. Quietly laying down his pen, he turned toward her, and
spoke for the first time.

"We gathered from your letter, Miss Thurwell, that you desired to
consult us concerning the murder of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston."

Helen was surprised into assenting, and before she could qualify her
words, Mr. Benjamin had taken the case in hand.

"Exactly. Now, Miss Thurwell, we have had some very delicate and very
difficult business confided to us at different times, and I may say,
without boasting, that we have been remarkably successful. I may so,
father, may I not?"

"Most decidedly, Benjamin. There was Mr. Morris's jewels, you know."

"And Mr. Hadson's son."

"And that little affair with Captain Trescott and Bella B----"

Mr. Benjamin dropped the ruler, which he had been idly balancing on his
forefinger, with a crash, and shot a warning glance across at his
father.

"Miss Thurwell will not be interested in the details of our business,"
he remarked. "Our reputation is doubtless known to her."

Considering what the reputation of Messrs. Levy & Son really was, this
last remark was a magnificent piece of cool impudence. Even Mr. Levy
could not refrain from casting a quick glance of admiration at his
junior, who remained perfectly unmoved.

"What I was about to remark, Miss Thurwell, was simply this. The chief
cause of our success has been that we have induced our clients at the
outset to give us their whole confidence. We lay great stress on this.
Everything that we are told in the way of business we consider
absolutely secret. But we like to know everything."

"I shall keep nothing back from you," she said quietly. "I have nothing
to conceal."

Mr. Benjamin nodded approval.

"Then, in order that the confidence between us may be complete, let me
ask you this question, Why have you brought this matter to us, instead
of leaving it to the ordinary authorities?"

Helen Thurwell lifted her veil for the first time, and looked at the
young man who was questioning her. Mr. Benjamin Levy, as a young man of
fashion, was an ape and a fool. Mr. Benjamin Levy, taking the lead in a
piece of business after his own heart, was as shrewd a young man as you
could meet with. Looking him steadily in the face, and noticing his keen
dark eyes and closely drawn lips, she began for the first time to think
that, after all, she might have done a wise thing in coming here.

"The ordinary authorities have had the matter in hand two months, and
they have done nothing," she answered. "I am very anxious that it should
be cleared up, and I am naturally beginning to lose faith in them. They
have so many other things to attend to. Now, if I paid you well, I
suppose you would give your whole time to the matter."

"Undoubtedly," assented Mr. Levy, senior, gravely.

"Undoubtedly," echoed his son. "I am quite satisfied, Miss Thurwell, and
I thank you for your candor."

"I suppose you will want me to tell you all about it," she said, with a
faint shudder.

"Not unless you know something fresh. I have every particular in my head
that has been published."

Helen looked surprised.

"You read all about it, I suppose?" she asked.

"Yes; such things interest us, naturally. This one did me particularly,
because, from the first, I saw that the police were on the wrong tack."

"What is your idea about it, then?" she asked.

"Simply this," he answered, turning round and facing her for the first
time. "All the time and trouble spent in scouring the country and
watching the ports and railway stations was completely wasted. The
murder was not committed by an outsider at all. The first thing I shall
want, when we begin to work this, is the name and address of all the
people living within a mile or two of the scene of the murder, and then
every possible particular concerning Mr. Bernard Brown, of Falcon's
Nest."

She could not help a slight start. And from his looking at her now for
the first time so fixedly, and from the abrupt manner in which he had
brought out the latter part of his sentence, she knew that he was trying
her.

"There is one more question, too, Miss Thurwell, which I must ask you,
and it is a very important one," he continued, still looking at her. "Do
you suspect any one?"

She answered him without hesitation.

"I do."

Mr. Levy, senior, stirred in his chair, and leaned forward eagerly. Mr.
Benjamin remained perfectly unmoved.

"And who is it?" he asked.

"Mr. Brown."

Mr. Benjamin looked away and made a note. If she could have seen it,
Helen would certainly have been surprised. For, though her voice was
low, she had schooled herself to go through her task without agitation.
Yet, here was the note.

"Query: Connection between Mr. Brown and Miss T. Showed great agitation
in announcing suspicion."

"Do you mind telling us your reasons?" he went on.

She repeated them after the manner of one who has learned a lesson.

"Mr. Brown came to our part of the country just at the time that Sir
Geoffrey came from abroad. They had met before, and there was some cause
of enmity between them----"

"Stop! How do you know that?" Mr. Benjamin interrupted quickly.

She told him of Mr. Brown's admission to her, and of the tragedy of
Rachel Kynaston's last words. He seemed to know something of this too.

"Any other reason?"

"He seemed agitated when he came out from the cottage, after the crime
was discovered. From its situation he could easily have committed the
murder and regained it unseen. It would have been infinitely easier for
him to have done it than anyone else."

Mr. Benjamin looked at his father, and his father looked at him.

"Can you tell me anything at all of his antecedents?" he continued.

She shook her head.

"We knew nothing about him when he came. He never talked about himself."

"But he was your father's tenant, was he not?"

"Yes."

"Then he gave you some references, I suppose?"

"Only his bankers and his lawyers."

"Do you remember those?"

"Yes. The bankers were Gregsons, and the lawyer's name was Cuthbert."

Mr. Benjamin made a note of both.

"There is nothing more which it occurs to you to tell us, Miss
Thurwell?" he asked.

"There is one circumstance which seemed to me at the time suspicious,"
she said slowly. "It was after the body had been carried to Mr. Brown's
house, and I was waiting for my father there. I think I must have
suspected Mr. Brown then, in a lesser degree, for I took the opportunity
of being alone to look into his sitting room. It was rather a mean thing
to do," she added hurriedly, "but I was a little excited at the notion
of his guilt, and I felt that I would do anything to help to bring the
truth to light."

"It was very natural," interposed Mr. Levy, senior, who had been
watching for some time for the opportunity of getting a word in. "Very
natural, indeed."

His son took no notice of the interruption, and Helen continued.

"What I saw may be of no consequence, but I will just tell you what it
was, and what it suggested to me. The window was open, and the leaves of
a laurel shrub just outside were dripping with wet. A little way in the
room was an empty basin, and on the floor by the side was a pile of
books. They might have been there by accident, but it seemed to me as if
they had been purposely placed there to hide something--possibly a stain
on the floor. Before I could move any of them to see, I was disturbed."

"By Mr. Brown?"

"By Mr. Brown and Sir Allan Beaumerville."

"Did you gather from his appearance that he was alarmed at finding you
there?"

Helen shook her head.

"No. He was surprised, certainly, but that was natural. I cannot say
that he looked alarmed."

Mr. Benjamin put away his notes and turned round on his stool.

"A word or two with regard to the business part of this matter, Miss
Thurwell. Are you prepared to spend a good deal of money?"

"If it is necessary, yes."

"Very good. Then I will give you a sketch of my plans. We have agents in
Paris, Vienna, Venice, and other towns, whom I shall at once employ in
tracing out Sir Geoffrey Kynaston's life abroad, concerning which I
already have some useful information. During the rest of the day I shall
make inquiries about Mr. Brown in London. To-morrow I shall be prepared
to come down to Thurwell in any capacity you suggest."

"If you know anything of auditing," she said, "you can come down and go
through the books of the estate at the Court. I can arrange that."

"It will do admirably. These are my plans, then. We shall require from
you, Miss Thurwell, two hundred guineas to send abroad, and forty
guineas a week for the services of my father and myself and our staff.
If in twelve months we have not succeeded, we will engage to return you
twenty-five per cent of this amount. If, on the other hand, we have
brought home the crime to the murderer, we shall ask you for a further
five hundred. Will you agree to these terms?"

"Yes."

Mr. Benjamin stretched out his hand for a piece of writing paper, and
made a memorandum.

"Perhaps you would be so good as to sign this, then?" he said, passing
it to her.

She took the pen, and wrote her name at the bottom. Then she rose to go.

"There is nothing more?" she said.

"Nothing except your London address," he reminded her.

"I am staying with my aunt, Lady Thurwell, at No. 8, Cadogan Square."

"Can I call and see you to-morrow morning there?"

She hesitated. After all, why not. She had put her hand to the plow, and
she must go on with it.

"Yes," she answered; "as the auditor who is going to Thurwell Court."

He bowed, and held the door open for her.

"That is understood, of course. Good morning, Miss Thurwell."

She was standing quite still on the threshold, as if lost in thought for
a moment. Suddenly she looked up at him with a bright spot of color
glowing in her cheeks.

"Let me ask you a question, Mr. Levy."

"Certainly."

"You have read the account of this--terrible thing, and you have heard
all I can tell you. Doubtless you have formed some idea concerning it.
Would you mind telling it to me?"

Mr. Benjamin kept his keen black eyes fixed steadily upon her while he
answered the question, as though he were curious to see what effect it
would have on her.

"Certainly, Miss Thurwell. I think that the gentleman calling himself
Mr. Brown will find himself in the murderer's dock before a month is
out."

She shuddered slightly, and turned away.

"Thank you. Good morning."

"Good morning, Miss Thurwell."

She was gone, and as the sound of her departing cab became lost in the
din of the traffic outside, a remarkable change took place in the
demeanor of Mr. Benjamin Levy. His constrained, almost polished manner
disappeared. His small, deep-set eyes sparkled with exultation, and all
his natural vulgarity reasserted itself.

"What do you think of that, guv'nor, eh?" he cried, patting him gently
on the shoulder. "Good biz, eh?"

"Benjamin, my son," returned the old man, with emotion, "our fortune is
made. You are a jewel of a son."




CHAPTER XIII

A STRANGE MEETING


Grayness reigned everywhere--in the sky, on the hillside, and on the
bare moor, no longer made resplendent by the gleaming beauty of the
purple heather and fainter flashes of yellow gorse. The dry, springy
turf had become a swamp, and phantom-like wreaths of mist blurred and
saddened the landscape. The sweet stirring of the summer wind amongst
the pine trees had given place to the melancholy drip of raindrops
falling from their heavy, drooping branches on to the soddened ground.
Every vestige of coloring had died out of the landscape--from the sea,
the clouds, and the heath. It was the earth's mourning season, when the
air has neither the keen freshness of winter, the buoyancy of spring,
the sweet drowsy languor of summer, or the bracing exhilaration of
autumn. It was November.

Daylight was fast fading away; but the reign of twilight had not yet
commenced. After a blustering morning, a sudden stillness had fallen
upon the earth. The wild north wind had ceased its moaning in the pine
trees, and no longer came booming across the level moorland. The dull
gray clouds which all day long had been driven across the leaden sky in
flying haste, hung low down upon the sad earth, and from over the water
a sea fog rose to meet them. Nature had nothing more cheerful to offer
than silence, a dim light, and indescribable desolation.

A solitary man, with his figure carved out in sharp relief against the
vaporous sky, stood on the highest point of the cliff. Everything in his
attitude betokened the deepest dejection--in which at least he was in
sympathy with his surroundings. His head drooped upon his bent
shoulders, and his dark, weary eyes were fixed upon the rising sea fog
in a vacant gaze. Warmly clad as he was, he seemed chilled through his
whole being by the raw lifelessness of the air. Yet he did not move.

The utter silence was suddenly broken by the rising of a little flock of
gulls from among the stunted firs hanging down over the cliff. Almost
immediately afterwards there came another sound, denoting the advance of
a human being. The little hand gate leading out of the plantation was
opened and shut, and light footsteps began to ascend the ridge of the
cliffs on which he was standing, hesitating now and then, but always
advancing. As soon as he became sure of this, he turned his head in the
direction from which they came, and found himself face to face with
Helen Thurwell.

It was the first time they had come together since the terrible night at
Thurwell Court, when their eyes had met for an awful moment over the
dead body of Rachel Kynaston. The memory of that scene flashed into the
minds of both of them; from hers, indeed, it had seldom been absent. She
stood face to face with the man whom she had been charged, by the
passionate prayers of a dying woman, to hunt down and denounce as a
murderer. They looked at one another with the same thoughts in the minds
of both. The first step she had already taken. Henceforth he would be
watched and dogged, his past life raked up, and his every action
recorded. And she it was who had set the underhand machinery at work,
she it was whom he, guilty or innocent, would think of as the woman who
had hunted him down. If he should be innocent, and the time should come
when he discovered all, what would he think of her? If he could have
seen her a few days back in the office of Messrs. Levy & Son, would he
look at her as he was doing now? The thought sent a shiver through her.
At that moment she hated herself.

It was no ordinary meeting this, for him or for her. Had she been able
to look him steadily in the face, she might have seen something of her
own nervousness reflected there. But that was just what at first she was
unable to do. One rapid glance into his pale features, which suffering
and intellectual labor seemed in some measure to have etherealized, was
sufficient. She had all the poignant sense of a culprit before an
injured but merciful judge, and at that moment the memory of those dying
words was faint within her. And so, though it is not usually the case,
it was he who appeared the least disturbed, and he it was who broke that
strange silence which had lasted several moments after she had come to a
standstill before him.

"You do not mind speaking to me, Miss Thurwell?"

"No; I do not mind," she answered in a low, hesitating tone.

"Then may I take it that Miss Kynaston's words have not--damaged me in
your esteem?" he went on, his voice quivering a little with suppressed
anxiety. "You do not--believe--that----"

"I neither believe nor disbelieve!" she interrupted. "Remember that you
had an opportunity of denying it which you did not accept!"

"That is true!" he answered slowly. "Let it remain like that, then. It
is best."

She had turned a little away as though to watch a screaming curlew fly
low down and vanish in the fog. From where he stood on slightly higher
ground he looked down at her curiously, for in more than one sense she
was a puzzle to him. There was a certain indefiniteness in her manner
toward him which he felt a passionate desire to construe. She seemed at
once merciful and merciless, sympathetic and hard. Then, as he looked at
her, he almost forgot all this wilderness of suffering and doubt. All
his intense love for physical beauty, ministered to by the whole manner
of his life, seemed rekindled in her presence. The tragedy of the
present seemed to pass away into the background. From the moment when he
had first caught a glimpse of her in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vechi,
he had chosen her face and presence with which to endow his artist's
ideal--and, since that time, what change there had been in her had been
for the better. The animal spirits of light-hearted girlhood had become
toned down into the more refined and delicate softness of thoughtful
womanhood. In her thin supple figure there was still just the suspicion
of incomplete development, which is in itself a fascination; and her
country attire, the well-cut brown tweed ulster, the cloth cap from
beneath which many little waves of fair silky hair had escaped, the trim
gloves and short skirts--the most insignificant article of her
attire--all seemed to bespeak that peculiar and subtle daintiness which
is at the same time the sweetest and the hardest to define of nature's
gifts to women.

Even in the most acute crisis, woman's care for the physical welfare of
man seems almost an instinct with her. Suddenly turning round, she saw
how ill-protected he was against the weather, and a look of concern
stole into her face.

"How ridiculous of you to come out without an overcoat or anything on
such a day as this!" she exclaimed. "Why, you must be wet through!--and
how cold you look!"

He smiled grimly. That she should think of such a thing just at that
moment, seemed to him to be a peculiar satire upon what had been passing
through his mind concerning her. Then a sudden thrill shook every limb
in his body--his very pulses quickened. She had laid her gloved hand
upon his arm, and, having withdrawn it, was regarding it ruefully. It
was stained with wet.

"You must go home at once!" she said, with a decision in her tone which
was almost suggestive of authority. "You must change all your things,
and get before a warm fire. Come, I will walk with you as far as
Falcon's Nest. I am going round that way, and home by the footpath."

They started off side by side. The first emotion of their meeting having
passed away, he found it easier to talk to her, and he did so in an odd
monosyllabic way which she yet found interesting. All her life she had
been somewhat peculiarly situated with regard to companionship. Her
father, having once taken her abroad and once to London for the season,
considered that he had done his duty to her, and having himself long ago
settled down to the life of a country squire, had expected her to be
content with her position as his daughter and the mistress of his
establishment. There was nothing particularly revolting to her in the
prospect. She was not by any means emancipated. The "new woman" would
have been a horror to her. But, unfortunately, although she was content
to accept a comparatively narrow view of life, she was slightly
epicurean in her tastes. She would have been quite willing to give up
her life to a round of such pleasures as society and wealth can procure,
but the society must be good and entertaining, and its pleasures must be
refined and free from monotony. In some parts of England she might have
found what would have satisfied her, and under the influence of a
pleasure-seeking life, she would in due course have become the woman of
a type. As she grew older the horizon of her life would have become more
limited and her ideas narrower. She would have lived without tasting
either the full sweetness or the full bitterness of life. She would have
filled her place in society admirably, and there would have been nothing
to distinguish her either for better or worse from other women in a
similar position. But it happened that round Thurwell Court the people
were singularly uninteresting. The girls were dull, and the men bucolic.
Before she had spent two years in the country, Helen was intensely
bored. A sort of chronic languor seemed to creep over her, and in a fit
of desperation she had permitted herself to become engaged to Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston, for the simple reason that he was different from the
other men. Then, just as she was beginning to tremble at the idea of
marriage with a man for whom she had never felt a single spark of love,
there had come this tragedy, and, following close upon it, the vague
consciousness of an utter change hovering over her life. What that
change meant she was slow to discover. She was still unconscious of it
as she walked over the cliffs with the grey mists hanging around them,
side by side with her father's tenant. She knew that life had somehow
become a fairer thing to her, and that for many years she had been
living in darkness. And it was her companion, this mysterious stranger
with his wan young face and sad thoughtful eyes, who had brought the
light. She could see it flashing across the whole landscape of her
future, revealing the promise of a larger life than any she had ever
dreamed of, full of brilliant possibilities and more perfect happiness
than any she had ever imagined. She told herself that he was the
Columbus who had shown her the new land of culture, with all its fair
places, intellectual and artistic. This was the whole meaning of the
change in her. There could be nothing else.




CHAPTER XIV

HELEN THURWELL ASKS A DIRECT QUESTION


At the summit of the little spur of cliff they paused. Close on one side
were the windows of Falcon's Nest, and on the other the batch of black
firs which formed the background to it ran down the steep cliff side to
the sea. The path which they were following curved round the cottage,
and crossed the moor within a few yards of the spot where Sir Geoffrey
had been found. As they stood together for a moment before parting, she
noticed, with a sudden cold dismay, that thick shutters had recently
been fitted to the windows of the little room into which she had stolen
on the day of Sir Geoffrey's murder.

"Are you afraid of being robbed?" she asked. "One would imagine that
your room there held a secret."

She was watching him, and she told herself the shot had gone to its
mark.

He followed her finger with his eyes, and kept his face turned away from
her.

"Yes, that is so," he answered quietly. "That little room holds its
secret and its ghost for me. Would to God," he cried, with a sudden
passion trembling in his tones, "that I had never seen it--that I had
never come here!"

Her heart beat fast. Could it be that he was going to confess to her?
Then he turned suddenly round, and in the twilight his white face and
dark luminous eyes seemed to her like mute emblems of an anguish which
moved her woman's heart to pity. There was none of the cowardice of
guilt there, nothing of the criminal in the deep melancholy which seemed
to have set its mark upon his whole being. And yet he must be very
guilty--very much a criminal.

Her eyes strayed from his face back to the window again. There was no
light anywhere in the house. It had a cold desolate look which chilled
her.

"Is that the room where you sit?" she asked, pointing to it.

"Yes. There is no other furnished, except my housekeeper's, and she is
away now."

"Away! Then who is with you in the house?"

"At present, no one," he answered. "She was taken ill, and went home
this morning. She is generally ill."

She looked at him perplexed.

"But who does your cooking for you, and light the fires, and that sort
of thing?"

"I haven't thought about it yet," he answered. "I did try to light the
fire this afternoon, but I couldn't quite manage it. I--I think the
sticks must have been damp," he added hesitatingly.

She looked at him, wet through and almost blue with cold, and at the
dull cheerless-looking cottage. Again the woman in her triumphed, and
her eyes filled with tears.

"I never heard anything so preposterous," she exclaimed almost angrily.
"You must be out of your senses, Mr. Brown. Now, be so good as to obey
me at once. Go into the house and get a thick overcoat, the thickest you
have, and then come home with me, and I will give you some tea."

He hesitated, and stood quite still for a moment, with his face turned
steadily away from her. All the subtle sweetness of that last visit of
his to her home had come back to him, and his heart was sick with a
great longing. Was he not a fool to refuse to enter into paradise, when
the gates stood open for him? No words could describe the craving which
he felt to escape, just for a brief while, from the lashings of his
thoughts and the icy misery of his great loneliness. What though he were
courting another sorrow! Could his state be worse than it was? Could any
agony be keener than that which he had already tasted? Were there lower
depths still in the hell of remorse? If so, he would sound them. Though
he died for it, he would not deny himself this one taste of heaven. He
turned suddenly round, with a glow in his eyes which had a strange
effect upon her.

"You are very good to me, Miss Thurwell," he said. "I will come."

"That is sensible of you," she answered. "Get your coat, and you can
catch me up. I think we had better go back the same way, as it is
getting late."

She walked slowly down the path, and he hurried into the cottage. In a
few minutes he overtook her, wrapped in a long Inverness cape from head
to foot, and they walked on side by side.

The grey afternoon had suddenly faded into twilight. Overhead several
stars were already visible, dimly shining through a gauze-like veil of
mist stretched all over the sky, and from behind a black line of firs on
the top of a distant hill the moon had slowly risen, and was casting a
soft weird light upon the saddened landscape. Grey wreaths of
phantom-like mist were floating away across the moor, and a faint breeze
had sprung up, and was moaning in the pine plantation when they reached
the hand-gate. They paused for a moment to listen, and the dull roar of
the sea from below mingled with it in their ears. She turned away with a
shudder.

"Come!" she said; "that sound makes me melancholy."

"I like it," he answered. "Nature is an exquisite musician. I never yet
heard the sea speak in a tone which I did not love to hear. Listen to
that slow mournful rise of sound, reaching almost to intensity, and then
dying away so sadly--with the sadness that thrills. Ah! did you hear
that? The shrieking of those pebbles dragged down to the sea, and crying
out in almost human agony. I love the sea."

"Is that why you came to this desolate part of the world?" she asked.

"Partly."

"Tell me the whole reason," she said abruptly. "Was there anything
special which made you fix on this neighborhood? You may think me
curious, if you like--but I want to know."

"I had a vow to keep," he answered hoarsely. "You must ask me no more. I
cannot tell you."

Her heart sank like lead. A vow to keep. There was something ominous in
the sound of those words. She stole a glance at him as they walked on in
silence, and again her judgments seemed put to confusion and her hopes
revived. His face, dimly seen in the shadows of the plantation, was
suddenly illuminated by a pale quivering moonbeam, as they passed
through a slight opening. Could these be the features of a murderer? Her
whole heart rebelled against her understanding, and cried out "No!" For
the first time she realized the æsthetic beauty of his face, scarred and
wasted though it was by the deep lines of intellectual toil and
consuming sorrow. There was not a line out of place, save where his
cheek-bones projected slightly, owing to his extreme thinness, and left
deep hollows under his eyes. Nor was his expression the expression of a
guilty man, for, notwithstanding the intense melancholy which dwelt
always in his dark eyes, and seemed written into every feature, there
was blended with it a strange pride, the slight yet wholesome contempt
of a man conscious of a certain superiority in himself, neither physical
nor in any way connected with material circumstances, over the majority
of his fellows. And as the realization of this swept in upon her, and
her faith in him suddenly leaped up with a new-born strength, there came
with it a passionate desire to hear him proclaim his innocence with his
own lips, and, having heard it, to banish for ever doubts and
suspicions, and give herself up to this new sweetness which was hovering
around her life. She caught hold of his hand, but dropped it almost at
once, for the fire which flashed into his face at the touch of her
fingers half frightened her. He had come to a sudden standstill, and
before his eyes she felt hers droop and the hot color burn her cheeks.
What had come to her? She could not tell. She was nervous, almost faint,
with the dawning promise of a bewildering happiness. Yet her desire
still clung to her, and she found words to express it.

"I cannot bear this any longer," she cried. "I must ask you a question,
and you must answer it. The thought of it all is driving me mad."

"For God's sake, ask me nothing!" he said in a deep hollow tone. "Let me
go back. I should not be here with you."

"You shall not go," she answered. "Stand there where the light falls
upon your face, and answer me. Was it you who killed Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston? Tell me, for I will know."

There was a dead silence, which seemed to her fevered nerves
intolerable. From all around them came the quiet drip, drip, of the
rain, from the bending boughs on to the damp soaked ground, and at that
moment a slight breeze from over the moorland stirred amongst the
branches, and the moisture which hung upon them descended in little
showers. From below, the dull roar of the sea came up to them in a
muffled undertone, like a melancholy background to the slighter sound.
There was an indescribable dreariness about it all which quickened the
acute agony of those few moments.

More awful than anything to her was the struggle which she saw in that
white strained face half hidden in his clasped hands. What could
hesitation mean but guilt? What need was there for it? Her feet seemed
turned to stone upon the cold ground, and her heart almost stopped
beating. There was a film before her eyes, and yet she saw his face
still, though dimly, and as if it were far off. She saw his hands
withdrawn, and she saw his ashen lips part slowly.

"I did not kill Sir Geoffrey Kynaston," he said in a low constrained
voice. "If my life could have saved his, I would have given it."

A warm golden light seemed suddenly to banish the misty gloom of the
damp plantation. The color rushed into her cheeks, and her heart leaped
for joy. She heard, and she believed.

"Thank God!" she cried, holding out both her hands to him with a sudden
impulsive gesture. "Come! let us go now."

She was smiling softly up at him, and her eyes were wet with tears. He
took one quick passionate step towards her, seizing her hands, and
drawing her unresistingly towards him. In a moment she would have been
in his arms--already a great trembling had seized her, and her will had
fled. But that moment was not yet.

Something seemed to have turned him to stone. He dropped her fingers as
though they were burning him. A vacant light eclipsed the passion which
had shone a moment before in his eyes. Suddenly he raised his hands to
the sky in a despairing gesture.

"God forgive me!" he cried. "God forgive me!"

For very shame at his touch, and her ready yielding to it, her eyes had
fallen to the ground. When she raised them he was gone. There was the
sound of his retreating footsteps, the quick opening and closing of the
hand-gate, and through the trees she saw him walking swiftly over the
cliffs. Then she turned away, with her face half hidden in her hands,
and the hot tears streaming down her cheeks.

Again there was silence, only broken by the louder roar of the incoming
tide, and the faint rustling of the leaves. Suddenly it was broken by a
human voice, and a human figure slowly arose from a cramped posture
behind a clump of shrubs.

"Holy Moses! if this ain't a queer start," remarked Mr. Benjamin Levy,
shaking the wet from his clothes, and slowly filling a pipe. "Wants him
copped for murder, and yet tries to get him to make up to her. She's a
deep un, she is. I wonder if she was in earnest! If only she was, I
think I see my way to a real good thing--a real good thing," he
repeated, meditatively.




CHAPTER XV

A LITERARY CELEBRITY


It was Tuesday afternoon, and the Countess of Meltoun was at home to the
world--that is to say, her world. The usual throng of men of fashion,
guardsmen, literary men, and budding politicians were bending over the
chairs of their feminine acquaintances, or standing about in little
groups talking amongst themselves. The clatter of teacups was mingled
with the soft hum of voices; the pleasantly shaded room was heavy with
the perfume of many flowers. People said that Lady Meltoun was the only
woman in London who knew how to keep her rooms cool. It was hard to
believe that outside the streets and pavements were hot with the
afternoon sun.

Helen Thurwell, who had come late with her aunt, was sitting on a low
couch near one of the windows. By her side was Sir Allan Beaumerville,
and directly in front of her the Earl of Meltoun, with a teacup in his
hand, was telling her stories of his college days with her father. There
had been a great change in her during the last six months. Looking
closely into her face, it seemed as though she had felt the touch of a
deep sorrow--a sorrow which had left all its refining influences upon
her without any of the ravages of acute grief. Those few minutes in the
pine grove by the sea had left their indelible mark upon her life, and
it was only the stimulating memory of his own words to her concerning
the weakness of idle yielding to regret, and the abstract beauty of
sorrow which had been her salvation. They had come back to her in the
time of her suffering fresh and glowing with truth; she had found a
peculiar comfort in them, and they had become her religion. Thus she had
set herself to conquer grief in the highest possible manner--not by
steeping herself in false excitement, or rushing away for a change of
scene, but by a deliberate series of intellectual and artistic
abstractions, out of which she had come, still in a manner sorrowful,
but with all her higher perceptions quickened and strengthened until the
consciousness of their evolution, gradually growing within her, gave a
new power and a new sweetness to her life.

And of this victory she showed some traces in her face, which had indeed
lost none of its physical beauty, but which had now gained a new
strength and a new sweetness. She was more admired than ever, but there
were men who called her difficult--even a little fastidious, and others
who found her very hard to get on with. The great artist who had just
taken Sir Allan Beaumerville's place by her side was not one of these.

"I am so glad that you are here to-day, Miss Thurwell," he said, holding
her grey-gloved hand in his for a moment. "I have been looking for you
everywhere."

"That is very nice of you," she answered, smiling up at him.

"Ah! but I didn't mean only for my own sake. I know that you like
meeting interesting people, and to-day there is an opportunity for you."

"Really! and who is it, Mr. Carlyon? How good of you to think of me!"

"You remember telling me how much you admire Maddison's work."

"Why, yes! But he is not here, surely?" she exclaimed. "It cannot be
he!"

Mr. Carlyon smiled at her sudden enthusiasm. After all, this woman had
fire. She was too much of the artist to be without it.

"He is not here now, but he will be. I could not believe it myself at
first, for I know that he is a perfect recluse. But I have just asked
Lady Meltoun, and there is no doubt about it. It seems that they came
across him in a lonely part of Spain, and he saved the life of Lady
Meltoun's only child--a little boy. It is quite a romantic story. He
promised to come and seem them directly he returned to England, and he
is expected here to-day."

"I shall like to see him very much," she said thoughtfully. "Lately I
have been reading him a great deal. It is strange, but the tone of his
writings seems always to remind me of some one I once knew."

"There is no one of to-day who writes such prose," the artist answered.
"To me, his work seems to have reached that exquisite blending of matter
and form which is the essence of all true art."

"All his ideas of culture and the inner life are so simple and yet so
beautiful."

"And the language with which he clothes them is divine. His work appeals
everywhere to the purest and most artistic side of our emotional
natures; and it is always on the same level. It has only one
fault--there is so little of it."

"Do you know him?" she asked, deeply interested.

"I do. I met him in Pisa some years ago, and, although he is a
strangely reserved man, we became almost intimate. I am looking forward
to introducing him to you."

"I shall like it very much," she answered simply.

"Who is the fortunate individual to be so highly favored?" asked a
pleasant voice close to her side.

"You have returned, then, Sir Allan?" she said, looking up at him with a
smile. "Have you heard the news? Do you know who is expected?"

He shook his head.

"I have heard nothing," he said. "If I am to have a sensation, it will
be you who will impart it to me. Don't tell me all at once. I like
expectancy."

She laughed.

"What an epicure you are, Sir Allan! Come, prepare for something very
delightful, and I will tell you."

"Is it the prince?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"The Mikado in disguise? The Khedive incognito? Mr. Gladstone?"

She shook her head again.

"The sensation will be more delightful than you imagine, evidently.
There have been many Khedives, and many Mikados, but there can never be
another Bernard Maddison."

A disturbed shade seemed to fall upon the baronet's face. She followed
his eyes, riveted upon the door. The hum of conversation had suddenly
ceased, and every one was looking in the same direction. On the
threshold stood a tall, gaunt man, gazing in upon the scene before him
with an expression of distinct aversion, mingled with indifference. He
was dressed just like the other men, in a long frock coat, and he had a
white gardenia in his buttonhole. But there was something about him
distinct and noticeable--something in the quiet easy manner with which
he at last moved forward to greet his hostess, which seemed to thrill
her through and through with a sense of sweet familiarity. And then she
caught a turn of his head as he stooped down over Lady Meltoun's hand,
and a great wave of bewilderment, mingled with an acute throbbing joy,
swept in upon her. This man, whom every one was gazing at with such
eager interest, was her father's tenant, Mr. Bernard Brown.




CHAPTER XVI

A SNUB FOR A BARONET


Those few moments were full of a strange, intense interest to the three
persons who side by side had watched the entrance of Mr. Bernard
Maddison. To Helen Thurwell, whose whole being was throbbing with a
great quickening joy, they were passed in a strenuous effort to struggle
against the faintness which the shock of this great tumult of feeling
had brought with it. To the artist, who loved her, they brought their
own peculiar despair as he watched the light playing upon her features,
and the new glow of happiness which shone in those sweet, sad eyes. And
to Sir Allan Beaumerville, who had reasons of his own for surprise at
this meeting, they brought a distinct sensation of annoyance.

The artist was the first to recover himself. He knew that the battle was
over for him, that this woman already loved, and that his cause was
hopeless. And with little of man's ordinary selfishness on such
occasions, his first thought was for her.

"You would like to change your seat," he whispered. "Come with me into
the recess yonder. I will show you some engravings."

She flashed a grateful look up at him, and saw that he knew her secret.

"I should like it," she said. "Walk that side of me, please."

They rose and made their way to one of the little screened recesses
which people--especially young people--said made Lady Meltoun's rooms so
delightful. He placed a chair for her, and taking up a book of
engravings buried himself in it.

"Don't speak to me for five minutes, please," he said. "I am looking for
a design."

At the end of that time he closed the book, and looked up at her. There
was no fear of her fainting now. She was very pale, but she seemed quite
calm.

"I am going to speak to Maddison," he said quietly. "Do you--may I bring
him and introduce him to you?"

She looked up at him with luminous eyes.

"If you please. Don't tell him my name, though."

"It shall be as you wish," he answered.

By moving her chair a few inches she could see into the room. He was
still standing by Lady Meltoun's side, listening with an absent smile to
her chatter, and every now and then bowing gravely to the people whom
she introduced to him. The hum of conversation had been renewed, but
many curious glances were cast in his direction, of which he seemed
altogether unconscious. Even had there not been his great fame as a
critic and a writer, and the romance of his strange manner of life to
interest people, his personal appearance alone was sufficient to attract
attention. He was taller by several inches than any man in the room, and
his thin oval face, refined yet strong and full of a subtle artistic
sensibility, was in itself a deeply interesting study. How different he
appeared here in his well-fitting, fashionable clothes, and calm
distinctive manner, and with just that essence of wearied languor in his
dark eyes which men of the world can only imitate! He had changed, and
yet he had not changed, she thought. He was the same, and yet there was
a difference. Presently she saw Mr. Carlyon reach his side, and the
greeting which passed between the two men was marked with a certain
quiet cordiality which bore out Mr. Carlyon's words, that they had once
been fellow-workers. Watching his opportunity, the artist drew him a
little on one side, and made his request. Helen drew back trembling with
expectancy. But a few minutes later Mr. Carlyon came back to her alone.

"I am sorry," he said simply, "but, even to oblige me, Maddison won't
come. I had no idea he was such a misogynist. He is here, he says, to
keep a promise, but he wishes for no acquaintances, and he absolutely
declines to be introduced to any woman, unless it is forced upon him.
What shall I do? Shall I tell him your name?"

She hesitated.

"No, don't tell him that," she said. "Do you remember a few lines of
poetry of his at the end of his last volume of criticisms? There is a
little clump of firs on the top of a bare wind-swept hill, with the moon
shining faintly through a veil of mist, and a man and woman standing
together like carved figures against the sky, listening to the far-off
murmur of the sea."

"Yes, I remember it," he said slowly.

"Then will you tell him that some one--some one who has seen such a
place as he describes, is----?"

"I will tell him," Mr. Carlyon answered. "I think that he will come
now."

He left her again, and went back towards Mr. Maddison. Just as he got
within speaking distance he saw a slight quiver pass across the white
face, as though he had recognized some one in the crowd. Mr. Carlyon
hesitated, and decided to wait for a moment.

They were standing face to face, Sir Allan Beaumerville, the
distinguished baronet, who had added to the dignity of an ancient family
and vast wealth, a great reputation as a savant and a _dilettante_
physician, and Mr. Bernard Maddison, whose name alone was sufficient to
bespeak his greatness. In Sir Allan's quiet, courteous look, there was a
slightly puzzled air as though there were something in the other's face
which he only half remembered. In Mr. Maddison's fixed gaze there was a
far greater intensity--something even of anxiety.

"Surely we have met before, Mr. Maddison," the baronet said easily.
"Your face seems quite familiar to me. Ah! I remember now, it was near
that place of Lord Lathon's, Mallory Grange, upon the coast. A terrible
affair, that."

"Yes, a terrible affair," Mr. Maddison repeated.

"And have you just come from ----shire?" Sir Allan asked.

"No; I have been abroad for several months," Mr. Maddison answered.

"Abroad!" Sir Allan appeared a little more interested. "In what part?"
he asked civilly.

"I have been in Spain, and the south of France, across the Hartz
mountains, and through the Black Forest."

"Not in Italy?" Sir Allan inquired.

There was a short silence, and Sir Allan seemed really anxious for the
reply. It came at last.

"No; not in Italy."

Sir Allan seemed positively pleased to think that Mr. Maddison had not
extended his travels to Italy. There was a quiet gleam in his eyes which
seemed almost like relief. Doubtless he had his reasons, but they were
a little obscure.

"Ah! Shall you call upon me while you are in town, Mr. Maddison?" he
asked, in a tone from which all invitation was curiously lacking.

"I think not," Mr. Maddison answered. "My stay here will be brief. I
dislike London."

Sir Allan laughed gently.

"It is the only place in the world fit to live in," he answered.

"My work and my tastes demand a quieter life," Mr. Maddison remarked.

"You will go into the country then, I suppose."

"That is my intention," was the quiet reply.

"Back to the same neighborhood."

"It is possible."

Sir Allan looked searchingly into the other's calm, expressionless face.

"I should have thought that the associations----"

Mr. Maddison was evidently not used to society. Several people said so
who saw him suddenly turn his back on that charming old gentleman, Sir
Allan Beaumerville, and leave him in the middle of a sentence. Lady
Meltoun, who happened to notice it, was quite distressed at seeing an
old friend treated in such a manner. But Sir Allan took it very nicely,
everybody said. There had been a flush in his face just for a moment,
but it soon died away. It was his own fault, he declared. He had
certainly made an unfortunate remark, and these artists and literary men
were all so sensitive. He hoped that Lady Meltoun would think no more of
it, and accordingly Lady Meltoun promised not to. But though, of course,
she and every one else who had seen it sympathized with Sir Allan, there
were one or two, with whom Sir Allan was not quite such a favorite, who
could not help remarking upon the grand air with which Mr. Maddison had
turned his back upon the baronet, and the dignity with which he had left
him.

Mr. Carlyon, who had been watching for his opportunity, buttonholed
Maddison, and led him into a corner.

"I've got you now," he said triumphantly. "My dear fellow, whatever made
you snub poor Sir Allan like that?"

"Never mind. Come and make your adieux to Lady Meltoun, and let us go. I
should not have come here."

"One moment first, Maddison," the artist said seriously. "Do you
remember those lines of yours in which a man and woman stand on a bare
hill by a clump of pines, and watch the misty moonlight cast weird
shadows upon the hillside and over the quivering sea? 'A Farewell,' you
called it, I think?"

"Yes; I remember them."

"Maddison, the woman to whom I wished to introduce you bids you to go to
her by the memory of those lines."

There was very little change in his face. It only grew a little more
rigid, and a strange light gleamed in his eyes. But the hand which he
had laid on Carlyon's arm to draw him towards Lady Meltoun suddenly
tightened like a band of iron, till the artist nearly cried out with
pain.

"Let go my arm, for God's sake, man!" he said in a low tone, "and I will
take you to her."

"I am ready," Mr. Maddison answered quietly. "Ah! I see where she is.
You need not come."

He crossed the room, absolutely heedless of more than one attempt to
stop him. Mr. Carlyon watched him, and then with a sore heart bade his
hostess farewell, and hurried away. He was generous enough to help
another man to his happiness, but he could not stay and watch it.




CHAPTER XVII

BERNARD MADDISON AND HELEN THURWELL


And so it was in Lady Meltoun's drawing-room that they met again, after
those few minutes in the pine plantation which had given color and
passion to her life, and which had formed an epoch in his. Neither were
unmindful of the fact that if they were not exactly the centre of
observation, they were still liable to it in some degree, and their
greeting was as conventional as it well could have been. After all, she
thought, why should it be otherwise? There had never a word of love
passed between them--only those few fateful moments of tragic intensity,
when all words and thoughts had been merged in a deep reciprocal
consciousness which nothing could have expressed.

He stood before her, holding her hand in his for a moment longer than
was absolutely necessary, and looking at her intently. It was a gaze
from which she did not shrink, more critical than passionate, and when
he withdrew his eyes he looked away from her with a sigh.

"You have been living!" he said. "Tell me all about it!"

She moved her skirts to make room for him by her side.

"Sit down!" she said, "and I will try."

He obeyed, but when she tried to commence and tell him all that she had
felt and thought, she could not. Until that moment she scarcely
realized how completely her life had been moulded by his influence. It
was he who had first given her a glimpse of that new world of thought
and art, and almost epicurean culture into which she had made some
slight advance during his absence, and it was certain vague but sweet
recollections of him which had lived with her and flowed through her
life--a deep undercurrent of passion and poetry, throwing a golden halo
over all those new sensations--which had raised her existence, and her
ideals of existence on to a higher level. How could she tell him this?
The time might come when she could do so, and if ever it did come, she
knew that it would be the happiest moment of her life. But it was not
yet.

"Tell me a little of yourself," she said evasively. "You have been
traveling, have you not?"

"Yes, I have been traveling a little!" he answered. "In Spain I was
taken ill, and Lady Meltoun was kind to me. That is why I am here."

"But you do not say how it was that you were taken ill," she said, her
cheeks suddenly glowing. "You saved her son's life. We saw all about it
in the papers, but of course we did not know that it was you. It was
splendid!"

"If you saw it in the papers at all, depend upon it, it was very much
exaggerated!" he answered quietly. "Your father received my letter, I
suppose?"

"Yes; the cottage has been shut up, just as you desired. Are you ever
coming to take possession again?"

"I hope so--some day--and yet I do not know. There are strange things in
my life, Miss Thurwell, which every now and then rise up and drive me
away into aimless wanderings. Life has no goal for me--it cannot have.
I stand for ever on the brink of a precipice."

There was a sadness in his voice which almost brought the tears into her
eyes--mostly for his sake, partly for her own. For, though he might
never know it, were not his sorrows her sorrows?

"Are they sorrows which you can tell to no one?" she asked softly. "Can
no one help you?"

He shook his head.

"No one."

"And yet no sorrow can last for ever that has not guilt at its root,"
she said.

"Mine will last while life lasts," he answered; "and there is--no guilt
at the root."

"You have taken up another's burden," she said. "Is it well? Do you owe
nothing to yourself, and your own genius? Sorrow may shorten your life,
and the world can ill spare your work."

"There are others who can do my work," he said. "No other can----But
forgive me. I wish to talk of this no more. Tell me of your life since I
left you. Something in your face tells me that it has been well spent.
Let me hear of it."

And, gathering up all her courage, she told him. Piece by piece she took
up the disconnected thoughts and ideas which had come to her, and wove
them together after the pattern of her life--to which he listened with a
calm approval, in which was sometimes mingled a deeper enthusiasm, as
she touched a chord which in his own being had often been struck to deep
tremulous music. And as she went on he grew sad. With such a companion
as this woman, whose sensibilities were his sensibilities, and whose
instincts so naturally cultured, so capable of the deeper coloring and
emotional passion which his influence could speedily develop--with such
a woman as this--whom already he loved, what might not life mean for
him? Well, it must pass. Another of those bright butterfly visions of
his fancy, gorgeous with hope and brilliancy--another one to be crushed
by the iron hand of necessity. He had gone away wounded, and he had come
back to find the wound still bleeding.

Gradually the rooms were thinning, and at last Lady Thurwell, impatient
of her niece's long absence, came to fetch her. When she found her
_tête-à-tête_ with the lion of the day, however, her manner was most
gracious.

"I hope you have been able to persuade Mr. Maddison to come and see us,"
she said to her niece. "We are at home on Thursdays at Cadogan Square,
and we lunch every day at two," she added, turning towards him. "Come
whenever you like."

"You are very good, Lady Thurwell," he said, accepting her offered hand.
"I am only passing through London, but if I have the opportunity I shall
avail myself of your kindness."

She left them together for a moment while she made her adieux to her
hostess. In that moment Helen found courage to yield to a sudden
impulse.

"Please come," she said softly.

He had no time to answer, for Lady Meltoun had come up to them.

"Miss Thurwell," she said good-naturedly, "I don't know when I shall
forgive you for monopolizing Mr. Maddison in this shameful manner. Why,
there were quite a crowd of people came this afternoon only to catch a
glimpse of him, and there was nothing to be seen but his boots behind
that screen. I am in terrible disgrace, I can assure you!"

"The fault was mine," he interposed, "altogether mine. In an
ungovernable fit of shyness, I took refuge with the only person except
yourself, Lady Meltoun, whom I was fortunate enough to know. I simply
refused to come away."

"Well, I suppose I must forgive you, or you won't come again," Lady
Meltoun said. "But now you are here, you must really stop and see Edgar.
When every one has gone we will go up to the nursery, and in the
meantime you may make yourself useful by taking Lady Thurwell out to her
carriage. I'm afraid there's rather a crush."

So they all three went out together, and while they stood waiting for
Lady Thurwell's victoria, he managed to say a word to her alone.

"I will come and see you," he whispered.

She looked up at him a little shyly, for in handing her into the
carriage he had assumed a certain air of proprietorship which had
brought a faint color into her cheeks.

"Come soon," she whispered. "Good-bye!"

She nodded brightly, and Lady Thurwell smiled as the horses started
forward, and the carriage drove away.

"I wonder who Mr. Maddison really is?" she said, half to herself, just
as they reached home.

Lady Thurwell shrugged her shoulders.

"Do you mean who his family are?" she asked. "My dear, it isn't of the
slightest consequence. Bernard Maddison is Bernard Maddison, and his
position would be just what it is, even though his father were a coal
heaver."

Which remark showed that Lady Thurwell, as well as being a woman of
society, was also a woman of sense. But Helen was not thinking of his
family.




CHAPTER XVIII

A CHEQUE FOR £1,000


It was ten o'clock in the morning, and the usual routine of business had
commenced in the office of Messrs. Levy & Son. Mr. Levy, senior, was
sitting at his desk opening his letters, and Mr. Benjamin, who had only
just returned from a long journey on business of the firm, and did not
feel inclined for office work, was leaning back in the client's chair,
with his feet up against the mantelpiece, and a partly smoked cigar in
his mouth. He had just finished a long account of his adventures, and
was by no means inclined to quit the subject.

"Altogether, dad," he was saying, "it's about the prettiest piece of
business we ever struck. But one thing is very certain. We must get some
more tin from Miss Thurwell. Why, I've been at it five months now, and
the expenses at some of those foreign hotels were positively awful. Not
knowing the confounded lingo, you see, I was forced to stump up, without
trying the knocking-off game."

"Yes, Benjamin. Yes, my son. We must certainly have some more of the
rhino. Your expenses have been positively e-normous, e-normous,"
declared the old man, with uplifted hands and eyes. "Some of your drafts
have brought tears into my eyes. Positively tears," he echoed
mournfully.

"Couldn't be helped, guv'nor. The thing had to be done."

"And you have got it nearly all in order now, Benjamin, eh? You've got
him under your thumb, eh? He can't escape?"

"Not he! Mark my words, dad. The rope's already woven that'll go round
his neck."

The old man looked doubtful.

"If he's such a learned, clever man as you say--writes books and such
like--they'll never hang him, my son. They'll reprieve him. That's what
they'll do."

"I don't care a blooming fig which it is, so long as it comes off. Do
you remember what I told you when Miss Thurwell first came here, dad?"

"Perfectly, my son, perfectly. You said that our fortune was made. Those
were your very words," he added, with glistening eyes. "Our fortune is
made."

"And what I said I'll stick to," Mr. Benjamin declared. "When this case
comes off, it'll be the biggest thundering sensation of the day. And
who'll get the credit of it all? Who tracked him down for all his false
name and sly ways; hunted him all over Europe, found out who he really
was, and why he hated Sir Geoffrey Kynaston so much that he murdered
him? Why, I did, dad--Benjamin Levy, of Levy & Son, Carle Street,
Strand. Ain't it glorious, guv'nor? Ain't it proud?"

Mr. Benjamin's enthusiasm was catching. It was reflected in his father's
face, and something glistened in his eyes. He removed his spectacles,
and carefully wiped them. After all, he was a father, and he had a
father's feelings.

"When will the time come, Benjamin?" he inquired.

"A month to-day, I hope," was the prompt reply. "I have one more
journey to take, and it will be all square."

"Where to? How far?" inquired the old gentleman uneasily.

Mr. Benjamin looked at him, and shook his head. "Come, dad, I know what
you are thinking of," he said. "It's the expense, ain't it?"

"It is, Benjamin," his father groaned. "I hate parting with hard-earned
money for exorbitant bills and these long journeys. Couldn't it be done
without it, Ben?" he inquired, in a wheedling tone. "There's piles of
money gone already in expenses. Piles and piles."

"And if there is, ain't it Miss Thurwell's, you old stupid?" remarked
Mr. Benjamin. "'Tain't likely that we should find the money ourselves."

"Of course, of course. But, Benjamin, my son, the money is thrown away
for all that. We could charge it, you know--charge it always. We must
have a margin--we must positively have a margin to work with."

"Dad, dad, what an old sinner you are!" exclaimed his hopeful son,
leaning back in his chair and laughing. "A margin to work with. Ha! ha!
ha!"

Mr. Levy looked uncertain whether to regard his son's merriment as a
compliment, or to resent it. Eventually, the former appeared to him the
wisest course, and he smiled feebly.

"Dad, just you leave this matter with me," Mr. Benjamin said at last. "I
know what I'm doing, and unless I'm very much mistaken, I see my way to
make this a bigger thing, even as regards the cash, than you and I ever
dreamed of. Leave it to me. Hullo! who's that?"

He peered up over the office blind, and sat down again at once. In a
moment his cigar was behind the grate, and his expression completely
changed.

"Ah! Miss Thurwell, dad," he said coolly, "and I'll bet ten to one I
know what she wants. Mind you leave it all to me. I've no time to
explain, but you'll spoil it if you interfere. Come in. Why, Miss
Thurwell, we were this moment talking of you," he continued, springing
to his feet and offering her a chair. "Please come in."

Helen advanced into the room, and lifted her veil. One swift glance into
her flushed face confirmed Mr. Benjamin's idea as to the reason of her
visit, and he commenced talking rapidly.

"I'm glad you've come this morning, Miss Thurwell. I only got back from
Spain yesterday, and I'm thankful to tell you our case is nearly
complete. Thankful for your sake, because you will have the satisfaction
of seeing the murderer of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston brought to book, and
thankful for ours, because we shall at one stroke establish our
reputation. I need not tell you that that is far more to us than the
reward will be, for our expenses have been enormous."

"Enormous!" groaned Mr. Levy, senior.

"However, we have decided not to take another penny of money from you,
Miss Thurwell," he continued, casting a warning glance at his father.
"After all, the money is not so much to us as our reputation, and this
will be made for ever, now."

Mr. Benjamin paused, a little out of breath, but quite satisfied with
himself. Opposite, his father was purple with anger, and almost choking
at his son's folly. Take no more money from Miss Thurwell! Was the boy
mad?

"I'm afraid, from what you say, Mr. Levy," Helen said hesitatingly,
"that you will be rather disappointed when I tell you the reason of my
visit."

Mr. Benjamin, who knew perfectly well what she was going to say, assumed
an expression of deep concern.

"I find," she continued, "that we must have been making a mistake all
along, and you have evidently been misled. This Mr. Brown, who appeared
such a mysterious personage to us, and whom we therefore suspected, is
no other than Bernard Maddison."

"Yes. I knew that," Mr. Benjamin remarked quietly. "I found that out
very soon, of course. Author, and all that sort of thing, isn't he?
Well, go on, Miss Thurwell, please. I am anxious."

She looked surprised.

"Don't you see that this does away with our theory at once? It is quite
impossible that a man like Bernard Maddison could have committed a
horrible crime like this."

Mr. Benjamin looked ingenuously perplexed.

"I can't say that I follow you, Miss Thurwell," he said, shaking his
head. "All I know is that I can prove this Mr. Bernard Brown, or Bernard
Maddison, or whatever else he chooses to call himself, guilty of that
murder. That's what we want, isn't it?"

A cold chill passed over her, and she was compelled to sink into the
chair which stood by her side. Like a flash she suddenly realized the
impossibility of convincing such men as these of his innocence. Yet,
even then, the worst side of the situation did not occur to her.

"Perhaps we had better put it in this way, Mr. Levy," she said. "I gave
you certain instructions to follow out, which I now rescind. I wish
nothing further done in the matter."

Mr. Benjamin's face was a study. He had contrived to conjure up an
expression which combined the blankest surprise with the keenest
disappointment. Helen began to feel still more uncomfortable.

"Under the circumstances," she said, "and as you seem rather
disappointed, I will pay you the reward just as though the thing had
gone on."

Mr. Benjamin shook his head slowly.

"Do you know, Miss Thurwell, that you are proposing a conspiracy to me?"

"A conspiracy!" she repeated. "I don't understand."

"It's very simple," he went on gravely. "I have in my possession, or
shortly shall have, every particular of this Mr. Maddison's life. I can
show the connection between him and Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, and, in
short, I can prove him guilty of murder. What you ask me to do is to
suppress this. That is the moral side of the question. Then, with regard
to the practical side, if this thing is gone on with, we shall get the
reward you promised and, what is far more important to us, a reputation
which we have looked forward to as a certain foundation for a great
extension of our business. If, on the other hand, we drop it, we get
simply the reward, which, pardon my saying so, would be a miserable
return for all our labor. That is how the matter stands from our point
of view. I think I've expressed it fairly, father?"

Mr. Levy, who had assumed a far more contented expression, solemnly
assented. What a son this was of his, he thought. Bless him!

Helen was very pale, and her heart was beating fast. Why had she come to
this place, and put herself in the power of these men? It was too
dreadful.

"I do not desire to hear a word of Mr. Maddison's history," she said.
"This thing must be stopped. I have my cheque book with me. Cannot you
take money to withdraw from it?"

Mr. Benjamin looked at his father gravely, and Mr. Levy shook his head.

"My dear young lady," he said, "this is a very serious thing, a very
serious thing."

"The fact is," said Mr. Benjamin, "I was going to Scotland Yard for a
warrant this morning."

Helen looked from one to the other appealingly, with tears in her eyes.
Mr. Benjamin appeared to be somewhat moved thereby.

"Look here, dad," he said, "suppose we go into the other room and talk
this thing over for a few minutes. Miss Thurwell will not mind excusing
us."

"Oh, no. Only don't be long!" she pleaded.

They left her for barely five minutes, although to her, waiting in an
agony of impatience, it seemed much longer. When they returned, they
both looked very solemn.

"We have talked this matter over thoroughly, Miss Thurwell," said Mr.
Benjamin, taking up his old position at the desk, "and we cannot help
seeing that it is a great risk for us to run to suppress our
information, and a great disappointment."

"Quite so, quite so," interrupted Mr. Levy. "A great risk, and a great
disappointment!"

"Still, we are willing and anxious to help you," Mr. Benjamin continued,
"and, if you like, we will do so on these terms. If you like to give us
a cheque for a thousand pounds, we will agree to let the matter stand
over for the present. We cannot give you any undertaking to absolutely
destroy or suppress any evidence we may have against Mr. Maddison, as
that would be a distinct conspiracy, but we will agree to suspend our
present action, and to do nothing without communicating with you."

She moved to the desk, and drew out her cheque book.

"I will do it," she said. "Give me a pen, please."

There was not the slightest sign of emotion on either of their faces.
They received the cheque, bowed her out, and watched her disappear into
the street without making any sign. Then Mr. Benjamin's exultation broke
out.

"Dad, I told you that our fortune was made, didn't I. Was I right or
wrong?"

Mr. Levy was so overcome with parental affection, that he could scarcely
command his voice. But he did so with an effort.

"You were right, my son," he exclaimed. "You were right, Benjamin. We
will go together and cash the cheque."




CHAPTER XIX

AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY FOR BERNARD BROWN


A March wind was roaring over the open moorland, driving huge masses of
black clouds across the angry sky, and whistling amongst the dark
patches of pine trees, until it seemed as though their slender stems
must snap before the strain. All around Falcon's Nest the country, not
yet released from the iron grip of a late winter, lay wasted and
desolate; and the heath, which had lost all the glowing touch of autumn,
faded into the horizon bare and colorless. Nowhere was there any relief
of outline, save where the white front of Thurwell Court stretched
plainly visible through a park of leafless trees.

And of all the hours of the day it was at such a season the most
depressing. Faint gleams of the lingering day still hung over the
country, struggling with the stormy twilight, and a pale, wan glare,
varied with long black shadows, moved swiftly across the sea and the
moor--the reflection of the flying clouds overhead.

A single human being, the figure of a tall man clad in an ulster
buttoned up to the throat, was making his way across the open country.
He walked rapidly--and, indeed, there was nothing to tempt any one to
linger--and his destination was obvious. He was on his way to Falcon's
Nest.

A drearier abode than it appeared that afternoon never raised its four
walls to the sky. The grounds which surrounded it had been swept bare
by the storms of winter, and nothing had been done to repair the
destruction which they had accomplished. Uprooted shrubs lay dead and
dying upon the long dank grass, and the creepers torn from the walls
hung down in pitiful confusion. Every window reflected back the same
blank uninviting gloom. There was no light, no single sign of
habitation. Mr. Thurwell had evidently respected his tenant's wish to
the letter. The place had not been touched or entered during his
absence.

The pedestrian, Mr. Bernard Brown himself, leaned over the gate for a
moment, silently contemplating the uninviting scene with a grim smile.
He had reasons of his own for being satisfied that the place had not
been interfered with, and it certainly seemed as though such were the
case.

After a few minutes' hesitation he drew a key from his pocket and fitted
it in the lock. There was a resistance when he tried to turn it that he
did not understand. Stooping down, he suddenly tried the handle. It
opened smoothly. The gate was unlocked. He withdrew the key with
trembling fingers. All his relief at the dismantled appearance of the
cottage had disappeared. A strange unquiet look shone in his eyes, and
his manner suddenly became nervous and hurried. He had locked the gate
on his departure, he was sure, and Mr. Thurwell's steward had told him
that there was no duplicate set of keys. How could it have been opened
save with a skeleton key.

He walked quickly up the path to the front door. Here a greater shock
still awaited him. The latch-key which he held ready in his hand was not
needed. He tried the handle, and the door opened.

Mr. Brown grew white to the lips, and he shrank back as though afraid
or reluctant to enter the house. The door stood ajar. He pushed it open
with his stick, and peered in upon the darkness. Everything was silent
as the grave. He listened for a moment, and then, his natural courage
returning, he stepped inside, and closed the door after him. The
shutting out of the few gleams of daylight which lingered in the sky
left him in utter darkness. Fumbling in his pocket, he produced a wax
candle wrapped in a piece of newspaper, and a box of matches, one of
which he carefully struck.

At first the gloom seemed too profound to be dispersed by the feeble
flickering light, but gradually, as his eyes became accustomed to it, he
began to distinguish the more familiar objects. Half fearfully he
glanced towards the door on the right-hand side. It stood half open.
There was no longer room for any doubt. The house had been opened during
his absence.

The full realization of any disaster often brings with it a calm which,
to all outward appearance, contrasts favorably with the prior state of
anxiety. This appeared to be the case with Mr. Bernard Brown. His
entrance to the house had been hesitating and anxious, but as soon as he
was convinced that what he dreamed had really come to pass, his
nervousness seemed to fall away from him, and he was his old self again,
calm and resolute. Holding the flickering candle high above his head, he
moved steadily forward into the room on the right-hand side of the
entrance.

Everything here was exactly as he had left it. The cases filled with
books, some half emptied, some untouched, still lay about the floor,
with the dust thick upon them. He cast one swift glance around, and then
walked across and opened the door of the small inner room. The sudden
draught extinguished his candle, and he found himself suddenly in total
darkness. The closely barred shutters, which protected the low window,
were securely fastened, and effectually shut out the lingering remnants
of daylight. Stooping down, he re-lit the candle which he was still
carrying, and holding it high over his head, looked anxiously around.
One glance was sufficient. In the corner of the room opposite to him was
a small table, where he always kept a basin of cold water and some clean
towels. Round here the carpet had been torn up, and rearranged, with
little pretence at concealment. Nearer the window stood a large oak
cabinet, the most important piece of furniture in the room, and this he
saw again in a moment had been tampered with. It had been moved a little
out of its position, and one of the lower drawers stood partly open.

Like a man in a dream he slowly walked across to it and drew out a bunch
of keys from his pocket. The final test had yet to be applied, and the
final blow to fall.

He unlocked the topmost partition, and revealed a number of small
drawers. Eagerly he drew out the topmost one, and looked inside. Then he
knew the worst. It was empty. There was no longer any doubt whatever.
His cottage had been entered by no ordinary housebreaker, for the
purpose of plunder, but with a set of false keys, and with a far more
serious object. The secret on which more than his life depended was
gone!




CHAPTER XX

GOD! THAT I MAY DIE!


For a certain space of time, which seemed to him indefinite, but which
was indeed of no great length, he stood there stunned, gazing at the
rifled cabinet. Then, as consciousness returned to him, the roar of the
storm without fell upon his ears, and struck some strange note of accord
with the tumult in his brain. Turning round, he unbarred the shutters,
and, opening the window, stepped outside. With slow, uncertain steps he
made his way through the dense black plantation of shrieking fir trees,
and out on to the cliffs. Here he paused, and stood quite still, looking
across the sea. There was no light in the sky, but the veil of absolute
darkness had not yet fallen upon the earth. Far away on the horizon was
a lurid patch of deep yellow storm-clouds, casting a faint glimmer upon
the foaming sea, which seemed to leap up in a weird monotonous joy to
catch the unearthly light. From inland, rolling across the moorland,
came phantom-like masses of vaporous cloud, driven on by the fierce wind
which boomed across the open country, and shrieked and yelled amongst
the pine plantations as though mad with a sudden hellish joy. On the
verge of the cliff he stretched out his arms, as though to welcome the
wild din of the night. The thunder of the ocean, seething and leaping
against the rocks below, shook the air around him. The salt spray leaped
up into his white face, and the winds blew against him, and the
passionate cry of saddened nature rang in his deafened ears. At that
moment those things were a joy to him.

And there came to him then something of that strange sweet calm which
lays its soothing hand for a moment upon those who stand face to face
with death, or any other mighty crisis. Looking steadfastly far away,
beyond the foaming waste of waters to where one faint streak of
stormlight shone on the horizon, pictures of the past began to rise up
before his eyes. He saw himself again a happy, light-hearted child,
riding gaily upon his father's shoulder, and laughing up into the
beautiful face of his youthful mother. The memories of that time, and of
his first home, came back to him with a peculiar freshness and
fragrance, like a painting by one of the old masters, perfect in design,
and with its deep rich coloring softened and mellowed by age. He
remembered the bright beauty of those sunny southern gardens, where he
had passed long hours listening to the gentle splashing of the water in
the worn grey fountain bowl, and breathing in the soft spring-like air,
faint with the sweetness of Roman violets. And, half unconsciously, his
thoughts travelled on to the time when all the pure beauty of his
surroundings--for his had been an artist's home--had begun to have a
distinct meaning for him, and in the fervor of an esthetic and unusually
thoughtful youth, he had dreamed, and felt, and tasted deep of pleasures
which the world yields only to those who stoop to listen to her secrets,
with the quickened sensibilities and glowing imagination of the
artist--one of her own children. He had read her in such a way that he
found himself struggling, even in early boyhood, for some means of
expression--but at that time none had come to him. The fruits of his
later life had been the result of his early experience, but how
embittered, how saddened by the unchanging gloom, which, at one period,
had seemed as though it must dry up for ever all enthusiasm from his
boyish heart. What a fire of passions had blazed up and died away within
him; and as he thought of that sudden dying away, he thought of the
moment when they had been quenched for ever, and of the voice which had
quenched them. Again he crouched on his knees by the side of the sofa
drawn up close to the high open windows of the Italian villa, and felt
that thin white hand laid gently upon his trembling lips, checking in a
moment the flood of angry words which in his heart had been but the
prelude to a curse. The calm of that death-white face, with its marble
passionless pallor and saint-like beauty, lingered still, faithfully
treasured up in the rich store-house of his memory. Death alone would
wipe it out. It was one of the experiences of his life, written alike
into his undying recollection, and into his heart.

And then had come that period of severe struggle with himself, out of
which he had emerged not only a conqueror, but with all the spoils of
conquest. For he had found himself, after the battle was fought out and
won, possessed of a more triumphant self-control, and a complete mastery
over those fierce earthly passions which, had they held sway for long,
would in time most surely have weakened that higher and purer part of
his nature from which all the good of his life had come. It was, indeed,
in some measure owing to the wholesome discipline of this struggle that
he had found at last the long-sought-for gift of expression, and,
taking up the pen, had sent forth golden words and thoughts into an age
where such metal was rare indeed. Always there had been this dark cloud
of anxiety looming over him, and leading him into many countries and
constantly denying him the peace for which he longed. Then had come the
climax of it all, the tragedy which had thrown over him the lowering
cloud of a hideous danger. Failure was his. The moment of trial had
come, and he had been unequal to it; and day and night there rang ever
in his ears the faint far-off whisper of those tremulous lips, and the
pleading light in those burning eyes seemed ever before him. Again he
felt the touch of that icy cold hand, and again he remembered the words
of the oath which, alas! he had not kept. Oh, it was horrible!

Once more his thoughts moved on a stage, and this time they reached
their climax. Before his fixed eyes there floated the image of a sweet,
wistful face glowing with healthy physical life, and yet with all that
delicate refinement of coloring and feature which had made her face
linger in his artist's memory for years before she had dwelt in his
man's heart. It was a torture of hell, this, that the fairest and
sweetest part of a man's life--his love--should come to him at such a
time. And then for one brief moment all memory of his misery passed away
from him, and his whole being became absorbed in a luxury of
recollection. He thought of the change which his love had wrought in
him. What had life been before? A long series of artistic and
philosophical abstractions, bringing their own peculiar content, but a
content never free from disquieting thought and restless doubts. How
could it be otherwise? Was he not human like other men? Asceticism and
intellect, and a certain purity of life which an almost epicurean
refinement had rendered beautiful to him, these, easily keeping in sway
his passionate temperament through all the long years of his life, now
only served to fan the flame of that great pure love which had suddenly
leaped up within him, a blazing, unquenchable fire. Human emotion once
aroused, had thrilled through all his being with a sweet, heart-stirring
music, and his whole nature was shaking from its very foundation. To him
such a love seemed like the rounding of his life, the panacea for all
that vague disquiet which, even in the moments of most perfect
intellectual serenity, had sometimes disturbed him. The love of such a
man was no light thing. It had mingled with his heart's blood, with the
very essence of all his being. No death, no annihilation was possible
for it. It was a part of himself, woven unchangeably into his life in a
glowing skein, the brilliant colors of which could never fade. He looked
into the future, golden with the light of such a love, and he saw a
vision of perfect happiness, of joy beyond all expression, of deep, calm
content, surpassing anything which he had known. Hand in hand he saw two
figures, himself and her, gliding through the years with a sort of
effortless energy, tasting together of everything in life that was
sweet, and pure, and beautiful; scattering all trouble and worldly
vexation to the winds, by the touchstone of their undying love. There
was intoxication--ethereal intoxication in such a vision. The winds blew
against him, and the torrents of driven rain, cold and stinging, dashed
themselves against his pale, steadfast face. Down on the beach below the
mad sea was thundering upon the cliffs, flinging its white spray so high
that it glittered like specks of luminous white light against the black
waters. Yet he noticed none of it. Until the brilliancy of that vision
which glowed before him faded, nothing external could withdraw his
thoughts.

And fade away it did at last, and neither the cold rain nor the howling
wind had given him such a chill as crept through all his body, when
memory and realization drove forth this sweet flower of his imagination.
All the cruel hopelessness, the horror of his position, rushed in upon
him like a foul nightmare. He saw himself shunned and despised, the
faces of all men averted from him; all that had gone to make his life
worthy, and even famous, forgotten in the stigma of an awful crime. He
saw her eager, beautiful face, white and convulsed with horror,
shrinking away from him as from some loathsome object. God! it was
madness to think of it! Let this thought go from him, fade away from his
reeling brain, or he would surely go mad.

Heedless of the fury of the winds that roared over the moorland, and
sobbed and shrieked in the pine grove, he threw himself upon his knees
close to the very verge of the cliff, and stretched out his hands to the
darkened heavens in a passionate gesture of despair. It was the first
time during all the fierce troubles of a stormy life that he had shrunk
down, beaten for the moment by the utter hopelessness of the struggle
which seemed to him now fast drawing toward its end.

"God! that I may die!" he moaned. "That I may die!"

And, as though in answer to his prayer, life for him suddenly became a
doubtful thing. A wild gust of wind had uprooted a young fir tree from
the plantation, and bearing it with a savage glee toward the cliff side,
dashed it against the kneeling man. There was no chance for him against
it. Over they went, man and tree together, to all appearance bound for
inevitable destruction.

Even in that second, when he felt himself being hurled over the cliff,
by what force he knew not, the consciousness of the sudden granting of
his prayer flashed across his mind, and, strange though it may seem,
brought with it a deep content. It was as he would have it be, death
sudden and unfelt. But following close upon it came another thought, so
swiftly works the brain in the time of a great crisis. He would be found
dead, and everyone, in the light of what would soon be made known, would
surely call it suicide. She would think so, too. Death on such terms he
would not willingly have.

Effort followed swiftly upon thought. He clutched wildly at the cliff
side during the first second of that flying descent, and the wind
bending it almost double, brought a stunted fir tree sapling within his
reach. He grasped it, and he was saved. Only a yard or two away, the
cliff side was black with them growing so closely together that he
pulled himself with ease from one to another till he climbed over the
cliff top, and stood again upright on the ground.

His hands were bleeding, and his clothes were hanging round him in rags.
Yet, in a certain sense, his narrow escape had done him good, for it had
brought very vividly before him the impiety of his prayer. He had given
way too long to maddening thoughts, and they had unnerved him. With the
consciousness of his escape, all the manliness of his nature reasserted
itself. He had faced this thing so long that he would face it now to the
end. Let it come when it would, he would summon up all his strength, and
meet it like a man. After death was peace for everlasting. God keep him
in that faith!

He turned away from the cliff, and walked quickly back to the cottage,
making his plans as he went. First he changed all his clothes, and then
opening again his rifled cabinet, he transferred the remaining papers to
a small handbag. These were all his preparations, but when he stepped
out again and walked down the path of his garden, a change had fallen
upon the earth. Faint gleams of dawn were breaking through the eastern
sky, and though the sea was still troubled and crested with white-foamed
breakers, the wind had gone down. Compared with the violence of the
storm a few hours back, the stillness of the gray twilight was full of a
peculiar impressiveness. Peace after the storm. Rest after trouble.

And something of this saddened peace crept into the heart of the
solitary figure crossing the moorland--on his way back to face a doom
which seemed closing in fast around him.




CHAPTER XXI

SIR ALLAN BEAUMERVILLE HAS A CALLER


Sir Allan Beaumerville, Bart., _dilettante_ physician and man of
fashion, was, on the whole, one of the most popular men in London
society. He was rich, of distinguished appearance, had charming manners,
and was a bachelor, which combination might possibly account in some
measure for the high esteem in which he was held amongst the opposite
sex. He had made his _début_ in society quite late in life, for he had
succeeded to the baronetcy, which was one of the oldest and richest in
the country, unexpectedly; and, as a young man, London--fashionable
London, at any rate--had seen or known nothing of him. Nor, indeed, had
he at any time had much to say to anyone about the earlier period of his
life. It was generally understood that he had lived abroad, and that he
had been in some sort of practice, or how else could he have acquired
his knowledge of the technical part of his profession? Beyond this,
nothing was known; and although he was evidently a traveled man, having
much to say at times about all the interesting parts of Southern Europe,
no one ever remembered meeting him anywhere. For the rest, he had passed
through none of the curriculum of English youth. No public school had
had his name upon its books, nor had he even graduated in his own
country. But he had taken a very high degree indeed at Heidelberg,
which had won him considerable respect among those who knew anything
about such matters, and his diplomas included half the letters of the
alphabet, and were undeniable. And so when he had suddenly appeared in
London on the death of his uncle and cousin, a middle-aged,
distinguished gentleman, with manners a little foreign, but in their way
perfect, society had voted him a great improvement on the former
baronet, and had taken him by the hand at once. That was a good many
years ago, and very soon after his first introduction to the London
world he had become a notable figure in it. He had never missed a town
season, and at all its chief functions was a well-known and popular
figure, always among the best and most exclusive set, and always welcome
there. He had a yacht at Cowes, a share in a Scotch moor, a dozen or so
hunters at his little place near Melton, a shooting box in Derbyshire,
and a fine old mansion and estate in Kent, where everyone liked to be
asked; and where he had more than once had the honor of entertaining
royalty. There was only one thing in the world wanted to make Sir Allan
Beaumerville perfect, women declared, and that one thing was a wife. But
although no one appeared to appreciate more highly the charms of
feminine society--as he showed in more ways than one, both in St. John's
Wood and in Belgravia--he had never shown the least inclination to
perform his duty to society in this respect. How he managed to steer
clear of the many snares and pitfalls laid for him in the course of his
career puzzled a good many men. But he did it, and what was more
remarkable still, he made no enemies. He had friendships among the other
sex such as no man save he dared have indulged in to a like extent; but
with infinite skill he always seemed to be able to drop some delicate
insinuation as to the utter absence of any matrimonial intention on his
part, which left no room for doubt or hope. He was, in short, possessed
of admirable powers of diplomacy which never failed him.

Of course his impregnability gave rise to all manner of stories. He had
been jilted in his youth, he had a wife alive, or he had had one, and
she was dead, none of which rumors met any large amount of credence. As
to the first, the idea of anyone jilting Sir Allan Beaumerville, even
before his coming into the baronetcy, found no favor in the feminine
world. No woman could have shown such ill judgment as that; and,
besides, he had very little of the melancholy which is generally
supposed to attend upon such a disappointment. As to the second, it was
never seriously entertained, for if any woman had once claimed Sir Allan
Beaumerville as a husband, she was scarcely likely to keep away from
him, especially now that he was occupying such a distinguished position.
The third was quite out of the question, for even had he ever been
married--which nobody believed--he was scarcely the sort of man to wear
the willow all his life, and, indeed, it was very evident that he was
not doing anything of the sort. Everyone knew of a certain little
establishment beyond Kensington way, where Sir Allan's brougham was
often seen, but of course no one thought the worse of him for that. And
without a doubt, if Sir Allan had yielded to that gentle wish so often
expressed, and commenced domestic life in a more conventional manner in
the great house at Grosvenor Square, he would have forfeited at once a
great deal of his popularity, at any rate among the feminine part of his
acquaintance. As it was, there was always a faint hope of winning him to
add a zest to his delightful companionship, and Sir Allan, who was a
very shrewd man, was perfectly aware of this. He was a sybarite of
refined taste, with an exquisite appreciation of the finer and more
artistic pleasures of life; and the society of educated and well-bred
women was one of the chief of them. Rather than run any risk of
deterioration in its quality he preferred to let things remain as they
were, and that he might enjoy it the more thoroughly without the
restraint placed upon other men, was the sole reason that he had not
altogether abandoned his profession. He never took any fee, nor did he
ever accept any casual patient. But on certain days of the week, at
certain hours, he was at home as a physician to certain of his lady
acquaintances to whom he had already offered his services. The number
was always few, for the invitations were rarely given, and the patients
generally remained upon the sick list for an indefinite period. But
there were few invitations more sought after. Something--perhaps the
very slight spice of impropriety which certain prudes, who had not been
asked, affected to see in such an arrangement--had made them the
fashion; and, then, Sir Allan was undeniably clever. Altogether, the
idea was a great success for him.

It had been one of Sir Allan's afternoon receptions, and, as usual,
every patient on his list had paid him a visit. Having seen the last and
most favored to her carriage, Sir Allan returned to his study with a
slight smile on his handsome face, and the recollection of some
delightfully confidential little speeches still tingling in his ears.
For a moment he stood on the hearth rug recalling them, then he looked
round the room and rang the bell. A servant appeared almost
immediately.

"Clear these things away, Morton," Sir Allan said, pointing to some
dainty marvels of china and a Japanese teapot, which stood on a little
round table between two chairs, "and bring me a loose jacket from my
room. I am dining in Downing Street to-night, and shall not want to
dress before eight."

The man obeyed, and Sir Allan, lighting a thick Egyptian cigarette, took
up a French novel, and stretched himself out in his easy chair.

"You are not at home to anyone else this afternoon, sir?" the servant
inquired before quitting the room.

"Certainly not," Sir Allan answered, yawning. "Has anyone been inquiring
for me?"

"Yes, sir."

"Lady or gentleman?"

"Gentleman, sir--at least, I think so. He looks like one."

"Any name?"

"I didn't inquire, sir. I said that you were not at home; but, as he
seemed very pressing, I promised to try and ascertain when you would be
at liberty."

"Ask him his name," Sir Allan directed.

The man withdrew, and returned in a moment or two looking a little
puzzled.

"His name is Brown, sir--Mr. Bernard Brown."

Sir Allan was seldom clumsy in little things, but at that moment he
dropped the book which he had been reading upon the floor. The servant
hastened toward it, but Sir Allan waved him away. He preferred to pick
it up himself.

"I'm afraid I've lost my place," he remarked, turning over the leaves.
"You can show Mr. Brown in here, Morton," he added. "I may as well see
what he wants."

The man withdrew, and Sir Allan recommenced the chapter. Then the door
was opened again, and the visitor was admitted. Sir Allan laid the paper
knife carefully in his place, and shutting the book, rose from his
chair.

"Mr. Brown," he said, "I am very pleased to see you. Come and take a
seat here."

He stood up in an easy attitude upon the hearthrug, and pointed with a
smile to the chair which his last visitor had occupied. But he did not
offer his hand to Mr. Brown, nor did Mr. Brown appear to expect it.

The apartment was in the semi-gloom of twilight, for the silver lamp
burning on the bracket by Sir Allan's side was covered with a
rose-colored shade, and threw all its light downward. The art treasures
with which the room was crowded, and the almost voluptuous grace of its
adornment and coloring, were more suggested than seen. Mr. Brown, who
had advanced only a few steps from the closed door, covered his eyes
with his hand, and looked a little dazed.

"Do you live in darkness?" he said in a low tone. "I want to see your
face."

Sir Allan shrugged his shoulders, and turned up the lamp a little higher
than it was. The faces of the two men were now distinctly visible to
each other, and the contrast between them was rather startling. Sir
Allan's was placid, courteous, and inquiring. Mr. Brown's was white
almost to ghastliness, and his eyes were burning with a strange light.

"I wish you'd sit down, my dear fellow!" Sir Allan remarked in a tone of
good-natured remonstrance. "It worries me to see you standing there, and
I'm sure you look tired enough."

Mr. Brown took no notice whatever of the invitation.

"I have come to see you, Sir Allan Beaumerville," he said slowly, "to
lay certain facts before you, and to ask your advice concerning them--as
a disinterested party."

"Very happy, I'm sure, to do the best I can," Sir Allan murmured,
lighting a fresh cigarette. "I wish you'd sit down to it, though. I
suppose it's about that murder we were mixed up in? Horrid affair it
was."

"Yes, it was a very horrid affair," Mr. Brown repeated slowly.

"They haven't caught the man yet, I suppose?"

"They have not--yet."

Sir Allan shrugged his fine shoulders.

"I fancy their chance is a poor one now, then," he remarked, emitting a
little cloud of smoke from his lips, and watching it curl upward in a
faint blue wreath to the ceiling. "How differently they manage affairs
on the Continent! Such a crime would not go undetected a day there."

"It will not be undetected here many more days," Mr. Brown said. "My own
belief is that a warrant is already issued for the apprehension of the
supposed murderer, and I should not be surprised to hear that at this
very moment the police were watching this house."

Sir Allan looked hard at his guest, and elevated his eyebrows.

"This is a very serious matter, Mr. Brown," he said, looking at him
steadily in the face. "Do I understand----?"

"I will explain," Mr. Brown interrupted quietly. "On my return to
Falcon's Nest yesterday, I find that during my absence the cottage has
been entered, apparently by some one in authority, for keys have been
used. My cabinet has been forced open, and a number of my private
letters and papers have been taken away. Certain other investigations
have also been made, obviously with the same object."

Sir Allan maintained his attitude of polite attention, but he had
stopped smoking, and his cigarette was burning unnoticed between his
fingers.

"I scarcely see the connection yet," he said suavely. "No doubt I am a
little dense. You speak about a number of private papers having been
abstracted from your cabinet. Do I understand--is it possible that
anything in those papers could lead people to fix upon you as the
murderer of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston?"

The two men looked steadily into each other's faces. There was nothing
in Sir Allan's expression beyond a slightly shocked surprise; in Mr.
Brown's there was a very curious mixture indeed.

"Most certainly!" was the quiet reply. "Those letters plainly point out
a motive for my having committed the crime."

"They are from----"

"Stop!"

Sir Allan started. The word had burst from Mr. Brown's lips with a
passion which his former quietude rendered the more remarkable. There
was a dead silence between them for fully a minute. Then Mr. Brown,
having resumed his former manner, spoke again.

"Those letters," he said, "tell the story of a certain episode in the
life of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. No other person is mentioned or alluded
to in them. Yet the fact of their having been found in my possession
makes them strong evidence against me."

Sir Allan nodded.

"I don't know why on earth you've come to me for advice," he remarked.
"I'm not a lawyer."

"Neither do I quite know. Still, I have come; and, as I am here, give it
me."

"In a word, then--bolt," said Sir Allan laconically.

"That is your advice, is it?"

"I don't see anything else to do. I don't ask you whether you are guilty
or not, and I do ask myself whether I am doing my duty in giving you any
advice calculated to defeat the ends of justice. I simply consider the
facts, and tell you what I should do if I were in your unfortunate
position. I should bolt."

"Thank you, Sir Allan, for your advice so far," Mr. Brown said quietly.
"There is just one little complication, however, which I wish to tell
you of."

"Yes. Might I trouble you to put the matter in as short a form as
possible, then?" Sir Allan remarked, looking at his watch. "I am dining
with the Prime Minister to-night, and it is time I commenced to dress."

"I will not detain you much longer," Mr. Brown said. "The complication,
I fear, will scarcely interest you, for it is a sentimental one. If I
fled from England to-night, I should leave behind me the woman I love."

"Then why the devil don't you take her with you?" asked Sir Allan, with
a shrug of the shoulders. "She'll go right enough if you ask her. Women
like a little mystery."

"The woman whom I love appears to be of a different class to those from
whom you have drawn your experience," Mr. Brown answered quietly. "I am
not married to her."

Sir Allan shrugged his shoulders lightly.

"Well, if she's a prude, and won't go, and you haven't pluck enough to
run away with her, I don't know how to advise you," he remarked.

Mr. Brown looked steadily into the other's face. Sir Allan met his gaze
blandly.

"Your speech, Sir Allan, betrays a cynicism which I believe is greatly
in fashion just now," Mr. Brown said slowly. "Sometimes it is altogether
assumed, sometimes it is only a thin veneer adopted in obedience to the
decree of fashion. Believing that, so far as you are concerned, the
latter is the case, I beg you to look back into your past life, and
recall, if possible, some of its emotions. Again I tell you that if I
fly from England, I shall leave behind me the woman I dearly love. I
have come to you, Sir Allan Beaumerville, with an effort. I lay all
these facts before you, and I ask you to decide for me. What shall I
do?"

"And I repeat, my dear fellow," answered Sir Allan suavely, "that the
only advice I can give you is, to leave England to-night!"

Mr. Brown hesitated for a moment. Then he turned away toward the door
without a word or gesture of farewell.

"By the by," Sir Allan remarked, "one moment, Mr. Brown! Have you any
objection to telling me the name of the lady who has been honored with
your affection. Do I know her?"

"You do. Her name is no concern of yours, though."

Suddenly an unpleasant idea seemed to flash across Sir Allan's mind. He
was more disturbed than he had been during the whole of the interview.

"Of course you don't mean that charming Miss Thurwell?" he said quickly.

The limits of Mr. Brown's endurance seemed to have been passed. He
turned suddenly round, his eyes blazing with passion, and walked across
the room to within a few feet of Sir Allan. He stood there with one hand
grasping the back of a chair, and looked at him.

"And if I did mean her, sir, what is that to you? By what right do you
dare to----"

Suddenly his upraised hand fell. Both men stood as though turned to
stone, listening, yet scarcely daring to glance toward the door. It was
the sound of Morton's quiet voice and the trailing of skirts which had
checked Mr. Brown's passionate speech.

"Lady and Miss Thurwell!"

There was no time to move, scarcely time for thought. Morton stood
respectfully at the door, and the two ladies were already on the
threshold.

"My dear Sir Allan"--in Lady Thurwell's silvery voice--"what will you
think of such a late visit? I felt ashamed to ask for you, only we have
been at the Countess of Applecorn's in the next square, and I could
positively not pass your door when I remembered that it was your
afternoon. But you are all in darkness; and you have a visitor, haven't
you?"

The figures of the two men were barely visible in the deep gloom of the
apartment, for the lamp had burned low, and gave little light. Lady
Thurwell had stopped just inside the room, surprised.

If only Sir Allan's companion had been a patient! What a delightful
piece of scandal it would have been!

"Lady Thurwell! Ah, how good of you!" exclaimed Sir Allan, coming
forward out of the shadow; "and you, too, Miss Helen. I am honored
indeed. Morton, lights at once!"

"We must not stay a moment," declared Lady Thurwell, shaking hands.
"No, we won't sit down, thanks! You know why we've called? It's about
the opera to-night. You got my note?"

"I did, Lady Thurwell, and I can trustfully say that I never read one
from you with more regret."

"Then you have an engagement?"

"Unfortunately, yes! I am dining at Downing Street."

"Well, we must send for that schoolboy cousin of yours, Helen!" said
Lady Thurwell, laughing. "You see how dependent we are upon your sex,
after all. Why, is that really you, Mr. Maddison!" she broke off
suddenly, as a tall figure emerged a little out of the gloom. "Fancy
meeting you here! I had no idea that you and Sir Allan Beaumerville were
friends. Helen, do you see Mr. Maddison?"

"I can't say that I do," she answered, with a low happy laugh; "but I'm
very glad he's here!"

The lights were brought in as she finished her little speech, and they
all looked at one another. Lady Thurwell broke into a little laugh.

"Really, this is a singular meeting," she said, "but we mustn't stop a
moment. Mr. Maddison, we were hoping to see you yesterday afternoon. Do
come soon!"

He bowed with a faint smile upon his lips.

"Come out to the carriage with us, please, Mr. Maddison," Helen said to
him in a low tone as Lady Thurwell turned to go; and he walked down the
hall between them and out on to the pavement, leaving Sir Allan on the
steps.

"You will come and dine with me soon, won't you, Mr. Maddison?" Lady
Thurwell asked him, as she touched his hand stepping into the brougham.

"I will come whenever you ask me!" he answered rashly.

"Then come now!" said Helen quickly. "We are all alone for the evening,
fancy that, and we can't go out anywhere because we haven't an escort.
Do come!"

He looked at Lady Thurwell.

"It will be a real charity if you will," she said, smiling graciously.
"We shall be bored to death alone."

"I shall be delighted," he answered at once. "About eight o'clock, I
suppose?"

"Half-past seven, please, and we'll have a long evening," said Helen.
"That will give you time to get to your club and dress. Good-by!"

They drove off, and Mr. Bernard Brown walked swiftly away toward Pall
Mall. Once he stopped in the middle of the pavement and broke into an
odd little laugh. It was a curious position to be in. He was expecting
every moment to be arrested for murder, and he was going out to dine.




CHAPTER XXII

"GOD FORBID IT!"


Mr. Maddison--to drop at this point the name under which he had chosen
to become the tenant of Falcon's Nest--was a member of a well-known
London club, chiefly affected by literary men, and after his acceptance
of Lady Thurwell's invitation, he hastened there at once and went to his
room to dress. As a rule a man does not indulge in any very profound
meditation during the somewhat tedious process of changing his morning
clothes for the monotonous garb of Western civilization. His attention
is generally fully claimed by the satisfactory adjusting of his tie and
the precaution he has to use to avoid anything so lamentable as a crease
in his shirt, and if his thoughts stray at all, it is seldom beyond the
immediate matter of his toilet, or at most a little anticipation with
regard to the forthcoming evening. If on the right side of thirty, a
pair of bright eyes may sometimes make him pause for a moment, even with
the hair brushes in his hands, to wonder if she will be there to-night,
and if by any fortunate chance he will be able to take her in to dinner.
And if the reign of the forties has commenced, it is just possible that
a little mild speculation as to the _entrées_ may be admitted. But, as a
rule, a man's thoughts do not on such an occasion strike deep beneath
the surface, and there is no record of an author having laid the plan of
his next work, or a soldier having marked out a campaign, while
struggling with a refractory tie, or obstinate parting. Even if such had
ever happened to be the case, we should not have cared to hear about it.
We prefer to think of a Napoleon planning great conquests in the serene
stillness of night among a sleeping camp and beneath a starlit sky, or
of a Wordsworth writing his poetry in his cottage home among the
mountains.

But Mr. Bernard Maddison, before he left his room that evening, had come
to a great decision--a decision which made his step the firmer, and
which asserted itself in the carriage of his head and the increased
brightness of his eyes, as he slowly descended the wide, luxurious
staircase. And he felt calmer, even happier, from having at least passed
from amid the shoals of doubt and uncertainty. The slight nervousness
had quite left him. He was still more than ordinarily pale, and there
was a look of calm resignation in his thoughtful æsthetic face which
gave to its intellectuality a touch of spirituality. One of the members
of the club said, later on in the smoking room, that Maddison seemed to
him to realize one's idea of St. Augustine in evening clothes. So far as
appearance went the comparison was not inapt.

As he reached the hall the porter came up to him with his cloak.

"There is a gentleman waiting for you in the strangers' room, sir," he
said.

Mr. Maddison turned away that the man might not see the sudden dread in
his face. It was not a long respite he craved for--only one evening. Was
even this to be denied him?

"Any name?" he asked quietly.

"He gave none," the man answered; "but I think it is Sir Allan
Beaumerville."

"Ah!" Mr. Maddison felt a sudden relief which escaped him in that brief
interjection. He was scarcely surprised at this visit. "I will go to
him," he said. "Call me a hansom, Grey, will you?"

The porter went outside, and Mr. Maddison crossed the hall and in a
small, dimly-lit room, found himself face to face with his visitor.

Sir Allan wore the brilliant uniform of a colonel in the yeomanry, for
the dinner to which he was going was to be followed by an official
reception. But he was very pale, and his manner had lost much of its
studied nonchalance.

"I followed you here," he began at once, "because, after your departure,
I began to realize more fully the seriousness of what you told me."

"Yes. I thought at the time that your indifference was a little
remarkable," Mr. Maddison said quietly. The positions between them were
entirely reversed. It was Sir Allan Beaumerville now who was placing a
great restraint upon himself, and Mr. Maddison who was collected and at
his ease.

"I was taken by surprise," Sir Allan continued. "Since you left me I
have been picturing all manner of horrible things. Have you fully
realized that you may be arrested at any moment on this frightful
charge?"

"I have fully realized it," Mr. Maddison answered calmly. "In fact, when
the porter told me that a gentleman wished to see me, I imagined at once
that it had come."

"And have you considered, too," Sir Allan continued, "how overwhelming
the evidence is against you?"

"I have considered it."

"Then why do you linger here for one moment? Why don't you escape while
you have the chance?"

"Why should I?" Mr. Maddison answered. "I shall make no attempt to
escape."

Sir Allan's face grew a shade more pallid, and betrayed an agitation
which he strove in vain to conceal.

"But supposing you are arrested," he said quickly, "everything will go
against you. What shall you do?"

"I shall accept my fate, whatever it may be," was the quiet reply. "I
prefer this to flight. Life would not be very valuable to me as a
skulking criminal in a foreign country. If it be declared forfeit to the
law, the law shall have it."

There was a sudden choking in Sir Allan's voice, and an almost piteous
look in his face.

"God forbid it!" he cried; "God forbid it!"

And suddenly this hardened man of the world, this professed cynic in an
age of cynicism, sank down in a chair and buried his head in his arms on
the green baize writing table, crushing the gold lace of his glittering
uniform, and the immaculate shirt front, with its single diamond stud.
It was only for a moment that a sudden rush of feeling overcame him. But
when he looked up his face was haggard and he looked years older.

"Does anyone--know of this?" he asked in a hoarse tone.

Mr. Maddison shook his head.

"No one whatever as yet," he said shortly. "If I am free to-morrow, I
shall go to Italy."

A sudden change swept into Sir Allan's face. He rose from his chair,
drawing himself up to his full height. Again he was the stately,
distinguished man of the world, with little feeling in his voice or
looks. Between him and this other man in his sober black, with wasted
face and thin stooping frame, there was a startling difference.

"I have no doubt that you will do your duty, Mr. Maddison," he said
coldly; "although, if I may be forgiven for saying so, your method
appears to me a little quixotic, and, in a certain sense, singularly
devoid of consideration for others. I will not detain you any longer."

He wrapped his long cloak around him and left the room in dignified
silence. Mr. Maddison followed him to the steps, and saw him get into
his carriage. They parted without another word.




CHAPTER XXIII

LOVERS


Bernard Maddison kept his engagement that evening, and dined alone with
Lady Thurwell and Helen. There had been some talk of going to the opera
afterwards, but no one seemed to care about it, and so it dropped
through.

"For my part," Lady Thurwell said, as they sat lingering over their
dessert, "I shall quite enjoy an evening's rest. You literary men, Mr.
Maddison, talk a good deal about being overworked, but you know nothing
of the life of a chaperon in the season. I tell Helen that she is sadly
wanting in gratitude. We do everything worth doing--picture galleries,
matinées, shopping, afternoon calls, dinners, dances, receptions--why,
there's no slavery like it."

Helen laughed softly.

"We do a great deal too much, aunt," she said. "I am almost coming round
to my father's opinion. You know, Mr. Maddison, he very seldom comes to
London, and then only when he wants to pay a visit to his gunmaker, or
to renew his hunting kit, or something of that sort. London life does
not suit him at all."

"I think your father a very wise man," he answered. "He seeks his
pleasures in a more wholesome manner."

She looked thoughtful.

"Yes, I suppose, ethically, the life of a man about town is on a very
low level. That is why one meets so few who interest one, as a rule.
Don't you think all this society life very frivolous, Mr. Maddison?"

"I am not willing to be its judge," he answered. "Yet it is a moral
axiom that the higher we seek for our pleasures the greater happiness we
attain to. I am an uncompromising enemy to what is known as fashionable
society, so I will draw no conclusions."

"It is intellect and artistic sensibility _versus_ sensuousness," yawned
Lady Thurwell. "I'm a weak woman, and I'm afraid I'm too old to change
my ways. But I'm on the wrong side of the argument all the same; at
least, I should be if I took up the cudgels."

"Which are the greater sinners, Mr. Maddison?" asked Helen, smiling,
"men of the world or women of the world?"

"Without doubt, men," he answered quickly. "However we may talk about
the equality of the sexes, the fact remains that women are born into the
world with lighter natures than men. They have at once a greater
capacity, and more desire for amusement pure and simple. They wear
themselves out in search of it, more especially the women of other
nations. And after all, when their life has passed, they have never
known the meaning of real happiness, of the pleasures that have no
reaction, and that sweet elevation of mind that is only won by thought
and study."

"Poor women!" murmured Lady Thurwell. "Mr. Maddison, you are making me
quite uncomfortable. Paint my sex in more glowing colors, please, or
leave them alone. Remember that I am the only middle-aged woman here. I
don't count Helen at all. I see that she is something of your way of
thinking already. Traitress! Do light a cigarette, Mr. Maddison. I adore
the perfume of them, and so does Helen."

He took one from the box she passed him, and gravely lit it. They were
doing everything in a very informal manner. Dinner had been served in
the library, a cozy little apartment with a large open grate in which a
cheerful fire had been lit. The ordinary table had been dispensed with
in favor of a small round one just large enough for them, and now, with
dessert on the table, they had turned their chairs round to the fire in
very homelike fashion.

"Do you know, I like this," Helen said softly. "I think it is so much
better than a dinner party, or going out anywhere."

"See what a difference the presence of a distinguished man of letters
makes," laughed Lady Thurwell. "Now, only a few hours ago, we were
dreading a very dull evening--Helen as well as myself. How nice it was
of you to take pity on us, Mr. Maddison!"

"Especially considering your aversion to our society," put in Helen.
"Are not you really thinking it a shocking waste of time to be here
talking to two very unlearned women instead of seeking inspiration in
your study?"

He looked at her reproachfully.

"I know nothing of Lady Thurwell's tastes," he said; "but you can
scarcely call yourself unlearned. You have read much, and you have
thought."

"A pure accident--I mean the thinking," she answered lightly. "If I had
not been a country girl, with a mind above my station, intellectually,
there's no telling what might have happened. Town life is very
distracting, if you once get into the groove. Isn't it, aunt?"

Lady Thurwell, who was a thorough little _dame de société_, rose with a
pout and shrugged her shoulders.

"I'm not going to be hauled over the coals by you superior people any
longer," she answered. "I shall leave you to form a mutual improvement
society, and go and write some letters. When you want me, come into the
drawing room, but don't come yet. Thank you, Mr. Maddison," she added,
as he held the door open for her; "be merciful to the absent, won't
you?"

And so they were alone! As he closed the door and walked across the room
to his seat, there came back to him, with a faint bewildering sweetness,
something of the passionate emotion of their farewell in the pine grove
on the cliff. He felt his pulses quicken, and his heart beat fast. It
was in vain that the dying tenets of his old life, a life of
renunciation and solitude, feebly reasserted themselves. At that moment,
if never before, he knew the truth. The warm fresh sunlight lay across
his barren life, brightening with a marvelous glow its gloomiest
corners. The old passionless serenity, in which the human had been
crushed out by the intellectual, was gone forever. He loved this woman.

And she was very fair. He stole a long glance at her as she leaned back
in her low wicker chair--the fond glance of a lover--and he felt his
keenly artistic sense stirred from its very depths by her purely
physical beauty. The firelight was casting strange gleams upon the deep
golden hair which waved about her oval face and shapely forehead in
picturesque unrestraint, and there was an ethereal glow in her exquisite
complexion, a light in her eyes, which seemed called up by some unusual
excitement.

The setting of the picture, too, was perfect. Her ivory satin gown hung
in long straight lines about her slim perfect outline with all the grace
of Greek drapery, unrelieved save by one large bunch of Neapolitan
violets nestling amongst the folds of old lace which filled up the open
space of her bodice. He stood and looked at her with a strange confusion
of feelings. A new life was burning in his veins, and for the first time
since his boyhood he doubted his absolute self-mastery. Dared he stay
there? Could he sit by her side, and bandy idle words with her?

The silence had lasted for several minutes, and was beginning to possess
something of that peculiar eloquence which such silences usually have.
At last she raised her eyes, and looked at him standing motionless and
thoughtful amongst the shadows of the room, and at the first glance he
felt his strength grow weak, and his passionate love rising up like a
living force. For there was in her eyes, and in her face, and in her
voice when she spoke, something of that softening change which
transfuses a woman's being when she loves, and lets the secret go from
her--a sort of mute yielding, an abandonment, having in it a subtle
essence of unconscious invitation.

"Come and talk to me," she said softly. "Why do you stand out there?"

He made one last despairing effort. With a strangely unnatural laugh, he
drew a chair to her side and began to talk rapidly, never once letting
his eyes rest upon her loveliness, striving to keep his thoughts fixed
upon his subject, but all the time acutely conscious of her presence. He
talked of many things with a restless energy which more than once caused
her to look up at him in wonderment. He strove even to keep her from
answering him, lest the magic of her voice should turn the trembling
scale. For her sake he unlocked the inmost recesses of his mind, and all
the rich store of artistic sensations, of jealously preserved memories,
came flooding out, clothed with all that eloquence of jeweled phrase and
daintily turned sentence which had made his writings so famous. For her
sake, too, he sent his imagination traveling through almost untrodden
fields, bringing back exquisite word pictures, and lifting the curtain
before many a landscape of sun-smitten thought. All the music of sweet
imagery and pure bracing idealism thrilled through her whole being. This
was indeed a man to love! And as his speech grew slower, and she heard
again that peculiar trembling in his tone, the meaning of which her
woman's heart so easily interpreted, she began to long for those few
words from him which she felt would be the awakening of a new life in
her. He could not fail to notice even that slight change, and wondering
whether her attention was commencing to flag, he paused and their eyes
met in a gaze full of that deep tragical intensity which marks the birth
between man and woman of any new sensation. The fire which glowed in his
eyes told her of his love as plainly as the dreamy yet expressive light
which gleamed in hers spoke also to him, and when her head drooped
before the gathering passion in his face, and the faint color streamed
into her cheeks, no will of his could keep the words back any longer. He
felt his breath come quickly, and his heart almost stop beating. His
pulses were quickening, and a strange new delight stole through him.
Surely this was the end. He could bear no more.

And it seemed as though it were indeed so, for with a sudden impulse he
caught hold of her white, ringless hand, and drew it gently toward him.
There was a slight instinctive resistance which came and went in a
space of time only a thought could measure. Then she yielded it to him,
and the sense of her touch stole through his veins with a sort of dreamy
fascination, to give place in a moment to the overmastering fire of his
great passion.

Her face was turned away from him, but he saw the faint color deepen in
her cheeks and the light quivering of the lip. And then a torrent of
feeling, before which his last shaking barriers of resistance crumbled
away like dust, swept from his heart, striking every chord of his nature
with a crash of wild music.

"Helen, my love, my love!" he cried.

And she turned round, her eyes dim with trembling tears, yet glowing
with a great happiness--turned around to feel his arms steal around her
and hold her clasped to his heart in a mad sweet embrace. And it seemed
to her that it was for this that she had lived.




CHAPTER XXIV

A WOMAN'S LOVE


It seemed to him in those few golden moments of his life that memory
died away and time stood still. The past with its hideous sorrows, and
the future over which it stretched its chilling hand, were merged in the
present. Life had neither background nor prospect. The overpowering
realization of the elysium into which he had stepped had absorbed all
sense and all knowledge. They were together, and words were passing
between them which would live to eternity in his heart.

But the fairest summer sky will not be fair forever. Clouds will gather,
and drive before them the sweetness and joy from the smiling heavens,
and memory is a mistress who may slumber but who never sleeps. Those
moments of entrancing happiness, although in one sense they lasted a
lifetime, were in the ordinary measure of time but of brief duration.
For with something of the overmastering suddenness with which his
passion had found expression, there swept back into his heart all the
still cold flow of icy reminiscence. She felt his arms loosen around
her, and she raised her head, wondering, from his shoulder, wonder that
turned soon to fear, for he rose up and stood before her white, and with
a great agony in his dark eyes.

"I have been mad!" he muttered hoarsely. "Forgive me! I must go!"

She stood up by his side, pale, but with no fear or weakness in her
look. She, too, had begun to realize.

"Tell me one thing," she said softly. "You do--love me!"

"God knows I do!" he answered. The words came from his heart with a
nervous intensity which showed itself in his quivering lips, and the
vibration of his tone. She knew their truth as surely as though she had
seen them written in letters of fire, and that knowledge, or rather her
absolute confidence in it, made her in a measure bold. The dainty
exclusiveness which had half repelled, half attracted other men had
fallen away from her. She stood before him a loving tearful woman, with
something of that gentle shame which is twin sister to modesty burning
in her cheeks.

"Then I will not let you go," she said softly, taking both his hands in
hers, and holding him tightly. "Nothing shall come between us."

He looked into the love light which gleamed in her wet eyes, and
stooping down he took her again into his arms and kissed her.

"My darling!" he whispered passionately, "my darling! But you do not
know."

"Yes, I do," she answered, drawing him gently back to their old place.
"You mean about what Rachel Kynaston said that awful night, don't you?"

"More than that, alas!" he answered in a low tone. "Other people besides
Rachel Kynaston have had suspicions about me. I have been watched, and
while I was away, Falcon's Nest has been entered, and papers have been
taken away."

She was white with fear. This was Benjamin Levy's doing, and it was
through her. Ought she to tell him? She could not! She could not!

"But they do not--the papers, I mean--make it appear that----"

"Helen," he interrupted, with his face turned away from her, "it is best
that you should know the truth. Those papers reveal the story of a
bitter enmity between myself and Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. When you
consider that and the other things, you will see that I may at any
moment be arrested."

A spasm of pain passed across her face. At that moment her thoughts were
only concerned with his safety. The terrible suggestiveness of what he
had told her had very little real meaning for her then. Her one thought
was, could she buy those papers? If all her fortune could do it, it
should be given. Only let him never know, and let him be safe!

"Bernard," she whispered softly, "I am not afraid. It is very terrible,
but it cannot alter anything. Love cannot come and go at our bidding. It
is forever. Nothing can change that."

He stopped her lips with passionate kisses, and then he tried to tear
himself away. But she would not let him go. A touch of that complete
self-surrender which comes even to the proudest woman when she loves had
made her bold.

"Have I not told you, Bernard," she whispered, "that I will not let you
go?"

"Helen, you must," he said hoarsely. "Who knows but that to-morrow I may
stand in the dock, charged with that hideous crime?"

"If they will let me, I shall gladly stand by your side," she answered.

He turned away, and his shaking fingers hid his face from her.

"Oh, this is too much for a man to bear!" he moaned. "Helen, Helen,
there must be nothing of this between you and me."

"Nothing between you and me!" she repeated with a ring of gentle scorn
in her voice. "Bernard, do you know so little of women, after all? Do
you think that they can play at love in this give-and-take fashion?"

He did not answer. She stood up and passed one of her arms around his
neck, and with the other hand gently disengaged his fingers from before
his face.

"Bernard, dearest, look at me. All things can be changed by fashion or
expediency save a woman's love, and that is eternal. Don't think,
please, of any of these terrible things that may be in store for us, or
what other people would think or say. I want you to remember that love,
even though it be personal love, is far above all circumstance. No power
in this world can alter or change it. It belongs to that better part of
ourselves which lifts us above all misfortune and trouble. You have
given me a great happiness, Bernard, and you shall not take it away from
me. Whatever happens to you, it is my right to share it. Remember, for
the future, it is 'we,' not 'I.' You must not think of yourself alone in
anything, for I belong now to everything that concerns you."

And so it was that for the first time in his life Bernard Maddison, who
had written much concerning them, much that was both faithful and
beautiful, saw into the inner life of a true woman. Only for the man
whom she loves will she thus lift the curtain from before that sweet
depth of unselfishness which makes even the homeliest of her sex one of
the most beautiful of God's creations; and he, if he be in any way a man
of human sensibility and capacity, must feel something of that wondering
awe, that reverence with which Bernard Maddison drank in the meaning of
her words. The mute anxiety of her tearful gaze, the color which came
and fled from her face--he understood all these signs. They were to him
the physical, the material covering for her appeal. A life of grand
thoughts, of ever-climbing ideas, of pure and lofty aims, had revealed
to him nothing so noble and yet so sweetly human as this; had filled his
being with no such heart-shattering emotion as swept through him at that
moment. A woman's hand had lifted him out from his despair into a higher
state, and there was a great humility in the silent gesture with which
he yielded his will to hers.

And then again there were spoken words between them which no chronicles
should report, and a certain calm happiness took up its settled place in
his heart, defiant of that despair which could not be driven out. Then
came that reawakening to mundane things which seems like a very great
step indeed in such cases. She looked at the clock, and gave a little
start.

"Bernard, it is nearly eleven o'clock," she cried. "We must go into the
drawing-room at once. What will aunt think of us? You must come with me,
of course; but you'd better say good night now. There, that will do,
sir!"

She drew away and smoothed her ruffled hair back from her forehead,
looking ruefully in the glass at her tear-stained cheeks, and down at
the crushed violets in her corsage.

"May I have them?" he asked.

She drew them out and placed them in his hand.

"To-morrow----" she said.

"To-morrow I must go into the land of violets," he interrupted.

She turned round quickly.

"What do you mean? You are not going away without my permission, sir?"

"Then I must seek it," he answered, smiling. "You have given life such
an exquisite sweetness for me, that I am making plans already to
preserve it. My one hope lies in Italy."

"How long should you be away?" she asked anxiously.

"Not a week," he answered. "If I am permitted to leave England, which I
fear is doubtful, to-morrow, I can be back perhaps in five days."

"Then you may go, Bernard," she whispered. "Take this with you, and
think of me sometimes."

She had drawn out a photograph of herself from a folding case on the
mantelpiece, and he took it from her eagerly.

"Nothing in the world could be so precious to me," he said.

"For a novice you say some very nice things," she answered, laughing
softly. "And now you must go, sir. No, you needn't come into the
drawing-room; I really couldn't show myself with you. I'll make your
excuses to my aunt. Farewell--love!"

"Farewell--sweetheart!" he answered, hesitating for a moment over the
words which seemed so strange to him. Then, as though loth to leave him,
she walked down the hall by his side, and they looked out for a moment
into the square. A footman was standing prepared to open the door, but
Helen sent him away with a message to her maid.

"Do you know why I did that?" she asked, her clasp tightening upon his
arm.

He shook his head, and looked down at her fondly.

"I can't imagine, unless----"

She glanced half fearfully behind and then up into his face again, with
a faint blush stealing into her cheeks.

"I want one more kiss, please."

He looked into her soft trustful face, and he felt, with a sense almost
of awe, the preciousness of such a love as this, a love which,
comprehending the terrible period of anxiety through which he had to
pass, was not ashamed to seek to sweeten it for him by the simple charm
of such an offering. Then, at the sound of returning footsteps in the
hall, he let go her hands, and with her fond farewell still lingering in
his ears, he hurried out into the street.




CHAPTER XXV

MR. LEVY, JUNIOR, GOES ON THE CONTINENT


Mr. Benjamin Levy was standing in his favorite position before the
office fireplace, with his legs a little apart, and his small keen eyes
fixed upon vacancy. It was thus, in that very pose, and on that very
hearthrug, that he had thought out more than one of those deep-laid
schemes which had brought a certain measure of notoriety to the firm of
which he was a shining light, and at that very moment he was engaged in
deep consideration concerning the case in which his energies were at
present absorbed.

A few feet away, his father was carefully calculating, with the aid of a
ready reckoner, the compound interest on a little pile of bills of
exchange which lay before him. Every now and then he paused, and,
looking up from his task, glanced cautiously into his son's perplexed
face. Curiosity at length culminated in speech.

"What was you thinking, Benjamin, my son?" he said softly. "The Miss
Thurwell case is plain before us, is it not? There is nothing fresh, is
there? No fresh business, eh, my son?"

Mr. Benjamin started, and abandoned his reflections.

"No; nothing fresh, dad. It was the Thurwell affair I was thinking of.
Give me the keys, will you?"

Mr. Levy leaned back in his chair and produced from his trousers pocket
a jingling bunch of keys.

Mr. Benjamin took them in thoughtful silence, and, opening the safe,
drew out a packet of faded letters tied up with ribbon. From these he
selected one, and carefully replaced the rest.

"Those letters again," remarked his fond parent, chuckling. "Take care
of them, Benjamin, take care of them. They was worth their weight in
gold to us."

"They're worth a great deal more than that," remarked Mr. Benjamin
carelessly. "There's only one thing, dad, that puzzles me a bit."

"It must be a rum thing, my boy, that does that," his fond parent
remarked admiringly. "I never praise undeservedly, but I must say this,
Benjamin, you've managed this Thurwell affair marvelously--marvelously!
Come, let me see what it is that is too deep for you."

He rose and looked over his son's shoulder at the letter which he was
reading--one thin sheet of foreign note paper, covered with closely
written lines of faint, angular writing, and emitting even now a
delicate musky scent.

"What is it, Benjamin--what is it?"

His son laid his finger on a sentence toward the close of the letter,
and read it aloud:--

     "What that fear has been to me, and what it has grown into during my
     sad lonely life, I cannot hope to make you understand. Always those
     terrible words of vengeance ring in my ears as I heard them last.
     They seem to roll over sea and land, and in the middle of the night,
     and out in the sunlit street, I seem to hear them still. It is not
     you I fear, Bernard, so much as him!"

Mr. Levy listened, and nodded approvingly.

"All is plain there, Benjamin, I think. The meaning is quite clear."

Mr. Benjamin laid his finger upon the last sentence.

"What do you make of that, dad?" he asked.

Mr. Levy adjusted his spectacles and read it slowly.

"'It is not for you I fear, Bernard, so much as him.' Tut, tut, that's
simple enough," he declared. "This woman, whoever she may be, is afraid
of a meeting between Sir Geoffrey Kynaston and Mr. Bernard Maddison, to
give him his right name, and she remarks that it is for him she fears,
and not for Sir Geoffrey. Quite right, too, considering the affectionate
tone of these letters."

"Yes, I suppose that's it," Mr. Benjamin remarked in an absent tone,
folding up the letter, and putting it back amongst the rest.

Mr. Levy watched him narrowly, and returned to his desk with a sense of
injury. His son--his Benjamin--had discovered something which he was not
going to confide to the parental ear. It was a blow.

He was wondering whether it might have the desired effect if he were to
produce a scrap of old yellow pocket handkerchief, and affect to be
overcome, when they heard a hurried footstep outside. Both looked up
anxiously. There was a quick knocking at the door, and a shabby-looking
man dressed in black entered.

"Well, Leekson, what news?" Mr. Benjamin asked quickly.

"He's off," was the prompt reply. "Continent. Afternoon train. Waterloo,
three o'clock."

Mr. Benjamin's eyes sparkled.

"I knew it!" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Job's over, Leekson. Get me a
cab, and go to the office for your money."

"You're going to let him go!" cried Mr. Levy piteously.

"Not I. I'm going with him, dad. A fifty-pound note from the safe,
quick."

Mr. Levy gave it to him with trembling fingers.

"Now, dad, listen to me," Benjamin said earnestly, reaching down his
overcoat from the peg. "Miss Thurwell will be here some time to-day, I'm
certain, to try and buy those letters. I've changed my mind about them.
Sell."

"Sell," repeated Mr. Levy, surprised. "I thought that that was what we
were not to do."

"Never mind, never mind. I'm playing a better game than that now,"
continued Mr. Benjamin. "I'll leave it to you to make the bargain.
There's no one can beat you at that, you know, dad."

Mr. Levy acknowledged his son's compliment with a gratified smile.

"Well, well, Benjamin, we'll say nothing about that. I'll do my best,
you may be sure," he declared fervently.

"I may as well just mention that I have ascertained how much money she
has got," Mr. Benjamin went on. "She's worth, until her father dies,
about fifteen thousand pounds. We won't be hard on her. Suppose we say
five thousand the lowest, eh?"

"All right, Benjamin, all right," the old man murmured, rubbing his
hands softly together. "Five thousand pounds! My eye! And how long shall
you be away?"

"I can't quite tell, dad. Just keep your pecker up, and stick to the
biz."

"Yes, Ben, yes. And of course you can't stop to tell me about it now,
but won't this five thousand pounds from the young lady about put an end
to this little game, eh? And, if so, need you go following this Mr.
Maddison all over the country, eh? An expensive journey, Ben. You've got
that fifty-pound note, you know."

Mr. Benjamin laughed contemptuously.

"You'll never make a pile, you won't, dad," he exclaimed. "You're so
plaguedly narrow minded. Listen here," he added, drawing a little closer
to him, and looking round over his shoulder to be sure that no one was
listening to him. "When I come back, I'll make you open your eyes. You
think this thing played out, do you? Bah! The letters aren't worth
twopence to us. When I come back from abroad, I'm going to commence to
play this game in a manner that'll rather astonish you, and a certain
other person. Ta-ta, guv'nor."

Mr. Benjamin Levy was a smart young man, but he had a narrow escape that
afternoon, for as he was sauntering up and down the platform at
Waterloo, whom should he see within a dozen yards of him but Mr.
Maddison and Miss Thurwell. He had just time to jump into a third-class
carriage, and spread a paper out before his face, before they were upon
him.

"Jove, that was a shave!" he muttered to himself. "Blest if I thought
they were as thick as that. I wonder if she's going with him. No,
there's no female luggage, and that's her maid hanging about behind
there. Moses, ain't she a slap-up girl, and ain't they just spooney!
D--d if he ain't kissed her!" he wound up as the train glided out of the
station, leaving Helen Thurwell on the platform waving her handkerchief.
"Well, we're off. So far, so good. I feel like winning."

But, unfortunately for Mr. Benjamin, there was a third person in that
train whom neither he nor Mr. Maddison knew of, who was very much
interested in the latter. Had he only mentioned his name, or referred in
the slightest possible way to his business abroad before Mr. Benjamin,
that young gentleman would have promptly abandoned his expedition and
returned to town. But, as he did not, all three traveled on together in
a happy state of ignorance concerning each other; and Mr. Benjamin Levy
was very near experiencing the greatest disappointment of his life.




CHAPTER XXVI

HELEN DECIDES TO GO HOME


Mr. Benjamin Levy's surmise had been an accurate one. Late in the
afternoon of that day, Helen Thurwell called at the little office off
the Strand, and when she left it an hour later, she had in her pocket a
packet of letters, and Mr. Levy had in his safe a check and promissory
note for five thousand pounds. Both were very well satisfied--Mr. Levy
with his money, and Helen with the consciousness that she had saved her
lover from the consequences of what she now regarded as her great folly.

She was to have dined out that evening with her aunt, but when the time
to dress came, she pleaded a violent headache, and persuaded Lady
Thurwell, who was a good-natured little woman, to take an excuse.

"But, my dear Helen, you don't look one bit ill," she had ventured to
protest, "and the Cullhamptons are such nice people. Are you sure that
you won't come?"

"If you please, aunt," she had begged, "I really do want to stay at home
this evening;" and Lady Thurwell had not been able to withstand her
niece's imploring tone, so she had gone alone.

Helen spent the evening as she had planned to. She took her work down
into the room where they had been the night before, and where this
wonderful thing had happened to her. Then she leaned back in her low
chair--the same chair--and gave herself up to the luxury of thought; and
when a young woman does that she is very far gone indeed. It was all so
strange to her, so bewildering, that she needed time to realize it.

And as she sat there, her eyes, full of a soft dreamy light, fixed upon
vacancy, and her lips parted in a happy smile, she felt a sudden longing
to be back again upon the moorland cliffs round Thurwell Court, out in
the open country with her thoughts. This town season with its monotonous
round of gayety was nothing to her now. More than ever, in the enlarged
and sweeter life which seemed opening up before her, she saw the
littleness and enervating insipidity of it all. She would go down home,
and take some books--the books he was fond of--and sit out on the cliffs
by the sea and read and dream, and think over all he had said to her,
and look forward to his coming; it should be there he would find her.
They two alone would stand together under the blue sky, and wander about
in the sunshine over the blossoming moors. Would not this be better than
meeting him again in a crowded London drawing-room? She knew that he
would like it best.

So when Lady Thurwell returned from her party, and was sitting in her
room in a very becoming dressing gown, yawning and thinking over the
events of the evening, there was a little tap at the door, and Helen
entered, similarly attired.

"Please tell me all about it," she begged, drawing up a chair to the
fire. "My headache is quite gone."

"So I should imagine," remarked Lady Thurwell. "I never saw you look
better. What have you been doing to yourself, child? You look like
Aphrodite 'new bathed in Paphian wells.'"

"If you mean to insinuate that I've had a bath," laughed Helen, "I admit
it. Now, tell me all about this evening."

Which of course Lady Thurwell did, and found a good deal to say about
the dresses and the menu.

"By the bye," she wound up, with a curious look at her niece, "Sir Allan
Beaumerville was there, and seemed a good deal disappointed at the
absence of a certain young lady."

"Indeed!" answered Helen. "That was very nice of him. And now, aunt, do
you know what I came in to say to you?"

Lady Thurwell shook her head.

"Haven't any idea, Helen. Has anyone been making love to you?"

Helen shook her head, but the color gathered in her cheeks, and she took
up a screen, as though to protect her face from the fire.

"I want to go home, aunt. Don't look so startled, please. I heard from
papa this morning, and he's not very well, and Lord Thurwell comes back
to-morrow, so you won't be lonely, and I've really quite made my mind
up. Town is very nice, but I like the country best."

"Like the country best in May!" Lady Thurwell gasped. "My dear child,
have you taken leave of your senses?"

"Not quite, aunt," Helen answered, smiling. "Only it is as I say. I like
the country best, and I would really rather go home."

Lady Thurwell considered for a full minute. Being a very juvenile
matron, she had by no means enjoyed her _rôle_ as chaperon to an
acknowledged beauty. She had offered it purely out of good nature, and
because, although only related by marriage--Lord Thurwell was the elder
brother of Mr. Thurwell, of Thurwell Court, and the head of the
family--still there was no one else to perform such a service for Helen.
But if Helen did really not care for it, and wished to return to her
country life, why there was no necessity for her to make a martyr of
herself any longer.

"You really mean this, Helen?"

"I do indeed, aunt."

"Then it is settled. Make your own arrangements. I have liked having
you, child, and whenever you choose to come to me again you will be
welcome. But of course, it is not everyone who cares for town life, and
if you do not, you are quite right to detach yourself from it. I'm
afraid I know several young men who'll take your sudden flight very much
to heart; and one who isn't particularly young."

"Nonsense!" laughed her niece. "There'll be no mourning on my account."

"We shall see," remarked Lady Thurwell, sententiously. "If one person
does not find his way down to Thurwell Court after you before long, I
shall be surprised."

"Please don't let anyone do anything so stupid, aunt," pleaded Helen
with sudden warmth. "It would be--no good."

Lady Thurwell lifted her eyebrows, and looked at her niece with a
curious little smile.

"Who is it?" she asked quietly.

But Helen only laughed. Her secret was too precious to part with--yet.




CHAPTER XXVII

MR. THURWELL MAKES SOME INQUIRIES


And so Helen had her own way, and went back to her home on the moors,
where Mr. Thurwell, who had just finished his hunting season, was very
glad to see her, although not a little surprised. But she told him no
more than she had told her aunt, that she had no taste for London life.
The time would soon come when he would know the whole truth, but until
her lover's return the secret was her own.

She had one hasty note from him, posted in Paris on his way to Italy,
and though there were only a few lines in it, she treasured up the
little scrap of paper very tenderly, for, such as it was, it was her
first love letter. He had given her an address in the small town to
which he was bound, and she noticed, with a slight wonder at the
coincidence, that it was the same place where he had first seen her. She
had written to him, and now there had come a pause. She had nothing to
do but to wait.

But though such waiting is at best but a tedious matter, those few days
brought their own peculiar happiness to her. She would have found it
impossible to have confided her secret to any human being; she had no
bosom friend to whom she could go for sympathy. But her healthy,
open-air life, her long solitary walks, and a certain vein of poetry
which she undoubtedly possessed, had given her some of that passionate,
almost personal, love of nature which is sweeter by far than any human
friendship. For her those long stretches of wild moorland, with the dark
silent tarns and far-distant line of blue hills, the high cliffs where
the sea wind roared with all the bluster and fury of a late March, the
sea itself with its ever-changing face, the faint streaks of brilliant
color in the evening sky, or the wan glare of a stormy morning--all
these things had their own peculiar meaning to her, and awoke always
some echo of response in her heart. And it chanced that at that time all
the sweet breezy freshness of a late spring was making glad the country
which she loved, and the perfect sympathy of the season with her own
happiness seemed to her very sweet, for it was springtime too in her
heart. A new life glowed in her veins, and sometimes it seemed to her
that she could see the vista of her whole future bathed in the warm
sunlight of a new-born happiness. The murmuring pine groves, the gay
reveling of the birds, the budding flowers and heath--all these things
appealed to her with a strange sympathetic force. So she took long
walks, and came home with sparkling eyes, and her cheeks full of a rich
color, till her father wondered what had come to his proud silent
daughter to give this new buoyancy to her frame, and added physical
beauty to her face, which had once seemed to him a little too
_spirituelle_ and ethereal.

Once more Helen and her father sat at breakfast out on the sheltered
balcony of Thurwell Court. Below them the gardens, still slightly coated
with the early morning dew, were bathed in the glittering sunshine, and
in the distance, and over the tops of the trees in the park, a slight
feathery mist was curling upward. The sweet, fresh air, still a little
keen, was buoyant with all the joyous exhilaration of spring, and
nature, free at last from the saddened grip of winter, was reasserting
itself in one glad triumphant chorus. Down in the park the slumberous
cawing of the rooks triumphed over the lighter-voiced caroling of
innumerable thrushes and blackbirds, and mingled with the faint humming
of a few early bees, seemed to fill the air with a sweetly blended
strain of glad music. It was one of those mornings typical of its own
season, in which the whole atmosphere seems charged with quickening
life. Summer with its warm luscious glow, and autumn with its clear calm
repose, have their own special charms. But a spring morning, coming
after the deep sadness of a hard winter, gains much by the contrast.
There is overflowing energy and passionate joy in its newly beating
pulses, the warm delight of reawakening life, happy to find the earth so
fair a place, which the staider charms of a more developed season
altogether lack.

It was in some measure owing to this influence, and also to the fact
that she held in her hand a letter from her lover, which her father had
handed her without remark, but with a somewhat curious glance, that
Helen was feeling very happy that morning. The last year had dealt
strangely with her. Tragedy had thrown its startling, gloomy shadow
across her life, and had left traces which could never be altogether
wiped out. Anxieties of another sort had come, perplexities and strange
unhappy doubts, although these last had burned with a fitful, uncertain
flame and now seemed stilled for ever. But triumphing over all these was
this new-born love, the great deep joy of a woman's life, so vast, so
sweet and beautiful, that it transfuses her whole being, and seems to
lift her into another world.

And so Helen, leaning back in her chair, with her eyes wandering idly
over the pleasant gardens and park below, to where, through a deep gap
in the trees, was just visible a faint blue line of sea, was wrapped up
very much in her own thoughts, and scarcely doing her duty toward
entertaining her father. Indeed, she seemed almost unconscious of his
presence until he looked up suddenly from a letter he was reading and
asked her a question.

"By the bye, Helen," he said, "I've meant to ask you something every day
since you've been home, but I have always forgotten it. Who was that
young man who came down here to help Johnson with the auditing, and who
went away so suddenly? A _protégé_ of yours, I suppose, as he came here
on your recommendation?"

"Yes, I was interested in him," she answered, looking steadily away, and
with a faint color in her cheeks. "Why do you ask? Did he not do his
work properly?"

"Oh, yes, he did his work very well, I believe," Mr. Thurwell said
impatiently. "It was what he did after working hours, and which has just
come to my notice, which makes me ask you. It seems he spent the whole
of his spare time making covert, but I must say ingenious, inquiries
respecting Sir Geoffrey's murder, and I am also given to understand that
he paid Falcon's Nest an uninvited visit in the middle of the night.
What does it all mean? Was it merely curiosity, or had he any object in
it?"

"I think--he had an object," she answered slowly.

"Indeed!" Mr. Thurwell raised his eyebrows and waited for an
explanation.

"You remember, papa, that awful scene here when Rachel Kynaston died,
and what her last words to me were?"

"Yes, I remember perfectly," Mr. Thurwell answered gravely.

"Well, at that time I could not help having just a suspicion that Mr.
Brown must be mixed up in it in some way, and it seemed to me that I
should not be quite at ease if I let matters go on without doing
anything, so I--well, this young man came down here to see whether he
could find out anything."

Mr. Thurwell seldom frowned at his daughter, of whom he was secretly a
little afraid, but he did so now. He was seriously angry.

"It was not a matter for you to have concerned yourself in at all," he
said, rising from his seat. "At least, I should have been consulted."

"It was all very foolish, I know," she admitted humbly.

"It was worse than foolish; it was wrong and undutiful," he declared. "I
am astonished that my daughter should have mixed herself up with such
underhand work. And may I ask why I was kept in ignorance?"

"Because you would not have allowed me to do what I did," she said
quietly, with downcast eyes. "I thought it was my duty. I have been
punished--punished severely."

He softened a little, and resumed his seat. She was certainly very
contrite. He was silent for a moment or two, and then asked her a
question.

"Did this young man--detective, I suppose he was--find out anything
about Mr. Brown?"

She looked up, a little surprised at the curiosity in his tone.

"Why, papa, it was I who found out how stupid I had been," she said.
"When I discovered that our mysterious tenant was Bernard Maddison, of
course I saw the absurdity of suspecting him at once."

Mr. Thurwell moved a little uneasily in his chair.

"He did not find out anything, then?" he asked.

She was silent. She had not expected this, and she scarcely knew how to
answer.

"He found out what Mr. Brown--I mean Mr. Maddison--himself told me, that
he had known Sir Geoffrey abroad."

"Nothing more?"

"I did not ask. To tell the truth, I was not interested. The idea of Mr.
Maddison being connected with such a crime is simply ridiculous. I was
heartily sorry that I had ever taken any steps at all."

Mr. Thurwell lit a cigarette, and drew his remaining letters toward him.

"I must confess," he said slowly, "that when his house was searched in
my presence, and all that we discovered was that Mr. Brown was really
Bernard Maddison, I felt very much as you feel; and, as you no doubt
remember, I went out of my way to be civil to the man, and brought him
up here to dine. But since then things have cropped up, and I'm bound to
say that it looks a little queer. I hear that young man of yours told
several people that he had in his pocket what would bring Mr. Brown to
the scaffold any day."

"It is not true," she answered in a low firm tone. "I know that it is
not true."

Mr. Thurwell shrugged his shoulders.

"I hope not, I'm sure. Still, I'd rather he did not come back here
again. Some one must have done it, you see, and if it was a stranger,
he must have been a marvelous sort of fellow to come into this lonely
part of the country, and go away again without leaving a single trace."

"Criminals are all clever at disguises," she interposed.

"Doubtless; but they have yet to learn the art of becoming invisible,"
he went on drily. "I'm afraid it's no use concealing the fact that
things look black against Maddison, and there is more than a whisper in
the county about it. If he's a wise fellow, he'll keep away from here."

"He will not," she answered. "He will come back. He is innocent!"

Mr. Thurwell saw the rising flush in his daughter's face, but he had no
suspicion as to its real cause. He knew that Bernard Maddison was one of
her favorite authors, and he put her defence of him down to that fact.
He was not a particularly warm advocate on either side, and suddenly
remembering his unopened letters, he abandoned the discussion.

Helen, whose calm happiness had been altogether disturbed, rose in a few
minutes with the intention of making her escape. But her father, with an
open letter in his hand, checked her.

"Have you been seeing much of Sir Allen Beaumerville in town, Helen?" he
asked.

"Yes, a great deal. Why?" she asked.

"He's coming down here," Mr. Thurwell said. "He asks whether we can put
him up for a night or two, as he wants to do some botanizing. Of course
we shall be very pleased. I did give him a general invitation, I
remember, but I never thought he'd come. You'll see about having some
rooms got ready, Helen!"

"Yes, papa, I'll see to it," she answered, moving slowly away.

What could this visit in the middle of the season mean? she wondered
uneasily. It was so unlike Sir Allan to leave town in May. Could it be
that what her aunt had once laughingly hinted at was really going to
happen? Her cheeks burned at the very thought. She liked Sir Allan, and
she had found him a delightful companion, but even to think of any other
man now in such a connection seemed unreal and grotesque. After all, it
was most improbable. Sir Allan had only shown her the attention he
showed every woman who pleased his fastidious taste.




CHAPTER XXVIII

SIR ALLAN BEAUMERVILLE VISITS THE COURT


On the following day Sir Allan duly arrived, and in a very short space
of time Helen's fears had altogether vanished. His appearance was
certainly not that of an anxious wooer. He was pale and haggard and
thin, altogether a different person to the brilliant man about town who
was such a popular figure in society. Something seemed to have aged him.
There were lines and wrinkles in his face which had never appeared there
before, and an air of restless depression in his manner and bearing
quite foreign to his former self.

On the first evening Mr. Thurwell broached some plans for his
entertainment, but Sir Allan stopped him at once.

"If I may be allowed to choose," he said, "I should like to be
absolutely quiet for a few days. London life is not the easiest in the
world, and I'm afraid I must be getting an old man. At any rate I am
knocked up, and I want a rest."

"You have come to the right place for that," Mr. Thurwell laughed. "You
could live here for months and never see a soul if you chose. But I'm
afraid you'll soon be bored."

"I'm not afraid of that," Sir Allan answered quietly. "Besides, my
excuse was not altogether a fiction. I really am an enthusiastic
botanist, and I want to take up my researches here just where I was
obliged to leave them off so suddenly last year."

Mr. Thurwell nodded.

"I remember," he said; "you were staying at Mallory, weren't you, when
that sad affair to poor Kynaston happened?"

"Yes."

Sir Allan moved his chair a little, as though to escape from the warmth
of the fire, and sat where the heavily shaded lamp left his face in the
shadow.

"Yes, that was a terrible affair," he said in a low tone; "and a very
mysterious one. Nothing has ever been heard of the murderer, I suppose?"

"Nothing."

"And there are no rumors, no suspicions?"

Mr. Thurwell looked uneasily around, as though to satisfy himself that
there were no servants lingering in the room.

"It is scarcely a thing to be talked about," he said slowly; "but there
have been things said."

"About whom?"

"About my tenant at Falcon's Nest--Bernard Maddison, as he turned out to
be."

"Ah!"

Mr. Thurwell looked at his guest wonderingly. He could not quite make up
his mind whether he was profoundly indifferent or equally interested.
His tone sounded a little cold.

"There was a fellow down here in my employ," continued Mr. Thurwell,
lighting a fresh cigar, "who turns out to have been a spy or detective
of some sort. Of course I knew nothing of it at the time--in fact, I've
only just found it out; but it seems he ransacked Falcon's Nest and
discovered some papers which he avowed quite openly would hang Mr.
Maddison. But what's become of him I don't know."

"I suppose he didn't disclose the nature of the papers?" Sir Allan asked
quietly.

"No, he didn't go as far as that. By the bye, you know every one,
Beaumerville. Who is this Bernard Maddison? Of course I know all about
his writing and that; but what family is he of? He is certainly a
gentleman."

Sir Allan threw away his cigarette, and rose.

"I think I have heard once, but I don't remember for the moment. Miss
Helen promised us a little music, didn't she?" he added. "If you are
ready, shall we go and remind her?"

Sir Allan brought the conversation to an end with a shrug of his
shoulders, and during the remainder of his stay Mr. Thurwell noticed
that he carefully avoided any reopening of it. Evidently his guest has
no taste for horrors.

Sir Allan rose late on the following morning, and until lunch-time
begged for the use of the library, where he remained writing letters and
reading up the flora of the neighborhood. Early in the afternoon he
appeared equipped for his botanizing expedition.

"Helen shall go with you and show you the most likely places," Mr.
Thurwell had said at luncheon. But though Sir Allan had bowed
courteously, and had expressed himself as charmed, he had not said
another word about it, so when the time came he started alone. On the
whole Helen, although she was by no means ill-pleased, was not a little
puzzled. In London, when it was sometimes difficult to obtain a place by
her side at all, Sir Allan had been the most assiduous and attentive of
cavaliers; but now that they were quite alone in the country, and her
company was even offered to him, he showed himself by no means eager to
avail himself of it. On the contrary, he had deliberately preferred
doing his botanizing alone. Well, she was quite satisfied, she thought,
with a little laugh. It was far better this way than the other. Still
she was puzzled.

Later in the afternoon she started for her favorite walk alone. She
nearly always chose the same way along the cliffs, through the fir
plantation, and sometimes as far as the hill by the side of which was
Falcon's Nest. It was a walk full of associations for her, associations
which had become so dear a part of her life that she always strove to
heighten them even by choosing the same hour of the day for her walk as
that well-remembered one when they had stood hand-in-hand for a single
moment in the shadows of the darkening plantation. And again, as it had
done many times before, her heart beat fast, and sweet memories began to
steal back to her as she passed under those black waving branches
moaning slightly in the evening breeze, and pressed under foot the brown
leaves which in a sodden mass carpeted the winding path. Yes, it was
here by that tall slender fir that they had stood for that one moment of
intense happiness, when the thunder of the sea filling the air around
them had almost forbidden speech, and the strange light had flashed in
his dark eyes. She passed the spot with slow, lingering steps and
quickening pulses, and opening the little hand-gate, climbed slowly up
the cliff.

At the summit she paused and looked around. A low grey mist hung over
the moor, and twilight had cast its mantle of half-veiled obscurity over
sea and land. A wind too had sprung up, blowing her ulster and skirts
around her, and driving the mist across the moor in clouds of small,
fine rain. Before her she could just see the dim outline of the opposite
hill, with its dark patch of firs, and Falcon's Nest, bare and distinct,
close up against its side. The wind and the rain blew against her, but
she took no heed. All personal discomforts seemed so little beside these
memories tinged with such a peculiar sweetness. It is a fact that a
woman is able to extract far more pleasure from memories than a man, for
there is in his nature a certain impatience which makes it impossible
for him to keep his thought fixed steadfastly upon the past. The vivid
flashes of memory which do come to him only incite a great restlessness
for its renewal, which, if it be for the time impossible, is only
disquieting and discontenting. But for a woman, her love itself, even
though it be for the time detached from its object, is a sweet and
precious thing. She can yield herself up to its influence, can steep her
mind and soul in it, till a glow of intense happiness steals through her
whole frame; and hence her patience during separation is so much greater
than a man's.

And it was so to a certain extent with Helen. Those few moments of
intense abstraction had their own peculiar pleasure for her, and it was
only the sound of the far-off clock borne by the wind across the moor
from Thurwell Court which recalled her to herself. Then she started, and
in a moment more would have been on her way home.

But that lingering farewell glance toward Falcon's Nest suddenly changed
into a startled fearful gaze. Her heart beat fast, and she took an
involuntary step forward. There was no doubt about it. A dim moving
light shone from the lower windows of the cottage.

Her first wild thought was that her lover had himself returned, and a
thrill of intense joy passed through her whole being, only to die away
before the cold chill of a heart-sickening dread. Was it not far more
likely to be an intruder of the type of Benjamin Levy, a spy or emissary
of the law, searching amongst his papers as Benjamin Levy had done, for
the same hideous reason. Her heart sank with fear, and then leaped up
with the fierce defensive instinct of a woman who sees her lover's
enemies working for his ruin. She did not hesitate for an instant, but
walked swiftly along the cliff-side towards that tremulous light.

The twilight was fast deepening, and the cold grey tint of the dull
afternoon was gradually becoming blotted out into darkness. As she drew
nearer to her destination, the low moaning of the sea below became
mingled with the melancholy sighing of the wind amongst the thick fir
trees which overhung the cottage. The misty rain blew in her face and
penetrated her thick ulster. Everything around was as dreary and lonely
as it could be. The only sign of any human life was that faint
glimmering light now stationary, as though the searcher whoever he might
be, had found what he wanted, and had settled down in one of the rooms.

As she drew nearer she saw which it was, and trembled. All the rest of
the cottage was in black darkness. The light shone only from the window
of that little inner study on the ground floor.

She had passed through the gate, and with beating heart approached the
window. A few yards away she paused and looked in.

A candle was burning on a small bracket, and, though its light was but
dim, it showed her everything. The cabinet was open, and papers were
strewn about, as though thrown right and left in a desperate search;
and, with his back to her, a man was seated before it, his bared head
resting upon his arms, and his whole attitude full of the passionate
abandonment of a great despair. She had but one thought. It was her
lover returned, and he needed her consolation. With a new light in her
face she turned and moved softly toward the front door. As she reached
the threshold she paused and drew back. There was the sound of footsteps
inside.

She stepped behind a bush and waited. In a moment the door of the
cottage was thrown suddenly open, and the tall figure of a man stood in
the entrance. For one moment he hesitated. Then with a sudden passionate
gesture he raised his hands high above his head, and she heard a long
deep moan burst from his quivering lips.

The pity which swelled up in her heart she kept back with a strong hand.
A strange bewilderment was creeping over her. She had seen only the dark
outline of the figure, but surely it was not the figure of her lover.
And then she held her breath, and walking swiftly away, passing so close
to her that she could look into his white, strained face, Sir Allan
Beaumerville strode down the garden, and disappeared in the shadows of
the plantation.




CHAPTER XXIX

THE SCENE CHANGES


The midday sun had risen into a sky of deep cloudless blue, and a
silence almost as intense as the silence of night rested upon the earth.
No one was abroad, no one seemed to have anything particular to do. Far
away on the vine-covered slopes a few peasants were lazily bending over
their work, the bright garments of their picturesque attire standing out
like little specks of brilliant coloring against the dun-colored
background. But in the quaint old-fashioned town itself no one was
astir. One solitary Englishman made his way alone and almost unnoticed
through the queer zig-zag streets, up the worn grey steps by the famous
statute of Minerva, and on to the terraced walk, fronting which were the
aristocratic villas of the little Italian town.

It was a solitude which was pleasing to him, for it was very evident
that he was no curious tourist, or casual visitor of any sort. His eyes
were full of that eager half-abstracted look which so clearly denotes
the awakening of old associations, quickened into life by familiar
surroundings; and, indeed, it was so. To Bernard Maddison, every stone
in that quietly sleeping, picturesque old town spoke with a language of
its own. The very atmosphere, laden with the sultry languorous heat of a
southern sun, seemed charged with memories. Their influence was strong
upon him, and he walked like a man in a dream, until he reached what
seemed to be his destination, and here he paused.

He had come to the end of the terraced walk, the evening promenade of
the whole town. Before him was a small orange grove, whose aromatic
odor, faintly penetrating the still air, added one more to his stock of
memories. On his right hand was a grey stone wall, worn and tottering
with age, and overhung with green creepers and shrubs, reaching over and
hanging down from the other side, and let into it, close to him, was a
low nail-studded door of monastic shape, half hidden by a luxurious
drooping shrub, from amongst the foliage of which peeped out star-like
clusters of soft scarlet flowers.

For many moments he stood before that door, with his hand resting upon
the rusty latch, lingering in a sort of apathy, as though he were
unwilling to disturb some particular train of thought. Then a
mellow-sounding bell from a convent in the valley below startled him,
and immediately he lifted the latch before him. There was no other
fastening, and the door opened. He stepped inside, and carefully
reclosed it.

He was in a garden, a garden of desolation, which nature seemed to have
claimed for her own and made beautiful. It was a picture of luxuriant
overgrowth. The grass on the lawns had become almost a jungle. It had
grown up over the base of the deep grey stone basins of exquisite shape
and carving, the tiny statuettes tottering into ruin, and the worn old
sun-dial, across which the slanting rays of the sun still glanced.
Weeds, too, had crept up around them in picturesque toils, weeds which
had started to destroy, but remained to adorn with all the sweet abandon
of unrestrained growth. Some of them had put forth brilliant blossoms
of many hues, little spots of exquisite coloring against the sombre hue
of the stonework and the deep green of the leaves. Everywhere nature had
triumphed over science and skill. Everything was changed, and nature had
shown herself a more perfect gardener than man. The gravel paths were
embedded with soft green moss, studded with clumps of white and purple
violets, whose faint fragrance, mingled with the more exotic scent of
other plants, filled the warm air with a peculiar dreamy perfume.
Nowhere had the hand of man sought to restrain or to develop. Nature had
had her own way, and had made for herself a fair garden.

A little overcome by the heat, and a little, too, by swiftly stirring
memories, Bernard Maddison sank down upon a low iron seat, under the
shade of a little clump of almond trees, and covered his face with his
hands. And there came to him, as he sat there, something more vivid than
an ordinary day-dream, something so real and minutely played out, that
afterwards it possessed for him all the freshness and significance of a
veritable trance. It seemed, indeed, as if some mysterious force had
drawn aside the curtain of the past in his mind, and had bidden him look
out once more upon the moving figures in a living drama.

       *       *       *       *       *

The warm sunlight faded from the sky, the summer heat died out of the
air, the soft velvety mantle of a southern night lay upon the brooding
land. Many stars were burning in the deep-blue heavens, and the horned
moon, golden and luminous, hung low down in the west.

Pale, and with the fever of a great anger burning in his dry eyes, a
man sat at the open window of the villa yonder, watching. Around him
were scattered all the signs of arduous brain labor, books, manuscripts,
classical dictionaries, and works of reference. But his pen had fallen
from his hand, and he was doing nothing. He sat there idle, gazing out
upon the fantastic shapes and half-veiled gloom of this fair garden. Its
rich balmy odors, and the fainter perfume of rarer plants which floated
languidly in through the open window, were nothing to him. He was barely
conscious of the sweet delights of the voluptuous summer night. He was
watching with his eyes fixed upon the east, where morning would soon be
breaking.

It came at last--what he was waiting for. There was a slight click of
the latch from the old postern door in the wall, and the low murmur of
voices--a man's, pleading and passionate, and a woman's, half gay, half
mocking. Then the door opened and shut, and a tall fair lady walked
leisurely up toward the villa.

She wore no hat, but a hooded opera-cloak was thrown loosely over her
shoulders, and as she strolled up the path, pausing every now and then
to carelessly gather a handful of the drooping lilies, whose perfume
made faint the heavy night air, its folds parted, and revealed brief
glimpses of soft white drapery and flashing jewels on her bosom and in
her hair. Her feet, too, were cased in tiny white satin slippers, which
seemed scarcely to press the ground, so lightly and gracefully she
walked. Altogether she was very fair to look upon--the fairest sight in
all that lovely garden.

Not so seemed to think the man who stood back in the shadow of the
window, waiting for her. His white face was ghastly with passion, and
his fingers were nervously interlaced in the curtains. It was only with
a supreme effort that he at last flung them from him, and moved forward
as though to meet her.

She saw him standing there, pale and rigid, like a carved statue, save
for the passion which burned in his eyes, and for a moment she
hesitated. Then, with the resigned air of one who makes up her mind to
face something disagreeable, she shrugged her shoulders, and throwing
away the handful of lilies she had gathered, advanced toward him.

They neither of them spoke until they stood face to face. Then, as his
motionless form prevented her stepping through the window, and barred
her further progress, she came to a standstill, and addressed him
lightly.

"Yours is a strange welcome home, _mon ami_," she said. "Why do you
stand there looking so fierce?"

He pointed with shaking fingers away toward the east, where a faint
gleam of daylight was lightening the sky.

"Where have you been?" he asked harshly. "Can you not see that it is
morning? All night long I have sat here watching for you. Where have you
been?"

"You know very well where I have been," she answered carelessly. "To the
ball at the Leon d'Or. I told you that I was going."

"Told me! You told me! Did I not forbid it? Did I not tell you that I
would not have you go?"

"Nevertheless, I have been," she answered lightly. "It was an
engagement, and I never break engagements."

"An engagement? You, with no chaperon, to go to a common ball at a
public room! An engagement. Yes, with your lover, I presume."

She looked at him steadily, and yawned in his face.

"You are in a bad temper, I fear," she said. "At least, you are very
rude. Let me pass, will you? I am tired of standing here."

He was beside himself with passion, and for a second or two he did not
speak. But when at last the words came, they were clear and distinct
enough.

"Into this house you shall never pass again," he said. "You have
disregarded my wishes, you have disobeyed my orders, and now you are
deceiving me. You are trifling with my honor. You are bringing shame
upon my name. Go and keep your assignations from another roof. Mine has
sheltered your intrigues long enough!"

The hand which had kept together her opera-cloak relinquished its grasp,
and it fell back upon her shoulders. The whole beauty of her sinuous
figure, in its garb of dazzling white, stood revealed. The moonlight
gleamed in her fair hair, bound up with one glittering gem, shone softly
upon her white swelling throat and bare arms, and flashed in her dark
eyes, suddenly full of passion. Her right hand was nervously clasped
around a little morsel of lace handkerchief which she had drawn from the
folds of her corsage, and which seemed to make the air around heavy with
a sweet perfume.

"You are angry, and you do not know what you are saying," she said. "It
is true that you forbade me to go to-night--but you forbid everything. I
cannot live your life. It is too dull, too _triste_. It is cruel of you
to expect it. Let me go in now. If you want to scold, you can do so
to-morrow."

She stepped forward, but he laid his hands upon her dainty shoulders and
pushed her roughly back.

"Never!" he cried savagely. "Go and live what life you choose. This is
no home for you. Go, I say!"

She looked at him, her lovely eyes turned pleadingly upwards, and her
lips trembling.

"You are mad!" she said. "Am I not your wife? You have no right to keep
me here. And my boy, too. Let me pass."

He did not move, nor did he show any sign of yielding. He stood there
with his hand stretched out in a threatening gesture toward her, his
face pale and mute as marble, but with the blind rage still burning in
his dark eyes.

"What is the boy, or what am I to you?" he cried hoarsely. "Begone,
woman!"

Still she did not seem to understand.

"Where would you have me go?" she asked. "Is not this my home? What have
I----"

"Go to your lover!" he interrupted fiercely. "Tell him that your husband
is no longer your tool. He will take you in."

A burning color streamed into her delicate cheeks, and a sudden passion
blazed in her eyes. She drew herself up to her full height and turned
upon him with the dignity of an empress.

"Listen to me one moment," she said. "Ask yourself whether you have ever
tried to make my life a happy one. Did I ever pretend to care for books
and solitude? Before I married you I told you that I was fond of change
and gaiety and life, and you promised me that I should have it. Ask
yourself how you have kept that promise. You deny me every pleasure, and
drive me to seek them alone. I am weary of your jealous furies, and
your evil temper. As God looks down upon us at this moment, I have been
a faithful wife to you; but if you will add to all your cruelties this
cowardly, miserable indignity, then I will never willingly look upon
your face again, and what sin I do will be on your head, not mine. Will
you stand aside and let me pass?"

"Never!" he answered. "Never!"

She drew her mantle round her shoulders, and turned her back upon him
with a contemptuous gesture.

"You have made me what I shall be," she said. "The sin be with you. For
several weary years you have made me miserable. Now you have made me
wicked."

She walked away into the perfumed darkness, and presently he heard the
gate close behind her. He listened frantically, hoping to hear her
returning steps. It was in vain. All was silent. Then he felt his limbs
totter, and he sank back on a couch, and buried his face amongst the
cushions.




CHAPTER XXX

BENJAMIN LEVY RUNS HIS QUARRY TO EARTH


The slumberous afternoon wore slowly away. A slight breeze rustled
amongst the cypresses and the olive trees, and the air grew clearer. The
sun was low in the heavens, and long shadows lay across the brilliant
patches of flowers, half wild, half cultivated, and on the moss-grown
walks.

Still Bernard Maddison made no movement. It may have been that he shrunk
from what was before him, or it may have been that he had some special
purpose in thus calling up those broken visions of the past into his
mind. For, as he sat there, they still thronged in upon him, disjointed
and confused, yet all tinged with that peculiar sadness which seemed to
have lain heavy upon his life.

Again the memory of those long lonely days of his boyhood stole in upon
him. He thought of that terrible day when his father stood by his
bedside, and had bidden him in an awful voice ask no more for his
mother, and think of her only as dead; and he remembered well the chill
of cold despair with which he had realized that that fair, sweet woman,
who had called him her little son, and who had accepted his devoted
boyish affection with a sort of amused pleasure, was gone from him for
ever. Henceforth life would indeed be a dreary thing, alone with that
cold, silent student, with whom he was almost afraid to speak, and whom
he scarcely ever addressed by the name of father.

A dreary time it had indeed been. His memory glanced lightly over the
long monotonous years with a sort of shuddering recoil. He thought of
his father's frequent absences, and of his return from one of them in
the middle of a winter's night, propped up in an invalid carriage, with
a surgeon in attendance, and blood-stained bandages around his leg. And
he thought of a night when he had sat up with him while the nurse
rested, and one name had ceaselessly burst from those white feverish
lips, laden with fierce curses and deep vindictive hate, a name which
had since been written into his memory with letters of fire. Further and
further on his memory dragged him, until he himself, a boy no longer,
had stood upon the threshold of man-hood, and on one awful night had
heard from his father's lips that story which had cast its shadow across
his life. Then for the first time had sprung up of some sort of sympathy
between them, sympathy which had for its foundation a common hatred, a
common sense of deep, unpardonable wrong. The oath which his father had
sworn with trembling lips the son had echoed, and in dread of the
vengeance of these two, the man against whom they had sworn it cut
himself off from his fellows, and skulked in every out-of-the-way corner
of Europe, a hunted being in peril of his life. There had come a great
change over their lives, and they had drifted farther apart again. He
himself had gone out into the world something of a scholar and something
of a pedant, and he had found that all his ideas of life had lain
rusting in his country home, and that he had almost as much to unlearn
as to learn. With ample means, and an eager thirst for knowledge, he had
passed from one to another of the great seats of learning of the world.
But his lesson was not taught him at one of them. He learned it not
amongst the keen conflict of intellect at the universities, not in the
toils of the great vague disquiet which was throbbing amongst all
cultured and artistic society, but in the eternal silence of Mont Blanc
and her snow-capped Alps, and the whisperings of the night winds which
blew across the valleys. At Heidelberg he had been a philosopher, in
Italy he had been a scholar, and in Switzerland he became a poet. When
once again he returned to the more feverish life of cities he was a
changed man. He looked out upon life now with different eyes and
enlarged vision. Passion had given place to a certain studied calm, a
sort of inward contemplativeness which is ever inseparable from the true
artist. Life became for him almost too impersonal, too little human.
Soon it threatened to become one long abstraction, accompanied
necessarily with a weakened hold on all sensuous things, and a
corresponding decline in taste and appreciation. One thing had saved him
from relapsing into the nervous dreamer, and the weaver of bright but
aimless fancies. He had loved, and he had become a man again, linked to
the world and the things of the world by the pulsations of his passion
and his strong deep love. Was it well for him or ill, he wondered. Well,
it might have been save for the deadly peril in which he lived, and
which seemed closing fast around him. Well, it surely would have
been....

Lower and lower the sun had sunk, till now its rim touched the horizon.
The evening breeze stealing down from the hills had gathered strength
until now it was almost cold. The distant sound of footsteps, and the
gay laughing voices of the promenaders from the awakening town broke the
deep stillness which had hung over the garden and recalled Bernard
Maddison from thoughtland. He rose to his feet, a little stiff, and
walked slowly along the path towards the villa. At that same moment, Mr.
Benjamin Levy, tired and angry with his long waiting, stole into the
garden by the postern-gate.




CHAPTER XXXI

BENJAMIN LEVY WRITES HOME


     "_June 10th_.

     "MY DEAR DAD:--

     "I wired you yesterday afternoon, immediately on our arrival at
     this outlandish little place, to write to me at the hotel Leon
     d'Or, for it seems that we have reached our destination--by we, of
     course, I mean Mr. Maddison and myself, though he has not the least
     idea of my presence here. Well, this is a queer old crib, I can
     tell you, and the sooner we are on the move again the better I
     shall be pleased. The fodder is odious, not fit for a pig, and the
     wine is ditto. What wouldn't I give for a pint of Bass like they
     draw at the Blue Boar? Old England for me is my motto!

     "And now to biz! So far all's well. I'm on the right tack and no
     mistake. We got here middle day, yesterday--came over the hills
     from the railway in a regular old bone-shaker of a coach. My
     tourist get-up is quite the fig, and though I caught Mr. M----
     eyeing me over a bit supercilious like once, he didn't recognize me
     if ever he did see me down at Thurwell Court, which I don't think
     he did. Well, directly we got here, off started Mr. M---- through
     the town, and after a bit I followed. Lord! it was hot and no
     mistake, but he didn't seem to notice it, though the perspiration
     was streaming down my back like anything. About a mile out of town
     we came to a great high wall with a door in it, and before I could
     say 'Jack Robinson' or get anywhere near him, in he went. Well, I
     hung round a bit, and soon I found a sort of opening in the wall
     where I could just see in, and there he was sitting down on a seat
     in a regular howling wilderness of a garden, as though the whole
     place belonged to him, if you please. All right! I thought, I'm
     agreeable to a rest, and I sat down too, little thinking what was
     in store for me. Four mortal hours passed before he stirred, and
     jolly stiff and tired I was, I can tell you. But it was a lucky
     thing for me all the same, for when he got up and made for the
     house it was almost dark, so without more ado I just opened the
     door and walked in myself. There was no end of shrubs and trees
     about the place, and though I followed him on another path only a
     few yards away, he couldn't see me, and there was no chance of his
     hearing, for the moss had grown over the gravel like a blooming
     carpet, which was all lucky for me again.

     "Well, we were just close to the house, when we both of us got a
     start, and I nearly yelled out. Round the corner of his path, thank
     goodness! came a tall, white-haired old lady, in a long black
     dress, with an ivory cross hanging down, and looking as dignified
     as possible. She no sooner saw him than she stopped and cried out,
     'Bernard! Bernard!' and seemed as though she were going to faint.
     She pulled herself together, however, and things became very
     interesting for me, I can tell you.

     "Mr. M---- he was going to take her hands and kiss her, but she
     drew them away and stood back. Lord! how awful her face did look!
     It gave me a regular turn just to look at her.

     "'Bernard!' she cried out in a low, shaking voice, 'I know
     all--all!'

     "'What do you mean, mother?' he asked.

     "Then she stretched her arms up, and it was dreadful to look at
     her.

     "'I had a dream!' she cried, 'a dream which kept me shuddering
     and sleepless from midnight to daybreak. I dreamed I saw
     him--dead--cold and dead!'

     "He said nothing, but he seemed fearfully upset. I kept crouched
     down behind a shrub and listened.

     "'In the morning I sent for a file of English newspapers,' she went
     on. 'One by one I searched them through till I came to August last
     year. There I found it. Bernard, it was at Thurwell Court. I had a
     letter in my pocket from you with the postmark Thurwell. Don't come
     near me, but speak! Is there blood upon your hands?'

     "And now, dad, the most provoking things happened. It seemed just
     as though it were done to spite me. He had his mouth open to
     answer, and I had my ears open, as you may guess, to listen, and
     see what happens, and tell me if it wasn't a rare sell! Off the old
     woman goes into a faint all of a sudden. He catches hold of her and
     sings out for help. Down I ran to the door as hard as I could,
     slammed it as though I had just come in, and came running up the
     path. 'Anything the matter?' I called out, as though I didn't know
     my way. 'A lady fainted,' he shouts; 'come and help me carry her
     into the house;' so up I went, and together we carried her inside
     and laid her on a couch in one of the queerest-furnished rooms I
     ever saw. There was servants with lighted lamps running about, and
     another woman who seemed to be a relation, and such a fuss they all
     made, and no mistake. However, Mr. M---- cooled them all down
     again pretty soon, for he could see that it was only an ordinary
     faint, and then he began to look at me curiously. I had made up my
     mind to stay until the old woman came round, but he was too many
     for me, for he got up and took me to the door himself. Of course,
     he was awfully polite and all that, and was very much obliged for
     my help, but I twigged it in a moment. He wanted me gone, so off I
     skedaddled.

     "Well, back I went to the inn, and began to make a few cautious
     inquiries about the lady of the Villa Fiorlessa, for that was the
     name of the house where I had left Mr. M----. I could not get on at
     all at first, not understanding a word of the blessed lingo, but by
     good luck I tumbled across an artist chap who turned out a good
     sort, and offered to interpret for me. So we had the landlord in,
     and I ordered a bottle of his best wine--nasty greasy stuff it
     was--and we went at it hammer and tongs. Pretty soon I had found
     out everything I wanted to.

     "Nearly twenty years ago the lady--Mrs. Martival she was
     called--had come to the Villa Fiorlessa with her husband and one
     little boy. They were, it seems, one of the worst-matched couples
     that could be imagined. Mr. Martival was a gloomy, severe man, who
     hated going out, and worked at some sort of writing day and night.
     His wife, on the other hand, who was a Frenchwoman, was
     passionately fond of travel, and change, and gaiety. Her life was
     consequently very like a prison, and it is stated, too, that
     besides denying her every whim and forcing her to live in a manner
     she utterly disliked, her husband ill-treated her shamefully. Well,
     she made a few friends here and went to see them pretty often, and
     just at that time an English milord--you can guess who he was--came
     here to see the statue, and met Mrs. Martival, whom he seems to
     have known before her marriage. The exact particulars are not
     known, but it is supposed that Mrs. Martival would have been
     married to this young Englishman, Sir Geoffrey Kynaston, but for
     some deep scheming on the part of Mr. Martival. Anyhow, there was a
     desperate quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Martival, when she charged
     him with duplicity before this marriage, and he forbade her to meet
     Sir Geoffrey Kynaston again. Quite properly she refused to obey
     him, and they met often, although every one seems quite sure that
     at that time they met only as friends. Mr. Martival, however,
     appears to have thought otherwise, for one night, after what they
     call their carnival dance here, which every one in the neighborhood
     had attended, Mr. Martival had the brutality to close his doors
     against her, and refuse to let her enter the house. It was the
     crowning piece of barbarism to a long course of jealous cruelties.
     Mrs. Martival spent that night with some friends, and seems even
     then to have hesitated for a long time. Her married life had been
     one long disappointment, and this brutal action of her husband had
     ended it. Sir Geoffrey Kynaston was madly in love with her, and she
     was one of those women who must be loved. In the end she ran away
     with him, which seemed a very natural thing for her to do.

     "The queerest part of it is to come, though. Sir Geoffrey was
     devoted to her, and would have married her at once if Mr. Martival
     would have sued for a divorce. He showed her every kindness, and he
     lavished his money and his love upon her. But it seems that she
     was a devout Roman Catholic, and the horror of what she had done
     preyed upon her so, that in less than a month she left Sir
     Geoffrey, and entered one of the lower sort of nunneries as a
     menial. From there she went to the wars as a nurse, and did a great
     deal of good. When she returned, of all places in the world she
     came back to the Villa Fiorlessa, partly from a curious notion of
     penance, that she might be continually reminded of her sin. The
     queerest part of it is, however, that the people round here behaved
     like real Christians, and jolly different to what they would have
     done at home. They knew all her history, and they welcomed her back
     as though that month in her life had never been. That's what I call
     charity, real charity, dad! Don't know what you think about it.
     Well, there she's lived ever since with her sister, who had lots of
     money (she died last year), and the poor people all around just
     worshipped them.

     "Now, to go back a bit. Mr. Martival, although he had been such
     a brute to his wife, no sooner found out that she was with Sir
     Geoffrey Kynaston than he swore the most horrible oaths of
     vengeance, and went off after them. He was brought back in a fever,
     with a pistol shot in his leg, which served him d----d well right,
     I think. No sooner was he better than he started off again in
     pursuit, but Sir Geoffrey dodged him, and they never met. Meanwhile
     the young cub, whom you will recognize as Mr. M----, had grown up,
     and what must his father do when he returned but tell him as much
     of the story as suited him, with the result that he too swore an
     oath of vengeance against Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. Time goes on, and
     Mr. Martival and his son both leave here. Mr. Martival is reported
     to have died in Paris, his son goes to England, and is lost sight
     of. We can, however, follow the story a little further. We can
     follow it down to its last scene, and discover in the Mr. Brown who
     had taken a small cottage near Sir Geoffrey's seat, within a week
     of his return home, and whom soon afterwards we discover bending
     over Sir Geoffrey's murdered body, the boy who, fired with what his
     father had thundered into his ears as his mother's ruin, had sworn
     that oath of vengeance against Sir Geoffrey.

     "All this looks very simple, doesn't it? and I dare say, my dear
     dad, you're wondering why I don't come straight away home, and
     cause a sensation at Scotland Yard by clearing up the Kynaston
     murder. Simply because that isn't quite my game. I didn't come over
     here to collect evidence against Mr. M----, for I could have laid
     my hand on plenty of that at home. There is something else at the
     back of it all, which I can only see very dimly yet, but which will
     come as a crasher, I can tell you, when it does come. At present I
     won't say anything about this, only keep your eyes open and be
     prepared. Ta-ta!

    "Your obedient son,
    "BEN.

     "P.S. Don't worry about Xs. They won't come out of your pocket in
     the long run, I can tell you.

     "P.S. 2. Wednesday evening. Here's a pretty pickle! You remember
     the artist I told you about. I'm d----d if he isn't a regular from
     S.Y., and he's got his pocket-book pretty full, too. The game is
     serious now and no mistake. Mind you, I think we stand to win
     still, but I can't be quite sure while this chap's on the lay. Look
     out for telegrams, and don't be surprised if I turn up at any
     moment. It may come to a race between us. D----n, I wonder how he
     got on the scent!"




CHAPTER XXXII

A STRANGE TRIO OF PASSENGERS


Before the open window of her room, looking out upon the fair wilderness
below, and over its high stone walls to the dim distant line of hills
vanishing in an ethereal mist, lay Mrs. Martival, and by her side stood
Bernard Maddison, looking down into her white suffering face.

Sorrow and time together had made strange havoc with its beauty, and yet
the lines had been laid on with no harsh hand. There was a certain
dignity which it had never lost, which indeed resigned and large-minded
sadness only enhances, and her simple religious life had given a touch
of spirituality to those thin, delicate features so exquisitely carved
and moulded. The bloom had gone from her cheeks for ever, and their
intense pallor was almost deathlike, matching very nearly her snow-white
hair, but her eyes seemed to have retained much of their old power and
sweetness, and the light which sometimes flashed in them lent her face a
peculiar charm. But now they were full of a deep anxiety as she lay
there, a restless disquiet which showed itself also in her nervously
twitching fingers.

Far away down the valley the little convent clock struck the hour, and
at its sound she looked up at him.

"You go at nine o'clock, Bernard?"

"At nine o'clock, mother, unless you wish me to stay."

She shook her head.

"No, I shall be better alone. This thing will crush me into the grave,
but death will be very welcome. Oh, my son, my son, that the sin of one
weak woman should have given birth to all this misery!"

He stooped over her, and held her thin fingers in his strong man's hand.

"Do not trouble about it, mother," he said. "I can bear my share. Try
and forget it."

Her eyes flashed strangely, and her lips parted in a smile which was no
smile.

"Forget it! That is a strange speech, Bernard. Have I the power to
beckon to those hills yonder, and bid them bow their everlasting heads?
Can I put back the hand of time, and live my life over again? Even so
futile is my power over memory. It is my penance, and I pray day and
night for strength to bear it."

Her voice died away with a little break, and there was silence. Soon she
spoke again.

"Tell me--something about her, Bernard."

His face changed, but it was only a passing glow, almost as though one
of those long level rays of sunlight had glanced for a moment across his
features.

"She is good and beautiful, and all that a woman should be," he
whispered.

"Does she know?"

He shook his head.

"She trusts me."

"Then you will be happy?" she asked eagerly. "Happy even if the worst
come! Time will wipe out the memory."

He turned away with a dull sickening pain at his heart. The worst he had
not told her. How could he? How could he add another to her sorrows by
telling her of the peril in which he stood? How could he tell her what
he suspected to be true--that in that quiet little Italian town English
detectives were watching his every movement, and that at any moment he
might be arrested? With her joyless life, and with this new misery
closing around her, would it not be well for her to die?

"It is farewell between us now, Bernard, then?" she said softly. "God
grant that you may be going back to a new and happier life. May I, who
have failed so utterly, give you just one word of advice?"

He bowed his head, for just then he could not have spoken. She raised
herself a little upon her couch, and felt for his hand.

"Bernard, you are not as your father was," she said; "yet you, too, have
something of the student in you. Don't think that I am going to say
anything against learning and culture. It is a grand thing for a man to
devote himself to; but, like everything else, in excess it has its
dangers. Sometimes it makes a man gloomy and reserved, and averse to all
change and society, and intolerant toward others. Bernard, it is bad for
his wife then. A woman sets so much store by little things--her
happiness is bound up in them. She is very, very human, and she wants to
be loved, and considered, and feel herself a great part in her husband's
life and thoughts. And if it is all denied to her, what is she to do? Of
necessity she must be miserable. A man should never let his wife feel
that she is shut out from any one of his great interests. He should
never let those little mutual ties which once held them together grow
weak, and fancy because he is living amongst the ghosts of great
thoughts that little human responsibilities have no claim upon him.
Bernard, you will remember all this!"

"Every word, mother," he answered. "Helen would thank you if she had
been here."

A horn sounded from outside, and he drew out his watch hastily.

"The diligence, mother!" he exclaimed; "I must go."

He took her frail form up into his arms, and kissed her.

"If all goes well," he said in a low tone, "I will bring her to you."

"If she will come, I shall die happy," she murmured. "But not against
her will or without knowing all. Farewell!"

That night three men were racing home to England as fast as express
train and steamer could bear them. One was Bernard Maddison, another Mr.
Benjamin Levy, and the third his artist friend.




CHAPTER XXXIII

VISITORS FOR MR. BERNARD MADDISON


In an ordinary case, with three men starting from a given point in North
Italy at the same time, the odds seem in favor of their all reaching
their destination at the same time. As it happened, however, there was
another factor to be considered, which had its due result. Bernard
Maddison was rather more at home on Continental railroads than he was on
English ones, whereas neither of the other two had ever before left
their own country save under the wing of "Cook." The consequence was
that by the aid of sundry little man[oe]uvres, which completely puzzled
his would-be companions, Bernard Maddison stood on the platform of
Waterloo while they were still in the throes of seasickness. As a
further consequence two telegrams were dispatched from Ostend, and were
duly delivered in England. The first was from Benjamin Levy to his
father.

     "Meet all boat trains at Waterloo, and try to recognize B. M. King
     will do to shadow. Ascertain Miss Thurwell's address. Home early
     to-morrow."

The second was from his acquaintance, the artist, to Scotland Yard.

     "Bernard Maddison ahead of us. Meet all trains. Tall, dark, thin,
     pale, brown check traveling ulster. Photograph for sale in Regent
     Street if can get to shop."

Both telegrams were conscientiously attended to, and when Bernard
Maddison drove out of the station his hansom was followed by two others.
There was nothing very suspicious about his movements. First of all he
was set down at his club, which meant a wait of an hour and a half for
his watchers. At the end of that time he reappeared with all the traces
of his journey effaced, and in a fresh suit of clothes, carrying now a
smaller portmanteau. He lit a cigarette, and sent for a hansom. This
time he was set down at King's Cross, and took a ticket for a small town
on the Yorkshire coast. Hereupon the employee of Messrs. Levy & Son
retired, having ascertained all that he was required to ascertain. The
other myrmidon, however, having dispatched his subordinate to
headquarters with particulars of his destination, took up the chase.

It was late in the afternoon before they reached their journey's end,
but Bernard Maddison was quite unconscious of any fatigue, and marching
straight out of the station, turned toward Mallory. The man who was
following him, however, hired a carriage, and drove down to the hotel.
He knew quite well where the other was going to, and as nothing could be
done that night, he determined to enjoy as much as he could of his
seaside trip, and, after making up for his day's fasting by a
satisfactory tea, he spent the evening on the jetty listening to the
town brass band.

       *       *       *       *       *

That was a strange walk for Bernard Maddison. Two sensations were
struggling within him for the mastery, fear and despair at the terrible
crisis which seemed to yawn before his feet, and that sweet revolution
of feeling, that intense, yearning love, which had suddenly thrown a
golden halo over his cold barren life. But as he left the road and took
the moorland path along the cliff, the battle suddenly came to an end.
Before him stretched the open moor, brilliant with coloring, with dark
flushes of purple, and bright streaks of yellow gorse, and the sunlight
glancing upon the hills. There was the pleasant murmuring of the sea in
his ears, a glistening, dancing, silver sea, the blue sky above, and the
fresh strong breeze full of vigorous, bracing life. Something of a glad
recklessness stole over him and lightened his heart. This was no scene,
no hour for sad thoughts. Where was the philosophy of nursing such, of
giving them a home even for a moment? Joy and sorrow, what were they but
abstract states of the mind? Let him wait until the ashes were between
his teeth. The future and the past no man could command, but the present
was his own. He would claim it. He would drink deep of the joy which lay
before him.

And as he walked on over the soft springy turf, with the tall chimneys
of Thurwell Court in the valley before him, life leaped madly through
his veins, and a deep joy held memory in a torpor, and filled his heart
with gladness. The whole passionate side of his nature had been suddenly
quickened into life by his surroundings, and by the thought that down
yonder the woman whom he loved was waiting for him. Once again, come
what may, he would hold her in his arms and hear her voice tremble with
joy at his return. Once more he would hold her face up to his, and look
into her dim, soft eyes, full of that glowing lovelight which none can
fail to read. Once again he would drink deep of this delicious
happiness, a long sweet draught, and if life ended after that moment he
would at least have touched the limits of all earthly joys.

And suddenly he stood face to face with her. He had passed Falcon's
Nest, dismantled and desolate, with scarcely a careless glance, and had
entered the long pine grove which fringed the cliff side. Already he was
close to the spot where they had stood once before, and with all the
subtle sweetness of those memories stealing in upon him he had turned
aside to look through the tree tops down into the sea, as they had done
together. Thus he was standing when he heard light firm footsteps close
at hand, and a little surprised cry which rang in his ears like music,
for it was her voice.

They stood face to face, their hands clasped. In that first moment of
tremulous joy neither of them spoke. Each was struggling for
realization, for even an inward expression of the ecstasy of this
meeting. For them there was a new glory in the sunny heavens, a new
beauty in the glistening sea and the softly waving pine trees, even in
the air they breathed. The intensity of this joy filled their hearts,
their fancy, their imagination. Everything was crowned with a soft
golden light; new springs of feeling leaped up within them, bringing
glowing revelations of such delight as mocked expression. For them only
at that moment the sun shone, and the summer winds whispered in the
trees, and the birds sang. The world was theirs, or rather a new one of
their own creation. The past and the future emptied their joys into the
overflowing bowl of the present. Life stood still for them. There was no
horizon, no background. Oh, it is a great thing, the greatest thing upon
this earth, to love and be loved!

Each dreaded speech. It seemed as though a single word must drag them
down from a new heaven to an old earth. Yet those murmured passionate
words of his, as he drew her softly into his arms, and her head sank
upon his shoulder--they were scarcely words. And then again there was
silence.

It lasted long. It seemed to him that it might have lasted forever. But
the sun went down behind the hills, and a dusky twilight stole down upon
the earth. Then she spoke.

"My love, my love! you must listen to me. I have a confession to make."

"A confession? You!" he echoed.

Her cheeks burned with a fire which seemed to her like the fire of
shame. Her tongue seemed hung with sudden weights. She had doubted him.
The hideousness of it oppressed her like a nightmare; yet her voice did
not falter.

"You remember those dying words of Rachel Kynaston?"

"I have never forgotten them," he answered simply.

"They laid a charge upon me. I told myself that it was a sacred charge.
Listen, my love--listen, and hate me! I have been to detectives. I paid
them money to hunt you down; I have done this, I who love you. No, don't
draw your arms away. I have done this. It was before I knew. Oh, I have
suffered! God! how I have suffered! It has been an agony to me. You will
forgive me! I will not let you go unless you forgive me."

He looked down at her in silence. His cheeks were pale and his eyes were
grave. Yet there was no anger.

"I will forgive you, Helen," he whispered--"nay, there is nothing to
forgive. Only tell me this: you do not doubt me now?"

"Never again!" she cried passionately. "God forgive me that I have ever
doubted you! It is like a horrible dream to me; but it lies far behind,
and the morning has come."

He kissed her once more and opened his arms. With a low happy laugh she
shook her tumbled hair straight, and hand in hand they walked slowly
away.

"You have been long gone," she whispered reproachfully.

He sighed as he answered her. How long might not his next absence be!

"It has seemed as long to me as to you, sweetheart," he said. "Every
moment away from you I have counted as a lost moment in my life."

"That is very pretty," she answered. "And now you are here, are you
going to stay?"

"Until the end," he said solemnly. "You know, Helen, that I am in deadly
peril. The means of averting it which I went abroad to seek, I could not
use."

She thought of those letters, bought and safely burnt, and she pressed
his fingers. She would tell him of them presently.

"They shall not take you from me, Bernard, now," she said softly. "Kiss
me again, dear."

He stooped and took her happy upturned face with its crown of wavy
golden hair between his hands, looking fondly down at her. The thought
of all that he might so soon lose swept in upon him with a sickening
agony, and he turned away with trembling lips and dim eyes.

"God grant that they may not!" he cried passionately. "If it were to
come now, how could I bear it to the end?"

They walked on in silence. Then she who had, or thought she had, so much
more reason to be hopeful than he, dashed the tears away from her eyes,
and talked hopefully. They would not dare to lay a finger upon Bernard
Maddison, whatever they might have done to poor Mr. Brown. His great
name would protect him from suspicion. And as he listened to her he had
not the heart to tell her of the men who had followed him abroad, that
he was even then doubtless under surveillance. He let her talk on, and
feigned to share her hopefulness.

The time came when they passed into the grounds of the Court, and then
she thought of something else which she must say to him.

"We have a visitor, Bernard--only one; but I'm afraid you don't like
him."

Something told him who it was. He stopped short in the path.

"Not Sir Allan Beaumerville?"

She nodded.

"Yes. I'm so sorry. He invited himself; and there is something I must
tell you about him."

His first instinct was to refuse to go on, but it was gone in a moment,
after one glance into Helen's troubled face.

"Don't look so ashamed," he said, smiling faintly. "I'm not afraid of
him. What is it you were going to tell me about him?"

"He went out the other day alone, to do some botanizing," she said. "Do
you know where I saw him?"

He shook his head.

"No. Where?"

"In your cottage. I saw him sitting at your table, and I saw him come
out. He looked terribly troubled, just as though he had found out
something."

He seemed in no wise so much disturbed as she had feared.

"It's astonishing how many people are interested in my affairs," he said
with grim lightness.

"No one so much as I am," she whispered softly. "Bernard, I must tell
you something about papa. I had almost forgotten."

"Yes. Has he been exercising a landlord's privilege, too?"

"Of course not, sir. But, Bernard, people have been talking, and he has
heard them, and----"

Her face grew troubled, and he stood still.

"He suspects, too, does he? Then I certainly cannot force him to become
my host."

She took hold of both of his hands, and looked up at him pleadingly.

"Don't be stupid, Bernard, dear, please. I didn't say that he suspected.
Only people have been talking, and of course it leaves an impression.
You must make friends with him, you know. Won't you have something to
ask him--some day--perhaps?"

She turned away, blushing a little, and he was conquered.

"Very well, love, I will come then," he said. "Only, please, you must go
and tell him directly we get there; and if he would rather not have me
for a guest, you must come and let me know. I will sit at no man's table
under protest," he added, with a sudden flush of pride.

"He'll be very pleased to have you," she said simply. "A few words from
me will be quite enough."

"Your empire extends further than over my heart, I see," he said,
laughing. "There is your father coming round from the stables. Suppose
we go to him."

They met him face to face in the hall. When he saw who his daughter's
companion was he looked for a moment grave. But he had all the courtly
instincts of a gentleman of the old school, and though outside he might
have acted differently, the man was under his own roof now, and must be
treated as a guest. Besides, he had implicit faith in his daughter's
judgment. So he held out his hand without hesitation.

"Glad to see you, Mr. Maddison. We began to fear that you had deserted
us," he said.

"I have been away longer than I intended," Bernard Maddison answered
quietly.

"Of course you dine here," Mr. Thurwell continued, moving away. "You'll
find Beaumerville in the library or the smoke room. You know your way
about, don't you? My gamekeeper wants to speak to me for a moment. I
shan't be long."

He crossed the hall, and entered his own room. Helen slipped her arm
through her lover's, and led him away in the opposite direction, down a
long passage to the other end of the house.

"Consider yourself highly favored, sir," she said, pausing with her hand
upon one of the furthest doors. "You are the only male being, except my
father, who has ever been admitted here."

She led him into a daintily furnished morning room, full of all those
trifling indications of a woman's constant presence which possesses for
the man who loves her a peculiar and almost reverent interest. There
was her fancy work lying where she had put it down on the little wicker
table, a book with a paper knife in it, one of his own; by its side an
open piano, with a little pile of songs on the stool, and a sleek
dachshund blinking up at them from the hearthrug. The appointments of
the room were simple enough, and yet everything seemed to speak of a
culture, a refinement, and withal a dainty feminine charm which appealed
to him both as an artist and a lover. She drew an easy chair to the
fire, and when he was seated, came and stood over him.

"I expect you to like my room, sir," she said softly. "Do you?"

"It is like you," he answered; "it is perfect."

They were together for half an hour, and then the dressing bell sounded.
She jumped up at once from her little low chair by his side.

"I must go and give orders about your room," she said. "Of course you
will stop with us. I have made up my mind where to put you. Roberts
shall come and take you to your room in a few moments."

"Dressing will be a farce for me," he remarked. "I have no clothes."

"Oh, we'll forgive you," she laughed. "Of course you were too anxious
to get here to think about clothes. That was quite as it should be.
Good-by! Don't be dull."

He was alone only for a few minutes. Then a servant knocked at the door
and took him to his room. He looked around him, and saw more evidences
of her care for him. In the sitting room, which opened on one side, was
a great bowl of freshly cut flowers, a pile of new books, and a
photograph of herself. The rooms were the finest in the house. The oak
paneled walls were hung with tapestry, and every piece of furniture was
an antique curiosity. It was a bedchamber for a prince, and indeed a
royal prince had once slept in the quaint high four-poster with its
carved oak pillars and ancient hangings.

To Bernard Maddison, as he strolled round and examined his surroundings,
it all seemed like a dream--so delightful, that awakening was a thing to
be dreaded indeed. The loud ringing of the second bell, however, soon
brought him back to the immediate present. He hastily made such
alterations in his toilet as were possible, and descended. In the hall
he met Helen, who had changed her dress for a soft cream-colored dinner
gown, and was waiting for him.

"Do you like your room?" she asked.

"Like it? It is perfect," he answered quietly. "I had no idea that
Thurwell was so old. I like you, too," he added, glancing approvingly at
her and taking her hand.

"No time for compliments, sir," she said, laughing. "We must go into the
drawing-room; Sir Allan is there alone."

He followed her across the hall, and entered the room with her. Sir
Allan, with his back to them, was seated at the piano, softly playing an
air of Chopin's to himself. At the sound of the opening door, he turned
round.

"Sir Allan, you see we have found another visitor to take pity on us,"
Helen said. "You know Mr. Maddison, don't you?"

The music, which Sir Allan had been continuing with his right hand, came
to a sudden end, and for the space of a few seconds he remained
perfectly motionless. Then he rose and bowed slightly.

"I have that pleasure," he said quietly. "Mr. Maddison is a neighbor of
yours, is he not? I met him, you know, on a certain very melancholy
occasion."

"Will you go on playing?" she asked, sinking down on a low settee; "we
should like to listen."

He sat down again, and with half-closed eyes recommenced the air. Helen
and Bernard Maddison, sitting side by side, spoke every now and then to
one another in a low tone. There was no general conversation until Mr.
Thurwell entered, and then dinner was announced almost immediately.

There was no lack of conversation then. At first it had lain chiefly
between Mr. Thurwell and Sir Allan Beaumerville, but catching a somewhat
anxious glance from Helen, her lover suddenly threw off his silence.
"When Maddison talks," one of his admirers had once said, "everyone else
listens"; and if that was not quite so in the present case, it was
simply because he had the art of drawing whoever he chose into the
conversation, and making them appear far greater sharers in it than they
really were. What was in truth a monologue seemed to be a brilliantly
sustained conversation, in which Maddison himself was at once the
promoter and the background. On his part there was not a single faulty
phrase or unmusical expression. Every idea he sprang upon them was
clothed in picturesque garb, and artistically conceived. It was the
outpouring of a richly stored, cultured mind--the perfect expression of
perfect matter.

The talk had drifted toward Italy, and the art of the Renaissance. Mr.
Thurwell had made some remark upon the picturesque beauties of some of
the lesser-known towns in the north, and Bernard Maddison had taken up
the theme with a new enthusiasm.

"I am but just come back from such a one," he said. "I wonder if I could
describe it."

And he did describe it. He told them of the crumbling palaces, beautiful
in their perfect Venetian architecture, but still more beautiful now in
their slow, grand decay, in which was all the majesty of deep repose
teeming with suggestions of past glories. He spoke of the still, clear
air, the delicate tints of the softened landscape, the dark cool green
of the olive trees, the green vineyards, and the dim blue hills. He
tried to make them understand the sweet silence, the pastoral simplicity
of the surrounding country, delicate and airy when the faint sunlight of
early morning lay across its valleys and sloping vineyards, rich and
drowsy and languorous when the full glow of midday or the scented
darkness of the starlit night succeeded. Then he passed on to speak of
that garden--the fairest wilderness it was possible to conceive--where
the violets grew like weeds upon the moss-grown paths, and brilliant
patches of wild geraniums mingled their perfume with the creamy clematis
run wild, and the clustering japonica.

"She who lives there," he went on more slowly, turning from Helen toward
Sir Allan, "is in perfect accord with everything that is sweet and
stately and picturesque in her surroundings. I see her now as she met me
in the garden, and stretched out her hands to greet me. It is the face,
the form of a martyr and an angel. She is tall, and her garb is one of
stately simplicity. Her hair is white as snow, and the lines of her face
are wasted with sorrow and physical decay. Yet there is sweetness and
softness and light in her worn features--aye, and more almost than a
human being's share of that exquisite spirituality which is the reward
only of those who have triumphed over pain and suffering and sin. Guido
would have given the world for such a face. Little does an artist think
at what cost such an expression is won. Through the fires of shame and
bitter wrong, of humiliation and heart-shattering agony, the human cross
has fallen away, and the gold of her nature shines pure and refined. God
grant to those who have wronged her, those at whose door her sin lies,
as happy a deathbed as hers will be. Sir Allan, I am boring you, I fear.
We will change the subject."

"Not at all. I have been--very interested," Sir Allan answered in a low
tone, pouring himself out a glass of wine, and raising it to lips as
white as the camellia in his buttonhole.

"We are all interested," Helen said softly. "Did you stay with her?"

"For three days," he answered. "Then, because I could not bring myself
to tell her the news which I had gone all that way to impart, I came
away."

There was a moment's silence. A servant who had just entered the room
whispered in Mr. Thurwell's ear.

"Two gentlemen wish to speak to you, Mr. Maddison," he said, repeating
the message. "Where have you shown them, Roberts?--in the library?"

"I wished to do so, sir," the man replied, "but----"

He glanced over his shoulder. Every one looked toward the door. Just
outside were two dark figures. To three people at the table the truth
came like a flash.

Sir Allan sat quite still, with his eyes fixed upon Bernard Maddison,
who had risen to his feet, pale as death, with rigidly compressed lips,
and nervously grasping his napkin. Helen, too, had risen, with a look of
horror in her white face, and her eyes fastened upon her lover. Mr.
Thurwell looked from one to the other, not comprehending the situation.
The whole scene, the glittering table laden with flowers and wine, the
wondering servant, the attitude and faces of the four people, and the
dark figures outside, would have made a marvelous tableau.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a low agonized cry. Helen had thrown
her arms with a sudden impulsive gesture around her lover's neck.

"My love, my love!" she cried, "it is I who have done this thing. They
shall not take you from me--they shall not!"




CHAPTER XXXIV

ARRESTED


As is often the case, the person most concerned in the culmination of
this scene was apparently the least agitated, and the first to recover
his self-possession. Gently loosening Helen's arms from around him,
Bernard Maddison walked steadily toward the door, and confronted his
visitors. One was his fellow-passenger from London, the other a tall,
wiry-looking man, who was standing with his hat under his arm, and his
hands in the pocket of a long traveling coat.

"I am Bernard Maddison," he said quietly. "What is your business with
me?"

"I am sorry, sir, that it is rather unpleasant," the man answered,
lowering his voice. "It is my duty to arrest you under this warrant,
charging you with the murder of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston on the 12th of
August last year. Please do not make any answer to the charge, as
anything that is now said by you or anyone present, in connection with
it, can be used in evidence against you."

"I am ready to go with you at once," he answered. "The sooner we get
away the better. I have no luggage here, so I do not need to make any
preparations."

He felt a hand on his arm, and turned round. Mr. Thurwell had recovered
from his first stupefaction, and had come to his side. Close behind
him, Sir Allan Beaumerville was standing, pale as death, and with a
curious glitter in his eyes.

"Maddison, what is this?" Mr. Thurwell asked gravely.

"I am arrested on a charge of murdering Sir Geoffrey Kynaston at your
shooting party last year," Bernard Maddison answered quietly. "I make no
reply to the charge, save that I am not guilty. I am sorry that this
should have occurred at your house. Had I received any intimation of it,
I would not have come here. As it is, I can only express my regret."

Although in some respects a plain man, there was a certain innate
dignity of carriage and deportment which always distinguished Bernard
Maddison among other men. Never had it been more apparent than at that
moment. There was unconscious hauteur in his manner of meeting this
awful charge, in his tone, and in the perfect calm of his demeanor,
which was more powerful than any vehement protestations could have been.
Mr. Thurwell had long had his doubts, and very uneasy doubts, concerning
this matter, but at that moment he felt ashamed of them. He made up his
mind on impulse, but what he said he meant and adhered to.

"I believe you, Mr. Maddison," he said cordially, holding out his hand.
"I think that the charge is absurd. In any case, please reckon me
amongst your friends. If there is no one else whom you would prefer to
see, I will go and get Dewes down from town in the morning."

For the first time Bernard Maddison showed some slight sign of emotion.
He took Mr. Thurwell's hand, but did not speak for a moment. Then, as
they stood there in a little group, Helen glided up to them with a
faint smile on her lips, and a strange look in her white face.

"Father," she said, "thank God for those words!"

Then she turned to her lover, and gave him both her hands, looking up at
him through a mist of tears, but still with that ghostly smile upon her
parted lips.

"Bernard," she said softly, "you know that I have no doubts. You must go
now, but it will not be for long. You will come back to us, and we shall
be glad to see you. You need not trouble about me. See, I am quite calm.
It is because I have no fear."

He stooped and kissed her hands, but she held up her face.

"Kiss me, Bernard," she said softly. "Father," she added, turning half
round toward him, "I love him. We should have told you everything
to-morrow."

Mr. Thurwell bowed his head, and turned away to speak to the detectives,
who had remained discreetly outside the door. Sir Allan returned to his
seat, and poured himself out a glass of wine. For a moment they were all
alone, and he held her hands tightly.

"This will all come right, love," she whispered softly; "and it will
make no difference, will it? Promise me that when it is over you will
come straight to me. Promise me that, and I will be brave. If you do
not, I shall break my heart."

"Then I promise it," he answered, with a slight tremble in his voice.

But looking at him anxiously, she was not satisfied. His white face,
firm and resolute though it was, had a certain despair in it which
chilled her. The hopefulness of her words seemed to have found no echo
in his heart.

"Dearest," she whispered, "it will all come right."

His expression changed, but the effort of it was visible. His smile was
forced, and his words, light though they were, troubled her.

"We must hope so. Nay, it will come right, dear. Wish me good-by now, or
rather, _au revoir_. My guardians will be getting impatient."

They were virtually alone, and he drew from her lips one long,
passionate kiss. Then, with a few cheerful words, he turned resolutely
away. Mr. Thurwell, who had been waiting outside, came to him at once.

"The brougham is at the door," he said, with an anxious glance at Helen,
who was leaning back against a chair, her hands locked in one another,
ghastly pale, and evidently on the point of fainting. "These men have
only an open trap, and it is a cold drive across the moor. To-morrow you
go to York to be brought before the magistrates. I shall be there."

"You are very good," Bernard Maddison said earnestly; "but, so far as
defence is concerned, I will have no lawyer's aid. What little there is
to be said, I will say myself."

Mr. Thurwell shook his head.

"It does not do," he said. "But there will be time to consider that. The
magistrates will be sure to commit you for trial. They must have
evidence enough for that, or Mr. Malcolm would never have signed the
warrant against anyone in your position."

"I am quite prepared for that," he answered. "Let us go."

They left the room at once. Helen had fainted in her chair. Sir Allan
Beaumerville had apparently disappeared.

They stood on the doorstep for a moment while the carriage, which had
been driven a little way down the avenue to quiet the mettlesome horses,
returned, and Mr. Thurwell spoke a few more encouraging words.

"Jenkins has packed some things of mine, which may be useful to you, in
a portmanteau," he said. "You will find it in the carriage, and also an
ulster. Keep up your spirits, Maddison. All will be well."

"At any rate, I shall never forget your kindness," Bernard Maddison
answered, grasping his hand. "Good-by, Mr. Thurwell!"

"Good night, Maddison, good night! I shall see you to-morrow."

The impatient horses leaped forward, and Mr. Thurwell turned back into
the hall, and made his way back into the dining room. Helen had
recovered sufficiently to be able to go to her room, he was told. Sir
Allan was still sitting at the table, quietly sipping a cup of coffee.
His legs were crossed, and he was smoking one of his favorite Egyptian
cigarettes.

"Has he gone?" he said, looking round languidly.

Mr. Thurwell frowned. He was a man of somewhat imperturbable manners
himself, but he was far from being unfeeling, and Sir Allan's silence
and non-expression of any sympathy toward Bernard Maddison annoyed him
not a little.

"Yes, he's gone," he answered shortly. "I can't believe that there's
the slightest vestige of truth in that ridiculous charge. The man is
innocent; I'm sure of it."

Sir Allan shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't believe he's guilty myself," he answered; "but one never
knows."




CHAPTER XXXV

COMMITTED FOR TRIAL


Early on the following morning Mr. Thurwell ordered his dog cart, and
drove into Mallory. The arrest of Bernard Maddison had been kept quite
secret, and nothing was known as yet of the news which was soon to throw
the little town into a state of great excitement. But in the immediate
vicinity of the courthouse there was already some stir. The lord
lieutenant's carriage was drawn up outside, and there was an unusual
muster of magistrates. As a rule the cases brought before their
jurisdiction were trivial in the extreme, consisting chiefly of
drunkenness, varied by an occasional petty assault. There was scarcely
one of them who remembered having sat upon so serious a charge. Lord
Lathon came over to Mr. Thurwell directly he entered the retiring room.

"You have heard of this matter, I suppose?" he inquired, as they shook
hands.

"Yes," Mr. Thurwell answered gravely. "He was arrested at my house last
night."

"I can't believe the thing possible," Lord Lathon continued. "Still,
from what I hear, we shall certainly have to send it for trial."

"I am afraid you will," Mr. Thurwell answered. "I shall not sit myself;
I am prejudiced."

"In his favor or the reverse?" his lordship inquired.

"In his favor, decidedly," Mr. Thurwell answered, passing out behind the
others, and taking a seat in the body of the room.

The general impatience was doomed to be aggravated. The first prisoner
was an old man charged with assaulting his wife. The bench listened for
a few minutes to her garrulous tale, and managed to gather from it that
a caution from their worships was what she chiefly desired. Having
arrived at this point, Lord Lathon ruthlessly stopped her, and dismissed
the case, with a few stern words to the elderly reprobate, who departed
muttering threats against his better half which, for her bodily comfort,
it is to be hoped that he did not put into execution.

Then there was a few minutes' expectation, at the conclusion of which
Bernard Maddison was brought in between two policemen, very calm and
self-possessed, but very pale. Directly he appeared Mr. Thurwell rose
and shook hands with him, a friendly demonstration which brought a faint
glow into his cheeks.

He was offered a chair, and the services of the solicitor of the place,
the latter of which he declined. Then the chief constable, a little
flurried and nervous at the unwonted importance of his office, rose, and
addressed the bench.

The case against the prisoner was, he said, still altogether incomplete,
and he had only one witness, whose evidence, however, he felt sure,
would be such as to justify their sending the matter to be decided
before a judicial tribunal. No doubt they all remembered the painful
circumstances of Sir Geoffrey Kynaston's death, and the mystery with
which it was surrounded. That death took place within a stone's throw of
the cottage where the prisoner was then living, under an assumed name,
and more than three miles away from any other dwelling place or refuge
of any sort. He reminded them of the speedy search that had been made,
and its extraordinary non-success. Under those circumstances a certain
amount of suspicion naturally attached itself to the prisoner, and a
search warrant was duly applied for, and duly carried out. At that time
nothing suspicious was discovered, owing in some measure, he was bound
to say, to the scrupulous delicacy with which the magistrate who had
signed it--looking toward Mr. Thurwell--had insisted upon its being
carried out. Subsequently, however, and acting upon later information,
Detective Robson of Scotland Yard was appointed to look into the case,
and the result of his investigation was the issuing of the warrant under
which the prisoner stood charged with the murder of Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston. Their worships would hear the evidence of Detective Robson,
who was now present.

Detective Robson stepped forward, and was sworn. On the 15th of June
last, he said, he searched the prisoner's cottage on the Thurwell Court
estate. He there found in the secret recess of a cabinet, which had
apparently not been opened for some time, a dagger, produced, in a case
evidently intended to hold two, and which was an exact facsimile of the
one, also produced, with which the murder was committed. He found also a
towel, produced, which was stained with blood, and several letters. With
regard to the towel, he here added, that in one corner of the room was
fixed a small basin, and on the floor just beneath, covered over by a
carpet, and bearing several signs of attempted obliteration, was a large
blood stain. The woman who had cleaned the cottage prior to Mr.
Maddison's occupation, was in court, and would swear that the stain in
question was not there at that time. He mentioned these details first,
he went on to say, but the more important part of his evidence had
reference to these letters, and his subsequent action with regard to
them. He would call attention to one of them, he remarked, producing it,
and allow the bench to draw their own conclusions. He would read it to
them, and they could then examine it for themselves.

The thin rustling sheet of foreign notepaper, which he held in his hand,
was covered closely with delicate feminine handwriting, and emitted a
faint sweet perfume. For the first time during the hearing of the case
Bernard Maddison showed some slight emotion as the letters were handed
about. But he restrained it immediately.

The sentence which Detective Robson read out was as follows:--

     "Bernard, those who have sinned against their fellow creatures, and
     against their God, may surely be left to His judgment. The
     vengeance which seeks to take life is a cruel bloodthirsty passion
     which no wrong can excuse, no suffering justify. Forgive me if I
     seem to dwell so much upon this. That terrible oath which, at his
     bidding, I heard you swear against Sir Geoffrey Kynaston rings ever
     in my ears!"

There were other sentences of a somewhat similar nature. As Mr. Thurwell
listened to them he felt his heart sink. What could avail against such
evidence as this?

There was no hesitation at all on the part of the magistrates. Bernard
Maddison had pleaded "not guilty," but had declined to say another
word. "Anything there is to be said on my behalf," he remarked quietly,
in answer to a question from the bench, "I will say myself to the jury
before whom I presume you will send me."

While the committal was being made out, Mr. Thurwell leaned over and
whispered to him.

"Helen sends her love. I will arrange about the defence, and will try
and see you myself before the trial."

"You need send no lawyer to me," he answered. "I shall defend myself."

Mr. Thurwell said no more. He was a little dazed by those letters, but
he was not going to allow himself to be influenced by them, for his
daughter's sake, as well as his own. He did not like to admit himself in
the wrong, and he had made up his mind that this man was innocent.
Innocent he must therefore be proved. As to his defending himself, that
was all nonsense. He would see to that. Dewes should be instructed.

The committal was read out, and Bernard Maddison was removed from the
court. On the following day he was to be taken to York, there to be
tried at the forthcoming assizes. Mr. Thurwell bade him keep up his
courage in a tone which, though it was intended to be cheerful, was not
particularly sanguine. There was but one opinion in the court, and
despite all his efforts its influence had a certain effect upon him. But
Bernard Maddison never carried himself more proudly than when he bowed
to Lord Lathon, and left the court that morning.

At home Helen was eagerly waiting for the news. She had no need to ask,
for her father's face was eloquent.

"Is it--very bad?" she whispered.

He looked away from her with a queer feeling in his throat. To see his
daughter, who had always been so quiet, and self-contained, and
dignified--his princess, he had been used to call her--to see her
trembling with nervous fear, was a new and terrible thing to him, and to
be able to offer her no comfort was worse still. But what could he say?

"The evidence was rather bad," he admitted, "and only a portion of it
was produced. Still, we must hope for the best."

"Please tell me all about it," she begged, very quietly, but with a look
in her white face which made him turn away from her with a groan. But he
obeyed, and told her everything. And then there was a long silence.

"How did he look?" she asked, after a while.

"Very pale; but he behaved in a most dignified manner throughout," he
told her. "He must be well born. I wonder what or where his people are?
I never heard of any of them. Did you?"

She shook her head.

"He told me once that he had no friends, and no relations, and no name
save the one which he had made for himself," she said. "I don't know
whether he meant that Maddison was not his real name, or whether he
meant simply his reputation."

"There must be people in London who know all about him," Mr. Thurwell
remarked. "A man of his celebrity can scarcely conceal his family
history."

Helen had walked a little away, and was standing before the window,
looking out with listless eyes.

"Father, I wonder whether Sir Allan Beaumerville has anything to do with
this?" she said. "Has he ever hinted to you that he suspected Mr.
Maddison?"

"Certainly not," he answered. "Why do you ask?"

"Because one afternoon last week I saw him come out of Falcon's Nest. It
was the afternoon he went botanizing."

Mr. Thurwell shook his head.

"The detective mentioned the date of his visit and search," he said. "It
was a month ago."

She wrung her hands, and turned away in despair.

"It must have been through those dreadful people I went to," she sobbed.
"Oh, I was mad--mad!"

"I scarcely think that," Mr. Thurwell said thoughtfully. "They would not
have kept altogether in the background and let Scotland Yard take the
lead, if it had been so. What is it, Roberts?"

The servant had entered bearing an orange-colored envelope on a salver,
which he carried towards Helen.

"A telegram for Miss Thurwell, sir," he said.

She took it and tore it open. It was from the Strand, London, and the
color streamed into her cheeks as she read it aloud.

     "We must see you at once in the interests of B. M. Can you call on
     us to-morrow morning? Levy & Son."

"When are the assizes at York, father?" she asked quickly.

"In ten days."

"And you are going to London to-day, are you not, to see Dewes?"

"Yes."

"Then I will go with you," she said, crumpling up the telegram in her
hand.




CHAPTER XXXVI

MR. LEVY PROMISES TO DO HIS BEST


Once more Mr. Benjamin Levy trod the pavement of Piccadilly and the
Strand, and was welcomed back again amongst his set with acclamations
and many noisy greetings. One more unit was added to the vast army of
London youth who pass their time in the fascinating but ignominious
occupation of aping the "man about town" in a very small way. And
Benjamin Levy, strange to say, was happy, for the life suited him
exactly. He had brains and money enough to be regarded, in a certain
measure, as one of their leaders, and to be looked up to as a power
amongst them, and it was a weakness of his disposition that he preferred
this to being a nonentity of a higher type.

Certain of his particular cronies had organized a small supper at a
middle-class restaurant on the previous night in honor of his return,
and as a natural consequence Mr. Benjamin Levy walked down the Strand at
about half-past ten on the following morning, on his way to the office,
a little paler than usual, and with a suspicion of a "head." It would
have suited him very much better to have remained in bed for an hour or
two, and risen towards afternoon; but business was business, and it must
be attended to. So he tried to banish the effects of the bad champagne
imbibed on the previous night with a stiff glass of brandy and soda, and
lighting a fresh cigarette, turned off the Strand and made his way to
the office.

"Guv'nor in?" he inquired of the solitary clerk, a sharp-featured,
Jewish-looking young man, who was sitting on a high stool with his hands
in his pockets, apparently unburdened with stress of work.

The youth nodded, and jerked his head backwards.

"Something's up!" he remarked laconically; "he's on the rampage."

Mr. Benjamin passed on without remark, and entered the inner office. It
was easy indeed to see that something had gone wrong. Mr. Levy was
walking restlessly up and down, with a newspaper in his hand, and
muttering to himself in a disturbed manner. At his son's entrance he
stopped short, and looked at him angrily.

"Benjamin, my boy," he said, rustling the paper before his face, "you've
been made a fool of. Scotland Yard have licked us!"

Mr. Benjamin yawned, and tilted his hat on the back of his head.

"What's up now, guv'nor?" he inquired.

His father laid the paper flat on the desk before him, and pointed to
one of the paragraphs with trembling fingers.

"Read that! Read that!" he exclaimed.

His obedient son glanced at it, and pushed the paper away in contempt.

"Stale news," he remarked shortly.

Mr. Levy looked at him amazed.

"Maybe you knew all about it," he remarked a little sarcastically.

"May be I did," was the cool reply.

"And yet you have let them be beforehand with us!" Mr. Levy exclaimed
angrily. "If this was to be done, why did we not do it?"

"Because we've got a better game to play," answered the junior partner
of the firm, with a hardly restrained air of triumph.

Mr. Levy regarded his son with a look of astonishment, which speedily
changed into one of admiration.

"Is this true, Benjamin?" he asked. "But--but----"

"But you don't understand," Benjamin interrupted impatiently. "Of course
you don't. And you'll have to wait a bit for an explanation, too, for
here's the very person I was expecting," he added, raising himself on
his stool, and looking out of the window. "Now, father, just you sit
quiet, and don't say a word," he went on quickly. "Leave it all to me;
I'll pull the thing through."

Mr. Levy had only time to express by a pantomimic sign his entire
confidence in his son's diplomacy before Miss Thurwell was announced.
She was shown in at once.

"I had your telegram," she began hurriedly. "What does it mean? Can you
do anything?"

Mr. Benjamin placed a chair for her, and took up his favorite position
on the hearthrug.

"I hope so, Miss Thurwell," he said quietly. "First of all, of course
you are aware that Mr. Maddison's arrest was as much of a surprise to us
as to any one. We neither had any hand in it, nor should we have dreamed
of taking any step of the sort."

"I thought it could not be you," she answered. "How do you think it came
about?"

Mr. Levy, junior, shrugged his shoulders.

"Quite in the ordinary course," he answered. "So I should think. The
police have never let the matter really drop, and I should imagine that
he had been watched for some time. How it came to pass, however, it is
not worth while discussing now. The question with you, I presume,
is--can he be saved?"

"Yes, that is it," Helen answered quietly, but with deep intensity. "Can
he be saved? Do you know anything? Can you help?"

Mr. Benjamin Levy cleared his throat, and appeared to reflect for a
moment or two. Then he turned towards Helen, and commenced speaking
earnestly.

"Look here, Miss Thurwell," he said, "your interest in this matter is,
of course, a personal one. Mine, on the other hand, is naturally a
business one. You understand that?"

She nodded.

"Yes, I understand that," she said.

"Let us put it on a business basis, then," he went on. "The question is,
what will you give us to get Mr. Maddison off? That's putting it baldly;
but we've no time to waste mincing matters."

"I will give you one--two thousand pounds, if you can do it," she said,
her voice trembling with eagerness. "Will that be enough?"

"Two thousand five hundred--the five hundred for expenses," Mr. Benjamin
said firmly. "Father, make out a paper, and Miss Thurwell will sign it."

"At once," she answered, drawing off her glove. "Mr. Levy, you have some
hope! You know something. Tell me about it, please," she begged.

"Miss Thurwell," he said, "at present I can tell you no more than this.
I really think that I shall be able in a short time to upset the whole
case against Mr. Maddison. I can't tell you more at present. Let me
have your address, and you shall hear from me."

She had signed her name to the document which Mr. Levy had drawn up, and
she now wrote her address. Mr. Benjamin copied the latter into his
pocket-book, and prepared to show his visitor out.

"I really don't think that you need be very anxious, Miss Thurwell," he
said hopefully. "At present things look bad enough, but I think that
when the time comes, I shall be able to throw a different light upon
them."

"Thank you," she answered, dropping her veil. "You will let me know
immediately you have definite news?"

"Immediately, Miss Thurwell. You may rely upon that. Good-morning!"

He closed the door after her, and, returning to his seat, scribbled
something on a piece of paper. Then he rang the bell.

"Is Morrison about?" he asked the boy.

"Been in and gone. Round at the Golden Sun, if wanted."

"Take him this slip of paper," ordered Benjamin, "and tell him to keep a
keen watch on the person whose name and address are there. Understand?"

The boy nodded, and withdrew. Then Mr. Benjamin looked across at his
father.

"Well, guv'nor?" he remarked laconically.

"Benjamin," his fond parent replied with enthusiasm, "you are indeed a
jewel of a son."

"I think I am," Benjamin replied modestly. "Come out and have a drink."




CHAPTER XXXVII

BERNARD A PRISONER


The arrest and committal of Bernard Maddison on a charge of murder
created the most profound sensation in every circle of English society.
His work, abstruse and scholarly though some of it was, had appealed to
a great reading public, and had made his name like a household word.
That long deep cry for a larger and sweeter culture which had been
amongst the signs of this troubled generation, had found its most
perfect and adequate expression in his works. He had been at once its
interpreter and its guide. There were thoughtful men and women, a great
mixed class, who, in their own minds, reckoned themselves as his
apostles, and acknowledged no other intellectual master. Some were of
the highest rank of society, others of the very lowest. It was a
literary republic of which he had been the unacknowledged dictator,
containing all those whose eyes had been in any way opened, who had felt
stirring even faintly within them that instinct of mind-development and
expansion to which his work seemed peculiarly fitted to minister. And
so, although his career as an apostle of culture had been but a short
one, he was already the leader of a school whose tenets it would have
been a heresy to modern taste to doubt or question.

The news of this tragical event, therefore, fell like a thunderbolt
upon society, eclipsing every other topic in the newspapers, in
conversation, and general interest. The first instinct of every one
appeared to be to look upon the whole affair as a ludicrous piece of
mismanagement on the part of the police, and Scotland Yard came in for a
good deal of scathing criticism, as is usual in such cases. But when the
evidence before the magistrates was carefully read, and sundry other
little matters discussed, men's tongues began to run less glibly. Of
course it was impossible that it could be true; and yet the evidence was
certainly strong. In the country generally the first impulse of generous
disbelief was followed by a period of pained and reserved expectancy. In
clubdom, where neither fear of the devil nor love of God had yet been
able to keep the modern man of the world from discussing freely any
subject interesting to him, a gradual but sure reaction against the
possibilities of his innocence set in.

There were plenty of men about still who remembered Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston, and the peculiar manner of his life. During his long absence
from England there had been many rumors about, concerning its reason,
and now these were all suddenly revived. The breach of a certain
commandment, a duel at Boulogne, and many other similar adventures were
freely spoken of. After all, this story, improbable though it sounded,
was far from impossible. It had always been reckoned a little mysterious
that nothing whatever had been known of Bernard Maddison's antecedents,
great though had been his fame, and assiduous his interviewers. As all
these things began slowly to fit themselves together, men commenced to
look grave, and to avoid the subject in the presence of their
woman-kind, who were one and all unswerving in their loyalty to that
dear, delightful Bernard Maddison, who had written those exquisite
books. But in the smoking-room and among themselves views were gradually
adopted which it would have been heresy to avow in the drawing-room.

No man appeared to take less interest in the event and the discussion
of it than Sir Allan Beaumerville. Known generally amongst his
acquaintances as a cynic and pessimist, men were pretty sure what his
opinion would be. But he never expressed it. Whenever he strolled up to
any group in the smoking-room or library of the club, and found them
discussing the Maddison murder case, he turned on his heel and walked
another way. If it were broached in his presence it was the signal for
his retirement, and any question concerning it he refused point-blank to
answer. Gradually the idea sprang up, and began to circulate, that Sir
Allan Beaumerville had formed an idea of his own concerning the Maddison
murder, and that it was one which he intended to keep to himself. Every
one was curious about it, but in the face of his reticence, no one cared
to ask him what it was.

       *       *       *       *       *

A plain whitewashed cell, with high bare walls and tiny window, through
which the sunlight could only struggle faintly. Only one article of
furniture which could justly be called such, a rude wooden bedstead, and
seated on its end with folded arms and bent head, like a man in some
sort of stupor, sat Bernard Maddison.

He was in that most pitiable of all states, when merciless realization
had driven before it all apathy, all lingering hope, all save that
deadly cold sea of absolute, unutterable despair. There had been moments
on his first arrival here, when he had fallen into a dozing sleep, and
had leaped up from his hard bed, and had stretched up his hands above
his head, and had called out in agony that it must be a dream, a hideous
nightmare from which he would awaken only to look back upon it with
horror. And then his glazed, fearful eyes had slowly taken in his
surroundings--the stone walls, the cold floor, the barred window--and
pitiless memory had dragged back his thoughts amongst the vivid horrors
of the last forty-eight hours. It was all there, written in letters of
fire. He shrunk back upon his mattress and buried his face in his hands,
whilst every instinct of manliness fought against the sobs which seemed
as though they would rend to pieces his very frame.

Once more the morning light had come, and the burning agony of the hours
of darkness was exchanged for the cold, crushing despair of the weary
day. They had brought his breakfast, which he had loathed and left
untasted. And then, as he sat there, so worn out with physical and
mental exhaustion, something of a dull miserable apathy acted like opium
on his wearied nerves and brain. He sat there thinking.

The great passions of the world are either our sweetest happiness or
our most utter misery. Not unfrequently the one becomes the other.
Circumstances may change, but the force remains, sometimes, after
yielding us the most exquisite pleasure, to lash us with scorpion-like
whips. The love of Bernard Maddison had thrilled through heart and
soul--it had become not a thing of his life, but his whole life. Every
impulse and passion of his being had yielded itself up to it. Ambition,
intellectual visions, imaginative fancies, all these had been not indeed
driven out by this passion, but more fatal still, they had opened their
arms to receive it, they had bidden it welcome, and heart and brain and
imagination had glowed with a new significance and a new-born power. A
lesser love would have had a lesser effect; it would have made rivals of
these other parts of himself. Not so the love of Bernard Maddison. Every
fiber of his deep, strong nature was strengthened and beautified by this
new-kindled fire. At that moment, had he been free to write, he would
have been conscious of a capacity beyond any which he had ever before
possessed. For a great nature is perfected by a great love, as the
blossoms of spring by the April showers and May sun. The dry dust of
scholarship sometimes chokes up the well of fancy. The perfect humanity
of love acts like a sweet, quickening impulse upon it, breathing sweet
soft life into dry images, and rich coloring into pallid visions. Such
love, which is at once spiritual and passionate, of heaven and of the
earth, absorbing and concentrative, widening and narrowing, is to a
man's nature, if he be strong enough to conceive and appreciate it, the
very food, the essence of sublimated life.

To Bernard Maddison it had been so. To its very depths he realized it as
he sat in his prison cell with something of the deep passive resignation
of the man who stands with one foot in the grave. The latter part of his
life--nay, the whole of it--had been full of noble dreams and pure
thoughts. His genius had never run riot over the whole face of nature,
to yield its fruits in a sickly sweet realism with only faint flashes of
his deeper power. Always subordinated by the innate and cultured
healthiness of his mind, he had sent it forth a living power for good.
Great joy had been his as he had watched his message to the world
listened to, and understood, and appreciated. Another age might witness
its fruits, it was sufficient for him that the seed was rightly planted.

Oh, the horror of it--the burning, unspeakable horror! In his ears there
seemed to come ringing from the world without the great hum of gossip
and lies which were dragging his name down into hell. A murderer! The
time might come when she too would think thus of him, when the tragedy
of her first love might fade away, and the lovelight might flash again
in her eyes, but not for him. He shook his head wildly, stretched out
his hands as though to hide something from his quivering face, and
barely suppressed the groan of deep agony which trembled on his lips.
God in His mercy keep him from such thoughts! Death, disgrace,
surpassing humiliation, let them float in their ghostly garments before
his shuddering gaze, but keep that thought from him, for with it madness
moved hand in hand. As Michael Angelo had stifled his grief at Vittoria
Colonna's death, in the sweet hope of rejoining her as soon as the last
lingering breath should leave his mortal body, and as Dante had hoped
for his Beatrice, so let him think of the woman without whom no human
life was possible for him, almost, he cried out in his agony, no
spiritual hope or longing.

The sound of the key in the lock of his door, and the tramp of footsteps
on the stone floor outside, awoke him with a start from his
half-dreaming state. The thought of visitors being permitted to come had
never occurred to him, nor did it even then. The footsteps had paused
outside his door, but he felt no interest in them, nor ever the vaguest
stirrings of curiosity. Then the harsh lock was turned with a grating
sound, and two figures, followed by the prison warder, entered the
room.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

"THERE IS MY HAND. DARE YOU TAKE IT?"


There is nothing which can transport one so quickly from thoughtland to
acute and comprehensive realization, as the sound of a human voice or
the consciousness of a human presence. Like a flash it all came back to
the lonely occupant of the prison cell--the personal degradation of his
position, his surroundings, and everything connected with them. And with
it, too, came a strong, keen desire to bear himself like a man before
her father.

He rose to his feet, and the pitiful bareness of the place seemed to
become suddenly enhanced by the quiet dignity of his demeanor. Out of
the gloom Mr. Thurwell came forward with outstretched hand, followed by
another gentleman--a stranger. Between the two men, that one long ray of
sunlight lay across the stone floor, and as Bernard Maddison stepped
forward to meet his visitor, it gleamed for a moment upon his white,
haggard face, worn and stricken, yet retaining all that quiet force and
delicacy of expression which seemed like the index of his inward life.
It was the face of a poet, of a dreamer, a visionary perhaps--but a
criminal! the thing seemed impossible.

"This is very good of you, Mr. Thurwell," he said in a low but clear
tone. "I scarcely expected that I should be permitted to see visitors."

Mr. Thurwell grasped his hand, and held it for a moment without
speaking. He had all an Englishman's reticence of speech in times of
great emotion, and it seemed to him that there was nothing that he could
say. But silence was very eloquent.

"I have brought Mr. Dewes with me," he said at last. "He wants to see
you about the defence, you know. The high sheriff's a friend of mine, so
I got him to pass me in at the same time; but if you'd rather see Dewes
alone, you'll say so, won't you?"

There had been an acute nervous force working in Bernard Maddison's face
during that brief silence. At Mr. Thurwell's words, a change came. He
dropped his visitor's hand, and his features were still and cold as
marble, and almost as expressionless, save for the lightly drawn lips,
and lowered eyebrows, which gave to his expression a fixed look of
power.

"That is very kind and thoughtful of you, Mr. Thurwell, and I am sorry
that you should have had the trouble to no purpose. I have nothing to
add to my previous decision. I will not be represented by either lawyer
or counsel."

Mr. Dewes moved forward out of the background, and bowed. He was a
handsome, middle-aged man, looking more like a cavalry officer than a
solicitor. But, as everyone knew, so far as criminal cases were
concerned, he was the cleverest lawyer in London.

"You are relying upon your innocence, of course, Mr. Maddison," he said;
"but it is a very great mistake to suppose that it will establish itself
without extraneous aid. You will have the Attorney-General against you,
and you must have some one of the same caliber on your side. The old
saying, 'Truth will out,' does not apply in an assize court. It requires
to be dragged out. I think you will do well to accept my services.
Roberts holds himself open to take the brief for your defence, if I wire
him before midday."

"I seldom change my mind," Bernard Maddison said quietly. "In the
present case I shall not do so. If it seems to me that there is anything
which should be said on my behalf, I shall say it myself."

There was a short silence. Mr. Dewes looked at Mr. Thurwell, and Mr.
Thurwell looked both perplexed and worried.

"Maddison, you must admit that yours is an extraordinary decision," he
said at last. "You must forgive me if I ask you in plain words what your
reason is for it. I ask as one who is willing to be your friend in this
matter; and I ask you as Helen's father."

A sudden spasm of pain passed across Bernard Maddison's face. He shrunk
back a little, and when he spoke his voice sounded hollow and strained.

"I do not deny you the right to ask--but I cannot tell you. Simply it is
my will. It is best so. It must be so."

"Can you not see, Mr. Maddison," the lawyer said quietly, "that to some
people this will seem almost like a tacit admission of guilt?"

"I shall plead 'not guilty,'" he answered in a low tone.

"That will be looked upon only as a matter of form," Mr. Dewes remarked.
"Mr. Maddison, I should not be doing my duty if I did not point out to
you that the evidence against you is terribly strong. Just consider it
yourself, only for a moment. Sir Geoffrey Kynaston is known to have
seriously wronged a member of your family. You are known to have sworn
an oath of vengeance against him. There are witnesses coming from
abroad to prove that. Immediately on his return to his home you take a
cottage, under an assumed name, close to his estate. He is found
murdered close to that cottage, of which it seems that at that time you
were the only occupant. You are the only person known to have been near
the spot. The dagger is proved to be yours. Letters are found in your
cabinet urging you to desist from your threatened vengeance. There is
the stain of blood on the floor of your study, near the place where you
would have washed your hands, and a blood-stained towel is found hidden
in the room. All this and more can be proved, and unless you can throw a
fresh light upon these things, there is no jury in the world that would
not find you guilty. You hold your fate in your own hands."

"I have considered all this," Bernard Maddison answered in a low tone.
"I know that my case is almost hopeless, and I am prepared for the
worst."

Mr. Thurwell turned away, and walked to the furthermost corner of the
apartment. For his daughter's sake, and for the sake of his own strong
liking for this man, he had resolutely shut his eyes upon the damning
chain of evidence against him. Now he felt that that he could do so no
longer. Nothing but guilt could account for this strange reticence. He
was forced to admit it at last. His compassion was still strong, but it
was mingled with a great horror. He felt that he must get away as soon
as possible.

Mr. Dewes, who had all along had the most profound conviction of the
guilt of the accused man seized his opportunity, and stepping close up
to him, whispered in his ear:

"Mr. Maddison, I should like to save you if I can. There have been
cases--forgive me for suggesting it--in which, by knowing every
circumstance and trifling detail connected with a crime, we have been
able to build up a def----"

Bernard Maddison drew himself up with a sudden hauteur, and raised his
hand.

"Stop, Mr. Dewes!" he said firmly. "I do not blame you for assuming what
you do, but you are mistaken. I am not guilty. I do not ask you to
believe it. I only ask you to bring this painful interview to an end."

"We will go," said Mr. Thurwell, suddenly advancing from the other end
of the cell. "I am not your judge, Bernard Maddison, and it is not for
me to hold you guilty. God shall pass His own judgment upon you. There
is my hand. Dare you take it?"

For answer, Bernard Maddison stepped forward and clasped it in his own.
Once more he had moved from out of the darkness, and a soft stream of
sunshine fell upon his pallid face. White though it was, even to
ghastliness, it betrayed no sign of blanching or fear, and his dark
eyes, from their hollow depths, shone with a clear, steadfast light.
Once more its calm spirituality, the effortless force which seemed to
lurk in every line and feature of the pale wasted countenance, had its
effect upon Mr. Thurwell. He wrung the hand which it had cost him a
suppressed effort to take, and for the moment his doubts faded away.

"God help you, Maddison!" he said fervently. "Shall I tell her anything
from you?"

A faint smile parted his tremulous lips. At that moment he was beyond
earthly suffering. A sweet, strong power had filled his heart with
peace.

"Tell her not to grieve, and that I am innocent," he said softly.
"Farewell!"




CHAPTER XXXIX

MR. BENJAMIN LEVY IS BUSY


A woman stood on the little stone piazza of that Italian villa, with her
face raised in agony to the blue sky, and her thin white hands wrung
together with frantic nervous strength. Her whole attitude was full of
the hopeless abandonment of a great tearless grief; and slowly dawning
passion, long a stranger to her calm face, was creeping into her
features. On the ground, spurned beneath her feet, was a long
official-looking letter and envelope. A thunderbolt had flashed down
upon the sweet stillness of her serene life.

She was quite alone, and she looked out upon an unbroken solitude--that
fair neglected garden with its high walls which seemed to give it an air
of peculiar exclusiveness.

"I will not go," she said, speaking quickly to herself in an odd, uneven
tone. "The law of England shall not make me. I am an old woman. If they
do, they cannot open my lips. I! to stand up in one of their courts, and
tell the story of my shame, that they may listen and condemn my son. Oh,
Bernard, Bernard, Bernard! The Lord have mercy upon you for this your
crime! Mine was the sin. Mine should be the guilt. Oh, my God, my God!
Is this just, in my old age, to pour down this fire of punishment upon
my bowed head? Have I not suffered and done penance--ay, until I had
even thought that I had won for myself peace and rest and forgiveness?
Was it a sin to think so? Is this my punishment? Oh, Bernard, my son, my
son! Let not the sin be his, O Lord. It is mine--mine only!"

Sweet perfumes were floating upon the soft still air, and away on the
hill sides the morning mists were rolling away. The sun's warmth fell
upon the earth and the flowers, and birds and humming insects were glad.
And in the midst of it all she stood there, a silent, stony figure,
grief and anguish and despair written in her worn face. God was dealing
very hardly with her, she cried in her agony. Truly sin was everlasting.

"Signorina!"

She turned round with a start. A servant girl stood by her side with a
card on a salver.

"A gentleman to see the signorina," she announced; "an English
gentleman."

The woman turned pale with fear, and her fingers trembled. She would not
even glance at the name on the card.

"Tell him that I see no one. I am ill. I will not see him, be his
business what it may. Do you hear, child? Go and send him away."

The girl curtsied and disappeared. Her mistress stepped back into the
room, and listened fearfully. Soon there came what she had dreaded, the
sound of an altercation. She could hear Nicolette protesting in her
shrill _patois_, and a rather vulgar, but very determined English voice,
vigorously asserting itself. Then there came the sound of something
almost like a scuffle, and Nicolette came running in with red eyes.

"Signorina, the brute, the brute!" she cried; "he will come in. He dared
to lay his hands upon me. See, he is here! Oh, that Marco had been in
the house! He should have beaten him, the dog, the coward, to oppose a
woman's will by force!"

While she had been sobbing out her complaint, her assailant had followed
up his advantage, and Mr. Benjamin Levy, in a rather loud check suit,
and with a cringing air, but with a certain dogged determination in his
manner, appeared. Mrs. Martival turned to him with quiet dignity, but
with flashing eyes.

"Sir, by what right do you dare to enter my house by force, and against
my command? I will not speak with you or know your business. I will have
no communication with you."

"Then your son will be hanged!" Mr. Benjamin said, with unaccustomed
bluntness.

Mrs. Martival trembled, and sank into a chair. Mr. Benjamin followed up
his advantage.

"I am not from the police. I have no connection with them. On the other
hand, I am considerably interested in saving your son, and I tell you
that I can put into your hands the means of doing so. Now, will you
listen to me?"

Something in Mrs. Martival's face checked him. The features had suddenly
become rigid, and an ashy pallor had stolen over them. Nicolette, who
had been lingering in the room, suddenly threw herself on her knees
beside her mistress's side, and caught hold of her hands.

"Oh, the wretch!" she cried, "the miserable wretch; he has killed my
mistress!"

He stood helplessly by while she ran backwards and forwards with cold
water, smelling salts, and other restoratives, keeping up all the while
a running fire of scathing comments upon his heartless conduct, of
which, needless to say, he understood not a single word. Beneath his
breath he cursed this unlucky fainting fit. He had already lost a day on
the way, and the time was short. What if she were to be ill--too ill to
be moved! The very thought made him restless and uneasy.

In the midst of the confusion Mrs. Martival's housekeeper returned from
her marketing in the little town, and to his relief he found that she
understood English. He interrupted Nicolette's shrill torrents of abuse
against him, and briefly explained the situation.

"I do not wish to force myself upon her," he said. "I do not wish to be
troublesome in any way. But when she is conscious, I want you just to
show her half a dozen words which I will write on the back of a card.
If, when she has read them, she still wishes me to go, I will do so
without attempting to see her again."

The woman nodded.

"Very well," she said; "wait outside."

He left the room and walked softly up and down the passage, eyeing with
some contempt the rich faded curtains and quaint artistic furniture
about the place, so unlike the gilded glories of his own taste. In about
half an hour the housekeeper came out to him.

"She is conscious now," she said; "give me your message."

He gave her a card on which he had already penciled a few words, and
waited, terribly anxious, for the result. The woman withdrew, and closed
the door. For a moment there was silence. Then a wild, fierce cry rang
out from the room and echoed through the house. Before it had died away
the door was flung open, and she stood on the threshold, her white hair
streaming down her back, and every vestige of color gone from her face.
Her eyes, too, shone with a feverish glow which fascinated him.

"Is it you who wrote this?" she cried, holding up the card clenched in
her trembling fingers. "If you are a man, tell me, is it true?"

"I believe it is," he answered. "In my own mind, I am certain that it
is. You are the only person who can prove it. I want you to come to
England with me."

"I am ready," she said. "When can we start?"

He looked at his watch.

"I will be here in half an hour with a carriage," he said. "If we can
get over the hills by midday, we shall catch the express."

"Go, then," she said calmly; "I shall be waiting for you."

He hurried away, and soon returned with a carriage from the inn. In less
than an hour they had commenced their journey to England.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was an early summer evening in Mayfair, and Sir Allan Beaumerville
stood on the balcony of his bijou little house, for which he had lately
deserted the more stately family mansion in Grosvenor Square. There was
a soft pleasant stillness in the air, and a gentle rustling of green
leaves among the trees. The streets below were almost blocked with
streams of carriages and hansoms, for the season was not yet over, and
it was fast approaching the fashionable dinner hour. Overhead, in
somewhat curious contrast, the stars were shining in a deep cloudless
sky, and a golden-horned moon hung down in the west.

Sir Allan was himself dressed for the evening, with an orchid in his
buttonhole, and a light overcoat on his arm. In the street, his night
brougham, with its pair of great thoroughbred horses, stood waiting. Yet
he made no movement toward it. He did not appear to be waiting for
anyone, nor was he watching the brilliant throng passing westward. His
eyes were fixed upon vacancy, and there was a certain steadfast, rapt
look in them which altered his expression curiously. Sir Allan
Beaumerville seldom used his powers of reflection save for practical
purposes. Just then, however, he was departing from his usual custom.
Strange ghosts of a strange past were flitting through his mind. Old
passions, which had long lain undisturbed, were sweeping through him,
old dreams were revived, old memories kindled once more smoldering
fires, and aided at the resurrection of a former self. The cold
man-of-the-world philosophy, which had ruled his life for many years,
seemed suddenly conquered by this upheaval of a stormy past. Under the
influence of the serene night, the starlit sky, and the force of these
old memories, he seemed to realize more than he had ever done before the
littleness of his life, its colorless egotism, the barrenness of its
routine. Like a flash it stood glaringly out before him. Stripped of all
its intellectual furbishing, the chill selfishness of the creed he had
adopted struck home to his heart. A finite life, with a finite
goal--annihilation! Had it really ever satisfied him? Could it satisfy
anyone? A great weariness crept in upon him. Epicureanism could have
been carried no further than he had carried it. He had steeped his
senses in the most refined and voluptuous pleasures civilization had to
offer him. Where was the afterglow? Was this all that remained? A palled
appetite, a hungry heart, and a cold, chill despair! What comfort could
his much-studied philosophy afford him? It had satisfied the brain; had
it nothing to offer the heart? Something within him seemed to repeat the
word with a grim echo. Nothing! nothing! nothing!

What was it that caused his eyes to droop till they rested upon two
figures on the opposite pavement? He could not tell whence the power,
and yet he obeyed the impulse. They glanced over the man with
indifference and met the woman's upturned gaize. And Sir Allan
Beaumerville stood like a figure of stone, with a deathlike pallor in
his marble face.

The stream of carriages swept on, and the motley crowds of men and women
passed on their way unnoticing. Little they knew that a tragedy was
being played out before their very eyes. A few noticed that stately
white-haired lady gazing strangely at the house across the way, and a
few too saw the figure of the man on whom her eyes were bent. But no one
could read what passed between them. That lay in their own hearts.

Interruption came at last. Mr. Benjamin Levy's excitement mastered his
patience. He asked the question which had been trembling on his lips.

"Is it he?"

She started, and laid her hand upon his shoulder for support. She was
very much shaken.

"Yes. See, he is beckoning. He wants me. I shall go to him. May God give
me strength!"

She moved forward to cross the road. He caught hold of her arm in sudden
fear.

"You mustn't think of it," he exclaimed. "You will spoil everything. I
want you to come with me to--D--n! Come back, I say; come back! Curse
the woman!"

He stood on the pavement, fuming. She had glided from his grasp, and
his words had fallen upon deaf ears. Already she was half across the
road. The door of Sir Allan's house stood open, and a servant was
hurrying down to meet her. At that moment Mr. Benjamin Levy felt
distinctly ill-used.

"D--d old fool!" he muttered to himself angrily. "Hi, hansom, Scotland
Yard, and drive like blazes! The game's getting exciting, at any rate,"
he added. "It was mine easy before that last move; now it's a blessed
toss up which way it goes. Well, I'll back my luck. I rather reckon I
stand to win still, if Miss Thurwell acts on the square."




CHAPTER XL

A STRANGE BIRTHDAY PARTY


It was close upon midnight, and one of the oldest and most exclusive of
West-end clubs was in a state of great bustle and excitement. Sir Allan
Beaumerville was giving a supper party to his friends to celebrate his
sixtieth birthday, and the guests were all assembled.

Sir Allan himself was the last to arrive. The final touches had been
given to the brilliantly decorated supper table, and the _chef_, who had
done his best for the greatest connoisseur and the most liberal member
in the club, had twice looked at his watch. As midnight struck, however,
Sir Allan's great black horses turned into Pall Mall, and a few minutes
later he was quietly welcoming his guests, and leading the way into the
room which had been reserved for the occasion.

As a rule men are not quick at noticing one another's looks, but
to-night more than one person remarked upon a certain change in their
host's appearance.

"Beaumerville's getting quite the old man," remarked Lord Lathon, as he
helped himself to an ortolan. "Looks jolly white about the gills
to-night, doesn't he?"

His neighbor, a barrister and wearer of the silk, adjusted his eyeglass
and looked down the table.

"Gad, he does!" he answered. "Looks as though he's had a shock."

"Not at all in his usual form, at any rate," put in Mr. Thurwell, _sotto
voce_, from the other side of the table.

"Queer thing, but he seems to remind me of some one to-night," Lord
Lathon remarked to the Home Secretary, who was on the other side. "Can't
remember who it is, though. It's some fellow who's in a devil of a
scrape, I know. Who the mischief is it?"

"You mean Maddison, don't you?" Sir Philip Roden answered. "Plenty of
people have noticed that. There is a likeness, certainly."

"By Jove, there is, though!" Lord Lathon assented; "I never noticed it
before. I'm devilish sorry for Maddison, Roden, and I hope you won't let
them hang him."

The conversation turned upon the Maddison case and became general.
Everybody had something to say about it except Sir Allan. He himself, it
was noticed, forbore to pass any opinion at all, and at the first
opportunity he diverted the talk into another channel.

The quality of his guests spoke volumes for the social position and
popularity of their entertainer. Probably there were not half a dozen
men in London who could have got together so brilliant and select an
assembly. There were only twenty, but every man was a man of note.
Politics were represented by the Home Secretary, Sir Philip Roden, and
the First Lord of the Treasury; the peerage by the Duke of Leicester and
the Earl of Lathon. There were two judges, and a half a dozen Q.C.'s,
the most popular novelist of the day, and the most renowned physician. A
prince might have entertained such a company with honor.

It had been arranged that the advent of cigars should be the signal for
the Duke of Leicester to rise and propose their host's health. But to
the surprise of every one, whilst his grace was preparing for the
ordeal, and was on the point of rising, Sir Allan himself slowly rose to
his feet, with a look in his still, cold face so different from anything
that might be expected of a man who rises at two o'clock in the morning
after a capital supper to make a speech to his guests, that every one's
attention was at once arrested.

"I am given to understand, gentlemen," he said slowly, "that his grace
the Duke of Leicester was about to propose my health on your behalf. I
rise to prevent this for two reasons. First, because to a dying man such
a toast could only be a mockery; the second reason will be sufficiently
apparent when I have said what I have to say to you."

Every one was stupefied. Had their host suddenly gone mad, or had those
empty bottles of Heidseck which had just been removed from his end of
the table anything to do with it? Several murmurs for an explanation
arose.

"I had forgotten for the moment," Sir Allan continued, "that none of you
are yet aware of what I have only known myself during the last few days.
I am suffering from acute heart disease, which may terminate fatally at
any moment."

A sudden awed gloom fell upon the party. Cigars were put down, and
shocked glances exchanged. A murmur of condolence arose, but Sir Allan
checked it with a little gesture.

"I need scarcely say that I did not ask you to meet me here this evening
to tell you this," he continued. "My object is a different one. I have a
confession to make."

The general bewilderment increased. The air of festivity was replaced
by a dull restrained silence. Could it be that their host's illness had
affected his brain? A painful impression to that effect had passed into
the minds of more than one of them.

"You will say, perhaps," Sir Allan continued, speaking very slowly, and
with a certain difficulty in his articulation, which did not, however,
prevent every word from being distinctly audible, "that I am choosing a
strange time and place for making a personal statement. But I see
amongst those who have done me the honor of becoming my guests to-night,
men whom I should wish to know the whole truth from my own lips--I refer
more particularly to you, Sir Philip Roden--and to-night is my last
opportunity, for to-morrow all London will know my story, and I shall be
banned forever from all converse and intercourse with my fellow-men.

"Very few words will tell my story. Most of you will remember that I
came into my title and fortune late in life. My youth was spent in
comparative poverty abroad, sometimes practicing my profession,
sometimes living merely as a student and an experimenting scientist. In
my thirtieth year I married a woman of good family, with whom I was very
much in love, so much so that in order to win her I forged a letter from
the man whom she would otherwise have married, and obtained her consent
in a fit of indignation at his supposed infidelity. That man, gentleman,
was Sir Geoffrey Kynaston."

There was a subdued murmur of astonishment. Every one's interest was
suddenly redoubled. Sir Allan proceeded, standing at the head of the
table, motionless as a statue, but with a strange look in his white
face.

"In every possible way I failed in my duty as a husband toward my wife.
She was light-hearted, fond of change, gayety, travel. I shut her up in
a quiet, old-fashioned town while I pursued my studies, and expected her
to content herself with absolute solitude. For years I crushed the life
out of her by withdrawing every interest and every amusement from her
life. We had one child only, a son.

"From bad, things grew to worse. What I had dreaded came to pass. She
discovered my treachery. Still, she was faithful to me, but we were
husband and wife in name only.

"Time passed on, and she made a few friends, and went out occasionally.
Then, who should come by accident to the little town where we lived but
Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. I was madly, insanely jealous, and I forbade my
wife to meet him. She declined to obey me, and she was quite right to do
so. At that time she was as faithful to me as any woman could be, and
she treated my suspicions, as they deserved to be treated, with
contempt. Sir Geoffrey and she met as friends, and if it had not been
for my brutality they would never have met in any other way.

"One night there was a fête and dance in our little town. My wife went,
against my orders, and Sir Geoffrey escorted her home. A demon of
jealousy entered into my soul that night. Although all the time I knew
that my wife was faithful to me, the worse half of my nature whispered
to me that she was not, and, wretch that I was, I stooped to listen to
it. When she returned I was mad with a fit of ungovernable rage. I shut
my doors against her, and refused to allow her to enter my house. I
taunted her with her infidelity. I bade her go to her lover. She went to
some friends, and for two days she waited for a message from me. I sent
none, and on the third day she left the place with Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston. In less than a month she was in a convent, and from that day
to this she has lived the life of a holy woman."

There was a slight tremor in his voice for the first time, and he
paused. The silence was profound. Everyone sat motionless. Everyone's
eyes were fixed upon him. In a moment he continued.

"Although by sheer brutality, by coarse insults and undeviating cruelty,
I had driven my wife to the edge of the precipice, my rage against the
man, whom I knew she had always loved, burned as fiercely as though he
had won her from me by the cruelest means. I followed them to Vienna,
and insulted him publicly. My wife left him on that very night, and he
has never seen her since; but Sir Geoffrey and I fought on the sands
near Boulogne, and I strove my utmost to kill him. Fortune was against
me, however, and I was wounded. I returned to my home with my thirst for
vengeance unabated. I taught my son to curse the name of Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston, and as soon as I had recovered from my wounds I hunted him all
over Europe. Where he spent those years I cannot tell, but he eluded me.
Often I reached a town only to learn that he had left it but a few days;
once, I remember, at Belgrade, I was only a few hours behind him. But
meet him face to face I could not.

"When at last I saw my son again, I found him grown up, and in his first
words he told me boldly that he had espoused his mother's cause, and
that he withdrew altogether from his vow of vengeance against Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston. I left him in a fury, and almost immediately
afterwards came the unexpected news of my accession to the baronetcy of
Beaumerville. I made up my mind then to turn over the past chapter of my
life, and start the world afresh. I had always been known by the family
name of Martival, and my wife was unaware of my connection with the
Beaumerville family. Taking advantage of this, I sent her false news of
my death at Paris, and started life afresh as Sir Allan Beaumerville.

"The past, however, soon began to cast its shadows into the future. A
new author, calling himself Bernard Maddison, was one night introduced
to me at a crowded assembly. I held out my hand, which he did not take,
and recognized my son."

There was a general start. The first gleam of light struggled into the
minds of the little group of listeners. They began to see whither this
thing was tending, and everyone looked very grave.

"I had nothing to fear," Sir Allan continued. "My son showed by his
looks the contempt in which he held me. We met frequently after that,
but we never exchanged a single word. He kept my secret, too, from his
mother--not for my sake, but for her own.

"Six months after our first meeting Sir Geoffrey Kynaston returned to
England. It may seem strange to you, gentlemen, but my hate for this man
had never lessened, never decreased. The moment I heard the news I began
to lay my plans.

"Then, for the first time, my son sought me. He had come, he said, to
make one request, and if I granted it, he would leave me in peace
forever. Would I tell him that my oath had been buried with the old
life, and that I would seek no harm to my old enemy? I simply declined
to discuss the matter with him, and he went away.

"From that time he commenced to watch me. I laid my plans deeply, but
somehow he got to hear of them. When I went down on a visit to you, Lord
Lathon, that I might be near Sir Geoffrey, he took a small cottage in
the neighborhood, intending to do his best to counteract my schemes. But
I was too cunning for him.

"On the morning of Sir Geoffrey's murder I was on the cliffs, under the
pretence of botanizing. While there I heard the guns of a shooting
party, and through a field-glass I saw Mr. Thurwell and Sir Geoffrey
Kynaston. At that time I scarcely thought that chance would bring Sir
Geoffrey within my power, but I made up my mind to watch them.

"Accordingly I descended from the cliffs, and, on my way, passed close
to my son's cottage. I looked in at his sitting-room through the open
windows, and it seemed as though the devil must have guided my eyes. His
cabinet was open, and right opposite my eyes was a pair of long Turkish
daggers carelessly thrown down with a heap of other curios. I listened.
There was no one about. I stepped through the window, seized one of
them, and hurried away. About a hundred yards from the cottage was a
long narrow belt of plantation running from a considerable distance
inland almost to the cliff side. Here I concealed myself, and looked out
at the shooting party. I could see them all hurrying across the moor
except Sir Geoffrey Kynaston. While I was wondering what had become of
him, I heard footsteps on the other side of the plantation. I stole back
to the edge and looked out. Coming slowly down by the side of the ditch
was Sir Geoffrey, with his gun under his arm, and whistling softly to
himself. He was alone. There was no one within sight. Gentlemen, it is
an awful confession which I am making to you. I stole out upon him as
he passed, and stabbed him to the heart, so that he died without a
groan."

Rembrandt might have found a worthy study in the faces of the men seated
round that brilliant supper table. Blank horror seemed to hold them all
speechless. Sir Allan, too, was trembling, and his hand, which rested
upon the table, was as white as the damask cloth.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door, and a waiter entered.

"A gentleman wishes to speak with Sir Allan Beaumerville," he announced.

Sir Philip Roden rose to his feet, and pointed to the door.

"The gentleman must wait, Nillson," he answered. "Leave the room now,
and see that we are not interrupted until I ring the bell."

The servant bowed and withdrew, after a wondering glance at the faces of
the little party. Sir Philip Roden left his seat and, crossing the room,
locked the door.

"Sir Allan Beaumerville," he said quietly, "there can be only one course
to take with regard to the painful disclosures which you have laid
before us to-night. If you have anything to add, please let us hear it
quickly."

Sir Allan continued at once.

"I went back to my son's cottage. I washed my hands in his room, and the
towel I concealed in his cabinet. Just as I was leaving he entered. What
passed between us I need not mention. I took up my botanizing case and
hurried away along the cliffs, and afterward was met by Mr. Thurwell's
servant, with whom I returned once more to look upon my work. Then came
the time when suspicion commenced to fall upon my son. I implored him
to leave the country. He refused. At last he was arrested. For the
father whom he can only despise he has been willing to die. To-night I
had made up my mind to leave a confession of my guilt and fly. My plans
are changed. Only a few hours ago I looked into the face of one whom I
had never thought to see again in this world. Her advice I am now
following. To her care I entrusted my confession, and to your ears I
have detailed it. My story is done, gentlemen. Sir Philip Roden, I place
myself in your hands."

His last words had been almost drowned by a clamorous knocking at the
closed door. When he had ceased, Sir Philip Roden rose and opened it.
Two men entered at once, followed by Mr. Benjamin Levy. The men
recognized Sir Philip, and saluted.

"What is your business?" he asked.

"We hold a warrant for the arrest of Sir Allan Beaumerville, sir," was
the respectful answer, "granted on the sworn information of Mr. Benjamin
Levy there, by Mr. Pulsford, half an hour ago. Which is he, sir?"

Sir Philip pointed to where his late host was standing a little away
from the others, his hand resting on the carved knob of his high-backed
chair, and his eyes fixed wildly upon them. The man advanced to him at
once.

"You are my prisoner, Sir Allan Beaumerville," he said quietly. "I hold
a warrant here for your arrest on the charge of having murdered Sir
Geoffrey Kynaston on the 12th of August of last year."

Those who were watching Sir Allan's face closely saw only a slight
change. Its deep pallor grew only a shade more livid, and there was a
faint twitching of the features. Then with an awful light flashing into
his burning eyes, and a cry which rang through the whole building, he
threw up his arms and fell like a log across the hearth rug. Every one
sprang up and crowded round him, but the physician pushed his way
through the group and fell on his knees. He was up again in a moment,
looking very pale and awed.

"Keep back, gentlemen; keep back, please," he said in a low tone. "Never
mind about the brandy, Sir Philip. Every one had better go away. These
people from Scotland Yard need not wait. Sir Allan will answer for his
crime at a higher court than ours."

And so it indeed was. Tragical justice had herself added the last and
final scene to the drama. Sir Allan Beaumerville's lips were closed for
ever in this world.




CHAPTER XLI

INNOCENT


An hour or two before the _dénouement_ of Sir Allan Beaumerville's
supper party, his brougham had driven up to Mr. Thurwell's town house,
and had set down a lady there. She had rung the bell and inquired for
Miss Thurwell.

The footman who answered the door looked dubious.

"Miss Thurwell was in, certainly, but she was unwell and saw no
visitors, and it was late. Could he take her name?"

The lady handed him a note.

"If you will take this to Miss Thurwell, and tell her that I am waiting,
I think that she will see me," she said quietly.

The man took it, and, somewhat impressed by the bearing and manner of
speech of the unknown lady, he showed her into the morning-room, and
ringing for Miss Thurwell's maid, handed her the note and awaited the
decision. It was speedily given. The lady was to be shown to her room at
once.

The agonizing suspense in which Helen had been living for the last few
days had laid a heavy hand upon her. Her cheeks were thin, and had been
woefully pale until the sudden excitement of this visit had called up a
faint hectic flush which had no kindred with the color of health. Her
form, too, seemed to have shrunken, and the loose tea-gown which she
wore enhanced the fragility of her appearance. She had been sitting in a
low chair before the fire, with her head buried in her hands, but when
her visitor was announced she was standing up with her dry, bright eyes
eagerly fixed upon the woman who stood on the threshold. The door was
closed, and they looked at one another for a moment in silence.

To an artist, the figures of these two women, each so intensely
interested in the other, and each possessed of a distinctive and
impressive personality, would have been full of striking suggestions.
Helen, in her loose gown of a soft dusky orange hue, and with no harsher
light thrown upon her features than the subdued glow of a shaded lamp,
and occasional flashes of the firelight which gleamed in her
too-brilliant eyes, seemed to have lost none of her beauty. All her
surroundings, too, went to enhance it: the delicately-toned richness of
the coloring around, the faintly perfumed air, the indefinable
suggestion of feminine daintiness, so apparent in all the appointments
of the little chamber. From the semi-darkness of her position near the
door Helen's visitor brought her eager scrutiny to an end. She advanced
a little into the room and spoke.

"You are Helen Thurwell?" she said softly. "Sir Allan Beaumerville has
bidden me come to you. You have read his note?"

"Yes, yes, I have read it," she answered quickly. "He tells me that you
have news--news that concerns Bernard Maddison. Is it anything that will
prove his innocence?"

"It is already proved."

Helen gave a great cry and sank into a low chair. She had no doubts;
her visitor's tone and manner forbade them. But the tension of her
feelings, strung to such a pitch of nervousness, gave way all at once.
Her whole frame was shaken with passionate sobs. The burning agony of
her grief was dissolved in melting tears.

And the woman whose glad tidings had brought this change stood all the
while patient and motionless. Once, when Helen had first yielded to her
emotion, she had made a sudden movement forward, and a sweet,
sympathetic light had flashed for a moment over her pale features. But
something had seemed to restrain her, some chilling memory which had
checked her first impulse, and made her resume her former attitude of
quiet reserve. She stood there and waited. By and by Helen looked up and
started to her feet.

"I had almost forgotten; I am so sorry," she said. "Do sit down, please,
and tell me everything, and who you are. You have brought me the best
news I ever had in my life," she added with a little burst of gratitude.

Her visitor remained standing--remained grave, silent, and unresponsive;
yet there was nothing forbidding about her appearance. Looking into her
soft gray eyes and face still beautiful, though wrinkled and colorless,
Helen was conscious of a strange feeling of attraction toward her, a
sort of unexplained affinity which women in trouble or distress often
feel for one another, but which the sterner fiber of man's nature rarely
admits of. She moved impulsively forward, and stretched out her hands in
mute invitation, but there was no response. If anything, indeed, her
visitor seemed to shrink a little away from her.

"You ask me who I am," she said softly. "I am Sir Allan Beaumerville's
wife; I am Bernard Maddison's mother."

Helen sank back upon her chair, perfectly helpless. This thing was too
much for her to grasp. She looked up at the woman who had spoken these
marvelous words, half frightened, altogether bewildered.

"You are Sir Allan Beaumerville's wife," she repeated slowly. "I do not
understand; I never knew that he was married. And Bernard Maddison his
son!"

Helen sat quite still for a moment. Then light began to stream in upon
her darkened understanding. Suddenly she sprang to her feet.

"Who was it? then, who killed--Oh, my God, I see it all now. It was----"

She ceased, and looked at her visitor with blanched cheeks. A low,
tremulous cry of horror broke from Lady Beaumerville's white lips. Her
calmness seemed gone. She was trembling from head to foot.

"God help him! it was my husband who killed Sir Geoffrey Kynaston," she
cried; "and the sin is on my head."

Helen was scarcely less agitated. She caught hold of the edge of the
table to steady herself. Her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

"Sir Allan! I do not understand. Why did he do that horrible thing?"

"Sir Geoffrey Kynaston and my husband were mortal enemies," answered
Lady Beaumerville, her voice scarcely raised above a whisper. "Mine was
the fault, mine the guilt. Alas! alas!"

The stately head with its wealth of silvery white hair was buried in her
hands. Her attitude, the agony which quivered in her tone dying away in
her final expression of despair like chords of wild, sad music, and
above all her likeness to the man she loved, appealed irresistibly to
Helen. A great pity filled her heart. She passed her arm round Lady
Beaumerville, and drew her on to the sofa.

There were no words between them then. Only, after a while, Helen asked
quietly:

"Sir Allan--must he confess?"

"It is already done," her visitor answered. "To-morrow the world will
know his guilt and my shame. Ah," she cried, her voice suddenly
changing, "I had forgotten. Turn your face away from me, Helen Thurwell,
and listen."

In the silence of the half-darkened chamber she told her story--told it
in the low, humbled tone of saintly penitence, rising sometimes into
passion and at others falling into an agonized whisper. She spoke of her
girlhood, of the falsehood by which she had been cheated into a loveless
marriage, and the utter misery which it had brought. Then she told her
of her sin, committed in a moment of madness after her husband's brutal
treatment, and so soon repented of. Lightly she touched upon her many
years of solitary penance, her whole lifetime dedicated willingly and
earnestly to the expiation of that dark stain, and of the coming to her
quiet home of the awful news of Sir Geoffrey's murder. In her old age
her sin had risen up against her, remorseless and unsatiated. Almost she
had counted herself forgiven. Almost she had dared to hope that she
might die in peace. But sin is everlasting, its punishment eternal.

Here her voice died away in a sudden fit of weakness, as though the
fierce consuming passion of her grief had eaten away all her strength.
But in a moment or two she continued.

"I thought my husband dead, and the sin my son's," she whispered. "They
sent to me to come to his trial, that they might hear from my lips what
they thought evidence against him. I would have died first. Then came a
young man who told me all, and I came with him to England. I have seen
and spoken with my husband. On his table he showed me signed papers. His
confession was ready. 'This night,' he said, 'I take my leave of the
world.' Thank God, he forgave me, and I him. We have stood hand-in-hand
together, and the past between us is no more. He bade me come here, and
I have come. I have seen the woman my son loves, and I am satisfied. Now
I will go."

Her eyes rested for a moment upon Helen, full of an inexpressible
yearning, and there had been a faint, sad wistfulness in her tone. But
when she had finished, she drew her cloak around her, and turned toward
the door.

Helen let her take a few steps, scarcely conscious of her intention.
Then she sprang up, and laid her hand upon Lady Beaumerville's shoulder.

"You are his mother," she said softly. "May I not be your daughter?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"Helen, Helen, I have strange news for you!"

The room was in semi-darkness, for the fire had burnt low and the
heavily shaded lamp gave out but little light. Side by side on the low
sofa, two women, hand-in-hand, had been sobbing out their grief to one
another. On the threshold, peering with strained eyes through the gloom,
was Mr. Thurwell, his light overcoat, hastily thrown over his evening
clothes, still unremoved.

She rose to her feet, and he saw the dim outline of her graceful figure,
even a vision of her white, tear-stained face.

"The truth has come out," he said gravely. "To-morrow Bernard will be
free. The man who killed Sir Geoffrey Kynaston has confessed."

"Confessed!" Helen repeated. "Where? To whom?"

"To the Home Secretary, to a party of us as we sat at supper, his guests
at the club. Helen, be prepared for a great surprise. The murderer was
Sir Allan Beaumerville."

"I know it," Helen whispered hoarsely across the room. "Have they
arrested Sir Allan?"

Mr. Thurwell's surprise at his daughter's knowledge was forgotten in the
horror of the scene which her words had called up. Across the darkened
air of the little chamber it seemed to float again before his shuddering
memory, and he stretched out his hands for a moment before his face.

"Arrested him--no!" he answered in an agitated tone. "I have seen
nothing so awful in all my life. He made his confession at the head of
his table, the police were clamoring outside with a warrant, and while
we all sat dazed and stupefied, he fell backward--dead."

A cry rang through the little chamber, a sudden wail, half of relief,
half of anguish. Helen fell upon her knees by the side of the sofa. Mr.
Thurwell started, and moved forward.

"Who is that?" he asked quickly. "I thought you were alone."

"It is his wife," Helen answered, not without some fear. "See, she has
fainted."

Mr. Thurwell hesitated only for a moment. Then his face filled with
compassion.

"God help her;" he said solemnly. "I will send the women up to you, and
a doctor. God help her!"




CHAPTER XLII

AT LAST


The morning sunlight lay upon that wonderful fair garden of the villa.
The tall white lilies, the scarlet poppies, the clustering japonica, the
purple hyacinths, and the untrimmed brilliantly-flowering shrubs, lifted
their heads before its sweet, quickening warmth, and yielded up their
perfume to the still clear air. The languorous hour of noon was still
far off. It was the birth of a southern summer day, and everything was
fresh and pure, untainted by the burning, enervating heat which was soon
to dry up the sweetness from the earth, and the freshness from the
slightly moving breeze. Away on the brown hills, fading into a
transparent veil of blue, the bright dresses of the peasant women
stooping at their toil, the purple glory of the vineyards, and the deep,
quiet green of the olive groves--all these simple characteristics of the
pastoral landscape were like brilliant patches of coloring upon a
fitting background. Soon the haze of the noonday heat would hang upon
the earth, deadening the purity of its color, and making the air heavy
and oppressive with faint overladen perfumes. But as yet the sun lay low
in the heavens, and the earth beneath was like a fair still picture.

The heavy lumbering coach which connected the little town with the
outside world was drawn up at the gate of the villa, and twice the
quaintly sounding horn had broken the morning stillness. It was a moment
of farewell, a farewell not for days or for years, but forever.

Their words denied it, yet in their hearts was that certain conviction,
and much of that peculiar sadness which it could not fail to bring. Yet
she would not have them stay for the end. She had bidden them go, and
the hour had come.

Too weak to walk, or even sit upright, they had laid her upon a sofa in
front of the open windows, through which the perfume from the garden
below stole sweetly in on the bosom of the slowly stirring south wind.
On one side of her stood a tall mild-faced priest from the brotherhood
who had made their home in the valley below, on the other were Bernard
and his wife, her son and daughter.

There was no doubt that she was dying, that she was indeed very near
death. Yet she was sending them away from her. The brief while they
three had lived there together had been like a late autumn to her life,
which had blossomed forth with sweet moments of happiness such as she
had never dreamed of. And now her summons had come, and she was ready.
In her last moments she must return once more to that absolute
detachment from all save spiritual things in which for many years she
had lived, a saintly, blessed woman. So she had bidden them go, even her
son, even that fair sweet English girl who had been more than a daughter
to her. She had bidden them go. The last words had been spoken, for the
last time her trembling lips had been pressed to her son's. Yet they
lingered.

And there came of a sudden, floating through the window, the sweet slow
chiming of the matins bell from the monastery below. Almost it seemed
as though the soft delicate air through which it passed, the exquisite
beauty of the sloping landscape and old garden over which it traveled,
had had a rarefying influence upon the sound itself, and had mellowed
its tones into a strain of the most perfect music throbbing with harmony
and dying away in faint, delicious murmurs. They stood and listened to
it, and a sudden light swept into the pale face upon the couch. They all
looked at her in a sudden awe. The priest sank upon his knees by her
side, and prayed. Long desired, it had come at last at this most fitting
moment. The glory of death shone in her face, and the light of a coming
release flashed across her features. She died as few can die, as one who
sees descending from the clouds a long-promised happiness, and whose
heart and soul go forth to meet it with joy.

They stayed and buried her under a cypress tree, in a sunny corner of
the monastery churchyard, where a plain black cross marked her grave.
Then they turned their faces toward England.

       *       *       *       *       *

And in England they were happy. For the first few years they chose to
live almost in retirement at their stately home, for with no desire for
notoriety, Sir Bernard Beaumerville found himself on his return from
abroad the most famous man in London. To escape from the lionizing that
threatened him, Helen and he shut themselves up at Beaumerville Court,
and steadfastly refused all invitations. Of their life there little need
be said, save that to each it was the perfect realization of dreams
which had once seemed too sweet to be possible.

And in the midst of it all he found time to write. From the quaint oak
library, where he had gone back into the old realms of thoughtland, he
sent out into the world a great work. Once more the columns of the daily
papers and the reviews were busy with his name, and for once all were
unanimous. All bowed down before his genius, and his name was written
into the history of his generation. Through a burning sea of trouble, of
intellectual disquiet and mental agony, he had emerged strengthened at
every point. Love had fulfilled upon him its great office. He was
humanized. The impersonality, which is the student's bane, which deepens
into misanthropy, cynicism, and pessimism, yielded before it. The voices
of his own children became dearer to him than the written thoughts of
dead men. It was the reassertion of nature, and it was well for him. So
was he saved, so was his genius unfettered from the cloying weight of
too much abstract thought, which at one time, save for his artistic
instincts, would have plunged him into the morass of pedantry and turned
his genius into a pillar of salt. A woman had saved him, and through the
long years of their life together he never forgot it.

THE END







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