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        "The Secret of Wyvern Towers" in THE ARGOSY, VOLUME XXVI.
         (DECEMBER, 1897), No. 1, pp. 1-78, published by
         Frank A. Munsey in 1898.






CONTENTS


CHAPTER I.
VERY STRANGE TIDINGS.

CHAPTER II.
AFTER THE TELLING OF THE NEWS.

CHAPTER III.
SIR JOHN CONDUCTS THE INQUIRY.

CHAPTER IV.
A BACKWARD GLANCE.

CHAPTER V.
IN THE LEFT WING.

CHAPTER VI.
RECREANT LOVER.

CHAPTER VII.
AN AMAZING CONFESSION.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

CHAPTER IX.
WAITING FOR THE VERDICT.

CHAPTER X.
IN THE LAST RESORT.

CHAPTER XI.
ONE STEP NEARER.

CHAPTER XII.
ON THE BRINK.

CHAPTER XIII.
LAST THINGS.

CHAPTER XIV.
WITH ALL SPEED.

CHAPTER XV.
THE SECRET OP WYVERN TOWERS.






THE SECRET OF WYVERN TOWERS.*
[*_Copyright, 1897, by T. W. Speight_.]

BY T. W. SPEIGHT.


Being an account of the circumstances that shadowed the happiness of
Felix Drelincourt--Why two persons proclaimed themselves guilty of a
fearful crime, on account of which a vagabond's life was placed in
jeopardy--The blotting out of an identity brought about by an
unexpected legacy.

(_Complete in This Issue_.)




CHAPTER I.
VERY STRANGE TIDINGS.


On a certain sunny May morning, about forty years ago, the owner of
Wyvern Towers stepped into a lovely glade of Barras Wood, which was a
portion of his extensive property.

Felix Drelincourt was a man who stood a little over six feet in
height. His black, silky hair had a careless wave in it, and his thin
mustache, with its up curled tips, was the cause of his often being
taken for a foreigner.

But his eyes were the most striking feature of a striking personality.
They were black, and of an extraordinarily piercing quality, with a
sort of veiled, somber glow in them at times, as it might be the glow
thrown out from between the bars of some hidden furnace, the fire in
which was eating its heart away in the flame of its own burning
unrest. It was not easy to judge his age, but one might put it down as
being somewhere between eight and twenty and four or five and thirty.
This morning he was dressed in a velveteen shooting jacket, with cord
breeches and leggings, and was wearing a low crowned felt hat.

"What has brought me here on this one morning of all mornings of the
year?" he said. "Ah, what! Am I wrong in terming it a force--a
magnetic attraction--I was powerless to resist? This is _her_
birthday. Where is she? Does an English sun shine here on this
morning, or that of some far off land? Vain questions, and idle as
vain."

He took a couple of turns from end to end of the glade with compressed
lips and bent brows. Then his thoughts again took articulate form.

"This is the spot--the forest temple--the grove sacred to the memory
of that hour--where, only three short years ago, Madeline told me that
she loved me! Only three little years ago, and yet I seem to have
lived through a cycle since then. Yes, here our lips met in love's
first kiss, and here we vowed that nothing on earth should divide us.
Poor fools that we were! We did not dream of treachery; we hardly knew
there was such a word."

He came to a halt by a sturdy young oak at the upper end of the
opening.

"It was in the bark of this tree that I cut her initials and my own.
Here they are still to convince me I am not dreaming of something
which never happened. Time's obliterating fingers have dealt tenderly
with them, as though the old graybeard knew they were a lover's
handiwork, and remembered a far off eon when he was young himself."

At this moment the clock of a distant church began to strike the hour.
Drelincourt stood listening till the last stroke had died into
silence.

"Nine of them," he said. "It's time to think of going back to the Cot.
At what hour did I leave it? There's the mystery. It must have been
near midnight before I fell asleep, dog tired. The rest is an absolute
blank till I---- Ah! Some one is calling me. It sounds like Rodd's
voice. What can he want with me at this hour?"

Taking a silver whistle from his pocket, he put it to his lips and
blew. Its keen, shrilly scream cut the silence, like a knife.

Two minutes later a man came brushing roughly through the underwood.
At the edge of the glade he paused for a moment, while he took off his
hat and mopped his brow.

Drelincourt stood motionless, his eyes turned upon him. Under his
breath he said: "He has the look of one charged with a message of
doom."

The newcomer, Roden Marsh by name, was Felix Drelincourt's foster
brother. He was a tall, gaunt man, with a pronounced stoop of the
shoulders which detracted considerably from his height. He had a long,
thin face, a high ridged, prominent nose, thoughtful, deep set eyes,
and a profusion of straw colored hair parted down the middle.

His clothes, generally more or less worn and threadbare--not from
necessity, but because he was both indifferent to appearances and
parsimoniously inclined--hung loosely on his lean and bony frame. By
strangers he was often taken for the village schoolmaster.

As he advanced into the glade, any one familiar with his customary
phlegmatic and unemotional manner would have seen at once that he was
the bearer of no ordinary tidings.

"Thank Heaven I have found you!" were his first words, and there could
be no doubt of the sincerity with which they were spoken.

"It is a small mercy to be thankful for," replied the other, with the
ghost of a smile.

"A terrible discovery has been made at the Towers."

"Those are strong words, my dear Rodd, but they fail to convey any
definite idea to my mind. They may mean much or they may mean very
little."

"Mrs. Drelincourt has been murdered in her sleep."

"Murdered!" Drelincourt staggered back a pace or two, and then,
putting forth his right hand, he caught hold of an oak sapling and
gripped it hard. For a few seconds his body rocked like that of a man
whose brain has been stunned and dizzied by some great shock.

"That is indeed a terrible discovery to have made," he went on, after
a pause. "Kate dead! It seems incredible; altogether beyond belief."

"For all that, it is true."

"But what possible motive could any one have for the commission of
such a crime?"

Roden's thin lips tightened. Evidently the question was one which he
either would not or could not answer.

"When and by whom was the discovery made?" asked Mr. Drelincourt,
after a brief pause.

"It was made by Lucille, nearly a couple of hours ago. She went as
usual to take her mistress an early cup of chocolate, and--and found
her dead in bed."

"Go on. Tell me all the particulars known to you."

"Mrs. Drelincourt had been stabbed to the heart, most probably while
she was asleep."

"So! Has the weapon with which the deed was committed been found?"

"It had not when I left the Towers."

Drelincourt seated himself on the fallen trunk, and resting his elbows
on his knees, he bent his eyes on the ground.

"As soon as the crime became known," resumed the other, "I sent off a
groom on horseback to fetch Dr. Carew. On the way he met Mr. Ormsby
and told him the news, and was ordered by him to at once communicate
with the police."

"A very proper thing to do."

"Mr. Ormsby, accompanied by another gentleman, a stranger, had just
reached the Towers before I left it."

"To come in search of me?"

"Exactly. It has taken me nearly an hour to find you. I hurried, first
of all, to the Cot, but you were not there. Margery Trant had not
heard you leave the house, and was unable to tell me in which
direction you had gone. I set out to look for you, and it must have
been instinct which directed my steps to this place."

He paused. A throstle in the wood piped a few notes and then ceased.

"Go on," said Drelincourt, without looking up. "You have something
more to tell me."

"As I bent over Mrs. Drelincourt's dead body, I found this close by
her pillow."

As he finished speaking, he drew from one of his pockets a white
handkerchief bordered with a thin line of black, and having shaken it
out, held it up to the light. On it were three or four crimson stains.
"It is yours. Here are your initials in one corner," he said.

He had a softly modulated voice, but just now there was no more
emotion either in it or his manner than if he had been discussing the
state of the weather.

Drelincourt started to his feet, his face blanched to the lips. A
moment or two he stared at the handkerchief as though it had for him a
horrible fascination. Then the eyes of the two men met in a silence
which seemed charged with hidden meaning.

"A dumb witness, but enough to hang a man," said Drelincourt at
length, as he turned away with a shudder.

Marsh did not reply, but, after a keen glance round, as if to make
sure there was no lurking onlooker, he let the handkerchief drop to
the ground, and then, dropping on one knee, he set it alight with a
match from his fusee box.

Drelincourt, his back supported by a tree, stood looking on in silence
till the flame had burned itself out, and nothing was left save a
little fine ash, which a wandering breeze presently caught up and
frolicked off with into the depths of the wood.

"This also I found," resumed Roden. "It was lying open on the writing
table in your dressing room at the Towers for anybody to see. It is in
your writing, and is dated today."

As he spoke, he produced a letter from his breast pocket and handed it
to Drelincourt, who took it mechanically and like a half dazed man.
It was without an envelope, and was simply folded in two. Opening it,
he read it in silence and with growing amazement.

"An unfinished letter to my friend, Professor Ridsdale. And you say
that you found it in my dressing room at the Towers?"

"I do."

"It refers to certain chemical experiments in which my friend and I
are interested. It is the very letter, almost word for word, which I
made up my mind to write to him the first thing after breakfast this
morning.. And yet I slept last night at the Cot, while you found this
an hour or more ago at the Towers!"

Again the eyes of the two met in pregnant silence.

"Rodd, you must have guessed the truth?"

"I have, Felix."
"Yes, no other explanation is possible. Yet it seems
monstrous--unbelievable. And by my hand! Oh!"

He ended with a groan, turned his face aside, and was silent. For
once this man, usually so proudly self-centered, so stoically
self-repressed, was moved to the depths of his soul as never in his
life before.

Crossing to him, Roden Marsh grasped one of his hands in both his own.

"Felix, between you and me not a word more is needed--I comprehend.
You have suffered. Your life has been made a burden almost too bitter
to be borne. I have seen and known it for long. I have suffered with
your sufferings; my heart has bled for you times without number. I can
speak now; hitherto I have had to look on and be dumb."

"Yes, you have seen something--perchance much; but you know no more
than your eyes have shown you, whatever you may have guessed. Of the
details of her treachery--_hers_, Rodd--which was black as hell, you
know nothing. Sit you there and listen. The tale shall be told, now
and here, from beginning to end."

Roden seated himself on the fallen trunk, while Drelincourt, pacing
slowly back and forth, half a dozen yards this way and as many that,
began his narrative.

"You will not have forgotten that about three years ago Colonel
Fenwicke and his niece were staying with the Ormsbys at Denham Lodge,
where I was an occasional visitor. I had met Madeline Fenwicke abroad
in the course of the previous summer, and had fallen in love with her;
but at that time I was comparatively a poor man, and marriage was not
to be thought of. In the interim my father had died, and I had
succeeded to the entail. There was no longer any reason why I should
keep silent. It was in this very glade, Rodd--here--here--that I met
my darling and told her my secret! It was here her lips touched mine
in love's first kiss. O Heaven! To think of all that has happened
between then and now!"

He took a turn or two in silence. Roden sat with crossed legs, nursing
an elbow with one hand, his chin supported in the hollowed palm of the
other.

"Madeline and Kate Ormsby had been schoolfellows, and the former had
no secrets from her friend. The day following our interview I was
called away to London by the illness of my aunt, Mrs. Gascoigne. At
Denham Lodge there is a terrace with a stone balustrade, from which a
flight of steps leads to the lower garden. As Madeline and Kate were
leaning over this balustrade after dark a few evenings later,
listening to a nightingale, two people came along the lower walk, a
man and a woman, judging from their voices. Said the man, as they drew
near:

"'The way Mr. Drelincourt has behaved to the girl is common talk in
the village. Of course he can't marry her--she's too far beneath him
for that--and now they say she's fit to break her heart because he
refuses to have anything more to do with her.'

"'Perhaps he's grown tired of her and found somebody more to his
liking. That's often the way you men have of treating us,' answered
the woman.

"Oh, come! We're not all as bad as that,' said the man with a laugh,
after which they passed out of earshot.

"An hour later Madeline wrote me that all was at an end between us.
The letter, which should have reached me next morning, was kept back
by Kate, and did not come to hand till three days later. Within four
hours of receiving it I was at Denham Lodge, only to find that
Madeline and her uncle had left there the day before.

"My aunt lingered on from week to week. I was her last living
relative, and she would not hear of my leaving for longer than a few
hours at a time. All I could do was to write a note to Madeline,
begging for an explanation, and inclose it under cover to the colonel
at his club. A week later my note was returned to me from Paris,
together with a few lines from the colonel, stating that thenceforward
all communication with me must cease, both on his part and that of his
niece. What I had been guilty of which deserved such a sentence I was
wholly at a loss to conceive. I could not comprehend the meaning of
such an action.

"A month later my aunt died. As soon as I was at liberty, I set out
for the continent, but nowhere could I come across a trace of those I
was in search of. You know what followed a little later: how I was
accidentally wounded while out shooting; how I was carried to Denham
Lodge, and there nursed back to convalescence by Kate Ormsby."

"Some part of what you have now told me I know or guessed already,"
said Roden; "but not the whole of it."

"You did not know how, one day, Kate read to me a passage from a
letter professedly written by her correspondent, Lady Linthorpe, in
which it was stated that Madeline Fenwicke had been married a
fortnight before at Rome. Within six weeks of that day Kate Ormsby had
become my wife."

Seating himself on the tree by the side of Marsh, he began to
manufacture a cigarette. By this time, to all outward seeming, he was
thoroughly himself again.

The shock of the news brought him by his foster brother had stunned,
and in a measure unmanned him for a little while, but his nature was
too self-poised, and his nerves too thoroughly under control, to allow
of his equanimity being seriously disturbed for any length of time.
That which had happened, however much it was to be deplored, belonged
to the past, and not all the powers of Heaven and earth combined could
alter or undo it. The only thing left him was to face the
consequences, and that he was prepared to do.

"It was not a fact, then, that Miss Fenwicke was married?" queried
Roden, after a pause.

"The statement was false from beginning to end. No such letter was
ever written by Lady Linthorpe; but not till about a month ago did
that fact come to my knowledge, and not till then was I in a position
to fathom the depths of my wife's treachery. It was she who arranged
the conversation overheard by Madeline that evening on the terrace,
the actors in it being the son of her father's bailiff and the
governess to her two younger sisters. It was a damnable plot, but it
succeeded."

He proceeded to light his cigarette, which done, he resumed his slow
pacing to and fro.

"It was indeed a black business," said Roden. "Did you tell Mrs.
Drelincourt of your discovery?"

"I did not fail to do so."

"And she----?"

"Laughed at me with that cold blooded laugh of hers which used to go
through me like a knife. In those days, she said, she was such a
simpleton as to fancy herself in love with me, and, in any case, she
had vowed to herself that Miss Fenwicke should never be my wife. She
will never laugh at me again."

"I am glad, Felix, you have told me this," said Roden presently. "It
has served to make clear much that was obscure to me before."

"I have not done yet. Something more remains to be told."

Tossing away what was left of his cigarette, Drelincourt sat down
again on the felled trunk.





CHAPTER II.
AFTER THE TELLING OF THE NEWS.


"When, soon after my marriage," resumed Mr. Drelincourt, "I furnished
the Cot--which, some years before, had been tenanted by my father's
gamekeeper--and fitted up a couple of its rooms as a laboratory, I had
a double object in view. First of all, I wanted a place where I could
prosecute my experiments free from the interruptions and annoyances to
which I was subjected at the Towers; and, secondly, because it would
be a haven of refuge to which I could escape at any time when matters
at home had become so insupportable that I felt I must get away from
them for a while lest I should go mad.

"Well, five days ago I left the Towers and took up my quarters at the
Cot. It was after a scene with my wife of more than ordinary violence.
As you know, I some time ago made old Margery Trant a fixture at the
Cot, so that she might be on the spot to look after my meals and what
not. On previous occasions when I have made the place my temporary
home, I have always been able to plunge into my experiments with a
vast feeling of relief. Grateful to me was the sense of solitude and
of isolation from all my kind. Even you, Rodd, never intruded upon me
at such times.

"This time, however, I could not settle down to anything. My mind was
upset as it had never been before. The discovery of Kate's treachery
weighed me down like a hideous nightmare from which I could not free
myself. For the first time my experiments had become distasteful to
me. My laboratory was as a temple of despair. I spent my days out of
doors, sometimes on horseback, at other times on foot, keeping as far
as possible from the haunts of men, and only returning to the Cot to
eat and sleep when mind and body alike refused to hold out any longer.

"It had been dark some hours when I got back last night. I had taken
Favorita for a twenty miles' stretch across the downs, and she was as
tired as I was. After supping on a biscuit and a glass of Madeira, I
lay down, without undressing, on the couch in my study, and a few
minutes later fell asleep. The next thing I knew was that I was broad
awake--but where, think you? In the library at the Towers! Yes, so far
as regarded any waking consciousness on my part, there was no
perceptible interval of time between the moment of my closing my eyes
in sleep at the Cot and that of my opening them at the Towers. But you
have already surmised the truth. I had been walking in my sleep; a
habit to which, you know full well, I have been more or less subject
from my youth upward.

"There, then, I was, suddenly brought back to conscious life by the
merest accident. In my sleep, in obedience to some somnambulistic
impulse, I had unlocked and opened the old secretaire in the library
in which are stored a number of family papers. In shutting down the
lid, I had accidentally trapped my finger, and the pain thereby caused
me had been sufficient to awake me. I stared around in an effort to
collect my amazed faculties. Then the truth dawned upon me. Very
similar experiences had been mine before, although not oftener than
once or twice since my marriage. Of all that must have happened up
stairs prior to the moment of my awaking I retain no faintest shadow
of recollection.

"Presently I turned and left the house by the way I had entered
it--that is to say, by the little side door in the north wing, which
the butler has orders to leave unbolted and merely locked when I am
from home, so that I can let myself in at any hour of the day or night
by means of my pass key. So far as I am aware, not a creature saw me
either enter the house or leave it. And then, after a while, I found
myself here."

A silence ensued, which Roden Marsh was the first to break.

"I wholly fail to see how, in the eye of the law, a man can be held to
be even partially accountable for anything that may happen, or any
deed he may commit, while in a state of somnambulism."

Drelincourt lighted another cigarette before speaking. Then he said:
"But where are my witnesses to prove I was in that state when this
morning's tragedy took place?"

"For the matter of that, where are the witnesses to prove you had any
hand at all in the affair?"

"I know of none."

"Then, as it seems to me, all you and I have to do is simply to keep
our own counsel, and let the affair work itself out as best it may."

To this Drelincourt apparently found nothing to reply.

Roden lapsed into a brown study.

"No," he said, after a pause, with a shake of his head, "neither
legally nor morally can you be held accountable for this morning's
work."

Drelincourt flicked the ash off his cigarette.

"And I am just as convinced that if the crime is brought home to me,
the law will find me guilty and hang me in due course. What judge or
jury would for one moment give credence to my plea of somnambulism? It
would be brushed aside as an attempt, at once foolish and futile, to
escape the consequences of my act. Pray disabuse your mind on that
point, my dear Rodd. And now, as regards the moral guilt of the act.
If the notion of my wife's death, and of the vast difference such an
event would make to me, had not been a factor--embryonic, if you
will--in my mind, if it had not found receptivity there, would it ever
have evolved itself in action in the way it has done?"

"For all that, a man who, while sleep walking, kills another cannot be
deemed guilty of murder," protested Rodd dogmatically.

"Undoubtedly he can, and ought to be so deemed morally; because,
believe me, he must already have been guilty in thought--although not
necessarily in intention--and, under such circumstances as we are
considering, the deed itself is merely the natural outcome of the
rudimentary idea."

Again Rodd shook his head. Evidently he was not open to conviction.

"Had we not better make our way to the Towers without further delay?"
he asked. "It is known that I came in search of you, and your
prolonged absence may excite suspicion."

Drelincourt turned on him with one of his peculiar smiles.

"Why hurry ourselves, my dear Rodd? Let the first scare get itself
over; we shall be in excellent time for the sequel. What a lovely nook
is this! I could linger here for hours. Look how that shaft of
sunlight quivers through the crowns of yonder elms. But thou hast no
eye for such effects, Rodd; thou art woefully lacking in artistic
insight. See! a squirrel. What a pretty rascal it is?"

Roden had risen. "I am waiting for you, Felix," he said coldly. "But
perhaps you wish me to leave you here and go back alone."

Although Roden Marsh addressed his foster brother as "Felix" when they
were alone, in the presence of others he always spoke of and to him as
"Mr. Drelincourt."

"What a restless, weariful mortal thou art," said the latter. "Come,
then, let us go!"

But scarcely had they taken half a dozen steps before they both came
to a stand. Some one in the distance was calling Mr. Drelincourt by
name.

"Unless I'm mistaken, that is the voice of Dixon, the groom," said
Rodd. "He has probably been sent in search of you. Let me go to him
while you wait here, and ascertain whether he's the bearer of any
fresh news."

A moment later he had plunged into the depths of the wood.

"I am afraid that in no case will the next few days prove pleasant
ones for the master of Wyvern Towers," murmured Drelincourt, as he
stood where the other had left him. "_Eh, bien!_ the first act of the
drama is over; soon the curtain will rise on the second. I am as
curious as if I were merely a looker on to know how the plot will
develop itself, and to what extent it will involve F. D. Will it prove
to be merely a nine days' wonder and there end? By this time next year
it may be merely an old wife's tale, to tell o' nights by the chimney
corner. Or the _dénouement_ may be something altogether different; a
tolling bell, a crossbeam, and a dangling rope. Those who live will
see."

He turned and began to pace the glade slowly, his hands crossed behind
his back. As he walked, his lips moved.

"Oh Madeline, Madeline, could I but bring back the hour I met you
here, when, soft and low, with many a blush, you told me that you
loved me! If I could but wake up and find the time between then and
now nothing more than a hideous nightmare fancy of my own! In vain! It
is no wild imagining of a disordered brain, but a baleful reality,
with far reaching consequences which no human eye can foresee. But
here comes Rodd, red faced and out of breath. What a pity it is--and
how futile--to take things so seriously as he does."

"It _was_ Dixon, as I thought," exclaimed the other as he came up.
"Much has happened since I left the Towers. It has been discovered
that Mrs. Drelincourt's jewel case has been rifled, and, by Mr.
Ormsby's orders, Gumley has been arrested on suspicion of being both
the thief and--and----"

"The murderer. Why fight shy of the word, my dear Rodd? 'Tis always
best to call things by their right names. But who is this Gumley that
you speak of?"

"An ill conditioned, saucy sort of fellow who was taken on about a
fortnight ago to help in the gardens. He and Mrs. Drelincourt had some
words the other day, when she lashed him across the face with her
riding whip."

"Just the sort of thing Kate would do. But this rifling of the jewel
case--and last night, too! The coincidence, if one may call it such,
is somewhat remarkable."

"Had we not better get back to the Towers with as little delay as
possible?"

"Under the circumstances, it may perhaps be as well to do so. And so
this fellow--this Gumley--has been arrested by James Ormsby's orders!
I have always regarded Ormsby as a meddlesome fool; now I'm sure he's
one."

"We have yet to learn under what circumstances the arrest was
effected."

"True for you, my youthful Solomon. Well, let us be gone. But the
coincidence, Rodd, the coincidence--the strangeness of the two things
happening together!"

Roden Marsh did not reply, but led the way out of the glade.
Drelincourt, who was following him, on reaching the edge of it,
turned, and lifting his hat, said softly: "Adieu, Madeline!"




CHAPTER III.
SIR JOHN CONDUCTS THE INQUIRY.


The middle of the library at the Towers was occupied by a large oblong
oaken table, with a number of leather seated chairs ranged around it.
At the upper end of this sat Sir John Musgrave, who had lately bought
the mansion and estate of Grovelands, and was as yet a comparative
stranger in the neighborhood. Mr. Ormsby, brother-in-law to Mr.
Drelincourt, took the chair on the right of the baronet.

Roden Marsh was the first to enter, and, by the baronet's request, he
took a seat about half way down the table to the left of the latter.
He had brought his writing materials with him.

Next came in Chief Constable Draycot and the man Gumley, while a
constable in uniform took up a position near the door. By Sir John's
direction, Draycot and his prisoner took possession of a couple of
chairs somewhat removed from the lower end of the table. Gumley, who
was dressed like an ordinary laboring man, cast a comprehensive scowl
around, and then, having subsided into his chair, he crossed his legs
and stretched them out in front of him, as he might have done in a tap
room, and seemed intent on examining the lining of his old felt hat.

Sir John, addressing himself to him, said: "Attend to me, Gumley, if
you please. Although the evidence I am about to take down this morning
is merely preliminary to the fuller inquiry which will have to be held
later on, when the same evidence will have to be sworn to a second
time, I have deemed it right that you should be present in order that
you may have a clear understanding from the first of what you are
charged with, and may thereby have every opportunity afforded you of
disproving the same when the time for doing so shall have arrived."

"All right, guv'nor," answered Gumley, in the sullen way which seemed
natural to him. "I can onny say, as I said afore, that I'm as
innercent of the charge as the babby onborn."

Drelincourt crossed from the window and sat down on a chair a little
withdrawn from the table and apart from the others.

"This fellow's face is an indictment of itself," he said under his
breath, "and with nine people out of every dozen would go far to
convict him."

"Inform Mrs. Drelincourt's maid that she is wanted," said Sir John to
the constable at the door.

"A faithful, good hearted creature. My poor sister was much attached
to her," remarked Mr. Ormsby, _sotto voce_, to the baronet.

Enter Lucille, a rather attractive looking young woman, not in the
least shy or embarrassed by the unfamiliar surroundings among which
she finds herself. She favored the two gentlemen at the head of the
table with a graceful courtesy as soon as the door was shut behind
her, and then went slowly forward.

Here a momentary hitch occurred, which was got over by Roden Marsh's
production of a Greek Testament from one of the bookshelves. The
witness was then sworn in the usual way by the constable in waiting,
who had been so often called upon to take the oath in his own person
that he had the formula at his tongue's end.

When the witness had stated that her name was Lucille Fretin, and that
she had filled the position of maid to the late Mrs. Drelincourt from
the time of that lady's marriage, Sir John said to her: "You have
already, I believe, had some conversation with Mr. Ormsby about this
most shocking affair; be good enough to tell us here, on your oath,
all that you know about it."

"Monsieur and gentlemen," began Lucille, standing with a hand thrust
into each pocket of her coquettish looking apron, and speaking with a
pronounced French accent, "yesterday madame, my mistress, gave me
permission to go to London to see my sister, who is ill. She had the
_bonté_ to say that I might stay all night, but that I must return by
the first train this morning. That is what I do. I come back by the
early train, and I reach the house just as the clocks are about to
strike seven. Five minutes later I enter madame's room. I call her
softly. I say, '_Madame, je suis arrivée_.' She does not reply. I say
to myself, 'She sleeps. I will not disturb her.' Then I go a little
nearer, and then--_mon Dieu!_--I see something which frightens me. It
is one big drop like blood on the pillow! Then I bend over her, and I
see that her eyes are not shut, but open and staring; and then
something tells me that they are the eyes of a dead woman."

Drelincourt rose abruptly, and going to the side table, he poured out
a glass of wine and drank it. Then he went back to his chair.

"After that," said Sir John to Lucille, "you were just able to arouse
the household, and then you fainted and knew nothing more for some
time?"

"_C'est vrai, monsieur_."

"How long was it after you came to your senses before you discovered
that your mistress' jewel case had been rifled?"

"About half an hour, monsieur."

"And what led you to make the discovery?"

"Madame's jewel case was kept in the top drawer of the bureau in her
dressing room. This morning I found the case on the floor near the
window. It was empty."

"You have furnished the chief constable with a description and list of
the missing articles as far as your memory serves you?"

"_Oui, monsieur_."

"And at the proper time you will be prepared to swear that you saw the
articles in question in your mistress' jewel case yesterday afternoon
before you left home?"

"_Certainement, monsieur_."

"Had not your mistress, a few days ago, a difference or disagreement
of some kind with one of the people in Mr. Drelincourt's employ?"

"_Oui, monsieur_."

"Who was the person with whom your mistress had the difference in
question?"

"_Cet homme lá_," replied Lucille, without a moment's hesitation,
pointing a rigid forefinger at Gumley.

"Be good enough, mademoiselle, to tell us what you know of the
affair."

"It was on Saturday last. Madame was dressed to go out riding, and was
waiting for her horse to be brought round. That man was in the flower
garden close by the long window which opens out of her boudoir. Madame
had given him some instructions in the morning which he had not
attended to, and she stepped out of the window to speak to him. Madame
was a lady who would not have her slightest order neglected. She was
very angry. She said something to him in her quick, haughty way, and
he answered her back--insolently."

"You say insolently. Can you not tell us exactly what he said?"

"No, monsieur, I was not near enough to hear; but I could tell from
the way the man looked up at madame--he was kneeling on one knee at
the time--that his words were insolent."

"What happened next?"

"Madame lifted her riding whip and lashed him with it three or four
times across the head and shoulders."

Before anybody could stop him, Gumley started to his feet, and
pointing to a livid whelt across his cheek, exclaimed in hoarse
accents, "Ay, and here's the mark to bear witness to it--curse her!"

Sir John turned on him with an admonitory frown. "Silence, man, or it
will be worse for you!"

Then Draycot whispered sternly to him, and he resumed his seat,
sullenly enough.

Sir John turned again to Lucille. "What followed?"

"Madame turned and came back indoors, while he--the
_polisson!_--sprang to his feet and shook his clenched hand, and
called after her, 'You will live to be sorry for this day's work, my
fine Madam, for I'll have my revenge if I swing for it!' The same
evening he was discharged by madame's orders."

Again Gumley started to his feet. "That's a lie!" he called out. "What
I said was, 'If you was my wife, my fine madam, dash my limbs if I
wouldn't break every bone in your body, though I had to swing for it!'

"Shut up, you fool," said Draycot in a fierce whisper, as he pulled
him down into his seat.

"_Will_ you be quiet, fellow?" snarled Sir John. Then to Lucille: "You
recognize the locket found in this man's possession as having been the
property of Mrs. Drelincourt?"

"_Oui, monsieur_."

Addressing himself to Drelincourt, Sir John said: "The prisoner's
statement is that he found the locket in question a few days ago in a
summer house in which Mrs. Drelincourt was in the habit of sitting on
fine afternoons, and that he pocketed it with the intention of
subsequently disposing of it for his own benefit. In so far he admits
his guilt, but he persists in asserting that he had no hand in the
robbery, or in the commission of the far more serious crime with which
we are more especially concerned at present."

Once more he turned to Lucille. "As I am led to understand, you are
not prepared to assert positively that you saw the locket in your
mistress' jewel case yesterday or the day before?"

"_Non, monsieur_. I do not remember."

"Thank you, mademoiselle; I have nothing further to ask you at
present."

"_Merci, monsieur_."

Having favored Sir John with an elaborate courtesy, she left the room.
"There is still one point on which I am not clear," remarked Sir John.
"What gave rise, in the first instance, to this man's arrest?"

"The onus of that rests with me," replied Mr. Ormsby. "It was in
answer to certain questions put by me and Draycot to Lucille that we
were told of the threats this scoundrel had made use of towards my
poor sister."

Once more Gumley could not restrain himself. "Scoundrel, eh?" he said
with a scowl. "I wish you had _this_ acrost your face instead o' me!"

"Gumley, you are unbearable," said Sir John, in his most severe
accents. "The next time you attempt to interrupt the proceedings I
will have you removed."

"Then it was," resumed Mr. Ormsby, "that I suggested to Draycot that
this man should be found--we were given to understand that he had not
yet left the village--and that both he and his lodgings should be
searched. The result was that one of the missing articles--a
locket--was found on his person."

"But nothing else has been found?" It was Mr. Drelincourt who asked
the question.

Draycot took on himself to answer it. "Not yet, sir. His lodgings will
be thoroughly searched in the course of the next hour."

Gumley felt compelled to make another protest. "As I said afore, and
as I say agen, I know nothen about the murder and nothen about the
robbery. I found the locket in the----"

"Silence, fellow!" Almost yelled Sir John. "Once for all, let me
caution you to hold your tongue."

But Gumley was determined to have the last word. "All I wants is to
speak the truth," he growled sullenly.

"As it happens," resumed Mr. Drelincourt, "I am in a position to
confirm at least one portion of this man's statement. Some time in the
course of last week my wife spoke to me about having missed the locket
now in question, which was rather a favorite with her, and which she
was afraid she had lost a day or two previously somewhere in the
grounds. Such being the case, I fail to see how the locket could have
formed part of the missing jewels."

Sir John and Mr. Ormsby exchanged looks.

Gumley pricked up his ears. The sort of sullen apathy which had
hitherto marked his demeanor vanished. From that moment he became a
different man.

"Your statement, Mr. Drelincourt, is certainly a strong point in the
prisoner's favor," remarked Sir John, after a few moments' cogitation.
"Still, bearing in mind the threats made use of by him towards Mrs.
Drelincourt, I do not feel myself justified in sanctioning his
release. The coroner's inquest will take place at the earliest
possible moment, and I have decided to remand the prisoner till
tomorrow, when he will be brought up before the bench of magistrates
at Sunbridge."

Draycot nudged his prisoner. "Now, then!" he said.

Gumley stood up, and addressing himself to Mr. Drelincourt, said:
"God-bless you, sir, for helpin' to get a pore, innercent cove out of
a scrape wot he's got into through no fault of his'n." Then, as he
followed Draycot, he said to himself, "It was a lie, though, wot he
told about the locket. Now, wot's his little game, I wonder?"

The baronet, having filled up and signed the necessary commitment
order, handed it to Roden Marsh to give to the superintendent. Rodd
then gathered up his papers and followed the others out of the room.

Sir John stood up and stretched himself. "In spite of your evidence
about the locket, Mr. Drelincourt," he said, "I am strongly of opinion
that in Gumley we have got hold of the real criminal."

"My own opinion exactly," responded Ormsby. "The scoundrel's
countenance is enough of itself to proclaim him guilty."

"If we were all judged by our looks, how few of us would escape
condemnation," remarked Drelincourt dryly. "For my part, I am strongly
inclined to believe in the fellow's innocence."

"My dear Drelincourt, you surprise me," remarked his brother-in-law,
as he crossed to the side table.

"It is possible, Mr. Drelincourt," suggested the baronet, "That your
suspicions point in some other direction."

"No, I have no suspicions--none whatever. For all that, I have a sort
of intuitive belief in Gumley's innocence."

"Time will prove."

"Possibly so. But there are some mysteries which time never solves."

"My experience as a magistrate convinces me that they are few and far
between. You remember what old Chaucer says: 'Murder will out, that
see we day by day'--words as true now as they were five hundred years
ago."

Mr. Drelincourt looked slightly bored.

Sir John consulted his watch. "Later than I thought. I have an
appointment at Sunbridge, and am already overdue."

"And I, too, must be off," remarked Ormsby. "I quite expect to find my
wife in hysterics when I get home. She was awfully attached to poor
Kitty."

"For the present, then, goodby," said Sir John to Drelincourt, as he
proffered his hand. "To attempt to condole with you under such a
terrible blow would be an impertinence on my part; but this I must
say--that you have my heartfelt sympathy."

"Of that I am quite sure, Sir John."

They shook hands cordially, and then Drelincourt crossed and rang the
bell. "Ormsby, I shall see you in Sunbridge later in the day," said
Sir John. Three seconds later he was gone, shown out by Simmons.

"Now to get rid of this pompous fool," said Drelincourt to himself as
he came forward.

Now that the two were alone, Ormsby had resumed his most lugubrious
expression.

"Felix," he began, "I am at a loss for words wherewith to express a
tithe of what I feel on this most heartrending occasion."

"Then I wouldn't try to find any, if I were you. There are some things
which won't bear talking about, and this is one of them."

"That seems rather unfeeling, doesn't it?"

"Are one's feelings to be gauged by the amount of talk one may give
utterance to? Are there not occasions when silence may be the heart's
most eloquent tribute?"

"Possibly--possibly," replied Mr. Ormsby, with a little cough behind
his hand. "I dare say you are right--from your point of view. If you
would like Octavia to come and look after matters at the Towers for
the next week or two, I am sure that she----"

"Not for the world! I am a strange fellow, Ormsby, as I dare say you
have found out before today. The more I am left to myself just at
present, the better I shall be pleased."

"Well, well, as you will. Still, I cannot but feel sure that my wife
would have been a great comfort to you in your affliction. She is so
truly sympathetic."

"Good day, Ormsby," said the other abruptly. "I know you mean well,
and I thank you. But I'm all on edge just now and I can't talk any
more."

"I can sympathize with you, my dear fellow. I have something of the
same feeling myself." With that he held out his hand.

"Ah, excuse me, but I sprained my wrist this morning." He crossed to
the fireplace and rang the bell, and then stood grasping his right
wrist with his left hand.

"That's unfortunate. Well, _au revoir_," said Ormsby, as he took
possession of his hat and gloves.

The attentive Simmons stood holding the open door.

"I'm nearly sure he shook hands with Sir John," muttered Ormsby, as he
made his exit. "What a queer, ill-conditioned beggar he is! Still, I
wish he would have had Octavia here. She would have been just in her
element on an occasion like this. And then, she is so truly
sympathetic."

No sooner did Drelincourt find himself alone than he strode to one of
the windows and flung open the casement.

"At last I can breathe! For a little while the torture is relaxed, but
only for a little while. What would I not give if the next few days
were well over! This fellow Gumley must be saved at all risks. Of
course, it was he who stole the jewels; and yet for the sake of a
wretch like this I shall have to lie and perjure myself again and
again. To me such a necessity is more hateful than I can express. The
mere thought of such comradeship in crime sends a shudder down my
spine. For all that, he _must_ be saved! All may go well if only the
rest of the jewels remain undiscovered. In that case, my lie about the
locket ought to be enough to clear him. Faugh! Let me try to get this
greasy smelling knave out of my thoughts for a while."

There was a box of cigars on the top of one of the low bookcases, from
which he now proceeded to select one and light it.

"'Murder will out'--so quotes Sir John. But does that follow as a
matter of course? Facts--indisputable facts--prove the contrary.
Though Nemesis may dog the footsteps of a man for years, yet oftener
than we wot of she fails to overtake him. In any case, the man who,
after having incurred a penalty--whether with wide open eyes or as the
result of circumstances outside his control--shrinks from facing the
consequences when they are brought home to him, is both a fool and a
coward. That is not the stuff, I trust, of which Felix Drelincourt is
made."




CHAPTER IV.
A BACKWARD GLANCE.


Presently Mr. Drelincourt quitted the library, and, traversing the
entrance hall, went up the fine old oaken staircase at the farther
end. But on reaching the spacious landing at the top, instead of
turning to the right in the direction of his own and his late wife's
apartments, he turned to the left, and after going some way down a
corridor which gave access to sundry rooms, he came to a red baize
covered door--the others were all of oak or walnut--with a bell pull
pendent at one side of it. At this he gave a tug, which was responded
to by a faint tinkle somewhere inside.

Half a minute later a little wicket in the door was drawn back, and a
woman's face appeared at the opening. On perceiving who it was that
had rung the bell, the face, an unusually grave one, for the most
part, brightened perceptibly.

"Will you be kind enough to open the door," said Mr. Drelincourt.
Sometimes he contented himself with asking a question or two at the
wicket, and did not enter.

The woman nodded, and shut the wicket. Then from the bunch of keys at
her waist she selected one, and with it opened the door, which was
shut and relocked as soon as Mr. Drelincourt had crossed the
threshold.

But at this point it may be as well to take leave of the master of
Wyvern Towers for a while, and in order that the reader may have a due
comprehension of what has yet to be told, make him acquainted, in as
brief terms as may be, with certain particulars having reference to
that person's family history, and to the relations which had existed
between his father and himself.

The late Colonel Drelincourt had been twice married, and had left
behind him two children--Felix, his son by his first wife, and Anna,
his daughter by his second. At the time of the colonel's death the
former was twenty three years old, and the latter thirteen. His second
wife had predeceased him by a few years.

As a young man, Felix had serious differences with his father, whose
pet project it was that his son should follow his own profession.
This, however, Felix resolutely declined to do.

He had no taste whatever for soldiering; nor, on the other hand, did a
political career hold out any attractions for him. He was a studious
and bookishly inclined man, addicted to experimental chemistry, and
with a strong liking for travel and exploration. Of sport, in the
common acceptance of the term, he knew nothing and cared as little;
but he had a fondness for horses, and was an intrepid rider.

The colonel, a military martinet of the old school, who held a blind
obedience to one's superiors to be one of the main rules of conduct,
never forgave his son's refusal to follow in the course he had
prescribed for him. At his death it was found that, outside the
entailed property, he had left everything he was possessed of to his
daughter, to whom he had been passionately attached.

He had married her mother for love (like many another man, he had
never touched even the fringe of romance till he was past his fortieth
year), whereas he had married his first wife for her dowry. Thanks to
certain arrangements made by his mother, Felix was in a measure
independent of his father even before he became of age.

About three years prior to the colonel's death a terrible mischance
befell his daughter, at that time in her tenth year.

It was Christmas week, at which season a certain amount of license is
often winked at among the servants in country houses. In the dusk of
afternoon, and in the gallery at the head of the stairs, Anna
encountered what she took for an apparition, but which, in point of
fact, was merely one of the servants dressed up in a sheet, and having
her face whitened, on her way to join in some mummeries below stairs.

The child, who from her birth had been of a highly excitable
temperament, with hysterical tendencies, gave one piercing scream, and
fell to the ground in a fit, which was followed by several others, and
for some days her life was despaired of.

Gradually, however, she regained her health, and everybody hoped--her
father, of course, most of all--that the shock her system had
undergone had left no ill effects behind it.

One of the colonel's first acts after his daughter's seizure had been
to send for Mrs. Jenwyn, with whose services, only a little while
before, he had seen fit to dispense. It was Mrs. Jenwyn who had nursed
his wife through the long illness which had preceded her death, and it
was in fulfilment of Mrs. Drelincourt's dying request that he had
installed her in the dual position of nurse and governess to his
motherless girl, who, in the course of time, had learned to love her
almost, if not quite, as well as the parent she had lost.

Whether it was a feeling of jealousy that his child should care so
much for any one but himself, or some other whim, which caused him to
give Mrs. Jenwyn notice to leave, was known only to himself. In any
case, Anna took the separation greatly to heart, far more so than her
father was aware of, for the child's deepest moods were silent ones;
of what she felt most she talked least, and the colonel was not
skilled in reading below the surface.

Now, however, he blamed himself with undue severity for having sent
Mrs. Jenwyn about her business. Again and again he told himself, most
unreasonably, that had she been on the spot the mischance would never
have happened. It was some consolation to him to witness the naïve and
touching delight with which Anna welcomed Mrs. Jenwyn's return.

For all that, as he quitted the room, leaving them together, he could
not help saying to himself, with a touch of bitterness, "She loves
that woman better than she loves me."

Unfortunately, the colonel's fondly cherished hope that the shock to
his daughter's system would entail no after consequences was not
destined to be fulfilled. To all appearance, Anna had regained her
health and strength in full measure, and her fright was a matter six
months old, when, without any warning, so to speak, an unaccountable
change came over her which found its physical expression in a state of
irritability and low fever, supplemented by insomnia. Dr. Carew was
called in, and prescribed, but declined to commit himself to any
expression of opinion.

On the fifth day from the beginning of her attack, Anna fell into a
deep, trance-like sleep which lasted eighteen hours. When at length
she awoke, everything that had happened to her during the six months
which had intervened since the date of her fright was lost to her
memory. She went back and took up her life again at the point where
consciousness had left her at the moment of her scare in the gallery.

All Mrs. Jenwyn had taught her in the interim was clean gone. A book
half read at the time she now began afresh and finished, and she
resumed the practice of a piece of music on which she had been engaged
during the forenoon of that unfortunate day. The break in her memory
was absolute and complete.

By Dr. Carew's recommendation, no attempt was made to enlighten her.
Everybody about her accommodated themselves to circumstances as she
believed them to be. The doctor trusted to time. It was all he could
do.

Any attempt at a cure on his part, as he was not slow to recognize,
might have been productive of more harm than good, and possibly have
entailed consequences he would have been loath to face. He watched the
case with the deepest interest, but beyond prescribing a harmless
draft or two, he left nature to work after her own fashion.

At the end of a fortnight Anna fell into another trance-like sleep,
and awoke from it her proper self. The two preceding weeks were
blotted from her memory. She had merely had a longer and sounder sleep
than ordinary, from which she had awaked feeling strangely refreshed.

From that time forward the same thing had happened to her, at
irregular intervals, every three or four months. After certain
preliminary symptoms, which hardly ever varied, she would fall into a
deep sleep, always to awake at that moment of her life which preceded
her meeting with the supposed apparition in the gallery. At the end of
ten days or a fortnight, and after another sleep, she would become her
normal self again.

She had been ten years old at the time of her first attack, and she
was now eighteen. A lovely girl (but with no touch of resemblance to
Felix), and of an affectionate and amiable disposition; bright and
cheerful enough at times, but, for the most part, with a vague shadow
of melancholy brooding over her, as of one who realized in all its
bitterness the fact that there was about her a something which set her
apart from her fellows; for long before now the full measure of her
affliction had become known to her.

Mrs. Jenwyn had given Colonel Drelincourt her promise on his deathbed
that she would never leave Anna while it was the latter's wish that
she should stay with her. In order, however, to make assurance doubly
sure, the colonel had left instructions in his will that the sum of
two hundred guineas per annum should be paid to Mrs. Jenwyn out of his
estate so long as she should retain her position by his daughter's
side.

As already remarked, the colonel had bequeathed to Anna all that it
was in his power to leave her. An ample sum was settled on her, under
the control of trustees, during her minority, and when she should come
of age she would find herself mistress of an income of twelve hundred
a year, with absolute power over ten thousand pounds of the gross sum
capitalized by her father.

About a year before his death, and when he had no prevision of that
event being so near, Colonel Drelincourt had caused to be set aside,
and specially arranged for their use, a suite of rooms in the left
wing of the Towers, to which his daughter and Mrs. Jenwyn could retire
whenever Anna's symptoms gave warning that one of her periodical
attacks was imminent.

He had also caused a considerable space or ground on the same side of
the house to be walled in, so as to form a private garden in which the
two could obtain a sufficiency of fresh air and exercise without being
overlooked or spied upon by any visitors at the house, or by any
casual outsiders, there being a right of public footway through the
park at the back of the Towers, as a consequence of which stragglers
were sometimes found in those parts of the grounds where they had no
business to be.

When, at his father's death, Felix Drelincourt came into the property,
matters, so far as they related to his half sister, were in no wise
changed. All he did was to cut down the staff of servants, and to
request Mrs. Jenwyn to take upon herself the control of the
establishment, he himself having no intention at that time of settling
permanently at the Towers. Not till after his marriage, some three
years later, did he make it his home.

When talking over future arrangements with his prospective wife, he
had given Miss Ormsby clearly to understand that his marriage was to
alter nothing so far as his half sister was concerned. Anna's home, as
heretofore, would still be at the Towers, and the special suite of
rooms in the left wing still be reserved for the occupancy of herself
and Mrs. Jenwyn at certain seasons.




CHAPTER V.
IN THE LEFT WING.


And now to revert to Mr. Drelincourt's visit to the left wing of the
Towers on the day his wife came by her tragic end.

His first question, in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenwyn, after the baize
covered door had been locked behind him, was: "You have heard the
news?"

"I have, sir, and I need not tell you what a dreadful shock it was to
me. Poor lady! Poor unhappy lady!"

Drelincourt bit his lip for a moment. Then, "You have not breathed a
word about it to Anna?"

He had taken a chair, after motioning Mrs. Jenwyn to another.

"Certainly not, sir. I should not dream of doing so without your
permission. Indeed, I am far from sure that just now it would be
advisable to say anything to her about it."

"My own opinion exactly. The news must be kept carefully from her
while she is as she is. It will be time enough to break it to her when
she is herself again. Of course, her present attack has not yet run
its course?"

"Oh, no, sir; it is only five days since she was taken. We may
calculate on another week at the least."

"So much the better. By that time the funeral and other matters will
be over and done with."

Drelincourt sat for a few moments without speaking, toying with his
watch-guard. Mrs. Jenwyn knew better than to break the silence.

At this time, judging from appearances, she was somewhere about forty
years of age. Her features were regular and refined, and she would
still have been accounted a very handsome woman but for the abnormal
pallor of her complexion, her sunken cheeks, and a certain worn and
tired look about her keenly watchful eyes, with their slightly
contracted lids, which might be the result of insomnia.

Like her hair, her eyes were of a brown so dark as in some lights to
be hardly distinguishable from black. Although her face was
essentially feminine in certain of its aspects, its dominant
expression was one of innate resolution, and of an amount of will
power rather unusual in one of her sex. "A woman of great force of
character, who would do and dare much to gain her ends, whatever they
might be," was Mr. Drelincourt's pithy summing up of her.

For all that, there must have been a sunny corner hidden somewhere
under the husk of her almost frozen reserve, or Anna Drelincourt--so
susceptible to chills of every kind--would not have learned to love
her and cling to her as she did. Scarcely less dear had Anna's mother
held her.

Beyond the fact that she was a widow, Drelincourt knew nothing of her
history or antecedents, and did not seek to know anything. He had
accepted her, so to speak, as a legacy from his father, and had soon
learned to like and respect her for herself.

There was something about her self-contained character, with its
reserve of quiet force, which appealed specially to him. She was the
very woman--one out of a thousand--he told himself, for the peculiar
post she occupied, and he was careful to treat her with every
consideration.

Some little time passed before Mr. Drelincourt spoke again. To Mrs.
Jenwyn he seemed to be debating some point with himself. At length he
said:

"Contrary to what I had ventured to hope before they came together, my
wife always seemed to be very fond of Anna, and to make much of her.
That, at least, is how matters presented themselves to me. What is
your opinion, Mrs. Jenwyn? You were in a position to observe things
from a far more intimate point of view than I was."

His eyes were fixed on the matron; she could not choose but answer
him. Her dark, prominent brows came together for a moment; a little
wave of color tinged her pale cheeks for a second or two.

"A question so plainly put, Mr. Drelincourt, ought to be met by a
plain answer. Is not that so?"

"Why, certainly, Mrs. Jenwyn."

"Now that Mrs. Drelincourt is unhappily no more, there seems to me no
reason why I should any longer refrain from mentioning to you a
certain conclusion which I could not help arriving at on the occasion
of Mr. Guy Ormsby's visit at the Towers a few months ago."

Mr. Drelincourt sat up in his chair. "Go on, please," was all he said.

"To such an extent and so openly did Mrs. Drelincourt make it her
business to throw Miss Anna and Mr. Guy together, that at length I
could not help having my eyes opened to the ulterior object she had in
view. What at first had been nothing more than suspicion was turned
into certainty by a few words between brother and sister which I
accidentally happened to overhear."

"And that object was--"

"The marriage--not just now, but after Miss Anna shall have come of
age--of the two young people."

It was not often that Drelincourt was betrayed into an expression of
surprise, but he was on this occasion.

"What!" he exclaimed. "Scheme to wed her brother to a girl mentally
afflicted as my poor sister is? It would be nothing less than
monstrous."

"Mrs. Drelincourt, sir, professed to believe, with Dr. Pounceby, the
London specialist, that Miss Anna would grow out of her affliction in
the course of a few years."

"An opinion, I am grieved to say, wholly opposed to that of an equally
eminent man--Dr. Ferrers."

"And then, sir, it behooves Mr. Guy Ormsby, as a younger son without
expectations, to look out for a wife with money."

"Why do you say that, Mrs. Jenwyn?"

"I am merely repeating Mrs. Drelincourt's own words to her brother."

"So!" Then to himself he added: "Evidently between my wife and this
woman there was no love lost."

He seemed to consider for a few moments, and then he said: "But tell
me this, Mrs. Jenwyn: Did Anna seem to take to young Ormsby in the way
you think my wife would have liked her to do--that is to say, did he
succeed in entangling her affections? For I have no doubt he was ready
enough to follow up his sister's precious scheme."

"That is more than I can say, sir, with any degree of certainty.
Sometimes I am inclined to think one thing, and sometimes another.
Miss Anna is not an easy person to read."

"Not an easy person to read? One of the most transparent and simple
minded girls in existence."

A thin smile flickered for a moment over Mrs. Jenwyn's bloodless
features. She had a soft, level voice, which, while it fell soothingly
on the ear, was not without a certain penetrative quality of its own.

"Excuse me, sir, but you don't know so much of her as I do, or you
would scarcely say that. You think her transparent and easy to read,
whereas there are depths in her character which not even I, who am
with her every day and all day, have yet succeeded in sounding. You
can never make sure beforehand of what she will either say or do in
reference to any given subject. In short, Miss Anna is a law unto
herself."

Drelincourt looked puzzled and only half convinced. It was not
pleasant to him to be told that he had so completely misread the
character of his seeming simple minded sister.

"It's a pity you did not give me a hint at the time of what was going
forward," he remarked, after a momentary pause.

"Young Mr. Ormsby's visit had nearly come to an end before I had
anything more than vague suspicions to go upon. And the next thing I
heard was that his regiment was presently going abroad. After that it
seemed to me all further danger was at an end, and I came to the
conclusion that my wisest plan would be to keep my discovery to
myself."

"I presume you have satisfied yourself that no correspondence has
passed between Lieutenant Ormsby and Anna?"

"On that point I am quite satisfied."

"Does she talk much, or at all, about him?"

"I have not heard her even mention his name during the last month or
more."

"Then I suppose all there is left me to do is to hope for the best,
and to trust that no real harm has been done?"

"If signs go for anything, sir, I am certainly inclined to believe
that Miss Anna is still heart whole and fancy free. But, as I have
already remarked, her character is not an easy one to read. Of course,
if Mr. Guy were to appear again on the scene, I could not answer for
what might happen."

"There is not much fear of that--now," said Mr. Drelincourt
significantly. "It is not at all likely that he and Anna will ever set
eyes on each other again."

He rose and pushed back his chair.

"Will you not see Anna for a few minutes, sir, while you are here?"
queried the matron. "She always seems brighter and better for some
time after one of your visits; indeed, except myself, you are the only
person from whose presence at these times she does not shrink with a
sort of nervous dread, as though doubtful whether they might not be
about to do her some bodily harm. It was rather singular, was it not,
sir, that Mrs. Drelincourt's presence at these times always had a
peculiarly disturbing effect upon her?"

If Drelincourt heard the question, he did not care to answer it. He
was cogitating, with a finger pressed to his lips.

"Yes," he said presently. "I will see her. I have much to do, but I
can spare her a few minutes."

Thereupon Mrs. Jenwyn at once led the way to an inner room, which
opened out of the first one. It was a large and sunny apartment,
lighted by three windows, from which there was a view beyond the
surrounding park of some miles of rolling, well timbered country. In
the middle window hung a brass cage containing a couple of canaries.
On a soft cushion reposed a Persian cat. From a brace of hooks in the
ceiling was suspended a swing. Near at hand was a big rocking horse
fitted with a side saddle. On the floor lay a pair of Indian clubs, a
battledore and shuttlecock, and a hoop. In one corner was a small
bookcase.

On a low chair near one of the windows sat Anna Drelincourt, busily
engaged in sewing some lace on one of several dresses composing the
wardrobe of a big wax doll which, seated limply on an opposite chair,
its arms dangling loosely by its sides, seemed with its glassy,
unwinking eyes to be watching every movement of her needle.

Occasionally Anna would look up from her work for a moment to nod her
head and chirrup at Ninon, which was the doll's name; and possibly to
her imaginative eyes that young person's fixed, vacuous smirk became
endued, for a second or two, with a responsive meaning.

At this time, as already stated, Anna was eighteen years old. She had
a slender figure of medium height, with glossy chestnut hair, and eyes
of the darkest blue. Her face might have been called insignificant had
not her features been so perfectly formed, and her complexion so
almost dazzlingly fair.

Never was there a more April day face than Anna's, one liable to more
swift changes of expression or that betrayed more ingenuously the
thoughts and emotions--which sometimes ranged over a wide gamut--at
work below.

This morning she was wearing a simple white frock, with her unbound
hair, confined by a bit of blue ribbon, falling nearly to her waist. A
tiny foot, on which dangled a bronze slipper, peeped from under the
hem of her frock. She was humming softly to herself as she plied her
needle.

As the door opened she glanced up, and at sight of Drelincourt sprang
to her feet with a little cry of pleasure. Then running to meet him,
she caught both his hands in hers, and held up her face to be kissed.

"I knew you would come and see me this morning," she said brightly.
"The Voices told me so, and they never deceive. You don't know what a
number of secrets they whisper to me, and whatever they bid me do that
I am bound to do. It is not only that, if I were to refuse, I should
run the risk of their displeasure, but because I cannot help myself.
Oh, to disobey them would be terrible! The mere thought----"

"Anna!"

Merely her name pronounced by Mrs. Jenwyn, but its effect on the girl
was instantaneous. She still had hold of Drelincourt's hands, and he
was conscious of a momentary spasmodic twitching of her fingers, such
as might have been caused by a slight electric shock. Then his hands
were released; something seemed to catch her breath for a second or
two, her eyes opened and shut quickly several times, and therewith her
mood changed.

"What have I been rambling on about?" she asked, with a rippling,
childlike laugh. "How silly of me! But whatever it was, it's all
gone--all gone. And now, Felix, you must come and say 'Good morning'
to Ninon, and ask her how she is. She is a good little thing on the
whole, but sometimes I feel her temper rather trying." With that she
drew him forward by the lapel of his coat. "Sit down," she said, "and
nurse her for a little while. I fancy she looks slightly feverish this
morning. I hope I shall not have to call in Dr. Carew."

Drelincourt did as he was told. The doll was placed in his arms, and
was held by him as awkwardly as might be expected. A smile, which had
in it as much of pathos as of humor, played round his lips, but the
expression of his eyes was one of grave tenderness and pity for the
unhappy girl.

Mrs. Jenwyn sat a little way apart, busy with her favorite crochet
work, seeing everything without seeming to do so. It was evident that
her presence acted powerfully on Anna as a restraining influence.

Drelincourt stayed a quarter of an hour longer, chatting as lightly
and pleasantly with Anna as though he had not a thought or a care
beyond those of the passing moment, although all the while that dread
Object lying cold and stark in another room framed itself like a
ghastly picture on the background of his consciousness.


                *     *     *     *     *     *     *


It was a month later, when, on a certain afternoon, as Mr. James
Ormsby was walking down the platform of one of the London terminal
stations on his way to the train, he was startled by a tap on his
shoulder.

On turning in his touchy way to ascertain who had ventured on such a
liberty with him, he was pleasurably surprised to find that the
offender was none other than Tom Thornswade, son of Squire Thornswade
of Highcroft, whom he had known from the time he was short coated.

"Thought I couldn't be mistaken in your back, Mr. Ormsby, as you
marched along in front of me," said Master Tom, with a merry laugh, as
his hand met that of the elder man in a cordial clasp. "I must say I'm
awfully glad to see you. Yours is the first face known to me that I've
set eyes on since I landed at Southampton four days ago."

"Glad you've got back safe and sound, Tom. Your father told me all
about your having to go out to the States to look after some property
which has been left him there."

The two had many topics in common, and found much to say to each
other, and it was not till the train was fairly under way that young
Tom, with a sudden change of tone and manner, said: "I must really
crave your pardon, Mr. Ormsby, for having omitted to give expression
to my sincere regrets at the great and irreparable loss you have
recently sustained. Poor dear Mrs. Drelincourt! I cannot tell you how
shocked I was when I read the account of her terrible end in one of
the newspapers sent me by my mother."

"Yes, it was indeed a tragical affair," replied Mr. Ormsby, with what
he meant for a heartfelt sigh, and a sudden elongation of his visage.
"I was her favorite brother, Torn--her favorite brother! What I have
suffered God alone knows. I don't think I shall ever be quite my own
man again. Poor Kate! Poor Kate!"

"And the sad affair is still wrapped in mystery, is it not?" asked
Tom, after a pause.

"It is."

"In the paper sent me there was an account of some man having been
arrested on suspicion and examined before the magistrates, but who was
afterwards set at liberty for want of sufficient evidence to bring the
crime home to him."

"That is so. Gumley, the fellow in question, had been temporarily
engaged as under gardner at the Towers, and although, thanks to the
evidence of my brother in law, who--and I can't help saying so--acted
very strangely throughout the affair, he was released, nothing will
persuade me that in him we had not got hold of the murderer of my
sister. Unfortunately there was a link wanting in the chain of
evidence--only one, mind you. But some day it may be found. I do not
despair. Time solves many mysteries and brings many a clue to light."

"It was a great blow to Mr. Drelincourt, was it not?"

"Um"--with a pursing out of his under lip. "That is a question which
he could best answer--if he chose to do so. At any rate, it's one I
don't feel called upon to answer for him."

"Not an ordinary sort of man, by any means, I should imagine, nor one
easily bottomed, judging from what little I saw of him from time to
time," remarked Tom, who was not without some grains of shrewdness.

"That's as it may be. A shallow fool is often mistaken for a deep one
by those who don't know better. In any case, we are not likely to see
much of Drelincourt for a considerable time to come. He has shut up
the Towers, putting in a man and his wife as caretakers, and has gone
abroad for an indefinite period."

"And Miss Drelincourt, his half sister, what has become of her?"

"Her chest is said to be delicate, and she and the person who has
charge of her have gone to live for a time in Devonshire. She's a
charming girl--leaving her mental affliction out of question--and my
poor sister was greatly attached to her."

"And an uncommonly pretty girl, too," added Master Tom _sotto voce_.




CHAPTER VI.
RECREANT LOVER.


Mrs. Drelincourt had been dead a year.

Anna and Mrs. Jenwyn were still at Combe Fenton, the Devonshire
village to which they had retired shortly after the death of the
mistress of Wyvern Towers.

On the particular morning to which we have now come, Anna set off for
her customary after breakfast constitutional on the sands. It was her
favorite walk, and one which she rarely missed in fine weather. She
was accompanied by Fanny, a demure looking but rather pretty girl, and
a native of Combe Fenton, who filled the post of maid and attendant to
both the younger and the elder lady.

About a fortnight before this, Mrs. Jenwyn, while gathering ferns, had
slipped and sprained her ankle so severely that she had not yet been
able to use it for longer than a few minutes at a time for walking
purposes. As a consequence, she had been under the necessity of
substituting Fanny for herself as Anna's companion during the latter's
outdoor rambles. In so doing no faintest suspicion entered her mind
that she might be exposing her charge to a risk.

This morning, however, her eyes were destined to be opened.

After Anna's departure the housemaid wheeled her in her bath chair to
a favorite spot in the grounds under a spreading beech, where she was
in the habit of reading and working the time away till the girl's
return. Here she had been some time engaged with her tatting, when she
was startled by the appearance of a man who came suddenly from behind
a thick clump of laurels and rhodendrons, and halting a few yards from
her, took off his soft felt hat and made her a low bow.

He was young, and looked what he was, a superior mechanic. Before Mrs.
Jenwyn could find her tongue he spoke.

"I crave your pardon, ma'am, for intruding upon you in this way," he
began, "but I couldn't very well call upon you at the house, because
the servants there all know me. And now, ma'am, I must ask you to
excuse me if I put a certain question to you. Are you aware that the
young lady who lives here with you is in the habit, morning after
morning, of meeting a young gentleman on the sands of Carthew Bay?"

For a few seconds Mrs. Jenwyn could not speak, so utterly astounded
was she.

Then she said, a little faintly, "No, I am certainly not aware of
anything of the kind."

"That, however, is what takes place. The young gentleman is always
there, waiting for her, and they walk up and down the sands together,
or sit side by side on some of the big stones which are strewn about,
for an hour at a time. Yesterday--excuse me, ma'am, for mentioning
it--he kissed her twice before they parted."

"Do you happen to know how long these meetings have been going on?"

"This will make the eleventh day."

"You seem to have done your spying to some purpose to be able to tell
me all this."

The young man merely screwed up his lips.

"Describe the young gentleman's appearance as nearly as you can."

"He's not so tall as I am by half a foot, but rather stiffly built;
with sandy hair and a light mustache. In one eye he carries a glass."

"Guy Ormsby!" exclaimed Mrs. Jenwyn under her breath. "I felt nearly
sure it must be he; and yet not eighteen months ago I heard him tell
his sister that his regiment was ordered abroad." Aloud she said, "But
how is it, I should like to know, that Fanny Davis has never said a
word to me about these meetings at Carthew Bay?"

"Because, ma'am, she has no doubt been bribed not to tell. She just
perches herself on a bit of rock out of the way of the others, and
reads novelettes all the time they are together. Oh, she's a deep un,
is Fan, and not to be trusted further than one can see her!" He spoke
with a touch of bitterness not observable before.

Like most women, Mrs. Jenwyn was certainly not without her occasional
intuitions.

Looking the young fellow straight in the eyes, she said: "You either
are or have been in love with Fanny Davis, and she has jilted you."

He looked first amazed and then sulky, while his face turned the color
of a peony. "Whether that's so or not," he said, after a brief pause,
"I don't see that it has anything to do with what I came here to tell
you."

"You are quite right," replied Mrs. Jenwyn pleasantly. "One thing has
nothing whatever to do with the other. It was merely a guess on my
part. By the way, what is your name? You need not be afraid of telling
it me, because I shall not speak to any one about our interview."

"My name is John Clisby."

"Thank you. Then, Mr. Clisby, there are two more items of information
which I should feel obliged by your obtaining for me. First of all,
I should like to know the address of our young friend with the
eyeglass--that is to say, at what place he has taken up his quarters
for the time being; and, secondly, what name he is passing under."

"He's staying at the Golden Swan, at the other end of the village, and
has been since he came here, nearly three weeks since. As for his
name, I'll engage to find that out for you by tomorrow."

After a little further talk the young carpenter went his way, fully
satisfied with his morning's work. He told himself that he had merely
been playing a game of tit for tat. After leading him on and trifling
with him for six months, Fanny had finally sent him about his
business, and now he had done his best to be even with her.

"She'll get the sack as sure as her name's Fan D., and serve her jolly
well right," he said to himself with a chuckle, as he took his way
through the shrubbery.

Miss Drelincourt and her maid were back from the bay in time for
luncheon; indeed, Anna's punctuality could always be depended on.

"How innocent and good they both look," said Mrs. Jenwyn to herself,
as they entered the house. "As for the girl, I always misdoubted that
demure face of hers--but Anna! And yet, why wonder? Did I not say to
Mr. Drelincourt that she was a hard one to read? And now, I suppose, a
new factor has come to complicate matters, and will have to be
reckoned with. Oh, what a pity!--what a pity! I would rather Guy
Ormsby were dead and buried than he should have found his way here."

But nothing of what she felt or thought was visible to the others.
Anna was conscious of no change in her, and the day passed over as
quietly and uneventfully as hundreds before it had done.

Next morning Anna and her attendant set out for their usual forenoon
ramble, utterly unsuspicious that Mrs. Jenwyn had any knowledge of the
magnet which drew the former's footsteps unerringly in the direction
of Carthew Bay.

Half an hour later a note, which had been brought to the house by a
boy, was put into Mrs. Jenwyn's hands. It contained two lines only:


The person we spoke about yesterday is passing under the name of Mr.
Harold Vince, but his portmanteau is marked with the letters G. O.

          Your obedient servant,

                                John Clisby.


When Miss Drelincourt, accompanied by Fanny, got back from her
forenoon walk on the day following that of John Clisby's visit to
Rosemount, she found that Mrs. Jenwyn had gone for a drive in the pony
chaise they were in the habit of hiring from a jobmaster in the
village; and, further, that she had left word Anna was not to wait
luncheon for her, as she might possibly be rather late in returning.

It was such an unusual thing for Mrs. Jenwyn to drive out without her
that the girl could not help speculating as to the nature of the
errand which had taken her from home (why had she said no word of her
intention at breakfast?), but no faintest suspicion of the truth
entered her mind.

Mrs. Jenwyn went for a long country drive, and it was close upon two
o'clock before Combe Fenton was reached on her return, by which time
she felt pretty sure Guy Ormsby would be back from his usual
appointment with Anna. Nor was she mistaken. She had requested her
driver to stop at the Golden Swan Hotel, and on inquiring whether "Mr.
Harold Vince" was indoors, she was told, to her satisfaction, that he
was.

By this time her sprain was very much better, and with the driver's
help, and that of a walking stick, she managed to alight and limp
indoors. A minute later there was a tap at the door of "Mr. Vince's"
sitting' room, and in response to his "Come in," it was opened by the
landlady, who the same moment announced, "A lady to see you, sir."

Guy, who, with one leg thrown over the arm of his easy chair, was
indulging in an after luncheon cigar, sprang to his feet, and on
recognizing his visitor, which he did at the first glance, he stood
staring at her for some seconds with a dropped jaw and a face which
had faded to the color of an unripe lemon.

Mrs. Jenwyn waited till the door was shut behind the landlady before
she spoke. Then she said pleasantly:

"Good afternoon, Mr. Ormsby. My intrusion upon you seems to have taken
you a little by surprise, which, perhaps, is hardly to be wondered at.
Still, although your natural timidity has hindered you from calling
upon us at Rosemount, I have no wish to appear unneighborly, and I
know of no reason why I should not call upon you. I trust that you
left them all well at Denham Lodge."

Guy's smile was not a pleasant one to see. Flinging away what was left
of his cigar, he said: "Will you not be seated, Mrs. Jenwyn? I may at
once confess that your visit is a surprise, but not, let me add, an
unwelcome one. May I be permitted to hope that Miss Drelincourt is
quite well?"

He felt that he must talk, but he hardly knew what to say. One of his
first thoughts at sight of her had been, "Can Anna have been such a
fool as to tell this woman that she has agreed to a secret marriage?"
It was a disquieting question.

"As you have had the pleasure of seeing Miss Drelincourt within the
last two or three hours, you are in a better position to judge of the
state of her health than I am, who have not seen her since breakfast
time."

This was not a very promising beginning, as Guy could not but admit.
"Hang it all!" he said to himself. "Where's the good of beating about
the bush? Some specific purpose has brought her here. What is it? The
sooner I find out the better."

After a brief pause, he said aloud: "I perceive, Mrs. Jenwyn, that you
are not unaware that Miss Drelincourt and I have seen each other?"

Mrs. Jenwyn's reply was a grave inclination of the head.

"We have met more than once--several times, in point of fact--at
Carthew Bay. I have no wish to deny that such is the case."

"It would be useless of you to attempt to do so."

"Am I right in assuming that your call upon me today is in reference
to those meetings?"

"You are quite right in your assumption. As you are aware, Miss
Drelincourt is here under my sole charge, and it rests with me to
safeguard her by every means in my power. That being the case, I am
fully justified in demanding of you with what purpose you have been at
the trouble of tracing her to this remote village, and then of
contriving stealthy meetings with her at a time when you knew I was
laid up and not there to look after her. That, Mr. Guy Ormsby, is what
I am justified in demanding to know."

There was no trace of excitement either in her voice or manner, but
the very quietude of her demeanor lent her words an added
impressiveness. Evidently Mrs. Jenwyn was not a woman to be trifled
with.

Guy cleared his voice before replying. "Your demand, as you term it,
Mrs. Jenwyn, certainly lacks nothing on the score of frankness," he
said, "and I will endeavor to be equally frank in my reply to it. I
have been at the pains of tracing Miss Drelincourt, and of following
her to this place, because I am deeply and sincerely in love with her,
and because it is my dearest hope to be able to win her for my wife."

This was probably no more than Mrs. Jenwyn had expected to be told;
indeed, on the assumption that he was a man of honor, no other plea of
justification was open to him.

"You know, as you must have known from the date of your visit to
Wyvern Towers, if not before then, all about poor Anna's mental
affliction, and yet in the face of this terrible visitation you tell
me that you love her and would fain make her your wife! To me such a
thing seems inconceivable. You must be very differently constituted
from others of your sex, Mr. Ormsby--very differently indeed."

"Say what you please, Mrs. Jenwyn, think what you choose--I am
perfectly sincere in what I have told you. I love Anna, and I am here
with the purpose of winning her for my wife. Besides, I believe, with
my poor dead and gone sister, that Anna will grow out of her
affliction, as you call it. If I am not mistaken, that was the opinion
of Dr. Pounceby, the celebrated specialist."

Mrs. Jenwyn shook her head sadly. "I wish I could discern any grounds
for such a belief," she said, "but at present I see none whatever."
Then, after a pause, "Tell me this, Mr. Ormsby: Seeing you were so
bent on making love to Anna, why, after you had discovered her
retreat, did you not come direct to Rosemount, send in your card, and
ask to see her?"

A faint tinge of color flushed his cheeks for a moment, but he
answered quite coolly, "I will tell you why, Mrs. Jenwyn. Because, if
I had presented myself at Rosemount, I should not have been allowed to
see Miss Drelincourt--at least, not alone. I should have had no
opportunity afforded me of pressing my suit, or of saying a twentieth
part of what I wanted to say to her. You, my dear madam, would have
taken jolly good care of that. Such being the state of affairs, no
course was open to me save to act as I did."

Mrs. Jenwyn's thin lips came together for a moment. "You are quite
right, Mr. Ormsby. I should have opposed your suit by every means in
my power. It would have been my duty to do so. Before coming near
Rosemount, you ought to have gone to Mr. Drelincourt, or, at any rate,
have written to him, asking him to sanction your suit with his
sister."

"A sanction I should never have succeeded in obtaining--of that I am
quite sure. Besides, Anna is only his half sister, and there's nothing
in her father's will which gives him the least control over either her
or her property."

"But surely, as her nearest living relative, he has a right to be
consulted in so important a matter, more especially as Anna is still
considerably under age."

"I fail to recognize any such right on his part. Besides, he would
only flout me. I know him--curse him! The things he sometimes said to
me at the Towers used to make me wild with rage, only there was never
anything to lay hold of. He was too cunning for that."

"There are Miss Drelincourt's trustees, through whom her income is
paid her while she is under age."

"SO there are. But why should I go near them? I suppose the old
colonel had got it into his head that his daughter would never marry.
At any rate, there's no clause in his will which empowers her trustees
to alienate a shilling of her income, even should she marry under age
and without their consent. On that point I've satisfied myself."

"You are not a very rich man, I believe, Mr. Ormsby?"

The hot color surged up to the roots of his hair. He half rose to his
feet, and then sat down again as if remembering himself. "Faith,
you're right there, Mrs. Jenwyn," he said, with a short laugh. "I am a
poverty stricken beggar, and no mistake. I freely admit it."

"And of course it would be great pecuniary gain to you to marry any
one with Anna's prospective income?"

"To be sure it would. I should be a fool to deny it. If I marry at
all, I must marry money; that's absolutely essential. So, why should I
not wed Anna? She is, or will be, fairly well off; and then she's a
lovely girl and I'm awfully gone on her."

He finished with a self satisfied smirk and a twist of his mustache,
and then sat staring at Mrs. Jenwyn through his monocle, with his
other eye half shut, as implying that, so far as he was concerned, the
last word had been said, and that the interview might be considered as
at an end.

But Mrs. Jenwyn was by no means of the same opinion.

"Then, am I to understand, Mr. Ormsby, that it is your intention to
persist in your suit, despite anything I can say or urge to the
contrary?"

"That is what I certainly wish you to understand."

"Will nothing move you from your resolve?"

"Nothing whatever."

"What is there to hinder me from taking Anna away and placing her
directly under the charge of Mr. Drelincourt? That is a possibility
you seem to have lost sight of."

"Not at all. The question is, if you were to propose any such measure,
would Anna agree to it? I affirm distinctly that she would not. The
time has gone by, my dear madam, when your wishes were a law to her.
Allow me to tell you this: I have Anna's distinct promise to marry
me."

Under the circumstances, he might perhaps be excused the smile of
exultation and gratified vanity which overspread his features; but,
for all that, Mrs. Jenwyn felt a strong desire to slap his face
vigorously with both hands.

What he had just told her did not surprise her greatly. From the
moment John Clisby stated that he had seen Ormsby kiss Anna she had
known that matters must have come to a serious pass between them.

She sat for a few moments as if considering. Then she said: "If Anna
has indeed given you such a promise as you say she has, the matter at
once assumes a very different complexion. All the more needful is it
that Mr. Drelincourt should at once be communicated with, in order
that either he or her trustees may be in a position to decide where
and with whom Anna's home shall be during the remaining term of her
minority."

"Pardon me, my dear madam, but there will be no need whatever for
either you or any one else to enter into any such arrangements with
regard to Miss Drelincourt's future. In less than a month from now her
home will be with me. The dear girl has consented to make me the
happiest of men as soon as the needful arrangements for our marriage
can be concluded."

He rose and pushed back his chair.

"We love each other; why, then, defer our happiness till she shall be
of age?"

There was a touch of bluster in his way of asking the question, as
though he anticipated some further opposition on Mrs. Jenwyn's part.

Not without a little dismay did that lady learn that matters had gone
so far between the young people.

"It is all the fault of my accident," she said to herself. "But for
that, I should have had her constantly under my eye, and he would have
had no opportunity of meeting her except in my presence, which would
not have suited his purpose at all. But the harm is done, and I am
driven to my last intrenchment. Oh, Anna, Anna, where are your eyes,
that you cannot see through this shallow, selfish pretender--a cad at
heart, if ever there was one--who cares no more for you than for the
flower in his buttonhole, who seeks you only for your money, and who
would break your heart when once he had made you his wife, as surely
as the sun will rise tomorrow morning! But you shall be saved in your
own despite, my poor darling, even if your foolish little heart should
be cracked in the process. There is no help for it--none!"

She had ample time for these and other thoughts while Ormsby crossed
to a corner cupboard, from a decanter in which he poured out a
"Thimbleful" of neat spirits and drank it off, wondering to himself
meanwhile how much longer his unwelcome visitor was going to intrude
her presence upon him. But Mrs. Jenwyn had not done with him.

"Sit down in that chair, Mr. Ormsby," she said, as he turned from the
cupboard, speaking in a tone so peremptory that he could not repress a
start. After staring at her for a second or two, he did as he was
told.

It was not the chair he had occupied before, but one drawn up close to
the narrow table on the opposite side of which she was seated. Leaning
forward, with her arms resting on the table, and her face within a
yard of his, she said: "Listen, Guy Ormsby. I have something to say to
you, the telling of which you have brought on yourself by your own
persistent folly."

Then, after a backward glance, as if to assure herself that the door
was really shut, with lowered voice, and eyes which compelled his to
confront them whether they would or no, she went on to speak to him
for the next five minutes without a break or ever hesitating for a
word. It was evident that she spoke from a heart fully charged, and
while her utterance was so impressive, that which she had to tell him
was of a nature so singular that when she had come to an end Guy might
be excused if for a few seconds he felt rather uncertain whether he
was standing on his head or his heels.

Various emotions had chased themselves across his face during the
telling--simple surprise deepening into wide eyed amazement, and
lurking incredulity ripening into a conviction of the truth of what he
was being told, which for a little space left his cheeks nearly as
bloodless as those of the woman opposite him, whose cold, incisive
tones seemed to cut into his consciousness like a surgeon's knife.

Presently he drew a long, deep breath, like that of a person coming
round after an operation. Then, in a voice as guarded as Mrs. Jenwyn's
own, he said: "And you are prepared to swear that what you have just
told me is the truth?"

"I swear it before Heaven!"

A brief space of silence ensued, which Mrs. Jenwyn was the first to
break.

"And now, Mr. Ormsby, may I ask whether you are still in the same mind
with regard to Miss Drelincourt? Are you still as firmly determined as
before to persist in your suit?"

"No, that I am not," responded Guy, with some emphasis. "What I have
just learned has put that notion wholly out of the question. I'm sorry
for poor dear Anna that matters have gone so far between us; but
what can I do, Mrs. Jenwyn? Tell me that. It's not altogether my
fault--now, is it?--that things have come to the pass they have."

"Certainly not, Mr. Ormsby. You are merely one more victim to the
force of circumstances. You have already admitted that pecuniarily
your position is not a very flourishing one. Of course, you have your
regimental pay, but am I right in assuming that outside that your
income is--what shall I call it?"

"Call it strictly limited, Mrs. Jenwyn, and then you will be
absolutely right," replied Guy, with a little jarring laugh. "In point
of fact, as you have seen fit to tell me so much, I don't mind
admitting to you that I haven't even my regimental pay to fall back
upon. In other words, I've thrown up my commission, and am now a
private gentleman at large, with empty pockets, and a hankering after
the fleshpots of Egypt which I have no longer the means of
gratifying."

"That must be a very uncomfortable state of affairs for you."

"It is; it is."

"Well, now, I have a certain proposition to make to you," said Mrs.
Jenwyn. Guy pricked up his ears and became all attention. "In the
first place, you shall give me your solemn promise never to reveal to
any one the secret which I have just confided to your keeping; and, in
the second place, you shall write Anna a couple of notes which I will
dictate to you. That is all. In return, if you care to accept of a
little present of a hundred pounds, you will be very welcome to it."

"If I care to accept it! My dear--my very dear--Mrs. Jenwyn! In the
present state of my finances a hundred pounds will be like---- But
never mind that. I am yours to command. There are writing materials on
the side table, so that----"

"I am quite ready, Mr. Ormsby."

The first note, dictated by Mrs. Jenwyn and written by Guy, ran thus:


Dearest:

I have just been telegraphed for on account of my brother's illness,
and must leave here at once. I will write you at greater length as
soon as possible. Meanwhile, believe me,

Devotedly yours,
     G. O.


It was arranged that this note should be delivered to Anna by
messenger next morning, after she and Fanny should have left the house
for their usual forenoon ramble.

The second note read as follows:


Dear Miss Drelincourt:

After what occurred between us at our last few meetings on the sands
of Carthew Bay, you probably think it due to you that I should have
written you before now; and, indeed, my omission to do so would have
been unpardonable had not my silence been dictated by certain
considerations which I have found it impossible to ignore.

Into the nature of those considerations I have no wish to enter, nor
would it, perhaps, be desirable that I should do so. It will be enough
to state, in as few words as possible, to what conclusion they have
gradually but surely led me. It is to this: That, unwittingly and
unthinkingly, and as one walking blindfold, I have been guilty of the
most deplorable mistake of my life.

Is there any need for me to be more explicit, or to enter into details
which could not fail of being painful to us both? No, I am sure there
is not. Your woman's instinct will have already revealed to you the
nature of the mistake in question.

This I may add, that when I last parted from you I had no faintest
prevision of what was so soon to happen. Perhaps it never would have
happened had circumstances not called me away from Combe Fenton.

Yet who shall say it is not best for the happiness of both that the
discovery should have been made before the time had gone by for
remedying it! That is the light in which I trust you will endeavor to
regard it.

In conclusion, my dear Miss Drelincourt, I can only ask you to believe
in the sincerity of my contrition should my conduct be the cause of
any temporary unhappiness to you. And that, in any case, it will be no
more than temporary is the heartfelt hope of him who now subscribes
himself

        Your obedient and devoted servant,

                                    Guy Ormsby.


When the foregoing had been written, it was sealed up, addressed in
full to "Miss Drelincourt, Rosemount, near Combe Fenton, Devon," and
taken charge of by Mrs. Jenwyn.

All that now remained to be done was to arrange for the handing over
of the hundred pounds, and then for Mrs. Jenwyn to take her departure.




CHAPTER VII.
AN AMAZING CONFESSION.


Within a month of the events recorded in the preceding chapter, Mrs.
Jenwyn and her charge had left Combe Fenton. Anna had conceived a
violent dislike to the place, and was restless till she got away from
it. After her receipt of Guy Ormsby's letter, which Mrs. Jenwyn had
arranged to have mailed from London, she never set foot on the sands
of Carthew Bay. It is almost needless to state that the girl Fanny was
left behind. She had heard of John Clisby's visit to Rosemount, and
she needed no one to tell her why Mrs. Jenwyn had chosen to dispense
with her services.

A few days before Anna's departure she received the news of her half
brother's marriage. The ceremony had been solemnized at the British
embassy at Naples, the bride being a Miss Madeline Fenwicke, whose
name Anna seemed to remember as that of a visitor at Denham Lodge some
three years previously.

In the course of the next four years, at the end of which period we
take up their history afresh, Mrs. Jenwyn and her charge found a
temporary home in three or four widely different places.

Anna's coming of age, and with it her command of the fortune left her
by her father, had made no difference in her simple and inexpensive
mode of life. She had had more than enough before for all her needs,
and except that she now set aside a considerably larger sum for
charitable purposes, the major portion of her income was never drawn
upon, but allowed to accumulate untouched in her banker's coffers.

Anna and her brother had met but once since the latter's marriage, and
then he brought with him the news of the birth of a daughter.

It was during the time of Anna's sojourn at Dieppe that Drelincourt,
when on his way back from London, whither some law business had taken
him, made a detour on purpose to see his sister and spend a week with
her. He had exiled himself from England, preferring to live abroad,
chiefly in Italy, the climate of which seemed to suit both him and his
wife, but now and then wintering in Egypt or elsewhere.

But although he and Anna saw so little of each other, he wrote to her
regularly once a month, and his letters, chatty, vivacious, and
stuffed with news and gossip of one kind or another, made one of the
chief pleasures of her quiet existence.

They were the sole link between her and that great, restless, seething
world outside her about which she knew so little, and from any closer
contact with which she was kept by her constitutional timidity and
that distaste for mixing in general society which she found it quite
impossible to overcome.

But latterly--that is to say, within the last twelve months or so--the
dread shadow which for so long a time had brooded over her life had
been penetrated by a ray of sunlight which was gradually broadening
and brightening, so that it seemed as if, at no very distant date, Dr.
Pounceby's prediction that, in the course of time, Anna would outgrow
her mental malady, was on the eve of fulfilment.

For some time past each recurrent attack had been of shorter duration
than the preceding one, so that now, instead of extending over twelve
days or a fortnight, as used to be the case, they lasted for two or
three days only; and there was every reason for hoping that in the
course of another year or two they would leave her altogether.

Mrs. Jenwyn had few living relatives, and only one with whom she kept
up anything like a regular correspondence. The person in question was
a first cousin, Martin Soanes by name, whose position in life was that
of managing clerk to a London solicitor in a large way of business.

From Mr. Soanes, when she had been about six months at Guernsey, she
one day received a letter, the contents of which proved to be of a
sufficiently startling kind.

In it her cousin informed her that, in consequence of an advertisement
he had come across in the _Times_, he had called upon a certain firm
in his own line of business, and, on making himself known to them, was
told that the person advertised for had, through the death of an uncle
in Australia, become entitled to a bequest of twenty two thousand
pounds.

That fortunate person was none other than herself, Henrietta Jenwyn,
_née_ Henrietta Wynter, daughter of so and so. Finally, Mr. Soanes
wrote, her presence was desired in London as speedily as possible,
with the view of enabling her to prove her identity.

For a little while after reading the letter Mrs. Jenwyn felt like a
stunned person. Some time was needed to enable her to realize her good
fortune--if such it should prove to be; and, indeed, at first she
hardly knew whether to feel glad or sorry, not being able just yet to
discern to what extent it might affect the relations between herself
and Anna.

But presently she took comfort. Why need it affect them in any
way--this legacy by a man she had never set eyes on, even if it should
prove to be hers? Why should not matters go on as they had hitherto
done? It certainly would not be her fault if they did not.

The legacy proved to be no myth, but a very pleasant and substantial
reality. The sum total was invested in certain railway scrip which for
the last half dozen years had never paid a less dividend than five per
cent per annum, and there the fortunate legatee decided to let it
remain.

It would not have been easy to find a safer or more profitable
investment, and the income derivable therefrom seemed to her amply
sufficient to meet all needful requirements on her part, even should
she finally decide on carrying out a certain project which had been
simmering in her brain from within a few hours of her receipt of her
cousin's letter.

But it was a project not to be decided upon in a hurry. It was rife
with certain consequences from which there would be no escape, and
some of them might, perhaps, prove to be of a far more serious kind
than was apparent on the surface.

She turned it over in her mind, not once, but a thousand times,
considering it from every conceivable point of view; indeed, during
those few days all other subjects, including the arrangements
connected with her legacy, were subordinated to it. The temptation to
carry it into effect appealed to her with an all but irresistible
force, and at length she yielded to it so far as to say to herself:

"I will sound Anna. I will put certain questions to her, and from her
answers I shall be enabled to judge whether it will be safe to venture
any farther, or wiser to draw back, and keep silence for evermore."

When her cab stopped at the garden gate, Anna came flying down the
pathway to greet her.

"Well, you dear old thing, what luck have you had?" she cried, as soon
as she had given her an affectionate hug. "Has the legacy taken to
itself wings and vanished into thin air, or have you brought back a
portmanteau stuffed with bank notes?"

"Neither one nor the other. The legacy has not taken to itself wings,
but I have not brought so much as a slice of it back with me. It is
all safely invested, and I think I can't do better than let if remain
where it is."

"And you come back just the same as you went--not even an inch taller
than you were five days ago! The same dowdy gown and old-fashioned
bonnet. Where's the good of having twenty thousand pounds left you if
you have nothing to show for it?"

"That is a question easier to ask than answer. I was quite content,
and as happy as I ever expect to be, before this money came. What more
can I hope to be now?"

"And you say that you never even saw this uncle of yours who has
remembered you so handsomely in his will?" queried Anna, as soon as
they were indoors.

"Not so far as my memory serves me, although I believe he saw me when
I was an infant. He emigrated when I was about three years old. My
mother, who was his favorite sister, heard from him at long intervals
for a period of seven or eight years. Then followed a silence which,
so far as I am aware, was never broken, and at home the belief
gradually grew up among us that he was dead."

"Possibly, if your cousin had not seen the advertisement in the
_Times_, you would never have known anything about your legacy?"

"I think that very probable indeed. I was advertised for under my
maiden name, and except my cousin (who, I believe, prides himself on
the fact that nothing in the _Times_ escapes him), few, if any, of
those now living who knew me before my marriage would be likely to see
it, or, if they should see it, would know where to find me."

Although Mrs. Jenwyn had made up her mind to a certain course, she
seemed in no special hurry to carry her purpose into effect. Indeed,
she was one of those women who never appear to hurry; she could always
afford to bide her time.

Besides, in the present case, a few days--or, for that matter, a few
weeks or a few months--would make no difference. She told herself that
she would not make an opportunity, but wait till one should come to
her. Perhaps she was not without a lingering doubt as to the spirit in
which Anna might receive her communication, and was not disinclined to
let matters go on as they were for a little while longer.

Of one thing she felt sure--that nothing could ever be quite the same
as it had been when once her lips should have been unsealed and her
secret have passed from her own keeping.

Her opportunity, or what seemed such, came on a certain afternoon when
the weather, would not admit of their going out, and she and Anna were
seated by the window, one busy with her sewing, the other with her
knitting.

The maid had just been in to ask leave to go and visit her mother, who
was said to be dying. The girl had been in deep distress.

"I have sometimes wondered, Tetta," said Anna presently, "whether it
is harder for a mother to lose her child or for a child to lose its
mother. I am not referring to cases like Charlotte's, where the child
is grown up; although, if tears are anything to go by, she seems
extremely attached to her mother."

"A great deal depends on circumstances. When a mother loses her only
child, or one of two, it may reasonably be assumed that she feels the
loss far more than she would do if she had other children left to
comfort her. Again, where a child loses its mother while still at a
tender age, it is not to be expected that the loss can seem such an
irreparable one as it would do at a later period, when it is old
enough not only to appreciate her love, but to reciprocate it in full
measure."

"It was my misfortune to lose my mother when I was at a very tender
age," said Anna presently, in a low voice.

"It was. You were barely five years old when she died. I suppose you
remember very little about her?"

"Not a great deal. I seem to see her nearly always as an invalid,
lying either on a couch or in bed. I have an impression that she was
very fond of me, but that I was told I must not make a noise when in
her room, nor stay with her too long at a time."

"I suppose it has been a source of never ending regret to you that you
lost her at such an early age?" She was watching Anna keenly from
between her narrowed lids.

"Of never ending regret?"--with a little surprise in her tone. "No,
Tetta, scarcely that, I think. How could it be? At that age our
regrets are nearly as fleeting as our joys. I was too young to sound
the depths of sorrow, or to allow of any loss touching me very deeply
for longer than a few passing hours."

"Still, you often thought of her--often do now, perhaps--and have felt
that by her death a void was left in your life which nothing else
could fill; and have longed to have her with you, that you might pour
your troubles and confidences into her sympathetic ear, for, to a
daughter, whose ear is like her mother's?"

For a little while Anna went on stitching in silence. Her brows were
knitted, her face wore an expression of dubiety.

Presently she said: "Yes, I have often thought about my poor dead
mother, and have sometimes wondered, if she had lived, how she and I
would have got on together; perhaps not so well as you and I have,
Tetta. But I can't say that I have ever felt about her as you seem to
think I ought to have done. Was it wrong and wicked of me not to have
those feelings? If it was, I cannot help it. I did not make myself."

Again there was a space of silence which Mrs. Jenwyn did not break.
All her attention was apparently being given to her work, but a close
observer might have seen that her hands were trembling slightly, and
that more than once she dropped her stitches.

Presently Anna spoke again.

"I think, Tetta, it must have been because I have had you by my side
to love and cling to almost ever since I can remember, that I have
missed my mother as little as I seem to have. You have filled her
place to me. I have grown up under your hands, molded by you so far as
it was possible for any one to mold me. You have been to me a warm and
living reality; she nothing but a dim, sweet memory. How was it
possible that she should be anything more to me?"

Mrs. Jenwyn lifted her eyes from her knitting and looked fixedly at
Anna. On her face was an expression which seemed to transfigure it.

"Suppose, my dear one," she said, and the words came brokenly
and with difficulty, as though she were feeling her way like one in
doubt--"mind, I only say suppose--that things had so fallen out that
not Mrs. Drelincourt, but I--I--were your mother--what would you have
said and thought in that case?"

Anna's eyes met hers with a great wonder shining in them, not
unmingled with perplexity. She drew a long breath before she spoke.

"What should I have said and thought in that case--or, rather, what
should I say and think now? I should thank Heaven on my knees for
having given me a living mother in the place of a dead one, and one
whom I could love from the bottom of my heart, as I have loved you
from childhood."

Here she rose impulsively from her chair, and making three steps
forward, she went down on her knees before Mrs. Jenwyn and laid her
clasped hands on the other's lap.

"But, oh, Tetta, what do you mean--what _do_ you mean by asking me
such a question?" On her face was the radiance of a dawning hope.
Expectation sat on her parted lips; her bosom rose and fell quickly.

Mrs. Jenwyn bent forward and touched Anna's sunny hair with her lips.
"Oh, my darling, cannot you guess?" she said, in a voice shaken with
emotion. "I am your mother--I, and not another!"

It was a quarter of an hour later when Mrs. Jenwyn began her
confession--for nothing less than that could it be called. As a matter
of course, certain things--not necessarily everything--must be told
Anna in satisfaction of her legitimate curiosity, and there seemed no
reason why the telling of them should not be got over and done with as
speedily as possible.

The two were seated side by side on a couch, and Anna held one of her
mother's hands in hers as the latter proceeded with her narrative.

"My father, the Rev. George Wynter, was a poor curate in a rural
district, with little or no hope of preferment, and when, at the age
of sixteen, I was offered the post of companion to Miss Lemoine, of
Waterend, he was only too pleased that I should accept it, and so
lighten the burden at home.

"For me the next three years were very happy ones, I was not merely
Clara Lemoine's companion, but her bosom friend. She was a
warm-hearted girl of strong attachments, and I soon learned to love
her very dearly. At the end of that time Mrs. Lemoine, who had been an
invalid for years, died. The home was broken up, and Clara went out to
Calcutta to join her father, who held a position in the Indian Civil
Service. There, after a time, she met Colonel Drelincourt and married
him, becoming his second wife.

"After about a year the colonel, together with his regiment, returned
to England, his wife, of course, accompanying him. Some three or four
years later he was ordered out to Egypt at a few days' notice, and was
under the necessity of leaving his young wife, to whom he was
passionately attached, behind him. He had not been gone a month when
she was prematurely confined at a London hotel, but the child, a girl,
only lived three weeks.

"By this time I had been a couple of years married, and you, my dear
one, were born a fortnight before Mrs. Drelincourt's child. Clara,
while in India, had written to me from time to time, and I had duly
replied to her letters, so that the link between us had never been
broken. She knew of my marriage, and of many, but not the whole, of
the circumstances connected with it. She had called upon me at my
house in the suburbs of London only a few days before the birth of her
daughter. Within an hour of the child's death she sent me a telegram,
asking me to go and see her without delay. This I did, and then it was
that she went on her knees to me and implored me, with the most
passionate entreaties, to give up my child to her, so that she might
be enabled to pass it off to her husband in the place of the one that
was dead.

"It was a proposition to which, much as I loved Clara Lemoine, and
willing though I was to make almost any sacrifice for her, I could not
for some time persuade myself to accede. But she bore down my
opposition by degrees. Colonel Drelincourt, who was not on good terms
with his only son, was extremely desirous of having another child--a
boy preferably, but better, far better, a girl than none at all.

"He had been informed in due course of the birth of his daughter, and
Clara dreaded the effect which the tidings of the child's death would
have upon him--dreaded, or so she made out, that his love for her
(there being no likelihood of her having any more children) might
gradually fade into indifference, or even turn into positive dislike.
'I will not face my husband without his child, or one he believes to
be his, in my arms,' she said. 'If you refuse to give me yours, I will
drown myself.' And in the mood in which she then was she was quite
capable of doing so.

"But, over and above all this, there were circumstances in my own life
which, when I called them to mind, compelled me in my own despite to
lend a more favorable ear to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. My husband
was a bad and cruel man. (It is better you should know the truth,
however painful it may be.) He was both a drunkard and a spendthrift,
and something worse than either. He had deserted me months before you
were born, leaving me all but penniless.

"I neither knew where he was nor when to expect him back; and it was
his return I dreaded more than anything else in the world. Could I
have been sure that I should never see him again, I should have felt
comparatively happy. But I might hear his knock at the door at any
hour of the day or night, and the fear of it turned my life into a
perpetual nightmare. Oh, I had good cause for being afraid of him!

"Not to weary you, it will be enough to say that I finally gave way
and yielded to Mrs. Drelincourt's entreaties. Of what it cost me to do
so I will say nothing.

"When Mrs. Drelincourt was well enough to leave the London hotel, at
which she was an entire stranger, it was to go down to Wyvern Towers.
It was at a little country station, at which she made a stoppage for
the purpose, that you were given over into her charge. Our faithful
servant; since dead, with whose services it was impossible to
dispense, was our sole confidant in the affair.

"For the next four years I lived as companion to an invalid lady, to
whom some portion of my history was known, and who did not object to
my passing under a fictitious name--the one by which I have ever since
been known. At the end of that time Mrs. Drelincourt sent for me.

"She was in a consumption, and was quite aware that her recovery was
hopeless. She had grown to care for you as if you were her own child,
and her object in sending for me was not merely that I might nurse her
through her last illness, but that after she was gone I might have the
permanent charge of you, at any rate for several years to come; nor
did she rest satisfied till she had extracted a promise from her
husband that her wishes in this respect should be faithfully observed
by him. Me, two days before she died, she bound by a solemn promise
that only under the most extreme circumstances would I ever reveal the
true story of your parentage."

In view of the amazing confession just made by the elder woman, mother
and daughter found no lack of subjects to talk about, but it was not
till an hour later that a new and, to her, very surprising thought
struck Anna.

"If you are my mother," she said, "and of course you are, then Felix
cannot be my half brother?"

"That is very true," replied Mrs. Jenwyn, with a faint smile. She had
been waiting for Anna to make the discovery.

"Nor any relation at all. Oh, dear! I am very, very sorry for that. I
always loved Felix--although, all the same, I used to stand a little
bit in awe of him. And now, I suppose I've no right to love him any
more. But perhaps you don't intend to tell him even a part of that
which you have just told me. In that case, matters would go on as they
have always done, and he would continue to think of me and to treat me
as his sister."

"And, knowing what you know now, would you be content to go on living
on money to which you have no right?"

Anna looked dumfounded.

"I had not thought of that," she said. "No, I suppose I should not be
content--indeed, I am quite sure I should not be. But what is to be
done?"

"There is only one way out of the difficulty, and that is, for Anna
Drelincourt to die."

"Good gracious, Tetta--I mean, mother dearest--you frighten me!"

"I have thought it all out. Listen! In the course of a few days you
shall write to Mr. Drelincourt, informing him that you purpose taking
a voyage to Madeira for the good of your health, which has been
anything but satisfactory of late. We will go and stay there a month;
but while on the return voyage Anna Drelincourt shall die, and shall
be buried at sea, and on landing it will be my painful duty to inform
Mr. Drelincourt of her demise. I think you said that his last letter
to you was dated from Bordighera."

Her voice and manner were as dry and matter of fact as if she were
explaining some detail of housekeeping, but when she had come to an
end Anna sat and stared at her like one doubtful whether she had heard
aright.

"Why do you look at me so strangely?" asked her mother, after a
minute's silence. "There is no other way open to us that I can see.
Can you discern any other?"

Anna shook her head. "No," she said faintly, "I cannot."

"You do not know, you cannot comprehend," resumed Mrs. Jenwyn--and now
there was a ring of genuine emotion in her voice--"what I have gone
through in the course of the last few days, since I knew that this
money was coming to me. On the one hand was my promise to Mrs.
Drelincourt not to reveal the secret of your birth, except under very
exceptional circumstances; on the other was a mother's heart hungering
and crying out for her child. There is no one left alive to whom the
death of Anna Drelincourt will be a matter of much moment. Mr. Felix
Drelincourt will grieve about her for a little while, but her fortune
will make a handsome addition to his income, and he may perhaps derive
some consolation from that.

"And so--and so at length I came to the determination to tell you
everything. I wanted to claim you as my own--my very own. I wanted to
break down the invisible barrier which has kept us apart for too many
years. Oh, my darling, do not tell me that I have done wrong!"

"Wrong, mother! How can you imagine such a thing?" cried Anna, as she
burst into tears and flung her arms round Mrs. Jenwyn's neck. "In
gaining you I have gained everything. All else is as nothing compared
with that."

The audacious scheme conceived by Mrs. Jenwyn was carried to a
successful issue. To Felix Drelincourt in his Italian home came the
tidings of his half sister's death on shipboard while on her way back
from Madeira. He grieved sincerely for her loss, and wrote Mrs. Jenwyn
a letter full of sympathy, regrets, and grateful acknowledgment of her
services to the dead girl. Before leaving England Anna had made a
will, in which she bequeathed all she possessed, with the exception of
a few trinkets, to Drelincourt. This step was rendered necessary by
the peculiar circumstances of the case.

The money which thus accrued to him made a very welcome addition to
Drelincourt's somewhat limited income. After the reading of the will
he wrote to Mrs. Jenwyn, expressing his surprise and regret that,
except so far as regarded the aforesaid trinkets, her name found no
mention in it, and offering to continue to her for life the income his
father had set aside for her so long as she and Anna should remain
together. In reply, Mrs. Jenwyn informed him, with many thanks, that,
by the death of a relative, she had recently succeeded to a legacy
which would amply suffice to meet all her simple needs in time to
come.

And there matters between them came to an end forever, as they
probably thought, neither of them foreseeing where and under what
peculiar circumstances they should meet again, nor having any
prevision of the underlying purpose for which fate had interwoven the
threads of their destiny.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END.


It is a lovely afternoon in early summer, and a pair of youthful
lovers have the morning room at Fairlawn to themselves.

And a very pleasant room it is, at once sunny and airy, with two long
windows which open on a space of greenest lawn interspersed with
flower beds of various quaint shapes and sizes, which as yet are
hardly in their full summer beauty. At one end of the room is an
archway shrouded by a portière, forming the entrance to the second
Mrs. Drelincourt's boudoir.

At a table between the windows a very charming girl, as fresh and
sweet as a rosebud dipped in dew, is arranging some cut flowers in a
Nankin jar. On a couch no great distance away, admiring her with all
his eyes, lounges a rather jaded looking young man in flannels; jaded,
be it understood, not from dissipation, but from overwork.

"I only sat out two dances the whole evening, and it was my own fault
I didn't dance those." It was Marian Drelincourt who spoke.

"No doubt you fancied yourself the belle of the ball," rejoined the
young man. "I dare say there were several other young ladies there who
cherished the same pleasing delusion."

"No such silly thought ever entered my head. But I will say this--that
if there had been twice as many dances, I could have had partners for
all of them."

"You seem on particularly good terms with your young self this
afternoon. I almost wonder how you escaped falling in love with one or
other of your partners."

"How do you know that I did escape? There were two or three who made
themselves especially agreeable. But for anything that may have
happened you have only yourself to blame. You ought to have been there
to look after me, and keep me out of danger. Mrs. Delisle could easily
have managed to get a ticket for you."

"My dear Marian, as if I had not already explained to you how utterly
impossible it was for me to start on my holidays till late yesterday
afternoon! I took the first train after I was at liberty----"

"And reached Fairlawn just as papa and mamma were sitting down to
dinner. Although you professed to be so exceedingly delighted to see
them, mamma told me that she never saw you pull such a dismal face as
you did last evening. I wonder why?"

"Then you may have the pleasure of wondering, because I shan't tell
you why."

"Amiable youth!"

"But why didn't Mrs. Drelincourt take you to the ball herself, instead
of leaving you to be chaperoned by Mrs. Delisle?"

"Mamma rarely goes anywhere. In the first place, as you know, her
health is very delicate, and, in the second, she wouldn't go anywhere
without papa."

"Is Mr. Drelincourt, now that he has come back to England, as much of
a recluse as he was during the time he lived abroad?"

"Just as much. His coming home has made no difference in his mode of
life. We see no company, or next to none, and he and mamma visit
nowhere."

"It seems to me that it must be rather a dull sort of life to lead."

"Not at all. You forget for how many years they led the same kind of
life abroad. Wet or fine, papa goes out on horseback for a couple of
hours every morning. Then, all forenoon he is busy in his laboratory.
You may or may not know that he is a fellow of more than one learned
society. In the afternoon he and mamma--sometimes taking me with
them--drive or walk, and for the evening we have books, chess, and
music."

"You, at least, must find such an existence very, very quiet."

"Quiet, yes; dull, no. Since I left school it is the only kind of life
I have known, and I have never longed for any other. Besides"--with a
demure glance at the young man--"have I not everything a girl could
wish for to make me happy?"

"Sweet one!" exclaimed Walter Deane,--as he sprang to his feet. That
half veiled glance was more than flesh and blood could withstand.

Another instant and his arms would have been about her. But Miss
Drelincourt sprang back with a warning finger on her lips. "Hush! I
think there's some one coming," she whispered. In point of fact, she
thought nothing of the kind. But the pretense answered its purpose.
Young Deane slunk back to his seat with rather a shamefaced air.

Finding no one appeared, he made a mental note that he had been
tricked, but deemed it best to postpone his revenge.

"I don't think I ever saw two people so wholly devoted to each other
as Mr. and Mrs. Drelincourt are," he presently remarked. "They are
more like--well--like lovers than----"

"Than two people who have been long enough married to have a daughter
who will be eighteen on the second of next month. But they are always
the same. They seem to live only for each other."

"And for their daughter."

"Oh, I am quite a secondary person, I assure you, especially with
papa. Do you know, Wally, I believe he is sometimes actually jealous
of me when he thinks I am paying mamma too many attentions. It almost
seems as if he grudged me more than a tiny corner of her heart."

"That seems rather a strange feeling for a father to entertain."

"Somehow, papa seems different from other people. I can't explain how
or in what way, only I feel that there is a difference."

"There's a magnetism about Mr. Drelincourt which seems to draw people
to him whether they wish it or no. Me he attracts more than any man I
ever met."

"You are not the only one by many who has experienced the same
peculiar attraction. Can you wonder at mamma and I loving him so
dearly?"

Before there was time to say more the portière was drawn aside, and
the second Mrs. Drelincourt advanced slowly into the room.

Although she had left her fortieth birthday behind her, she was still
a very beautiful woman, with a freshness and purity of complexion
almost rivaling that of her daughter. Strangers seeing them together
found it hard to realize that she was Marian's mother.

"Mamma," exclaimed Marian, "I have here the very first Gloire de Dijon
which has come into bloom. I've been watching it for days on purpose
that you might have it. I've not forgotten that it's your favorite
flower."

"You are always thinking of me."

"As if it were possible to think of you and love you half as much as
you deserve!" said Marian, as she proceeded to fix the flower in her
mother's dress.

"That would indeed be an impossibility."

Everybody started and turned their eyes in one direction. The speaker
was Mr. Drelincourt. He was standing in the archway, holding the
portière aside with one hand.

"Have you not another rose for me, _petite?_" he asked, as he came
forward:

"It is the only one which is yet open, papa; but there will be a lot
more in a day or two."

"By which time they will have become common. _N'importe_. I must try
to find existence endurable without one." Then, turning to his wife:
"The postman has just brought me a letter which must have been delayed
in transit, since it was evidently intended to reach me yesterday. It
is dated from Paris a couple of days ago, and is written by my old
friend, Colonel Winslow. In it he says that we may expect him at
Fairlawn on Thursday--that's today--in time for dinner. He may arrive
at any moment."

"Was it not Colonel Winslow, papa, who stayed with us at Bordighera
five or six years ago?"

"That was the man."

"I was in short frocks at the time, and I remember that I quite fell
in love with him."

"I should advise you not to repeat the process now," remarked young
Deane in an aside to her.

"And why not, pray?" she asked in the same tone. "Colonel Winslow, let
me tell you, is a very charming man. I always did like elderly men
better than boys. I think it very likely that I shall fall desperately
in love with him."

Without giving her lover time to reply, she picked up her hat, and
swinging it by its ribbons, passed out through one of the long
windows. Before she had time to cross the lawn and plunge into the
shrubbery beyond, Walter was following her. Drelincourt and his wife
stood watching them through the other window.

The twenty years which had passed over Felix Drelincourt's head since
his first wife's death had changed him very little to outward seeming.
His black hair was turning gray about the temples, his long, thin face
looked a trifle longer and thinner, a few crow's feet had gathered
about his eyes, and there was a slight but perceptible stoop of his
tall, lean figure. And that was all.

"I hope that Colonel Winslow will make a long stay with us," remarked
Mrs. Drelincourt, as she seated herself in a favorite easy chair.

"Why do you hope so?"

"Because the presence of your old friend will be such a pleasure to
you; because he will cheer your loneliness, and----"

"Mr. Ormsby," intoned the solemn voice of Wicks, the butler, before
any one was aware that the door had been opened.

Drelincourt turned on the instant, and confronted his visitor, one
lean, muscular hand gripping the back of his wife's chair like a vise.

Our old acquaintance, his silk, hat balanced carefully in his left
hand, advanced with that air of self-consequence which was so much a
part of him that he could no more have divested himself of it than he
could-have unscrewed and laid aside one of his limbs. He never forgot
that he was Mr. Ormsby, of Denham Lodge--not even when he repeated
aloud the responses in church and avouched himself a miserable sinner.

He was considerably stouter than when we saw him last, and more scant
of breath. His cheeks, too, were fuller and rounder, and his double
chin more noticeable than of yore. His complexion was no longer
mottled, but of one uniform tint, and that the tint of a boiled
lobster, while his once sandy hair had turned completely white. In
other respects no change was discernible in him.

"Drelincourt," he began at once, "you and I have not met for twenty
years. I have called on you twice since your return, but both times
was told you were not at home--a statement which, I tell you candidly,
I did not credit. Today, however, I am more fortunate, and it is well
I am so, seeing that I am the bearer of news which can scarcely fail
to make even you--cold-blooded cynic though you always were--rejoice
and feel glad. At last, Drelincourt, at last, and after all these
years, the murder of my poor sister will be avenged."

For the next few seconds his listeners might have been figures of wood
or stone. They neither stirred nor spoke, but stood or sat in the
particular position in which each of them had been arrested by
Ormsby's ominous words.

The silence was broken by Drelincourt's clear, level accents.

"My dear Ormsby, you speak in enigmas."

"Enigmas? Stuff! They are a sort of rubbish I never deal in; more in
your line, by far. Man alive! I tell you we have got hold of the
wretch, the double dyed villain who did the deed, and have laid him
safely by the heels in Sunbridge jail. And, after all, Drelincourt,
whom do you think the fellow turns out to be?"

"Guessing riddles is not in my line."

"Why, that scoundrel Gumley."

"A--h!" It was more an indrawing of the breath than an exclamation.
Never had Drelincourt's marvelous command over himself stood him in
better stead. For a second or two there was a slight flickering of his
eyelids, and that was all.

"Yes, sir," resumed the other, "Gumley, the under gardener, the man
who was arrested at the time on suspicion, but ultimately liberated.
From the first I made no secret of my belief that he was the criminal.
From that belief I have never swerved, and today facts have fully
justified it."

"May I inquire as to the nature of the facts in question?"

"The most important of them is the fellow's own confession."

There was a perceptible pause on Delincourt's part. Then "Gumley's own
confession that----" Another pause.

"That it was he who stole my sister's jewels."

"So! And does his confession end there?"

"It does. But surely no sane person can doubt that the hand which
stole the jewels was guilty of the far graver crime!"

"And yet there might be found people, whether sane or otherwise, to
doubt the accuracy of such an assumption."

A coldly malignant gleam shot from Ormsby's porcine eyes. "I have not
forgotten, Drelincourt, how you stood up for the fellow twenty years
ago. Had it not been for your evidence about the locket, in all
probability he would have been convicted then. But stand up for him
now, after his own confession! On my soul, Drelincourt, it almost
looks as if you knew more about the affair than you choose to tell!"

Mrs. Drelincourt let her soft cheek rest for a moment like a caress
against her husband's hand, which was still grasping the back of her
chair.

"Ormsby, I am one of those men, too few in number, I am sorry to
think, who decline to accept assumptions in lieu of facts. You say
this fellow has confessed to the robbery. Well and good; let him be
punished for it. But to assume that he is, therefore, and as if it
were a matter of course, guilty of the more heinous crime seems to me
monstrous in the extreme."

"If you were a man of the world, Drelincourt, instead of being the
student and recluse you are, you wouldn't talk such rot--for I can
call it by no other name. So convinced are I and my brother
magistrates of Gumley's guilt that we have unanimously made up our
minds to commit him to the next assizes on the double charge of
robbery and murder."

"Iv that case, there's nothing more to be said," remarked Drelincourt
with a shrug, as he turned away.

"My errand is discharged; I will no longer intrude," said Ormsby.

He made a sweeping, old fashioned bow, and then marched out, his nose
in the air, and the color in his cheeks a shade deeper than when he
had entered the room. Wicks shut the door behind him, and the next
moment the first dinner bell sounded.

"I will follow you in a few moments," said Drelincourt to his wife. "I
have a note to write which must be despatched at once."

He waited with a nonchalant air, a couple of fingers of each hand
thrust into his waistcoat pockets, till she had gone, then he sank
wearily into a chair.

"At last the sword has fallen! For twenty long years it has been
suspended over my head, and now the hair that held it has snapped.
Fate guides our footsteps through a blind labyrinth, and brings us to
the exit by ways we wot not of. But it may be that all is not yet
lost. Some loophole of escape there may be still, though all is dark
at present. Through what mischance has Gumley been caught in the toils
after all these years? Why has he confessed to the robbery of the
jewels? Why---- But these are idle questions. I must see Rodd and get
him to fathom this mystery for me."

Therewith he rang the bell. "Tell Mr. Marsh that I wish to see him at
once in the library," he said to Wicks. Then to himself he added: "In
all the world there is but one soul to whom I can freely talk and from
whom I have no concealments."

When he entered the library, three minutes later, he found Roden Marsh
already there.

"So--you have heard," he said, as he shut the door, and paused for a
moment before advancing. "I can read your news in your face."

"I wanted to be the first to tell it you, so that you might be
prepared; but I could find no opportunity of seeing you alone."

"My dear Rodd, night and day for twenty years I have never been
otherwise than prepared. But tell me what it is you have heard. At
present I am altogether in the dark. That Gumley has been arrested,
and has confessed to the robbery of my first wife's jewels--so much I
have been told, but beyond that I know nothing."

"Yesterday morning Gumley, who has not been seen in this part of the
country for a number of years, tried to pawn a lady's watch. The
suspicions of the pawnbroker were aroused, the police were called in,
Gumley's lodging was searched, and in it was found nearly the whole of
Mrs. Drelincourt's stolen property. This morning I happened to be in
Sunbridge on business when Gumley was brought up at the court house
before Mr. Ormsby and two other magistrates. It was Draycot, the chief
constable, who told me of the arrest, so, of course, I took care to be
present at the hearing."

"It seems strange, does it not, that the fellow should have kept his
ill-gotten gains by him all these years?"

"Not when you know the circumstances, as you shall hear."

At this point Drelincourt sat down, and motioned Rodd to do the same.

"To go back to the affair of twenty years ago," resumed the latter.
"It seems Gumley's cupidity had been excited by the sight of the
jewelry worn at different times by Mrs. Drelincourt, besides which he
had sworn to be revenged on her for the horsewhipping she had
administered to him a few days before the robbery. He obtained access
to the dressing room through the window, by means of a ladder planted
outside, purloined by him from one of the outhouses, and duly taken
back when he had accomplished his purpose. He had chosen a time when
he knew there was not much likelihood of his being interrupted,
Lucille, Mrs. Drelincourt's maid, who slept next her mistress'
dressing room, being out of the way on leave of absence. Having found
the jewel casket, he emptied it of its contents, and got back to his
own room at the east lodge by the way he had come. With the exception
of the locket afterwards found on him----"

"To account for his possession of which I perjured myself."

"He hid away the whole of the stolen property in the thatch of the
lodge, where the police failed to discover it. I ought here to mention
that Gumley had a bed room at the east lodge, which he had not yet
given up, although Mrs. Drelincourt had discharged him some days
before. Well, finding it impossible, after his release from prison, to
obtain possession of the jewelry, he left the neighborhood, only
coming back to it about a week ago. At last his long waited for
opportunity had arrived. As you know, a new lodge has just been built.
The old one was untenanted and on the point of being pulled down. A
night or two since Gumley forced his way into it, and there, under the
thatch, he found the little parcel he had hidden twenty years ago.
What followed is known to you."

"And yet--fools that we are--how many of us are ready to affirm that
blind chance alone is the arbiter of our destinies!" Drelincourt
sighed heavily, then he rose and took a turn or two across the floor,
after which he resumed his seat.

"Ormsby tells me that he and his brother dunderheads have made up
their minds to commit Gumley for trial on the capital charge."

"There is little doubt but they will do so."

"When do the assizes take place?"

"Three weeks from now."

"Should Gumley be committed tomorrow, as I suppose he will be, you
must go up to London, and see a certain solicitor whose name and
address I will give you. You will put Gumley's case into his hands,
and instruct him to engage the best counsel. Expense must be no
object; only, it must not be known from whence or whom the requisite
funds will be forthcoming."

"I understand. But suppose----"

"My dear Rodd, let us have no suppositions, as thou lov'st me! They
are hateful things. When you have carried out my instructions, you
will have done all that can be done."

Again he rose and in his restless fashion took a turn or two from end
to end of the room. Then, as he laid a hand on Rodd's shoulder: "You
have read how, during the First Revolution, when the guillotine was
busy at work and the Conciérgerie was crammed with prisoners who had
been tried and condemned, morning after morning the tumbrels used to
come to the prison gate and the names used to be called out of those
who were to be led off to execution--you have read all that?"

"Certainly--and how gay the prisoners were, or made believe to be; and
how they used to get up little dances among themselves, although they
knew that for some of them the sun would rise next morning for the
last time."

"Rodd, I feel exactly as I can conceive those condemned prisoners used
to feel, except that in my case the end is a little farther off,
although none the less inevitable. Meanwhile, let us eat, drink, and
be merry. Bring roses and garlands. Let us have in the hautboy and the
flute. And as for the grim Shadow biding its time behind my chair--I
can feel its presence there already--you and I alone have eyes to see
it."

Rodd regarded him with a troubled expression. "I fail to understand
you," he said. "You don't mean to imply----"

"Hush!"

Marian was standing at the open door.

"Ah! here comes my little girl," exclaimed Drelincourt, turning to her
with his gayest smile.

Rodd went slowly out of the room, with bowed head and heart as heavy
as lead.

"Yes, you tiresome old thing, and come to scold you. Mamma wants to
know what is keeping you so long. If you don't come at once, you won't
be able to finish dressing before the bell rings, and then everybody
will be kept waiting."

"That would, indeed, be a grave misdemeanor. By the way, you have not
told me how you enjoyed the ball last night. When you got back you
stole off to bed without my having seen you."

"I saw a light in the laboratory, but was afraid of disturbing you.
The ball? Oh, it was just lovely! And what do you think? I danced
every dance but two!"

"Greedy child! Then you did not fail to enjoy yourself, although a
certain person was not there to keep you company."

"It was my first ball, papa--think of that! I could scarcely fail to
enjoy myself, could I? Of course I should have enjoyed myself far more
if Wally had been there."

"You seem very much in love with Wally, as you call him."

"Of course I am, papa. Have not you yourself agreed that some day we
are to be married?"

"I suppose you won't care how soon that 'some day' comes?"

"Indeed, then, I don't want it to come, oh, for ever so long! As if I
were in a hurry to leave you and mamma! It is most unkind of you even
to hint at such a thing, and I have a great mind to sulk with you for
the rest of the day."

"Such a threat is enough to make any one shake in his shoes. Do you
know, _petite_, of what I have been thinking?"

"How should I, papa?"

"Why, now Walter and my old friend Winslow are both here, that we will
try for a little while--say, for the next few weeks--to be as jolly as
sandboys. Yes, we will be gay, we will be dissipated even (fancy poor
mamma being dissipated, eh?), and our mottoes shall be 'Away with
melancholy' and '_Vive la bagatelle!_'"

"That will be awfully nice."

"Awfully. Tomorrow, if the weather hold fine, we will drive as far as
Beauchamp Chase and picnic there. Then mamma and you must arrange for
a garden party, and possibly we may be able to get up a dance or
two--and I know not what other frivolities." To himself he said: "What
a mockery is all this!"

"You darling papa! How happy we shall be! But come along, do, or mamma
will say that you are making me as bad as yourself."




CHAPTER IX.
WAITING FOR THE VERDICT.


It was three weeks later, and the day of Gumley's trial.

In the same pleasant room, with its French windows opening on the
lawn, already known to us, Mrs. Drelincourt was reclining on a lounge,
engaged in some kind of fine needlework. On a small occasional table
within reach of her hand lay an open telegram. She was alone, and had
been so for some time, but she did not on that account think herself
neglected. Indeed, she was one of those women, few and far between,
who love solitude for its own sake, and can taste to the full its
subtle charm.

Before long her reverie was broken by the entrance of Colonel Winslow.

"It's close upon three o'clock, and yet Felix has not returned," he
said. "It is not often that he prolongs his ride so far into the
afternoon."

"Very seldom indeed. I was becoming rather anxious about him when this
came to hand." As she spoke, she handed him the telegram.

The colonel took it and read it aloud:

"'Drelincourt, Greystone Priors, to Mrs. Drelincourt, Fairlawn.--Selim
has fallen lame. Shall leave him here, to be fetched by groom
tomorrow, and return by train.' That fully accounts for his
non-arrival," added the colonel, as he replaced the telegram on the
table, and drew up a chair. "You have heard nothing yet, I presume, as
to how Gumley's trial is progressing?"

"Nothing whatever. Roden Marsh is in attendance at the sessions house,
and will bring us the news at the earliest possible moment."

"I am afraid the result is a foregone conclusion," remarked the
colonel.

The subject was one Mrs. Drelincourt did not care to pursue.

"And must your visit really come to an end in the course of a few
days?" she presently asked. "Cannot we persuade you to favor us with
your company for a fortnight longer?"

"I'm afraid I have no option in the matter. Weeks ago I promised my
sister to be with her on the twelfth of this month, and were I to
break my word, I should render myself liable to pains and penalties
without number."

"But we shall have you with us again later in the season?"

"I certainly hope so. It won't be my fault if you don't."

"I cannot tell you how grateful I feel for the change which your
visit--for I can set it down to nothing else--has wrought in Felix.
Not for years--nay, scarcely since our marriage--has he seemed so
cheerful, so free from care, so little given to brooding over his
experiments and shutting himself up among his books, as during the
three weeks you have been with us."

"Ah ha! I do take some little credit to myself for having coaxed our
snail out of his shell, for having wheedled our bookworm out of his
seclusion; and it must be your care after I'm gone, dear Mrs.
Drelincourt, to see that he doesn't revert to his hermit-like ways."

A little sigh escaped Mrs. Drelincourt.

"I am greatly afraid that when your enlivening presence is no longer
here, everything will go on precisely as it did before your arrival."

"It is always wise to hope for the best. In any case, I won't fail to
come and stir up Felix again in the course of the autumn."

Before more could be said, Marian, closely followed by Walter, each of
them carrying a croquet mallet, made their appearance at one of the
long windows, which, this balmy afternoon, stood wide open.

"Colonel Winslow," said the flushed and happy looking girl, "we want
you to come and decide a point of the game for us about which we can't
agree."

Left alone, Mrs. Drelincourt resumed her needlework. Her thoughts were
busy with what had just passed between the colonel and herself.

"Yes, Felix has been a changed man from the day of his friend's
arrival three weeks ago. And yet, there is something in the change
which I fail to understand, and which, for that very reason, dulls the
edge of my happiness. To me--but I may be fanciful--there seems
something feverish and unreal about his gaiety. His mirth has an air
of being assumed for the occasion; in his laughter there is an echo of
mockery; it is as though he were laughing at himself for finding
anything worth laughing about.

"At times there comes into his eyes a strange, impersonal look, as
though he were gazing at something invisible to any one but himself.
And why is it that of late he cannot rest at night? Why does he
rise and quit the house at daybreak, and not be seen again till
breakfast time? There is something below the surface of which I know
nothing--something he is hiding from me. He thinks to deceive me by
his assumption of gaiety, whereas--Ah!"

A slight noise had caused her to turn her head. There stood her
husband, holding aside the portière and gazing smilingly at her. He
had gone to the boudoir first in search of her. He now came forward,
and having disposed of his hat and gloves on a side table, he bent
over his wife and kissed her tenderly.

"My telegram reached you in due course, I see. I was afraid you would
be growing uneasy."

"I had indeed grown very uneasy long before it arrived."

"I had gone for a longer ride than usual, when all at once Selim fell
lame. I was compelled to dismount and lead him at a snail's pace as
far as Greystone Priors, where I had his legs bandaged, and have left
him till tomorrow." Then, having drawn up a chair, he asked, but
without any apparent eagerness: "Anything fresh? Any news?"

"None whatever."

"Then Rodd has not returned?"--consulting his watch as he put the
question.

"I have not seen anything of him. But the trial will scarcely be over
as early as this, will it?"

"That is more than I can say."

Thrusting his hands into his pockets, and whistling under his breath a
lively operatic air, he strolled to the garden window and stood gazing
out for a little while. His wife followed him with her eyes. Now that
his back was towards her, her face had grown suddenly aged and anxious
looking.

"He is playing a part, and he thinks I cannot see through the
pretense," she whispered to herself. "But love has keen eyes. What it
is that he is hiding from me I cannot so much as guess, but sure I am
that some secret trouble is gnawing at his heartstrings."

Presently Drelincourt turned from the window, and going to the piano,
he sat down on the music stool and began to play a bar of the air he
had been whistling.

Suddenly Marian appeared at the window, and seeing her father in the
room, she laid a finger on her lips as a caution to her mother. Then
she ran lightly across the floor, and next moment her arms were round
his neck and her lips pressed to his cheek.

"You were gone this morning before I was down, so that I have not been
able to thank you till now for your beautiful, beautiful present."

"Nor I an opportunity of wishing my little girl--ought I not rather to
say my bouncing big girl?--many, very many happy returns of the day,
which I now do from the bottom of my heart."

His arm was round her waist, and for the next few seconds she felt
herself pressed close to him. Tears sprang to her eyes. "Dear papa!"
she said to herself. "He loves me more than I thought he did."

At this juncture the colonel and young Deane came in by way of the
farther window.

"And I have had other charming gifts," resumed Marian. "One from
mamma, one from Wally, another from Colonel Winslow, and yet another
from Roden Marsh. Am I not a fortunate girl? You must come and see
them where they are laid out in mamma's dressing room."

A little later in the afternoon Drelincourt and Walter Deane happened
to be left alone in the morning room.

Deane was turning over a book of engravings at one of the tables, but
not without an eye for all that was going forward. Drelincourt was
lounging against the framework of the farther window.

"In this suspense there lurks a torture worthy of a grand inquisitor,"
murmured the latter. "I wonder whether I or that poor devil awaiting
sentence in the dock suffers the more on our invisible rack."

Having glanced at his watch, he took to slowly pacing the room, his
hands behind his back.

"And yet, what need to wonder? He is but a clod, callous, brutalized,
degraded; and though his life is doubtless as sweet to him as mine is
to me, there are in me a thousand springs of feeling and emotion, each
a separate source of torture, of which such as he can know nothing. In
my case the stake is more, infinitely more, than is involved in the
premature ending of a life by which I have never set any special
store. There's the pity of it! If the issues of our actions affected
ourselves alone, we could afford to suffer in silence, and bow our
necks to the stroke with something like equanimity; but the Eumenides
who wait on wrong doing ever contrive to stab us through the hearts of
our dearest and our best."

Young Deane's furtive glances followed Drelincourt every time the
latter's back was turned on him.

"I have never seen Mr. Drelincourt so restless as he seems this
afternoon," he muttered to himself. "There's something on his
mind--that's clear. Can it be that he's troubling himself about the
result of the trial? Yet, why should he? It's not as if he were a
vindictive man. However it may go, it can matter little to him."

"That boy is eying me and wondering what the deuce is the matter," was
Drelincourt's unspoken thought. "_Eh bien!_ Let us give him something
else to think about."

Drawing up a chair close to Deane, he seated himself astride it, and
rested his crossed arms on its back.

"While I was out this morning," he began, "I was told something which
put me about more than I like to own."

"Indeed, sir! I am very sorry to hear it," answered the young fellow,
as he shut up the book of engravings and turned a sympathetic face
toward the other.

"If I tell my wife, she will be greatly distressed, because she is
acquainted with the people concerned; and yet I feel that she ought to
know. I'm rather at a loss what to do."

Drelincourt paused to follow with his eyes the flight of a butterfly
which had found its way into the room.

Walter wondered what was coming next.

"Some little while ago," resumed Drelincourt, "a friend of mine, whom
I may be said to have known all my life, was charged on his own
confession--a confession he need never have made had he not
voluntarily chosen to do so--with the commission of what by the
majority of persons would doubtless be regarded as a crime of a very
heinous kind; although it is to be presumed that, had he thought well
to do so, he could have alleged some justification at least of the
crime of which he was guilty. But be that as it may, having made a
clean breast of it, there seemed no course left open to him but
suicide."

"Suicide! Oh, Mr. Drelincourt!"

"That touches him!" whispered the latter to himself. Then aloud: "Life
had become too bitter to him; he could endure it no longer. Well, he
had one child, a daughter, who was engaged to be married at the time
of her father's death; but after that event, the man to whom she was
betrothed broke off the affair on the plea that it was impossible for
him to wed the daughter of a criminal and a suicide."

"The mean scoundrel!"

"The double blow--the loss at once of her father and her lover (not to
speak of the social stigma which will inevitably cling to her in time
to come) has all but broken poor Lucy's heart. On the other hand,
there is, of course, much to be urged from young Melville's point of
view, and I have no doubt the majority of men would be inclined to do
as he has done. Who can estimate the harm it might have done his
future career had he married the daughter of a man who, rather than
face the consequences of his crime, had preferred to put an end to
himself! Yes, on further reflection, I am inclined to think that he
behaved with admirable prudence."

"While I, if he were here, would brand him for the coward and
despicable wretch he really is!" exclaimed Deane.

His cheeks were flushed, a fine indignation shone in his eyes; there
could be no doubt of the sincerity with which he spoke. Nothing of all
this was lost on the elder man.

"But the young lady is well rid of him," he went on. "If in the
darkest hours of her life he thus abandons her, what he miscalled his
love is not a thing either to covet or regret."

"But consider," urged Drelincourt, "what the world would have said!
Think of the shock to his friends!"

"In his place I should have thought only of her I loved. If the world
and my friends chose to disapprove, they would have been welcome to do
so. Oh, Mr. Drelincourt, what a miserable hound this fellow must be!
Not to one man in a thousand in these days is the chance afforded of
proving what stuff he's really made of. In King Arthur's time men had
to win their wives after a fashion which revealed the coward and the
cad in their true colors. What a pity that some such test is not
enforced nowadays!"

Drelincourt smiled as he rose and pushed away his chair. "In that
case, I'm afraid the number of compulsory bachelors would soon mount
up to an alarming figure."

Walter also rose and went and stood by one of the windows. He wore a
preoccupied air, as of one debating some question with himself.

Drelincourt's lips moved inaudibly.

"As I told Winslow, I had my reasons for affording Marian and this
young fellow an opportunity of falling in love with each other. I do
not think--no, I do not think that I am mistaken in him!"

Next moment a shadow darkened his face. Again he glanced at his watch.
"The trial ought to be over by now. I thought I heard the sound of
galloping hoofs." For a few seconds he stood in a listening attitude.
"The sound was in my own brain only. So does expectation play the
cheat with itself!"

Presently Deane turned from the window and went up to Drelincourt, who
was standing at the center table, examining an etching through a
magnifying glass. His face was pale, but his lips were firmly set, and
his eyes shone with resolution.

"Mr. Drelincourt," he began, in a voice which had lost something of
its customary assurance, "after what has just passed between us, I
think it due to you to inform you that _I_ am the son of a man who
committed suicide! Probably you will think that such a circumstance
ought to have been brought to your knowledge long ago; and, indeed, I
feel now that it was both cowardly and wrong on my part to keep it
from you. The only excuse I can offer is that my father's memory is so
dear to me that--that----"

The words broke on his lips; a mist dimmed his eyes; he turned away
while he recovered himself.

Drelincourt laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

"Not a word more is needed," he said in grave, kindly accents. "My
boy, all the sad circumstances connected with your father's end are
known to me already."

"Mr. Drelincourt!"

"As also how every penny of your legacy was devoted to the payment  of
the debts he left behind him."

"You know all this, and yet----"

"Hush! Some one comes. Not another word."




CHAPTER X.
IN THE LAST RESORT.


It was Marian, who came quickly forward, her cheeks aglow with
pleasurable excitement.

"Papa, what do think? There are a couple of Neapolitan _pifferari_ on
the lawn, and I have told them to come round here. You should have
seen how delighted they were when I spoke to them in Italian. I knew
you would be pleased to hear them play a few of their simple airs. It
will seem like old times come back again, will it not?"

"Old times, forsooth!" exclaimed Drelincourt with his most riant air.
"You talk, _mignonne_, as if this were your fiftieth birthday instead
of your eighteenth. But where are these vagabonds of yours? I suppose
I must submit to having my ears tortured, since you will it so." Then,
as the girl turned away, the shadow swept over his face again, and
under his breath he murmured: "Rodd--Rodd--whip and spur!--whip and
spur!"

Marian had flitted on to the lawn, and was beckoning to the
_pifferari_, who presently came slouching along, and took up a
position a little way removed from one of the long windows.

"Poor fellows! Their clothes seem little more than tatters," remarked
Marian, as she reëntered the room. "And yet how picturesque they
look!"

"And how very far from clean!" Added Walter in a low voice. "It would
be a charity to make them a present of a bar of soap--if one could
feel sure of their using it."

Then they began to play. The air, although set to waltz time, was a
wild and plaintive one, and not at all like conventional dance music.

After listening for a couple of minutes, Marian clapped her hands and
cried excitedly: "Papa, don't you remember?"

"Remember what, my dear?"

"The air they are playing. It's called '_La Strega_,' which"--with a
glance at Walter--"being interpreted for the behoof of illiterate
people, means 'The Sorceress.'"

"So kind of you to enlighten my ignorance!" murmured the young man.

Marian turned to her father.

"It's the same tune two wandering minstrels played one day ever so
long ago on the terrace at Bordighera. And that day you were so gay
and light-hearted that you and I danced to it together. Oh, I have not
forgotten! And now it's my birthday, and we will dance to it again."

"_I_ dance! Madness!"

"It's a very delightful kind of madness. Am I not queen today? Do you
dare, sir, to dispute any of my behests?"

"There's Walter."

"It is you, papa, whom I am going to dance with, not that boy. I won't
listen to another word. Come! Let us try for a little while to fancy
ourselves back in Italy."

"What it is to be a slave of a tyrant in petticoats!"

He offered no further resistance, but slid an arm round his daughter's
waist, and the pair began to waltz to the music. Walter stood looking
on from the embrasure of one of the windows. Twice had they gyrated
the length of the room and back, when Drelincourt caught sight of
Roden Marsh's pale face peering at him through an opening in the
portière. The latter had approached unseen and unheard by either of
the young folk. For a couple of minutes longer the dancers kept
revolving to the music, then, as they again drew near the window where
Walter was lounging, Drelincourt beckoned to him to take his place,
which the young man did, nothing loath. A second later Drelincourt had
disappeared through the portière.

"Your news?" said Drelincourt to Roden Marsh, the moment they were
alone.

"Found guilty and sentenced to death."

"So now the curtain is rung up for the last act!"

Rodd grasped one of his foster brother's hands in both his, and for a
few moments the two stood looking into each other's eyes.

Then Drelincourt said, "Come," and with that he led the way to his own
room, where there was less likelihood of their being intruded upon.

"And of course the judge held out no hope of mercy?" he recommenced,
as soon as he had seated himself and motioned Rodd to another chair.

"None whatever. The fact of Gumley having confessed to the robbery
seemed to be accepted both by judge and jury as conclusive evidence
that he must be guilty of the other crime."

"His counsel----"

"Urged every point in his favor that could be urged, but to no
purpose.

"Poor devil! What must his sensations have been when he heard his doom
pronounced! But in a little while, as at the wave of a necromancer's
wand, the weight of that dread sentence shall be lifted off his heart,
and life shall once more taste sweet in his mouth."

"Felix! What would you do?"

"Can you ask? I thought it was long ago understood between us what my
course was to be should the worst ever come to pass. The worst _has_
come to pass--as I have felt all along it would surely do some
day--and it has now, to be faced. Could anything be more simple?"

"But consider, Felix, consider! This fellow who was sentenced today is
a low, brutal, besotted wretch, who--as was proved against him by the
police--has already served two terms of penal servitude for other
crimes; who, as I have ascertained, has not a single tie to bind him
to life, and of whom, when he dies--and the sooner the better--the
world will be well rid. No sane man would seriously think of
sacrificing himself for such a scoundrel. Let him hang! Such
_canaille_ as he are fit fruit for the gallows."

"My dear Rodd, how strangely you must have misread me all these years,
if you think it possible that, deliberately and knowingly, I could
allow this man to pay the penalty of a crime of which he is as
innocent as you are! Granting him to be all that you say he
is--assuming him to be the vilest wretch that crawls--his life is the
one sacred thing he can call his own till he himself shall forfeit it,
and all the unseen powers forbid that I should rob him of it! The
thing done by me twenty years ago concerns me, and me only, and I
swear that this man's blood shall not lie at my door!"

Then, in a changed voice:

"Rodd, you remember what we agreed upon long ago in case of emergency?
Have you the vial still by you which I gave at that time into your
keeping?"

"I have."

"That is well--that is very well. Fetch it me now--at once."

A groan broke from Rodd's lips; too well he knew how futile any
further remonstrance on his part would have been. There was that about
Drelincourt which brooked no denial. All his life Rodd had done his
foster brother's bidding, and he did it now.

"How strangely calm I feel now that the suspense is over and I know
the worst!" mused Drelincourt, when Rodd had left the room. "My pulse
beats as evenly as an infant's. Tonight I shall sleep as I have not
slept for weeks. Now that my doom stares me straight in the face, now
that I hear a footstep on the threshold audible to myself alone, of
what little consequence the world and its business have all at once
become to me! Already life and the things which make life sweet have
put on an altogether different aspect; already I find myself regarding
them almost as impersonally as if I were a denizen of another plant,
and had no part or parcel in them. It is a novel experience, and did
time allow, I might endeavor to analyze it."

His unspoken soliloquy was brought to an end by the return of Rodd.

"Have you found the vial?" he asked, with restrained eagerness.

"I have." He came slowly forward. "Felix, once more----"

"Give it me. Not another word!" Drelincourt held out his hand, and
Rodd had no choice save to do as he was told. Drelincourt's features
were lighted up by a faint smile. "Why this childish puling?" he
asked. "Why this sudden faint heartedness? You know well how it was
agreed between us years ago that this should be my way of escape when
none other was left me."

Rodd resumed his seat without replying, and letting his elbows rest on
the table, covered his face with his hands. Drelincourt held the vial
up to the light.

"Even in the tiny compass of this the Great Destroyer finds room to
lurk. 'Swift and painless,' were the words of the Italian _savant_
when he put it into my hands. Swift--and--painless. It is well. Now I
am prepared."

Rodd turned on him a face charged with tragic intensity.

"You will not do this thing just yet--if it must be done at all?" he
pleaded.

"Not today certainly--nor yet tomorrow. I have much to see to first.
Besides, this is my daughter's _festa_, and no faintest shadow of a
cloud shall mar its brightness. In years to come, when she is a happy
wife, and when the trouble which is now closing round her shall be
nothing but a memory, I would fain have her be able to look back on
this day as one of unclouded happiness."

"And Mrs. Drelincourt?"

"Ah! Now you stab me. Now you all but unman me. Why did you mention
her name?"

He got up abruptly, his hands clinched, his features working. Scarcely
ever before had Rodd seen him so moved.

"Leave me now," he went on, after a brief pause. "I must be alone for
a little while. I will see you again later. But not a word to my wife
about the verdict. Should she question you, tell her that the trial
will not be finished till tomorrow. How strangely you look at me! Go,
and fear nothing."

Sadly and lingeringly Rodd left the room. "There is one door of escape
for him, and it rests with me to open it," he said to himself as he
went. "He saved my life when we were boys; why should I not make an
effort to save his now? Felix--Felix--dearer to me than any brother
could have been--had I a dozen lives I would willingly sacrifice them
all to save yours!"

Left alone, Drelincourt crossed to one of the windows which fronted
the west, and flung wide the casement.

"Yes, to leave her--my Madeline--will in very truth be to drain
death's bitter cup to the lees. If she and I could but walk hand in
hand into yonder sunset, and so vanish forever from mortal ken--that
would indeed be well!"




CHAPTER XI.
ONE STEP NEARER.


It was the early afternoon of the sixth day after Gumley's trial and
conviction. In the library at Fairlawn, which just then he had all to
himself, Mr. Wicks was planted with his back to the empty fireplace, a
newspaper which had just arrived in one hand, and a paper knife in the
other. As he stood thus he soliloquized aloud:

"Well, of all the rummy goes I ever heard tell of, this licks the lot!
To think of Mr. Roden Marsh going and giving himself up as being the
murderer of the first Mrs. Drelincourt! But I must say that I never
did altogether approve of Mr. Marsh and his goings on. Not that he was
what one might call stuck up, because he wasn't. But, for all that, he
had ways about him which I couldn't stummick."

The turning of the door handle transformed him on the instant into a
different being.

It was Mrs. Drelincourt who now entered the room.

"Has your master returned yet, Wicks?"

"I have seen nothing of him, ma'am." He was standing at the center
table, cutting the newspaper in readiness for Mr. Drelincourt.

"Have _you_ heard anything of this dreadful rumor?"

"Meaning about Mr. Marsh, ma'am? I can't deny, ma'am, but what I 'ave
heard about it: It's in everybody's mouth, if I may make so bold as to
say so."

"When and by whom was the rumor brought?"

"By a messenger from Sunbridge about a couple of hours ago. He brought
a letter for master from Mr. Marsh, who, so the man said, is now in
Sunbridge jail, having given hisself up to the police late yesterday
evening."

"Great Heaven! Can this be true? Where is the letter?"

Wicks took it off the writing desk where he had laid it, and handed it
to his mistress. "The messenger brought it, ma'am, when you were out
in the pony carriage."

"Yes, it is Roden's writing," said Mrs. Drelincourt to herself, as she
glanced at the superscription. For a moment or two she pressed her
hand to her heart; then, as she gave back the letter, she said: "But
do you mean to imply that Mr. Marsh was away from home all last
night?"

"According to the chambermaid, ma'am, his bed had not been slep' in."
The door was opened quickly, and Marian, followed by Walter, entered
the room.

"Mamma----" began the former, and then stopped at sight of Wicks.
"That will do, Wicks," said Mrs. Drelincourt.

The man bowed and left the room.

Then Marian began afresh. "I can see by your face, mamma, that you
have heard this terrible rumor; but surely, surely it cannot be true!"

"As you say, dear, it surely cannot be true. And yet I know not what
to think. That Roden is in prison seems an undoubted fact."

"The report goes that he went into Sunbridge last evening, and gave
himself up to the police." This from Walter.

"As a murderer," said Marian with a shudder. "Oh, it seems
incredible!"

"Incredible, indeed," replied her mother. "If it be really true that
he is guilty, the act must have been committed during a fit of mental
aberration when he was not responsible for his actions. But we shall
learn the truth when your papa returns."

"Is not papa back?"

"Not yet. It is quite fifteen miles to Dunford, where Colonel Winslow
was to catch the Scotch express. But he cannot be long now."

"How would it be," said Walter, "if I were to have the bay mare
saddled and ride down the Dunford road and meet Mr. Drelincourt on his
way back? I could then tell him all about the rumor, after which he
might perhaps prefer to drive direct into Sunbridge and find out the
particulars for himself before coming home."

"An excellent idea, Walter," said Mrs. Drelincourt. "Go at once, and
come to me the moment you return."

As soon as he was gone she said to Marian: "Open one of the windows a
little way, dear; I feel slightly faint." Then to herself she added:
"My heart feels as if it were constricted by a band of steel."

She was lying back in a capacious leathern easy chair. Marian having
opened one of the windows, unceremoniously twisted up the outside
sheet of the _Times_ and proceeded gently to fan her mother with it.

Presently the latter looked up at her with a smile. "I am better now,
darling," she said. "This sultry weather always tries me."

Marian stooped and kissed her. Then she said: "Oh, mamma, what if it
should prove that poor Roden is really out of his mind!"

Mrs. Drelincourt sat up quickly in her chair. "How careless of me to
forget!" she exclaimed. "There is a letter on the table from him
addressed to your papa, which may possibly explain everything. Run and
give it to Walter, and tell him----"

"Here's papa, himself," broke in Marian, as the door opened to admit
Drelincourt.

"I am so glad you are come!" sighed his wife, as she turned to him
with a quick lighting up of her spiritualized face. Then to her
daughter: "Hurry after Walter. You will perhaps be in time to stop
him."

"And I am glad that you are glad," replied Drelincourt, regarding her
from a little distance with a smile, as he proceeded in leisurely
fashion to draw off his-driving gloves. "And yet, all things
considered, I have not been long gone. We had quite a race, I must
tell you, to catch the express."

"Then you have heard nothing of this dreadful rumor which has put us
all so much about?"

"You mean some rumor in connection with Roden Marsh?"

"Yes."

"Old Tyson, the turnpike keeper, did mumble something to me while he
was counting out my change."

"Did he tell you that Roden gave himself up last night as being the
murderer of--of you know whom?"

"It was something to that effect I gathered from Tyson."

"Oh, Felix, how coolly you take it! How can you--how can you?"

"Because, my dearest and best, I am absolutely sure that in Rodd's
self accusation there is not the slightest grain of truth."

"Then you think that it is all a hallucination on his part? That he
has brooded over the affair till at length he has come to believe that
he himself is the criminal?"

"There can be no doubt that such is the case."

"What a weight you have lifted off my heart!"

"I have noticed that he has been somewhat strange in his manner of
late. More than once he has said things to me which I utterly failed
to comprehend. Now, however, everything is explained."

"Poor Rodd! Poor fellow! But I am forgetting. There is a letter from
him for you which was brought here by a special messenger two or three
hours ago."

"So!"

Mrs. Drelincourt rose from her chair, and crossing to the table, found
the letter and handed it to her husband.

"Most likely this will throw some further light on Roden's
incomprehensible proceeding," she said. "I presume you will at once
drive into Sunbridge and take whatever steps may be necessary in order
to effect his release."

"That is what I purpose doing--almost immediately. I shall lose no
time in carrying out my intention in that regard. It must be done! In
my hands rests the question of his freedom or execution, and there is
but one course for me to pursue, that the gates of his prison may be
opened, and Rodd again enjoy the liberty which is his by right--human
and divine."

"Then, for the present, I will leave you. But I shall see you again
before you go?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Poor Roden! Most sincerely do I hope that you will be able to bring
him back with you."

"I hope so too. In any case, you need not fear but we shall soon have
him released from durance vile."

He opened the door for her, and as she was passing out, he stooped and
touched her hair with his lips. She smiled up at him, and her lips
softly breathed the word "Dearest!"

Could she have seen the change which came over his face the moment the
door was shut behind her, she would have been startled, indeed. The
transformation was marvelous. The real man was alone with himself.

"Poor Roden, indeed!" he murmured. "But what about poor Felix? And
alas!--and alas! What about poor Madeline?"

He was standing in the middle of the floor, turning over the letter
absently between his fingers.

"How little she dreams of the awful knowledge which a few short hours
must inevitably bring her? For there must be no more delay. This mad
act of Rodd's has served to bring matters to a climax a little sooner
than I intended. Today is Thursday, and Saturday was the day I had
fixed on in my mind as the one on which my long hidden secret should
be laid bare to the world. But now that the end is so near, it matters
not whether the revelation be made today or a few hours hence. Yes,
after twenty years--the end!--just as the past with its dread secret
was beginning to assume the vagueness of a half forgotten dream, and
life was becoming sweeter to me than ever it had been before. If,
perchance, I see tomorrow's sunrise, it will scarcely be from the
windows of Fairlawn!"

He crossed to the chair vacated by his wife, and sat down in it.

"I may as well read what that foolish Rodd has to urge in defense of
his insane action, although I know quite well beforehand the line of
argument he will take."

With that he opened the letter and began to read:


Sunbridge Jail, Thursday, 6 A.M.

My Dear Foster Brother:

When we were lads together you saved my life at the imminent risk of
your own. The time has now come when I can cancel the debt by saving
yours.

To me life is a concern of little moment. So far as I know, I have not
a single relative living, and were I to die tomorrow, there is not a
being in the world, with the exception, maybe, of yourself, to whom
that event would cause one pang of regret.

You, my dear Felix, are possessed of nearly everything which tends to
make existence sweet to most persons. In your wife and daughter alone
you have a double tie sufficient to cause a man to cling to this world
with all his might.

Let me, then, for their dear sakes, if not for your own, most
earnestly beg and entreat of you to accept the payment hereby offered
of that just debt which has been so long owing, and which, I swear as
Heaven is above me, will be joyfully discharged by

Your devoted and affectionate

                             Roden Marsh.


"Just as I thought," said Drelincourt, as he refolded the letter.
"Dear, true hearted, simple minded old Rodd! And does he really dream
for one moment that I either shall, can, or will accept the sacrifice
he is so eager to consummate? Even after all these years, how little
he knows me! No, my dear Rodd, neither you, nor Gumley, nor any one
shall discharge that debt which is due from Felix Drelincourt alone.
So, now to consider--to consider."

He lay back in his chair and closed his eyes, still holding Rodd's
letter in his hand. He had sat thus for a matter of five or six
minutes when the door was opened by Wicks.

"Sir John Musgrave and Mr. Ormsby to see you, sir."

"So! Where are they?"

"I have shown them into the morning room, sir."

Mr. Drelincourt's eyebrows came together for a moment. "Better show
them in here," he said. "Their coming is most opportune for my
purpose," he continued aloud, as soon as he was alone. "It will spare
me the necessity of a journey to Sunbridge." With that he put away the
letter in the breast pocket of his coat, and stood up to receive his
visitors. "Now to screw my courage to the sticking place! I could
laugh, were this a time for laughter, at the thought of Ormsby
aghast--dumfounded--his fat cheeks quivering like a jelly--when the
truth is told him. And he was so sure Gumley was the man. Poor Ormsby!
At last your thirst for vengeance shall be appeased."




CHAPTER XII.
ON THE BRINK.


"Sir John Musgrave and Mr. Ormsby," announced Wicks.

Drelincourt advanced smilingly and took the baronet's proffered hand.

"I think I can guess the nature of the business which has brought you,
Sir John; but in any case you are welcome," he said. "Ormsby, how are
you?"

Sir John cleared his throat. "As I judge, then, you have heard of the
singular freak--for at present I can look upon it as nothing more--of
your secretary, or whatever he is, Roden Marsh?"

"Who gave himself up last night at Sunbridge as being the murderer of
my ever to be lamented sister." This from Mr. Ormsby.

"I have been from home all morning, and the first I heard of the
affair was half an hour ago. I was on the point of driving into
Sunbridge when you were announced. But pray be seated."

"I am glad to have saved you the journey," remarked Sir John, as he
sat down. "My--our--object in coming to see you is to ascertain
whether you can throw any light on this most extraordinary business,
for, to tell you the truth, we are at a loss to know what steps we
ought to take next with the view of either proving or disproving
Marsh's statement."

"And not feeling sure how the affair might turn out, nor what fresh
light you might be able to throw on it, I ordered Draycot, the chief
constable, to follow us, so as to be in readiness in case of
emergency."

"That was really very thoughtful on your part, Ormsby."

"Hum--hum. Confound his sneering ways!" remarked Ormsby to himself,
with a grunt.

"One thing, gentlemen, I may tell you," went on Drelincourt, "which
is, that one of the first steps you will have to take will be to set
Mr. Marsh at liberty."

"Then you are satisfied in your own mind," said Sir John, "that he is
not really the criminal he seems so desirous of making himself out to
be?"

"On that point I am fully satisfied."

"What, then, can be the fellow's motive for such an insane
proceeding?" demanded Ormsby--reasonably enough. "Is he a madman, or
merely a fool?"

"He is very far from being either one or the other."

"But this is such a terrible crime for any sane man to charge himself
with?" interpolated Sir John.

"You say, Drelincourt, that one of our first steps must be to set him
at liberty," resumed Ormsby. "Now, I don't see that at all. He has
seen fit to charge himself with the commission of a most heinous
offense, and has put a lot of people to no end of worry and bother;
consequently it will rest with him to thoroughly disprove his words
before being allowed to regain his liberty. If I had my way, I would
treat such pestilent fellows to a month on the treadmill."

"It is possible that Mr. Drelincourt may be in a position to throw an
unexpected light on the affair," remarked Sir John in his blandest
tones.

"In that case, of course----"

"It will assume an altogether different complexion from the one it
wears at present. That goes without saying." It was Drelincourt who
completed the sentence.

He drummed on the table for a few seconds with his finger tips. Then
he resumed:

"A few days ago an enlightened British jury declared the man Gumley to
be guilty of murder because, having confessed to being a thief, they
assumed that he must of necessity be the author of the greater crime.
It was a verdict, my dear Ormsby, in which I have no doubt you fully
concurred."

"I did concur in it, and most fully. Twenty years ago I avowed my
belief in Gumley's guilt, a belief which the result of the recent
trial has fully justified, for of course I attach no credence to the
so called confession of this hair brained Roden Marsh. No, sir, you
may rely upon it that Gumley is the real criminal, and I shall receive
with much satisfaction the news that he has been hanged."

"And yet, I am afraid, my dear Ormsby, that for once your usual acumen
has been at fault--a rare occurrence, I admit--seeing that I happen to
be in a position to prove that yonder poor devil now lying under
sentence of death had no more to do with the tragic end of my first
wife than either of you."

"God bless my soul!" ejaculated Ormsby.

"Drelincourt, you astound me," exclaimed Sir John. "Are we really to
understand that you are in a position to prove Gumley's innocence?"

"I think what I said was clearly to that effect."

"In that case, the question naturally follows: If you are prepared to
prove Gumley's innocence, are you, further, in a position to bring the
real criminal's guilt home to him?"

"I am."

Mr. Ormsby's lips moved, but no sound came from them.

"You astonish me more and more," responded Sir John. "It is a
fortunate thing that Ormsby and I took it into our heads to call upon
you."

"Had you not done so, I should have called upon you, Sir John, a
little later in the day."

"With the view of conveying to me the same information that you have
just now imparted?"

"With that view."

"Then you had made up your mind before seeing us today to reveal what
you know?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Of course, our meeting here today is altogether informal and _ex
officio_; still, if I gather your intention aright, you will be
prepared at another time and place--say tomorrow, at Sunbridge court
house--to substantiate on oath what you have just told us?"

"Most assuredly I shall."

"Perhaps you would prefer not to reveal the name of the real criminal
till the whole affair can be officially investigated?"

Drelincourt did not answer for a moment or two. "Why wait till
tomorrow?" he asked himself. "The time for further concealment is at
an end." Then aloud: "Gentlemen, you see the real criminal, as you
term him, before you!"

Both the others started to their feet, and stared at him with an
amazement which for a little while bereft them of speech.

"God bless my soul!" gasped Ormsby at length, for the second time.

"You! Oh, Drelincourt!" exclaimed Sir John, in a voice broken by
emotion.

"Yes, I, and I alone, am the man." He spoke in passionless, almost
frigid tones, and as the words left his lips he, too, rose to his
feet.

"Drelincourt, never in the whole course of my life have I been shocked
as you have just shocked me," said the baronet. "I am utterly at a
loss for words. I--I know not what to say." His agitation and distress
were unmistakable.

"Then say nothing, Sir John, that will be the wisest course. Yes, I,
and I alone, am the man," Drelincourt repeated. "But this I must
add in self-justification--so far as such a deed is open to
justification--that what I did was done when I could hardly be said to
be answerable for my actions. From my youth I have been addicted to
occasionally walking in my sleep, and it was in a fit of somnambulism
that I killed my wife."

The baronet's face brightened. "Have you any witnesses to prove that
such was the case?" he eagerly asked.

"Not one," replied Drelincourt, with a shrug. "As you may perhaps
remember, my temporary quarters at the time were at a little shanty of
mine called the Cot?" Sir John nodded assent. "On the fatal morning I
rose in my sleep, dressed myself in my sleep, and, still asleep, I
walked from the Cot to the Towers. But no eye saw me enter the
house--which I did through a side door by means of my master key--no
eye saw me do the deed, and no eye saw me quit the house after it was
done."

"And no judge and jury would credit such a cock and bull story for one
moment," broke in Ormsby, with a brutal laugh.

"For once, Ormsby, you and I are fully agreed," answered Drelincourt,
with a thin smile. Then, turning again to the baronet: "And now, Sir
John, I must ask you to allow me to have a quarter of an hour alone
with my wife, after which I shall be entirely at your disposal."

"Does she--does Mrs. Drelincourt know of this?"

"With her the suspicion of such a thing is as far removed as Heaven is
from hell."

"Poor lady! Poor unhappy lady!"

The words smote Drelincourt as an ice cold wind might have done. A
shiver went through him from head to foot.

Ormsby could no longer contain himself. "So, then, we have got the
truth at last!" he burst out, a dull gleam of vindictive malice
lighting up his little white lashed eyes. "At last the foul mystery
which shrouded my poor sister's fate is dispelled, and the man who, in
cold blood--for I tell you plainly that I attach not the slightest
credit to your sleep walking rigmarole--slew the innocent being he had
sworn to love and cherish through life stands revealed to the world as
the miscreant he really is!"

"Ormsby--for God's sake----" broke in Sir John.

But Ormsby went on without heeding him.

"For twenty years my sister's blood has cried aloud for vengeance,
but, thank Heaven, it has not cried in vain! For twenty years the
gallows has been waiting, and at length it shall be satisfied. The day
you are hung, Drelincourt, shall be kept by me and mine as a holiday
and festival, and so shall every anniversary of it be kept as long as
I live."

Drelincourt fixed him with two glittering eyes, but did not speak. He
was standing with his back to the center table, and resting both hands
upon it. It was a favorite attitude of his.

Again Sir John felt compelled to protest.

"Ormsby, I will not listen to this sort of thing any longer. It is
shameful--shameful!"

But the other had not done yet. He was determined to have his say out
at every cost. The concentrated venom of years had at length found an
outlet.

"Somnambulism, indeed!" he sneered. "Tell that to the marines. Now we
can understand why, twenty years ago, you were so anxious that Gumley
should go scot free, and why you lied about the locket; for I have no
doubt it was a lie. Now----"

"Stop!" broke in Drelincourt, with uplifted right hand. "That is a
point about which I have something to say. Knowing Gumley to be
innocent of my wife's death, I did my best at the time to secure his
acquittal; but bear in mind this--that had the verdict gone against
him, I should most assuredly have given myself up then as I am giving
myself up today. From the first I swore that, whatever else I might be
guilty of, his death should not be laid to my charge. Sir John, a few
moments, if you please."

Out of the library there opened a much smaller room, where most of
Roden Marsh's work was done. Towards this Drelincourt now led the way.

"What can he have to say to Sir John that he doesn't want me to hear?"
asked Ormsby of himself, as he stood staring after the others with a
mingled expression of curiosity and distrust. "After all, what does it
matter? It's enough for me that, of his own accord, Drelincourt has
put the hangman's rope round his neck. Now that he has confessed, what
a blind fool I feel myself to have been not to have suspected the
truth long ago. A score of things occur to me, any one of which ought
to have sufficed to give me an inkling of it. And yet, not even his
wife has the ghost of a suspicion--or so he says! Then let me be the
first to enlighten her! A score of years ago his hand stabbed my
sister to the heart; but there are more ways of stabbing a person to
the heart than one."

A slow, cruel smile crept over his face. He nodded his head twice, as
if in approval of what he had decided upon. Then, seating himself at
the writing table, and having sought for and found the requisite
materials, for the next three or four minutes he wrote busily. When he
had done, he inclosed what he had written in an envelope, addressed
the latter, and rang the bell.

"Give this into Mrs. Drelincourt's own hands--and as soon as
possible," he said to Wicks, as he handed him the letter.

"Ah-ha I my dear Drelincourt, that will serve to go part way in
payment of the thousand and one sneers with which you have favored me
at various times," he muttered, rubbing his hands gleefully as he rose
from the table: "Let those laugh who win! The chance won't be given
him of indulging in them much longer. No doubt he will favor the
hangman with one of his most cynical smiles as that functionary
adjusts the rope, and will say to him in those bland tones of his,
which always seem to veil a sneer, 'My good friend, I hope you won't
bungle this simple little affair.' The fellow has the cool effrontery
of the Foul Fiend himself."

"You may rely upon me, Drelincourt. Everything shall be carried out as
you wish." It was Sir John who was speaking, as the two men came back
from the inner room.

Ormsby's face darkened. "If Sir John chooses to forget that this man
is a criminal, I don't," he said to himself. Then, aloud: "Ahem! I
presume you are now prepared, Sir John, to make out and sign a warrant
for the committal of Mr. Drelincourt to Sunbridge jail, on the charge
of which he has just admitted himself to be guilty!"

"I can't, Ormsby--I can't. I couldn't put pen to paper just now to
save my life," replied the kind hearted baronet, whose distress at the
position in which circumstances had placed him was self-evident.
"Besides, where's the need for a warrant? Drelincourt is giving
himself up voluntarily, and--and the charge against him can be taken
down at the proper time and place."

"Just as you please, of course. Then, if you have no objection, I will
ring for Draycot and give him the requisite instructions and have him
carry them out now."

"Ormsby, one moment," said Drelincourt. "I have a few words to say to
you on a topic which it is my wish never to have to refer to again. It
is in reference to your sister's death. Seeing that I have never
attempted to cozen my conscience by putting forward any plea of
justification for what I did, other than that it was done while I was
asleep, it is not likely that at this time of day I should care to
urge anything in extenuation of it, either to you or to any one.
Still, I think it well that you should be told, although to no one
else will the fact ever pass my lips, that your sister won me for her
husband by an act of treachery so base and heartless that I will spare
you the pain of listening to any of its details. Believe me or not, as
you please, but such is the simple truth. And now, Sir John, with your
permission, I will say a few words to my wife, after which I shall be
wholly at your disposal. I do not doubt but that you will allow me
such a privilege."

He bowed gravely to both gentlemen, then turned and went. As he shut
the door behind him and walked into the room a deep sigh welled up
from his heart.

"And now for the bitterest ordeal of all!" he murmured under his
breath.

"Our business here is at an end, and the sooner we get away the
better," remarked Sir John to Ormsby.

"So say I. But it will be requisite to see Draycot for a minute before
we go, as he must now take upon himself the responsibility of looking
after Drelincourt. I suppose he will prefer being driven into
Sunbridge in his brougham. Well, there's no harm in that. It's the
last time he will ride in it."

Sir John was already at the door. As Ormsby followed him out, he said
to himself, half aloud: "Thank Heaven that I have lived to see this
day. At last, my poor Kitty, at last you are avenged!"




CHAPTER XIII.
LAST THINGS.


The note given by Mr. Ormsby to Wicks was placed by that functionary
on the table in Mrs. Drelincourt's boudoir. Although he had been told
to deliver it at once, he took no notice of the request. His mistress
was probably in her dressing room, and the note might wait till she
came downstairs. He was not going to put himself out of the way to
please Mr. Ormsby, whose imperative mode of addressing him had cut his
superfine feelings to the quick.

On entering the room a little later, Drelincourt failed to perceive
the note. He sank into an easy chair, and supporting an elbow on
either of its arms, he let his chin rest on his interlocked fingers.
He was awaiting the coming of his wife.

The boudoir was lighted by a large oriel window, the upper half of
which contained a representation in stained glass of the coat of arms
and device of the Drelincourts.

After waiting a few minutes, Drelincourt rose in order to ring the
bell. The sands in his hour glass were running quickly away. As he
crossed the room, he caught sight of the letter, and he at once picked
it up. The superscription was in a peculiar, crabbed hand, which, as
he looked at it, seemed to grow familiar under his eyes. Then the
truth flashed across him: the writing was James Ormsby's. He had seen
more than one specimen of it in years gone by, and his memory was a
tenacious one. He could not be mistaken.

"Now, what can Ormsby have to write about to my wife?" he asked
himself. "He owes me a grudge, or fancies he does, and now that, of my
own accord, I have put myself beyond his reach, it would be just like
him to vent the last drops of his spite on Madeline. She must not be
allowed to read what he has written till I have thoroughly satisfied
myself that it is fit for her to see."

Without more ado, he tore open the note. Here is what he read:


Madam:

I consider it my duty to inform you that your husband has just
confessed that he, and he alone, was the murderer of my sister, the
first Mrs. Drelincourt.

James Ormsby.


"The caitiff!--the coward! To aim a final blow at me through
Madeline." He groaned out the words between his teeth. His strong,
lean fingers gripped the note, as they would have gripped Ormsby's
throat had he been there.

A tap at the door recalled him to himself. Next moment Wicks entered,
carrying a letter on a salver.

"Just brought by a mounted messenger, sir. The man is waiting in case
there should be any answer."

Not without surprise, Drelincourt saw that the address was in his
wife's writing. He opened the envelope, extracted the contents, and
read as follows:


Dear Felix:

Do not be more surprised than you can help when I tell you that I am
writing this at the Dun Cow Inn, Overthwaite. The explanation is very
simple.

I was standing on the terrace when Sir John Musgrave and Mr. Ormsby
drove up, but they seemed too much preoccupied to see me. After they
had entered the house, I descended the steps and turned into the
drive, which I find pleasantly shady these hot afternoons. Presently I
saw a dog cart coming along at a rapid pace, the driver of which
pulled up on reaching me, and asked whether I was Mrs. Drelincourt.
When satisfied on the point, he told me that he had been sent by his
master, the landlord of the Dun Cow, to inform us that Mr. Walter
Deane had been thrown by his horse, and was lying with a broken ankle
at the inn in question.

I must tell you that a little while before you reached home this
afternoon Wally set off on the bay mare, in the hope of meeting you on
your road back, and imparting to you the news about Roden Marsh, so
that, if you chose to do so, you could ride direct into Sunbridge
before coming to Fairlawn. How you and he missed each other I cannot
imagine.

Well, when the man had told me his news, I did not wait to go back to
the house in order to break it to you--I had no doubt you were engaged
with your visitors--or to Marian, but climbed into the dog cart beside
him, and was driven here its rapidly as possible. As you know,
Overthwaite is not quite three miles from Fairlawn.

I found poor Walter already in the doctor's hands. The fracture is a
bad one, and, as a matter of course, he will be laid up for some weeks
to come. He will remain overnight where he is, and I shall stay with
him; but I hope, with the doctor's sanction, to have him transferred
to Fairlawn in the course of tomorrow. Perhaps you can make it
convenient to ride over after breakfast and ascertain how we are
getting on.

I leave you to tell Marian as much or as little as you may think best.

Your loving wife,

     Madeline.


Wicks was still waiting. Drelincourt, after considering for a few
moments, said to him: "Tell the messenger there is no answer."

"It is well--it is better so," he continued half aloud, when the man
had gone. "We are spared a parting, and I a confession, which would
have racked the hearts of both. This will tell her all after I am gone
that is needful for her to know." As he spoke, he took a sealed packet
from his breast pocket and laid it on the table. It was addressed to
his wife.

"She, at least, will not condemn me," he resumed. "She sees with the
large eyes of love and charity. She will read and understand. My image
will not be deposed in her heart. My memory will be cherished by her
while she has breath to speak my name."

He took a slow turn or two from end to end of the room. Then he spoke
again.

"Not long will she stay after I am gone. The thread of her life is
frail--very frail. She will make haste to follow me."

A tap at the door was followed by the entrance of Marian. She paused
with the open door in her hand.

"I am looking for mamma," said the girl. "I can't find her anywhere.
And Wally, who ought to have been back long ago, has not yet returned.
What can have become of them?"

"Shall I enlighten you? Yes? Well, then, at the present moment the
pair of them may be found at the inn named Dun Cow, in the village of
Overthwaite, a couple of miles away."

"But, good gracious, papa, whatever are they doing there?"

"Ah, that's a question you must not ask me, or, at any rate, one I
must not answer. Perhaps I have divulged too much already. But shall I
tell you what I should do in your place?"

"If you please, papa."

"I should ask Robert to drive me over in the pony chaise to the Dun
Cow, and take the pair of them unawares. By so doing I fancy you will
surprise them quite as much as they are plotting to surprise you."

"That will be very jolly."

"'Won't it?"

"Are you aware, papa, that Mr. Draycot is pacing the entrance hall,
waiting to see you?"

"I shall be ready to see him in the course of a few minutes. By the
way, you may as well give me your good night kiss before you go. I
shall be engaged when you return, and shall not care to be disturbed."

Marian flung her arms round his neck in impulsive fashion, and kissed
him a number of times. Then he pressed her to his heart for a moment,
and it seemed to her that she heard a whispered "Heaven bless you, my
child!" She glanced up into his face with a momentary surprise, for he
was not used to being demonstrative; but she read nothing there. The
eyes that met hers were calm and shining, and on his features was the
stamp of a great serenity.

"You darling daddy!" exclaimed the girl, as she pulled his ear
playfully. "You don't half know how much I love you."

When she was gone and the door shut behind, her, he could hear her
singing as she went. He stood without stirring till the sound had died
away.

Then a deep sigh welled up from his heart. "The last link is severed,"
he said, as he turned away. "Winslow will act a father's part by her
till she marries. In years to come, when she has a husband and
children of her own, all this will seem like a dream of old, unhappy,
far off things. So, now to bid the world a long goodby!"

Taking out of his pocket the vial given him by Roden Marsh some days
before, he held it up to the light. But at this moment there came
another knock. Replacing the vial in his pocket, he went to the door,
opened it and disclosed Draycot.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Drelincourt," said the chief
constable--"more sorry than I can say. But time is running on, and Mr.
Ormsby's instructions were most imperative."

"Five minutes, only five more minutes, Draycot, and then, my good
fellow, you shall do with me as you will."

"All right, Mr. Drelincourt. You'll excuse me, sir, I'm sure, but duty
is duty." With that he shut the door, turned on his heel, and strode
back to his post in the entrance hall.

Drelincourt went back to the easy chair and seated himself on one of
its low, broad arms. His features were tense and drawn, but his
marvelous command over himself was in no wise shaken.

"How the evening sun lights up that window and brings out the motto of
my ancestors: _J'espère toujours. Tojours j'espère!_ Who shall dare to
sound the depths of infinite compassion? Even for such as I there may
be hope. 'Swift and painless' were the Italian doctor's words when he
gave me this." He was gazing at the vial, which lay in the palm of his
hand. "Now to find out whether he spoke the truth!"

With that he stood up and put the unstoppered vial to his lips.




CHAPTER XIV.
WITH ALL SPEED.


On quitting Fairlawn, which they did together after their interview
with Drelincourt, Sir John Musgrave and Mr. Ormsby parted at the park
gates, each going his own way. The baronet took the road to Sunbridge,
and, picking up a brother magistrate en route, drove with him direct
to the jail. There Roden Marsh was at once summoned before them, and
having been severely lectured for his insane act, was forthwith
ordered to be set at liberty. Mr. Drelincourt's voluntary confession
that he, and he alone, was the guilty person obviated all necessity
for Rodd's further confinement.

He left the jail fearing the worst, his heart tortured with anxiety of
the most poignant kind. His proffered sacrifice had been contemned,
and, so far as he could judge, had merely been the means of
precipitating a catastrophe to avert which he would willingly have
given his life's blood. His one burning desire just now was to reach
Fairlawn with all possible speed.

That his being there would avail to dissuade Felix from his rash
purpose he greatly doubted, but not willingly would he throw away the
faintest chance. Perhaps, even now, he might be too late!

The jail at Sunbridge was little more than a stone's cast from the
railway station, and no sooner was the grim portal shut behind him
than he hurried off to the latter, with the intention of hiring a cab
in which to be driven to Fairlawn. It was growing dark by this time,
and the station lamps were being lighted one by one.

A train had arrived a few minutes earlier, and every cab but one had
been engaged. Towards this one he now made his way, but only reached
it in time to see the door banged by the driver, and to find that it
had already an occupant. With a muttered anathema, he glanced inside
the cab, and then, not a little to his surprise, saw that the person
about to be driven off in it was none other than Mrs. Jenwyn.

The same instant it struck him that if her destination was Wyvern
Towers, the one cab would serve the purpose of both. It appeared that
the recognition had been mutual, and, in point of fact, Mrs. Jenwyn
was the first to speak.

"Oh, Mr. Marsh, is that you?" she began, addressing him through the
cab window. "I am very glad to see you, because you can perhaps inform
me whether I am likely to find Mr. Drelincourt at Fairlawn."

"I have every reason to believe you will find him there. But--pardon
the question--are you bound for Fairlawn?"

"That is my destination. I have just arrived from London, where I have
been staying for the last few days, and wish to see Mr. Drelincourt,
and with as little delay as possible, about a matter of very special
importance."

"I, too, am bound for Fairlawn--and in a hurry," said Roden, hiding
the surprise he could not help feeling. "So, as there is not another
cab left on the stand, if you will kindly allow me to share yours, you
will be rendering me a great service."

"Why, certainly. I shall be very glad of your company, Mr. Marsh, and
we can talk as we go along."

So Roden, having given his orders to the driver, got inside, and away
they rattled; but all talking was out of the question till they had
left the paved streets of the town behind them, and were well out on
the quiet country road.

Then said Mrs. Jenwyn: "My errand to Fairlawn is a very singular one,
as I have no doubt you will admit, Mr. Marsh, when I have explained to
you what it is."

"I am all curiosity," replied Roden, which was not far from being the
truth.

"It is the fact, is it not, that a man named Gumley is lying under
sentence of death in Sunbridge jail as being the supposed murderer of
the first Mrs. Drelincourt?"

"The fact is as you state it. But why do you say as being the
'supposed' murderer of Mrs. Drelincourt?"

"Because I am in a position to prove that the man in question had
nothing whatever to do with the crime for which he has been convicted,
and it is with the view of laying my evidence to that effect before
Mr. Drelincourt that I am now on my way to Fairlawn."

For a little while sheer amazement held Rodd speechless. But presently
came a question which, under the circumstances, was almost inevitable:
"You have indeed surprised me, Mrs. Jenwyn; but if you are in a
position to prove Gumley's innocence, you are, perhaps, equally in a
position to bring the real criminal's guilt home to him?"

"I am."

Again Rodd's thoughts held him silent for a little while. Then he said
tentatively: "Mr. Drelincourt----" and then he was silent.

"What of him?"

"You say that you are on your road to see him about this very matter
of Gumley's?"

"That is so."

"Then you do not know, you cannot have heard, that this very
afternoon, In order to save Gumley's life, Mr. Drelincourt gave
himself up as the murderer of his wife!"

"Mr. Drelincourt his wife's murderer? No! No!" The words were uttered
almost in a shriek.

"That is what he has confessed to being."

"Then he has confessed to a falsehood. It is not true, I tell you. I
can prove it. Mr. Drelincourt had no more hand in his wife's death
than you or I had."

Rodd pinched his arm as if to convince himself that he was really
awake. Was Mrs. Jenwyn in her right mind? Was she not laboring under
one of those strange hallucinations to which some persons seem
constitutionally liable? Perhaps she would tell him, in addition, that
she herself was really the criminal!

Was there a word of truth in what she had just asseverated with such
extraordinary emphasis? He greatly doubted it. And yet if there should
be! The mere thought of such a thing turned him dizzy.

A burning curiosity got the better of his discretion. "The real
criminal was----" He paused for a moment, as if expecting Mrs. Jenwyn
to fill up the hiatus.

"Pardon me, Mr. Marsh," she said, "but what I have to reveal must
first of all be told Mr. Drelincourt. When that has been done, the
affair will be out of my hands. But you, in your turn, can tell me
something, provided there is no objection to your doing so. By what
circumstances was Mr. Drelincourt influenced in coming to his strange
determination to charge himself with the commission of a crime of
which he is wholly guiltless?"

Rodd told himself that, although she had not answered his question,
there was no reason why he should not answer hers.

"In early life Mr. Drelincourt was addicted to walking in his sleep,
and it was while he was in one of his fits of somnambulism that he
believed himself to have been guilty of the death of his wife. I need
not trouble you with the details of the evidence which seemed to bring
the crime irresistibly home to him; it will be enough to remark that
both to him and me--for all the particulars of the affair have been
known to me from the first--it appeared absolutely conclusive. And
yet, Mrs. Jenwyn, you now assert, and in the most positive terms, that
Mr. Drelincourt's belief had absolutely no foundation of fact!"

"I do assert it, and at the proper time and place I shall be prepared
to prove my words."

Roden Marsh sank back in his seat with a great sigh of contentment.
However amazing it might seem, he could no longer doubt that Mrs.
Jenwyn was in a position to carry out all that she had undertaken to
do. Her words and manner were convincing.

About the details of the story she had come prepared to tell he cared
little; it was enough for him to know that the dread burden which had
weighed upon them for so many years would at length be lifted off the
shoulders of his beloved foster brother, never to be reimposed. With
the question of whose shoulders it was about to be transferred to he
did not trouble himself at all.

But a moment later he cried out: "Shall I get there in time? Shall I
arrive before it is to late?" They were questions which lit a flame of
torment within him.

He took out his repeater and struck the hour. Then, protruding his
head and half his body out of the cab window, he shouted to the man on
the box: "Drive hard--drive fast! There will be a sovereign for you if
you get there in a quarter of an hour."

The driver gave a whoop and cracked his whip. Never had the old horse
in the fly been driven at such a pace before.




CHAPTER XV.
THE SECRET OF WYVERN TOWERS.


To return to Drelincourt. As has been said, he had the unstoppered
vial to his lips, and was about to drain the contents, when the door
was thrown open and Roden Marsh rushed into the room.

With one sweep of his arm he dashed the bottle from Drelincourt's
hand, crying out: "Thank God, I am not too late!"

But Drelincourt gazed at him with reproachful eyes.

"Why have you thwarted me, Rodd?" he said.

"Because you would have made the most frightful mistake of your life;
because there is no need of your sacrificing yourself for Gumley;
because the real murderer has been discovered!"

Rodd got out all this in a breath and then dropped into a chair,
panting from the haste with which he had come and the excitement which
possessed him.

"The real murderer has been discovered!" Drelincourt gasped. "Then
I----"

"Had nothing whatever to do with it, as Mrs. Jenwyn will tell you. She
is here now, waiting impatiently to see you."

"But what has she----"

"That she will tell you herself. I will bring her at once;" And Rodd
started up.

But Drelincourt laid a detaining hand on his shoulder.

"Wait," he said. "Give me a few moments. I can scarcely realize yet
that--that I am not in another world."

It was ten minutes later that Mrs. Jenwyn and Drelincourt were left
alone.

They had shaken hands, and, at her host's request, she had seated
herself on a chair opposite his own, on the other side of the hearth.

Drelincourt lost no time in coming to the point.

"Roden Marsh tells me that you are the bearer of some very remarkable
news," he said, "and, in point of fact, that your visit here tonight
was on purpose to make it known to me. Is that so, may I ask?"

"It was that, and nothing else, which brought me to Fairlawn."

"I am given to understand that the information you wish to impart to
me is concerned with the death of my first wife."

"That is so."

"You know already from Roden Marsh that I have all along laid her
death at my own door. I had every reason for believing that I had
killed her while in a somnambulistic state, but Roden tells me you
assert most positively that my belief was utterly baseless."

"I do assert it, Mr. Drelincourt."

"Such an assertion presupposes a knowledge on your part of the guilty
person."

Mrs. Jenwyn bowed.

"Are you prepared to name the person in question?"

"I am."

"Yes?"

Mr. Drelincourt sat up in his chair. A hectic spot burned in either
cheek. His whole frame was a-tingle with excitement.

"The person to whom your first wife owed her death was none other than
your half sister, Anna Drelincourt."

Slowly, clearly, and unhesitatingly fell the words. Mrs. Jenwyn had
come purposely to declare the truth, and the more simply she put it
the better.

"Great Heavens! You don't mean to say that!"

"I have told you the simple truth."

For a little while they sat in silence. Drelincourt seemed utterly
overcome. Anna's name was the last he would have picked out with all
the world to choose from. And yet----

"Go on, please. Tell me all you know of the dreadful affair," he said,
after a time.

"Anna, poor girl, was no more mistress of her actions at the time it
happened than you, Mr. Drelincourt, had reason to believe yourself to
be master of yours. Just then she was laboring under one of her
recurrent attacks of mania. At such times, as you are aware, in all
her actions, thoughts, and habits, she became again as a child of ten.

"But there were occasions when darker symptoms would betray
themselves, when I caught little glimpses below the surface which
caused even me who knew her so well and loved her so dearly to tremble
and ask myself what still darker fate the future might have in store
for her. Of such symptoms, however, I said nothing to any one. Where
would have been the use of my doing so? No one could help her, nothing
more could be done for her than had been already done. The future must
be left to care for itself.

"To come to the fatal morning.

"Anna and I slept in separate rooms, with a door between, which, by
her wish, was always kept open at night. I may add that it was my
practice to sleep with my bunch of keys under my pillow. On the
morning in question I awoke earlier than usual, and while the day was
still very young. There was upon me an uneasy sense of something being
wrong.

"Instinctively I felt for my keys. They were gone. I was out of bed in
an instant, and, crossing to Anna's room, I looked in. It was empty.
Then I noticed that the outer door of my room, which opened into the
anteroom, was slightly ajar. Only giving myself time to thrust my feet
into a pair of slippers and to wrap a shawl round my shoulders, I
started to look for Anna, dreading I knew not what.

"The first thing I saw was my bunch of keys hanging from the lock of
the baize covered door, one of which had been used to open it. From
the anteroom I passed into the corridor, the doors opening into which
were all shut, and so went swiftly forward till I reached the gallery
at the head of the great staircase. Still there was no sign of Anna.

"While hesitating what to do next, I perceived that the door of Mrs.
Drelincourt's dressing room was partly open. It seemed to me a most
unlikely thing that I should find Anna there, yet it was impossible to
answer for her actions while she was as she was. Before descending to
the lower parts of the house I would satisfy myself so far. (I knew
that you, sir, were away at the Cot.) Pushing wider the dressing room
door, I went in and then paused. A slight noise in the bedroom drew me
forward; on the soft carpet my footsteps were inaudible.

"Peeping cautiously through the divided portière, I beheld Anna
standing by Mrs. Drelincourt's bed, still grasping the stiletto with
which she had just accomplished her dreadful purpose. Her face was
towards me, and the expression it wore just then I can never forget;
my dreams were haunted by it for months afterwards. While gazing thus
at her handiwork, a low maniacal laugh broke from her lips. A moment
later she tossed the stiletto away, and made for the portière. I had
barely time to shelter myself behind a screen before she passed me,
going straight out of the room.

"Scarcely had she disappeared before I was in the bed chamber. I
quickly satisfied myself that Mrs. Drelincourt was dead. For her
nothing could be done, and my one thought now was how I could best
screen the culprit. When I got back to my rooms, I found her fast
asleep in bed, a lovely color mantling her cheeks, and her lips parted
with a childlike smile.

"That morning, I remember, she slept a little later than usual, but
when she awoke she was as gay and as full of innocent fun as, at such
times, she nearly always was. She had slain Mrs. Drelincourt (whom, I
have reason to know, she secretly hated) in a temporary access of
homicidal mania, but her memory, on awaking, retained no recollection
of it whatever."

Mrs. Jenwyn ceased speaking, and Drelincourt was slow to break the
silence which ensued.

At length he said: "You have succeeded in astonishing me more, Mrs.
Jenwyn, than I was ever astonished before. But that is a point on
which I will not expatiate at present. May I take it that you never
said anything to my poor sister about what you had witnessed in my
wife's bed room?"

"Not a hint nor a syllable about it ever passed my lips to her."

"So that she lived and died in utter ignorance of that terrible
morning's work?"

Mrs. Jenwyn bowed affirmatively.

"From the bottom of my heart, madam, I thank you for your wise
reticence. While it would have benefited nobody to have revealed what
you knew to Anna, it would have distressed her infinitely, and, in all
probability, would have tended to shorten her life. For her sake I
shall always hold myself your debtor. But tell me this, please. In
case Gumley, after his arrest twenty years ago, had been brought to
trial and found guilty, as he has been now, what action would have
been taken by you? Or should you have taken any at all?"

"I should have done at that time precisely what I have done today: I
should have sought an interview with you, and have revealed to you
everything that was known to me."

It was evident to Drelincourt that Mrs. Jenwyn had been actuated by
precisely the same motives that had prevailed with himself.

To the widow it seemed that the time had now come when she might ask a
question on her own account.

"And now, sir, that I have told you all this," she said, "will you
kindly inform me, in return, what step it will be needful for me to
take."

Mr. Drelincourt considered for a few moments. Then he said: "As it
seems to me, the proper thing to do will be for both of us to put in
an appearance in the morning before the Sunbridge magistrates, when
you can depose on oath to the truth of what you have told me here
tonight. What will happen after that I cannot tell. The joint wisdom
of our friends on the bench will decide that point for us."

After a little further conversation, the housekeeper was summoned, and
Mrs. Jenwyn given into her charge. Breakfast would be on the table at
nine, her host told her, and at ten the brougham would be in readiness
to drive them into Sunbridge.

The arrangement made by Drelincourt overnight was duly carried into
effect next morning. The brougham conveyed Mrs. Jenwyn and him into
Sunbridge, where they presented themselves before the bench of
magistrates.

At Drelincourt's request he was sworn first. To recapitulate his
statement would be superfluous, what he had to tell being known to us
already. Then came Mrs. Jenwyn's turn, the nature of whose evidence is
equally known to us. After that the magistrates retired to their
private room in order to consult together, with the result that the
case was adjourned for a couple of days to allow of their taking legal
opinion in the interim, bail being accepted for the reappearance of
Drelincourt and Mrs. Jenwyn.

At the adjourned inquiry no charge was preferred against the former,
but the widow was committed for trial at the autumn assizes, on the
count of being accessory after the fact to the murder of the first
Mrs. Drelincourt. That such a charge, bearing in mind the peculiar
character of the case, should involve any more severe penalty than a
very limited term of imprisonment was what nobody believed or
expected. Meanwhile, Mrs. Jenwyn was released on bail, the surety for
her appearance at the assize bar being no other than Felix
Drelincourt.

Long before this the latter had told everything to his wife. With what
passed between them on the occasion we have nothing to do. This,
however, may be said; that, woman-like, Mrs. Drelincourt thought far
more of the lack of confidence in her as a wife which her husband's
confession revealed than she did of anything else he had to tell her.

When the Sunbridge autumn assizes came on, Mrs. Jenwyn failed to put
in an appearance, nor was she anywhere to be found. As a consequence,
Mr. Drelincourt's bail was estreated, for which he was by no means
sorry. He would rather have forfeited the amount twice over than have
had the details of poor Anna's unhappy story related in a court of
justice.

Some time before this Gumley had been released under an order from the
Home Office.




THE END.









End of Project Gutenberg's The Secret of Wyvern Towers, by T. W. Speight

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